Learn and Invest in Cryptos to Stay in Charge

Halving of resilient grandfather crypto - BTC

No matter what you do and what your passion is, why and how are two basic questions for most topics we have to address. Let’s get right to why we should learn and invest in the cryptoverse. Since the bitcoin’s creation on 3rd Jan 2009, we have had three halvings, associated bull runs, and winters that follow. Arguably, we may still see more corrections in the coming period and not yet hit the new “bottom.” But that tells plenty of things about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general: the space has grown out of its infancy in terms of technology, use cases, user base, and probably the most important of all, the public dialogue and general confidence in its development. In this article, let’s examine some facts to substantiate why we should learn and invest in crypto and integrate it into your life.

Cryptocurrencies are scaling up from the infancy stage

Though there are major altcoins like Ethereum, bitcoin makes up about 40% of the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies at the time of writing. So let’s look at it as a vast representative of the cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has been around for 13 years with a completely open code repo, operating network, and blockchain ledger for the whole world to see AND all the hackers to attack at will. Despite being probably the most conspicuous target, bitcoin is going strong than ever and has proven to be an extremely resilient technology stack with a just as robust development community in the age of information tsunami and social network attention-grab disorder.

Meanwhile, the value of a single bitcoin has increased by 200 times in the past 9 years based on CoinGecko’s price data of about $100 on Aug 1st, 2013. This timeframe already excludes the first four years, in which it was traded at less than one dollar. Sure, you will see project after project breaks down, goes dormant, collapses, and even pulls the rug (fraud alert). Despite of these ill-fated crypto projects, bitcoin has stood the test of time and will grow stronger. Its potential upside warrants your attention to learn about and invest in it.

Institution adoption and offerings

Over the past two years, an increasing number of major institutions or brand name companies are adopting crypto in their infrastructure, business process, and direct offerings. It’s possibly only a few or even none of them that really touch your daily life. But the trend is clearly picking up. So you should teach or at least mentally prepare yourself to get oriented with some fundamental ideas of crypto currencies and what they mean or might be of use to you. This is not just financial wise but also get on the interactive journey into the cryptoverse and the world that you know.

Banks are offering crypto-backed loans and trading features

Goldman Sachs now offers loans backed by bitcoin. This happened soon after the banking behemoth traded its first over-the-counter bitcoin option in March this year. Lending US dollars, euros, and other major FIATs with cryptos you owned as collateral has been available and growing for years with lending platforms such as Nexo and Blockfi. But when the good old Goldman Sachs jumps into the water, you know they’ve done the homework and are ready to make a splash. Meanwhile, Santander, another brand name international bank, is offering crypto trading features to its clients of selective regions. Brazil seems to be the first one to receive such features, according to a coindesk report last week.

E-commerce payment and crypto-enabled credit and debit card

Another sector picking up the crypto adoption is e-commerce and payments. PayPal is probably one of the biggest and longest standing name since the early days of ebay. Ahhh, what lovely old days we once had. For a while, PayPal US users could buy and sell select cryptocurrencies within the platform. But from this summer, users of the US outfit can freely transfer their cryptocurrencies in the platform to any non-PayPal wallet address of their choosing. This is big deal that comes with a buying limit with one caveat of weekly cap of like $100,000 per week. For most of us folks, that’s almost like no limit.

And you probably hear an on-line commerce platform and another is accepting bitcoin or other select cryptocurrencies. Yes, Amazon is at nowhere close to adding bitcoin or other coins as payment option. But you can buy Amazon gift cards or pay with credit or debit card supporting cryptocurrencies issued by BitPay, Crypto.com, and alike. So by now, the public landscape of crypto adoption should look more clear now, even though we are digging into the obvious like Tesla, MicroStrategy, and Grayscale’s bitcoin trust.

Governments dishing out crypto market regulations

Understandably, governments of major geopolitical unions have been studying cryptocurrencies for a whole lot of time. Public executive commissions, government agencies, state-associated think tanks, etc., are publishing report after report. It’s safe to say that we’ve got a mixed bag of signals coming out of the shops. Take two examples. European Union is rolling out the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, which reached a provisional deal status at end of June this year and is slated to take effect in two years. The United States does not have such an expansive legal framework on the table yet. But you get plenty of ideas from various discussions and public hearings on how they stand on privacy, ownership, and taxes revolving around crypto assets.

It’s a vast domain and has plenty worth talking about. But let’s focus on one topic that closely relates to cryptocurrencies, which is Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). China has been experimenting with digital yuan in select cities and areas. France is carrying out tests of a digital currency, allegedly the digital euro. Ukraine was quite advanced in that direction before the war with Russia broke out. But Ukraine’s government and private sector are heavily adopting cryptocurrencies for various reasons, including to fund their military operation. In short, we are to see central banks roll out their digital currencies shortly. And do not forget that El Salvador adopted bitcoin as its legal tender last year.

DelftCoin says let’s learn and invest in cryptos

If you read this far, we should already make the case that cryptocurrencies have evolved much from a fledging technology with a geek cyber rebellion streak to a fast-growing asset class that has become comfortably valued at about 1 trillion US dollars in less than a decade. In this world, nothing is certain but death, taxes, and changes. Cryptos directly call for serious thinking and discussion on all of them. And that is a darn good reason for us to focus up to understand more about it.