You might know that Bitcoin is money for the Internet, a system where no one person has the power to change the ledger. What you might not know is, why should you care? How is it going to help people escape poverty, find prosperity, to hold governments accountable, to push banks to reform or be forgotten? Let’s talk about the potential that cryptocurrency has to change the future for regular people like you.
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This episode of Cryptonomics is brought to you by good questions. I’ve told you karma is real. As a human being, questions are your karma. Many people have improved their quality of life because they had the courage and the persistence to ask the right questions – starting with “what do I have to be grateful for right now?”
Personally, I am grateful for my listeners, and everyone who enjoys my content enough to share it.
When I first started to put the puzzle pieces together about Bitcoin, I realised it was similar to Napster or Bittorrent, these file sharing services which people used to share music and movies, giving more power to the people who consume them, putting pressure on the industries to better serve their them. I saw that Bitcoin could put pressure on commercial banks, central banks and governments. It wasn’t clear to me what the effects would be, but with time they’re becoming clearer.
Let’s talk about the big one. How could crypto end war?
Crypto ends war
Ron Paul said, it’s no coincidence that the 20th century was dominated both by central banking and war. Without central banks, wars are normally short. The government has to collect extra taxes to pay for the war, and eventually they either run out of money, or the people get tired of a constant low standard of living.
With modern central banking, states just keep borrowing and printing money, and it’s hard for people to even know that war has something to do with their money being worth less or the economy failing.
Unlike dollars, Bitcoins are limited by software and consensus of the network. That means a state can’t just keep printing more of them to sustain the war on terror. They would have to ask for the money. They would have to find ways to serve the people, justify their existence, and any war that they wanted to wage.
Now we have a very real choice. If we want to withdraw our support from the dollar and other fiat currencies based on violence, we don’t have to convince people to accept silver coins; we can ask them to accept electronic cash. That is, as soon as crypto gets a decent user experience.
Crypto ends poverty
We have these central banks borrowing money, state treasuries printing money. That’s one key reason our dollars, pounds and bolivares don’t buy as much as they did last year. Just like if you flood the market with bananas and the price of a banana goes down, when the Fed floods the market with dollars, the price of a dollar goes down.
This means that saving money is for suckers. There’s no reason to save when you know your money is going to be worth less the following year. Instead, it encourages people to spend money on things they don’t need, or even invest in things they haven’t fully researched.
When you have sound money, money with a limited supply, money chosen by the people rather than imposed by a state, it will become worth more over time. The purchasing power will reflect advances in efficiency.
Saving money will be meaningful, and it will even be cool to save money. If people can save even 0.5% of their paycheque, that will make a huge difference in the long run. First they leave poverty, then they become prosperous.
Crypto brings prosperity
In a lot of developed nations, people are afraid to start businesses. Regulations drive up the cost to start a business, and then people don’t want to risk that much money. Imagine a world where you could save for 5 or 10 years and retire. You would be much more willing to save for a year, chase your dream and start an enterprise, because you know you don’t have much to lose anyway.
So we’ll see a lot more entrepreneurs. People will try out many ideas, some of them will even work, they will become rich and so will the world, for seeing their ideas come to life.
Then there’s the process of raising capital. It’s not easy to raise a million dollars. With the advent of ICOs, it’s a lot easier. Now people with crazy ideas can fund their sci-fi projects. Of course there’s a lot of scams that go with that, and with time there will be greater accountability measures – keep the sci-fi projects focused on Mars.
The other side is making money as a speculator. Before ICOs, only qualified investors or millionaires could put money into a project in the early stages. Peter Thiel bought 10% of Facebook in 2004 for $500k. At IPO, 8 years later, those shares were worth about $500 million. It was impossible for someone to buy $10 worth of Facebook in 2004. Now, it could happen with a new project, so now these kinds of 1000x gains are available to regular people.
I remember when I saw the first $10 I put into Bitcoin turn into $1000. I said to myself, I’m probably never going to see ridiculous returns like that again. But now, I say the good times are just beginning.
Thank you!
If you didn’t know why people were excited about crypto, I hope you now see that it is about real change in the world. Please leave a comment, what’s the biggest change you picture happening as a result of Bitcoin. Thanks for sharing this video with your friends so they can start to get the bigger picture.
Please note, if you’re subscribed on YouTube, starting with the next video I’ll be publishing Cryptonomics on my old channel, The Paradise Paradox. Getting those first 1000 subscribers on YouTube isn’t easy, so I’m going to go back and leverage the audience I already had there, and I hope you’ll join me.
Thank you for listening. Stay grateful!
Important Links
Bitcoin vs Political Power – Stefan Molyneux
The Paradise Paradox on YouTube
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Cryptonomics – Nobody cares about cryptocurrency
