What is net neutrality? Why the big fuss? What does it mean for cryptocurrency? If you are not a techie, do not worry. Some things in life are actually simple, net neutrality is one of those things. This article introduces the concept of net neturality to the bignner and then looks at 2 issues, where America is hold in terms of its net neutrality law and how cryptocurrency might be affected by a change in legislation.
Net Neutrality
Very simply, net neutrality is a term that means giving equal status to all traffic that goes from the internet provider company to the client(s). This means that no preference is given to the rate of the transfer of any content. In other words no matter what content you are accessing at any moment, it is transferred to you at a set speed, which is the same speed as all your content and everyone else’s content that is coming from that particular service provider.
Neither the service provider nor the customer have any say in adjusting the speed of the transfer of data. For example, if Albert requests that his video streams faster than the other sites he is using, his service provider has no choice, but to decline the request. This is so even if Albert would pay extra to increase the speed. If the service provider wants to slow Ted’s service in order to give Sue more speed, they cannot do this. Even if Ted pays his bills consistently late and Sue pays on time and the provider wants to penalize Ted by slowing the download speed, they cannot. What if the service provider wants to give Sam a quicker download on their latest offers? Net neutrality will not allow this.
Campaign Promise to Repeal Net Neutrality
When President Trump was campaigning, 1 of the promises the president made in his presidential campaign was to repeal these net neutrality laws. It seems he thinks that net neutrality is about content and therefore can lead to censorship. However, net neutrality actually protects content because it streams everything at the same rate. So repealing these laws would lead to more censorship. It appears that there is a misconception of the concept. Alternatively President Trump wants companies to make their own decisions as to what content gets streamed at what speed. This would make sense to the former business man, that is give the control back to the businesses.
Whatever the motivation for this repeal, the wheels to repeal this law have been set in motion on December 2017. In December 2017 the Federal Communications Commission voted to overturn the Obama net neutrality laws. This meant that Senate had to vote on the issue.
What was the US Senate’s Reaction?
May 2018 has seen the Senate oppose the Federal Communications Commission’s decision in December 2017. This means that the repeal on net neutrality laws are one step closer to being overturned. In other words net neutrality advocators were heard and supported by the Senate’s vote in favour of net neutrality. It could be that the anti-net neutrality laws will be successfully overturned.
Further Action
2 more processes need to be completed in order to re-institute net neutrality. Now the laws go through the Congressional Review Act (CRA) and gives Congress a chance to overturn President Trumps repeal. However, the final step requires President Trump to sign on Congress’s ruling. Then, and only then will net neutrality either be re-instated or stay repealed.
The Impact of Net Neutrality on Cryptocurrency
While this probably applies to all content, this article focuses on cryptocurrency. If service providers are given the opportunity to decided on content streaming speed, then they could either be biased towards or against cryptocurrency transactions. This would mean that cryptocurrency has the potential to gain or lose, depending on the service provider or customer(s) preferences, in terms of speed of download. This is a potential big issue because if a service provider goes against cryptocurrency, scaling might be even more negatively affected. However, this only applies to cryptocurrency transactions that have something to do with the internet. If a cryptocurrency is running on an independent, decentralised system, then the speed of the transaction will be unaffected by service providers.
Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Net neutrality is essential for the smooth operation of exchanges. Exchanges have also gone through a revolution. Now there are platforms and almost anyone can trade on exchanges. Almost everyone, because you have to have the capital to support your trades, you need a bank account, and you need the temperament of a trader in order to be successful.
Exchanges are already biased in speed of operation. The actual live exchange always has the advantage in terms of trading. Next come some companies with power to influence the speed of their networks. Finally the average user or trader who is using a private trading platform. This is true even with net neutrality in place, but at least to lesser extent and could probably be brought to justice if the exchanges and powerful companies could be targeted. Exchanges are vital because there needs to be an entrance and exist point for cryptocurrency. In other words a place where cryptocurrencies can be bought and sold. So at least at this juncture net neutrality matters.
Conclusion
At this point in time President Trump has delivered on his campaign promise to overturn net neutrality. This happened in December 2017. Now Senate has voted against the repeal. This took place in May 2018. 2 more steps need to be completed in order for the repeal to be reversed and net neutrality reinstated. Further updates are therefore necessary. However, you should now be up to speed with net neutrality.
