One of the main arguments against cryptocurrencies (cryptos) favoured by the no-coiners is that they have no value, or aren’t backed by any asset with any value.
Because of this they are doomed to failure, and anyone who invests in them is a fool.
What an utter load of crap!
If you really want to know what has no value, just Google “fiat currency definition”.
For those of you that don’t know, fiat currencies are what we use today – Rands, Dollars, Pounds, Yen and even the Zimbabwe Dollar when it was still around.
This is what the Financial Times has to say about fiat currency:
Definition of fiat money. Paper money or coins of little or no intrinsic value in themselves and not convertible into gold or silver, but made legal tender by fiat(order) of the government. [ 1] Fiat money is an intrinsically worthless object, such as paper money, that is deemed to be money by law.
In other words, the so called “real money” that you are forced to use every day because your government says you must, is actually not backed by anything other than the trust you place in that same Government …
Just think about that for a little while …
Trust … in your Government …
Now I don’t know about you, but I have very little trust in the governments of the world today.
Here in my own country of South Africa our government is a joke.
It’s been run by a criminal for the past 8 years, and has been looted and slowly destroyed by him, his family and his buddies during that time.
The so called “leader of the free world”, the current US President, is no better. He’d rather get into a Twitter war with the leader of North Korea than address fundamental problems like climate change, poverty and the US national debt of (at time of writing) around $20 Trillion Dollars and some change.
If we look to whats happening in the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, China, Russia … the list goes on and on …
Trust in the governments of the world today is at an all time low, and its only going to take a major move in the wrong direction by any single one of them, and the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.
Now that we have established that our ‘real’ money is actually worthless, lets talk about cryptos.
So what can cryptos do to solve this trust issue?
Firstly what most people fail to realise when first getting into this market is that cryptos ARE actually backed by something of value.
Real value – something that has the ability to fundamentally affect the world we live in today.
That something is called the blockchain.
The problem right now is that it’s true value has not even been realised yet, but it is already changing our world in ways that we have still to realise.
Can you remember the world before the internet?
Can you see what an impact the internet has had on the world since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990?
How it has fundamentally changed the way we live, interact, socialise, earn a living, spend our money or manage our lives?
Do you remember all the naysayers in the early days of the web, when Amazon first started?
How they all said Bezos was mad, and that his idea would never work?
That e-commerce was doomed to fail because people would never transact financially online or buy stuff because it wasn’t safe?
Well look at Amazon today – they are the largest retailer on the planet, and e-commerce drives billions of dollars in revenue around the world each year.
So much for the naysayers in the 90’s …
Today we call them nocoiners.
And the dot com bubble?
I know some of you are going to throw the dot com bubble at me right now, so here’s something to think about before you do.
The large majority of dot com firms that failed were financed on no more than a pitch and a handshake because VC’s were caught up in the hype of this new yet untested technology.
They were often run by kids who had no business acumen, and who had no idea on how to responsibly manage these massive injections of cash into their businesses.
Frankly that was a disaster waiting to happen.
The irony is we survived through it, learned from it, and the technology matured and evolved to the massive maze of connectedness we have today.
Its important to understand that what we are dealing with when it comes to cryptos and the blockchain is something completely different.
So how exactly is the blockchain era different to the dotcom era?
Firstly, It isn’t just an idea or hype. It is already a decade old technology.
The blockchain, and the technology that drives it, has the ability to finally bring transactional trust to largely trustless world.
By its very nature its effectively unhackable and unforgeable.
All transactions on the blockchain are transparent and can be seen by anyone, making it impossible to hide anything funny or illegal.
And that dear crypto fan, is the value that has yet to be realised by mainstream society.
It gives us back the element of trust in the way we interact with one another.
When it matures, and it will, it will through its very nature and how it works have more value placed on it by society than fiat currency ever did.
This trust and the ability to use it to transact with absolute confidence in our daily lives, will change this world for the better.
But the only way it’ll get there is if we support it and help it grow.
So educate yourself beyond the coins.
Take the time to understand how the various cryptos are applying this technology to solving real problems we have in the world we all currently live in.
You have the ability to thoroughly research what the problem is that the application is trying to solve, who the team is behind it, what experience do they have with the technology, and most importantly do you see a real world solution from this technology or application or service that is being built.
Invest in ones that you believe have a real world chance of making a difference.
You will be helping to grow the influence of cryptos while changing the world for the better at the same time.
