Take a moment to consider the crypto-landscape as we know it today. From a certain perspective, it is viewed as a security. From another, it is a speculative commodity that’s value lies in its very existence and as such, a golden opportunity for trading. Professional traders and analysts publish ideas and predictions for cryptocurrencies while peddling buy and sell signals on the side. News channels are awash with the latest updates on the possibility of Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s). Many consider the approval of a Bitcoin ETF by the SEC to be the highest potential catalyst for the next crypto bull run. Wait….what?
I have to ask myself how it came about that Bitcoin and the SEC are even mentioned in the same sentence? On the one hand, we have the SEC, bastion of centralised authority over the market and on the other, we have Bitcoin, love child of cypherpunk and agorism. An orphan raised by crypto-anarchists to resist the tyranny of central banking and become the liberator of the debt-shackled masses struggling under the yoke of inflationary currency. Surely the paradox of Bitcoin’s further success hinging on an SEC decision qualifies for the title of most marvellous irony ever?
How did this come about? When did the conqueror turn into the conquered, meekly moving sideways week after week, waiting for its masters at the SEC to cast a crumb from the table? What was it that vanquished the valour of the decentralised avenging angel and bent his knee before the powers that be? Where do we cast the blame for this dismal state of affairs?
The answer dear reader is us. You and me. The crypto enthusiasts who lost sight of the ideals by which Blockchain was spawned. We became so blinded by the glare of accumulated fiat that we forgot the true value of crypto. Satoshi’s real gift to humanity was the means to decide for ourselves what we deem truly valuable. Like the Midas of myth, we squandered the infinite potential of that most precious gift on greed and just like Midas, we now find ourselves beleaguered by the ramifications of our own choice.
“Price doesn’t matter. It is an output variable” — Synth
The lead developer and co-founder of Skycoin, known as Synth, is often quoted in reference to many things crypto. His skills as an analyst are widely respected and his understanding of the forces that shape the global economy is profound. In the humble opinion of this writer though, the eight words quoted above epitomises wisdom as it pertains to cryptocurrency. It succinctly summarizes the flaw in our philosophical approach to crypto which, hitherto has been to use it as a means to accumulate fiat currency. We are literally using the very tool meant to free us from the death grip of centralised, controlled currency to accumulate more of same.
Simply put, crypto was sold out to the establishment by its own users. As long as we use fiat currency as the metric by which we measure the worth of our cryptocurrency, we are under the control of those who control fiat currency. The net worth in fiat of certain individuals is more than the entire crypto market cap. Let that sink in for a moment. These people manipulate global markets before breakfast. It is a trivial matter for these manipulators to pump and dump crypto markets and to sway markets to suit their agenda. No crypto bull run no matter how long it lasts will ever afford us the power to compete with the fiat establishment on its own turf. Sure, a handful of early crypto adopters made millions of Dollars but that is a drop in the ocean compared to the collective fiat wealth of the establishment.
What is needed to tip the scales in favour of freedom is for us to stop speculating with crypto and to start creating an actual crypto economy based on real-world, in-demand commodities. The value of a cryptocurrency should not be measured by how much fiat currency someone is willing to pay for it. It should be measured by what goods and services you can obtain with that cryptocurrency without having to first sell it for fiat. We should start using the usability of a cryptocurrency as it’s evaluation metric if we want to see crypto emerge from the sphere of establishment influence and realise its true, full potential.
Of course, there has to be a transition phase. Costs associated with developing a cryptocurrency cannot always be paid in crypto. Landlords, ISP’s and other parasitic entities are notoriously addicted to fiat currency and as such, it is necessary to have the means to exchange crypto for fiat to satisfy their needs in the interim. We should guard against becoming completely entangled in the crypto-as-a-means-to-fiat paradigm though because that is kryptonite to our hero.
I imagine it would be a safe assumption that most of us brave or foolish enough to have ventured into the stormy crypto seas at this early stage have done so fully aware of the mathematical inevitability of the eventual floundering of the fiat ship. Why then do we insist on tethering our little lifeboats to this fiat juggernaut that is taking on water at an alarming rate? The behemoth is going down sooner or later and I for one would like to be rowing somewhere well away from its wake when it does. Furthermore, I most certainly want to to be doing so on the sturdiest lifeboat available and in my opinion, that is Skycoin.
Skycoin flies in the face of the establishment and its tentacles of control. As a project, it can be considered to be a living embodiment of the ideals of decentralisation and freedom that are implicit principles of distributed ledger technologies. Unlike most cryptocurrencies out there, Skycoin’s developers had the foresight and vision to create a cryptocurrency that will retain the core principles of decentralisation no matter how widely it is adopted and it certainly is technologically capable of mass adoption. Skycoin solved the major technical obstacles to mass crypto adoption. It is hugely scalable with virtually instant transaction confirmations that are free of charge. The core currency is nestled in an ecosystem of supporting elements such as a programming language, distributed object storage, a parallel currency derived from the primary one, and a platform for issuing tokens.
Arguably the most radical component of the Skycoin ecosystem though is Skywire, the new Internet. At a time when the ringed fence of the state is busy strangling Internet freedom to death, Skywire constitutes a shining beacon beckoning to those who comprehend just how critical the free flow of information is to resisting a dystopian future. Skywire is a truly decentralised, fully encrypted, community owned and driven Internet where our data is safe from surveillance. That alone should be reason enough to use it but the true genius of Skywire lies in the fact that, along with Skycoin, it lays the foundation for a crypto economy based on an in-demand, real-world commodity. Censorship-free, unsurveiled bandwidth is becoming highly sought after and that is exactly what Skycoin delivers.
Who cares about the BTC:USD currency pair when we have in Skycoin the means of a working model to establish a virtual utopia independently of the state’s mechanisms of control? Skycoin carries forward the anti-establishment ideals that spawned Bitcoin but in an infinitely more practical manner and with a much wider scope. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the establishment is not your friend, the state is not working in your favour and the mechanisms of its control are coveted to your own detriment. Sure Bitcoin will be worth $1 000 000 in future. There is no doubt that as soon as the fiat currency Ponzi scheme implodes, all crypto will go to the moon but it will mean nothing because the fiat metric that you are using to measure your path to the moon will be obsolete. When that fools rocket takes off, would it not be infinitely wiser to be safely ensconced in an established, truly decentralised, freedom-centric, control and censorship free economy? This is the opportunity that Skycoin offers right now. Let those who have ears hear and those who have eyes see. That is all.