I have been following crypto-currency's usage for a while and I am so amazed of how it has evolve!
I am going to try to picture what I have seen so far in this story. Have fun!
Chapter 1 - 10000 BTC for a Pizza
10 years ago, the legenda.., wait for it, wait for it, dary! Satoshi created gold.
He decided to name it bitcoin (obviously because gold is trademark).
3 years later, you could have bought :
- anonymously
- without the need of a finance team
- without the need of a multi-million bank infrastructure
a pizza for just 10 000 btc ($#%&$#!).
Chapter 2 - 2 BTC for some drug on Silk road
1 year later, bitcoin price take-off and sky-rocketed!
Some people may have told you that it is because of your aunt Anna who try to buy a necklace online.
She is so scared her credit card details will be stolen by some bad computer so it can buy itself a new CPU on Ebay.
So she decided to go anonymously with bitcoins.
Truth is bitcoin was mainly used to buy drugs.
I believe many of you while partying like crazy heard : "You want some drugs? It's so amazing! I bought it anonymously on Silk Road with Bitcoin!".
Politician love theses stories to take down bitcoin. Drug dealer needed to anonymized their transaction so they use bitcoin. Unfortunately, a lot of innovation start from the wrong side of the coin. Did you know that streaming did not start with Youtube but with some porn website?
You wanna see how your internet will look like in 10 years, go take a look on the dark net!
Chapter 3 : Ether will govern them all
With Bitcoin, you got the raw money.
With Ethereum, you got the money, the bank account, the bank account T&C, the reconciliation process, the insurance, the advisor (you got the idea).
Transactions are link to contracts which govern the money flow accordingly.
But the killer app - The DAO - which tried to mimic a venture capital firm with automated computing of benefits, dividend and share distribution was an epic fail.
Some smart guy actually read the contracts (no kidding) and find a hole which allows him to steal 54 millions from it.
Chapter 4 : Steem and the sharing economy
You surf the Internet to look for informations.
And more and more of theses informations are created by regular people like you and me.
Stack Overflow, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Tweeter, Instagram or Youtube, all are powered by normal people.
But none of theses platform come up with such a great ecosystem as Steemit to compensate the content creator.
You post a story, people like it, it become trendy.
Not only you but also the early upvoters will got money !
One more thing : there is no advertising.
And it is just the beginning.