The following is a guest post from John deVadoss, the Co-founder of InterWork Alliance.
Act One: From a Crisis, A New Institution Emerges
On July 30, 2008, the United States Housing and Economic Recovery Act, intended to address the subprime mortgage crisis (which had precipitated the then ongoing Global Financial Crisis), was formally signed. Two weeks later, on Monday, August 18, 2008, the domain bitcoin.org was registered.
By November 2008, Quantitative Easing was in action, and the United States Federal Reserve had started buying mortgage-backed securities. In January 2009, the code for Bitcoin was released as open-source, and by March 2009, the Federal Reserve held close to two trillion US dollars of bank debt, mortgage-backed securities, and Treasury notes.
Suppose the goal was to beta-test digital currency at scale towards disintermediating secondary and tertiary financial institutions by directly linking citizens and a central bank. In that case, Bitcoin has been a spectacular success, heralding the upcoming era of CBDCs. If the goal were to make the common man conversant with digital currencies and their usage, Bitcoin would have succeeded remarkably.
A revolutionary breakthrough when it was released, Bitcoin is many things to many people: a virtual currency, a new kind of money, a store of value, and the promise of freedom. But, more than anything, Bitcoin is a new monetary institution for the digital age. Bitcoin has demonstrated that digital monetary institutions are the future; it has done its job by moving the goalposts from why to when.
Some see in Bitcoin and its pseudonymous creator(s), a Robin Hood-type legend, a Zorro-like hero, or a populist protagonist standing up against the system. It is not for me to deconstruct the thematic illusions, but as the old adage goes, the truth is bound to make you smile when it arrives.
Act Two: The Rise of a Monolith and its Discontents
Bitcoin begat Ethereum, a 21st-century application platform to rival any of…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Ethereum (ETH) News | CryptoSlate…
