In the World of Cryptocurrency fear is powerful — but who knows where you will finish up if you turn fear into curiosity …

What do you see when you see a shaft of light flowing from the door opening in the distance surrounded by darkness…?

Does your heart skip a beat?

Do you freeze? Take stock of your position, check for your nearest exits and head towards them?

Do you turn away and walk on by leaving it for others to explore?

Do you tentatively approach the door, the sweat deep in your palm; your throat tight; a dry swallow; a deep breath .

Your hand loiters over the door handle…

What if you pull the door open ? What is there beyond the light? What will you learn?

What if you don’t pull the door open ? But gently close it — allowing the shaft of light to fade behind the door; the lightened cracks a reminder of what might have been. What will you learn?

The fight or flight response is completely natural; the survival instinct an innate part of our physiological and psychological make-up. When we watch a horror film, we vicariously live through the horror our hero or heroine is about to face. It is the expectation of horror that is horror itself. The building tension; the lighting eerie; the music tense. It is the unknown that scares us.

And so it is with cryptocurrencies — it is the fear of the unknown that so often scares us into inaction. But as they say “with difficulty comes ease” — the more you try something, the easier it becomes. Perhaps the new language and vernacular is digging deep into the childhood psyche traumatised by the schooldays of being forced fed vocabulary of a language that meant nothing to you at that time.

Private keys? Public keys? Bitcoin? Ethereum? Byzantine fault tolerance?

And then there are the hackers that are out to steal your funds. Those elusive, faceless, grey faces that are targeting your every move. Yes, they do exist, and in a future post we will highlight some of the ways in which you can protect yourself and your hard earned funds. The hacked attacks are reinforced by the hackneyed media that pushes their worn-out virtual barrow of “if it bleeds it leads!” The media love bad news stories — its the main click fodder that gets eyeballs; advertising yielding eyeballs.

Of course, bad news stories do exist. Most, however, are the end result of human error and carelessness and if you have any doubts about this there are 4 billion reasons why the underlying blockchain technology has already proven its robustness.

Have a read of Sergio Lerner’s analytical post from 2013. The post highlights how the elusive creator of bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto has 1 million bitcoins which have remain untouched since their creation in January 2009 — that’s over 8 years ago.

https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

A quick reprise of elementary school maths shows this honey pot is worth around $3.7bn — 4bn at today’s value. This has never been touched — and more importantly it has never been hacked. Undoubtedly, there are people with immeasurably superior minds to yours and mine that have tried … and failed. If Satoshi had made his private key available to all and sundry to access the pool of fortune would it still remain secure… ?

The underlying blockchain technology is very robust; the human condition is not.

So next time when you approach that shaft of light flowing from the door opening in the distance surrounded by darkness, ask yourself how would you now react if you knew things about the unknown light behind the door? Ask yourself if you knew how to protect yourself — would you open the door? Would you want to learn what was behind the door and what was producing the shaft of light? The light of knowledge and insight, perhaps.

So, as long as you take necessary precautions and understand some of the basic, fundamental risks of crytpocurrencies and take appropriate, cautious actions, you will , with reasonable expectation, be okay. It’s about understanding the risks before you open the door, heading into the light with your eyes open and your senses on full alert for the downsides that can exist.

Are you brave enough to open the door, now… ?

In our next post we’ll show you some of the basic precautions you need to take to protect your funds in the Cryptocurrency world.

About the Author: Tim Lea is the CEO of Veredictum.io that is re-thinking film and video distribution by creating a decentralised anti-piracy and distribution platform that hits the drivers of piracy and not just its symptoms. Veredictum has a Token Sale/ICO in progress that finishes September 11 08:59am