This Thanksgiving, we should be grateful for the bitcoin revolution and the opportunity it offers us. We have seen a lot happen in the past couple of months, El Salvador adopts bitcoin as a legal tender, the NFT craze leading for digital arts to sell for whopping prices, The power of community-based tokens such as Dogecoin and Shiba INU, and the ongoing Metaverse craze. There are a lot of things happening in the crypto economy, and these are just a few (don’t forget, if I start listing them all, maybe you’d be bored by just reading their names).
Almost a decade ago, Satoshi Nakamoto, a quiet lad in his dorm, or a group of revolutionaries trying to change the fate of humanity started a revolution. Today we know it as bitcoin, the anti-fragile asset that acts as the ultimate store of value.
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without intermediaries. It has no central bank or single administrator. Instead, network nodes use cryptography to verify transactions recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.
On a personal note, bitcoin provided us a means to own our assets, to own every penny we earned working hard in our lives. We no longer need to be dependent on centralised traditional banks who feed our money and over time, devalue it as well. No government would ever have control over your assets, and they might as well never be able to confiscate it from you. On a side-note, I also believe that we do need goverment issues stablecoins as to transact better in the present financial world; at least until we start value things in terms of bitcoin.
For the people who think bitcoin cannot be used a payment method, I’d polietly ask them to think again, El Salvador seems to have done what most people think is immpossible to do, and believe isn’t good for an entire nation. Actually, who are those people? The IMF?
Anyways, this isn’t to say that cryptocurrencies haven’t brought about some tangible benefits. The blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin is finding applications in other areas of finance. Without the use of traditional intermediaries like lawyers and real estate brokers, it will soon be possible to conduct a wide range of transactions, including the purchase of a home or car. Of course, governments will still be required to enforce property and contractual rights, even if ownership transfers of various financial and physical assets can be conducted on public digital ledgers using blockchain technology.
While the future of cryptocurrencies as financial assets remains uncertain, they have undoubtedly sparked a revolution that nobody will ever be able to devalue your savings. These new technologies will also aid in democratization by making various primary financial products and services widely accessible to the general public.
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