BITCOIN is becoming the talk of the much MUCH BIGGER towns now. It's beginning to breach mainstream consciousness, to the point where I no longer get a blank stare if I mention it to a stranger, I typically get a response like,
I'm very excited about that, and I feel privileged to be alive in this day and age. Blockchain technology is truly a brand new frontier, and it is--as Andreas Antonopoulos's book title says, the "Internet of Money". Not money FOR the internet, but the internet OF money. In logically speaking terms, that is a very very important distinction.
Bitcoin is not just some digital fad, as is obvious to anyone who understands the blockchain even at a moderate level.
Blockchain technology is an expression of individual value, all over the world. It is a creation out of the deep human need to get around barriers and BORDERS to human freedom and innovation that has been so stifled by governments, regulation, and control freaks the world over.
People want to trade, human to human, whomever to whomever, whenever they want, for whatever reason they want, trading whatever item, skill, time, or value of whatever kind they want.
Governments and centralized control systems not only stifle that, but they put people's trading at risk by placing people's private and personal information and monetary assets all in large pools. Google is a giant risk, credit card companies are giant risks. Toys R Us, Target, Home Depot, Amazon, Yahoo or any company you can think of centralizing user information are all giant honey pots to people who may have malicious intent (private hackers and governments alike). When there are centralized resources and private user information, enormous RISK is created for the end user, and this also stifles the movement of resources, making it slower and more difficult/complicated-- because all of the weight and burden of resource-movement and resource-management are placed on a centralized few.
This is why many crypto enthusiasts like myself are more interested now in DE-centralized exchanges. Even the convenience and ease of the popular exchanges doesn't quite sit well with all the users who want true control and security with their assets. Market growth, as rapid as it is right now, also creates problems for centralized exchanges, and therefore creates issues with resource movement, as has already been seen with numerous maintenance issues and exchanges crashing from sheer overwhelm.
The Bottom Line on Why Blockchains Are The Future
Crypto is a way to trade anything, from any place to any other place, from any individual to another, without permission, centralized risk, or having to TRUST a giant central honey-pot organization to do the right thing with your value! It saves time, energy, and therefore saves people money (Spent life INSIDE time = money).
Those who don't understand that right now are about to miss out on a huge frontier of opportunity the way lots of people missed the boat on what the internet brought to the world. Those who took advantage of what mass communication on a global scale offered, are part of a new generation of wealthier and freer people -- those who didn't are stuck and limited by the control routines of what I affectionately refer to as the 'dinosaur' age.
Bitcoin is big right now, but it is the blockchain technology that is the miracle, and the currencies yet to be built on it we cannot even imagine. There are hundreds and hundreds of new coins, and new ways to transact on the blockchain, and the innovation rate is so rapid, that I feel like I can sometimes hear the entire globe screaming "We WILL be free, and you cannot stop that anymore!"
to wind down and shift gears. Let's look at where Bitcoin has just been and what it's doing right now! It broke $11k, and did a dip down as expected to the lower $9K area, recovered again to crest $10k, and dipped back to around $9500-ish as of typing this. What I want to know is...
Will the major crypto news writers ever stop posting an article for every single daily market "sigh" that Bitcoin does?!? Either they don't yet understand what is normal in markets like Bitcoin's, or they DO, and they're just enjoying making money on writing an article every 10 minutes for every "spike" or "crash" that the rest of us know are not the TRUE spikes or crashes.
Probably not, at least for now. And that is perfectly okay.
It is quite a lot like being on a rollercoaster, though. Except for those of us that have a general understanding of the ebb and flow of new markets as big as this one, it is a little bit funny. You see, I fully understand the screams for the big ups and downs, I'm screaming too for those, right? However, I have to say that it is hysterical when you are really just going over little hills and dips in the rollercoaster for a bit, like on a back road, and the rest of the crowd around you still screams bloody murder over each little dip and rise.
"OMG IT FLASH CRASHED TO LOWER $9K AFTER GOING OVER $11!!!"
So it corrected a little like it does WEEKLY, and has done a gajillion times since its creation? Yeah, maybe get used to those "crashes", because they're actually the normal dips in the market road, and you're going to give yourself a heart attack freaking out every time the market sighs or relaxes a little after a big run.