THE QUICKENING

It starts slow.

A wallet here, a wallet there. Maybe somehow you get to buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin. After quite a few years, bitcoin has withstood the challenges of the world and suggested that just maybe it is unhackable in the small. China could still pull the plug, but what we see with these decentralised networks is that every attempt to censor and shut them down winds up forcing them towards a path of being even stronger. China with the closure of exchanges spurs development of decentralised exchanges.

I think it was wonderful to see IPFS used in anger for the Catelonia referendum. A great demonstration of why even in first world countries we need to be able to have free speech.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch though. Free speech comes at the cost of having the haters being able to have their say. Whether you choose to look though is your choice. With Ethereum reinventing stocks, everyone in the world can participate in helping new ventures get off the ground. There will be many many scams and cons at the start as people get taken for a ride. Then there will be outcries asking to ban everything and unleash a ton of regulation. But the scammers are the ones that don’t adhear to the regulation and the usual punishment of throwing them in jail just isn’t possible (How many spammers are behind bars?). While legislation may be too slow, the developers of the world will provide a myriad of distributed solutions that people will be able to opt into using. Like ad-blockers stopping malicious adverts, people will choose to accept ICO screeners and various (decentralised) verification systems. We are on a very exciting journey through cyberfinance that will change the world forever. This is internet 2.0. Let’s hope the machines are lenient on their makers.