The “Black Hole” Economic Crisis and the Birth of the Accounting Economy — Analytical Review

  • 12 Apr, 2026
    | Salome K

The “Black Hole” Crisis and the Birth of the Accounting Economy
Analytical Review: Why Old Money No Longer Works and What Will Replace It

The Liquidity Illusion
A paradoxical situation has emerged in the global economy. Formally, there has never been as much money in the world as there is today. The central banks of leading countries have printed trillions, and the cryptocurrency market has added trillions more in virtual tokens. But upon closer examination, it turns out that up to 90% of this money supply is effectively frozen or withdrawn from active circulation. This money does not work to create anything new, does not finance real projects, does not build factories, and does not lay roads. It circulates inside a giant speculative system, which one expert aptly called an “economic black hole.”
Formally, there is plenty of liquidity. In reality, for development, there is a catastrophic shortage. Why did this happen? And most importantly, what will replace the old system when the mechanism finally fails? An analysis of current trends, combined with a deep understanding of the nature of money and blockchain technology, allows us not only to diagnose the disease but also to see the contours of the future — an economy based on the accounting of real resources.

Part 1. Anatomy of the Crisis: Why “Old” Money Turned into a “Black Hole”
The traditional financial system, built on unbacked fiat currencies, has ceased to perform its main function — to be a transparent accounting system for real values. Over the past half-century, it has evolved into a self-sufficient mechanism that serves itself, not the economy.
1.1. Pyramid on a Pyramid
Let’s start with the fundamental problem: modern money is backed by nothing but trust. Since the abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, the US dollar — and with it all other world currencies — became fiat, that is, decreed. Its value rests not on gold reserves but on a complex system of trust, the US military-political dominance, and its status as a global reserve currency.
This status is not the result of market efficiency but of decades of geopolitical struggle, wars, coups, and economic pressure. From the Bretton Woods agreements to the petrodollar deals with Saudi Arabia, the history of the dollar is a history of the forced unification of the global financial system under its own standards.
But today, the situation has been aggravated by a new factor — cryptocurrencies. Or rather, not cryptocurrencies themselves, but a mechanism that one expert called “emission duplication.” This refers to stablecoins — USDT, USDC, and their analogues.
Stablecoin issuers deposit real dollars into banks or Treasury bonds and issue an equivalent number of digital tokens. Formally, each token is backed by a real dollar. But these tokens live their own lives in the world of decentralized finance: they are repeatedly rehypothecated, used as collateral for new loans, and included in complex financial pools. As a result, one real dollar generates several virtual dollar obligations.
This is a “shadow of a shadow.” A financial structure built on fiat dollars, which themselves are backed by nothing but faith. Now imagine what happens when that faith fails. The multi-story pyramid collapses, freezing liquidity at all levels simultaneously.
Cryptocurrencies, instead of becoming an alternative to the old system, often exacerbate its problems, turning into part of the same speculative “black hole.” They do not create a new economy — they multiply the risks of the old one.
1.2. Money as a Weapon
The second fundamental problem of the modern financial system is its politicization. The sanctions war unleashed against Russia turned the dollar from a neutral instrument of settlement into a weapon of mass destruction. Freezing reserves, disconnecting from SWIFT, threats of secondary sanctions — all of this has dealt a crushing blow to the very idea of money as an apolitical medium of exchange.
Trust turned out to be an instrument that can be taken away on a political whim. Capital that could have been invested in development now goes into “defensive” assets or simply freezes in anticipation of further escalation.
Observing the behavior of Russian businesses, experts record a paradoxical picture. Even with rising prices for oil and other export goods, many companies are betting on the devaluation of the ruble. They buy up foreign currency, stockpile unnecessary goods, and withdraw capital through semi-legal schemes. This is a flight from risk, not creation. Capital freezes in anticipation of the worst, instead of working for development.
Those who try to invest face rising costs. Parallel import hubs raise commissions, logistics become more expensive, and settlements become more complicated. As a result, even money that could go into the real sector gets stuck in chains of intermediaries.
1.3. Resources vs. “Paper”
Behind all these processes lies a fundamental contradiction that only intensifies every year. This is the confrontation between “paper” (fiat) assets and real resources.
Russia, possessing a colossal resource base — oil, gas, coal, gold, diamonds, rare earth metals — is trying to defend its right to sell its goods for real value, not for depreciating dollars. Europe, having lost access to cheap resources, pays 3–4 times more for energy than before, subsidizes its population and businesses, sinks into recession, and at the same time bears the burden of social problems aggravated by the migration crisis.
Money invested in the “green transition” and politically motivated projects ends up frozen in inefficient assets. Wind turbines do not provide the required power, LNG terminals cannot be built fast enough, and industry stands idle. Capital lies as dead weight in infrastructure that does not work.
Commodity flows, meanwhile, are redirected to the East and South. China and India become the main buyers of Russian resources, often at a discount. Turkey and Middle Eastern countries increase trade turnover, turning into re-export hubs. A “shadow tanker fleet” is being formed to circumvent sanctions. New logistics routes, new payment mechanisms, and new centers of power are emerging.
But the old financial world does not want to give in. It pressures with sanctions, threatens secondary restrictions, and tries to forcefully maintain control over the movement of capital and resources. As a result, the system finds itself in a state of permanent war of all against all, where normal economic development becomes impossible.

Part 2. Blockchain: The Wrong Technology
In this chaos, blockchain occupies a special place. The technology that was created to solve the problem of trust in a digital environment today is primarily associated with cryptocurrencies, speculation, and “free money.”
One expert, reflecting on the fate of blockchain, offers a thought experiment. Imagine a village of a hundred houses whose inhabitants exchange goods and services but do not trust each other. To guarantee the honesty of transactions, they introduce a simple rule: every agreement is recorded on paper, and copies are handed over to ten neighbors. If someone breaks the terms, ten witnesses will confirm it, and the violator will be excluded from economic life.
This is the principle of blockchain: distributed data storage, collective verification, and the impossibility of retroactively changing information. Only instead of paper — electronic records, instead of neighbors — computers, and instead of manual verification — algorithms.
But if we transfer this model to the digital age, a question arises: why was it necessary to create a new currency? After all, money already performs the function of a universal equivalent of exchange. Yes, they are imperfect, yes, the centers of emission manipulate the money supply, but money orders relations between people, transferring conflicts from the power plane to the economic one.
The answer, most likely, lies in a different plane. The true purpose of blockchain is not the emission of new money, but the transparent accounting of what lies behind the money.
2.1. The Myth of Backing
In the crypto community, there is much talk about backing tokens with real assets. A cryptocurrency is created, “backed” by an oil well or gold reserves. It is assumed that this gives stability. But if you look closely, the structure is cracking at the seams.
First, the story about the existence of a well could be a fabrication. Issuers assume that no one will go to check. Second, even if the well is real, its owner could sell the resource that is considered backing at any moment. What will happen to the currency then? There is no answer.
The historical example given by the expert sounds almost like satire. A representative of a superpower with a powerful industry, a huge army, and colossal resources comes to international negotiations and begins to convince partners that his currency is stable because it is backed by gold. The absurdity of this picture is obvious. The stability of a currency is determined not by the number of bars in basements, but by the real economic system behind it.
2.2. Blockchain as an Accounting System
If we remove the speculative component from the crypto market, it becomes obvious that blockchain is ideally suited for a completely different task. It can serve as a tool for recording:
Obligations
Resource flows
Property rights
Contract execution
In other words, blockchain can become an infrastructure for transparent accounting of economic activity. A transaction record cannot be rewritten retroactively. Every participant in the network can verify its authenticity. In this model, blockchain ceases to be an alternative currency. It becomes a technology that ensures trust between participants in the economic system.
2.3. The Illusion of Decentralization
Crypto enthusiasts often claim that the main advantage of blockchain is decentralization. Supposedly, there is no longer a center controlling the system. But the practice of recent years shows a more complex picture.
Access to cryptocurrencies is through exchanges, payment gateways, and exchangers. These entry and exit points remain centralized. We have already seen cases where user accounts on major crypto exchanges were blocked due to sanctions or regulatory requirements. Formal decentralization does not mean real freedom for users.
Today, the cryptocurrency market is at a crossroads. On the one hand, blockchain is a powerful technological idea. On the other hand, a giant speculation industry has formed around it, absorbing colossal resources. The technology will either transform and find its real application, or gradually disappear, giving way to more efficient solutions.

Part 3. A Hypothesis on “New Money”: From Speculation to Resource Accounting
If 90% of “old” money is frozen in a speculative “black hole,” then financing a new economy will require not just new currencies, but a new philosophy of money. They must return to their original essence — to be an accounting tool.
Summarizing expert opinions, three key principles of this “new money” can be identified.
3.1. Resource Backing: A Return to Reality
A new currency cannot be “decreed,” based on trust in governments that easily confiscate assets. In an era of trust crisis, we need money whose value is directly linked to real, measurable assets: energy, metals, food, intellectual property.
This is not about “oil-backed tokens” as offered by today’s issuers. It is about a fundamentally different system, where every digital asset has behind it a real, legally fixed, and transparently accounted resource. Where redemption mechanisms work, and the issuer cannot one day sell the “backing” and disappear from the market.
We are likely to witness the growth of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) backed by countries’ resource bases, and the emergence of transparent commodity stablecoins with strong legal frameworks. Money in this model becomes not just a claim, but a digital representative of a real resource.
3.2. Depoliticization and Neutrality: Technology, Not a Weapon
Money that can be confiscated at the snap of a finger is unsuitable for long-term global development. The new economy will require a neutral settlement environment, where the rules of the game are the same for everyone and do not change to suit the political climate.
This does not mean abandoning government regulation. It means that the settlement infrastructure should be separated from the political will of specific centers of power. Just as the Internet is neutral to the information transmitted, the payment system must be neutral to transactions.
The development of multipolar payment systems (for example, based on BRICS), private blockchain networks with distributed governance, and clearing mechanisms for mutual settlements — all these are steps in this direction. Here, blockchain as a distributed consensus technology finds its true meaning: it becomes not an emission instrument, but an infrastructure of trust.
3.3. Programmability as a Guarantee of Purpose: Accounting, Not Speculation
The main problem of the current system is that money can be used anywhere, regardless of the source of emission. A loan taken for production development can be withdrawn to an exchange and lost in speculation. Infrastructure investments can end up in offshore accounts.
To save liquidity from the “black hole,” “new money” must be programmable. Their life cycle can be strictly tied to a specific economic process. Issuance of digital money strictly for targeted investment projects with automatic control of spending. Funds issued, for example, to build a factory can only be spent on construction materials, engineers’ salaries, and equipment purchases. Any attempt to withdraw them to the exchange market is blocked at the protocol level.
This turns money from a commodity into a targeted accounting tool. They are guaranteed to work to create new real value, not to feed the speculative pyramid.

Architectural Conclusion: From the “Black Hole” to the Accounting Economy
The mid-2020s will go down in history as the moment when the old financial system finally stopped working. Infrastructure wars, sanctions madness, speculative bubbles, the energy crisis, migration pressure — all these are symptoms of one process: the agony of a model where money exists separately from real resources.
The speculative capital “black hole” continues to absorb liquidity, but it can no longer generate development. A vicious circle: to build something, you need money, but money goes into speculation because the returns are higher with seemingly low risk. Meanwhile, the real sector suffocates without financing.
The way out of this circle is not to create another cryptocurrency or another financial instrument. The way out is a paradigm shift.
“New money” is a return to the essence of money as an accounting tool, multiplied by a quantum leap in technology. It is a synthesis of:
the idea of blockchain as an infrastructure of trust,
an analysis of the risks of the fiat system with its lack of backing and politicization,
an understanding of the critical importance of targeted capital use,
and most importantly — linking money to real, measurable, transparently accounted resources.
In the new economy, a digital record ceases to be an abstract number on a screen. It becomes a reflection of a real economic process. Of goods, energy, labor, infrastructure, intellectual property. And if technological development truly moves in this direction, then blockchain will finally transform from an instrument of speculative markets into the foundation of a new architecture of economic relations.
Where the main importance is not virtual tokens, but real resources and their fair, transparent, efficient distribution.
This is not a utopia. This is the only possible way for the global economy to survive in an era of trust crisis. The only question is how much time we have and whether we will have time to rebuild before the “black hole” swallows everything.

Analytical review prepared based on expert opinions and open data
March 2026