Crypto’s Influential Fear
All successful technologies in the past few decades experience five major waves. Crypto is nearing wave five. Unlike other major technologies, Crypto is unique in that not only does it tie technology to finance, but it also represents a major paradigm shift in our approach to work.
One of the unique crypto aspects is this philosophical underpinning about how work is done. The removal of even one potential overlord from the traditional workflow – a “boss” if you will – has the traditional finance community completely riled up. It is my opinion that the centralized finance debacles that we have seen has led to the current atmosphere of distrust within the crypto community. We must restore trusted communications between project leaders if we are to continue crypto’s evolution beyond wave 5.
Crypto technology is usually associated with just a faster way of paying someone. For example, $100 is converted to some number of bitcoins and sent to another address within minutes. Although this is a major ‘selling’ point of crypto, it is not the only aspect of crypto’s evolutionary approach to finance. Decentralized Finance, NFT’s and Smart Contracts are major evolutionary steps that has increased the fear and loathing of crypto by leaders of Centralized Finance.
The average consumer is not well informed by their usual sources of news. Industry publications such as Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and others has positioned crypto as something to fear. This is because Smart Contracts has removed the traditional concept of an overlord. The traditional finance community has long held the belief that an asset manager is required to manage any financial asset. A banker, a stockbroker, an investment advisor and so on are examples of these.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has removed the need for such individuals. An asset can be placed within a DeFi Cryptocurrency Smart Contract and earn compounded interest automatically. Sometime between 2013 and 2015, I believe that this new concept was seen as a major threat to Centralized Finance (CeFi) and their community rallied to create many CeFi Cryptocurrency exchanges with the same appeal as the DeFi Cryptocurrency Smart Contracts.
FTX, Voyager, Luna, Celsius and many others came out of the 2015 boom and bust cycle. When each of these exchanges failed, a new word was spread by traditional finance journals, such as the Wall Street Journal. To wit, their headline reads: “Contagion” and “Fear” spreads in the Crypto community. There are now so many TV shows, articles and more that state that Crypto is something to be afraid of. Investors have lost “billions” to crypto. A more accurate article would be to say that investors were scammed by the centralized finance community utilizing the selling points of crypto technology.
Throughout this entire process, the crypto technology has continued to improve and mature. Ethereum has switched to proof of stake and is continuing to evolve in both transaction speed and technical language capabilities. There are many crypto projects that are evolving as well. Solve.care, Drone Industry Systems, Presearch and many others are leveraging the crypto technology to create something better for all of us. Within each of the three projects, it is not necessary to be an investor of the project to receive a benefit.
With Solve.Care, one can just be a member of an exchange and then to see a doctor. The care wallet takes care of everything. With Drone Industry Systems, one can rent rooftop space or place a drone within their network. With Presearch – simply search on Presearch.com. Each of these services has an access point for a traditional user of the system. Crypto technology is leveraged to provide an enhanced experience for the end user. If one is interested to become an investor of these projects, then the traditional rule of finance still applies – due diligence is necessary. I suspect that even these rules needs to be enhanced over time such that investing into and providing governance around these projects becomes meaningful. DAO is still in the early days and it will likely take at least a decade before DAO’s become commonplace and standardized.
Regardless, it is important to continue to communicate. Traditional Finance does not have a lot of runway left. The formula behind it is simply broken beyond repair. Any true dashboard that examines the underpinnings of even the US Dollar is flashing code red. I hope and I pray that cryptocurrency can provide a stable foundation for the language of energy. It can and it has done some incredible things over the last decade. But what it has not been able to do is to restore trusted communications between project leaders.
There must be a way that we can continue to communicate and to share projects without the fear and loathing that these centralized financial leaders have so wrongly imposed upon us. To our audience, we cannot be held to such a high standard to imply that any spoken word is the absolute truth beyond the shadow of a doubt. We have all been wrong at some point or other in our lives. We have all associated with undesirables from time to time. Such are the rigors of life.
If we communicate about a project, this does not imply endorsement of any kind. Each of us will do as much as we can to examine a project. If it looks cool or exciting, we might invite others to examine the project. By no means do we imply that everyone should immediately become accredited investors and to deploy their life savings in the gamble that they will immediately become rich. This concept is a creation by centralized finance leaders and spokespersons. They portray themselves as the gatekeepers of the overnight success sensation. That one requires an investment advisor to immediately gain unimaginable wealth. There are no genies in this world. And the world has long used up its’ three wishes.
What cryptocurrency can do – through some seriously hard work by some talented individuals – is to save our world from a certain death. Capitalism is on a path to consume itself and to leave nothing left. One look at Putin’s threats to unleash a radioactive end to this world is sufficient. All of this fear leads to the immediate reaction to shell ourselves off from the world and to speak no further evil. This cannot and does not work.
We must communicate to a community. We must share in our understanding of a broader world and to invite participation in and of it. No person is an island.
Sharing our understanding about another project to a community does not imply an endorsement or investment advice. It simply is saying to the world, “hey look – I found something cool and exciting!” In this way, we can all work together towards a better world.
If a project shares a coupon code or a lead generation form from another project, it doesn’t mean that the other project is a guaranteed winner. It may just be a way for the community to examine the project and to learn more about it for any variety of reasons.
On standard TV Talk Shows, Oprah Winfrey shares many products. These products do not carry her endorsement. There have been several spectacular failures of a product featured by Oprah. There are also many good products that the consumers have enjoyed. Oprah is not judged by the products that she features. She invites the owners of the products onto the air to discuss the products to her audience. The audience can make up their own mind about the product. She is using her capabilities as a leader to interview other leaders.
The crypto community needs to get past its’ fear of another. There will be failures. There will be successes. Over time, standards will be created and the crypto community will soon enjoy the fifth wave.