Why should we care about crypto & blockchain technology?

"We take a product or service that is effectively being monopolised and without taking up arms or with any form of violence we decentralise that product or service and enable anybody to participate in the wealth"
--- @andrarchy Content Director of Steemit

At a family gathering recently one of my sisters asked why she should be interested in crypto, but like me she has kids & many distractions so I decided to present a more concise answer on Steemit. While most of you here will already understand the importance of what is happening in the world, you may wish to present this article to those who are not yet digesting the daily content of Steemit, which as we all know is orientated towards crypto & blockchain technology.

Centralised systems

Since the Industrial Revolution the world has been centralising. Here is a quick example I can think of from my childhood:

My sisters and I spent a part of our early lives in a village outside London which was full of family run stores: butchers, bakers, fruit & veg... all our food came from local businesses.

But then a Waitrose supermarket arrived and one by one the family stores were shut down, unable to compete. And so it is. Where once there were many now there are a few.

We are indoctrinated with the idea that life is about competition from an early age and when we grow up nothing changes. With substantial financial rewards for leading the pack, the centralisation of every industry is an inevitable outcome. One company (or a small group of companies) will always rise to the top where they generally remain dominant.

Pyramid power structures (centralised systems) are inherently destructive because those at the top will naturally wish to stay there and with almost unlimited resources and cooperation of the major industries, it has been proven time and time again that the dominant companies will abuse their power to retain control, always at the expense of the environment and the little people.

Centralised systems are inefficient, vulnerable and easily manipulated by those who control them.

Decentralised systems

The human body is a decentralised system on a cellular level.

Millions of individual cells functioning autonomously, each one a power source with the ability to reproduce itself with all the information it needs to stay in harmony with the whole. Our highly efficient (hard to kill) decentralised system would be the reason we have survived so long here and it naturally serves as a template for self sustaining systems.

Coming back to industry, let’s take a look at solar power as an example:

Technology continues to improve in this arena and so too do the DC products designed to run from solar, much more efficiently than AC products. If the governments of the world wished it we would all have solar panels on our roofs, connected up to a battery which charges all the DC products in our home. Most solar tech today is guaranteed for 25 years making it cost effective for the consumer, less wasteful and better for the environment. This would be a decentralised system and it would work very well.

The trouble is, the energy industry is not about to give up its very centralised position of control and is more than capable of manipulating any political system to protect it. Consequently we are told that solar farms are the solution; huge collecting stations which feed back into the existing grid where energy can be distributed to our homes and metered effectively by the energy companies.

The centralised distribution of energy is not only massively wasteful and needlessly expensive, it is highly vulnerable because if one power station stops running, many people are affected.

What does this have to do with cryptocurrencies?

The world is waking up to the problem I have described above and we are beginning to see a shift back to decentralised systems.

Bitcoin was born as a reaction to the last financial crisis. Sick and tired of living at the mercy of a corrupt & crumbling centralised monetary system, the group known as Satoshi Nakamoto created a digital currency which functioned outside of the banks. Direct peer-to-peer transfers permitted online transactions which didn't have to go through a financial institution.

With no middle man the system could be fast, cheap & efficient while remaining unaffected by the ongoing decline of fiat currencies.

The network is run not by a centralised banking system but by a decentralised collection of miners whose computers compete for the right to process our transactions in exchange for a small fee.

Blockchain

The key word for cryptocurrencies is BLOCKCHAIN for it represents the underlying idea very well: all our transactions are recorded chronologically in a distributed ledger, stored in blocks of information which are chained together, permanent, unchangeable and visible to all.

Bitcoin cannot be owned by anyone because it is an open source computer program, which means anyone can copy the code and adapt it as they wish.

By sharing its inner workings freely Bitcoin has spawned a digital revolution and blockchain technology is now being applied to almost every industry you can think of.

For the first time in history we have found a way to shake off the shackles of corruption and rebuild each system in a way which promotes honesty, transparency and accountability, free from control and manipulation.

Better than this, tokens with value, like stocks in a company can be issued to us if we invest in these ideas, giving us the little people a chance to benefit financially from being early investors in these new technologies which are reshaping the world as we know it.

It's all about TRUST

The bottom line is this...

Do you trust that the people sitting at the top of this pyramid have your best interests at heart?

The general unrest in the world, current state of our environment and declining eco-systems should be enough to answer this question for you. Let's face it, the system is broken and it needs rebuilding from the ground up.

So many of us today are completely reliant on banks, insurance brokers, the media, pharmaceutical drugs, governments and many other institutions with no choice but to trust the information they give us. We all know deep down that greed and corruption lurks amongst us and that everything may not be as it seems, but we accept the system presented to us because there are no viable alternatives... until now.

Steemit - decentralised social media

Just as Bitcoin is a decentralised reaction to the control system maintained by the banks, Steemit is a decentralised reaction to the control system maintained by social media companies. In case you don’t know, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit… all of them are now actively deleting content, shutting down accounts and reducing the visibility of your content if you are not singing the right song.

Information which challenges the control system is a threat to them and it is an inevitable outcome that a dying system will employ ever more draconian measures to protect itself. The latest move from YouTube is to insert ‘fact check’ titles on films they don’t agree with. See my recent post to learn more about this.

My personal friend and author of The Grand Illusion, Bendan D. Murphy contacted me just a few weeks ago to let me know that Facebook had deleted his Global Freedom Movement fan page with no warning at all.

See his article on this subject here

Such things cannot happen on Steemit because the code simply doesn't allow it and the blockchain records everything, permanently.

The Steem blockchain by the way happens to be one of the most awesome blockchains of all due to its unrivalled speed, complete absence of transaction fees and capacity for expansion, not just in terms of users but also in terms of websites which can connect with it.

For example we now have DTube which is a decentralised equivalent to YouTube and DSound, a decentralised equivalent to Soundcloud, both of which use the Steem blockchain as Steemit does.

We the users are the ones who decide if an article, video or sound file deserves recognition or oblivion and no one has the authority to censor, adjust or delete accounts. Everything posted on the Steem blockchain stays on the Steem blockchain. Permanent, unchangable & visible to all.

If you can't beat them...

It has almost been ten years since Bitcoin & blockchain were conceived and just as Hollywood have been unable to stop the peer-to-peer sharing of their films, the banks have been unable to stop the peer-to-peer sharing of a digital currency which continues to accumulate in value & popularity. Instead the banks have had no choice but to look at ways in which they can join the party and develop blockchain technology of their own.

All major industries will have seen this and board rooms around the world are full of people scratching their heads right now.

Be in no doubt, the revolution has begun...

...and it is not being televised (accurately). Because mainstream media is owned by the banks.

A quick example to demonstrate this was seen towards the end of last year when for the first time the mainstream media started singing Bitcoin's praises. Thousands of people would have felt that fear of missing out (FOMO) and invested their money at precisely the worst time, towards the end of a very speculative pump. And now the media has plenty of ammunition reporting on how much money people have lost in this ongoing 'crash' which is really nothing more than a blip in the inevitable rise of the world's first successful peer-to-peer currency.

Greed may have concentrated the power in the hands of a few and the control system may be strong, but blockchain has the ability to even out the playing field and instead of having a single entity in control, code & algorithms will run the show, giving way to a new age in which computer programs will keep us humans behaving in a much more honest fashion.

Final thoughts

When describing his vision of the future, pioneer Jacques Fresco spoke of a computer system which if given enough live-time information could accurately calculate for us the parameters outside of which us humans must not go without directly threatening our own existence here. All decisions relating to anything which affected us and our Mother Earth were to be made by the super computer.

Fresco's Venus Project is still just a dream but blockchain is the first step towards it and ultimately what it represents is our best chance at correcting the balance on this great playground known as Earth.

Let us not squander this opportunity.

Who is @samstonehill?

He was a London based filmmaker until he sold everything and set out on a barefoot journey around the world, currently based in the south of France.

He is travelling with his partner & two children and with no bank account he has been living on STEEM & crypto for over a year.

All content created for this account is 100% original (unless otherwise stated), produced by @samstonehill who invites you to use & share freely as you wish.

@samstonehill is the creator of:

@steemshop account where you can buy or sell anything you like using your steemit wallet

@steemmasters which provides FREE TUTORIALS, personal training & resteeming services. Website HERE
Contact me directly on steemit.chat if you want to know more about this

@steemholidays which encourages resort owners to offer holiday packages in Steem or SBD

@steemtv which aims to provide the best in decentralised films, exclusive to Steemit & DTube

The dailyquotes tag initiative designed to encourage steemians to share their most life changing quotes with the community on a daily basis.

The Aspiring Steemit Whales & Dolphins group on Facebook which seeks to help newcomers make the transition from Facebook to Steemit, providing them with detailed notes and personal assistance with their posts... resteeming them when he can.

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