The Future of the Blockchain is the Crypto Singularity
The Establishment is Embracing Bitcoin in order to Manipulate It
With the crypto singularity of November, 2017 we are seeing the start of a power play over Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and the future of the blockchain. Everyone is implicated now, regulators, central banks, nation states and world leaders.
The web could have been a free place, with an emphasis on education and a decentralized paradigm of access to information and services for all world citizens, promoting small businesses. Instead we are left with a web co-opted by advertizing, a profiteering of search, ISPs who lord over us, porn and social media algorithms. In Crypto and blockchain, it’s 1994 all over again, and there are signs the same forces at work could corrupt what they could become.
When you think of China’s “Bitcoin Ban”, Vladimir Putin’s reaction to Bitcoin and even Morgan Stanley CEO’s dismissal of it, you can see the battle going on here — banks, centralized states and powerful people all see a truly stateless cryptocurrency market and decentralized blockchain as a threat to their regime, control and power.
With Bitcoin Futures, new regulation in Japan and South Korea, and a constantly changing crypto assets market now accelerating with ICOs, blockchain projects all over the world and a rising Bitcoin and crypto valuations — the crypto singularity also means with mainstream recognition of these new crypto-economics forces, there will be a new battle over control of it.
A cryptocurrency after all is something increasingly tangible, or else a store of value that can’t be censored and is resistant to seizure. As more institutions go on the blockchain, as state banks create fiat cryptocurrencies and as big money enters Bitcoin trading; there are bound to be winners and losers.
Wall Street not too long ago ridiculed Bitcoin, now it seems they will be investing in cryptocurrencies and learning how to leverage them in their business. Not too long ago, Russia considered jailing bitcoin owners, but now has invested in crypto mining companies. Goldman Sachs and J.P Morgan Chase don’t just need to pivot to FinTech and AI, they need to understand and embrace what’s going on in the cryptocurrency markets, to have more control over it.
What the Fu*k is the Crypto Singularity?
China can kick out ICOs and Bitcoin trading, India can clamp down on regulation, but the Crypto-singularity is now being embraced by powerful entities, in order to control its volatility and profit from it. Bitcoin mania is worrying severely centralized states, and Financial institutions and there’s a new strategy afoot, buy-in and take over.
It’s not just Bitcoin that is reaching new highs, it’s taking all of cryptocurrency valuations with it. $300 Bn is just the beginning, and Bitcoin with its 800%+ YOY growth in 2017, marks this year as the true birth of blockchain as a scalable and exponential force in the future of crypto, ICOs, smart contacts and a new kind of digital collectable, kind of innovation, method of crowdfunding and way of doing business and investing.
Let’s face it, the decentralized blockchain and the Crypto singularity is one of the most dangerous ideas to centralized states and threats to monopolized governments, big players in the financial system and some of the richest and most powerful people on the planet.
On Nov 1st, 2017 Bitcoin was worth around $6,700, it could very well leave November worth nearly double that, at the time of this article it’s worth $11,000 USD. In other parts of the world it’s already worth more than that. With Japan and Korea starting to use Bitcoin as a method of payment in retail and with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)event on December 11th, 2017 — everything is changing for Bitcoin, that once seemed to have a murky fate.
Banks are starting to figure out they will have to become data-native providers that don’t just try to trick (read: upsell) customers and that they can’t afford to not integrate FinTech and blockchain benefits, because the Crypto Singularity is poised to revolutionize the global finance and banking system.
Indeed, Bitcoin and crypto can also be a threat to national security, and contribute to how terrorism is funded and its anonymity makes it almost impossible to track. China’s tendency of wanting full control over local firms complicates its relationship with it, and as for Russia, they have decided to go all-in, in order to control it as much as possible. These are the real issues today, not how high can Bitcoin’s price Surge or who wants in.
Bitcoin’s market cap is now valued at $167 billion — higher than roughly 95% of S&P 500 Index members. The valuation of Cryptocurrencies is likely to beat the likes of Apple and Amazon to the 1 trillion mark in early 2018. When that happens, you’ll know that the Crypto Singularity has begun.
There’s no precedent for what ICOs did in 2017, for the 900% increase of Bitcoin or the hard fork that is Bitcoin Cash. With SegWit and how Ethereum solves its own scalability issues in 2018, there’s light at the end of the Crypto Singularity and we are about to witness it, whatever it may be. But there is a sense that it’s 1994 for Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain.
This isn’t just the uberification of Banking, this is something else. Bitcoin is a catalyst for crypto-mining, similar to what Emails were for the adoption of the Internet, but the number and frequency of ICOs and the variety of crypto and blockchain experiments boggles the mind. We’ll likely have a smart contract revolution before 2020, as the Crypto Singularity takes shape with the next iteration of AI.
Bitcoin was a test, and the period of uncertainty is over. The Crypto Singularity is then the next phase, after cryptocurrencies have been validated, popularized and after more “institutions”, both in banking, finance, government and enterprise have bought in. This has already occurred now and everyone is working behind the scenes. The Crypto Singularity will now accelerate like a blockchain revolution, and nothing can hold it back.
The Crypto Singularity is Near
When China tried to ban and make it illegal to trade in crypto or use ICOs to fund their startups, even shutting down the cryptocurrency exchanges, Bitcoin’s price plunged by 40%. Bitcoin recovered though, and it’s going through the roof now. If you can’t control it, then you have to join and try to manipulate it to the extent that you can. To the envy of tangible currencies, Bitcoin doesn’t have to play by the old rules.
Thus, central banks will try to emulate it, will take what they consider to be the “good” from blockchain, without the value-system of decentralization of course. You will notice everyone saying they are developing their own “blockchain”. If Bitcoin hit a record high of $6,000 on the 21st of October, by the time November, 2017 is over, it will likley be double that.
Millennials investing in cryptocurrencies are investing in a new world order. They don’t want the same central authorities to have rule over them, the same manipulators of the system, that have shut them out. Sure as a digital asset, Bitcoin can and will be used by all kinds of individuals, groups and movements that won’t want to be traced.
The Ideology of Decentralization and Collective Institutions We Can Trust
However in a world of increasing housing prices, cost of living, student loans and with millions of jobs on the chopping block of AI and automation, cryptocurrencies are also a collectible digital asset of value at the intersection of a disenfranchised youth whose push to scale social justice is also considerably stronger than those still in power might assume.
It’s no longer a war over ideas such as democracy, human rights or capitalism, it’s gone beyond that to transparency, decentralization and trust. The Crypto Singularity is ultimately a revolution of the monetary, banking and a rebellion against the 1% and a silent epidemic of wealth inequality. The blockchain as a new mechanism of trust where transactions can take place in a more transparent manner, means nothing short of a revolution of our collective intelligence.
Cryptocurrencies must challenge the established order, blockchain must create a better system with smart contracts that legislate social justice and economic equality, if it doesn’t, it means the Crypto Singularity will have failed.
Disruption of the global banking system is not only inevitable, it must happen quickly for humans to face successfully some of the challenges of the next thirty years on the planet. Cryptocurrencies can be a new driver for innovation, business and smarter instantaneous transactions that can improve dozens of industries and enterprise verticals.
If Bitcoin is not a fraud, a bubble or even an infectious pyramid scheme, the establishment must ‘embrace’ it to seek to control it. Russia has understood this, China will soon as well. How do you control or manipulate a decentralized system? Creating a crypto version of your fiat currency is the first step. It stands to reason that Russia and China will be among the first to implement such a thing.
Central banks will push to implement blockchain without the decentralization. Big money and the state will seek to “hijack” the Crypto Singularity, and the battle ahead will be both political, generational and ideological — because the very fate of the future of money is at stake.
Yet if we admit that the cryptocurrency is stateless and belongs to all of humanity, it can be regulated, but it cannot be enslaved. We are witnessing history, we just don’t know what to call it or exactly where it will lead us.
Correct me if I am wrong?
Source Page: https://medium.com/@Michael_Spencer/future-of-the-blockchain-is-crypto-singularity-86813b4a828f