A Power Down done right?

Yes, I am in Power Down mode and looking to dump on the markets. I know, I just wrote a post about not selling anytime soon but I went to my wallet and noticed that I can both power down to sell and not do it soon.

This is of course a glitch but just in case I went to steemworld.org to make sure my account wasn't actually in a power down cycle. It seems that there are again some changes being made to steemit.com which generally introduces some UI weirdness along with it. no doubt it will be rectified soon enough so there is no need to panic or holler and shout.

However, if there was a 87 year power down cycle, that would definitely take some liquidity off the markets pretty fast :D

Since I just posted and I normally don't like to post too close together because people think that I am a robot, I will tell a related story about ownership and why crypto is awesome. It also has a lesson for the future.

I was in a class the other day talking crypto stuff and explaining how blockchain records things and if someone has lost their keys to their Bitcoin, that bitcoin is locked away for eternity -while still being visible. This sounded crazy to my client of course and he said that it is unsafe because if he lost his login keys to his bank, he'd just have to call his bank to get access. Sure, that is the case.

What people don't actually realize of course is that their bank accounts are not theirs at all. Sure, it has their name on it and they have keys but, other people have access and if a crooked bank manager was to clean out accounts and flee to a non-extradition country, not much could be done. Of course, we know that we shouldn't store crypto on exchanges for this very reason as if something happens, we don't have the keys.

My client didn't get the point of this straight away but then as I explained what would happen in the case of a run on the banks, essentially the banks would freeze bank accounts and cut access. This means that whatever value one stores in the bank is not actually ones own, it is entrusted to others to look after it. Tell me, how many people would you trust your Steem master key to? On top of this of course, what if the government/banks decided to destroy the value of that currency in your bank by printing a massive amount more of it? Oh, they do.

The thing that people believe protects them is that the banks fall under legislation and laws that make lots of things illegal but the thing is, there are many ways that one can still lose funds, banking fees being one of them. Essentially banks extract money out of accounts through fees that go largely unchecked and they can add up massively over time.

When it comes to ownership, whoever has the keys of access own the value and this is why blockchain is such a simple and brilliant piece of architecture because, ownership can be had of the data held on specific locations of the chain. This makes what is actually held here under your account and in your wallet, yours. Sure, it might be valueless but, it is yours. If at some point someone decides that they are willing to accept your valueless numbers in exchange for something you want, your valueless numbers now have value.

The economic value of something ultimately comes down to whether or not someone is willing to take it as payment for something they possess and in the future, the tokenization of nearly all 'countable things will mean that there will be a lot of trade of things that alone have no value but when people decide to attach them to their goods and services, will.

Still, hold onto your keys. They are yours.

86.995 years still to wait.... Will Steem moon by then?

 
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]