STEEM And The Internet Of Money: Why EVERYONE Will End Up With More Money Than They Can Spend

The Internet is the biggest copy machine the world ever created.

Everything that goes on the Internet wants to be duplicated. Over the last 20+ years, we saw many industries learn this lesson the hard way. For this reason, when the Internet comes for your industry, things do not end well for you. This is a medium that is more efficient and makes things less costly. This is fatal to entities that try to hold onto their old model.

Did you notice what happened to in the music industry? People were duplicating songs which really upset the record companies (and Metallica). What was their response? To sue their customers. They simply ran an old model to a new problem. Of course, they were able to take out Napster but then sprung up the likes of Kazaa and Limewire. Peer-to-peer ended up all over the place along with torrents.

We saw the same thing happen with movies and books. Anything put online could be duplicated and distributed. Even today, those with a Usenet reader can find most anything they want for free.

Going back to the beginning, we saw the Internet radically transform a couple major areas.

A. Information

When the Internet first started, most of the web pages were information only. They were basically static pages for people to read. While this seems rather archaic now, it was revolutionary at the time. Over the first decade of the Internet, we saw information become abundant. It did not take too long for there to be more information available than one could consume in a lifetime. For the first time, the world's knowledge was available for all who were online.

Like the record industry, this radically altered publishing, newspapers, and journalism. Even newscasts were affected. Many believe the 24 hours news cycle was created by the emergence of CNN and, I guess, in part it was. However, I believe that a major piece of the puzzle was the Internet. Each time you log in for your email, you get the headlines of the days stories. Many sites have the latest news streaming across the top. In essence, news that is an hour old can be termed "outdated".

B. Communication

Going back 30 years ago, there basically were 3 ways to communicate without being face-to-face: mail a letter, fax, or call on the phone. This was the extent of the communications system for most people.

Once again, with the advent and progression of the Internet, we see a radical difference. Today, there are hundreds of ways to communicate. To list just a few:

Yahoo messenger, Google hangouts, Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Twitter, Reddit, Email, and KIK.

Like everything else, this disrupted those who were in the communication business. Compare AT&T and Sprint's long distance billing now to 20 years ago (I won't mention MCI who disappeared but not because of the Internet). VoIP became a competitor to the local telephone carriers. Of course, email really took a toll on the postal system.

Now we have a system of abundant communication. We can interact with billions of people around the world without leaving our sofas. There is no shortage of ways to reach someone or distribute information. Over time, the ways we have to communicate only keep multiplying (like information). Again, the world's biggest copy machine.

The main thing these situations have in common is the Internet changed the power structure. Those entities which were in control either were eliminated or had their power severely reduced. The news was a tightly controlled system with the nightly news casts wielding tremendous power over its viewers. We saw the same thing with newspapers. They were the source of news and really were uncontested. Today, the nightly news is a dying entity while the newspaper industry is in shambles.

This situation keeps repeating itself. What is astonishing is people fail to realize what is happening until it is too late. In hindsight, it looks obvious but few even bother to look. They hold onto their old paradigm believing they can "weather the storm". When things start going downhill, they take off the gloves and fight back. This is exactly what the record industry did. Turn to the court system (read government) to bully people into compliance. The tried to eliminate peer-to-peer sharing and keep their money-making system in tact.

Ban, bully, sue, demonize....sound familiar?

Of course, this is the modus operandi being presently used by the banksters. They are one of the next targets of the Internet. We are entering an age where the next level of advancement of this medium is finance. And what an uproar is it causing.

People question whether cryptocurrencies will really impact the banking industry. The answer is that cryptocurrencies are symbolic of what is taking place. It is not cryptocurrencies which are the threat to the financial industry but the Internet. This is taking the form of blockchain technology. That is why the attacks on cryptocurrency are totally senseless. Of course, the music and movie industries thought that attacking the file sharing entities and punishing those who defied their system by holding the "pirated" content made sense too.

We are now seeing the Internet of money (also termed Internet of Value). Currency is now in a digital form. This is the next wave of the Internet's evolution. Cryptocurrency is just an app in a much larger picture. We are also going to see instruments such as DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) be erected on top of the blockchain which, effectively, will be a printing press of money. Commerce will take place without any human interaction.

I am hoping you can see why I stated in the title that "EVERYONE Will End Up With More Money Than They Can Spend". The Internet creates abundance. We saw the creation of abundance information and communication systems. Now we are starting to see abundance through the development of the first financial app. Today, there are almost 1,400 cryptocurrencies; 5 years from now there will be 14,000 (if it takes that long). Since we are in the early stages, many still are tied to the old system. Hence, currencies are acquired via a buy in like a stock. This, of course, precludes a great many people from participating.

Fortunately, we are starting to see the evolution past that. Currencies are being created which compensate people for what they normally do. The steem blockchain is a prime example. Those of us on here are being reward for what we put into this site. While many could claim they are not getting enough, anything is more than they received before. This is the multi-trillion dollar point: we are seeing the progression. At present, you earn a few cents, in 6 months, it could be a few dollars; in a year, hundreds of dollars. In a decentralized model, there is no entity to cap or limit how high things can go.

The Internet became a throttled entity since mega-corporations basically took control. Blockchain is correcting that situation. When innovation is put under the watch of a company, it is stifled. Now, we are starting to see that unleashed. The Internet of Money (Value) is going to see a ton of developments over the next few years which will create abundance. We always were in the "attention" economy. The only difference was that entities were paid to grant companies access to our attention. Soon, that is not going to be the case. Entities that want our attention are going to have to pay us directly since the centralization of these models is being disrupted.

30 years ago....

I had maybe 1,000 songs in my music collection...today I have access to 33M with Pandora
I had maybe 20 movies...now I have hundreds of thousands with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and illegal streaming sites
I had one newspaper at the house...today I can view almost all of them.

Today I have $1,000....10 years from now...millions?

The Internet is the world's biggest copy machine and it is entering the financial arena. We will see the same fights, most likely using the same tactics, as Hollywood and the record industry engaged in. Fortunately, we are also going to see the same futile results.

It isn't cryptocurrencies that will destroy the banksters, it is the Internet. Remember this the next time someone says the banksters will win because they can buy up bitcoin. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

And just like you have more news than you can consume, more music than you can listen to, more movies than you can watch, and more people than you can communicate with, you are also going to have more money than you can spend.

This is not my promise but that of the Internet.

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Pictures by Google Images.