After leaving the Army, I used the GI Bill to complete degrees in Finance and Economics. With an eye on a Wall Street gig, I completed a graduate degree in Statistics on a Fulbright Scholarship. My background is in econometric models and in comparative economic policy, but when I was all geared up to take a job at Deutsche, my wife asked, simply, "isn't there anything good you can do with your abilities?"
It was like she was channeling Uncle Ben.
So I ended up at a telecommunications startup, and worked on predictive models that put me somewhere between Nielsen Ratings and Edward Snowden on the creep spectrum. After we secured VC funding, I discovered Poloniex while looking for my next venture. There, 50,000 trolls like me were asking the same question - what's next for crypto? What are the price targets? Will it moon, or is it a shitcoin?
On the one hand you can't help but feel like it's the 80s again.
I'm here to tell you it's going to be more like the 70s.
Think about it. If Bitcoin is digital gold, why are we still treating it like a currency? Sure, it meets all the requirements of money. It has scarcity, it is fungible, it is highly divisible, readily transferable, and thanks to the blockchain, it's durable. But as transaction fees and transaction times increase, it's time to stop considering it as the be-all and end-all currency in the traditional sense, and start thinking of it as a reserve currency.
Which begs the question about a gap between a store of value and a medium of exchange. After all, dollars are the oil which keeps the economic engine running. If Bitcoin is gold, and it isn't the year 20, how am I supposed to get my pizza, or fill my gas tank, or pay for my mortgage?
Consider a real-world analogue: pre-1971 United States Dollars. Redeemable (in theory) for precious specie, the guy at the corner store knew that he could redeem the money I'd just given him for milk for gold if he wished. Well, now the USD is gold, Bitcoin the global reserve currency, and various altcoins the actual medium of exchange. Just like you have different currencies around the world, you'll have different mediums of exchange in different sectors.
Maybe there's a "gascoin" (or hopefully a "greencoin") for refueling your vehicle. Maybe there's a "foodcoin" for ordering pizza. Maybe there's a "mortgagecoin" for making your house payment. And just like when I visited continental Europe after visiting the UK, they'll happily take the wrong currency as payment - I can pay for gas with pizza money, as long as I pay at a five percent premium.
The point is this - behaviorally, we're already wired to operate this way. These are societal norms virtually no one is unfamiliar with.