A War of Economic Attrition

In a recent post, I mentioned in passing what kind of affect demanding payment in Bitcoin/ crypto might have. For example if a startup business sale to an investment conglomerate asked for Bitcoin for the transfer, rather than US dollars. What if Elon Musk (if he ends up doing it) says he will buy Twitter, but will pay the 44 billion dollars for it in the equivalent Bitcoin.

Far-fetched for sure.

But, how far?

There are already some sports stars taking part of their salary in Bitcoin for example and there is another factor that a lot of people seem to forget.

To illustrate this, in Australia there are over 1 million crypto holders, which isn't that many at the end of the day, but that is 8% of people between the ages of 20 and 64. However, under 35s account for 60% of all holders, which means that 20% of the entire 20-35 year population have crypto, which has doubled in the last year. And, this is a conservative estimate, as some have put it as high as 32%.

This is very important because as adoption happens more in the younger age brackets and time goes on, those "young people" quickly become "middle-aged" people and do you know what middle-aged people do?

They make decisions in companies.

For example, at the company I work for, most of the business decisions are made by people between the ages of 40 and 50, as they hold decision-making positions. In ten years from now, they might still be making decisions, but the people who are currently around 35 will be well and truly embedded in the decision-making group and, they are likely to have some experience with crypto.

All this time, there will be continued adoption and while there will be ups and downs, the longer it "lasts" the higher the chances of it surviving further. Continued survival and value generation will see increasing numbers of goods and services, as well as investment vehicles built around the crypto industry, solidifying it into daily life.

What happens?

Well, in short-order, these crazy risk seekers who have been crushed by the traditional economy due to exploitative practices from the older generations, are making decisions after having benefited from a new economy. Not only this, older generations don't live forever.

Warren Buffet is 91 years old, Charlie Munger is 98. For how long do their opinions get counted? And then in the companies where those young people are starting to make decisions, those who were are starting to retire. This applies pressures from both ends that drives decision-making change through business frameworks and, those with crypto (which might be a near majority within a decade) will want to be able to increasingly use it for their lives.

As I was saying about money laundering through the central banks and their lackies, more people are going to be willing and able to handle their own finances through crypto - having their own keys and, using the multitude of products that make it as simple (if not more so) than what they might be using today. This completely changes the economic landscape and not only that, the financial services landscape too, where investment practices shift to far more self-directed processes and, what is invested into is likely to be more "what you know" which isn't necessarily what is happening now.

So, while there are going to be ups and downs and plenty of pushback against the decentralized economies and business models, in time the decision makers on the centralized side start to die off and the decentralized primed come increasingly to the fore. It becomes a "war of attrition" with the resource being time and as we know, time wears down all things - even the control of the most harmful economy that has ever existed.

While it seems far-fetched, this is the thing with building an industry - it always takes time and, generally, the people who create the industry aren't the ones who benefit the most from it, because by the time it is adopted, their lives have expired. It is the young early adopters, the risk-seekers, the children of parents who rolled the dice on a better economic future who meet the peak.

This is a long game - longer than most people are able to survive mentally, as we are encouraged to be short-term actors, sell our value now for cheap in exchange for money - with the buyer of our resources knowing that the money they are handing over, will never be ours, it will always be theirs.

Economic change is coming - but will it be fast enough for us?

Unlikely for me, but I hope that my daughter will benefit.

Age is just a number, but it does help draw some conclusions.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]