Cryptocurrencies already changed the world

You blinked and you missed it

Source: Alex Wong/Getty Images

I know, I know. It’s a bold statement.

Blockchain as a technology has a long way to go, and yes, it is true — crypto is mostly used for speculation.

However, despite still being at a very early stage, cryptocurrencies have changed the world in a way that there’s no coming back from: they’ve shown us that there is an alternative.

Will they be disruptive? Maybe. Will they be the main form of payment in the future? Possibly. But those things aren’t here yet.

What is here is the following: a way to keep the system in check.

I recently spoke at the European Central Bank about crypto and what I realized is that the banks and Central Banks are rushing to get involved because they are suddenly exposed to something they did not know before: external competition.

The financial system is under constant competition from within itself, but its authority has never been questioned by an outsider. And even when they slipped, we know exactly what happened.

The famous headline included by Satoshi Nakamoto in Bitcoin’s genesis block

Except now there’s a little guy in the back just waiting to be put in the game. He’s no starter yet, but he has some skills — he’s mastered cross-border payments, for example.

So maybe cryptocurrencies never take over, or maybe they morph into top-down rather than bottom-up systems. But the fact that they came up from internet forums to snatch a few hundred billions of dollars in market cap shows that there is a viable alternative.

Finally, when the line gets crossed, we know there’s another option we can turn to. By itself, that’s enough to keep bankers in check and sleeping with one eye open.

If crypto will eventually disrupt the system I don’t know, but at a minimum it has and will continue to force it to be more efficient and inclusive.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is change like we’ve never seen before.