In what can only be characterized as a pivotal observation Deloitte, a renowned digital agency, has released a poll with the crucial finding that an increasing number of American merchants are expressing a strong preference for crypto and, as a result, are putting in the necessary groundwork. Merchants Getting Ready for Crypto, a study based on the poll, was created in partnership with PayPal. The discovery has sparked considerable alarm, with some fearing that if implemented with cryptocurrencies, it may have a negative impact on the US economy.
“To get more insights into the overall attitudes and investments in the implementation of digital currency payment systems,” the poll was conducted between December 3 and December 16, 2021. The fact that the poll was quite extensive and also quite representative in terms of the respondents and their industry background is the source of such worry. It surveyed over 2,000 senior executives from retail organizations across the United States, with a 10% contribution from each of the following subsectors: cosmetics, digital goods, electronics, fashion, food & beverages, home/garden, hospitality & leisure, personal & household goods, services, and transportation. It is clear that the survey included representatives from various sectors of the US economy, and the overwhelming preference for the “ubiquitous” use of digital currencies or cryptocurrencies within five years — with 85 percent of respondents falling into the “agree/strongly agree” category — cannot be dismissed.
Those who are concerned about cryptocurrencies’ potential integration into the US economy in the near future point to a number of risks, including loss of investment due to market volatility, cyber-attacks, fraudulent transactions, and various types of frauds. Apart from these concrete concerns, there is a broader issue: the decentralized architecture of digital currencies, which allows anonymous and pseudonymous organizations to freely operate, which can endanger the US dollar’s stability while also impeding the central bank’s ability to manage the physical currency system. It is self-evident that all of these elements, if they occur at the same time, will have a detrimental impact on sectors in general and the US economy in particular. On a larger scale, the mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies will result in a slew of non-state actors seizing control of the US economy and eroding the government’s grip on the economy via the extremely volatile cryptocurrency market. Cryptocurrencies have proven to be extremely powerful economic tools. It remains to be seen how it will affect the US economy once it has a stronger presence. The risk concerns, on the other hand, are already present and will not go away.
