How I Feel About Cryptocurrency
Lately I’ve been hearing buzzwords in the tech field and one of those words is cryptocurrency. What exactly is this? From a first impression I would break it up into two words: crypto and currency.
You hear crypto thrown around when security is involved. “Encryption software” to protect your laptop data. “Decrypt” a package to unlock its contents. The other side of currency is pretty common sense. It’s an exchange tool used to get something wanted. So put together, I can infer that there’s a type of money in the form of digital data that is secure from hackers.
To further illustrate my understanding let’s take a magical trip to the Harry Potter universe. There is a bank called Gringotts Wizarding Bank which is so secure, if anyone were to try to navigate it on their own (without the help of the goblin employees) they would get lost. Well, that’s just a metaphor for cryptocurrency and my first impression.
Finding Value Where It Counts
Blockgeeks wrote a thorough guide for the uninitiated. Cryptocurrency can be defined as a decentralized digital cash system. When we remove all the hype and noise around the buzzword it’s really just limited entries in a database no entity can change without meeting certain conditions.
Once of my favorite authors of all time made a great point. In Keith Ferrazzi’s “Never Eat Alone” he mentioned the three most important things to any one person is their health, wealth and children. Clearly how we handle our money is a very big deal to us. From buying decisions, to storing options there are many rough waters to navigate in the sea of financial peace.
“In addressing those three fundamental issues, you accomplish two things: 1) You help someone fulfill those needs they most need met, and 2) You allow them the opportunity to move up the pyramid of needs to tackle some of their higher desires.” ~Keith Ferrazzi, “Never Eat Alone”
Now I’ve never been a huge fan of banking in general. You place a lot of trust in them and for the uneducated, they can really take advantage of your hard-earned cash. It’s important to educate oneself on matters that affect their livelihood and one of the best resources I learned about banking was a short cartoon story called the “Goldsmith’s Tale.”
The idea of having the bank loan my money out to other people doesn’t set well with me. Comparatively, cryptocurrency is secured by math and not trust. It is the modern day Gringotts that puts away emotion and turns the volume of logic to absolute.
Remember when I mentioned the definition of cryptocurrency as a decentralized cash system? The decentralized part is super important. Because there is no middle man taking a cut of your money anymore. There’s no authority changing the value of your currency and ultimately you are in control.
Personally I find it liberating to take responsibility for my financial decisions.
The Big Picture
Now granted there is a lot of backlash on the consensus part of cryptocurrency along with this fluff about anarchist ideology. As a general consumer who makes daily transactions with merchants (like Amazon and Wal-Mart), I might wonder how I can use BitCoin to handle my purchasing needs. Yet, given the dissenters minority, so many problems would be solved if they were educated more fully on the benefits.
“There are practical considerations such as counterparty default risk, settlement risk, regulatory risk, etc, which decentralised models plus digital verification can address.” ~MsHagg, Reddit
We need to think about the macro-scale of currency. Issues on inflation, fiscal policies, breaking budgets and so on will continue as long as we keep our current financial system in place. Innovate to smarter technology.
Call it idealism or whatever you want. I, for one, advocate for the power of cryptocurrency after educating myself on the topic. Irreversible transactions, pseudonymous identities, fast and global exchanges, secure storage and permissionless access are just a few great reasons to see how valuable cryptocurrency is for our future.
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