XRP valuation during financial calamity

[Graine]

Recent stock and crypto markets downturn got me thinking, if the unusually synchronised movements is a sign of a systemic risk that has been widely evenly spilled, getting ready to become a glacial surface that would send global economy in a free fall. Or if there is indeed a powerful adversary with hands dipped in all markets, shaping the outcome to his/her or their will?

Original Max Entropy used to mention global banking collapse as a leading cause of Ripple's (and, subsequently, XRP) demise. So I brewed a decent-sized pot of herbal tea and dove in the prominent 'conspiracies' to get an inkling of what might happen. 

I am no Taleb, but I have been living in a country, that honestly should have had a black swan as a national symbol instead of a crane. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. That eerie feeling of an impending collapse suspended in time pierces all aspects of one's life. A personal experience of several bank runs, two instances of hyperinflation and some textbook economy collapse should serve as a sufficient canvas to model the topic of discussion. 

 

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For an exercise in imagination, let's contemplate what would happen, if one beautiful morning the banks do not open. All of them. The first one to raise alarm would be the small business owners, who usually come to banks early in the morning to carry out payments, but are greeted with closed doors and no explanation. A group of visibly shaken bank employees flocking to smoking areas, but other than that - the usual sight of a city waking up. 

By about 9:00 AM, special issue of news comes out, announcing temporal banks closure due to 'unforeseen technical issues'. The public is assured 'no money went missing'.  

Usually, it takes ~2 hours to cold start from a full backup of yesterday's bank ledger. It might take more hours in case of corrupt data or issues with business intelligence module of a bank. The catch is, you don't know if your backup is corrupted, until you restore from it. So IT department is optimistic, promising to resolve all issues by 11 a.m.

By afternoon, local cafeterias are filled with disgruntled customers and exhausted hosts, when a manager has to go out and repeat the same speech about why debit/credit cards don't work, and how you have to find cash to pay for your brunches. 

By 3:00 pm all merchants have a hand-drawn sign, saying 'cash-only'. 

5:00 pm News announce, that a cyber attack of unknown origin has paralyzed all banks in the world. People are advised to 'break apart' those piggy banks and budget for a day or two, until the situation is resolved. 

Only ~8% of money is in cash in USA. The first three days people manage. By the end of the 7th, when it is not possible to log into your bank account, riots begin. Government announce the plan to utilize FEMA and National Guard to distribute food rations. 

By the end of week 2, all shelves in stores are empty or looted. Curfew is imposed. People begin to use gold or medicine as a barter token. 

By the end of week 3 the economy is barter-only and highly fractured. People utilize alcohol beverages an antibiotics as a currency of sorts.  And guns ammo. 

But what if there was a sufficient number of users of cryptocurrency during such a calamity? Provided the electricity and internet remains intact, how would people act? 

Venezuela, while retaining a working banking system, is a peculiar example of societal shift towards alternative mediums of value. Emergence of PepeCash as a prominent currency, amongst high governmental scrutiny, demonstrates that intangible assets gain sufficient trust to enable economic relations, especially when it is dangerous to carry physical gold or cash due to high criminal activity. 

I came to believing that corporate entities, when faced with the urgent need for alternate transactional system, will turn to tokens that allow for trustless settlement. Especially after the initial wave of breaches of contract, citing great financial calamity and act of god as a sufficient reason not to act on their part of the deal. 

This could become a melting pot of crypto-currencies, that would eventually establish the foundations of the new world finance. Something tells me, that fiat will suffer a powerful blow of confidence. The question is, if by the end of the month the banking is back on, and all could go on as 'business as usual', what would eventually triumph: the habit/ease of use, or innovation? Will XRP be tainted by bank's failure? 
 

[PaulKim]

I am a closet stacker.

I know your feels.

Lately I have been a bit complacent as this artificial bull market inflation is so manipulated I don't think it will end soon.

Just be prepared. Have some cash, food, water, and a firearm on hand.

All will be well and we will drive our lambos on the moon.

[Benchmark]

Stock markets do seem overvalued in general, nothing goes up forever. A correction is inevitable. I'm not expecting any extreme scenario like a global banking collapse, those predictions are pretty much always exaggerated. The world didn't end in 2008, not in 2001, not in 1987, not in 1945, not in 1918. So let's get over that doom-mindset and accept the fact that recovery is always around the corner. People adjust, adapt, and move on. 

Focusing exclusively on finance, I do expect a repeat of the last recession, maybe worse. The good news is that cryptomarkets seem unrelated to other markets, as JPM analysis showed. That means it doesn't have to follow a stock market crash were that to happen, or even better it could become a hedge and more money flows in as people get out of other assets and into cash, gold or cryptocurrencies. Though we can't forget that institutional investors are still very wary of digital assets. But given that they are not an important factor now, neither would they be during a market recession in the near future.

Getting to XRP, it is not competing with fiat currencies, it is being positioned as the prime digital asset for global settlements. So we have to ask ourselves what would benefit or threaten that position. I don't have the answer, it's something to ponder while we wait for new developments.

[Graine]

8 hours ago, Benchmark said:

So let's get over that doom-mindset and accept the fact that recovery is always around the corner. People adjust, adapt, and move on. 

This is not about whether or not the collapse happens. 

I was trying to model how xrp will be valued during such a collapse. 

If you remove the river banks the bridge supposed to connect, the bridge drowns. 

[Benchmark]

37 minutes ago, Graine said:

This is not about whether or not the collapse happens. 

I was trying to model how xrp will be valued during such a collapse. 

If you remove the river banks the bridge supposed to connect, the bridge drowns. 

I understand, but I can't even comprehend how XRP is valued today. Much less so after a banking collapse.

Though again, XRP is to be used for global settlements. We have to figure out how that would develop during/after a banking collapse. I think the use of xRapid and xCurrent would be much more attractive than the current system during a collapse. Any shock to the system could increase the speed of change.