(An Analysis of Benefits and Challenges in the Ascension to the Vow Monetary Union)
Sovereign nations that manage their own currency suffer from limited choices in regulating their economies. In seeking to stimulate economic activity, their governments must commit to expenditures of funds they generally do not possess. Vow presents an alternative heretofore outside of reach
In formulating stimulus packages, attempting to tame inflation, or stem currency devaluation, governments typically need to raise funds. They may resort to one of three unpalatable choices:
- Taxation – Naturally a hard sell for politicians, this option offers limited upside. Not only is there a limit to how high rates may be imposed, due to their inflationary nature (as they raise the cost of living and reduce corporate profit), taxes are also counter-producent to the aims of improving economic health, thus even intelligent use of funds raised generates little benefit. Additionally, unpopular as they are, the raising of taxes endangers the survival at the polls of any political party backing them
- Debt Issuance – a choice that surrenders power. When borrowing money, governments must contend with a loss of national sovereignty as these arrangements naturally place the interests of bond-holders above those of the nation. Empirically, it is well understood that foreign debt leads to the plunder of a nation's resources by foreign interests, the corruption of its governance structures, and the impoverishment of its citizenry, who must eventually pay the debt
- Quantitative Easing – an alternative with direct consequences on foreign exchange rates, printing money reprices the nation's gross domestic product, and over the long term destroys its purchasing power – a situation particularly egregious for nations with a reliance on foreign imports. This option also generates significant inflation and suffers from the tendency to erode confidence in the local currency, thereby forcing governments to impose undemocratic capital controls to prevent capital flight, as well as discouraging foreign direct investment (FDI)
Of course, not doing anything is also an option, albeit one that leads to legitimate claims of incompetence or malfeasance, both of which lead to a loss of valuable political capital
As a monetary union, Vow offers nations the option to not only join a transnational trade bloc founded on a modern economic model and sporting its own payment rails, but also a novel tool for managing domestic monetary challenges
Expressly designed from a mercantilist perspective, the system easily lends itself to integration into monetary policy frameworks via the natural partnerships between commerce and government
Vow offers an alternative to centrally issued stablecoins
Additionally, in an era of deepening division between the G7 and BRICS nations with economic consequences for everyone, Vow provides a comprehensive alternative to IRBO mechanisms like SWIFT, the IMF, DTCC, BIS, and others, that together comprise the modern globalist control structure. In short, Vow, a newly architected and independent economic system, enables small nations to neatly step away from the confines of the Bretton Woods arrangements that have clearly, in hindsight, not served them well
The onboarding process for a nation carries a light footprint for legislatures and consists of 4 primary components:
- The declaration of legal tender status for a Vow token tethered to the national currency
- The issuance of discounts against tax liabilities for both individuals and corporations
- The acceptance of v-currency for tax payments
- Deployment of universal basic income (UBI) bootstrapping measures
Additionally, the nation's stake of Vow, used in the issuance of discounts, may become an fiscal policy goal, and serves as the highest-grade asset for tresorial purposes, with instant liquidity, zero risk of foreign state confiscation, and a clear path to appreciation
With looming inflationary pressures, a nascent cycle of credit tightening and its consequent drop in consumer spending, local economies are at peril. The benefits inherent in the Vow monetary union are manifold and timely in their capacity to maintain price stability, mitigate cost of living increases for populations, and provide stimulus under the umbrella of a common desire to thrive. From the direct effects of adoption listed below, to its longer-term second-order consequences, the liquidity mechanisms of Vow represent the chance to break from old patterns and discover an ascending spiral of national wellness
Most directly a nation deploying the Vow ecosystem will benefit by being able to:
- tackle local inflation via product subsidies, at zero cost
- expand the monetary supply without affecting global F/X rates for the currency
- increase the citizen's purchasing power, thus encouraging spending and local investment
- improve competitiveness for the nation's productive output via lower pricing
- attract corporate domiciliation via lower tax rates
- increased seigniorage owing to blockchain-based outsourced distribution
- blend corporate currency issuance with national monetary policy in support of a demand-driven monetary supply
- trade with other nations via a neutral, inviolable currency and payment channel
- access foreign exchange mechanisms at far lower costs
- deploy strategic relief funds to portions of the population in dire need
Longer-term benefits from joining the union will manifest in:
- a stronger, healthier economy
- allowing the nation to allocate more of its national currency to pay off debt, eventually extricating itself from foreign financing dependencies
- political popularity for the party that implements such measures
- empowerment of treasury departments in managing sovereign wealth independently from central bank operations
- mitigation of capital flight / increase in foreign direct investment (FDI)
- reduced risk in international commerce transactions
- reduced friction for national export payments
- a richer treasury, granting the nation greater discounting capacity in a cycle of virtue
- reduction of government corruption
- reduction of street crime and violence
- independence from the IRBO and its policies
- Legislators considering declaration of v-currencies as legal tender stand to benefit from the natural tendency towards modernisation. It is easy for those making the argument to articulate that the nation should come up to speed and adopt the technology represents the future of money
- Support for a tethered token should find no opposition within financial planners or the central bank, as it alters nothing of the present dynamics or power structure
- The VOW token and its tethered siblings are already legal and fully compliant with law, therefore declaration of their status as legal tender is largely perfunctory
- Legal tender status means that all government contract spending may be satisfied in v-currency, including for military expenditures, medical infrastructure support, social services, and basically all vendor relationships
- Reducing taxes is also an easy argument for law-makers, especially when it's possible to do without cutting back on public services. The reduction of the tax burden represents greater discretionary public income, which turns into consumption, and ultimately employment and productivity, ultimately subject to taxation. Therefore reducing tax rates actually increases tax revenue
- Reducing taxes for corporations, as Ireland has made clear, stimulates domiciliation of startups and innovation, which benefits the nation over the longer term by bringing capital, labour and sophistication that sustains the local population
- The acceptance of v-currency as applied to tax liabilities allows the government to un-stake its VOW position, thus taking advantage of better pricing for a deeper discount capacity
- The government may also choose to recirculate the v-currency received in the form of further stimulus
- Not only can the government pay for existing benefit liabilities in v-currency, it can also deploy funds for specific population targets, as well as afford investments into infrastructure. These expenditures can be made as a bootstrapping process for poorer nations where basic necessities are not currently being met
- Holding a crypto asset in the national treasury can prove an unexpected boon, as demonstrated in the case of Bulgaria. Consider that the confiscation of bitcoin by the government of that nation some years ago created a position now worth roughly 1/3 of the national monetary reserve (at its ATH, the 200,000 coins confiscated were worth $12B vis-à-vis total reserves of $39B). In fact, Bulgaria now holds more of its reserves in bitcoin than it does in gold. By staking Vow, the national treasury's balance sheet benefits from an asset whose upside is not only far greater than bitcoin's but whose value results directly from the nation's own deployment efforts
The VOW token is issued and managed by Vow Limited (VL), a company existing under a COBO from the JFSC in the bailiwick of Jersey, UK.
VOW is a fixed-supply utility token issued under the ERC-777 specification on the Ethereum blockchain. Its primary utility is in allowing merchants to issue discounts, which are recorded on the blockchain, to its customer base
The discounting mechanism, enabled via the company's capacity to track bank card purchases via a portfolio of direct integrations with the world’s leading financial service providers such as VISA or FiServ, encourages and incentivises retail demand, and hence productivity along the entire supply chain
Carey Olsen in Jersey have provided VL with a legal opinion that both VOW and v-currencies are simple utility tokens. Similarly, Frost Todd Brown in the USA, has provided a legal opinion that these currencies do not constitute securities under US law, nor are they considered e-money for FinCEN purposes
The tokens are presently listed on centralised, and decentralised exchanges and actively traded on liquidity pools
The Vow model utilises a dual-token strategy with v-currencies used for transaction settlement, whilst VOW itself is used as a reserve asset. By tethering the value of v-currencies to the local currency, the system:
- eliminates cognitive load at the consumer level
- eliminates foreign exchange risk exposure to the merchant
- provides a smooth transition to blockchain-based systems
In essence, the expansion of v-currency monetary supplies serves as a proxy for the aggregate, cumulative demand of real goods and services. It price, in particular due to its accumulative nature, cannot but rise across time, guaranteeing a deflationary dynamic without the associated decrease in demand
The Vow Council has a profound understanding of the necessity to onboard governments into the union and not only stands ready to facilitate the membership of all those that would hope to find a better future for their nations and their peoples, but actively supports those in the process. There is strength in numbers
Vires in numeris