Will the Blockchain Revolutionize or Kill the Traditional Banks?
An Australian dude, a group of rebellious Asian coders, or someone else entirely? Who’s really behind the blockchain concept and Why?
Traditional banks and even the central banks are counting their final days if the current trend continues and blockchain technology becomes globally adopted. That was the idea right from the start — to eliminate the middleman.
In the current circumstances, banks have two options is they wanna keep selling money:
OPTION A — resist with all they got
OPTION B — join, somehow…
However, the first real steps have been taken to remove banks and traditional payment processors out of the equation, once and for all. And not just them…
Now, this might sound a bit too far-fetched for many, but I believe that the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto figure is nothing but a consortium of top 1% of 1% of 1% industrial and hedge fund heads who got sick and tired paying billions of their own money to a middleman such as banks and governments (read: taxes).
There is a war going on. A brutal one. And it didn’t start yesterday.
You see, up until now, you had three types of players on the scene.
One type is the “money-only” boys and girls devoted to the fiat paradigm where money gives value to money. They managed to de-peg the value of money from gold and any other type of commodity for that matter. Only the faith of the people keeps the value of money alive. That’s why you have that famous “In God We Trust” tagline on every dollar bill. However, all that money is centralized and depends on the current mood of the Institute of the Central Bank, a governing body of the sovereign state that rules over the entire financial sector. In other words, central banks are in control of the money that circulates the markets.
Then, you have the “gold-only” guys that hold onto gold, silver, platinum, and the rest of valuable commodities. They never made their peace with the fact that gold is no longer the primary instrument that determines the value of money. But they too are under the direct control of the central bank and its policies. And, they have another problem. They need to trade their commodities for money because only money buys stuff in our current setup.
As you would expect, these two groups are constantly clashing with one another.
The “gold-only” guys are doing everything they can to spread panic across the markets. They always use the “artificial bubble” paradigm to scare the herd. And when the herd is anxious and scared, it immediately starts buying commodities. This automatically raises the price of gold, silver, platinum, coffee, and every other commodity, making more money for the “gold-only” group.
It happens every now and then on a smaller scale but sometimes, this war they are constantly waging tends to explode in the faces of the middle class like it happened back in 2008. While the boys and girls were playing their games, people were sleeping under the tents in the parking lots.
Both of these groups depend on the third type, the “middleman,” or the unavoidable link, arbitrage, and mediator that is present in any kind of a deal, not limited to money or commodities only. It can be the already mentioned central bank, some commercial bank, a brokerage company, but also an ordinary, local lawyer’s office.
All three types are making money, one way or another.
But…
Both “money-only” and “gold-only” groups are relying on a standard market exchange process to generate the profit meaning that certain values change hands between two parties in a deal.
The third type, the “middleman,” such as the bank or some other financial or legal institution, cashes-in only on a cut in a deal between two parties in the exchange process. In other words, the “middleman” holds no real risk in and brings no real value to the exchange process, other than largely enforced service. This basically means that this type can be observed as that annoying uncle without whom the party just can’t go along.
It’s the leeching nature of the “middleman” that bothers “money-only” and “gold-only” guys equally. At the same time, they cannot avoid being molested for the cut in any deal. It seems that everybody is looking for a fee and in most instances, there is more than one “middleman” in the entire process. Sometimes the entire set of different financial and legal institutions is feeding on a single deal.
Don’t get this wrong. There is a perfectly good reason for the existence of the “middleman.” They serve the purpose of validation. In simple words, the “middleman” is here to validate and confirm that some party A had the goods for sales and that some party B had the money to pay for those goods and that the entire deal went through. Values have exchanged the hands according to the rules of engagement and the “middleman” confirms to the entire world that the deal is sealed legitimately.
As you can imagine, that “middleman” type is not only leeching away an immense amount of money every second of every day but it’s also notoriously known for dragging the exchange process sometimes for over a week. Just try to wire the money from one account to another and you’ll see how long it takes. It appears that they are deliberately withholding the money and that lag cripples the global markets to a certain degree.
Now imagine the number of banks, lawyers, brokerage companies, and other financial slash legal entities that are taking a cut in every single deal that’s been made on the global market. We are talking about millions of transactions taking place every second.
Or take your paycheck for example. There is no single legitimate reason for the third party, like one of the many banks my company owns, to be making the cut in a deal between you and your employer. You are selling your labor for an agreed fixed or variable monetary compensation that comes from your employer who agrees to buy that labor from you. It’s a simple market exchange of values that the humankind is using since the dawn of the first modern humans.
Logic and common sense are telling us that there should be only two parties in that exchange process: you and your employer. Because, no matter how hard you try, you cannot make the proper handshake with three hands.
Yet, against that logic and common sense, we do have that third hand in a simple handshake. And the alleged reason is that we just don’t trust each other. It’s crippling, unreasonable, illogical but you were told that it is necessary for that third hand to exist and hover above you and your employer every time two of you execute the transaction.
Who told you that?
Your own government.
Why did your government allow such an intrusive behavior and practically illegal wealth building? Why is some third party that has nothing to do with the exchange between you and your employer allowed to make a profit on that deal?
So you wouldn’t be able to evade taxes. Less cash is circulating in the system easier it gets to keep track of your incomes. Ever since the Arpanet evolved into the Internet there was this tendency to shift from paper to digital. Today, only 3% of all the money in the US is paper money. Which means that 97% of it can be traced because of the digital signature, no matter where you send it.
Banks didn’t even have to put up the fight to convince the government to reroute the money of every single exchange directly to the banks. Because the taxes pay the government.
It eventually came to the point where you can be the strongest person in the world but you won’t be able to make a dime on your muscles if you don’t A) open a bank account, and B) authorize the bank to take few drops of your blood each time it leaks out. Yes, they are the closest thing we have to vampires, make no mistake about that.
The part that really blows? Individuals and businesses alike, we are the ones feeding the bloodthirsty government’s vampires. The government only holds the leash. We provide food.
But then, on October 31, 2008, an anonymous entity under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto published the whitepaper that sent wrinkles across the financial ecosystem, threatening to change the paradigm, once and for all.
The work was entitled, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” and immediately disturbed the routine on global markets. The “middleman” started to feel these weird goosebumps all over his body, not really knowing why. “Money-only” and “gold-only” guys felt it too but on a far lower scale. For them, it was just a matter of facing the unknown. They only needed someone to show them the bigger picture to go along.
The opening line of the document abstract alone was enough to make the “middleman” extremely nervous:
“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they’ll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.”
The paper goes on explaining the details of this entirely new and groundbreaking approach to transaction processing. It was clear as a whistle that the proposed model was, in fact, the future of exchange. And it wasn’t just limited to monetary exchange. All sorts of processes that depend on validation such as the ordinary purchase or loan contracts could be using the proposed blockchain technology. A software technology that utilizes the connected world and the raw computing power of millions of users across the globe, using custom peer-to-peer protocols.
What’s the big novelty that blockchain brings?
Total elimination of the traditional “middleman.”
In other words, there is no more real need for central banks, commercial banks, brokerage companies, lawyers or notary public offices. The global society takes over. You, me, your neighbor, your brother, his father-in-law, and everybody else who wants to be part of the process. In exchange for your effort and computing power, you will be rewarded with the small value that comes in the form of a digital currency named Bitcoin, the world’s first fully decentralized cryptocurrency. It’s basically the fee just like the one that the bank is taking. The wealth is suddenly being spread to anyone and not just to banks.
I remember the reaction of one of my colleagues when we first discussed the paper. He said, and I quote: “Another dream that will never see the light of the day. Such a waste of time and money.”
Something was telling me that he’s wrong. Because all it takes for the revolution to start is the second guy. And I was confident that even before the Nakamoto group released the paper in public, there were far more than two guys plotting this revolution.
You see, the one thing that separates a successful person from the rest of the crowd is the ability to recognize the next big thing. To predict the moment of the outbreak and the outcome of the revolution. It was clear as a whistle that I was reading the manifesto. The global manifesto that will quickly be adopted by millions across the globe because they were all sick and tired of being controlled by only a few guys on the boards of the central financial institutions. For the first time ever, every single person on this planet has the ability to make money the same way banks, lawyers, and government institutions are making.
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency respectively offered the simple way out of slavery.
As days went by and more people started believing in cryptocurrencies, the things in the traditional financial sector reached the boiling point. The panic spread across the banking and legal sector. It felt like someone released a deadly virus in every bank and lawyer’s office. The ground under their feet started shaking.
The series of actions were undertaken on the global level to contain the spread of this deadly virus. Spins, bullying, even real threats. But it was clear that those efforts were doomed because of the basic nature of the blockchain proposal.
What gives money its value? Faith.
What about gold? Again, faith. We cannot eat it, we cannot cover our cold asses with it either, so it’s got no real value. But we believe that it’s worth something and that’s enough.
For us humans, it’s enough that we believe that some, say, mineral holds a certain value and we will start using it as the exchange instrument. Over the course of time, we simplified things and invented paper money. It was more practical to carry paper than heavy stones.
Then, with the onset of global digitalization, common paper money got substituted with electronic money. The ones and zeroes on credit cards and bank accounts. The ones and zeroes flying at the speed of light through all those wires and nodes every time you use your card to purchase something.
The paradigm has changed. Money had lost its physical shape entirely. And that opened the door for the emergence of digital currencies. Because, same as the faith of people gives value to money, it can give it to some cryptocurrency.
Only nobody saw it. Or to be more accurate, nobody wanted to see it, in the beginnings.
Resistance in the financial sector was simply unbelievable. Stubbornness. Narrow-mindedness. Crippling factors that block any progress. They just didn’t want to see the forest from that single tree. Decades of the same practices created deeply rooted habits. And habits are hard things to break or change. Especially if they are on the global level.
Then, one day, the first US Dollar got exchanged for the very first Bitcoin. The exchange rate at that time was $10 for a single BC. At this very moment, you need $6451.22 to execute that same trade.
Was it just a great gesture? Final recognition of the will of the people from all over the world? To some extent, yes. But there was another reason why the “Roundtable” of the wealthiest literally allowed cryptocurrencies into financial markets. More ominous one.
One of the biggest promises of the entire blockchain and crypto concept is anonymity. It is a powerful incentive, no doubt about it. People are under the impression that no one has access to their true identities. Criminals all over the world saw a simple solution to their primary problem.
It’s a mistake.
Remember how everything with the digital signature can be traced all the way to its source? A cryptocurrency is nothing but a piece of code. And that code is in digital form. This means that it can be accessed and traced in a number of different ways, no matter how many different addresses you create for transactions.
The simplest way is to enforce access. So the IRS took decisive action. The litigation process against Coinbase, a renowned crypto brokerage company. They wanted names and connected addresses. On November 28, 2017, the court ruled in favor of the IRS. Coinbase is to hand over the users' accounts to IRS, effective immediately. And it was an expected outcome. After all, the judge’s paycheck and the paychecks of everybody inside the judicial sector of the state depend on the amount of money in the treasury. And that money is coming through taxes. So if they rule against the IRS, they are putting their own existence in danger.
As more countries are adapting to the changes while some of them are even designing their own cryptocurrencies, one thing is inevitable — the total governmental control of the crypto market. Your ability to buy some cryptocurrency using your credit card or to mine for it using your own computer that has the MAC address, unique for every single piece of hardware, is nothing more than a slow process of establishing the ultimate control over this novelty.
True, humankind might transfer entirely to blockchain technology in the near future but that won’t change the fact that the cash-flow will be under the strict control of the government. They might ditch the central banking practice and banks altogether but they will never give up on their taxes. And the only way to keep the steady influx of the taxpayers’ money is by controlling each citizen’s incomes.
The paradox is that cryptocurrencies made that job even easier because 100% of transactions will go through wires because paper money will eventually seize to exist.
Now, when you sum everything you’ve heard so far, are you still thinking how Satoshi Nakamoto is some good old Australian mate or a bunch of rebellious Asian coders who invested a great deal of time and money to “free” the citizens of the world from the shackles of central banks and governments or is it plausible to think that behind that entire project are several current global financial influencers?
Did it ever occur to you that a few names from the Madison Avenue gathered a team of wizards to upgrade the centuries-old monetary-market concept and free the capital once and for all?
Did it cross your mind that the whole blockchain idea works in the best interest of 1% of the wealthiest people on the planet who currently hold 47% of all the money we have in the system, and who are on the century-old mission to eliminate any kind of governmental influence on their affairs?
Because when your monthly income is around 1 billion of dollars, pounds, or euros, you really don’t want to give away 250 million so that the government’s leeches could survive the month. No sir, you wouldn’t want that. In fact, you would rather use those 250 million to fund the cause that benefits you personally. Perhaps you would round up some of the best minds in the fields of economics, finance, engineering, and computer algorithms to come up with the solution to your problems.
And what’s your biggest problem?
The government and its tax policies. But also the banking sector with those enormous fees and interests and a big mouth.
Wouldn’t it be better if you could somehow design the system where you wouldn’t be paying high taxes and where the business loans would go almost for free? Or how about not being molested for a fee every time you want to make some deal or execute the monetary transaction? Or not having to wait for 3–5 business days for the money to change accounts?
What do you have to do to achieve all or most of these goals?
You need to eliminate the traditional “middleman” because that “middleman” is the narc who’s been telling on you while squeezing you for some money just because it exists.
How about now? What do you think is more plausible? A random act of a random group of people or a deliberate act of a deliberate group of people on top of the food chain?
They can’t solve both problems but they can sure as hell remove at least one leech from the equation and save billions.
