There has been an argument made that we have had plenty of distractions to keep us from paying attention to the economy. From the situation in Europe to the missing plane in East Asia, there are a lot of people that are looking at the crisis of the week knowing full well than when all of the dust clears, when the wreckage is found and put back together we will have to deal with an economy that is devolving and what it may become in the near future.

Arguably, there seems to be a positive outcome of the shaky economy and that is the birth of cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin at the moment has captured the imagination of banks and investors. Bitcoin has the worlds largest virtual currency market capitalization at over $8 billion dollars. Apart from bitcoin, there are at least 100 other cryptocurrencies, ranging from Ripple at ($1.4 billion) and Litecoin ($453 million) also at the high end there is Germanys Deutsche eMark ($106,000) and Grumpycoin ($88,000) at the low end. Even criminals have begun to diversify into homemade cryptocurrencies.

There is also a cryptocurrency called Mazacoin that was created by Payu Harris in hopes that the Lakota can use it in order to have greater independence.

The question is: does the boom in cryptocurrency indicate that people want to become independent of the almighty dollar?

There are many people that agree that while we are seeing successes and failures with cryptocurrency that the dollar will eventually go the way of digital.

InformationWeek reports: According to former Central Intelligence Agency CTO Gus Hunt, in the future, the dollar could well become a crypto currency. Governments going to learn from Bitcoin, and all the official government currencies are going to become crypto currencies themselves, he said during a recent panel discussion in San Francisco hosted by information security firm eSentire, for which he sits on the board of advisers.

Others are saying that bitcoin will do for digital currency what Napster did for downloading music.

It is creating the format for which all digital dollars will be distributed.

Read the rest here:

Cryptocurrency | Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis