Hello Steemians! Saw 
Most of you should be familiar with CoinMarketCap, which is a very popular cryptocurrencies data aggregator. Similar to CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko is also among the most popular cryptocurrencies data aggregators in the world. And on it, you will be able to check the price of your favorite cryptocurrency, for example STEEM,
However, unlike other data aggregators, they provide some information that are not available elsewhere. For example, they offer the "Developer" and "Community" ranking of cryptocurrencies, and these are metrics that I am unable to find on other sites.
I digressed enough and now allow me to share why cryptocurrency is important to me...
Cryptocurrencies Bring Power Back to the People
Before I start, I need to emphasize that whenever I mention cryptocurrencies, I am referring to fully decentralized, P2P systems with all transactions recorded on an immutable blockchain. Why? Because I am aware of centralized systems that are also coined as cryptocurrencies and I don't regard them as true cryptocurrencies.
For most governments, fiat currencies coupled with traditional banking systems are the most powerful tool they have over their people. By controlling money, governments control our life. Whenever a potential threat is identified, the first thing governments will do, is to freeze the bank account of that threat entity. Regardless if the threat is from an individual or an organization, with the bank account frozen, it is essentially game over and the entity is effectively crippled. Imagine how much power an oppressive government has just by controlling the monetary system.
In my opinion, power corrupts and governments having too much power will, more likely than not, become oppressive and not always act with the interest of the people. On the other hand, it is not possible or very difficult to freeze cryptocurrencies transactions. Hence, in a world where the dominant currencies are cryptocurrencies, governments will lose an important grip over its people. I believe with the power distance greatly reduced, it will lead to better governments all over the world.
Cryptocurrencies can Potentially Fix our Broken Financial System
We have thousands of cryptocurrencies as of now and each of them represent an economy on its own. Why? If you think about it, each cryptocurrency, be it a coin or an utility token is a self-sustained ecosystem. Taking STEEM as an example, it is the currency for the Steem platform. On the Steem platform, we can buy and sell services just with STEEM alone. Similarly, Bitcoin is also an economy of miners (service providers) and consumers (people making transactions).
Source
I believe one of the reasons why we cannot escape market cycles of boom and bust is due to the fact that fiat currencies are used for all industries and business types. As a result, when one industry becomes overheated and the bubble burst, it typically results in a domino effect which will affect other industries. Depending on the scale of the bubble, it might then result in the entire country sinking into a recession. At the global scale, the US dollar is used in most international trades. Therefore, if one country gets into financial trouble it might lead to further widespread impact.
Imagine a world with thousands of functional cryptocurrencies. For example, we have STEEM which is a currency for social interaction and content creation. We have SUB (Substratum), which is a currency to access the decentralized internet. There will then be currencies system which is based on services/industries instead of countries. It will be a system without physical boundaries and every currency is backed by the demand of that service/industry itself.
At that point, where there are so many micro-economies, I believe we will have a more robust financial system. A failure of one currency/economy is less likely to result in a domino effect with widespread impact. This is akin to the micro-segmentation concept in the security world. Therefore, potentially, the invention of cryptocurrencies may just be the first step towards the proliferation micro-economies and it might be the fix for our current financial system.
This may seem a little too far-fetched at this stage, but I do believe we are embarking on a long journey to reach that end state.
And there you go, here are the reason why I think cryptocurrencies are important to me. In fact I think they are important to everyone. Thanks for reading!
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This post is a submission to CoinGecko's ”Why Cryptocurrency Is Important To Me” Writing Contest