I keep saying that central banks get one final kick at the can: they can "sell out" by purchasing bitcoins with newly-created fiat until all confidence in fiat is lost. Central banks would still have a big pile of coins to continue with monetary policy.
I wonder how many coins they could get if they started doing this today.
I'm guessing a good chunk - 1/3 of all in existence at least. A lot of people would sell their coins before it was clear who was buying them. And then it would take a bit to realize the CB's intention. It would take some very high prices before everyone knew what was happening. Over $100k, I'd guess. We could hit $10k and nobody would even suspect it was any different than previous bubbles.
the risk for them doing this would be enormous.
reputational risk would include a market perception of fear of Bitcoin and lack of confidence in USD. it would be a clear signal that they believe their future is doomed. just "being in the game" would not facilitate monetary policy manipulation which is the raison d'etre for their existence in the first place.
if ppl found out they were doing this, everyone and their mother would pile in driving the price even higher to stratospheric levels. i suppose they could find a proxy buyer to accumulate coins but if they accidentally pick a Snowden-type, they'd be screwed.
CB's aren't smart investors as far as i'm concerned. look at Gordon Brown's faux pas. during the noughts, CB's in general were selling gold for the most part. the recent buying by Russia and China, i believe, will go down in history as yet another mistake.
no, i think the CB's, especially the Fed, are "all-in" with fiat. that's not good; for them.
Cypher, I thought you believed that bitcoin could serve as a sort of reserve currency that enforced discipline. If central banks hold gold on the asset side of their balance sheets, why can't they one day hold bitcoin? If our world is truly going to transition from fiat to cryptocurrency, would this not be a natural step in the process?
To me the relationship between central banks and bitcoin is a high-stakes game of chicken--viewed together as a cohesive system, it's in their best interest to ignore bitcoin; but viewed individually, it's in each CB's best interest to support bitcoin sooner than all the others if the end game is inevitable.
In a bitcoin future, I also think they'll still be able to conduct monetary policy (albeit to a reduced extent). They'll be able to lend from their huge bitcoin reserves when the economy slows, and increase the interest rate on those loans when the economy improves. The beauty with bitcoin is that if they make poor decisions, their reserves will dwindle right alongside the notion that "wise men at the Fed" make better decisions for the economy than the free market.
