Cryptocoins and You - The Incoming Age of Quantifying - A re-review
As i think this medium will have more exposure, and the topic is also more "local", i will paste here this article i wrote back in 2014. I hope you like it.
THE PREMISE - CRYPTOCOINS PRESENT
When Bitcoin became mainstream in the aftermath of 2012 (And i mean "mainstream" in a nerd level way), i became interested as i am with every kind of money and wealth exchange. I bought some, later sold some, got some remorse two years later, you know how it works. Still, it was great so i was able to get a hold of the structure and the basic ideas of what is a "Cryptocoin" and how it works.
The releasing of Litecoin first, and then a myriad of what have been called "altcoins" was something expected. The technology/programming is reasonably accesible and the market in 2013 and beyond is really into it. But somehow, the ever growing forums of discussion and convention panels talking about cryptocurrencies are getting stalled, asking themselves the same question in one form or another:
Now what?
As it usually turns out, a small development can be the answer to this. And it comes from New York. From all places. Well, and also from Denmark. Actually an Asian-Dannish guy. Whatever.
Ladies and Gentlemen, a brilliant economic mastermind.
Joe Weisenthal is the Executive Editor of Business Insider, and is safe to say one of the most active econonomic reporters all over the internet, with nearly 160,000 messages and 60,000 followers in his twitter account.
He is well known for being outspoken in his economic views, and has been hit tons of times by the Goldbugs, ZeroHedgers , Bitcoiners, et al, as he is a firm believer in the current fiat economic system, and a praiser of the last head of the Fed Ben Bernanke. But he has undergo a transformation about his views on the cryptocurrencies. From a quite critic and humorous approach to a different and interested review of the system.
Which leads, finally, to my take.
One month ago, he started the development with an (apparently danish) coder named Guan of his own personal cryptocurrency, the Stalwart Buck (SBX) , based on the meme coin Dogecoin and with several humoristic treats, from the ticker of the coin (same than Starbucks, no more, no less) to the official denomination of each SBX unit as a Billion Stalwart Coins, so is "easy for everyone to become billionaire" , relating also to one of the most famous meme boosted by Weisenthal, the Trillion Dollar Coin solution to the Debt Ceiling drama back in 2013.
But this is not another lowball meme altcoin. Because:
".. this is an attempt to create something of real value that serves an economic purpose.
Once every month, Guan and I will go out to get Korean barbecue — our favorite food to eat together — and invite a third person along who wants to talk about economics and technology (two of our favorite subjects). Of course, to buy your way into this dinner, you'll have to pay using Stalwartbucks. Thus, unlike Bitcoin, we're instantly creating a floor in the value of the coins by dint of the fact that they'll be redeemable for something of real value.
Furthermore, I plan to auction off one post a month, where I will write on the topic of your choice: Again, you'll have to pay in Stalwartbucks.
And hopefully it's not just me. Other Twitterers, writers, pundits, and so forth will be encouraged to help create a thriving ecosystem whereby people can redeem their Stalwartbucks. "
This is Key.
Acting like a Central Bank, the issuer of the coin have a value added good that will support his coin. Like the Fed grants you that you will be able to pay your taxes, food, gas etc between US borders with US dollars, Weisenthal grants you a meeting and some time of his work in echange of some billion stalwartbucks.
I myself plan to win one of those auctions, and make him feature the small city i currently live in with an in-depth commentary about industry, main economic drivers and future. Valladolid, Spain, featured in Business Insider.
THE AGE OF QUANTIFYING
So, what would stop us all from having our own cryptocoin?
Some steps have been done. http://coingen.io/ Is a web in which, for a mere 0.05 BTC (less than $50) you can have a personalized mirror of the dogecoin framework, for you to create a pool, mine, distribute and promote freely.
But this is only the beginning. The first obstacle is the evident user-unfriendly environment. All this crypto-stuff is still only understood mostly by coders, and just barely used by the rest of the internet nerds but in the way like we used Mosaic browser back in 1995; no idea of the whole stuff, but we just typed some adress written with pencil on a piece of paper and voilà, we were "surfing inside the internet".
The advances in the graphic approach and user friendly clients will be awesome in this and next year. And then the whole world will be able to create, promote, share and use its own currency.
The next problem is the way of interaction. This will be impossible in the late XX century; we will need to have an accountant with dozens of books all day open, making endless transactions between my groceries coin wallet and my best buddy wallet, between the phone bill wallet and my crypto bank wallet. But we're in 2014. Dozens of echanges are flourishing: After mtgox and BTC-e, Cryptsy, CryptoRush, and a long list down.
We will be able to offer value added job, but only if we get paid in our very own currency. So if im very good doing massages, someone will spend his computing power (the other variable which is becoming mainstream and available to the general public) into mining some of my coins. Or maybe he can trade his own coins for some McDonalds coins, because he has some promo McCoin from his last meal with family. And i also accept McCoins, at a rate of 1.5 PGC/MCC. Just to say.
"The exchanges will be ginormous!" some will say. Well. After seeing how the complete player driven economy of a whole universe with 100,000 players is handled by a single server , its not hard to foresee an app for our iphone7 that will be able to track 5,000,000 of currency pairs after some refreshing using the 5G wireless conecction. Besides, the average wallet of anyone will hardly contain more than a few dozens of currencies. How many different invoices arrive at home monthly? How many different places do you shop yearly?
At the end, we will use all the time (processing power) we have to mine the coins we will be interested in. We also will use it to tie bonds between our own people. Hey, best friend, here you have one million of my coins, give me one million of yours. So if in some years you are an elite attorney, your coins will quote in the market at 0.01 versus the Citibank coin, and i will be able to pay all my yearly fees with them with just a part of your coins. Which i happen to have even more as i've been mining more while i witness how you were climbing on the law's success highway.
Its, as my workmate Alvaro said to me yesterday, similar to the movie "In Time". We will be able to quantify our job, time, relations, popularity and agreements. All instant. All secured. A world in which everyone will have an instant valuation of the rest of the world.
The rich and the Famous will promote their time or appearances. You will be able to finally set down discussion: Will Justin "Belieber" coin (BLBC) be worth more than Taylor Swifties (TSFC)? Last night at Grammy's 2017 Taylor got 5 awards; Justin is still under investigation for those photos... the pair BLBC/TSFC was down a whooping 15% up to 0.55. Of course, both coins can be used to buy their digital new albums. There is even a promo in Swift's webpage. For 5000 swifties you can meet and greet her in the next concert. Too hard to mine already? Nevermind. You can always buy swifties at $1 each in the webpage, while stocks last. If depleted, you will need to go to the trade pits.... The possibilities are endless.
There is only a winner here.
There is so much more to theorize and develop, but im not a tech guy. Also, this has become too long already. Share and discuss! I really would love to know what people here think about this.
Thanks,
Pablo