More and more people are getting informed about crypto assets. And many have even tried to invest in it but because they don't know much about it, they get stuck. There are cryptoskeptics who have seen how Bitcoin is more than a trend. But these skeptics haven't fully comprehended its use as a technology.
It has the capacity to create new business models and organizational structures;
it can also solve existing political, social and economic systems.
But most importantly, it can form a foundation layer for the world wherein data is the most important commodity.
Crypto assets are allowing a new era of intense experimentation within the meeting of governance and economics. The experimentation eventually leads to failures but it also brings upon the groundwork for exponential innovations to happen.
Tokens
The application of Blockchain brought about Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin. This revolutionary nature has brought about a whole world of projects that take advantage of this “technology primitive” to create all types of different crypto assets.
A lot of crypto assets have tried to copy Bitcoin's goal to be an effective currency with different monetary policies or more advanced privacy technology. Cryptocommodities are designed to represent a specific function which is accessible to anyone who owns the cryptocommodity.
There are also security tokes, non-fungible tokens and utility tokens. These crypto assets are known as "tokens" because of the their nature as applications that run on top of decentralized computing platforms like Ethereum and Dfinity. There is a plethora of uses for the tokens. Many are attempting to "tokenize" their real world assets so that they can provide the benefits of transaction history.
Some projects are selling tokens that have an end product towards what they're building, creating an "Initial Coin Offering" as a means of fundraising and kickstarting a potential network of end users. Meanwhile some are creating scarce digital assets with "non-fungible tokens" which can grow value like art and baseball cards can.
Use of Crypto Asset Management
Bitcoin, and all other Crypto Assets, represent a new form of technology. And now that the technology exists, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Like all technologies, Crypto Assets are tools that can be used for all sorts of applications, agendas, and ideologies. The purpose of this post is not to provide an exhaustive list of potential applications for Crypto Assets, but to convince you that you should care about them because they are relevant to your passions and goals.
Just a few of the topics that come to mind when I think about applying blockchain technology to the real world:
personal privacy in a world of AI-powered algorithms
stabilizing, managing, and incentivizing the development of an energy grid powered by clean energy
strengthening property rights and providing more liquid markets for traditionally non-liquid assets
building a better welfare system or a universal basic income to reduce inequality
counteracting the spread of fake news and reducing the risk of voting fraud
banking the unbanked
eliminating tax evasion and increasing transparency about the role of money in politics
providing censorship-resistant means of communication and exchange to citizens in oppressive regimes
prediction markets for everything, accessible by anyone
building a truly inter-operable digital economy for gamers where provably-scarce digital goods can be built and exchanged across games and platforms
creating personal digital assistants owned by us,not Apple or Google, which can interact with both the digital and real world
