While reading this article after the recent comments that suggested to have lead to fall in the crypto markets, I decided to preserve my thoughts up here.
I imagine a conversation with people on how crypto is gone/just a fad etc. in view of heavily swinging trading prices against USD (or their any local fiat currency). First-off, I see the ability to trade cryptocurrency an opportunity to invest but not that itself entirely as the end in itself. Read that again.
Cryptocurrencies have a “different” potential to enable the conduction of lives. For example, read the article cited previously. “Decentralized Financing” as it is called, the crypto-blockchain technology avoids the need to have expensive and inefficient (in terms of time) systems known today as “banking” for enabling human needs such as storing our own money, lending to others etc. With the decentralized being the key term, such a system empowers anyone to fund a geographically distant cause when they choose to. If it were to be the existing traditional banking system, one would have to deal with multiple banks, pay their commission fee so the transfer of funds is guaranteed.
With the Blockchain providing mathematically ensured trust, all these mediator entities can be eliminated altogether in the chain. This is obviously a downer for traditional players and they well do everything in their own right to oppose this move. Also, the point to note is that such a cryptographically encode/transferred asset should have some intrinsic value to be useful not just in terms of its fungibility in relation to same old traditional fiat currency. Such a pure crypto model might seem unfathomable at this time when we are so into traditional fiat currency model. However, the discouraging news that yells loudly as “this crypto thing is bad”, “crypto is wrong, see how variable its value is” etc. are to be understood as it is the ones who say such things need to be informed more of the value we are seeing and need to be brought to agreement that it is the big players who see it as a threat to the establishment are the ones that keep spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainity and Doubt) on this so they can protect their status.
Another such news item realted to RBI from India hints at a similar sentiment that either to self serve its existing establishments or to act around their inability to comprehend this new class of assets known as “cryptocurrency”, a huge government is straight out considering outlawing the entity class of assets while hypocritically coming up with its own version of Blockchain, digital assets (Digital Rupee or such).