What is Happening with the Bitcoin Takeover and Cryptocurrency Dream?

What Happened With the Cryptocurrency Dream?

In a recent article, Sterlin Lujan talks about what happened with the hype in virtual currencies and how the dream about buying lambos and mansons disappeared. He also explains what Amara’s Law is and anarchists’ role.

Back in 2017, Bitcoin grew during most part of the year. In December, Bitcoin reached $20,000 dollars. Everyone was very excited about it and thinking that virtual currencies were going to change the whole financial system. Clearly, this did not happen.

Since that moment, Bitcoin lost over 65% of its value and many investors decided to leave the market. Now, there is no expectations for a new bull run in the short term. However, Sterlin Lujan says that those who studied technological trends could have predicted this outcome experienced by virtual currencies.

When a new technology emerges, he says, those who enter see an important opportunity to profit from it. And indeed, they want to exploit the technology and obtain an important revenue. In general, these individuals do not want to change the world, instead, they care more about making money from them. This is not bad in the sense that capitalists want to earn as much money as possible. But there is an important problem with it. If people focuses just in making money, the proposals are expected to fail.

And this is when Lujan mentions Amara’s Law. He says that there is an explanation for these technologies to succumb to bad actors. The law says:

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

The overestimation is related to fraudsters, pseudo-entrepreneurs and other individuals that want to take advantage of it. During that time, in general the first years of the technology, the victims are just starting to learn about it and how it works. For the author, overestimation is a synonym of hype.

When the industry is analysed in the long term, the ecosystem cleans the bad actors from the space. Moreover, projects that are not scams fail, creating a consolidation phase. And in order to prosper, the consolidation phase is accompanied by self-governance.

At the moment, the cryptocurrency space is working in order to understand and promote self-governance. Developers consider platforms to help companies and the community improves the ecosystem with self-governance systems. All these scammers and fraudster can only attract governmental intervention, which according to Lujan, the government is one of the larges criminal organizations ever. That means that the community is calling a ‘murderer to prevent murder.’

Users and crypto enthusiasts should understand that virtual currencies were different. He mentions that people should start to learn about cypherpunks and crypto-anarchists, which were the predecessors of virtual currency and blockchain technology.

“The beautiful think about cryptocurrency is it changes people’s psychology,” says Lujan. “It teaches them about sound money, by rewiring their brain. It also reminds them they own themselves, and that no one deserves to extort the fruits of their labor.”

Finally, he says that the crypto-anarchist dream is the real source of hype and that it is not related to getting rich fast.