I like cryptos for the same reason I enjoy finance: I like the thrill of chasing alpha, or the excess return that an asset has over the market. I love the rush that comes from jumping on a trend that turns into secular growth. I like knowing I was fucking right, I fucking nailed it. I guess I have a competitive streak.
Within that chase, I have to perform a few calculations in order to create a reasonable estimate of a company's future cash flows. One of those is related to this little formula, the capital asset pricing model:
The risk-free value is where I think a crypto, maybe bitcoin, could have a legitmate, long-lasting macroecnomic impact. I know in my calculations, agreed upon by at least a few of my peers, I use US Treasuries. The prevailing belief here is that your risk-free rate needs to be represented by a government bond, ideally a reserve currency that the world acknowledges (in my example its USD).
I think it's only a matter of time: eventually, using a crypto rate instead of fiat for the risk-free value will be standard. With that said, "risk-free" is a hell of a claim to make, and as of now, no crypto matches the necessary profile. Still, I would love to see humanity get as close to a true risk-free rate as possible. In order to do that, we could decentralize how the risk-free rate is calculated, we could tie its value to a mature, stable crypto rather than any one country or nation. And why not? Governments, empires, even civilizations all pass. I'd prefer to be a part of something that helps create order, a layer of meaningfulness to the world, instead of trying to maximize just my own experience.
Determining the design of this blockchain would be an intriguing research project. Would it pull in all previous economic data as perhaps some sort of control to what the market eventually settles on? Would it be a POW blockchain or maybe DPOS like our beloved Steem? And realistically, how much time would need to pass before this ever became accepted by the market? The birth and adoption of cryptocurrencies represents a fundamental shift in the world's monetary system. I think that a crypto assuming the role of the world's risk-free rate, de facto or otherwise, will be a very important story as it unfolds over the years. Maybe I'm just a finance nerd, but I, for one, am excited to see what will happen.