This morning I was reminded of an old post extending on what I have dubbed, Workless Wealth, where people aim for a lot of gain with the minimal amount of input. While some think this is working smarter, the areas that they are looking to strike it rich enough to provide for their lives are often low-skilled and have high competition due to the near non-existent barriers to entry.
Instagram model for example, where there are thousands upon thousands of pretty people trying to get traction being pretty people. Even if they do get some decent gains, it'll never last and "being pretty" has an end date in a highly competitive area where attention shifts on a dime.
This particular post to follow however looks at the children of those who manage to do well in crypto investing and potentially make vast sums of money be being in the right place at the right time and rolling the dice. The early investors in any successful industry are going to be the largest gainers as they expose themselves to the highest degree of uncertainty and risk.
Crypto is no different and the barriers of entry to invest are much lower than many other industries as there is no equipment needed (unless mining), just a bit of capital. The people who rolled the dice and bought 100 dollars worth of bitcoin when it sat at one dollar and held, are pretty happy campers. While the potential is high and near anyone can enter, especially on a platform like Steem, it doesn't mean that everyone is suited for the ride.
This piece talks mostly from a personal perspective concerning my daughter and her potential future, something I spend a lot of time thinking about as a parent because with the quickening pace of technology, the uncertainty continues to increase. What will be best for her in 10 years, might not be in twenty or thirty.
Krypto Kids
There have always been spoiled children in this world, those born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth to families of wealth and station. While in the more distant past these were the sons and daughters of royalty and aristocracy, with the ability for more people to develop and strike it rich no matter who they are, this pool of children is growing into the new rich.
I think that this is going to set up some interesting dynamics in the future as currently (unless by winning the lottery), the people who have made large amounts of money have had to do a fair bit of work for it, take risks in investment and relationship over the space of years. In general, these people have an entrepreneurial mindset - is it genetic - I don't know.
But, the children of the newly rich are generally not far away from the ones who made the money, their parents and likely, many have watched their parents build the business and been part of the dinner table discussions that surround it. Not always, but often they will see that something has to be done in order to make that money.
I have talked about the Workless Wealth mentality several times before where people want to make massive amounts from doing very little but, what about those who don't have to do anything at all?
You never know - by 2035 she might be able to earn a living just messing about on steem! -
This is part of a comment I got on my last post where I was talking about the future of my daughter and my response is that if Steem does make it to 2025 (incidentally, around the time the inflation will be a flat 1% p.a.), she likely won't have to really work at all to earn as, the value of her account will be so high that she could set up an autovoter and sit back and live off a small weekly power down to liquids.
I really hope she doesn't do this because, what a waste...
If things go according to plan, I would have set my family up for life by that stage and the residuals possible will be more than enough to live a decent life without eating into the principle amount. As long as she is sensible, she will be fine. "Sensible" is the operative word there though as we have seen time and time again that the children of the rich are often not very practical when it comes to financial matters and instead live off their parent's success blindly and quite soon, eat away at the wealth created.
Up until now, this is a common cycle and it has been with the children of parents and grandparents who actually had to work for their business and take risks that could leave them destitute if they aren't successful - and many aren't successful, because i isn't easy.
What about the children of Crypto wealth where some chance, luck and a little risk-taking could bring a very, very, very, asymmetrical financial return. I have heard of truck drivers who bought into XRP early becoming millionaires in months. What of their kids?
The Krypto Kids.
There are going to be children born into families that have comparatively massive wealth but their parents did very little actual work to get it. Sure, there is the risk taking, the writing on Steem, the time spent etc but, is it really worth millions?
Yes it will be.
It is worth it because there is an industry in its infancy that is going to become one of the changing forces of technology in the coming decades and eventually, everyone is going to somewhat benefit from it and use it. Those who get in as investors early to any industry have to do the least work to get the most gains, even though they are taking the largest risks with their investment amounts. But, there is an asymmetry as I mentioned.
Those who bought and held Bitcoin from the start have ROI values that likely outstrip even the most successful of entrepreneurs. Likely, even those who got in early on Apple can't compete on a percentage basis - plus they had to wait 30 odd years. The founders with their hundreds of billions had to work very hard for the chance to get those hundreds of billions. A BTC miner?
It is going to be interesting to watch over the next few years as money pours into crypto projects and people who are "living in their parent's basement" suddenly are the 0.1 percenters with the buying power that can change country economics. How many Bitcoin holders will there be when it hits a million in your country? What will they pend their wealth on? It is going to have an effect on local inflation of products -just like any economic boom at a local level.
Their kids? It is going to be interesting to see what the children of basement dwellers who did little else than put a few dollars in and hodl are going to learn from their parents, isn't it? We already see the impatience and entitlement in the cryptosphere as well as the various forms of greed but, many of these people will also be raising children on the investment returns. Does hard work still matter in the cryptosphere?
On Steem it is a little different as to earn STEEM (without buying) one has to actually do something to get it. Write, play, vlog, beg... something. Even voting on the content of others for curation takes some kind of activity, even if it is just to set up a bot - the SP still needs to be there though to make it worthwhile, remember.
While I don't know what is actually going to happen, the cryptosphere is going to raise lots of questions that the society hasn't faced in quite this way before and future generations will be affected by it. It doesn't matter if it is high reward with low investment that early adopters will get or the effects of tokenization on the centralized currencies and economies - our children will have to live with our actions.
My hope is that when my daughter turns 18 (2034), I will hand over her Steem Master Key as her birthday present and it will be worth significantly more than it is today. However, that is not going to be the first contact she has with value as I plan on teaching her the things that every person should understand in this life - nothing is free. The way we raise her now as a two and a half year old helps her understand the basics. By the Key handover, I hope she has at least some of the maturity to handle it wisely. The decisions she makes as an adult are of course up to her, just as ours are up to us at this very moment.
Taking a look around, there seems to be a lot of Krypto Kids already - those who expect something for nothing and act like spoiled children. Maybe they exist regardless of the technology.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]