Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris: Logically, bitcoin fans should love the euro. Why don’t they?

Funny how Euroscepticism and a faith in hard money go together

Photo: Photothek via Getty

Bitcoins have been in the news, after a story about an unfortunate fellow who jettisoned his computer’s hard drive that contained (apparently) the code he needed to access his stash of this electronic currency — its value more than £4 million. I don’t even pretend to have an opinion on bitcoins. I only just, and most imperfectly, understand what this electronically traded currency is and why it appeals to people.

But it has got me thinking. A bitcoin is a single currency, a global currency, a currency beyond the reach or control of national governments around the world. In theory (unless governments try to ban the bitcoin) it would be politician-proof.

So my question is this: what would a Eurosceptic anti-single-currency-wallah make of bitcoins, or any transnational or world currency? What would be the ideologically correct response of the sovereignty-conscious right to the emergence of tradeable units of value whose price was fixed entirely by international supply and demand?

Because, you see, it’s my belief that British conservatives’ detestation of the European single currency, though usually couched in strictly economic terms, is actually rooted in a detestation of Europe, rather than the theoretical concept of a single currency. Would they feel the same about Britain’s adopting (say) the American greenback?

Think about it. The idea of a world currency whose value was determined entirely by demand, whose supply was decided by an authority other than national governments, and whose interest rates were determined entirely by what lenders were prepared to demand and borrowers offer, has a kind of right-wing beauty about it, doesn’t it? Nobody could fiddle with it, nobody could manipulate it, prices around the globe would tend to converge and stabilise so that true comparisons could be made of costs and productivity.

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