A mysterious paper appeared in a little known cryptography forum in 2008 with the title- “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. Bitcoin went on to become universally accepted money and changed the world. Or did it?
It’s been almost 9 years since the first Bitcoin was mined in January 2009. Bitcoin has been covered in the news extensively as the new digital gold and its value skyrocketed to around $20,000. Bitcoin has spawned off other cryptocurrencies and the world is trying to utilize the underlying tech of blockchain. Bitcoiners have all these sort of accelerating charts and these comparisons to the market cap of gold and suggest holding your Bitcoin to get spectacular returns.
I disagree with that, not just because I’m more pessimistic, but I disagree with the vision of the future where all you have to do is sit back, eat popcorn, and watch the movie of the future unfold.- Peter Thiel
Shravan and I disagree with this notion. Bitcoin is not Gold 2.0, but it is cash. It’s prophecy is to become cash, to replace global fiat currencies and create an open, free world where the element of friction in a transaction between two untrusted parties is removed.
We are not the types who believe that if we just sit back and wait, it will happen. People have to choose to work on hard problems. If no one’s working on the problem, it will not get solved. The problem is adoption. Global adoption. And that requires people who build to come into the ecosystem. Not speculators who are ‘hodling’ bitcoin. But people who want to make it happen and are developing the tools necessary for Bitcoin to become money.
Our dream is to see Bitcoin as a global currency. What bitcoin will do is not clear to anyone right now. But, the impacts will be massive and in 10–20 years, the world will be unrecognizable. This is something that is going to change human history and the story of civilization. People who understand the importance of money that is outside central control have been writing about the benefits of such a money but this is the first time in history we can actually achieve it. It will give us the tools to create a better world, a more equitable world. A world where anyone can trade with any other person without the notions of country, color, race,age or gender but the only factor they are judged on is the quality of their work. Innovation will not be curtailed due to regulations and problems such as aging, space travel, nuclear energy will be where the smartest people are working.
Why ‘Atlantis’
Atlantis is a myth of the earliest human civilization. This land is hypothesized to have advances in science and technology that far outsmart today’s developments. This ancient land contained knowledge that fractured throughout the world in various forms from the architectural wonders of the pyramids to the astronomical knowledge of the Mayans.
Our vision is to recreate this space of wonder, a space where people are free to express themselves, to trade freely, to exchange ideas and work on interesting projects.
In The Sovereign Individual, the authors prophesy:
At the highest plateau of productivity, these Sovereign Individuals will compete and interact on terms that echo the relations among the gods in Greek myth. The elusive Mount Olympus of the next millennium will be in cyberspace-a realm without physical existence that will nonetheless develop what promises to be the world’s largest economy by the second decade of the new millennium. By 2025, the cybereconomy will have many millions of participants. Some of them will be as rich as Bill Gates, worth over $10 billion each. The cyberpoor may be those with an income of less than $200,000 a year. There will be no cyberwelfare. No cybertaxes and no cybergovernment. The cybereconomy, rather than China, could well be the greatest economic phenomenon of the next thirty years
We believe that this prediction will turn out to be quite accurate. And our vision is to provide the tools to individuals and businesses to interact in this cyberspace. The tools to sell their products and services to customers all over the world and get paid. In this new world, you will have complete control over your money, no one can freeze your funds, no one will be able to track your financial activity, and you don’t need to ask for anyone’s permission.
Bitcoin enables a future of potential and our endeavor is to create simple tools that others can use to build the future that they desire. Check us out at Atlantis Labs!
