https://s3.amazonaws.com/main-newsbtc-images/2015/04/bitcoin-price-crash-illustration-ramreva-newsbtc1-825x510.png The new phenomenon of bitcoin and blockchain, otherwise known as cryptocurrencies, are currently making a name for themselves as currencies that are different from all the others. Bitcoin is a form of digital currency, created and held electronically. Bitcoins aren’t printed, like dollars or euros – they’re produced by people, and increasingly businesses, running computers all around the world, using software that creates mathematical code.

Bitcoin’s most important characteristic, as the story goes, is that it is decentralized. No single institution or major bank controls the bitcoin network. This puts some people at ease, because it means that a large bank can’t control their money. But is that really the case?

Nikolai Starikov is a well known author and politician. Recently, one of Starikov’s books was spotted lying on President Putin’s desk. “Nationalisation of the Ruble: the Path to free Russia” can be seen in The Putin Interviews - Vladimir Putin Gives Oliver Stone a Tour of His Offices, at 1 minute and 18 seconds. This has undoubtedly won him extra subscribers and readers!

Bitcoin isn’t based on gold, but mathematics, and there is a limit to have many can be created. However, given that nobody controls the production of bitcoin - Starikov asks – by which mechanism does a computer programme generate its own code? Is this artificial intelligence? If so, we didn’t know this kind of level of artificial intelligence exists. Furthermore, why is it that it has been allowed to exist, given that it is only Central Banks of any one country that are constitutionally allowed to create legal tender? If you or I tried to create our own currency, that would be against the law.

Starikov draws the conclusion that bitcoin has been intentionally recognised by international bankers as legal tender. Given that the creation of wealth and the control over it has destroyed countries and empires throughout centuries, it is unlikely that this new currency exists in a vacuum, free from human intervention.

Similarly, he concludes that the development of cryptocurrency is the beginning of the process designed to ditch the dollar, and with it the massive US debt of 19 trillion dollars.