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*Courtesy: @tts

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One day, my door-bell rang.
I opened the door and found a salesman.
Well clad in suit & tie, he was a handsome gentleman.
But I wondered as he had nothing in his hand!

“What do you want to sell me?” questioned I.
“I sell money”, he replied.
“For my money, you sell your money? Are you crazy?”
“My money is different. I sell cryptocurrencies and it’s revolutionary.”

“Whatever is that! When you have got some better money with you, why do you want mine in lieu?”
“It’s encrypted money - the money from the future. It’s called Bitcoin.”
“Oh! And how much for that coin?”
“It's only $15,000“
“OMG! What kind of coin is that? Got some samples, my friend?”

“Well, it’s all virtual …I mean it’s all digital.”
“WTF! Are you a scammer or a mental!!!”
“No, you can try by buying it a little and you will become its fan.”
“$15,000 for a trial? Are you really sane?”
“It’s called Bitcoin. So you are allowed to buy it in bits and pieces. You can buy as little as one hundred millionth part of it. It’s called 1 Satoshi. It will cost you only 0.015 cents.”

“Umm, then when I have all the 100 million parts, I can assemble it into a whole coin?”
“Yeah, it will amount to 1 Bitcoin.”
“Only 1 Bitcoin! How much for a Full Coin?”
“There is no Full Coin. It’s only Bitcoin for now.”
“What stupid! After spending thousands of dollars, I don’t get a full coin but only a bit! You sure are a scammer. Move away from here! BOWWOW!!!”

And I shooed him away.

Later I researched about this thing called Bitcoin and learned a lot about Blockchain technology.

Everyone seems to be all praise and upbeat for this new and upcoming technology. But thanks to my first encounter, I smell rat in it. Yes, I’m skeptical of blockchains since the beginning. I have always looked for telltale signs . e.g.:

• All block chains claim to be decentralized and democratic while the power lies only in the handful of people.

• Blockchains say they are anonymous while they register each and every transaction permanently in a publicly accessible ledger.

• Transaction speed is very slow & uncertain and fee is not very low as told.

How can you expect an innovation to be great, historic or revolutionary when its founders prefer to remain in a hideout concealing the identity behind a pseudonym? Doesn’t it smell something fishy to you here?

Let me tell you that this blockchain technology is sharper than a double edged sword …and the edge facing you is sharper than the one facing away!

Cryptocurrencies are professed to be decentralized alternative to centralized fiat currency but that is just impossible. Since cryptocurrency cannot see wide adoption without support from governments, they will remain highly volatile and won’t provide any stability & reliability as a medium of exchange. So, most crypto-exchanges are following KYC procedures as a self-regulatory measure in an attempt to lure government support. Thus anonymity aspect is being sacrificed with it. Next, crypto-community expects that many governments & central banks will launch their own cryptocurrency because that is the only way forward to sustain this market. Now if government launches its own blockchain then it would be regulated and controlled by it. So decentralization aspect will be sacrificed in order to get wider adoption.

Another reason for why blockchain technology can’t reach to masses is that it’s too complex to understand by an average person. If you notice the miniscule percentage of users today, you will find that over 90% of the investors don’t know much about the fundamentals of any coin or project. They just invest in a token or ICO on herd mentality. Who cares to read or understand a White Paper or research about the team behind the project? So crowd will buy any well publicized and aggressively marketed shit coin, whether it’s centralized or decentralized, anonymous or eponymous or even if it’s not even hosted on blockchain, who cares! So, all those voting, democratizing, proof of stake etc. are not going to bring any desired results.

Masses are doomed to be taken for a ride. When Government launches its own blockchain, people in the power will bypass KYC norms and move all their illegally acquired wealth into it and then to some opaque blockchain like Monero which will be equivalent to moving your money in a Swiss bank. All wealth will go in the hands of few privileged ones. With that asset base, they will be in a position to manipulate any blockchain in the market and take all investors’ money by crashing the market.

Gradually more than 99% of wealth will land in some handful of wallets. All others will become too poor to sustain themselves. Forget basic income, they will be forced to commit suicide as that will be the most painless method to die compared to starving to your death.

Actually, this blockchain is a weapon designed to kill major chunk of world population to get rid of unsustainably growing human population on this planet. This way, most of the world’s severe problems will be solved and it will be all rosy at the end. So yes, blockchain is the silver bullet for all the problems crippling humanity at present.

Long live blockchain!

_{[The above post is a submission to @v4vapid's Conspiracy Creative Writing Contest]}