The adoption of the blockchain is coming, and some feel it's already here.
As I look out on the technological landscape of FinTech, the land where finance meets technology, I see the revolution of Decentralized Finance, and although it may be argued that DeFi is a shooting star, due to land with an explosion and burn up it's proponents with it. I think this announcement of its death is premature.
As I once explained to my wife today, that cryptocurrency was really currency, like dollars in the bank, but that only the owners of the currency entered numbers in the ledger as they moved their cryptocurrency to buy things or pay bills, and the owners sign those transactions with a secret password and then the transaction is entered into the ledger.
The secret password is 24 letters and numbers. The people who specialize in making and breaking passwords and secret codes are called cryptographers. And the passwords are a form of cryptography, so the money or currency is protected by this cryptography, so the currency is called cryptocurrency.
The ledger is kept on computers running a special software which doesn’t allow anyone to tamper or alter the ledger unless they somehow get control of 52% of all the computers in the world running the program keeping copies of the ledger documenting the transactions signed by owners all over the world. The computer programs are also protected by cryptography and adding transactions to the ledger requires the solving of complex math problems called algorithms.
The idea is that your cryptocurrency is controlled by you because of your 23 digit password. No one, not even the banks or the government can take your money or move your money with out your password. As long as you keep your cryptocurrency in your cryptocurrency wallet. But in order to sell or trade your cryptocurrency you have to transfer it to an online, web page based exchange, where it’s under your control, but also the exchange. So if ordered they could freeze your account and surrender your cryptocurrency to the government.
The interesting thing is when you deposit your paycheck in a bank, you have to follow their rules about when you can withdrawal any of it and how much. If you want yo pay a bill or send money to someone, you have yo follow their rules about how much you can send, how much it costs and how long it will take.
Because of the ways the bank controls your money, it sometimes feels like they have more control over your money then you do. This is one of the reasons many cryptocurrency enthusiast started buying cryptocurrency. They wanted more control over their money. Power, wealth and control over money.
But this is only half of the story. The other half of the story is the rise of the blockchain, and that will be truly historic. The blockchain is the real technological wonder underlying cryptocurrency, and it will be the evolutionary component which I believe will one day be bigger then the internet.
But that's a story for another blog, another contest, another season.