Personal
Cryptocurrency
Nothing on this page should be construed as financial advice.
First and foremost, I'm not going to be talking about prices, price-action, current/future values - or even specific tokens/networks.
YouTube has tons of superstars you can get great financial advice from! /s
Why Crypto?
For me, this is simple: the existing system of layered middlemen lobbied, litigated, and lured politicians into providing an environment that favors big business and the ultra-rich.
Pot, meet Kettle!
I fully understand that the current crypto-ecosystem is full of greed and scammers. I hope this improves over time with regulations and technological-maturity.
I see crypto as a means for:
- Fewer middlemen taking their cut of my transactions with other people and businesses
The middleman becomes the network/code, but the rules that govern it still apply uniformly.
- More control over my own data, who can access it, and how they can use it
- Better feedback models in the form of governance solutions (DAO)
- Less-reliance on companies to provide my online identity
- More peer-to-peer transactions (which I believe is good for the overall economy)
- In theory, financial transparency that could reduce some corruption
NFTs are a scam!
Yes, absolutely, the current iteration of NFTs are garbage. Don't buy them.
However, long term, the concept of NFTs has real utility for our society - I think.
The goal with NFTs would be to provide ownership records (much like the physical and digital ownership records that exist today) that do not require a central authority to use.
In my mind, they are the natural evolution of where paper and digital records have been heading - we just need a way to mitigate the risk of a central authority having ownership. NFTs might be able to solve that.
Reducing dependence on middlemen
This is a list of middlemen we could cut out using cryptocurrency/NFT technology in some form (non-exhaustive):
- Credit card fees for accepting payments
- Ticketmaster and other ticketing services
- Almost all greedy financial services
- Platforms that skim profits from creators
- Paying $25 for a copy of your birth certificate
- Social Security Numbers for identity
Maybe this is a better read? hbr.org/2017/03/the-promise-of-blockchain-is-a-world-without-middlemen