As we approach the year’s end, I want to look at an important trend that could revolutionize our lives in 2015.

I’m talking about Bitcoin (BITCOMP), the groundbreaking digital currency.

You see, as it matures and heads toward wider acceptance, Bitcoin will unleash gale force winds on the financial services industry and its regulatory protector, the U.S. government.

(By the way, it’s not the only alternative currency you should be watching right now. Go here for more information.)

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you know that the most important currency in Washington, D.C. isn’t dollars… it’s power. When you have power, money follows.

Not surprisingly, money and power have been ruling America since the early 1910s, when the IRS and the Federal Reserve teamed up to become the largest monetary cartel on the planet.

Think about it…

The IRS routinely takes 30% of every dollar earned in the United States and around the world by American citizens and companies. And to ensure that it can collect, the IRS has turned the American financial services industry into the biggest spy operation on the globe.

Meanwhile, the political establishment reaps billions of dollars in contributions from that very industry. After all, the reason the industry is so profitable is because of government regulations that create barriers to competition – which, in turn, holds up prices.

How else do you think they can skim 3% off of nearly every financial transaction?

The Bane of Central Bankers

Bitcoin, therefore, is like a sword of Damocles pointing straight at America’s financial rulers.

The writer Charles Stross captures the power of Bitcoin in his essay, “Why I Want Bitcoin to Die in a Fire.”

He writes, “Bitcoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money-issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind – to damage states’ ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens’ financial transactions.”

That single sentence explains why the ruling elite fear Bitcoin. It makes tracking citizens’ financial transactions almost impossible and hamstrings the government’s ability to collect its mountain of taxes. (The other alternative currency we’re tracking is similarly disruptive.)

Meanwhile, if it were ever widely adopted, Bitcoin has the potential to far outperform the U.S. dollar as a store of value. Because mining Bitcoins takes continually increasing computational power, there’s an inherent cap on the creation of new currency. This deflationary force would cause the currency to appreciate in value.

The bottom line is that Bitcoin threatens the entire edifice, and the elites know it. They’re desperately working to place regulatory barriers that will prevent widespread adoption.

The race is on in 2015. Whether Bitcoin or Washington will win remains to be seen…

Your eyes on the Hill,

Floyd Brown