Think.Nxt With Raghav: Is Crypto Valued Because It Can Buy Things Money Can't?

To know more about cryptocurrency’s evolution and reasons behind its growing popularity, watch the full episode.

In the first episode of Think.Nxt With Raghav, experts argue if cryptocurrency grew in value because of its ability to do things that legal tender or fiat currency could not.

(Image: The Quint/Aroop Mishra)

Think.Nxt With Raghav is a brand new series available only on The Quint, where our Editor-in-Chief Raghav Bahl explores the extraordinary intersection of India's destiny with disruptive technologies and emerging trends which are rapidly changing the world order.

In the first episode of Think.Nxt With Raghav, The Quint’s Editor-in-Chief Raghav Bahl started a discourse on if cryptocurrency grew in value because of its ability to do things -- by virtue of its decentralised nature -- that legal tender or fiat currency could not.

Dissociating the technology element with cryptocurrency, politician and public intellectual Praveen Chakravarty said, “Let’s say I give you peacock feathers in return for your painting. And then you give those peacock feathers to someone else in exchange for their services. It does not have anything to do with technology.”

Arguing that it is the trust backing a currency which gives it value and not the technology, Chakravarty elaborated on how trust is induced in an asset either by a government backing it or if citizens simply believe in it.

However, he said that the entire idea backing cryptocurrency questions the control of a sovereign or a central agency over a medium of exchange, which brings us to the question:

“If something were to go wrong, whose throat do you choke? Because the very idea of trust also depends on who to go to if something were to go wrong,” Chakravarty explained.     

To know more about cryptocurrency’s evolution and the reasons behind its growing popularity, watch the full episode out now only on The Quint.

Click here to watch the full episode.