THE PEOPLE’S CURRENCY
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2018 By J.R. Forsyth, FOUNDER OF ONFO
We are currently entering a new age of world currency, whether we like it or not. A revolution is already well underway which is radically improving how we transact value. Most common citizens are unaware of the emerging ramifications of this system being built right underneath them. Old moth-ridden standards are being thrown out in favor of highly advanced transactional technology. Bitcoin and blockchain fired the first formidable volley of attack on the old structure. That initial offensive proved the value of developing updated and more advanced math-based algorithms, which are now being positioned to conclusively decimate the remaining trust-based financial orders. Few people have not heard of bitcoin. Even fewer people truly understand blockchain’s sublimely elegant solution to transactional exchange validation and consensus. As opposed to politicians, we are starting to trust the mathematicians and cryptographers to create a better security algorithm for our digital assets. We trust the software geeks with everything else, so why not let them show us the best way to secure and define money? It seems evident most citizens of the world would prefer the most highly educated and qualified among us make the genuinely vital decisions anyway, particularly when the cost of getting financial stuff wrong is so astronomically high. Few of us would protest the idea of leaving bloviating politicians to other less technical matters. Letting the diligent and less tainted academics among us sort out the dilemmas associated with world currency exchange certainly seems like sound policy.
The fiscally abused citizens in this world usually have no idea the extent to which their assets have been systematically siphoned from them. As governments print money to ambulate any political whim, an insidious robbery occurs to those desperately working for and saving that fragile sovereign paper. We are so used to this we hardly even notice it! It is undeniably the largest systematic theft perpetrated on intelligent beings in the history of the world. It is no wonder the US dollar has lost over 98% of its value in the past century. Where else are politicians able to scare up such massive resources to pay for lazy or failed policy? You already know it. We always have to pay one way or another, and tragically, it just so happens to affect the poor citizens of the world the most.
We have built global and ubiquitous computerized systems in many segments of the economy and particularly the social realms. These assets are bonding the world with new capabilities and efficiencies. The smart phone alone has ushered in countless new disruptive forces which encompass almost anything you can think of. The most potent of which are based on our internet connectivity. Almost everything is moving faster.
Unfortunately, we have generally seen slower adoption of technological innovation within the financial world. This is probably because there has always been so much at stake as electronic financial custodianship is one of the hardest things to secure. When it comes to money, only the very best technological mechanisms tend to make the cut after long experimentation and testing. We simply don’t trust just anything that comes along to handle our dough. Vetting the tech is vital and painstaking.
Bitcoin provided us with the breakthrough we were looking for. Blockchain, the powerful magic behind bitcoin, has now been around since 2009. We have been quietly improving and refining the architecture behind this phenomenal transactional model. It has had enormous volatility during its infancy, but we are now ready to take the next leap into mainstream adoption. This math-based, decentralized, and distributed advancement has enabled us to completely eliminate counterfeiting as a general principle in token issuance. It has also miraculously put the power of peer-to-peer transactions back in the hands of the user rather than some arbitrary and abusive central authority. We are starting to see the first fruits of what future global currency will look like, and it is so much more fair.
Currently, a truly singular global currency (SGC) does not exist. Many authorities would generally consider it a pipe dream. There aren’t really any serious candidates in play. Of course, nations and institutions tend to default somewhat to the US dollar, gold, or even bitcoin as a newer form of global safe haven. Nothing has ever really come close or had the penetration required to be considered a functional world currency.
Economists have been heralding the need for an SGC for centuries. Several monetary experts are going so far as to predict a unified SGC will happen in the next 10–20 years. Some, particularly in the cryptocurrency communities are even going so far as to say an SGC is inevitable. It is important to understand that if an SGC could indeed be developed, there are numerous massive advantages which would drastically change world commerce for the better. Up until now, creation of an SGC has been such an unlikely possibility, most economists don’t even talk about it.
With all the obvious reasons to consider creation of a single global currency, the United States has been approached repeatedly to support SGC formation by monetary consolidation efforts over the years and has typically been supportive in rhetoric, but ultimately reluctant to provide any real contribution to such a cause. China and Russia have recently proposed cooperative mechanisms to create a more stable currency structure. The relative success of the European Union and the Euro has created increased pressure on the US, primarily as the rest of the world reconsiders the value of the US dollar, which has generally been hailed as a de facto world currency. Moreover, fiscal concerns within the United States as well as rising domestic debt are weighing heavily on the minds of foreign owners of US notes. As nations lose trust in US currency, it is reasonable to predict that the popular model of cooperation demonstrated by the European Union could become the preferred stability safeguard in an ever expanding and increasingly cohesive global marketplace. We are seeing a gradual change in financial thought which appears to be favorable toward a trajectory in which an SGC could be attained.
As US currency loses traction in the world economy, the cooperativity of powerful nations would seemingly become the obvious replacement for such an important international reliance on the US dollar. After all, the greenback’s value is primarily based on assumed consumer confidence. There is no true gold standard to prop it up anymore, although gold was never really that helpful anyway. The fact that the US dollar has been the substitute for the lack-of-a-better-standard is being forgotten more and more. The Chinese have never been more skeptical of US currency than today and the respect is constantly waning. This is evidenced as multiple other monetary unions are been proposed, including an ‘Asian Monetary Union’, which would be modeled after the European Union due to the EU’s arguable successes. Many are hoping to see gradually increasing cooperativity resulting in the formation of these unions with eventual coalescence of the largest organizations down the road. This would seem to be the most obvious evolution of what may be the ultimate destiny of the world economy, and frankly, the United States would likely not be able to do much to stop it.
There are vast efficiencies and wild economic benefits implicit with the implementation of a global currency. No economists doubt this, but one of the biggest questions remains how such a currency would be regulated and by what authority or group of authorities. Naturally, a centralized bank which is not controlled by any one country or sovereign power would seem to be a reasonable consideration. Such a bank could regulate the financial markets with input provided by a consortium of international interests voting on currency policy. The efficiencies in the system which are obvious and substantial would be accompanied by the obvious corruption and manipulation risk inherent when control is consolidated. Few nations are ready to trust such an arrangement, and for good reason.
Obviously, the main challenge to establishing global currency are the various large sovereign powers which have tended to remain stubborn and self-serving, presumably related to the uncertainty and prohibitive costs which would likely be necessary in order to implement such an idea. Not the least of which, the United States, whereby most accounts could be considered the foremost player required to jump-start any proposal toward a more stable global monetary exchange platform.
It is astounding to note that few world economists have considered the potential for a global currency to be built upon the foundation of a grassroots movement! In other words, the usual high profile proposals always call for and basically assume that cumbersome negotiations between large industrialized nations are required. Obviously, these seemingly mandatory negotiations are listed as the great hurdle to make such a universal change in how our world economy operates. In addition, it is at least somewhat interesting that most experts have ignored the fact that some of the most powerful and recent economic shifts in American and global society have been related to the popular growth of internet based business models with exponential growth tendencies. Facebook, for example, was comprised of a dorm room computer not much more than a decade ago, but has become one of the largest companies in the world in a relatively short period of time due to breathtaking growth and profitability. Who would have ever predicted such a rise of power based on what has to be described as a relatively simple nevertheless elegant network improvement? Who would have predicted Facebook’s service would be a seeming necessity for hundreds of millions, let alone billions of world citizens in such a short time?
As a helpful analogy, a human being must develop biologically from the combination of information embedded in DNA which elegantly executes and orchestrates the development of all the complicated and highly adaptable processes which ultimately form a machine that is far beyond our own intellectual capability to fully understand. Despite the complexity, there are actually only 4 base pair molecules which make up all of the world’s biologic life! When aligned in a particular order, they create numberless organisms which could not be replicated utilizing modern construction technology, even the smallest and least complicated of which are marvels of creation. There is little reason to believe national authorities will ever lay down their own sovereign financial powers willingly in order to build a financial ‘organism’ such as a complex global monetary exchange system. Furthermore, standard government committees never come up with worldwide sensations such as Google or Bitcoin. Bureaucracies are naturally far too inefficient and self-serving.
Life has demonstrated to us so clearly that natural evolutionary selection is preferable for creating the most fit and viable entity in almost every instance where it is needed. Shouldn’t a global currency also be a product of a germinal implementation scheme such as we have seen in so many instances of internet success in recent times? Wouldn’t it be more likely for an evolutionary (or possibly even viral) software mechanism to overtake any arduous international endeavor to manually construct a viable form of world currency? Wouldn’t the natural obstacles of such an effort be quietly swept aside by the efficient progressive power of steady logarithmic network growth? It would not just be reasonable to believe that the very best solutions in regard to global currency come through natural selection, but very highly likely. We have axiomatic evidence of it everywhere in biologic life and all around us in business solutions as well. The miracle of the internet is the speed at which it allows and precipitates the organic growth needed to change the world. So, instead of waiting for the vast bureaucracies of the world to contrive what would likely be a cumbersome and flawed world economic entity, why not follow the example of so many other germinal business masterpieces and create The People’s Currency one user at a time using a viral model? Math-based currency is the game-changer, and as you start to think about it, you know this has to be the future. We the people finally have what we need to take back our money.
Money has been drastically devalued over the past many decades due to inflationary abuse. As the world economy continues to be in its usual fragile state, cryptocurrency represents the single greatest financial innovation and opportunity of our lifetimes. The world has dramatically changed in response to seismic forces of exchange and commerce only a few times in recorded history. For over two thousand years, government-controlled exchange systems have ruled mercilessly over the people of the world. Centuries of blood-shed, rooted in fiduciary power jostling, have undermined peace and growth as centrally consumed resources became abused. The gold standard constantly manipulated, largely to the advantage of a small perpetual oligarchy of major players. Value theft, through that inflationary spending, constantly undermining the productivity and laminar creation of wealth and goods.
We will look back on this time as the beginning of a new era in commerce, but more importantly power structure. Bitcoin and blockchain changed things forever, but that was just the beginning. We must be diligent in protecting this great and fair innovation which has been so carefully crafted for the people’s benefit. We must continue to enlarge this platform to the advantage of all world citizens, not just those that are joining and owning this great tech-commodity, but future generations waiting to inherit this tremendous momentum and the increased stability of world market forces which it will provide. As cryptocurrency propagates, common asset values will be far too difficult to erode via centralized powers. Vast currency exchange cost and it’s natural crippling effect on international trade will begin to vanish. Borders will open economically and arguably philosophically. Citizens of less fortunate nations will find level playing ground, some for the first time in recorded history.
Soak it in and enjoy the momentum, because this is just the beginning! Few people on this earth have any idea what is about to awaken them! We are living in an age of constructive e-viral revolution, where nations can be taken down by social networks and long held kingdoms of wealth and influence are powerless to stop this astonishing trend. We are witnessing a great crumbling of “brick-and-mortar” in the face of what are simply beautiful ideas taking root, one person at a time. The lords and barons of the old guard will be forced to yield control to the populace, as it always should have been.
Rake in these mathematic coins of consensus while you can! Someday it will be said how easily these tokens flowed in the beginning. This cryptocurrency gold rush is fully underway and the day will come where owning even fractions of the early currencies will feed a person for a year. Fast approaching is the day when our children universally grimace incredulously at the old fashioned notion of NON-math based currencies.
Everyone will finally be able to partake of that sense of liberation the early crypto adopters felt when we first obtained our own. It’s contagious, and we are watching it live, spreading among our various acquaintances, and we will continue to watch it as it fills society with increasing satisfaction, that they no longer must render to Caesar.
Let those who clearly see this true potential before us, continually guard it and nurture it forward. This radical change is inevitable. We must unite ourselves in order to see it through.
Long live THE PEOPLE’S CURRENCY
