The Future is Decentralized
With Bitcoin hitting $15K and ETH on track to hit $500, as well as major media organizations being taken less seriously, it’s becoming increasingly clear that people have lost faith in much of the centralized systems, in favor of smaller, decentralized systems.
All around us, the legacy centralized systems are crumbling. From big media, the central banks to big tech, people want systems that are not largely controlled by the very few. People are becoming hip to the fact their data is worth much more than they initially thought, evidenced by the #deleteFacebook trend, among others. Each day, more and more people question whether or not they’re following the right people and trends, trusting the right companies, as well as whether or not they will be okay to retire, given the seemingly overinflated stock market.
What does this mean for the future of crypto?
Looking back to the start of the NYSE on May 17, 1792, times were much different when 24 stockbrokers came together in NYC to sign the Buttonwood Agreement at 68 Wall Street. The famous opening bell at 9:30 am EST and closing bell at 4 pm EST has been a fixture throughout the world ever since, but with crypto, market hours are no longer needed. Crypto enables traders to trade at all hours, no longer binding them to specific time frames or alignment with certain time zones. Now, any company can have a token offering and trade on an exchange, it’s just up to that company to market its token, and for the wider public to accept it as a means of exchange.
While it’s no longer 2019, the year of ICOs, IEOs have become the next innovation in the quickly evolving digital asset space. According to the SEC:
IEOs are similar to initial coin offerings (ICOs) in that they are initial offerings of digital assets (e.g., coins or tokens) to raise capital. However, IEOs are being touted as an innovation on ICOs because they are offered directly by online trading platforms on behalf of companies — usually for a fee — to provide immediate trading opportunities for the digital assets. These online trading platforms, which are typically not registered with the SEC and which may improperly refer to themselves as “exchanges,” may also claim to perform due diligence or other quality assessments of the IEOs.
This new innovation is only further proof that decentralization is here to stay, pushing centralization quickly out the window.
All that being said, will we see crypto trading ever fully replace stock market trading?
It may be too early to speculate but based on the fact that crypto such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are much more widely known and accepted as assets today, and that there are new innovations such as the IEO, I would suggest yes. To make matters better, new companies like BlockFi are revolutionizing the way people think about saving and borrowing money. Why leave your money in a high yield savings account where you’ll earn max 0.6% APY when you can earn up to 8.6% APY in a BlockFi Interest account?
The opportunities may be vast, but the biggest challenge humans face moving forward, with special respect to DeFi, is marketing the industry in a way that the average person can connect with it. It’s about speaking an individual’s language so-to-speak and making it crystal clear what the benefits are of a completely decentralized financial ecosystem, among other decentralized systems. Bitcoin and Ethereum may be known worldwide, but in terms of the majority knowing what each are capable of, as well as all of the other crypto assets made available each day, the world still has a ways to go.
After studying the modern financial landscape, CryptOcean has identified three main areas of interest: acquisition of non-cash payments, cryptocurrency, and crypto banks. As the decentralized financial industry continues to evolve, it’s important for people to pay special attention to the three main areas that CryptOcean identified, and for culture to focus more heavily on educating the public on this industry. So long as the centralized entities are in charge, they will continue to push the centralized ways of doing things, and that’s especially true with centralized finance.
While the centralized powers that be will continue to downplay decentralization, it’s getting increasingly difficult for them to get away with it.
The time is now.
