Life After Google Book in times of COVI-19
I wanted to write a post about the not so recent published book, Life after Google. I took from the local library and it was impressive. It was published in 2018 but gives us good insight into what is going in the world of IT, blockchain and overall cultural implications.
Where are we right now? At the time of this post, a very dangerous virus threatening the world system and all the markets crashing. A couple of weeks ago some people believed that bitcoin was going to arise and save from all the market crash. It didn’t, it felt like other cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, commodities, and markets. What happened?
I think I have one of the reasons why in times of global financial crisis, the lack of knowledge about technologies as blockchain, but most importantly, its concepts, still fails…
Coming back to the book, it explains in great detail where google is, its relationship with AI, virtual reality, and the global economy. The book starts by explaining the historical path of the giant of tech to acquire almost all the human knowledge at this age in time. Although, one of the most key chapters is 21th: “The empire strikes back”. In this chapter, you will understand why and how bitcoin could fail regardless of its technology. The problem is the economics behind it, not the technology.
The main argument is that to any currency to succeed, it needs to just measure other objects or other assets. For example, kg ,meter,etc, are standards of measure of a specific unit, but fiat currencies, gold and especially bitcoin value changes over time.
According to the book, its value cannot change according to demand. For example, a chair cannot cost 10$ today and tomorrow 15#. Although, it doesn’t happen with fiat currencies and that’s why people can use it as a form of payment, because of its accurate measure. Fiat currencies are more stable and they work with human interaction, global economy, and politics.
Therefore the volatility is a huge obstacle if we want to use it as a currency. It is a strong obstacle, but even if we ignore this obstacle what really changed my optimism about bitcoin is the limitation in the supply.
There are just 31 trillion satoshis in a 131 years period. Although it could sound like enough, for our current rate of economic growth, this supply is hot enough and make it deflationary, meaning that there is no incentive to spend it and move the economy. That’s what actually made me think twice about the success of bitcoin. We don’t know what is going to happen but at least fr now I would be skeptical of the success of bitcoin but Blockchain technology is very promising but I will leave that for another post.
Ultimately, there is a game-changer recently that has gotten my attention. Stable coins such as MCM tokens and US coin which are backed by institutions and banks are private blockchains that are compatible with crypto exchanges. Therefore users can invest directly with cash first without the risk of lists because of the compatibility. They can just have funds in blokchain to be ready to jump into investments in exchanges when they desire. This gives a green light that financial institutions are accepting the use of crypto as a form of payment. Maybe crypto itself won't succeed as currencies, but as commodities, it might work, even if not, the seeds of the technology they have leveraged, meaning the following blockchain companies, will run with exchanges such as these ones that are being created.
I hope that this post was somehow useful to you guys, I would love to know your opinion about it, or if you read the book drop off your comments.
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