Monumental Effects of Blockchain

Blockchain is here and it's not going anywhere for a long time. The innovation in technology has allowed for us as a society to analyze what we consider currency and to reevaluate our viewpoint of value in a globalized economy. The main way in which this will occur will be through the eventual adoption of cryptocurrencies by more and more nations around the world.

While naysayers claim that cryptocurrencies rising as a result of this have no true value, I would instead claim that we have finally come full circle from the ages of national currency to a time in which the means of trade through which we connect with the rest of the world are not controlled by a central organization vulnerable to the corruption of human greed. This is not only large scale greed but also the acquisition of wealth through unseemly means such as theft from individuals and of financial institutions such as banks which hold our precious currency, which which we interact with each other in a capitalist society.

Throughout history, organizations have at their worst committed shady practices in the interest of self advancement or at their best been susceptible to similar tactics by other players. Even when companies are not directly connected, human interaction can lead to corruption, inflation, or simple madness such as the South Sea bubble. Inflation running rampant across many nations only further solidifies the idea of a need for cryptocurrency, which can only be achieved through blockchain. Countries such as the Marshall Islands have already created their own cryptocurrency for use as the official currency without a world bank.

The effects of this are monumental, essentially giving large groups of people more resources despite the lack of physical resources in a dying world. This lack of resources was the precise reason for the dropping of the gold standard, even by our great nation. Of course you can find now gold backed cryptocurrencies which represent “gold” and can be easily exchanged. In a globalized economy in which each person’s actions and outputs are so influential and necessary for another to live, act, and output goods or services themselves, there is no need to physically back a currency, as it is backed by its acknowledgement as currency by a group of people.

Put another way, an object’s value only exists while that value is respected by a community; and as the last decades of modernization have shown, human beings often respect machines and computers more than we respect ourselves and those around us. We can often get caught up in whirlwinds of imaginative irresponsibility and whimsical idealization as our emotions cause a complete detachment from logic. People have paid literal fortunes for tulip bulbs for no more reason than they thought it was a money machine. Others have paid miniscule amounts of money in support of artists only to have made vast fortunes in the eyes of modern society.

When we as a people are in control of the value of objects that we ourselves are using or exposed to, there is inevitable fluctuation and change. Cryptocurrencies will be a small step in the right direction against this tide as we finally have an unbiased system that is not run by a being inside the system. It’s detachment from human emotion and fancy will allow for a more fair system for people around the globe. Eventually, we might find a world in which families will not have to keep different currencies for fear that their government will destroy their savings, and as such, their futures.

With that dream in mind, we hope cryptocurrency will help to alleviate some of the struggles of the less fortunate. This is an example of how blockchain will change our lives, but this is only the beginning. As credit cards have so sweetly revealed, the ability to carry something that can spend money but holds no value to a robber is very enticing to consumers and a deterrent for theft. Who carries cash? Well, in that same regard, cryptocurrencies begin to provide opportunities to carry currency and engage in private transactions with whomever you please, instead of only companies as is usually the case when it comes to credit cards.

In a world becoming more and more accepting for gig employment and services such as Uber, DoorDash, or TaskRabbit, we are provided with a new way in which to make and spend a currency which can be accessed by the owner but digitally located on a protected cloud server. Home cooks could theoretically sell their goods easily and efficiently, or organizations can simply eliminate the need for keeping stores of physical currencies on hand, subsequently eliminating their ability to be robbed. Armored trucks would be unnecessary relics of the past, and Fort Knox would become just the most elaborate box in the world.

While some may be worried about the idea of hackers or hooligans finding a way to digitally steal money or make more, they can sleep easily and freely with the warm awareness that to do so would require a quantum computer the likes of which has not been created even in the most optimum of environments on this planet by teams of scientists composed of some of the greatest minds humanity has to offer. It is simply a nut that we cannot crack and will not crack for a long time; and when we finally do crack it, we can simply make a quantum-cryptocurrency and start the whole process over again.

This is of course so far in the future that we may have abandoned the idea of capitalism altogether. I honestly think any projection I make of life that far will simply be unrealistic. The modern world is just a web of people interconnected, weaving into the lives of others in ways we cannot even imagine through supply chains and commerce. Each human holds onto another, just like a block in a chain.