Here I am, discussing something that is totally out of my league, I guess. Well to be fair, from 1983 to 1990 I had a career as a small two-bit computer analyst, programmer and educator in the very prestigious Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Wall Street firm. I wasn’t a Fortran or Cobol programmer, I was what was then called a 4th Generation Language Programmer and the language was Nomad4. I taught myself (because I was bored!😊) how to program and then as the firm saw my work, I was sent to little workshops or training sessions in the language. So that’s a bit of my background on this subject.

Cash is Still King:

Remember that saying, Cash is King? Why is cash so important to us? Because you can spend it and not have someone know where you spent it! People like cash. People like it so much that when you offer to buy a house in cash they lower their price to accommodate.

Our Present Problem:

The problem with our present types of transactions is simple; they are traceable. We know who bought what, where it was bought and probably if we dug deep enough why it was bought. That’s the downside of purchasing anything with our credit cards. The other downside with our present system is that the banks hold all the money, there is a centralized location for currency.

Crptocurrencies, The Solution?

 The story goes that either a programmer or a group of geeky programmers came up with a solution to the problem of currency transactions on the internet and for that matter everywhere.

Cryptocurrencies are fascinating to me, I have to admit.

Along comes Satoshi Nakamoto and cash becomes blockchain technology. So cash meets the internet and the internet in late 2017 and early 2018 is now greeting the cryptocurrencies with a big hello.

Now, there are many different types of cryptocurrencies and I’m sure more will pop up. We have all been watching Bitcoin rise and fall daily in market value with interest, I’m sure. This technology is moving quickly and anyone who claims to have a handle on it is surely setting themselves up for some humble pie!

The question here is not will cryptocurrencies take some market share, the answer to that is clearly yes, the real question is what form will it take?

So, in my humble opinion, we are looking at cryptocurrencies in a manner which we’ve all known, that is currency or the US dollar, and I think that we might be a little myopic. I’m wondering if we’re thinking that we’ll be able to use Bitcoin to purchase everything, we may be wrong. Perhaps, and this is just my little idea, perhaps the coins are going to grab a market, for example, Bitcoin may be used to make larger purchases and Ethereum, Dash, Litecoin, and Ripple may be used to buy other things. I’m wondering if each coin lands on its own sort of niche, this could also take the form of culture. Perhaps a younger generation would rather prefer one coin over another. The internet has made it much easier for individualized tastes and preferences, so I’m wondering if the coins will follow this movement. 

Well, this is all so interesting, isn’t it? I guess we’ll have to see what happens! In the meantime, let’s stay focused, don’t invest money you don’t have and remember the best way to wealth is always, work hard, do what you love and SAVE!

What do you think? Where will Cryptocurrencies land, if ever?