Trouble sleeping lately? Browsing Delta while contemplating what an idiot you were for getting into cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency in 5 years?

If you are like me and got into crypto late, this post is for you. It’s been a rough couple of months for us, and I certainly don’t blame you for wanting to sell your holdings. All the cries for HODL’s in the world will not justify a 70% loss. It’s been hard.

I made my first purchase of ETH on 16th of January, the first dip of the year. I was over the top. Buy low, sell high bby! I felt like the best trader ever. That certainly did not last. I think I had about two weeks this year where I was somewhat in the green. If I had sold at any point this year, I would have lost a lot of money. So why on earth am I still buying?

Maybe I am just deeply disturbed and trying to justify my loss. I don’t know. We don’t know if we are right or not when it comes to crypto and blockchain. It might be a fad, it might never take off, it might fade on into obscurity yada yada yada.

I did not invest more than I could afford to loose. I don’t want to loose it, but I will be okay if I do. And if crypto goes to zero and I never see my investment again, I’m okay with that. The philosophy of cryptocurrencies and it’s potential economic impact, is far more powerful than high-risk trading, going to the moon and “believing in the tech”. Cryptocurrencies is at its core just a better currency and value transfer system.

If it all goes down the drain, I will take solace in the fact that I actively took part in a fundamental change that I believed in. A trust-less system. No intermediaries. No fees for accepting payment. Ownership of identity. Banking the unbanked. A transparent financial system. Donations that goes directly to the poor instead of funding organizations. The death of voting fraud. A system that puts power back into the hands of individuals, not global mega-corporations.

Alright, enough of the anti-establishment mumbo-jumbo. Blockhain is not the answer to every problem, but as a whole it is a step in the right direction.

We have two major problems in today’s society.

Our financial currency system is outdated.

The internet was built without a trust-protocol.

Cash and physical currencies was actually a great currency-system. You owned your money and you paid for wares. You were in control of your funds at all times, and transactions needed no intermediaries. Of course, it had some glaring limitations, which we are now moving towards a cashless society. First, it was hard to securely store massive bundles of cash. So we started paying someone to store it for us (hello modern banking). Then the 1970 came and we started doing payment by plastic, which is the standard even today with credit or debit cards. We are now paying the banks in order to make transactions IRL. Then we have the internet in the 1990’s and we started paying banks/payment processors in order to pay and receive money virtually. Cash is basically out at this point, and money is virtual. So today, we are not in control of our own money. If your bank freeze your assets today for whatever reason, there is not really anything you can do about it. And in order to transfer our own funds, we have to pay a small price. In order to receive money, we pay a bigger price (3.5–10% is today’s standard). In other words, everything that you purchase today is about 10% more expensive than it has to be because of payment processing fees.

The other reason that our financial system is “outdated”, is because it facilitates corruption and bad actors. The reason for this is simple: If you give all of your money to someone, it is just a matter of time before they steal it. Ask yourself, how many people in this world would you give all of your money to and be 100% sure that you would get it back in 10 years?

And this is what we are seeing. Corruption, Wall Street, Banks, economic crashes all around. Every ten years or so, when a system built on inflated lies breaks.

Let’ talk trust. Do you trust people on the internet? Generally no, but we trust a few actors. When we buy something on Amazon, we know that this transaction will most likely go through and we will receive our electric toothbrush. But how about some guy on Ebay selling a computer? Or those porn ads that promise you magic dick pills? Maybe not. And this is not just limited to transactions. Do you trust Facebook enough not to sell your data to political influencers?

The state of the internet today is that we either need to trust one actor or trust a third party that can facilitate trust. This third party is someone we pay in order to facilitate trust. Lets take Fiverr for example. I want to pay a designer to make me a logo. But I don’t have complete faith that the designer will either follow through or do a good enough job. So both me and the designer pays Fiverr to hold and facilitate payment in case something goes wrong. And in this way we give all of the power to these third-party facilitators. We make them both judge and executioner. They are the almighty gods of the internet.

These are the fundamental problems that blockchain aims to solve with decentralization and smart-contracts. Even if every trade in crypto you make goes to zero, you have donated money to a technology that can bring a lot of good in this world. With that said, don’t invest more that you can afford to loose and invest in solid projects.

Thank you for reading.