Crypto: the issue of planetary adoption

In his recent article Why Everyone Missed the Most Mind-Blowing Feature of Cryptocurrency, Daniel Jeffries makes the point that the true power of crypto-currency technologies lies in its ability to disintermediate the issuance and distribution of money i.e. to replace the 400 year old banking cartel that runs the world, and the attendant violence that keeps it in power

He correctly points out that money flows from the top, down through controlled channels that limit the amount of power any individual is allowed to have, and cleverly identifies that whilst crypto(-currencies) have done very well with issuance (the “printing” of money, in his parlance), they’ve done less well with adoption (distribution)

It’s true. Buying bitcoin is and has been, since inception, a path for the persistent and clever, but most importantly, for those fortunate enough to possess the requisite resources

I agree with Daniel that crypto will only bear fruit as a function of world-wide adoption and, as I argued in my article BTC Ad Astra, this adoption is less likely to happen as a function of the transactional value of crypto, than it is from its investment (store of value) quality, simply because from a comparative perspective, the average man can reach the conclusion of his need for participation more readily by viewing the price on a screen, than by observing advantages in the spending efficiency of the currency

At present there is a great deal of thinking devoted to the issue of adoption, including models where money is literally given away. Of course, no one can say for sure what will work and what won’t — there are no guidelines and we are walking in undiscovered country — but in thinking more deeply about how money is distributed we necessarily arrive at the corporate structure

If we’re going to change the world, we have to start with the corporation

Unlike what is widely believed in certain circles, corporations are not inherently evil. They have become evil as a function of the perversion of their mechanisms, but the basic premise of the corporation is still valid and useful: that a man who provides value to the world and captures that value (money), can redeploy it in the service of others (investment), facilitating growth, discovery and the…