Sponsor: N.C.
Signatories: D.H., K.V., M.M., O.A., S.Y.
Topic: Cryptocurrency. Should I Be Bothered?

Trying to explain cryptocurrency
Attempting to understand the cryptocurrency and blockchains and trying to understand the hype of the cryptocurrency,
- Acknowledges the idea of decentralized money however acknowledges the market speculations
- Draws parallels between control over money and control over political power; with cryptocurrency this control shifts towards open markets from governments
- Questions the guarantees behind the cryptocurrency as opposed to supply and demand of the national currencies backed by the economies
- Brings in ‘peoples’ element into the equation: people recognize and adopt the use of currencies; states that people are giving values to the likes of Bitcoin and Etherium, and Ripple.
- Acknowledges the finiteness of the resource of cryptocurrency as limits in computational power, although those limits to be ‘soft,’ and predictable throughout the algorithm at any given point of time.
- Discards the threat of losing network connectivity as means of transactions and states that the connectivity is a given in our epoch like the roads built by Romans in the olden days.
- Questions why some countries embrace the cryptocurrency and some are opposed
- Poses a question what Karl Marx’s opinion of the social currency be
- Draws attention to the reduction of costs due to more effective services and manufacturing and highlights that abundance and emerging of ‘democratized’ currencies go hand in hand.
- Treats common sense as a finite resource
- Praises blockchain as open and fair technology which threatens intermediaries
- Sees usefulness in the blockchains for humanity as opposed to the cryptocurrency at the given moment of time
Side Notes:
- We could not refrain from citing “There are no money in the 24th century.” Here is an episode from Star Trek about the economy.
- A reference was made to an abundance, here is a Peter Diamandis’s talk.
- Another good infographics found by one of our members on the blockchain.
Dubai, March 2, 2018