“People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company
Before I got into crypto, all I wanted was pretty much what everyone else wants. To improve my lot in life. You know the usual things: a better job, more money, nicer things for my family.
But ever since falling down the crypto rabbit hole, what I’ve come to realize is that everything I coveted in the past was in the context of the current reality. In other words, what I thought I wanted was faster horses, when what I could have been asking for is the automobile.
I think this is true for most people. If you were to ask them what they want, they’d probably imagine some version of their life now only better. The world itself would be the same, the only thing that would be different would be their place in it.
But I don’t think it has to be that way, because I believe that crypto has the power to change everything.
Just as people in Henry Ford’s day couldn’t imagine a better mode of traveling than a faster horse, chances are most people today can’t imagine a better way of life that doesn’t involve having to rely on governments, central banks, or credit card companies.
Earlier this year I reread George Orwell’s 1984, and what I realized afterward was that while there are countless novels describing how bad things can get, I really can’t think of any that show us the way to make everything better: 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Handmaid’s Tale, Farenheit 451, the list goes on and on.
While I think it’s great to have these stories to warn us of the dangers of authoritarianism, communism, and what can happen in the absence of freedom, I believe what would be even better is a story that shows us how good things can be in a truly free society.
Maybe it’s because such a world was impossible to imagine before the invention of cryptocurrencies, but now that crypto is here to stay, I hope we can explore what that means for the future of humanity.
How will things work? How will everything be different from today? What will banking be like? How will mortgages work? And of course, who will build the roads?
The truth is I have no idea. No one does according to Amaury:
“Go back to the Roman empire when they switched to fiat and ask the people, like even the economists, you know people that studied that all their life: What do you think the consequence would be? And none of them is going to tell you there’s going to be banks, and they’re going to do fractional reserve, and they’re going to do lending and stuff like that, and they’re going to rebalance their stuff, and then they’re going to do leverage trading and whatnot. Like none of them is going to, even the world expert on the matter is not going to be able to tell you anything that is even remotely close to looking like that. And I think it’s very much the same [for crypto].”
Amaury Sechet, founder of eCash
While I can’t help but agree with Amaury that it will be virtually impossible to accurately predict what the future might look like if everyone is using crypto, that doesn’t mean we can’t try and imagine it, and then try and build it.
That’s what this blog is all about, and I hope you will join me on my journey as I try and imagine a version of the world where we can both be civilized and free at the same time.