If you’ve only heard of cryptocurrency but don’t really know much beyond that, this post is for you.
I’ll share 3 pieces of crypto tech and explain why I’m really excited about the future. In a few years they’re going to be part of our lives like social media is now.
But first.
What the media thinks crypto is
What your parents think crypto is
What the government thinks crypto is
So what is it really?
All good crypto currency represents an underlying technology innovation that will change the world as we know it. A lot like the internet itself.
The most famous one so far is Bitcoin, which was made possible by the blockchain.
Put very simply the blockchain is a chain of blocks, each of which contains data. The blockchain is always accessible and universally true.
Think about the implications of that. It removes the need to trust third parties in any transaction of any kind.
Next up Substratum. If you’ve ever been to china you know how annoying it is to have a different internet to the rest of the world.
Substratum is proposing a new web that allows any computer to host tiny portions of websites. When you want to access a particular site, your machine pings the network and they all ping you back their own little piece to be assembled.
No one can shut it down because it’s local and decentralised, split up over dozens or hundreds or thousands of machines. Hosts will earn Substrate for lending their compute power to the network.
Finally there’s IOTA. They’ve developed the 3rd generation crypto, which uses a tangle instead of a blockchain. Basically that means the more people who use the network the faster it becomes.
But the reason IOTA is interesting is because they want to be the currency for the Internet of Things. So if in future your electric car realises it’s low on battery, it can drive itself to the power point, charge up and pay for it’s own purchase using IOTA. That’s a very basic example. So think of what that means for the entire connected device economy.
It’s been a wild ride and we’re in store for many more ups and downs. But I suspect a lot more ups.