Elon Musk wants to make Twitter the largest financial institution in the word. As someone who watched Musk for years, I believe he will get there, at least in terms of the Web 2.0 world.
There is one problem he faces: he is building within the established system. This is par for the course with people like him since he benefitted to such a great degree. While disruptive, his dismissing of blockchain and cryptocurrency is monumental. Of course, with the purchase of Twitter, he basically relegated himself to a Web 2.0 world.
We are seeing finance, social media and, even, broadcast media changing before our eyes. This is enormous even before we start to mention the transition that gaming will endure. It all could feed into the system that grows exponentially. When something is permissionless, has a lot of open source options, and includes people globally, we can see a realm where the network effect takes things to enormous heights.
Web 3.0 is in the process of laying a foundation that will change many things.
FinTech On Steroids
Those who watch either technology or the financial sector realize how much the former has affected the latter. This is especially true for the banks. While they adopted it to a great degree, there was still an enormous transition.
Consider the mortgage market. We have something that was completely dominated by the banks. However, with the Internet along with smartphones, suddenly applications stepped in. Rocket Mortgage and other entities took over the market. I read that just before COVID, they had a 70% share of mortgage origination.
Another area we see this occurring is with brokerage firms. There was a time, not long ago, where commissions were charged on each stock transactions. With the introduction of the Scottrades of the world, we saw the prices drop as compared to the traditional entities.
A few years ago, the shift was made to zero trading fees. To remain competitive, most had to adopt this. Now people can trade stocks without being charged.
Demonetization is a fact when it comes to technology. FinTech made financial services cheaper (if not free). It also changes the players who are involved in different facets.
Changing Who Creates Money
The banking system is in full control of the money. They are the ones who create it. This can be our currency which, under fractional reserve banking, is handled by the commercial banks. They expand the money supply by making loans. Then we have the Eurodollar system, which is the international financing arm that is responsible for most of global trade. This is totally controlled by the financial institutions, create an array of products that all serve as collateral.
Here we see another realm which is going to be put on steroids. This means that no longer is it the exclusive domain of the banks to create money. Anyone can do it. What makes Web 3.0 so powerful is that, eventually, this will come down to a reputation based system. That means we will see the money creators being people we trust. This will be the subject of an upcoming article.
Once we alter the face of money, everything changes. No longer are we limited by the existing financial system. That is exclusionary with most of the financial institutions operating as gatekeepers. This creates a system filled with friction.
We end up with a system that is more expensive and slower than it needs to be. The original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto was expanded. We now have the ability to penetrate every area of finance and do it in ways that allows people new access to money.
Web 3:0: An Inclusive Financial System
Hive is showing us what is possible.
There is usually one way people get money: they work for it. The majority of the world exchanges time (or services) for money. We see how this can lead to enabling one to have "money making money" yet there has to be some resources first.
With Hive, one has the opportunity to get rewarded for social media activities. Consider for a second how revolutionary that is. People can simply engage in different behaviors, ones that are common across most platforms and start the process of resource acquisition.
Here we see the feeder system. It is a rather simple concept considering how common social media is these days. The major difference is the monetization. Through the process of tokenization, we now see how things are changed. Each activity potentially has a financial component to it.
Of course, once resources are acquired, then we are now dealing with an alternative financial system. Over time, we are likely to see a variety of sectors built out, incorporating these assets into other financial services.
Another way of looking at this is from the asset under management perspective. We know that Blackrock is the leader in this realm with an estimated $10 trillion AUM. How much can there be in the cryptocurrency industry and under Web 3.0.? In other words, how much can decentralized finance (DeFi) create?
Obviously, this is almost 10 times the market capitalization of crypto. However, that will not always be the case. The above mentioned entry via social media can have a profound impact. Suddenly, monetary values are directly tied to network effects. Consider that for a second. We have the ability to increase valuation simply based upon usage.
This is what Web 3.0 is offering. Consider the growth that can take place over the next half decade as projects start to enjoy more users and infrastructure provides more offerings.
All of this, in my view, leads to a time when people will be getting resources through action and able to utilize many different financial services for further gain.
Since much of this is permissionless, as well as open source code, the existing system is going to have a tough time keeping up. That is the difference maker as I see it.
In the end, this is going to take over the entire financial world.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
gif by 
logo by 