This metaphor, the one I used in the headline, sounds a bit silly. I recognize that. But I’ll stand by it.

I’m in my mid 30s. My grandma had a home and three kids (she had her first, my aunt, at the age of 22) at my age.

Then when my mom was my age, I was already 13. She had a job. And a mortgage.

I don’t have a mortgage, and I’m not sure I want one.

But that’s beside the point, because even if I wanted one, I couldn’t get one.

I have a job but, like most people from my generation, are jobs are not at all solid or secure.

This depends a lot on the country but, where I’m from, if you’ve got a long-term contract or your public employer, it is de-facto impossible to fire you.

Most people my age don’t have that privilege. I’m not even sure we want it, but that’s a different conversation altogether.

I bet most of you have similar stories.

And then we get to actual, physical goods.

My dad used to own a Rolex Submariner. It was a gift from his parents, who were by no means rich, and he sold it for the equivalent of $2,500.

Today, your parents would have be wealthy to give you a Submariner. And if you sold it, you’d get $25,000 (depending on the model), not $2,500.

I could go on and I could talk about cars, houses and so on.

So what have I got that they didn’t?

Two things, the way I see it.

One, travel, and two, tech.

I can travel further and cheaper and faster and better than they could.

When they were my age, flying to Paris or London or Madrid was complicate and expensive. And you’d have to go through an agency. Today, I can fly to London and Paris for the equivalent of a cocktail in a NYC bar. And once I get there, I can call an Uber, I can use my own cell network.

I could decide, today, that I wanted to get to Brussels next week and fly there for €16 return. I know, because I’ve done things, multiple times.

The second thing is tech.

And tech brings crypto.

The thing is, we don’t have access to the financial instrument they did. Or rather, we do have access to them, but they cost more to us. There are more hurdles.

But crypto is a game we (as in our generation or younger) created, we call the shots. Even better, we engineered crypto in a way that makes it possible for the technology itself to call the shots.

It’s amazing how often I keep hearing, especially on mainstream media, things about crypto that are simply impossible.

Crypto is extremely binary. For the most part, either you can do something or you can’t. You can’t legislate your way through it or around it.

We understand crypto, they don’t.

We own crypto, they are only now beginning to buy it, and buy into it.

So for the first time, we own and, to an extent, control financial assets they want and need. Not the other way around.