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My thought is this: There is only one general-purpose blockchain worth paying attention to these next few years: Ethereum. Bitcoin is never going to be properly developed going forward again, the community has no focus and upgrades to it's network are impossible. We are capped at 1MB and the possibility of a turing-complete programming language is completely ignored. In my opinion, Bitcoin has fulfilled Satoshi's vision, and united us, as common men, in a financial system free from the Tyrant Bankers who caused the financial crisis of 2009.
However, now is the time of the altcoin, and yet, the upstarts around the world are too specialized or copy-cat to truly innovate. The only innovator on the scene is Ethereum, and Ethereum has ACTUAL leadership - Vitalik Buterin.
Ethereum 2.0 and the Golem Network will quickly find themselves becoming the platform upon which more and more of the world's economy rests.
Real Estate, Securities, household items, video game licenses, etc will have their equity (ownership) traded on these platforms more and more over the next few years as an increasingly large developer base and tech-savvy younger generation take the reins of the financial world away from the dying Boomer generation.
Part of the economic hysteria right now is that the Boomers were the largest generation in history - larger than their descendants - Gen X, the Millenials, and Gen Z. These three generations are the generations of Bitcoin adopters, and similarly, these three generations grew up through the 2009 financial crisis. The Boomers are all at Retirement age and a wave of social security, pension, and Required Minimum Distributions from retirement plans is all set against this current market as interest rates rise and bitcoin has arisen. Problem being - the social security pyramid is upside down - not enough people are paying in..and the same is true for the stock market. There aren't enough young people buying in! They're buying drugs, they're eating out, they're consuming like crazy - and not saving! You can't blame them..0% interest rates meant savings/CDs paid nothing and the 2009 financial crisis made them resentful towards bankers and brokers, and the drug war just flat out made them distrust the government in general. The never-ending military conflicts made them further resent the system.
This is leading to a very chaotic marketplace where, quite frankly, nobody is quite sure what is going on and prices for all assets are very volatile as interest rates on liabilities are incredibly high and comparative incomes/asset-bases of younger generations are low. Worse still, the younger generation are not buying in what the boomers are selling off to retire. If this doesn't rectify it's self - we're gonna be stuck with an older generation forced to sell their retirement savings for pennies on the dollar to foreign investors- the only people I see on the scene with money to wave around -cough cough- the chinese..-cough cough-
Young Americans need to get investing, not just in Cryptos, but in securities like stocks..they need to participate in the traditional as well as the new systems and push for the institutions to move in the decentralized, free, transparent, and open direction that cryptos provide...no more wondering if a crooked broker actually has your stocks! You can see it on a block explorer!
No more brokers purchasing stocks in street name on our behalves, we can digitally assign and track privately issued stocks now! And even better, with Regulation A, for the first time, the poor and middle class can get in on startups and trading uncertificated shares! I think we should watch for that - a decentralized exchange for uncertificated shares - that will be a sign that the crypto startup economy has started accomplishing real milestones.
I believe the Ethereum Scalability Problem is soon to be fixed and the Ethereum 2.0 network+Sidechains will finally have enough throughput to handle it's multi-industry applications.
ETH will go at least twice as high as it did in December of last year when this upgrade is complete. $2000+... Although the ramifications of another contentious hardfork are possible, maybe even assured, by mining cartels opposed to Proof of Stake transition. This is an unknown to me, as Miners are the ones who have to /vote/ the hardfork in by mining..and I can see them being very opposed to a transition away from PoW.
I, as a miner my self with a small setup, 12 GPU, am not opposed to PoS. I made money hand over fist from October of last year to now. I make a profit still at $100/ETH! But I think the protocol is vastly more important than my earnings, and I'd like the option to reinvest PoW earnings in to Staking contracts anyway, like a Certificate of deposit!
However, if Vitalik and the rest of the Ethereum Foundation push for a complete transition to Proof of Stake, instead of Hybrid PoW/PoS, I urge everyone in every community to stand diametrically opposed, because that will consolidate the full nodes verifying the network in to the hands of /very few/...Those that can afford to run a powerful mainframe and handle the stakes/accounting problems of others handing them currency to stake on their behalf (Since the staking requirement is relatively high) The beauty of PoW is that anyone can acquire the hardware to compete...
If this happens, the ETH community, and it's developers will go the direction of EOS, a hollow shell of a crypto with a paltry collection of Elites controlling all Masternodes..the economy we're trying to escape!
Ether, not bitcoin, because of it's turing-complete scripting languaage, will become the PLATFORM for ALL markets and municipal/corporate GOVERNANCE (Take a big look at Aragon and 0x for an idea of what I mean). The world is going to become very, very different in the next few years if this Scalability issue can be solved without sacrificing the decentralization that is so key to the anarcho-democratic networks Satoshi envisioned with Bitcoin.
Prices are down because the central bank raised the prime rate, causing all variable rate debt interest rates to rise (Credit cards, Mortgages, auto loans, business loans, etc). This is putting a squeeze on CASH which everyone now needs more of to pay back to their creditors, and the banks back to the Central bank. The time of banks borrowing at 0% and loaning to us at 20% is now over and we are out of dollar free-fall (Which is what caused the huge surge in stock/crypto prices the last few years). You'll notice savings accounts and Certificates of Deposit pay better rates now (Finally over inflation again at some banks! I have CDs from Cap1 that pay 3.1%, inflation is at about 2%. The Elites will do the recession cycle again..They inflate and deflate fiat at will. Any true enthusiast, who shared Satoshi's vision for a worker free from the tyranny of the money printers is undeterred by this current market cycle.
When the dollar is strong, prices on assets fall, when the dollar is weak, prices rise. This gives people an incorrect assumption about the FUNDAMENTALS of the asset. Price DOES NOT EQUAL value. Price is what /someone is willing to pay/ for underlying value. Ergo, the price of, say, wheat can drop to half because this year we had a huge harvest, but that wheat still has the same underlying value in producing a finished product from it. Or a stock's price dropped in half, but the dividends didn't, meaning that if you DRIP your dividends you're getting twice the return. See what I'm saying? Price and value are unrelated to an investor. An amateur speculator, on the other hand, lives on price and ignores asset fundamentals then wonders why he is losing mad money on trades.
Like the difference between someone who buys a house to live in (Or rent out for long-term profit) and someone who buys one to flip for short-term profit , that's the difference between an investor and speculator. The Investor is chasing value (A good, reasonably priced home to USE) for the LONG-TERM and the Speculator is (foolishly) chasing price and worrying about short-term market timing.
We need more crypto INVESTORS going long and less SPECULATORS shorting.
Feel free to find me @ Hiturunk.eth..
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