What’s interesting to me about the Great Crypto Crash Of 2018 …
- everyone should realize that money is a collective fantasy. As soon as we stop believing in it, any kind of currency loses its value
- decentralization has a complexity cost which is a natural barrier to entry
- decentralization expands the threat envelope which is why it’s possible for crypto millionaires to become crypto paupers in seconds, thanks to simple, well-known, and existing hacks both social and technological
- privacy in currency/payments is damaging to governmental desire for visibility, management, and taxation, so governments have a vested interest in seeing independent cryptocurrencies die
- without an economic use imperative and dead-simple idiot-proof low-or-no-cost means of exchange, currencies don’t get widespread adoption and don’t move past the innovator and early adopter slices of the population
- excessive hype kills whole sectors
- obviously greedy and stupid follow-on ICOs and token generation events created by get-rich-quick types have poisoned the well
- the world does not need 50 million currencies
Ultimately, I think all currencies that survive will be cryptocurrencies. But they’ll be nationalized or even internationalized by governmental or quasi-governmental organizations, and will be at least as easy to trade, use, and exchange as our current dollars and dinars, and most likely much easier.