The average American operates his daily life using well-established technology. No bleeding edge tech, thank you very much! This is why I was pleased to discover that craigslist added a "cryptocurrency ok" checkbox last month. If you check this box, craigslist displays items whose sellers accept cryptocurrency.
Since it was introduced, the number of items you can buy with crypto has grown steadily. For example, in Minneapolis, about as middle-America a place as any, you can buy 1264 items with crypto!
Why does this matter? Because it signals that crypto has finally gone mainstream: Because, for the first time since the late 1700's (when we used a variety of domestic and global currencies), the average American is beginning to buy sell and trade goods using a currency other than dollars.
^^^ Go back and read that again. ^^^
For the first time in 200+ years, your neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and fellow citizens are beginning to accept and trust something other than the almighty dollar.
This means that crypto is FUNGIBLE in the ordinary sense: "able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable. 'money is fungible—money that is raised for one purpose can easily be used for another'"
Until now, we've had limited options for actually spending crypto...and what good is money if you can't use it?
Although speculation accounts for the price of crypto, the usefulness of any currency is what dictates its long-term value. As crypto becomes useful in the hands of the people in the world's largest economy, at least some of that bubbly speculative value should convert into actual economic value.
It also means that cryptocurrencies that have lived a sheltered life in the artificial environments created by white-papers, marketing-hype, and exchanges must actually come out and start functioning in the real world. In the long run, the value of EVERY currency will be determined its utility:
- the number of users who are willing to use it
- the speed with which it can be exchanged
- the relative costs of using one currency over another
To restate the obvious: This is a major game-changer that is going to disrupt the status quo.
Now how do I earn enough steem to buy that Porche?!