Crypto: Enabling Crime, or Change?

I saw the following phrase written on a peer's cubicle yesterday and thought of this whole Cryptocurrency thing we all find so fascinating:

This made me think of a conversation I'd had with a former colleague on Facebook earlier that week. I'd been hyping an educational documentary named "The Blockchain and Us" (found here: http://blockchain-documentary.com/) 

An old peer argued that Bitcoin and Crypto currency was primarily motivated by crime. Every major spike in bitcoin has directly followed a worldwide ransomware attack. People are paying premium value on crypto-currency to pay a criminal to unlock their data. And speculators in the curriencies used are directly profiting from crime. And that Crypto enthusiasts know it, and that's why they're in.  

Its an interesting point - but Bitcoin is only half the story. I argued that dismissing all cryptocurrency because the criminal element uses Bitcoin is little like refusing to swim, take a boat, or eat fish because criminals drown people in water. 

An Imperfect Current State

It was clear that he hadn't looked at the Ethereum blockchain and some of the benefits of enabling direct peer to peer trustless transactions. While I do not endorse or condone cybercrime, terrorism, or tax evasion - and these are a certainly an unsavoury element of our shared passion - I argued that there is an enormous amount of potential to drive value and prosperity for every day retail investors like us. 

The current state of the traditional securities market and "Big Finance" is no better. Taking a look at the current state of the SEC, the endless layers of markup (brokerage, distribution houses, banks etc), the extreme cost of listing stocks on traditional excahages - leeches most of the value of any transaction that occurs. I looked at a $10k investment I'd made in arguably one of Canada's largest banks limp along at a meager 4% annually for years - while the bank smashed its estimates quarter after quarter. Somebody was making a ton of money  - it just wasn't the shareholders! 

A Ray of Hope

Here are a few examples of Blockchain (ETH) that drive legitimate benefit to investors and businesses alike:

Veritaseum (VERI) - software driven peer-to-peer capital markets that remove the need for the brokerages, banks, distribution houses, etc. Stocks can be traded between individuals without trusted 3rd parties, reducing fees for everyone. They're currently in talks with the Jamaican stock exchange, and there's intimation that they've begun talks with a major exchange (my suspicion is the NASDAQ based on the value estimates of the exhange). This will put more of the returns into the hands of the investors.

Populous (PPT) - if you are a small business, you do work, and recieve an invoice its often times a promise to pay within 3o, 60, or even 90 days. You have bills to pay now! Taking them to a major invoice financing company can result in fees as high as 35%, again robbing small businesses of value. Instead take your invoice using Populous where investors like you and I will bid on them based on the coin we have. The cheapest bid (from an interest perspective) gets the bid, driving a return on investment for retail investors like you and me and massive interest savings to the small business. 

These are just a couple of examples. What about our mutual favorite site Steem!? Just an other example of how the blockchain is putting power (and wealth) back into the hands of every day folk like you and me... often times at the expense of Big Business. What about very interesting experiements like POWR that enable peer to peer green energy exchange off the grid? There are many many examples!

Fortune Favours the Bold!

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here. Maybe I'm giving each of us a pat on the back. I can't help but think that while returning power, prosperity, and wealth to the people some legitimate good can be done by this whole blockchain phenomenon! 

 What ways do you think the Blockchain is revolutionizing the world? Or is my problem focused colleague right? Crypto is only good for criminals? Lets discuss! 

Cheers,

Stanimal