fkn crypto splash copy.jpg
You might know that Bitcoin is money for the Internet, a system where no one person has the power to change the ledger. What you might not know is, why should you care? How is it going to help people escape poverty, find prosperity, to hold governments accountable, to push banks to reform or be forgotten? Let's talk about the potential that cryptocurrency has to change the future for regular people like you. Scroll down to watch or listen to the episode.
This episode of Cryptonomics is brought to you by good questions. I've told you karma is real. As a human being, questions are your karma. Many people have improved their quality of life because they had the courage and the persistence to ask the right questions - starting with "what do I have to be grateful for right now?"
Personally, I am grateful for my listeners, and everyone who enjoys my content enough to share it.
When I first started to put the puzzle pieces together about Bitcoin, I realised it was similar to Napster or Bittorrent, these file sharing services which people used to share music and movies, giving more power to the people who consume them, putting pressure on the industries to better serve their them. I saw that Bitcoin could put pressure on commercial banks, central banks and governments. It wasn't clear to me what the effects would be, but with time they're becoming clearer.
Let's talk about the big one. How could crypto end war?
roman soldiers blurred.jpg
Crypto ends war
Ron Paul said, it's no coincidence that the 20th century was dominated both by central banking and war. Without central banks, wars are normally short. The government has to collect extra taxes to pay for the war, and eventually they either run out of money, or the people get tired of a constant low standard of living.
With modern central banking, states just keep borrowing and printing money, and it's hard for people to even know that war has something to do with their money being worth less or the economy failing.
Unlike dollars, Bitcoins are limited by software and consensus of the network. That means a state can't just keep printing more of them to sustain the war on terror. They would have to ask for the money. They would have to find ways to serve the people, justify their existence, and any war that they wanted to wage.
Now we have a very real choice. If we want to withdraw our support from the dollar and other fiat currencies based on violence, we don't have to convince people to accept silver coins; we can ask them to accept electronic cash. That is, as soon as crypto gets a decent user experience.
Crypto ends poverty
We have these central banks borrowing money, state treasuries printing money. That's one key reason our dollars, pounds and bolivares don't buy as much as they did last year. Just like if you flood the market with bananas and the price of a banana goes down, when the Fed floods the market with dollars, the price of a dollar goes down.
This means that saving money is for suckers. There's no reason to save when you know your money is going to be worth less the following year. Instead, it encourages people to spend money on things they don't need, or even invest in things they haven't fully researched.
When you have sound money, money with a limited supply, money chosen by the people rather than imposed by a state, it will become worth more over time. The purchasing power will reflect advances in efficiency.
Saving money will be meaningful, and it will even be cool to save money. If people can save even 0.5% of their paycheque, that will make a huge difference in the long run. First they leave poverty, then they become prosperous.