My dad and I have had a healthy running discussion on the nature of cryptocurrency going on 6 months now.
It’s an excellent counterpoint to much of the high hopes, belief and evangelism I engage in both personally and absorb from others.
These started out as arguments at first, fueled by a bit too much drink, his wanting to protect my little family from ruin and my wanting to prove that these technologies truly are incredible game changers. Lately they’ve become fun and engaging debates and have influenced me in many helpful ways.
With the dawning of a new year and closing of a great visit home, we had a lively one last night
Dynamism reached a pitch when we batted back and forth a scenario close to my heart from life-changing time spent in Africa in my youth: “If you lived in a hypothetical African country who’s local currency is going the way of the wheelbarrow, would you rather have $1000 dollars worth of crypto or a $1000 USD.” He felt strongly you would want the mighty greenbacks. My position was sure, but you likely would not have either unless you were somehow forexing your subsistence salary every day or were an early crypto adopter, but that a relative could send you 1000 crypto instantly for free. If the local currency was suddenly useless, why wouldn’t a population that took heartily to cellular text-based money exchanges very rapidly embrace crypto wallets for buying everything from maize meal to a new car?
Reaching a playful deadlock, I blurted out, “Well, let’s bet a bitcoin!”
And with that we designed a bet that if a certain cryptocurrency is worth more than at least 10% of it’s current value five years out, he’ll hit me with the equivalent of one bitcoin in USD at today’s prices. And if it’s worth less, I’ll give him that same amount in USD on January 1, 2023.
We both felt good about the bet. It’s by far the biggest bet I’ve ever made in my life (not counting investing in some of my early films, which luckily all seemed to pay off).
His overriding point in these conversations has come to be that buying tokens equates to a game of musical chairs. When the bubble pops and they all go to zero, don’t be one one of the floor droppers.
And that’s fair
Perhaps not so much the zero part, but corrections will continue to abound. Every way I look at it, buying speculative cryptos doesn’t give you any true ownership of an underlying asset, a piece of the digital highway the token represents, or even the tech itself which is largely open source. It’s a new paradigm. You’re buying stake in a network that will either prove to be insanely successful or won’t. And that has inherent risk. And the inherent possibility of reward.
If anyone has a better explanation of what you own beyond stake in a utility/security that has some underlying asset value I’m not identifying I’m all ears, and will be super helpful the next time I talk with my Dad ;-)
But regardless of underlying assets, what about the global game?
One thing that has became clear in these conversations is just how much trust my dad’s generation continues to put in nation-backed fiat. From my prospective, and certainly for millennials a few years younger, our trust in elected government (and the Big Brother 5 shadow government) is quickly eroding. This doesn’t have to be an irreversible trend. Hell, Apple just finally admitted to throttling us after all these years. Maybe the power base’s best counter to distributed ledgers they don’t control taking hold is becoming more transparent themselves, but they’ve got a long way to go.
From a global protective the industrialists view continues to discount how much of an impact those of us in this global village who have been downtrodden or overlooked will have on the new digital currency economy. So I’m betting on Africa, South America, Asia and all emerging economies that can suddenly get in on the bigger game without a handicap. And I’m betting that at least some of these incredible blockchain techs we’re all experimenting with, coming to love, waiting impatiently for confirmations on, hodling, fuding, dumping and evangelizing, will change the world.
It’s an expensive bet. It could all go to zero.
Somehow I think it won’t.
Wanna join the fun?
What coin did my dad and I bet on? First person to guess correctly gets 3 Steem. I’d make it more, but this $h!t is mooning and I’ve gotta save all other proceeds from this post to buy my dad drinks and carry on the conversation!
Yours In The Chain,
Doug
UP NEXT A CONVERSATION WITH @Andrarchy about just what owning crytpo tokens represents…
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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