Blockchain is still in its infancy, with exceptions like Bitcoin and Ethereum. For example, using blockchain for data storage or the processing is often slow. As new technologies arise, blockchain technology will become more popular. We are rapidly moving towards decentralised technologies, with no one point of contact.
Crypto is very much about autonomy. This appeared to be Satoshi Nakamoto’s intention when he built Bitcoin. A person can become ‘his own bank’ by keeping bitcoins in his wallet, just as he uses services like Signal or Tor to communicate privately. Cryptocurrency and decentralised applications offer and incentivise far more channels and meanings of “freedom” than any other segment.
Other than cryptocurrencies and anonymity communications apps, mesh networking devices like off-grid and decentralised communications startup goTenna and censorship-resistant storage options like data access and exchange protocol Interplanetary File Storage (IPFS). With cryptocurrency and other confidentiality technologies, we can ensure that our financial systems and new technology allow for the flourishing of human originality, ushering in the “renaissance 2.0.”
The use of crypto, similar to that of the Tor browser, has the potential to protect vulnerable citizens such as news reporters and intrigued individuals; enforcement advocates; human rights defenders; high-profile and low-profile people; executive officers; media personalities; and many others from overreaching institutions, which include governments, corporate entities and the mainstream press, among others.
Let us consider a real-life scenario. Venezuela’s government is now demanding a portion of the money that its poor citizens abroad send home in remittances. Venezuelan citizens are obligated to use state banks for overseas dealings. Banks are required to collect information on how individuals obtain and spend their money. A wire transfer from the United States now incurs a cost of up to 56% and can take several weeks. Venezuelans have gotten around this by using cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and blockchain-focused firms have long targeted remittances as a target use case.
You have complete command over your digital assets. In the case of a banking or investment company, this is not possible. As soon as you have experienced the freedom of instantly moving your money around the world, the ability to invest that money, the ability to engage in a project, the option to buy cryptocurrency, sell cryptocurrency, and transact NFTs, the incompetence of the present market condition becomes rather too apparent. Crypto and blockchain allow you to keep your money in a bank without worrying about negative interest rates or fees, allowing you to do whatever you want. The 21 million Bitcoins that have already been programmed will be dispersed for the next 140 years.
According to Nasdaq, the current rate of Bitcoin acceptance has exceeded the rise of internet users, with recent forecasts projecting that the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency may have more than a billion users in only four years. Bitcoin currently has over 130 million users, roughly the number of users the internet had in 1997 and is on track to reach a billion users two times quicker than the internet. El Salvador has formally passed legislation allowing Bitcoin to be accepted as legal money to top it all off.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies give unprecedented independence, making big banks and governments nervous. It is the government’s greatest fear that people would want independence. At this point, that freedom will come in the shape of digital currency. Liberation involves a substantial amount of personal responsibility.
We must work with governments to advance cryptography worldwide so that authorities do not condemn it for all of the world’s woes or outright ban it in specific countries, as has already happened in China. In China, for example, there has recently been a crackdown on Bitcoin. However, rather than killing Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, this has created an opportunity for mining in dominions that are further forbearing of cryptocurrencies, such as the United States and Scandinavia, and offer the trade more autonomy than in China. Countries that collaborate with the cryptocurrency business by fostering an atmosphere where go-getters are permitted to explore will promote and reap the benefits of a technology boom within their borders.
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