Cryptocurrency failing to take advantage of crisis

WAR is a crucible of innovation, not all of it necessarily malign - think of penicillin. In Russia's cowardly and horrific assault upon Ukraine, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts have declared that the war is a 9/11 moment, where crypto proves its worth and the scales fall from the eyes of skeptics and reluctant governments. But in circumstances which could have been tailor-made as a test bed for cryptocurrencies, like Arthur Conan Doyle's hound, crypto has largely failed to bark. For each of the three crypto tribes - the true believers, speculators and pragmatists - this is disconcerting.

As the true believers remind us, bitcoin was designed to liberate users from the tyranny of fiat currencies and their accompanying state-controlled financial infrastructures. Holders could escape the alleged iniquities of the dollar. Protected by its artificially controlled scarcity and immune from the ravages of inflation, bitcoin would prosper not only as a borderless and politically neutral payments instrument, but also as an immutable, anonymous asset.

The speculators - not all of whom are entirely honest - view bitcoin and its peers as tradable and investible alternative assets which ought to prosper in times of adversity, particularly for fiat instruments.