Yes, I Have Invested in Cryptocurrency
and here’s why.
First of all, I’m not a ‘Crypto-Bro and I don’t Work In The City.
I’m not particularly technical, or mathematical, and I wouldn’t know a futures portfolio if it slapped me in the face.
What I am really good at, being poor, is saving money.
I have to be. I live in the U.K.
My family however, and that of my husband, happen to live in Europe.
You remember Europe.
It’s where we all used to live before David Cameron, under pressure by his fellow Tories in fear of losing power to UKIP, in a huge knee-jerk reaction, handed over the nation’s future economy by voting on an All-in/All-out decision to the great unwashed.
An uninformed decision at best, because the deal had not, at that time, even been put together, let alone finalised, which (to date) has cost the country £140 billion, severely reducing access to borders which previously facilitated easy exportation of manufacturing, construction and wholesale goods, and thereby ending free movement.
Not being able to visit our families as easily or as often as we used to, we have all had to forego Christmases, birthday celebrations, weddings, (including my own, where I had the sum total of four guests), and other family events that are now, brexitly-beyond-our-means.
At times though, we need to send money abroad. As a family, we still try to buy presents in each particular country, in our case it’s Spain and the Netherlands, so that we don’t waste unnecessary funds in shipping.
The banks however use systems that are so antiquated and expensive, it’s very often better to take anything we need to send, in person.
I’m not joking.
So why are banks so expensive to transfer money internationally?
According to WorldRemit.com, it has to do with issues of service, discrimination against some countries’ poor banking infrastructure, and the speed of currency exchange rates.
Cryptocurrency defies all these limitations.
Because it is a De-Centralised Finance (DeFi) which uses a peer-to-peer transaction, it ultimately cuts out the middlemen (who charges the fees) and uses a tiny proportion of the investment (gas) to send the money using an unhackable, transparent network of blockchain technology.
“Crypto is a scam. People are always getting hacked”.
Why are there so many instances of people using crypto getting hacked, you cry?
Because it isn’t the crypto itself but the exchanges, that are at risk. Crypto is in itself, untouchable and unhackable.
Once it appears in the blockchain network, it becomes immutable and if you think you could hack say, a Bitcoin private key which is a 256-bit number, then many brains smarter than mine have speculated that the time it took, would outweigh its end-value.
(It’s roughly 0.65 billion billion years.)
Okay, let me try and simplify how I see Crypto.
Imagine you are going on holiday to a foreign country and need to change your money into a different currency.
You would go to a travel exchange, or a bank, hand over your pounds, dollars, etc. which would then be changed at the day’s current exchange rate, either online, or in cash.
On your return, you reverse the procedure. You take your Euros to the exchange and get your dollars, pounds, yen, won, in return.
It’s the same with Crypto.
You go to an exchange online, because it’s a digital currency, and buy whatever currency you need. You can either then, invest (withdraw it and wait for it to go up in value) or send it to someone, who then cashes it out, without needing any financial approval, at the other end.
Here’s the difference.
Sending money via international wire is expensive and long. Transfers can take days, sometimes weeks, to transfer.
Crypto takes seconds, and, as mentioned before, is extremely cheap by comparison.
So why is there so much mystery surrounding it? Why haven’t the banks taken it on?
The answer is simple. They would lose a hella lot of money. Initially.
That doesn’t mean that the western governments of the world aren’t frantically investing billions in crypto technology. As it stands, only 0.56% of all money is invested in cryptocurrency and decentralized finance.
However, in September 2022, the U.S. White House announced that they were looking into a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
“Crypto isn’t safe”.
Banks haven’t really changed much over the last 2500 years.
Merchant Banking has been alive and well since the 4th century (BCE) where in Babylonia, loans of grain-money as it was called, were given to the farmers to ship it, and other foodstuffs across the continent. These transactions were recorded on clay tablets and trade for those outside the city boundaries was forbidden.
“People depositing gold were required to pay amounts as much as one sixtieth of the total deposited” — History of Banking.
And all you had to keep your money safe was the might or integrity of the ruler in charge of the palace, treasury or temple, in which your wealth was stored. During wars, uprisings or rebellions, these were the first places to fall to plunder.
Even today’s banknote merely “promises to pay the bearer” it’s owed sum, and promises can be broken.
I’m not saying Crypto isn’t without its pitfalls. Of course it is.
It’s very much, in terms of time, brand new. But I believe it is the future of banking and moving money quickly, cheaply and efficiently, and despite its darker usages at this moment in time, for money laundering, and other nefarious transactions, there’s still plenty of that going on in the main money (fiat) world, for one such as I not to lose sleep over.
Improvements and regulations need to be made, of that there is no argument.
I shall reiterate my statement. I’m not particularly technical, or mathematical, and yet, if I can wrap my head around it, then anyone can.
I’ll let Investopedia have the last word:
“DeFi, like the blockchains and cryptocurrencies it supports, is still in its infancy.
Significant hurdles must be overcome before it can replace the existing financial system, which has its own issues that are difficult to resolve.
Lastly, financial service companies and banks are not going to be replaced without a fight — if there is a way for them to profit from the transition to a blockchain-based financial system, they will find it and make sure they are part of it.”
I started this draft 15th Feb and finally got around to finishing it thanks to Medium’s Draft Day. More here: MediumDraftDay.com
