Concepts are like seeds that can hold fundamental principles of a particular topic. Just like a seed can grow into a tree, fundamental principles can also offshoot into creating other principles. Mathematics as a topic include fundamental principles like arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. And these have branch off and created other principles like statistics and trigonometry.
Finance as a topic isn't excluded from this. Take the concept of money, which is arguably the most expansive concept in finance and many people usually have a rough understanding of what is money. Over the centuries, the concept of money has expanded from a seed to a full grown tree with branches in many directions. What is money, is it the leaf, the branches, or the fruit of the tree?
In particular, this post will focus on crypto, exploring how this concept have expanded over time. Crypto is relatively new, yet it has grown a lot within that time frame.
From Simple To Diverse
Cryptocurrency, in its early days was basically a digital currency that uses cryptography to verify and secure transactions. Bitcoin started as a peer-to-peer money system. But over the years, it has been recognized as a global store of value and a hedge against inflation, which is one of the reasons why more people are also viewing it as digital gold.
What was Steem/Hive in it's early days if not a social blogging platform? Today, is Hive still a social blogging platform? No and yes. No, because it has expanded beyond that and yes, because social blogging is a part of Hive.
It is said that Ethereum has become the crypto hub for innovation, experimentation and collaboration across different fields. Thanks to its invention of smart contracts and decentralized applications(Dapps) which it has developed and iterated over the years.
Apart from becoming a popular memecoin and a symbol of internet culture, Dogecoin has also been utilized as a vehicle for charitable donations. This cryptocurrency that started out as a joke and a parody of Bitcoin.
Possible Reasons For Expansion
Of course, crypto as a concept isn't strictly financial. However, finance is a core component of it. In a way, this is also a form of expansion.
Modern technologies are non-linear and multidimensional. They grow so fast and when they enter a particular field, they radically transform it. Besides, they're also very good at crossing different fields and domains, as they are often platform or protocol based. Blockchain technology and it's different mechanism are sometimes referred to as a protocol.
A possible reason for the expansion of crypto concept is the rapid development of this above mentioned technology, which has created new use cases and added features for crypto users. Apart from solving a problem(s), each new use case also expands the value of the technology.
Speaking of value, another possible reason for expansion could be the growing interest towards alternative forms of value creation and exchange that are transparent and inclusive.
Collectively, we're becoming more aware of the broken system we live in and this has fueled the need to change that through creating better systems that are not dependent on intermediaries or centralized authorities. We could say that centralized authorities are the main reason for the broken system and intermediaries reinforce the brokenness.
In Closing
As the digital age progresses, money is moving away from a simple or static concept, as it's becoming a more complex and dynamic concept that evolves and expands over time.
From an analogical viewpoint, money can be viewed as a tree that has grown from a seed of value exchange to a diverse and multifaceted system that has various functions and purposes.
Crypto is one of the recent branches from the tree and it has grown to also spawned sub-branches, such as tokens and applications. Going from a simple digital currency to a diverse and innovative ecosystem.
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