In: Finance
The Question as to What could replace United States Dollar as a world reserve currency is in itself a big research place. the rest come thereafter.
Lets talk about Why is US Dollar regarded as a World Reserve Currency.
US as we know is the world's largest and most developed economy. People look to US as a developed and a stabilized economy with excellence in Technology. US has been the main hub of Creation and Self Destruction. The last 2 Global Financial Crisis originated in the US. US was by far the front runner in both the crisis and suffered huge losses but was never overthrown by other economies. It got itself back upto where it belonged within a short period of time. However emergence of these crisis gave us the most important thing of our current life that is the Internet.
The US Dollar is a the strongest currency in the entire world. It is a very liquid currency due to America's wealth and can be exchanged with other currencies pretty easily. No other currency is actually accepted as widely as the Dollar has been for as long as i can remember. Take the example of going on Vacation. No matter to which Country you go you will find a currency exchange who would exchange your dollars for the domestic currency. The ability of US to be able to reach out and help many countries also allows it to become stronger with alliances.
Now talking about which of the 2 either bitcoin or other crypto currencies could possibly replace the US Dollar as the world reserve currency.
Crypto Currencies as we know aren't regulated or have a basis based on which their value increases or decreases. A certain basis is required in the first place so that a layman can determine the value and decide whether the bitcoin / other crypto currencies are worth buying or not. A world reserve currency should always be regulated otherwise how do we figure out, as to what determines the value of the Crypto Currencies and based on whose judgement will the exchange between countries take place. The biggest question looms is that what actually defines the value of a crypto currencies. Holding Cash gives us an idea of the amount we hold taking into consideration the movement of dollar. Here even if we would know how many bitcoins are we holding we would not know what can its worth be tomorrow or day after.
Bitcoin has been much more popular in recent times. And because of its vital and long run in the last few years a lot of countries have banned trading in bitcoin due to its unregulated nature. In order to allow bitcoin to be accessible by the entire world it is necessary to regulate it and have a basis for its valuation. Since the world is eager to be able to trade in bitcoin it is a high possibility that regulations with regard to bitcoin would fall through soon. And in case the whole world starts trading on Bitcoin it is possible that bitcoin replaces the World reserve currency.
However the possibility is very very slim, because the movement of a country's currency depends on a lot of factors be it macro,micro, performance of other countries, war etc etc etc. So if Bitcoin has to become a Reserve currency it is important for it to be able to capture all these ideas and react accordingly.
So as a conclusion Bitcoin has grim possibility, But my personal opinion would be it can never replace the US Dollar as a world reserve currency.