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Now that is something I like to talk about.
Here's may take.
Where do I begin? First of all, if you haven't heard of cryptocurrencies before now then you are either a very senior citizen or you've been living under a rock in the past few years.
Before we can talk about the future of money, like everything else in life, we have to remember the past and where we came from.
When it comes to money, we've really come a long way. Initially, it was trade by batter, though it helped, it came with the problem of double coincidence of need. Then came the point in history when humanity witnessed a then advanced technology called the unit of exchange (money) which came along and disrupted trade by batter and replaced it with gold coins. Later on, gold coins were made extinct by another disruptive product called paper money. Again, paper money was overthrown by credit cards. Can you see the trend? Following this trend, isn't it logical to assume that cryptocurrencies will replace fiat?
Since the dawn of civilization, technology has been employed to make man's life easier. Fiat currencies is failing in that task. It is way I call dealing with fiat and I quote "the old way". Fiat transactions are slower and more complicated. In order to make an international bank transfer, you need things like swiftcodes and the entire transaction takes 5days to complete. In some countries, the government even imposes restrictions on how much you can send out.
Its even more complicated to set up mediated payments. In order to buy goods or services overseas but you don't trust the merchant then you need a bank to write you a letter of credit then the merchant needs a bill of laden and on and on. The entire process can take up to 10working days to put in place. Its like sending a letter with snail mail.
Now compare all that to cryptocurrency transactions and blockchains. Its easier to transfer currency from on wallet address to another across continents within minutes.
Its even more efficient to set up crypto escrow transactions With the help of websites like setescrow.com.
I can buy goods and services from any part of the world from Nigeria with a secure, trustless escrow transaction set up within minutes. I don't even need to know the merchants name, tax ID, social security number etc. Thanks to this new technology, all I need to do is transfer funds to a multi-sig wallet and click release funds after I receive my purchase. That's the true meaning of a borderless world.
Cryptocurrency is the future of money for a very simple reason. ITS BETTER.
That is the reason why Facebook survived and MySpace failed because Facebook is better. And that the reason why steemit will overtake Facebook. Steemit is simply better. Everything about steemit is better than Facebook especially the communities within these platforms. Communities in steemit are better than communities on Facebook. Communities like #steemjet #wafrica are more supporting, encouraging and welcoming than anything I've seen in Facebook.
That's part of the reason I spend less time on Facebook.
That's why it also hurts me to see steem being treated me like an asset than like a medium of exchange. I dislike seeing steem being pulled apart by the bulls and bears speculating in exchanges.
If I had my, I would pull steem out of all but 4 exchanges and focus on promoting steem to merchants to encourage ecommerce and online marketplace integration. I would love to see more and more online stores adopting steem as a currency and accepting it as payment.
In conclusion, I can't say with certainty what the future of money will be neither can I say what the future of money won't be.
Whatever the future holds, I'm convinced that fiat and central banks have no place in it.
