If you want to experience the power of disruption in Bitcoin era, the best is available at www.coinmarketcap.com. Today, there are over 700 crypto-currencies mentioned on this site and over 584 are trading currencies out of them (as on 2nd July, 2016) and that too in a very short period. After the launch of bitcoin in 2009, there were only seven currencies till April 28, 2013 but since then, new currencies have kept on listing every week and sometimes every day. It is not only the number of currencies that is important but the rising market cap is also very critical. In the end of April 2013, the total market cap was $1.6 billion out of which bitcoin alone had a share of over 95% but today it is over $ 12 billion out of which bitcoin has a share of around 80%. A larger pie of coinmarket cap has been gained by other crypto-currencies. Today, there are five currencies with a market cap of over $100 million, 22 currencies with a market cap of over $10 million, 67 currencies with a market cap of over $1 million and 186 currencies with a market cap of over $100,000. All this has happened in a period of less than three years and it seems that things have just begun.
Why so many currencies? Initially, I thought that the most of them would eventually die as I was not able to see beyond bitcoin. I expected many of them to be only pump-and-dump schemes but the number kept on rising. I still resisted a rethink. Then, even their market cap kept on rising. I still was unsure. Then, their number of nodes kept on increasing and number of transactions also rose. Then, one day, ether crossed a market cap of $1billion and ether transactions have crossed 30,000 per day and they are doubling every three months. After Project Ethereum, Dash, Monero, Maidsafe, Agoras Token, Emercoin, Factom, Steem, Synereo and StorjCoin are coming out with unique value addition models. If Dash and Monero are privacy-centric currencies, Maidsafe and StorjCoin are building alternative public infrastructure of internet. Agoras Token with Tauchain, are promising to bring Artificial Intelligence on to blockchains. If we are to find which is the next crypto-currency as promising as bitcoin, it would require a great knowledge about these 700 currencies with an in-depth awareness of their issuing models and services offered by the organizations behind them.
When Satoshi Nakamoto invented peer-to-peer electronic cash, little was expected that it would unleash a Cambrian explosion of much better currencies but why are people building so many different types of currencies? Only pagans would have invented currencies like this some five thousand years back. Are we moving into an age where value will be as diversified as it was thousands of years back? Are we venturing into e-barter era? If yes, what will happen to monopolist regimes of value? Will dollar keep on monopolizing global trade and services despite sitting on a huge debt mountain? Will the centralized databases of nations, banks and corporations not stop this alternative value formation? The answer is whatever they may try, they cannot stop the change. The fundamental reason is that crypto-currency movement is not just an alternative idea that looks for support from some government or a big organization. It is not a concept that can be patented or closed inside the legal monopolies of nation-state.
It is unique because it is like 700 new public limited companies that have been listed in the global market without the mediation of any stock exchange, merchant banker or a ministry of corporate affairs. All the shares of these companies are actually crypto-tokens which global public have started using as currencies. Once they are launched, they cannot be closed. Blockchain technology ensures the safety of these ventures. Just download an app or software and you are creating a currency there and then. Bitcoin has nearly 8000 nodes across 90 countries. With the help of 21 Inc, people are earning satoshis through consumer pool mining. Ether has over 6000 nodes across 50 countries; just download Aleth One app from the website of Project Ethereum and your computer becomes a money creation machine as if it were a central bank. And not just that, this is also true of many other currencies. You can do the same by downloading the blockchains of Dash and Monero too. The beauty of monetary design behind them is that all the shares or crypto-equities can be further sub-divided e.g. bitcoin can be divided into 100 million satoshis, ether can be divided into 1000 finneys, 1000000 szabos and even further up to 18 decimal places. Just an amount of 10 bitcoin can be used to mark every residential and commercial property of the world using colored coin technology. One ether can be subdivided for every human being on the earth and still, it would be left for animals and birds.
Thousands of programmers are running these programs in dozens of countries. Nobody knows for sure how many are creating new money at numerous locations. No government can actually stop this because this is happening so fast and in such a diversified way that it is beyond control. It is the rise of crypto-currency perma-culture unlike that of fiat money monoculture. Repression is possible only in monoculture-driven orders. Somebody may think that these currencies will die or they are a scam but the important thing to understand is that they are all global and peer-to-peer currencies. They can easily be embedded into any kind of users’ network. Microsoft has already integrated multiple crypto-currencies like Ether, Ripple, Emercoin, Factom, Monero, Radium and others on its Azure platform through a new service called Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS). This would provide critical infrastructure support on an industrial scale. If we imagine the number of million-users network, there would be many like those of messaging app-based networks of Whatsapp, WeChat, Line, Snapchat, Hike and many like that; there would be online payment networks like Paytm, Alipay, Snapcash and so on; there would be online shopping networks, email networks, insurance policy holders’ network, banking networks, university students’ networks and so on. Every network would eventually tend to transform into native user base into native payment networks. Whether they do it by pegging crypto-currencies with fiat currencies or they do it in some other way, there are over 10,000 kinds of ‘million-users’ networks with overlapping user base. So, not just 700, there would be possibility of thousands of more crypto-currencies. Once people start using them as crypto-tokens for services and utilities, they would automatically be assimilated in consumer life.
When would that happen? This is possible anytime soon because 3G and 4G smartphone user base in increasing by over one billion new additions every year. It is an unprecedented historical change that will enable people talk peer-to-peer bypassing traditional mediating institutions. So, in such an age, the function of money creation and distribution will get decentralized completely and that would drive the acceptance of these currencies in a big way. Anybody can download an app or software and become an unofficial version of central bank in this Bitcoin era. This would be the time when humanity liberates itself from fiat money plutocracies of today.