Opinion: Didn’t see this coming with bitcoin

I think I’m beginning to understand the upside of bitcoin. Or at least I’m understanding another, broader facet of the cryptocurrency.

Thanks to Hackernoon.

It’s one of those websites where you could scroll for content into the post-Digital Age. (I’ve heard it’s going to be called the Experience Age.) Headlines like “Would a robot pet enhance your life?” and “The Dark Side of Data (Confessions of a Former Data Hitman)” pop up for days on Hackernoon.

But this one stopped my brain right in its tracks: “Why Everyone Missed the Most Mind-Blowing Feature of Cryptocurrency,” by Daniel Jeffries, a self-described author, futurist and thinker.

If you’re like me, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been puzzling. I recognize the allure of trading a paperless currency and the utility of making virtual payments, but I get lost in the blockchain mining functions and have a giddy bewilderment over bitcoin’s versions of initial public offerings, i.e. initial coin offerings.

Then there is this power piece to the puzzle. That’s where Jeffries enlightens.

He identifies a blueprint for control through currency: “Eradicate alternative coins, create one coin to rule them all and use brutality and blood to keep that power at all costs.” That’s the long history of money, in his few words.

Cryptocurrencies are counter to this system. Think about it. They’re decentralized – to the extent it makes the masses uneasy and the coins untrustworthy. Naturally, what we don’t know and understand, we distrust.

Jeffries claims bitcoin “was explicitly designed to resist coercion and control by centralized powers.”

His “mind-blowing feature” is the distribution part. The printing of money, used loosely here in the crypto setting, is probably obvious. It’s happening, and it’s exciting.

But distributing the new money is the upside, Jeffries says.

“The true power of cryptocurrencies is the power to print and distribute money without a central power,” he writes.

The miners are the current distribution vehicle. There’s only a select few who have the wherewithal to mine. We’ve seen some mining operations come and go in Springfield, in fact.

Jeffries asserts spreading that distribution power to the public at large would be a game changer. No, more than that, it would “completely alter the economic landscape of the world forever.” Mind blown.

Here’s why: Historically, world systems have distributed money from the top down, right? And thus, those closest to the governing rulers hold the majority of the money and power. It’s not like the game of Monopoly, where everyone starts out with equal stacks of cash.

But could it be? I think that’s where this idea is going. Jeffries connects bitcoin to the notion of a universal basic income. Light bulb.

Yes, like Monopoly, a new crypto law would say everyone gets bitcoin and has a seat at the table to participate in making more of it. Everyone can pass Go – not just the miners or the investors.

The ideas to earn coin are far-fetched, from rewards for using an app to the network randomly drafting miners for their turn to mine. In this scenario, everyone is a miner.

It has tinges of socialism without the difficulty of redistributing money already in the hands of people. That’s what makes it remotely possible. The rules of the game can be rewritten because the currency has yet to be widely distributed.

The Steemit social media platform is doing something similar for publishers. You post content to the website and get paid in digital tokens, a cryptocurrency called Steem, based on votes by readers. The rewards come from a pool of tokens minted daily by the Steem blockchain.

It’s all technically confusing, yes, but you can see how the type and flow of money can change and thus alter our financial ecosystems. Steemit is a self-described “attention economy.”

I’m not advocating for these global changes, but I can now see where we might be headed. Perhaps, the days of exchanging our time, energy and skills for earned pay are dwindling.

Back to where I started with Jeffries: “What we really need is to completely gamify the delivery of money, distributing it far and wide at the moment of creation,” he writes.

Figure that one out – trust me, he and others are trying – and the current financial systems will be upended.

Now, that’s food for thought. Check, please!

Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.