My wife's nephew came by today and was talking (and asking) about trading, as he has recently dipped his first toes into the pool. While I have spoken to him about it for a couple years now, the biggest influence has been peer pressure through his army colleagues, where he is doing his year of compulsory service now. While we were talking, my wife said "Don't tell your mother that Taraz helps you" as she knows that my sister-in-law disapproves of the idea of him investing into this at all -
Apparently, I am a bad influence - better to have 18 year old's give him investment advice instead...'
But, it will be his generation that takes crypto mainstream, as they will realize that they have been largely cheated out of a future, ironically, by listening to their parents.
"Go to school, study hard at university, get a good job, have a good life"'
Great advice, except the world has rapidly changed in the last 30 odd years and the opportunities and benefits of a traditional education are decreasing, while the salaries are not increasing at a fast enough rate to counteract inflation, and in many of life's milestone purchases like a house, are getting further and further out of reach. While their parents benefit from the post war saving mentality of their grandparents, their parents have extended their lifestyle by whittling away at those savings, which is part of the reason inflation has increased - but their parents aren't the best savers, they just started at a higher platform.
This means, that for the first time in a very long time, children are unlikely to be able to out earn their parents, with many struggling to get even a basic level of income. There are multiple reasons and factors in play for this, but what needs to be recognized is that the way money is flowing and the consumption habits of the general person is going to change, meaning that what has worked in the past, is perhaps becoming less relevant or maybe even harmful to securing an individual's future.
Post-war, saving was a great way to build the foundation for a better life and even the basic interest rates on savings accounts were offering some return, but that is no longer the case, with holding money being a cost, not a benefit. The whole setup is geared toward driving continued consumption, but it doesn't encourage investing into generative assets at all.
The culture has been designed around consumption that has driven money into the hands of those who are simultaneously telling the next generation to consume, because that is what drives profits. Not only does this process drive wealth into ever-fewer hands, it also means that in the future, that wealth isn't going to flow back into the community, it is going to keep narrowing.
Something has to change and while we are here changing it, it will be the next generation or two who are going to have to take the chance on the new economy, as there will essentially be no alternative, as they will have already been mostly squeezed out with too little resources to bay back into the old economic model.
Now, if you look at companies like Google making forays into EOS and Square buying Bitcoin, two companies that know the value of consumption and have the data and wealth behind them to prove it, we can see the shift happen. These are companies who rely on their ability to predict and shift trends and they know that "children are the future" consumer.
The systems of transfer and exchange are already available, the global borderless blockchains are up and running, the potential is already there - they just have to convince consumers to start transacting in the new curreny, instead of the old and, they will. They will be because not only will it be more technologically attractive and fit neatly into their digital lives, they will because it also will be the only way in which they can consume, as the wide gateways that their parents walked through are far narrower and closing further, fast.
While their parents will see this start up as a risk, it might be the only real move available for many of the future economic participants to have some of that "good life" that their parents enjoyed. Because of this, people could move en masse, meaning while it is risky for the early adopters, the masses will bring in the stability.
This has a very large impact on the economies of the world, as a world of consumption needs to put the supply where the consumers are - meaning more and more companies will shift over to the new economy making the old increasingly volatile and unstable. What this means is that the parents advice of "do what we did" will get increasingly poor and even their parents will have to start moving their assets across to the new economy, or be faced with holding a very large bag of dollars that no one wants and many companies won't accept.
Why accept dollars when you can accept an appreciating currency that can circumnavigate all of those high fees that banks demand their customers pay to transact? Why would a company pay those percentages to route money when they can do it for free or near free across blockchains? Google knows this, Square knows this, Facebook knows this and now - they are making their knowledge public.
What is going to be difficult for many of the newcomers FOMO'ing into the market, is that they are still likely to be driven by the desire for quick profits, while still lacking the knowledge and experience about what they are actually buying into. Some will get lucky, some will patiently ladder in and learn, many are going to get excitedly burned. But, this is part of the process of building a new industry and definitely, a new economy that functions in a way like it hasn't before.
The peer pressure that pushed my wife's nephew over the edge is a telling indicator of what this generation is going to do - once the real FOMO gets a hold of them. And most will understand or at least believe, that there is very little future economic opportunity open to them in the traditional economies. They are going to get bitten by the bug and they are going to go hard, as after all, You Only Live Once. YOLO!
My advice has always been, only invest what you are willing to lose completely, but I am guessing that many of the younger generation will feel that they have nothing to lose by going all in, by rolling that dice and taking a chance on forking away from the past that benefited their parents, by selling out the future of those to come.
It is going to be an interesting decade ahead, with those getting in early having advantage if they are able to pivot the economy in their favor by consuming differently - including changing the currency of their consumption.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]