Crypto & Our Decentralized Future
Seems like the future, will always be closer than we expect. If you told me last year that nations would be putting themselves on the blockchain this soon, I would’ve said you were bat shit crazy. The earliest timeline I would expect for this much traction for this technology, would be sometime in 2019.
However, Canada, Brazil, Switzerland and Venezuela, are just a few of the countries that are implementing some form of cryptocurrency or blockchain technology into their government infrastructure.
Canada Government Goes Crypto:
https://www.coindesk.com/canadian-research-body-pilots-ethereum-in-transparency-push
Switzerland Wants a Crypto Nation:
https://bitcoinist.com/switzerland-wants-crypto-nation-france-germany-want-regulation
Why São Paulo Wants to Pay for Infrastructure with Cryptocurrency:
https://www.coindesk.com/sao-paulo-wants-pay-infrastructure-cryptocurrency
US Senators Blast Venezuela's Oil-Backed Cryptocurrency Plan:
https://www.coindesk.com/u-s-senators-decry-venezuelan-petro
The implications of this, are far-reaching. There is room for multiple disruption points within the government. However, the one I’m watching closely, is voting. With the United Nations looking to have global identification by 2020, this would mean that transparency within the government, would’ve already had to be established. Which would lead the way for decentralized voting technology to make its debut.
UN Wants a Universal Digital ID for Your Data:
https://www.cnet.com/news/refugees-digital-id-tech-companies-id2020-summit-united-nations
Soon, it will be paramount for us to control our data. Especially if the government, who we’ve seen is horrible with security, will have access to more and more of our public and private data. For security, we will have to find out how to do this in a decentralized way. This way, no one company, can be a fail point to our private information.
Of course it won’t stop at Governments, all forms of businesses will have no choice but to utilize some form of decentralized technology to keep up with competitors.
Thing is, just as the Internet did, blockchain and decentralization is poised to disrupt many industries. My question is, what do we do when artificial intelligence, meets the decentralized global storage?
Google CEO Sundar Pichai compares impact of AI to electricity and fire:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/19/16911354/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-artificial-intelligence-fire-electricity-jobs-cancer
Ray: A Distributed System for AI
http://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2018/01/09/ray
Artificial Intelligence, will remove a large segment of jobs from our economy. This is why many corporate CEOs in the tech industry, are calling for some form of Universal Basic Income. Truthfully, I don’t feel that the Universal Basic Income, or a tax on Artificial Intelligence, will be enough to maintain a basic quality of life.
World Economic Changes
To exacerbate the problem, governments are not funding our debts, which will leave us with a dollar that will have less value than it did just last year. The World Bank seems to be losing interest in oil and gas, with no information, as to what industry they are looking to support in the future. All the while, small businesses aren’t able to innovate fast enough to even keep their companies open.
Employees want higher pay, while the machines whittle away manual labor, making their jobs obsolete.
The World Bank is no longer supporting the oil and gas industries:
http://www.businessinsider.com/world-bank-takes-over-from-the-us-to-address-climate-change-2018-1
Japan Dumping Treasuries Puts Spotlight on Euro-Area Debt:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/japan-dumping-u-s-treasuries-puts-spotlight-on-euro-area-debt
Millions of American small business owners feel left behind:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/19/millions-american-small-business-owners-feel-left-behind-how-tech-can-help-ebay-column/1046381001
What Do We Do?
Of course, I don’t have all the answers, but I believe that cryptocurrencies form part of a strategy of lessening the blow. As I’ve been telling everyone, earning your cryptocurrency, rather than buying your cryptocurrency is my strategy for 2018. So it should come as no surprise, that anything dealing with earning your crypto, will be at the forefront of any strategies I talk about.
There’s Steemit, a publishing platform in which you earn for your written word. Also, I’m currently looking at Staking, as a way for crypto to begin earning for itself.
The reason I feel staking will need to be a part of our financial strategy, comes from seeing banks begin to remove free checking accounts. This makes it hard for low income families, not to turn to predatory check-cashing establishments. In which doing so, they will lose more money in transaction fees.
American banks continue to phase out free checking accounts:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-wonder-so-many-americans-arent-using-bank-accounts-2018-01-23
In the future, I can’t see why anyone would want to keep their money at an establishment that does not want to issue you returns. Especially when it seems like they would rather drain away our financial future with fees.
So what is Staking?
To put it simply, Staking is you having your computer, validate transactions for a system. That is called Proof of Stake (POS), in which you lock your coins in a wallet, and can earn from validating transactions. Currently in the EastCoastCrypto Community, we’ve begun to validate for our coin Civitas. Of course, there are other coins that I’ll be looking at in the future, and will write an article about them as well. For now, I’ll be learning how to stake with this one, and draft "The Staking Guide: For Noobs, like Me”.
So what you think? Do you think decentralization will have as great of an impact as I’ve laid out? I’d love to hear your feedback.
Be sure to check out this video from last week where I go a bit more in depth about what I see with decentralization.
Crypto Plunder: Episode 30: Decentralization Kills Dumb Business Models:
Author:
Jay "TrajicK" Jeffrey
Lead Developer
Toxichustle Media
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Great article and I'll be watching your progress this year...good luck Toxic!
Thanks @purecane