Getting Into Crypto: What is it All GOOD For?

I have been a longtime PeakD user, and that has been where I have posted the vast majority of my Hive content for as long as it has existed.

But — in the interest of supporting a potentially massive initiative on Hive — I decided to post one from INLEO today.

Has it Really Been That Long?

In a way, I'm marking the fact that it's been more or less 10 years since the idea of cryptocurrency first came across my desk. Or, at least, since I started paying attention to it.

We were having a birthday party at our house, and my sister-in-law was all excited about something she was calling this "new online money" that could potentially change the world.

She was telling me about it because she'd determined that since I "knew something about computers" it would be right up my alley. I'd heard about Bitcoin before and had dismissed it as "cool, but unlikely to get much traction." But I decided to give this Bitcoin thing a second look while remaining a little skeptical about it.

I wasn't so much skeptical about its viability, as I was about it never making it out of niche status as some kind of "digital nerd money" that required a very high level of technical expertise to effectively mean anything and have functional utility.

Waiting for Practical Use Cases...

But I did really like the idea of being able to hold just one currency asset and sell some of my online stuff while sitting here in my house in Washington State, and using that same money without having to incur exchange rates and currency fluctuations buy a cup of coffee when I go to visit my godmother in Australia. That just seemed like a really cool idea.

And that is how I thought it might work out.

When I found Hive's predecessor I was no stranger to content creation sites that reward people for content, but I thought it was cool that he was a blogging venue that rewarded people with this digital money.

But, from the very start, I thought the coolest thing about this would again be to transcend borders and have something like a combination eBay, Amazon marketplace, Craigslist type thing except denominated in cryptocurrency. That would just be so cool!

Not Exactly...

Of course, none of that has really happened. Yes, I can already hear a chorus of "yes, buts" arise, but the simple fact is I can't walk into a café in Australia and buy a latte and pay with Bitcoin or for that matter any other currency. What I can do is walk in and pay with a debit card that draws on that crypto asset, but we're still solidly stuck in fiat land. So we've gotten pretty much nowhere there.

When did you last see some kind of "Crypto accepted here" signage on a business door?

As for having a giant peer-to-peer marketplace on Hive, all denominated in Hive and HBD, well that certainly hasn't happened either. In fairness, some people have tried but there's been very little interest in it.

So I sit here and look at all that and I find it really ironic that the entire Cryptosphere has been usurped by the very thing Crypto was started to get away from: old-fashioned "Wall Street Greed," where everyone is busy "number watching" and the wealth ends up in the hand of just a few power brokers.

Okay, so I'll grant you that now we have decentralized greed instead and that's probably pretty cute and clever. Nonetheless, the entire idea of it being cryptocurrency has been pushed aside by the idea that this is actually just another investment medium with which we can make a whole bunch of money with a little effort as possible.

So much for the idea of having a successful crypto-based business, selling my paper collectibles. Nobody cares, in that way.

I'm not saying that I can't use this digital money, I'm just saying the emphasis as it relates to crypto has completely shifted away from it actually being a utilitarian medium of exchange to the world, to just being a vehicle for filling your pockets.

Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way, or through the right lens of perception, but it seems to me that nothing much has actually changed. I'm still looking at the situation, scratching my head and going "what do I USE this stuff for?" I can't buy a cup of coffee or cat food, and most supposedly "functional" use cases have gradually been turned into investment derivatives rather than actual uses.

The Games People Play!

"We have this great crypto/blockchain based game!" And then the world piles in and stakes their tokens to earn money, rather than actually playing the game!

A lot of people point to the NFT phenomenon as a "use case" but I take that with a grain of salt. Sure, there is authentic art being purveyed around here in NFT form, but the vast majority of NFTs are essentially marketing gimmicks designed to put money in people's pockets far more than they are about actually creating unique digital art. To be honest, the late NeonMob Art website did a better job of developing the idea of digital scarcity than most NFT venues.

Although, I suppose, I should take off my hat to somebody who figured out that they could take pixelated computer icons that date to Windows 3.1 and declare them "art" and sell them for thousands of dollars! Which sort of points back to the reality that it's really not about the art, itself, is it?

No, I'm not writing this particular article has some kind of global condemnation of the Cryptosphere, I'm writing it more as a potential illustration of why a lot of people still don't take cryptocurrency seriously. Well, look around you; look at what we've created? Or rather, look at what we haven't created.

Don't get me wrong, I'm here on Hive and happy to be a participant on this new frontier, as things unfold. I get to do something I really like — which is to write and be part of a social content site — and I even get to possibly earn a little pocket money for my efforts. This enables me to set aside a small savings account that (if things actually go well in the long run) might have a bit of value somewhere five or ten years down the road.

And if it all turns into pretty much nothing? Well, then at least I will have had a good time writing and getting to know some interesting people who are part of a leading ddge technology!

Much of what happens around here though, reminds me of much what I used to experience when I worked in the IT industry some 30 years ago. Tech savvy people would get super excited about some new thing they invented which perhaps was cool when looked at in a vacuum, but usually fell apart when you asked that one critical question: "Yeah but what can I actually DO with this in the real world?"

Which, I guess, brings me to the conclusion of my line of thinking here, which is that I really hope the Cryptosphere finds some kind of solid value proposition that will support it in the long run and stands aside from the perception of just being "a wildly risky and speculative exotic investment vehicle."

Because if we don't have that, all we essentially have is the equivalent of people getting excited about running down to the bank and exchanging $20 bills for $5 bills and being fired up about the fact that they can DO that. Sure you can... but what use is that in terms of the real world? It might be fun, and it might be entertaining but what tangible use is it?

And now I shall climb back into my cave and go back to writing about psychology and gardening!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2024-04-07 18:37 PDT
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Posted Using InLeo Alpha