The Importance of Cryptocurrency is Clearer Than Ever

Cryptocurrency has been having a booming year in 2021. As of yet the price of Bitcoin is now hovering around 55k/BTC despite a complicated backdrop of big tech issues and the SEC‘s wrangling with regulation. But this is where decentralized networks bring some clarity. Like your inner voice that tells the older generation parents I’m good on my own. DeFi is the next frontier in our great odyssey towards financial freedom from the worrisome financial parents of yore.   

Defi consist of more complicated applications to suit the needs of the crypto holders’ reality. Ignoring the obvious application of currency exchanges, let’s move on to the arguably more exciting applications: Stablecoins, lending platforms, “Wrapped bitcoin” WBTC, and prediction markets. Each one of these applications is something that adds significant value to the currency you choose to hold. And if they pull it off you stand to earn a hell of a lot in the long run.

• Stablecoins are currencies that are tied to an asset outside of cryptocurrency. This is usually one that is backed by a centralized government like the dollar or the euro in order to stabilize its price.
• Lending platforms use smart contracts to replace intermediaries such as banks who manage lending as middlemen.
• WBTC’s enable holder’s to earn interest on the bitcoin they lend out via he decentralized lending platforms I described above.
• Then there are prediction markets which allow for the efficient betting on the outcome of future events such as elections where the goal is once again to cut out the middle men i.e. talking heads on the mainstream news might be out of a job.

Providing Unbiased Financial Services through DeFi

The efficiency and growing use of crypto under the DeFi applications reinforce the utility of these currencies and proof that they are indeed storing value. Although there are impediments within the boundaries of our boarders that will make this progress into the future quite difficult. Here in the US government regulation on the tech is overwhelmingly slow, obtuse, and exacerbating to effectively deal with the fast-evolving challenges that are highly complex across technical and human dimensions.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Cannot be Censored Easily

Censorship and centralized control over other networks have become increasingly problematic from the private sector as well. From the removal of web services from cloud providers to the more visible social media affront by big tech in the wake of the capitol building raid. This context creates a golden opportunity for Defi right now as posits

“Decentralized social media is an even larger and more critical opportunity. As tragic as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, it’s soon going to be squelched by vaccines. There is no vaccine for badly designed social media networks on the horizon. The negative impact of Big Tech-controlled social media on humanity has far greater destructive potential than the coronavirus pandemic.”  

Ben Gorzel of Coindesk

Reducing Reliance on Big Tech

And this control of crypto by big tech is just as bad as government control. The narrow-minded machine learning algorithms are indented to maximize shareholder value. To make the “users” (an awful term I actively seek to avoid) feel warmer and fuzzier as they play with Tiktok rather than solve some of the more pressing matters of the world i.e. COVID. But if the government’s aim is to reduce progress and investment it should continue its regulation of everything. A fear many of us investors have. See the ingenious graph below that Business Insider put together.

Yet the even more Robinhood’s decision to suspend trading on select securities is another critical example of how consumers can be misled or misinformed of when certain restrictions will be help. This is a two-sided coin, where these types of controls may be used to protect the consumer, but may conversely hurt the consumer. Herein lies another impediment.

The faster our government moves to identify the benefits of the applications of blockchain rather than press Reddit for account information of people that colluded on Game Stop. the faster the value of the currencies will rise and the value added to society. Many see the rise of passive income with Defi as a reason for the “great resignation”.

The importance of cryptocurrency enables us imagine a future that is beyond the congressional hearings (witch hunts), geeky financial gambling, and money laundering AMEN.