Crypto currency is a pyramid scheme, politicians ought to be challenged over their support for it - Andy Brown

So long as we all retain confidence that everyone else will accept our money it continues to be valuable and to do an efficient job at enabling us to exchange goods and services and get paid for our work. As soon as that confidence goes, life becomes very problematic.

That is why economists worry so much about inflation. It has a miserable impact on life when the money in your pocket goes down in value every day and the worth of savings gets wiped out in a few minutes.

Inflation in inter war Germany was one of the prime drivers of the dissatisfaction that drove people into the arms of the Nazis and even greater misery.

So it matters when a currency collapses in value and it is important that governments work hard to protect the value of the pound, the dollar and any other means of exchange which is commonly used. Fortunately the government is financed by millions of tax payers which helps to maintain trust.

And that used to be the end of the story. Because for hundreds of years the only reputable source of currency has been national governments and they were also the chief cause of concern when currencies fluctuated wildly in value.

Then a couple of decades ago a completely new phenomena came along. Crypto currency. Like government issued money it has absolutely nothing of real value backing it up. In fact the reverse. Its creation wastes resources. Huge amounts of energy is being used to drive computers to produce something utterly worthless.

You can’t eat it or see it and you can only sell it if someone else is prepared to buy it at the price you want. There is no government with a store of gold bars and other currencies or millions of taxpayers acting as the backstop to ensure it retains some value.

In other words it is like a giant Ponzi scheme. The first ones in buy cheaply and persuade the others to buy at a higher price. Should there be a panic which drives people to start to sell off there is no limit to how low the value could go.

What drives any retention and increase in value is two things. The first is sheer blind faith. The second is that some people find the transactions they can complete using crypto currencies very convenient.

If you wish to pay a criminal a lot of money for the supply of drugs it isn’t easy to do that using dollars or pounds. The solution is to use crypto. If you want to store the proceeds of supplying young women for prostitution to people in positions of power and influence that too can be done using crypto.

Want to avoid paying your former trophy wife alimony? Hide assets away offshore in a secret account. Don’t like paying your share of tax? Move your money into a crypto account and hide as many of your business transactions as you can.

Crypto is a perfect mechanism for organised crime and for tax dodgers. Any gains for more ordinary citizens only lie in being first adopters who sell at a profit when other buyers get attracted by tales of easy money making.

All easy money comes with risk. If it sounds too good to be true it is.

The scale of this dodgy business model has now reached such proportions that billionaires are creating their own currencies in much the same way that nations use to do. They are also busy recruiting politicians to promote the attractions of their schemes and paying them a lot of money for their publicity work.

Any politician who goes down that route ought to be exposed to fierce challenge over their motives and their honesty. Political parties ought to be financed via small contributions made by British citizens who believe that their policies are for the good of this country. They should not be financed by billionaires who reside abroad for tax or business purposes and try to buy influence in our country.

The rules over political funding need changing with urgency. It cannot be right for millions of pounds to be channelled by one foreign crypto billionaire into political campaigning on behalf of any party in this country.

I would say that if there was a billionaire offering to pour money into the Green Party because it is morally wrong for outsiders to persuade us which way we should vote. As it so happens it is the Reform party and Restore Britain that are attracting this money.

The brilliant Mrs Merton once asked “What was it that first attracted you to the multi millionaire?” Our nation now needs to ask “What was it that first attracted Reform to sing the praises of crypto currency?” We urgently need much stronger controls to stop external inference in our politics.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley.