The future of cryptocurrencies is possibly one of the biggest unknowns . Some predict that they will replace the FIAT currency, that is, the one we use today, others believe that it will not reach that point, but that it will become a common means of payment. And on the other hand, there are those who consider that it will only remain a high-risk investment but that it can generate great benefits, and even those who think that their days are numbered, and that sooner or later the bubble that has formed around them will burst. the same.
Be that as it may, in the absence of being able to know what his future will be, we must keep an eye on what is happening in his present , not only to play futurologists, but above all to try to have It is clear whether, today, investing in cryptocurrencies is or is not recommended, and in which places we can operate with them. And it is that despite the fanaticism of some and the negativity of others, reality is surely at a reasonably intermediate point, at least in the short term.
What happens is that, even looking at the short term, there are some signs that are, to say the least, worrying for the future of cryptocurrencies. And no, I am not going to talk about its fluctuations , about the concentration of some of them , as occurs with Bitcoin, or about the problems inherent to its immaterial nature. No, actually, in my opinion, the biggest problem today has to do with the countries in which cryptocurrencies are allowed to operate, and the truth is that the list is getting smaller with the passage of time .
The latest example of this is found in a report recently published by the Library of Congress of the United States, a document that you can see here , and that yields a figure that I bet will surprise many, and is that a total of 51 countries prohibit or severely limit operations with cryptocurrencies . More specifically, there are nine countries that have completely prohibited operating with them, while the remaining 42 prohibit banks and other financial institutions from operating with cryptocurrencies and offering their clients any type of service with them.
It is not the first that this institution has carried out this study, so we can assess the evolution and, without a doubt, the trend is quite negative for cryptocurrencies, since in the previous review, from 2018, there were eight the countries that prohibited cryptocurrencies and 15 those that imposed very severe limitations . Thus, we have gone from 23 to 51, more than double in three years, and at a time when many states are analyzing how to act against crypto.
Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Qatar and Tunisia are the countries that have banned cryptocurrencies and, although the influence of most of them is very limited in scope, the focus certainly points to China, which we must not forget, is, at the same time, the country with the largest number of cryptocurrency miners, as well as the second strongest economy in the world , with enormous influence in a large number of emerging economies and pre-emergent.