This is NOT financial advice, it’s just common sense.
The Intro:
When was the first time you ever heard about Cryptocurrency?
To my surprise, when I recently bumped into an old friend of mine at a crypto meetup, his first time was back in 2011 when he had bought Bitcoin to use as currency to buy drugs on the dark web. Unfortunately for him, he was (at the time) a typical broke student with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, so he didn’t have much to invest. But got me thinking just how far Bitcoin has come in such a short time.
From being labelled in its early days as a Ponzi Scheme Internet Coin used to fund illegal activities to what is now the official legal currency of El Salvador — The phrase from music artist Drake “Started from the bottom now we here” could not be more appropriate.
Here are 5 reasons why Cryptocurrencies are here to stay and here to grow.
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The Innovation:
1 — INSANE growth rates:
The Cryptocurrency adoption rate in recent years has been nothing short of astounding. In the 8.5 years since April 2013’s Bear Market low valuing the crypto industry at just under $1 Billion, the crypto market has added a non-linear average of $250 Billion per year to the industry’s market cap, making the total current valuation a whopping $2.1 Trillion United States Dollars (at the time writing).
According to a recent study, the total estimated number of Crypto users worldwide is currently 106 Million people — Just 2.05% of the current population that has internet access.
For reference, the worldwide population with access to the internet grew from just 30.2% of the world’s population in 2011 to 65.6% in 2021 — An average of 117% year over year, with an estimated 2.7 billion people still without access to the internet. Needless to say, if crypto continues on the growth path it’s currently on, it will become a widely used technology in the coming years.
Image above shows current crypto adoption comparable to the Internet in 1997. Specifically showing growth of the internet measured in users from 1995–2021 with overlapped user count comparison. Full Chart image at https://ibb.co/V2yjB7S. Chart by InnovationStew. Internet stats taken from internetworldstats.com. Crypto users stats taken from Crypto.com.
2 — Decentralization is the next step in the evolution of civilization:
To better understand this, let’s take a quick tour of the history of the Modern Age (1500CE — 2021CE Present). The transition into the Modern Age arguably began with the deadliest pandemic of all time: The Black Death, also known as the 2nd Bubonic Plague, which killed up to 50% of the population in many cities.
Not long after the Plague, the colonization of the Americas began, and simultaneously, major advances were made in science. These scientific advances paved the way to the Industrial Revolution, which then paved the way to the Technological Revolution we are currently in now.
In this Modern Age period, the world population grew exponentially from just 450 Million into now 7.9 Billion people, and with this growth came new economic models, political structures, and working-class cultures.
In the past decade, the internet has enabled entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote workers to thrive in what has been labelled a “gig-economy.” This gig economy however, is the just tip of the iceberg in what a decentralized economy looks like, and cryptocurrency investors are at the forefront of those in line to benefit from this rapidly growing industry.
(For more on decentralized economies, read my article here)
Image of a Bitcoin by Sinisa Maric from Pixabay
3 — Supply Transparency:
If you’ve heard about the rapid increase in the monetary supply of the US Dollar, you’ll have likely heard about the growing concerns surrounding Hyper Inflation and the threat of a Fiat Currency Collapse.
In many cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, the Inflation Rate has been pre-determined from the very beginning and such information has been made publicly available. With this, you know the exact yearly coin inflation rate and the exact total number of coins that will ever exist in the cryptocurrency.
It is important to note that NOT all cryptocurrencies are transparent about their supply inflation rate — Do your own research accordingly.
Image of M2 United States Monetary Supply — https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS
4 — Your Keys, Your Coins:
Decentralized currencies like Bitcoin provide the owners 100% control over their wealth. The only person with power and access to your coins is the person with the keys to access your crypto wallet; Needless to say, the only person that should be is YOU. This ecosystem is made possible by Key Cryptography and Decentralized Machine Consensus systems.
Image of keys by MasterTux from Pixabay
5 — Financial Inclusion. Banking the unbanked:
If you’re reading this, it probably doesn’t affect you directly, but it will affect you indirectly. You clearly have access to the internet, and like most people, you are probably paying for that internet from money sitting in your bank account — This is normal for 6 Billion people, but it might surprise you that even today, 1.7 Billion people do not have a bank account at a financial institution or a mobile money provider.
This financial exclusion severely limits their capability to contribute to society. Cryptocurrencies change this. Anybody can have a Bitcoin address, even if they don’t have internet access. This makes Cryptocurrency, not just the only banking option for these 1.7 Billion people but also the BEST option — The result: a more inclusive, more efficient global economy.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Summary:
There are many ways blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are shaping our future, in fact, the industry is growing so fast that new ideas and uses for this technology are surfacing seemingly almost every day. It’s no surprise the Blockchain industry is being labelled the Digital Gold Rush. Speculators have forecast the industry’s value at $200 Trillion by 2030, however, where it will be 10 years from now, only time will tell.
Image by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
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5 Reasons Why Cryptocurrencies ARE the Future was originally published in The Capital on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
