Ramblings About Crypto: Thinking About The Future

Introduction: A Creative Writing Experiment Thinking About The Future Of Crypto

Normally my blogs take anywhere between 2 weeks and 2 years to complete. This took two days.

Normally my blogs take between 20 and 200 hours to write. This took two hours.

This was an exercise based on my blog about how to think…a creative thinking exercise using the written word.

Below you will follow my thoughts as I think through the topic of cryptocurrencies as it relates to governments, their spending and power, and society at large. And, how a future looks with cryptocurrency as the dominant money supply.

I decided to do this thought experiment in order to help me better understand the basic nature of crypto, the hidden risks, the things that people aren’t talking about. Ultimately, I want to understand better how involved I should be in the space.

It’s an exercise for the ‘be careful what you wish for’ saying. The crypto experts appear to be all in or seem to be. But, if they get what they want, is that going to be a good thing? I’m not sure. That’s what I attempt to think through with this creative thinking exercise on the future of cryptocurrency and the role it might have in the world if it were a dominant currency.

I did proofread it once for spelling and grammar, but I left most of the abbreviations intact.

Gov’t means government.

Ppl means people.

Bc means because.

I wanted to keep the ramblings as original as possible because I want it to read as thoughts, not writing.

An Essay On Cryptocurrency…

Money runs the world. Politics do not. It’s a clever guise.

Those with money aren’t politicians. Politicians actually work.

If the government loses control of money, which they protect under the threat of violence and imprisonment, they lose control in totality.

Imagine what you would do if you were actually your own bank as the crypto world promotes as one of the benefits. “You must own your keys!”

Imagine what would happen if the money supply/financial system was in hands of average people?

The average person is retarded.

There are laws on the books to protect the average person.

80/20 rule applies here.

Most people fail at making even the basic of decisions correctly based on obvious reality. I was just talking with an acquaintance who told me about the girl he’s dating who he met in a strip club and how she’s seeing other guys and the relationship is difficult. Like, duh. How many times has this conversation been had over the years for the past 10,000 years?

There would be no police or military because who would pay them.

So, maybe the government gets into crypto, but they can’t enforce anything because there are too many people using it and it’s decentralized.

[The notion of decentralized and centralized is an important one I need to research further into.]

The reason why gov’t can monitor people’s bank accounts now is that they can hire people to create software and keep records because they have control of the money supply, because they can create more money, but when they can’t do that their control lessens. They simply have less money to spend. Less gov’t budget I think is ultimately a good thing because gov’t is a necessary evil that historically fucks itself over.

Ok. So, let’s assume everyone would start paying for goods and services with crypto which is unregulated. There are no fees. It actually makes business smoother. Less friction.

Easier to open an account. Easier to transfer money. Less paperwork.

My premise is that if the government loses control of the money supply, then they totally lose control. Is that true? Would they lose control of the money supply?

Today, they make you pay taxes under the threat of jail time. This makes a lot of people pay taxes.

Most people are law-abiding citizens.

This gives the government control. They provide stuff, which most people don’t value, in exchange for tax revenue. Today tax revenue is irrelevant to spending.

Look at the $29,000,000,000,000 USA deficiet.

But does government lose control if fiat money goes away? Well if they also had a bunch of crypto then they could survive maybe. But the issue of taxes. They would have to track you down and I guess that becomes harder with crypto. So fewer people would be willing to pay taxes. Governments could adjust to a purchase tax. No print money, only digital money and every time something is spent or sent, there is a tax. Can they do that? I’m unsure.

Maybe they can do it, but how many people would follow it?

I’m sure the government could enforce this on businesses that would not be allowed to change their wallet address. But average people can easily create new wallet addresses, making it virtually impossible to track someone.

Remember, the whole promise of crypto was anonymity. While that’s not totally true, it is to an extent. It requires resources to track and other resources will be created to make it harder to track.

Especially if borders open up and people travel wherever. That would weaken power. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing a tightening of border restrictions these past two years.

Governments would charge a purchase tax and enforce it against businesses. They’d just audit their public ledger. Very easy.

Going back to my premise, it’s that what if government lost control of money? If no one valued the USD anymore, what would happen. Maybe what is happening in Venezuela right now (I talked to my Venezuelan friend after writing this, see below for more context). Nothing much. Everyone is poor and generally powerless so the politicians are still in power

Venezuela also doesn’t use crypto. But what if they did. Well, they couldn’t use it much in the country (maybe they can?) but they don’t. Most people don’t get it. Too risk-averse. Too stupid to understand. Too lazy to learn. Wait for others to make the first move (ie don’t do what I’m doing).

I decided to invest back in 2017 because I saw a documentary on the original Silk Roads and Dread Pirate Roberts (whose name I will never forget because of what the evil, evil government operators did to him) which told me how scared the government was of cryptocurrency. Very, very scared. At least the US gov’t. Because it’s a new money supply they don’t control. What if it gets popular and therefore the USD gets less popular. If the gov’t doesn’t have money, they lose. But the gov’t wouldn’t not have money.

Ok so if people are their own banks, then all banks fail. If banks fail that means the fed fails and the government can’t print money anymore. That would severely limit the gov’t power. Right now, there is nothing the gov’t can’t do because there is no amount of money the gov’t can’t spend. Literally limitless. I think about how much money is spent on these protests with all the cops being paid overtime, all of these expensive armored trucks, specially trained police, the cost of ammo, cost of cleanup, cost of injuries, cost of damage, so expensive but literally doesn’t matter.

Because of such worldwide confidence in the USD, this alone allows them to print and print. But it will eventually all come falling down because humanity is a flawed system. We routinely make obvious mistakes and this seems to be one of them.

So that’s the final game in this saga.

The reality is that a lot of people in power, in power of the money supply are skimming money from the system. Maybe not as obvious as third-world countries, but to a larger extent, I’d argue. The most recent example is the war in Iraq for 20 years. The amount of money that went to security firms to train the troops, firms to build things for the military, departments opened to study things and funded to track things, the amount of money in general that is not accounted for. Trillions from the debt are unaccounted for. Government contracts to build stuff, etc. There’s all extra money in there for them and their pals. A lot. Every single time. They can do that because they have control of the money supply. They can simply print more money. And it works just as long as the USD is the global standard and people have confidence in it.

But if the USD losses value and crypto money gains value, well, then the banking system fails. The federal reserve fails. Or losses a lot of power. There’s no more need for it.

Or does the US gov’t just create their own cyrpto currency which immediately has a ton of value because it’s based on the USA or the US gov’t? Is this possible or does this break the rules of crypto?

So that’s the big thing: the gov’t losing control of the money supply and all of the effects that would have. Period. That’s it. They could tax and do all that, but they wouldn’t be able to print limitless money because crypto has a limited supply. And if they can’t print limitless money, they can’t pocket lots of money. They would lose lots of power. They simply wouldn’t have the resources to employ all of these gov’t agencies to police, collect taxes, etc. etc. That might/would ultimately be a good thing. Less gov’t power would be a good thing.

While gov’t is necessary. They do a lot of good. They also do a lot of bad. They’re a necessary evil. While they set rules that otherwise humans wouldn’t do, they also sabotage a lot of things.

For example, here in Colombia, I see the most obvious pollution taking place: black soot coming out of trucks’ exhaust on the road going straight into the faces of motorists and people walking on the sidewalk. People seem not to care. Or not notice. It’s not an issue here. In the US, the gov’t set regulations and the people followed. I suppose if they didn’t set regulations (there are regs in Colombia, but you can pay off the regulators easily) then people would be driving around with cars that spit out black polluting soot.

Same with garbage. The majority of places I travel to have trash in the streets. Is that a gov’t thing or not? I gotta give that to the people. I was recently in a neighborhood in Medellin with a bunch of trash piled up on the side of a street.

I asked my friend who lives there about it, and she said that there is a trash dump a block away, people are just lazy. That’s one point against humanity if I’ve ever seen one. We (the majority) would rather live in streets filled with trash than walk an extra block to put the trash in the designated areas. It’s not subjective. We all think the blue sky looks nice. A scenic view of trees is beautiful. Trash covering a street is ugly. That’s a human perception. Wow. In the US that doesn’t happen. I think because the garbage pickup system is better and there are laws (and enforceable laws because the gov’t has unlimited money to open more and more gov’t agencies to patrol and police more and more of our daily lives). But what if there weren’t laws and/or agencies to enforce these laws? Would we have trash on our streets? I think so.

So, in this case gov’t halts a common human trait: laziness.

So, when I say that a world full of crypto is a scary one, I mean it. I mean it because most humans are retarded. I mean that. There’s a very low threshold for human intelligence and grit. Most are lazy as fuck. And it’s in gov’t agenda to keep it that way. That’s why putting them on subsidies, even if they live a shit life and selling them cigarettes and soda is easy. Most of us lack the will power and/or intelligence to make good decisions. Most of us literally need the gov’t to control us.

Maybe that’s why the population has exploded this past century? More government. That’s true worldwide, even in poorer countries the govt’s from wealthier nations have extended themselves.

There’s a reason why gov’t has to put a limit on the amount of soda that fast food joints can sell to their customers. Because dumbass humans don’t think a second into the future.

Recently, a friend sent me a photo of what they were drinking. I asked ‘sode?’ She said juice. I was impressed! I asked with or without sugar and her response proves my point. “I don’t like things without sugar.” Like. Are you fucking kidding me? I also would prefer to eat sugar all day long, but I also understand there’s a connection between what I eat and my health. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the future. I understand I might need to make some sacrifices for a better future self. She didn’t seem to connect those dots with that statement of fact. When she ages, she will become fat and unhealthy…just like the majority of humans. And with that mindset she’s already starting off from an unhealthy beginning, just for her, she’s young so it doesn’t yet show on the outside.

So, yes, with governments isn’t ideal. Without governments is scary because 90% of the population needs care directly from the government. That’s also why crypto won’t become a thing for awhile. There are a LOT of people heavily invested in the dollar, in the fiat currencies, in the status quo. It’s going to take a lot and a long time to make that go away.

Crypto has a lot of potential. It’s an amazing technology and is making a lot of people rich. It has a lot of use cases and a bright future.

Summary: The Crypto Future

My conclusion based on this thought experiment is that crypto will not become the gold standard currency anytime soon because the majority of humans lack the willpower to be their own bank (they’d rather not). Even I was relieved when I sold most of my crypto money in early 2021. Being my own bank, especially this early on when I didn’t know what I was doing was really scary! I had no one to blame but myself if I lost my money.

And if/when it does become commonly accepted currency, it’s likely the big guys (governments, organizations, rich people) have already taken control of it.

Most humans would rather live a simple, carefree life being paid for by the government rather than make some sacrifices now, in this context learning about crypto, for a better future self. This is clearly evident in the worldwide health epidemic.

However, crypto is and will be a thing. And it will get more popular. There are just too many really useful cases for it. Shitty governments who mismanage their own fiat currency. Crypto solves that. Transferring money to someone in a different country. Crypto solves it. No more Western Union. Short that stock!

No more fees. Bank overdraft fees. Commission fees to withdraw fiat currency out of international ATM. Bank account maintenance fees. Wire fees.

And all the paperwork and processes needed to open up a bank account. Crypto solves all of those everyday hassles. Crypto makes the world more minimalistic which is the way of the future. We have too complicated our lives and that only continues with each passing year until it gets too much. It got too much. Crypto solves a lot. I’m bullish on crypto and have been since 2017. But don’t let the crypto experts of today fool you. Everyone is a winner in an upmarket and crypto has been an upmarket since December 2020. If your crypto expert doesn’t have content prior to 2020, he’s a bandwagon bro.

What are your thoughts? Will crypto hold up? Or will it be corrupted and ruin?