The pitfalls of crypto

By Hilbert Haar

Crypto currency is getting a bad name. Fast. But there are still plenty of believers who go out of their way to promote crypto as the way to go. MP Rolando Brison is just one of them.

He has openly declared that he wants to turn St. Maarten into the crypto capital of the Caribbean. He has announced that he wants to receive his salary in Bitcoin Cash. And he has made clear his intention to translate Dominica’s Virtual Asset Business legislation into something that would be useful for St. Maarten.

But so far, that crypto capital has not materialized and Brison is not receiving his salary in crypto currency. The silence about his plans to translate legislation from another jurisdiction is deafening.

And now Brison seems to be caught up in a potential scandal that has hit TRON DAO, a platform established by the Chinese crypto-entrepreneur Justin Sun. DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization, but that is another story.

In January, TRON was “proud to announce” that Brison would initiate legislation to legalize TRON-based crypto in St. Maarten. That sounded somewhat interesting, but only a few months later this plan blew up in Justin Sun’s face when the American Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against him with a court in New York.

According to this complaint, Sun manipulated the market through wash trading and he orchestrated a scheme to pay eight celebrities to tout his crypto currencies without disclosing their compensation. We know now that actress Lindsay Lohan received $10,000 to tweet (obviously in a positive way) about Sun’s crypto’s.

One may wonder whether MP Brison jumped on the TRON-bandwagon in January because he is enthusiast about its potential value or because Sun inspired him to do that by paying him an attractive bribe. It could be true, or it could be nothing. Fact remains that Brison was recently arrested on suspicions of taking bribes and abusing his position.

The truth will eventually come out, but for now we will have to make do with what others have to say about this issue. Marc Bitcoin, a Youtuber who promotes Bitcoin Cash said in a recent video that if there is crypto involved in the bribery-accusations against Brison, “it is most likely TRON.” He also stated that Brison’s arrest has caused reputational damage to crypto.

One thing is for sure. There is a lot of money floating around in the crypto-universe and some of it may well have landed in the pockets of MP Brison. Even if this are just suspicions (that could very well be unfounded) they must cause others to look with suspicion at Brison’s relentless promotion of crypto as legal tender for St. Maarten.

There has been a time when you could buy a whole Bitcoin for less than a dollar. At the moment of this writing the value of Bitcoin is around $27,500. So yeah, with hindsight one could argue that investing in crypto is very profitable. That is of course reasoning with lots of hindsight.

The reality is that crypto currency remain highly speculative. The value can go up but it can also go dramatically down. On February 9, 2011, Bitcoin reached a value of $1 for the first time. In 2017 Bitcoin was valued at close to $19,000, but only a year later it dropped to just over $3,100. By the end of 2020 a Bitcoin traded for around $29,000.

These price fluctuations show that crypto is highly speculative and not something for the weak of heart. Brison’s crypto capital may sound like a vision of things to come but until the court in New York has ruled on the SEC-complaint against Justin Sun and until there is clarity about Brison’s bribery-case the crypto world will remain crammed with pitfalls.

Don’t go there.

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