Whew, my last post on LibertyOS was popular to a degree, but also really contentious. Goodness. So before we begin with today's fun, allow me to gloss over a couple things on that. A new OS with all of its features of ad blocking and such is in a way handing over a portion of your system to the developer. In order for this to be a thing, trust between the users and the developers should be fostered. Best way to do that? Exposure, and I think they have so far put themselves out there really well. I think if we learned to trust Brave, maybe we could do the same for them too.

Second, it might not be considered a true "fourth way" in terms of OS choices, and it has been made clear to me in the comments that there are other options. Much respect on that front. That being said, I still do enjoy the features of LibertyOS, especially having some built in tools for folks in the Crypto space. To each his own on the OS debate. I love the project, but I respect your opinion if it isn't quite your cup of tea. Thanks again to the folks that mentioned these things, Coleslaw and beachbummer. You are both super great for keeping me in check. And reading what some asshole on the internet has to say! Read their articles, Tip them if you like their content, and give them some follows. For real.

Okay, enough with the digression.

So... I firmly believe that cryptocurrency is the next big paradigm shift in financial technology. Big whoop, right? All of us in the space probably agree more or less, but the really big question we need to ask ourselves is "why?" To this end, I want to cover a little history, a bit of economics, logistics (I guess), and some final thoughts on why the Crypto space is important. I'm gonna tie it all together. Like a bundle of sticks, just without the fascism or pejoratives (if you got that one, I love you). To begin, I'm gonna address what I think is the absolute biggest and most important aspect of cryptocurrencies: Decentralization.

Centralization Vs. Decentralization

Let me tell you about how a gecko's foot pads. No, don't go. Stay with me. So, geckos are known for being able to basically stick on every damn thing known to man, ever. They're cute little bastards to boot, and their tiny baby footsies are something profound. Don't believe me? Take a look:

Not Impressed? Look Closer:

No, CLOSER!

CLOSER!!

Okay, Close enough. Without going over the pants-shitting, eyes-glazing science of it all, gecko footpads are incredibly sticky and adaptive because the "hairs" on the feet branch off into tinier and tinier little "sub-hairs". Suddenly, instead of having one big-ass suction cup that may or may not work on a given surface, you have literally TRILLIONS of tiny baby suction cups that custom fit to any damn surface you want. Essentially, this increases the surface area of the gecko's foot, allowing it more purchase on whatever it happens to land on.

Here's the takeaway from this: do you think a gecko loses purchase on its climbing surface if say, 200 of the some trillion hairs just happen to fail? Hell no. That's just another day at the office for these little suckers. If the gecko just had one big suction cup on each pad and one of them happens to fail, that's bad news bears for our Sticky Boi. In relation to markets, central banks, and Crypto, this lesson is that if you have a single point of failure, you're in trouble if that point of failure just so happens to take a dump. Everybody is screwed. Satoshi Nakamoto knew this. Every Crypto developer worth their salt knows this. After the Great Recession of 2008, the big banks were bailed out by the government, and things - for the most part - recovered with time. However, it wasn't easy and if there was no government to bail out the banks, we would hurting bad to this day.

You might be surprised to know that Nakamoto published the bitcoin whitepaper in 2008 and it was launched officially in 2009. Interesting. Centralized finance was too big to fail, but it did. Bitcoin was the answer. I personally find it to be no coincidence here. Whether intentional or not, the universe had the answer for us: Decentralized Money.

I personally think that while there are drawbacks to any decentralized system (nothing is perfect), it can and will fare better than any centralized system. The drawbacks are interesting, but I could right a whole 'nother article for that. So for now, I'll stick to the basic idea. For better or worse, I'd rather have my bank balances, transactions and ledgers be decentralized. And the gecko's foot pad shows us why.

The Next Generation In The Evolution of Sweet Dough

Now this, like the scientific intricacies of a gecko's foot, can lull most people into a torpor. Ben Stein is an economist, that speech he gave in Ferris Bueller? Yeah, that was actually part of a real lecture. So, I'm gonna give you the skinny real fast.

It started with a fur loincloth. Okay, probably not, but this is the idea; One guy has a loincloth, and another guy has a stone axe. It just so happens that they both need what each have. Cool. How's about a little "this" for "that"? Economics was born.

PICTURED: Not What I was Describing. But Close.

Barter was the way stuff started. Then, after awhile, it became a little too cumbersome to carry around ten bushels of barley to immediately trade with some guy you met in town. So, little easy to carry tokens were made, and were declared to be EQUAL TO A PARTICULAR AMOUNT OF SOMETHING! Fiat currency was born. Shells or other types of little things was the earliest types, which was followed by coinage and then little pieces of paper. I'm something of an amateur numismatist myself, and I actually find this evolution deathly fascinating. Wanna kill me without me knowing? Lock me in a giant room full of old, rare collectible money of all types for me to look at. I'll starve before I realize I've been duped.

ENTER THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!

So there's a lot of history regarding the transport and evolution of money from say, the post-CE ancient world to today. Basically, the transport and easy usage of money was always sluggish due to technical constraints, and this was eventually sped up by advances in the late 20th century and the early 21st century (our current time frame as of this writing). Electronic money had its start with banks issuing debit and credit cards to people, and fiat money was substituted with a ledger of ones and zeroes. Then we reach the age of the internet and high technology and we finally discover that hey, we can invent commodities by directly building it into the currency we wanna have as a store of value. And so we have... Well not Bitcoin at first. There were some precursors to crypto as we know it now. But eventually, Bitcoin and all of the various 6000 plus alts that came after it.

I see electronic money as an inevitable evolution, starting all the way back to the that first barter between humans. This is where we need to go, because this just so happens to be the direction that we are headed. And this is good! And now for the "Why".

Bringing It ALL Together

Cryptocurrency happened because it had to. It was simply the next thing you think of after say, debits cards and such. It's similarly using computing and electronics to not only store money, but also to make it and proof it from hacking and losing data. And it revolutionized the very idea of wealth.

Consider for a moment: You are on this site, possibly using a browser that pays you, to read articles that pay you to read them. This is unheard of; in a different time, people would balk at the very notion. It would be like having a taxicab driver pay you to drive you to a newsstand, where a newsstand clerk hands you a dollar bill and a copy of the New York Times. That's insane. But this is the future. The economy of Cryptocurrency is not simply one of blockchain and coins. By its very nature of decentralization, it is an economy based on users! And at the center of it, as Brave clearly pointed out, the user and their attention is the beginning and end.

Cryptocurrency isn't just for the Plutocrats and the Tycoons (Looking at YOU, BINANCE), it is for the people. It provides an economic opportunity! Brave, Publish0x, BANANO, Steem, Faucets, Giveaways, airdrops, investment opportunities, development jobs, and MORE! The idea is to get people's attention and give them something to use! If it wasn't for Crypto, I would likely not even be half as successful internet-wise as I am now. And while that's saying about roughly nothing, it's something far more than I had before. Crypto is People. The power goes to them, and not the other way around as it has been for most of modern history.

That's why it is important. Because WE are important.

Challenges Ahead!

Okay, so I guess one could read to this point and basically say that this is just a really long love letter to Magic Internet Money. Sure. But I am often a realist as well as an enthusiast. There are some substantial challenges ahead:

1.) Security. Now, when it comes to security, I'd argue that we are ahead of the game in the Crypto Space. Hell, we ARE the game. However, it is nowhere near perfect and there is much to be done. Hackers and opportunists will always be a problem, and I think that continued focus on security measures will be something that will make up a big piece of future concerns.

2.) Adoption. Cryptocurrency is still very much a new asset class, and less than one percent of the world actually uses it. It makes me laugh just to think about it; You think you're Hot Shit, One Percent? Suck it Wall Street! That being said, the number one thing that will increase legitimacy and value over time is simply more people using it. More adoption means more action on the exchanges and between people. More of that means more inflows and outflows. More of That means an increase in value.

3.) Stablility. In order for bitcoin or some other altcoin to be used as a store of value in the long term, it has to have less volatility. There are many reasons for the volatility, but my hypothesis (as a COMPLETELY unqualified person) is that the Crypto Market is unstable because it is an Emerging Market. What has to happen is is that crypto enthusiaists simply need to hang on. We need more time. This goes hand-in-hand with adoption.

4.) BIG BROTHER WANTS A SLICE. It's no mystery to even the Day One Noob that Crypto is a wild west market with little in the way of regulation. It is also something that big central governments want to get into. And why not? The technology is probably one of the most versatile, most stupid useful things since the Internet. The rub here is that the fundamental ideas of Crypto (see above) hinges very much on the idea of DE-centralization. I think Governments across the globe are gonna hit a brick wall with trying to control it and getting it to work for them because of this. And if this is the case, then you're gonna see a lot of crackdowns. Think China likes to crack down on the Cryptos? Just wait till adoption ramps up. This is a big one, but I still think it can be managed. Nobody owns Bitcoin as a whole. In the end, there will need to be a lobby, a "face" so to speak that will negotiate reasonable practices. Kinda like AARP in the United States. It doesn't matter what kind of old ass man or woman you are, you are part of that lobby because you're old. Crypto could be the same way. Whether that's good or not is up to my reader to decide.

Now this post was a wild ride. Of course, there will be missing bits and pieces because I'm not writing a nonfiction tome here, and I look forward to the opinions of ALL my readers in the comments below. Give me the Business!

Thanks for reading, I REALLY really appreciate it. If you like this post, then please check out some of my others if you want.

AND if you want an easy way to earn a little extra crypto and help me out for FREE, please consider becoming my referral for the app FREE LITECOIN! They pay out like ClockWork Every Monday/Tuesday. I say that because I just got my payment today. They were Early!

Keep your eye on the Markets, and keep your Currency Crypto.