I am fairly new to cryptocurrency - I started investing in November 2017. I first came across blockchain and crypto whilst working as a lawyer on a corporate transaction which involved advising a blockchain company on its ICO.

Like many newbies, I started off with investing in Bitcoin and Etherium, mainly out of curiosity to see if these would turn out to be profitable investments. At that point in time, I did not have much knowledge about blockchain technology or cryptocurrency (other than what I knew already from my day job).

Being a lawyer by background, I am naturally risk averse and I soon found myself spending almost all my free time reading about blockchain technology to better understand the nature of my investments. The more I read, the more I realised that the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Etherium has the potential to change the world economy for the better.

The Internet became great as it offered individuals the opportunity to be part of something that was not centralised. Through the Internet everyone had the chance to be a participant and express their view - we were no longer an inert recipient - and that was truly awesome as we realised that we can make it into what we wanted it to be and we can craft a much more equal (and in my opinion a more successful) society where everyone has opportunity to share in the wealth that the “new web” creates.

Unfortunately, the overall benefit of the internet has not been equally distributed.

For example, each of us has had a part in creating this huge asset known as “data”. However, we receive no benefit from creating or contributing to the creation of this asset. It is owned by a handful of powerful companies or governments who monetise on this data or use it for their own benefit, in many cases hugely undermining our privacy.

Similarly, currently the Internet does not enable true peer to peer exchange of value. If you wish to send money to someone else today, you would have to send it to a powerful institution called the bank and you would need a government to authenticate who you are and who your receiver is.

For way too long we have lived in an era where things that matter to us are controlled by a few powerful institutions, and where everyone is a passive recipient. We now have an opportunity with the blockchain technology to change that. Is Blockchain what Internet was meant to be? I would say yes. And maybe this time, we can learn from the pitfalls of the Internet and build a truly decentralized platform that would enable us to do transactions, to do commerce, to exchange money, to invest money and to build our assets without the interference or help of a powerful third party. Clearly, that is the most valuable asset.