A lot of people feel they missed the boat when it comes to cryptocurrency - nothing could be further from the truth. The past 8, 9 years have been at most a blink of an eye when compared to what will be the lifespan of blockchain technology.
We are only at the currency phase of crypto. In the not too distant future, we will have various Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and Corporations (DAO's and DAC's) that will disrupt entire industries currently monopolized by corporate monoliths; in fact, DAO's might even replace government's role in a lot of categories.
These DAO's and DAC's will be ran using blockchain technology that will enforce a series of smart contracts. To give you an example, I could buy one one-millionth of a factory that makes spatulas. I would then automatically receive dividends monthly, weekly, even daily based on the factory's output. Or consider driverless taxis - right now it looks like Uber will have a stranglehold on driverless taxis, driverless technology period. But DAC's will make it possible for the average Joe or Jane to own a tiny share of a driverless taxi and as a result receive dividends from the various fares the taxi collects.
DAO's and DAC's are not pubicly traded yet; well, they are but not on a popular level. They will be distributed in the form of a coin or share and like any new IPO or ICO, you will be able to buy in at a super low rate. For all but $1,000 to $2,000 of investment you could potentially own enough shares of DAC's across a variety of industries and make enough money to live off for the rest of your life. What's more is that these DAC's will probably opt to pay people fair wages and respect the environment.
The fact is that DAC's are going to tap hidden human potential that otherwise would never have been realized, creating wealth all cross the world.
While there is definitely some tulip mania going on with cryptocurrency, what will remain is blockchain technology itself. Sure, the Dot Com bubble resulted in lots of businesses and individuals going under, but the Internet survived, flourished in the subsequent years. Critics will argue though that the wealth and power created from the Internet is in too few hands now... And this is unarguably true; however, with blockchain technology there is the possibility for wealth and power to be distributed to the masses
(Pets.com's mascot, the poster child of the Dot Com Bubble of the early 00's)
It's kind of like when Karl Marx argued for the people "owning the means of production." I'm not a fan of all that, but when you think about it, blockchain technology COULD actually allow the people to own the means of production. The difference with the DAC approach is that people will still earn additional money and be incentivized to work harder, innovate like they've never been able to before...
So in a nutshell, we are in for a serious RIDE and the journey hasn't even begun. So quit second-guessing blockchain technology and fasten your seatbelts!
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