7 December—Now that Donald Trump and his self-serving satraps are publicly and presumably heavily invested in cryptocurrency, expect Trump to do his damnedest to finagle a way to make it a world reserve currency. A reserve currency is a foreign currency that a nation’s central bank or treasury holds as part of its formal foreign exchange reserves.

As things stand, the International Monetary Fund recognizes eight reserve currencies: the U.S., Canadian, and Australian dollars; the British pound sterling; the Swiss franc; the Japanese yen; the Chinese renminbi (a.k.a. yuan); and the European Union euro. Of those, of course, the U.S. dollar is the most widely held and used, so it’s considered the primary global reserve currency, which gives us immense economic and political leverage. It also breeds resentment among all the also-rans and never-wills.

The Russian ruble is not now and probably never will be a world reserve currency, by the way. In fact, Russia is increasingly using its malevolent pal’s renminbi in international commerce. And the BRICS bloc—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (and new members like Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia)—are considering the creation of a new common (if not reserve) currency to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar. Talk about resentment. Anything to screw the United States.

Back to cryptocurrency, then, it’s commonly called bitcoin, just like aspirin, zipper, and kleenex are generic trade names. But, believe it or not, last year there were some 25,000 cryptocurrencies in existence; now there are only about 13,000, of which almost 9,000 are currently active. And there are some 420 million users of cryptocurrency internationally. Really.

So, you wonder, how can thousands of different iterations of a nonexistent and at the same time environmentally disastrous commodity become a reserve currency? No problem. Because only one of those iterations will be pushed by Trump, Elon Musk, and their venal confederates. Don’t forget that Trump is the ultimate con man and Musk, while probably not a con man (of the Trump ilk, anyway), is an excellent salesman.

Not that it matters, but Musk owns an indeterminate but doubtless humongous amount of Dogecoins, and the acronym of his impressive-sounding but likely unsuccessful and potentially disastrous bureaucracy—Department of Government Efficiency—is DOGE.

Right now a Dogecoin is worth only about 45 cents, compared to a Bitcoin’s 100,000-dollar price (if not value). But who knows? Why not go to a crypto exchange and buy some with real money? What’s there to lose?

Just don’t forget your password . . .