Jerome Powell Is Wrong: Cryptocurrencies Were Made for Payments

During a Senate hearing last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell suggested: “With cryptocurrencies, it’s not that they didn’t aspire to be a payment mechanism, it’s that they’ve completely failed to become one except for people who desire anonymity, of course, for whatever reason.” Setting aside that distributed open ledgers like Bitcoin are pseudonymous rather than anonymous, providing greater transparency into transactions compared to the existing financial system, there are several reasons why Jerome Powell is wrong in saying that cryptocurrencies have failed as a payment mechanism.