How many people care about Bitcoin an blockchain? Go on, have a guess...

GOVERNMENT plans for growth might well be an oxymoron, but do you know how many people under 50 in the UK take regulated pension advice?

The figure came out of a Parliamentary Select Committee meeting with the head of the FCA. In case you need telling, it’s only 9%.

Now how many people under 35 have some kind of crypto? You might be astonished to hear it’s 75%. And that’s after all the dire warnings about be prepared to lose all your money, and there is no redress. That has to be a harbinger of what the future holds.

Now I know there is no connection at all between these statements, but if people who one would assume are rational have largely decided NOT to take pensions advice, but hordes of young whippersnappers are piling into crypto, that surely is trying to tell us something about our present situation vis a vis markets. And, by extension, factories and manufacturing.

I may have said this before, but when I give my lectures I always used to start by asking who in the room had heard of Bitcoin and blockchain.

In the early days about 50% knew of Bitcoin, but only about 20% had heard of blockchain. I don’t bother asking these questions any more, but I do ask who in the room actually owns some form of cryptocurrency. And I would have to say the percentage is between 50% and 80%, so that kind of validates the official figures. One would have hoped that there wouldn’t be a question about them, but as we all know, “Lies, damn lies and statistics”.

One of the more interesting things I read about this week was the present “60 day pause” between XRP and the SEC.

Brad Garlinghouse said some weeks ago the SEC had dropped its case but clearly that is not yet so. There is an issue the SEC (and remember this is now the entity that has pretty much approved everything crypto) does not wish to let go of.

The best interpretation of the pause would be a renegotiation of the fine which still stands at $125million, but the worst would be some kind of limitation on what Ripple can do. We will have to wait and see, but the market appears to be saying whatever it is, it is neutral. And it may well be but in this day and age of financial shock and awe I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Just on that, President Trump’s insanity on tariffs is slowly being seen for what it is – an extremely powerful negotiating tool, and definitely a path to the less valuable dollar and lower interest rates.

I know liberal elites hate him but at least he does what he says and doesn’t faff about. Some of the loudest denouncers have gone strangely quiet, as well they might. It is entirely in their interest to do a deal.

It may well be that we will have lower tariffs world-wide as a result of what some have described as chaos. Actually, it’s not. It’s a very reasoned approach to a huge problem. And before you tell me about slapping tariffs on an island that only has penguins hey – those damned penguins make a hell of a noise and poo everywhere. You will probably find Trump stood in a gooey deposit at a zoo once. Trump is not an appeaser, so it’s merely justified retaliation.

So if the tariffs are supposed to bring back manufacturing, do you think that will work? It will, but not in the way people are thinking.

Global supply chains are here to stay (and if you don’t know about David Ricardo, you should) – and what we do in the west is largely assemble products from all over the world, so we can say those products are “home made”.

Factories in the future will not have thousands of muscular navvies using spanners to bash bits of metal. We will have computers, robots, technicians and supervisors who will make sure the assembly goes without a hitch and without a stop because something didn’t turn up on time.

The people in these new factories will be more like computer nerds than nut-tighteners. And while we are on the subject, here in the UK we better start thinking about our infrastructure – specifically water and electricity. We are already at critically inadequate levels with both. Forget net zero. Pray for net plus.