The Future is Decentralized?!
According to Tyler Winklevoss (smart guy), Bitcoin is digital gold and Ethereum is digital oil. In fact, Ethereum seems to have the most upside potential as a global disruptor because of the decentralized application idea. A decentralized application (dapp) is an application built on a decentralized network that combines a smart contract and a frontend user interface. This is like the internet does with websites, but instead of running on a server at Godaddy, it runs on a p2p (peer-to-peer) network, the internet itself.
The internet is itself a p2p network, one that governments can still shut down or take over if necessary. So, don’t go thinking that this is the end all be all for circumventing government. Of course, the 60 year olds of today will not be running the government in 5, 10, 20 years and those that do could easily make changes to decentralization. That would be the best case scenario, actually.
Real estimates of Bitcoin ownership in the United States comes out to roughly 2 to 4 million people, which is around 20% of the total ownership; however, only around 1,000 people own 40% of the entire share of the digital asset. Ethereum has 5 million owners, but only 400 people control one-third of the tokens. To say that it would be used as a global currency would mean building government currencies on top of them. Don’t forget, every fiat currency is digital too, just not decentralized. There’s not a bureaucracy in the world that would go for that.
To me, the greatest long-term value could be in the new tech which may be built on top of the decentralized network, the dapps. The tokens/coin look like a massive bubble helping the rich get richer and the bandwagon is getting really full. That said, happy to see this digital asset made up by solving mathematical problems become as a valuable as gold. We are living in a technology driven society where people would already rather engulf their lives into their smart devices. Why not have a digital asset that could easily be replicated (and has been) replace the tangible production costs of mining gold.
