I got involved with Crypto-currency late summary of 2017.  That was the leading edge of a boom that ended in December of 2017 and January of 2018 that saw the total market capitalization of crypto currency sky rocket to 814 billion (USD) dollars.  Just to compare, Apple is worth 889 billion USD and Amazon is worth 867 billion USD.  Cyrpto was huge at the time.  

There are so many misconceptions about money that I’d like to talk about it just a little bit starting off with the question, exactly what is money?

AS a brief history, people started out with bartering or trading.  Certain things had a certain value.  For example 5 sheep might be worth 1 camel or 5 large fish might be worth 1 basket of wheat.  From there, standards were established and value was assigned to things like wheat or seashells.   Gold and silver became the eventual standards.

In the USA, gold and silver turned into certificates that represented gold or silver…the forerunner of modern paper money which is also known as “fiat” money (the US or Canadian dollar, the peso, etc).  In the beginning, all gold certificates/paper money was backed by an equal amount of gold or silver.  That is no longer the case.  Not even close.  To go a step further, if everyone in the US decided to go to the bank tomorrow and withdraw all of their money, there would not be enough paper money to go around.

The fact is, our money is ALREADY mostly DIGITAL.  It is kept track of at the bank in a database and moved around electronically.  Money and crypto-currency are both digital.  The difference is in the technology that keeps track of it all.  Banks used traditional databases while crypto-currency uses something new called block-chain technology.  If your bank loses track of your money, your only option is to go there and get them to fix the issue.  No one else can do that, only your local bank can help.  It is centralized.

With crypto-currency, there are copies of the data stored on servers all over the world…there is no single point of failure.  

While many dispute the long term value of crypto currency make no mistake…the technology behind it is here to stay and is being adopted all over the place because it is fundamentally BETTER.  Block-chain technology gives a chronologically history from the beginning to end.  With every new transaction, a new “block” is added to the end of the data “chain”.

Now, back to my story.

The bubble burst in December 2017, total crypto value falling to 104 billion.  It looked like the end of crypto and many said, “the sky is falling”.  Well, Chicken Little, fast forward to March 2019 and market capitalization is back up to 141 billion (USD).  Not only has crypto survived AGAIN but it is now being more widely adopted than ever, used as a form of payment and block-chain technology is being used by more and more big companies with household names.  

The technology is here to stay.  The currency?  Who knows.  It might not be a bad time if you have a couple hundred dollars floating around to buy some Bitcoin.

If you’re interested in checking it out here are a couple of referral links:

COINBASE, San Fransicso – You can link a bank account or use a credit card to purchase. If you use the link, we will both get $10 of FREE Bitcoin.  
https://www.coinbase.com/join/5970bdb96e862802af325082

KUCOIN – Cool little exchange based in Hong Kong.   Purchases can be made by credit card.
Referral link:
https://www.kucoin.com/ucenter/signup?rcode=E3arRK
This link describes the referral program.
https://kucoin.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015207653-KuCoin-Referral-Bonus-Program