"Crypto bros are heading into 2025 with great expectations. For the $135 million they have donated to President-elect Donald Trump and dozens of successful congressional campaigns, they want unhindered access to the global banking system and an end to lawsuits against the industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A strategic US reserve dedicated to Bitcoin will be the icing on their cake."

Wrong: 'Crypto-Bros' want Bitcoin treated as money. That's it nothing more. "... and an end to lawsuits against the industry..."

There is no industry. There is only Bitcoin. "Industry" implying some kind of 'tokens' created by companies... are more-often-than-not unregistered securities. They get de-listed and eventually go to zero and/or collapse. The world transitions to a Bitcoin standard not a crypto-token "standard". "Crypto industry" is a scam a huge misnomer.

Nations will hoard Bitcoin, it's not 'if' but 'when' eventually...

"Don’t be surprised, however, if the actual outcome turns out to be less than a libertarian feast."

Ya well we'll see about that.

"For one thing, the European Union is going the other way. New EU rules, which kicked in Dec. 30, require large stablecoins — tokens that facilitate trades in Bitcoin, Ether and other risky digital assets by converting 1:1 into dollar, euro or other fiat currencies — to park 60% of their reserves in bank accounts. That level of entanglement with the banking system will end up “creating an incredibly big systemic risk,” Tether Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Paolo Ardoino has argued. But noncompliance will make Tether’s USDT, the leading stablecoin, difficult for European investors to access. Banks are ready to slip into the void with rival products. Traditional finance may score a win over crypto firms."

This section implies there are "rival products" to Bitcoin. There aren't. "Traditional finance" cannot in any way shape or form create 'competing products' to Bitcoin. They aren't proof-of-work and they aren't decentralized that ship has sailed.

I'm not sure what "crypto firms" the article is referring to... Bitcoin is doing just fine.

"And then there’s Asia, with its own plans for harnessing the power of blockchains. China, in particular, wants to employ it to resist both the dollar’s hegemony and Silicon Valley’s utopian idea of decentralized finance. All in all, 2025 may end up being a potentially tumultuous year for firms at the intersection of money, banking and technology. Here are the five emerging trends to watch:"

"Harnessing the power of blockchains..." Haven't people learned? It's not 'blockchain' it's not 'crypto' it's just Bitcoin. Blockchains are slow and expensive... and to the extent they are useful they are decentralized... The moment a nation-state or a company 'creates a blockchain' it is not decentralized... therefore there's no need for a blockchain at all it is a scam.

"tumultuous year..." Bitcoin has increased in value how much the last 5 years? 10? 15? ?

"The world of money is splintering into Western and Eastern blocs. The Bank for International Settlements’ recent departure from mBridge, after Russian President Vladimir Putin identified the underlying funds transfer technology as a tool to sidestep sanctions, was a watershed moment. While Thailand, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates are all involved in the project — and Saudi Arabia joined in June — it’s China that’s helming the mBridge initiative."

I do believe that what Mr. Putin referred to as 'something nobody can stop...' was Bitcoin. Not 'mBridge' or tech-nonsense or something else. And if a bank or institution can 'depart' from it (implying the technology is limited or slowed as a result) it's not decentralized (and is therefore extremely vulnerable).

Furthermore... nations have their own interests. If China is 'helming the initiative' can't they just change the network to fit their own purposes?

"A platform where financial institutions can swap digital currencies issued by their central banks to settle corporate clients’ cross-border claims could preempt the kind of US scrutiny that put Huawei Technologies Co. founder’s daughter under house arrest in Canada. Since then, the unease over weaponization of the dollar has only grown. An alternative mechanism that bypasses both the US currency and the SWIFT messaging system would curb Washington’s policing powers. The estimated 36% to 40% of greenback demand that comes from its role as a “vehicle” for indirectly exchanging two non-dollar currencies might also diminish."

I'll just leave this here with no comment. Anything not mentioned in this paragraph?

"Within the Eastern Bloc of money, there will be greater integration. India and Southeast Asia are moving toward interlinking their domestic payment systems; and other countries are free to join. Hong Kong tourists are paying for golf lessons in Thailand by scanning QR codes and debiting their bank accounts back home. All this experimentation is giving shape to Nexus. The open protocol for smartphone-based international payments in 60 seconds or less, which I described as consumer banking’s next big thing three years ago, is attaining critical mass.

From THAT (above) article: "For a bank to move funds from one country to another, it needs to either have a presence in both, or keep idle funds to maintain “correspondent” relationships with other financial institutions in the middle. Payments take at least a few hours, and sometimes get stuck for days because of a typo in the beneficiary’s name, address or account number. Which is when we wish we could just whip out our phones and pay an individual or a merchant in another part of the world on the spot by using only their phone number."

Don't we have Lightning for this?

"That’s why, in the coming months and years, we’ll probably hear more about Nexus, currently a blueprint drawn up by the Bank for International Settlements’ innovation hub."

I'm speechless?

"The focus of innovation, however, will be on what Citigroup Inc. calls the “killer use case” of blockchain technology: a $4 trillion market for tokenization of financial and real-world assets by 2030. Here, too, Asia wants to demonstrate leadership. Hong Kong is exploring digital representations of everything from green bonds to electric-vehicle charging stations, while Singapore seeks to replace manual processes with “smart contracts,” or self-executing computer code, to speed up fund management, private banking, and many other segments of its large financial-services industry."

"Real world assets" is a scam. Something outside the 'blockchain' has to enforce ownership of a 'real-world asset'... therefore it will always be inferior to Bitcoin which does not need outside enforcement. Either you have the keys or you don't.

And saying it is the "killer use case" of "blockchain technology" just sounds like crypto-bro bull****... from a paid financial newspaper, Bloomberg while they PRETEND to critique the "crypto-bros". THEY SOUND LIKE A CRYPTO-BRO (?) TALKING ABOUT "BLOCKCHAINS" and they don't even realize it?

I mean WTF?

Then there's this journalistic gem:

"Yet some fads will fade. Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, may be one of them. In a 2024 survey by the London-based Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, only 13% of central banks said that connecting CBDCs is best for improving cross-border transfers. That’s down from 31% in 2023, according to OMFIF’s latest Future of Payments report. Beijing sped up its e-CNY, a digital version of official Chinese cash, after Meta Platforms Inc., which at the time was called Facebook, announced its plans for Libra, a world currency, in 2019. Following Beijing’s lead, other countries began to consider their own CBDCs. Well, Libra is long dead, the e-CNY hasn’t quite taken off, and Trump isn’t interested in a digital dollar. Other countries’ ardor is also cooling."

You know what works for quick, cheap cross-border payments? Lightning. It's cheap... it's fast... and Bitcoin is actually decentralized. How do I know? I use it all the time and it's actually considered "neutral" world-wide.

"China may still promote the e-CNY as a tool to weaken the dollar’s outsize sway in critical areas, such as the global oil trade. Western central banks, however, will be content to restrict their CBDCs to wholesale use: Financial institutions can swap these coins to settle claims on one another. Consumer demand for cheap cross-border transfers will be met by linking up domestic payment systems with the Nexus protocol. Or — if there’s enough demand for money that moves according to pre-programmed rules — by putting bank deposits on the blockchain."

Again - isn't Lightning cheap and fast in sending or receiving funds? And isn't the 'base-layer' neutral, immutable, incredibly secure and inexpensive for wire-transfer-size transactions? Why re-invent the wheel when there's already Bitcoin?

What does "putting bank deposits on the blockchain" even mean? Can plebs run nodes decentralizing those "bank deposits"? Can the "bank deposit" code be easily changed? And is it censor-ship resistant, neutral, on nodes (rules-based ledgers) located worldwide? Is the "blockchain" truly survivable?

If the answer is No then?

"These will be claims on the issuing financial institutions, so not really a sovereign liability like cash withdrawn from ATM. And yet, most people will treat them as such. Unlike stablecoins, tokenized deposits won’t have to maintain 1:1 reserve backing. Deposit insurance will be enough to keep users confident about the value of money in their e-wallets. The prevailing power balance will be preserved: Crypto bros will be freer than before to provide speculative assets. But what we call money may well continue to be controlled by traditional banking institutions in 2025."

So it won't be cash 'per-say'... but a claim on the funds that financial institutions supposedly hold... without "1:1 reserve backing". So partial reserve, introducing risk, across borders.

I mean what's the worst that could happen? And in fact the author seems to promote and advocate for this? Partial-reserve banking, centralized blockchains, non-cash tokens... that financial institutions have to honor in partial-reserve?

"Deposit insurance will be enough to keep users confident about the value of money in their e-wallets". So counter-party risk? I mean WTF?

"The prevailing power balance will be preserved: Crypto bros will be freer than before to provide speculative assets." So an IOU in fractional reserve from the bank isn't speculative???

While China (the big prison) develops technology to facilitate 'cross-border-payments' for consumers... with no mention of Lightning which is/can be truly decentralized?

I mean WTF Bloomberg? It's like taking the truth and... flipping it 180 degrees to make it completely wrong and selling it to people. Journalism like this completely misinforms people and deceives them of what they need to know.

It's now 2025 - what is going on here?