Espionage, innovation and undermining the world

I got an email last night from Ledger about he breach saying that my details were leaked - which is pretty disappointing from a company who specializes in data protection. But, I think that the higher the price goes, the more this is going to happen as not only are there massive financial incentives to hack wallets, there are massive incentives to hack wallets and destroy rivals in the process. With the "big boys" entering into an unregulated arena, they have a lot of resources at their disposal and they are up against what could be considered quite a disorganized and unprofessional collection of targets. Who knows, the password to get into the servers may have been:

Ledger2020!

I think a lot of us see the value of crypto in the long term, but we also tend to underestimate the resources of the large institutions and corporations and their willingness to use them. The anti-trust cases against Facebook for example, where they have denied access to the APIs and bought up rivals and the like, is an indication of what kinds of people are making the decisions. And it should be remembered, that where they play is in regulated industries that have laws and jail time, as well as some level of global oversight - albeit, not very good.

The market cap of Bitcoin at 425B and the entire cryptosphere at about 650B is a tiny, tiny, tiny fragment of the world's wealth, but what it represents is far more valuable than what the value indicates. That 600B is generated, innovated and supported by a group of strangers spread across the earth, with no formal government or corporate intervention, other than those who are willing to participate in this "rogue" industry also. This organization of people at this level has never happened before, nor has it been technologically possible before.

Not only this, what it targets is the foundation of control itself, the economic platform and the players that direct the flow of finance across the system through their own gateways. Up until this point of the modern world, history has required us to use middlemen as we were unable to do this ourselves, but with the introduction of the internet, mobile technologies, artificial intelligence and computing power in general - the reliance on centralized institutions will continue to slip, at all levels.

And herein lies the problem. Because the current world is so heavily centralized and monopolized at the local level by corporation and governments, that he disruption being caused is a monumental threat to their way of existence to the point where many of their functions could be scaled back significantly, or made entirely obsolete. This is true even though the market cap is a minute slice of their overall wealth, because it opens the potential for others to do the same, ad infinitum.

The decentralized beast cannibalizes the centralized model, but doesn't rule-out centralized organization through collaboration and consolidation of resources. The difference being that if there is a centralized level of control, it can be disbanded or abandoned at any point, something that is very difficult currently, since so much of our living transactions are handled through the managed gateways and there is little option for an alternative. But, that can change quickly.

For example, I have been reading over the last few months how Toyota have been developing solid state batteries, that are smaller, lighter and cheaper - while extending the range and cutting down charging time to the point where it is insignificant. While these aren't quite on the market yet, how long until almost every argument against full-electric cars are irrelevant? How long until there is a breakthrough in energy production that reduces the cost and potential environmental impact to power the cars?

While we impatiently wait for mass adoption of crypto and know that it can take some time, industry innovations can change the speed of adoption enormously and in a decentralized environment where groups are competing for the underlying layer of the new economy, there can be a great deal of not only evolution in the technological layers, but also the simplification of process required to empower the average at the social layers. This means that there can be leaps and bounds forward and at each step, more people become accustomed to the processes of change, making the next step a shorter distance in front.

I think while Moore's Law of doubling doesn't quite apply to cultural change, I do think that the more we accept change, the faster we can accept the next change, in a process similar to stretching, lifting weights or the desensitization or normalization through the exposure to conditions and ideas. How long will it be before people start waking up to the risks of the centralized world of convenience, but innovate themselves a decentralized world that is not only just as convenient, but also more secure and personally valuable by expanding the distribution model?

It is hard to predict which projects will survive and thrive, but due to the nature of the technological advancements and direction so far, it is pretty certain that the industry itself will thrive, as it puts value up for grabs again. This will effectively see a "gold rush" fever in the industry but unlike the past that potential was tied to location and the resources required to get to the veins and stake a position, many people around the world will be able to stake their little slice of digital ground and start mining, in all the ways now and the future ways to come.

As said, crypto strikes at the heart of control and as such, it is going to bleed into every corner of transactional life in time. While the focus is obviously on Bitcoin and a handful of others currently, there is just not enough bandwidth for those to be the only gateways, plus, with the move away from centralization, people are going to want a wider range of options for how and where they store and shift their wealth across the globe. And because of these things, the competition for development is going to intensify at both the technological level and as always, for the attention of the users themselves. No matter what economy it is, it is the consumers who are the ones who drive utility and value and it will be us who either empowers ourselves or resigns us to a fate similar to the one we already live.

And you thought all this mining was for tokens.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

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