Not that long ago the Internet stormed into our lives. It was a really momentous event. People had high hopes for the beautiful future that the new technology would help them build. There were talks of freedom, equality, and fairness. The Internet was supposed to help the less fortunate of us become a part of the global economy, instead of making a way for the rich to multiply their fortunes. 

Does this ring a bell to you? Blockchain promise sounds suspiciously similar.

So what happened to all the good deeds that the Internet was supposed to inspire? Apparently, powerful businesses and governments across the world put the new democratic technology to use and continued gaining all the profits. From the terabytes of data and machine learning algorithms, to mobile applications and car and flat-sharing industries – they all belong to corporations now. Leaving the humble and hard-working lower-class to barely scrape by. And the more amenities we produce, the higher the social inequality. 

We may have lost the first battle, but we’re not quite ready to give up just yet. Especially since blockchain has come along and we can finally fight back. Crypto enthusiasts all over the world have prepared for a new era of low-cost financial services, fair elections, corruption-free prosperous lives, and freedom from the parasites who leech off us. 

But what if we’re running into the same trap again? Could what some skeptics keep diagnosing be true? Is crypto here only for the rich to get richer? 

Bitcoin Investing

According to statistics, 68% of the world’s richest have already put a bet on crypto or are going to do so in the near future. On the one hand, it’s good news for adoption. On the other, it raises some questions. 

The best crypto Investing strategy is to invest loads and be an early adopter. It’s no rocket science: the more money you put in, the higher the profit you will eventually get. All those crypto millionaires at the top of the Forbes’ lists were quite successful even before they embarked on the blockchain journey. Be it the Winklevoss brothers, Michael Novogratz, or Changpeng Zhao, they all had start-up capital of some kind whether it was from a lawsuit jackpot or a good education. 

Now, you may interject and use Erik Finman as an example. Just an average teenage boy who made his millions off Bitcoin with just a grand from his grandmother. It does sound like a promise, doesn’t it? However, there’s a catch. Why haven’t we heard a single inspirational story about a Nigerian boy who decided to put his extra $1,000 into crypto and made a fortune? Well, probably because he’s a flight of fantasy! 

All those western-world investors can afford their gamble to not work out. Their lives do not depend on this bet. They have spare cash and roll a hard six with it. If they fail once, well too bad. Better luck next time. But those of us who struggle to make ends meet have no such privilege. 

Not to mention that investing in crypto is no easy task when you have no access to simple commodities, yet still, some manage to march into play. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the amounts they put in crypto will be enough to change their financial situation drastically. 

Token Investing

The ICO model that everyone was so thrilled about didn’t seem to work all that great either. Instead of giving easy access to passive income to the masses, it left many participants if not broke, then devastated. As a result, regular folk ended up with a bunch of questionable projects that never happened, owning dozens of useless tokens.

On the contrary, when a well-known established business launches a funding campaign, it usually starts with a private pre-sale for those who can afford to invest heavily. Low prices for big buyers, and regular ones for the rest of the world once they’re done with the private sale.

And that’s the thing with investing: becoming a millionaire overnight is what everybody chases but it’s always a matter of pure luck. Although huge profits do happen all the time, sad to say, you have to put in a lot first. 

Mining

Mining is just another example of how big corporations lay their hands on anything worth grabbing. It’s almost hard to believe that in the beginning, your regular home computer was enough to mine BTC. Once the idea behind the first crypto went viral, things started to change. As a matter of fact, in ten years time, the situation has changed so much that the industry is now centralized in the hands of several Chinese companies. 

In Defense of Crypto

So who controls cryptocurrency? We’ve all heard the numbers: 40 percent of all Bitcoins belong to one thousand people. We’ll tell you more. Chances are that these people know each other very well and nothing will stop them if they want to manipulate the price. 

And it only gets worse with altcoins: 100 Ethereum addresses are in charge of the 40% of the entire supply. Not to mention other coins where the top hodlers own up to 90% of the pie.

Money attracts money, and usually the more people have, the more they crave. Why would digital money be any different? That’s just the way things work. We cannot change it until we reboot our mindsets and start considering the world as a whole. Once people realize that chasing profit and multiplying numbers in their bank account is not as rewarding as building a better and happier society, we will keep going round in circles.

So now you might even feel that blockchain has failed us all. Well, not really. It is still a promising technology that has the power to help humanity with a few important tasks. However, it is not a silver bullet against inequality, ignorance, and greed.

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