"Startup" the TV Series that features crypto-currencies & Kenyan - Edi Gathegi
Warning: This article contains a few spoilers.
In a world of Trump, banking crises, currency wars, trade imbalances, quantitative easing, Wikileaks, Snowden, Africa rising slogans, the Podesta emails, war and rumors of war, the 1%, technological marvels, the need for a hopeful future is evermore rife. The desire to behold an existence where each global citizen is plugged into the global prosperity agenda (GPA) without some Machiavellian stratagem in play to control the world remains rife. But, that sounds like some utopian hogwash, the only way that is happening is either by some human-caused apocalyptic event (after which the surviving population builds some utopian enclave) or by a force majeure, ushering us into a new age of absolute beauty. Alas! in the meantime, we have Bitcoin, and GenCoin, well at least the beginnings of it.
If you are reading this, you have probably heard about Bitcoin and what is happening in this space. If you haven’t, quick recap -Bitcoin is a digital, decentralized, partially anonymous currency, non-government backed or other legal entity, and not redeemable for gold or another commodity. Gencoin, on the other hand is the fictitious digital currency and payment system invented by Izzy Morales (Otmara Marrero) in the Original Crackle TV Series dubbed Startup. It is the descendant of Bitcoin, but a more robust offspring from the progenitor, that is rarely susceptible to global economic forces, and at the crux, untraceable. Aye, I can hear the alarms go off in your head, especially with regard to the fact that it is untraceable. Not only that, but it is some sort of panacea to the impoverished masses, the unbanked, which opens the pandora’s box of danger and conflict.
What stands out for me in the show is Edi Gathegi (Ronald Darcy), the Kenyan-American, at once a violent, Haitian-American (in the show) criminal, yet-benevolent idealist, who is thrown into the world of digital currency, high-technology, and the corporate world. His involvement comes from an idealistic desire to improve himself and that of his Haitian people given how Miami, Florida, the location of the show, has seen Cuban-Americans and Puertoricans prosper. Yet the plight of the darker hued Haitians remains an oblique one. Gencoin for him represents hope and prosperity as opposed to the isolation that they suffer from the system, a diorama of what’s happening with the world’s unbanked. He brings his street-hardened savvy to the negotiating table and proves to be a valuable asset in the building of the business.
Bitcoin and Gencoin are predicated on the philosophy of decentralization, which means not directly connected to any central authority like a government or a third-party such as a bank. This is showcased by the pilot episode where Izzy Morales extols the virtues of Gencoin in a traditional bank setting. It is at once evident how skeptical the loans committee takes Izzy’s sentiments on the matter. Except one, Nick Tully (Adam Brody), though guided by his desire to protect his dad, seeks out this opportunity. He’s the perfect depiction of the traditional finance institution that understands it must invest in the new technology to protect its investment and such.
It is a promising show, but let’s focus on Bitcoin. Let’s try and understand why Bitcoin is important to the world, or at least show you a glimpse of the world we could have. What comes to mind, thinking in terms of monetary economics, is how Bitcoin can be defined as synthetic commodity money. This is because it shares features with both commodity money and fiat money, as these are usually defined, without fitting the conventional definition of either. And as such, the presence of which might provide the framework for monetary regimes that do not require oversight by any monetary authority, but still able to provide for the changes in money stock as will create the conditions for macroeconomic integrity. Especially, what that means for Kenya and Africa is the streamlining of the global integration that is not curtailed with the drudgery of bureaucracy. This means, for instance, more young people (the largest demographic in Kenya and regionally), have access to the world’s trade flow, are able to innovate around the ecosystem and develop micro-economies that translate to the ultimate prosperity of the country, region.
The significance of Bitcoin grows by the leaps and bounds in the last few years, particularly in regard to the amount of investment flowing into the same. This October has seen Bitcoin’s price rise by almost 20%. And investment into Bitcoin and blockchain startups continues to grow, especially with the resounding shifts taking place in Geo-economics. Over 11 billion dollars and counting, Bitcoin is built on the Blockchain technology, which is a shared distributed ledger that immutably records transactions that are open to all. So, Bitcoin is an open source technology, meaning, anyone can have access, to one and all! Never have open-source frameworks, mutually distributed ledgers (Blockchain), essentially the technology of trust been so important in a vastly open and sharing global economy. There’s a lot to learn about Bitcoin, Gencoin, and the Technology of Trust, we are only beginning the journey.
The philosophical underpinnings of Bitcoin, Gencoin are reflected in the words of Terrence Mckenna when he quipped that technology is the skin of our species, the Technium, the seventh kingdom of life, to echo Kevin Kelly, co-founder at Wired; wherever, whoever, Satoshi is, I would fancy that his/her/their ultimate desire was to build a society that is predicated on a belief that people are the strongest of any technology. The human, the ultimate technology".
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Source: Startup TV Series (2016).
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This article was first published in part on http://blockchained.tv/