THE 2018 JOINT ECONOMIC REPORT notes

The report indicated that the concept of blockchain technology started to gain increasing prominence in 2017.

It then gave a nice introduction to how the valuations of some cryptocurrencies in the crypto market dwarfed the performance of the stock market, even though the Dow Jones posted ~ 24 percent gains during the same period, and the S&P 500 clocked in at ~17 percent.

The report then compared these gains to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and strangely enough, doesn't mention XRP, which actually led the returns of 2017 with 36,000 percent returns.

The report then compared the crypto market valuations to the dot com boom, and reminded readers of some very high profile miss-steps, like the acquisition of Geocities by Yahoo back in 1999 for $3.57 billion.

The first mention of Ripple is on page 204 when the author takes a detour and talks about market cap rankings of the different cryptocurrencies.

I like how the chart for the market cap rankings was constructed when XRP held that #2 spot for a couple weeks!

The report then gets into the meat of the technology and starts talking about blockchain tech (page 205).

I was a bit frustrated on page 208, because when they discussed scalability, they stopped at Bitcoin and Ethereum, where the author pointed out the failure of those networks' scalability.


 The report called out an example of Venezuelans buying Bitcoin to hedge against a failing national currency.

The report then dove into a section about ICOs and explained smart contracts.  The usual horror stories (Ethereum DAO) were outlined.

Starting on page 212, however, the author discusses some benefits to using blockchains for business purposes, such as patient records.  Another use case discussed was putting power generation by utilities on a blockchain.  The third example discussed was putting supply chain logistics on a blockchain.  I guess Walmart is experimenting with this concept, according to the report.  This segued into using blockchain for food safety, and being able to track the origin of all food items from farm to table.

This discussion of the benefits was short, however, and on page 216, a return to the 'risks' of blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies resumed, with notes about hacking, exchanges, and miss-uses of cryptocurrencies for black market purposes (Silk Road was paraded out as a topic)

The term "irrational exuberance" was used, and they also discussed the Long Island Iced Tea Corporation which benefitted from adding "blockchain" to their official business name.

The author then covered regulation, and the latest SEC pronouncements.  The report discussed taxation by the IRS and how cryptocurrencies are classified.

On a positive note, the report talked about efforts to standardize the laws with the Uniform Law Commission, among other examples.

It ended by saying that more coordination needed to be pursued among the different government agencies, and pointed out that in some respects, digital assets are considered currency, property, security, and a commodity.