Make no mistake about it: cryptocurrency is technology.
Over the long-term, technology raises the standard of living for all. This is something that really kicked into overdrive since the mid 1990s. Throughout the developed world, technology has penetrated most areas of our lives. Business flourished and people were able to do things that was not possible only a decade earlier.
Of course, since the advent of mobile, we saw other nations get involved. Much of our technology is now spreading to all parts of the world. While there are still a few regions that are severely lagging, the gap is closing. There are now over 5 billion people who are online. That is an incredible figure when you truly think about it.
Technology Increases Exponentially
Many seem to want to debate this yet there is no way around it. We see technology growing at an exponential rate. The reality is more is being shifted online, which means digitization is taking over. This is something that accelerates things. Bits are much faster than atoms.
When they say "software is eating the world", this is the reasoning behind it. Anything that gets digitized ends up creating abundance while also driving down costs. This makes it available to the masses.
Just consider what the mobile industry looked like 30 years ago. At that time, the devices were more than $1,000 and airtime costs a couple dollars per minute. Truthfully, the service sucked but that is how things go with technology.
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Now there are homeless people in the United States who have nothing in life yet do have a mobile phone. They have no roof over their heads but they can access Netflix.
We now have capabilities that were not available even to the richest of people decades ago. Today, we can communicate with someone on the other side of the world, for free. Not only is there no cost, we can do it in video instead of just voice communication like in decades past.
Whatever is in our lives today, we can only guess what things will look like in 25 or 30 years. There is no way to even estimate some of what will be part of our daily lives. The world we are entering will be as foreign to us as what we do each day was to people in the 1970s. Keep in mind those people did not even know what a copy machine was, let alone using a mobile phone as a scanner to send a document around the world, again for free.
Our ability to produce keeps growing each year. Whether it is advancements in software, machinery, or even robotics, we can churn out more with less. This is simply how things keep growing.
Here is an example of where we are heading with computing. We are going to see an exascale computer in 2022. It is remarkably more advanced than the top computer the US DOE has yet is more energy efficient.
The remarkable thing about Frontier is not that it will be more than seven times as powerful as Summit, stunning as that figure is. The remarkable thing is that it will use only twice the power. That’s still a lot of power—Frontier is expected to draw 29 megawatts, enough to power a town the size of Cupertino, Calif. But it’s a manageable amount, both in terms of what the grid there can supply and what the electricity bill will be.
With all that processing power, a great many discoveries are going to be uncovered.
Cryptocurrency Going To Kick Off Exponential Economic Growth
Cryptocurrency is an interesting animal. It is not only technology but is also has the direct financial component. Since cryptocurrency can be used as a medium of exchange, it puts it in a unique position as compared to all other technologies.
It will follow the same technological trend, increasing in capabilities exponentially, especially as computation keeps advancing and the levels of coding are built. This equates into massive progress, as we witnessed over the past few years. The industry looks a lot different, from a technical standpoint, than it did 4 or 5 years ago.
At the same time, the technology is instantly monetized since, well it is money. This is rather unique. Usually, with technology, the value is derived from outside. The technology has to be "sold" in some form to be monetized. With cryptocurrency, the monetary value is inherent in the data.
What does this all mean?
Ultimately, it is going to take the standard of living, globally, and send it skyrocketing. When you have enough money out there, working as a tool of collaboration, it can pay for a lot of development. In a world where software is expanding it influence, that will only accelerate things.
Don't we already see that happening?
Look at all the projects rolling out in cryptocurrency. Many of them are financed using means other than Venture Capital, although that is big right now. All of these potentially carry a financial value that can be tokenized. Some of these projects are going to truly be game-changers, offering something to the masses that never was available before. When something like that gets adopted, the value will take off.
Of course, being tokenized it will not be Wall Street or Silicon Valley that profits but average individuals. Cryptocurrency allows for regular people to benefit.
That said, I think it is already the case. Anyone who is in cryptocurrency for a number of years already likely saw a serious amount of money as compared to their lives in the past. It is hard to not enjoy that considering the overall trajectory of cryptocurrency over the long-term.
This is not going to stop either. Innovation is just getting underway which means there will be plenty of opportunities going forward. We are going to look back at a $2.5 trillion market cap in a few years and laugh. By then, this will seem like small potatoes.
The big revolution will take place when cryptocurrency starts to fund non-industry endeavors. We already see a great deal of donating being done involved cryptocurrency. There is going to come a point when research and other projects are going to be funded using this mechanism.
Once that happens, we are going to see the floodgates opening. People are going to realize they can tap into their communities, assemble them, monetize it, and use that as the funding for whatever the purpose is. At that point, we will only see another step forward in terms of the pace of innovation.
As we can now see, this just keeps building upon itself. Where this leads is to an ever increasing standard of living. Naturally, there is a lot that goes into that but technology always pulled humanity forward, albeit not in an equitable way.
Nevertheless, with each major technological era, we can see vast improvements from the previous one. The difference is we are starting to compact these eras. Computation is advancing at such a pace that we are seeing our tools expand rapidly. These ends up penetrating many areas of society.
Cryptocurrency, along with blockchain, are really going to alter many things over the next few decades. Throughout this one, the major shift will come from crypto funding outside technological development. That is when I expect things to head into warp speed.
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