Why Asking If Crypto Will Succeed Is The Wrong Question

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Many want to know if cryptocurrency will succeed or not. This leads them to ask whether there will be a time when we see mainstream adoption?

In my mind, this is precisely the wrong question and shows a misdirected focus.

People who ask this are looking left when they should be looking right. They are focusing at one level when the concentration should be another layer down.

Instead, the more accurate question is this: Do you believe Web 3.0 will become a reality?

If we pay attention at this level, everything else falls in place.

Why is this the elephant in the room?

Here again we see a simple answer: The present Internet is broken.

It is a siloed system that is run by centralized companies. People are under constant surveillance. To make matters worse, their financial and, sometimes, physical lives are put at risk because the data from that surveillance is gets hacked.

We see monopolies formed with a few companies having a great deal of control. Censorship is taking place as algorithms are written to silence certain viewpoints. The ability to manipulate information is only increasing as the few entities gain more power.

Inequality is growing as the mighty leverage the power of this tool for their own gain. As platforms become more important, those behemoths are able to take a larger portion of the pie.

Innovation is stifled since the power-base is with a few companies. Closed networks lock people in, making it difficult to switch. This not only reduces choice, it often presents an inferior product.

The Internet is not going away. There are roughly 3.5B people online now with that number expected to jump to over 7B within 10 years. If anything, this mechanism is only becoming a bigger part of each of our lives.

Hence, the need for reform. Web 3.0 provides the answer to a great many of those problems.

So what is Web 3.0?

When you strip it down, it is decentralization. Essentially, it is a peer-to-peer Internet without the need for the centralized entities that control it.

In focusing upon Web 3.0, one can easily see how the crypto question is answered.

If we look back at Bitcoin and the breakthrough Satoshi provided, we realize how this all unfolds.

The value of Bitcoin, as an invention, was not the idea of laying down data in this manner. That was around for decades. What Bitcoin did for the world was provided the ability to monetize peer-to-peer transactions (i.e. got rid of the double-spend problem).

This is what the Internet was missing, at least from its original ideals.

A decade later, this process evolved with many forms of value transfer arising within the peer-to-peer landscape. These systems are what is allowing for the innovation and ingenuity to emerge. No longer are people under obligation to the centralized entities in this regard.

It is vital to remember that cryptocurrency is just an application, the first application for the "new web". This is akin to email. One did not judge the possible success of the Internet by looking at email.

Of course, the Internet could succeed and became much more than email.

Yet within this realm, it is very simple: If Web 3.0 becomes a reality, then cryptocurrency must succeed.

The reason for this is they are tied together for commerce. When a system has the ability to monetize transactions, commerce can take place. Since cryptocurrency offers the ability for monetization without third party verification entities, it is a vital part of Web 3.0.

Thus, even though an application, it is interwoven in the fabric of Web 3.0.

As an aside, another application that I feel will be vital to the new web is a Digital I.D. system. That will be another application that will become an essential part of this technological roll out.

Which brings up another question that people often ask: When will cryptocurrency go mainstream?

The answer to that is when more people start conducting peer-to-peer transactions. To increase the usage of crypto, grow the number of peer-to-peer transactions.

It is all a very simple system when you dig down into it. This also explains why it is not an overnight process. It takes time to develop all that is required to replace much of the existing Internet.

Welcome to crypto-economics. It is the economic model for Web 3.0.

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