Economic Warfare & Terrorism; How Element Zero Stablecoins Can Insulate

At Element Zero, we believe that in the future, enemy countries and terrorists may focus more on economic warfare as an alternative to traditional military attacks. These types of attacks could be any actions that are coordinated, sophisticated or massive and aimed at destabilizing an economy, business, or group in order to disrupt their financial strength.

With the proliferation of stablecoins, we believe these may become an attractive perceived weakness for economic warfare and terrorism. “Bad Actors” will engage in “Blockchain Warfare” and assault the businesses and economies who create and use these stablecoins. The truth is, we are now all sitting in the same boat of the global economy with the risk that a rogue country or even a few individuals can rock the boat in an attempt to injure everyone. In reality, the Element Zero stablecoin is impervious to economic attacks due to its fundamental design that overcomes inflation and stabilizes its purchasing power. No one can buy the Element Zero coin in massive quantities and then dump it in order to drop the price. The coin is not based on supply/demand but on a smart contract protocol and therefore no attack can impact the stability of the Element Zero stablecoin.

It has been discovered that Russia actually assisted with the development of Venezuela’s new centralized digital currency, the Petro. Russia allocated senior Kremlin advisers to assist in the development of the Venezuelan Petro, which can clearly be classified as a joint Russian-Venezuelan venture. Russia’s attempts to remain in the shadows regarding its involvement in the development of the Petro raises some questions about its motives, and whether they are altruistic or not.

“The reign of the dollar must end,” said Andrei Kostin, the head of Russia’s central government controlled VTB bank, in a recent speech. “This whip that the Americans use in the form of the dollar would then, to a great extent, not have such a serious impact on the global financial system.”

The US Dollar(USD) is the most globally dominant currency, and it is clear that Russia wants this to change. Currently, when financial transactions happen across international borders, the currencies used are weighted against and oftentimes converted to USD before being converted back to the receiving nations official currency. This helps cement the value of USD, but also gives the United States a large amount of regulatory power in the form of global sanctions. Since most large banks across the globe are dependent on USD, these sanctions can be quite devastating when put into place.

Russia’s involvement in the development of the Petro is an attempt at weakening the overall economic power of the United States, something they have been striving to do for many years. Cryptocurrency is a new technology and is being looked at by Russia (and possibly other nations) as a potential vehicle for destabilizing the global economy. Their involvement shows that Russia is very interested in centralized, asset-backed cryptocurrencies and the Petro served as the perfect experiment to gauge public reception and global effects without imposing changes to their own economic structure. They found a more-than-willing ally for this endeavor in Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who thanked them openly during the launch of the Petro for their assistance in fighting American “imperialism”. It remains to be seen if Russia will pursue a digital version of its own currency, the Ruble.

Russia’s involvement in national cryptocurrencies and the possibility of its own national cryptocurrency being developed are not the only threats to the stability of the USD and other global currencies. It was recently found that hackers at a North Korean university developed and spread malware that hijacks the infected computer, forcing it to mine the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero and send it back to the hackers in North Korea. Though this malware cannot be linked directly to the North Korean regime or their elite hacker unit Lazarus, it shows how interested North Korea is in using cryptocurrency to avoid US-imposed economic sanctions. Cybersecurity vendor Group-IB has put forth that Lazarus has been behind 14 cryptocurrency exchange hacks, netting over $500m USD in cryptocurrency. If true, those funds have been funneled directly to the North Korean regime in an untraceable manner, rendering the funds immune to any kind of US sanctions. If these types of attacks continue, there is no telling how damaging they could be not just to the cryptocurrency market, but the global financial market as a whole.

Element Zero’s new algorithmic stablecoin creation platform allows partners (organizations, companies and even governments) to create their own stablecoins that leverages their stability and liquidity protocols that completely eliminates the possibility for any volatility in the first place.  The stability is created using a two-way smart contract that enforces both the token value; providing users with a coin that, irrespective of market conditions, will remain stable. With machine learning algorithms controlling the overall supply and redemption requests and reserves, there is also no threat of a centralized body imposing its will on the value of an Element Zero stablecoin. This protocol also means there is no mining Element Zero stablecoins, so no threat of hackers developing malware to mine EEZO using unsuspecting victim’s computer hardware. Element Zero can provide a safe-haven from the ongoing attacks against the USD, and it stands to reason that as cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies become more widely accepted these attacks will become more frequent.

Being free from the shackles of a national currency means Element Zero operates at a global level and should not be targeted by malicious states or radical groups. Element Zero’s autonomous redemption platform that adjusts the price of every token issued based on inflationary effects also means that if it does somehow become a target, the types of attacks discussed above will have no effect on the value of EEZO. Rising above these kinds of attacks puts Element Zero at an advantage over most current fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, and will allow it to maintain price stability even if it does somehow become the target of a malicious group. With Element Zero’s stablecoin creation platform made available at no cost to partners, economic safety is inherent by nature and is easily attained by its supporters.