Crypto currencies: More than Moon

Many people these days are hopeful that the crypto market will finally take off, prices will go through the roof, and portfolios will hit unimagined highs. But what if it doesn’t?

Cryptocurrencies are increasingly exerting immense fascination, as hardly any asset class proved to be more lucrative in recent months and years; with Bitcoin’s new all-time high, the world seems to have nothing but green candles for most crypto fans, the chart analysis only allows for bullish views, and the only question is by what factor the investments will multiply. But can it really be the purpose of cryptos to make people rich and live once as an island owner under palm trees?

Lost time

How many keyboards have been limited in function in the past bull markets because the F5 keys became useless from hammering away hoping for new highs on coinmarketcap.com?
How many afternoons were spent pointlessly in front of the PC thinking they were missing something important?
How many hours were left unused scrolling through millions of memes worldwide without adding any value to one’s life or even society?

If the product of cryptocurrencies is to waste our time on nothing instead of using it productively; if the result of looking at the morning’s coin price is to have “a bad day” instead of enjoying it; or if you already can’t even concentrate on the actual work because you’ve set a StopLoss that of course shouldn’t be triggered — then surely that can’t be the stated goal of cryptocurrencies?

Lost touch with reality

Since you started reading this article, at least 50 soccer fields full of rainforest have been cut down worldwide. Millions of people are suffering the consequences of natural disasters or repression by authoritarian regimes. Education is still not equally accessible to all people. Not even water!

One could go on forever explaining the inadequacies we face on this planet. And yet, in the crypto realm, the question of when the financial journey to the moon will finally begin prevails.

A thought experiment

This sounds a lot like doom and gloom and pessimism — understandably. But what if tomorrow the crypto exchanges collapse for whatever reason (you can think of enough, e.g. a tweet from Elon Musk…), with bitcoin as a reserve currency collapsing so much that all altcoins also collapse to — let’s say — 10% of today’s monetary value?

Admittedly, that would be annoying for invested capital. And yes, you would have invested a lot of time in a hobby that didn’t help you personally.
But the problems of our planet would still be the same. And this is exactly where the problem lies.

Currently, cryptocurrency acts as an investment. Buy low, sell high: get rich quick. Or they serve as an illusion of an alternative in case the euro and dollar fail in the next big crash (to then, in turn, serve as the basis for the next rich layer). But what if cryptocurrencies were more than that? What if they were used to address the real problems?

The alternative

Cryptocurrencies offer the potential to help with very real problems in everyday life, in addition to their purpose in the financial market: Data can be sent not only more securely (think hackers, criminals, data forgers, fraudsters..), but also faster.

Especially the decentralization, which is not for nothing in the center since the beginning of Bitcoin, offers unimagined possibilities, because companies and whole nations would no longer hang on the drip of FAANG&Co. And both private individuals and companies would more than appreciate it if they could finally (again) have confidence in the data (pictures, videos, sensor data, etc.) or live in cities and communities where ecologically sustainable and efficient housekeeping is practiced.

The bad news is: from the F5 key hammering, this scenario will not happen. And even the financial full moon wouldn’t automatically condition it. Instead, it requires commitment from each individual to tackle things and “build” (or as it’s nowadays called “buidl”):

• Entrepreneurs who recognize the opportunities and promote them in their companies and projects.
• Developers who bring their skills to companies and startups.
• Employees who embrace a (new) company ethos and are receptive to new approaches.
• Policymakers who don’t keep things as they are, but pull out all the stops (and promote appropriate technologies that have already proven helpful).
• Content creators who draw attention to developments (and sore points).
• Fans who inform themselves fundamentally (beyond memes!) and then carry ideas forward to the appropriate people in the environment.
• Etc.

The problems of our time are too big to be solved by politicians, doctors and rainforest activists alone. But with DLT, a means exists to combat many of the problematic developments. Hoping for the moon alone will be too little if we want the above problems to become less. It needs less passive waiting for getting rich, but active, motivated action.

And then if one day cryptocurrencies collapsed (which would be much less likely given the real equivalent value of cryptocurrency), that would still be annoying — but then DLT protocols would have added value not just for a few nerds, but for society as a whole.

The author is host of the YouTube channel IOTAWeekly (www.youtube.com/IOTAWeekly) and does this as a hobby because he sees in the technology of IOTA exactly the potential that can help our planet in so many problems (digital identities, cryptographically secured data flows, tokenization of assets, smart contracts, etc.).