This is your ticket to the greatest event on earth…do not squander it..
This is an article I wrote back in June while flying back from Singapore. One of those quiet moments where you can hear yourself think…
As the song goes “everyone is trying to keep us down….”
Business, Government and Society has a big issue; and it’s called ‘The Bitcoin Generation’. Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Decentralisation is more than a technology, it is a global movement! It is a structural change to not only commerce but how the resources of our planet will ultimately be shared out. It matters and it will change things, it may even save mankind.
1960s replay
There was an uprising similar to Bitcoin the 1960’s in London (a movement) where the average working man on the street, the young and disintermediated pushed back. They spoke out as individuals and no longer wanted to conform or be supressed as part of an obedient crowd. This was a break out because the UK was stuck in a post war grey period, a dull society where the powerful liked it that way and social norms encouraged conformist behaviour as sheep. This young generation spawned the Beatles, The Who, David Bailey, Twiggy, Vidal Sassoon and Mary Quant — the mother of the mini skirt suddenly developed a voice. They were part of a liberating movement, an emerging culture that encouraged people to express themselves and they did, and there was nothing the establishment could do about it.
In the sixties people were tired of the stiff society of our parents who lived through the scarcity of the war years and whose own parents brought them up with draconian Victorian attitudes that forced people to supress their feelings and encouraged the people to blindly follow the rules without questioning. This retentive society spawned a new generation saw the opportunity to make their own way in the world, the break free and not have to follow the rules of the past. Rules decided by the hierarchy of a class system where the ‘establishment’ designed the politics of the time to retain control and limit democracy, just enough to extract more from the people to stockpile wealth.
A decentralised freedom is the only way to fly…
The sixties movement was driven by people that wanted to gain control over their lives, make their own decisions, however the establishment at the time didn’t stand back and tried to constrain it and even quash it. Early adopters vocally expressing new freedoms were arrested and imprisoned, mostly musicians for living a rock n roll lifestyle and maybe just a little for smashing up hotels and taking large amounts of drugs. But the shackles were off and people loved it. Soon to be conjoined in the US where the people were demonstrating against injustice, voicing concerns about the Vietnam war and what emerged was as a range of fringe movements ‘flower power’ and free love period made easier by the pill that liberated women to control their sexuality. It was all going on and this is where we are are heading all over again as the people wake up to new freedoms and a future where they have a larger say in how their lives play out…
The parallels between the 1960’s revolution and Bitcoin are uncanny. Bitcoin is again encouraging the ‘permissive society’ fuelled by the underlying decentralised Blockchain tech, and led by new heroes have emerged with rock star like profiles led by Vitalik Buterin, Roger Ver, Andreas Antonopolous Eric Vorhees and many others, pioneers with a voice that are pushing this community forward and cannot be silenced… The revolution is becoming louder as people from all over the globe discover the joining the Bitcoin movement offers new freedoms to control their own finances, their identities and take back control.
What we dont want…
Nobody wants a centralised surveillance based society that is watching your every move, tell you what to wear, how to behave and have control over you. Society is a construct. Play by rules and you will be looked after is a lie! An illusion set by the Capitalist few that benefit from keeping the people off balance. And they will argue that someone has to make the decisions, take control and enforce law, as order is necessary which few would deny. But now they fear the advent of decentralised technology delivering the opportunity to create new models of governance, of decision making and consensus without them. A system that has trust and transparency built in. We are entering a new era that will decide how society will be run and who makes the decisions as what we have today isn’t working.
The 1960’s set the benchmark for Bitcoin…
As a sixties child, I was aware of this loud revolution, the music, the fashion and the different way of thinking, and yes, I hated the Beatles and Elvis music and still do. But they played their part. It was key The Time in the 20th Century to be alive, to be involved, to make your mark as the London scene demonstrated. Even the FBI and MI5 perceived this as an infection as something they had to deal with. A new Liberalism a new permissiveness was sweeping the western world as society broke with post wars years and the young started to shape the world we have today.
“This is our time” more empowering words from a song. And so, if you know anything about Bitcoin and you get it, like it, own it; you are already part of the Bitcoin Generation and we need you. 50 years from now this time will be seen as an historically landmark, a time when society awoke from an Orwellian dream, when the establishment was rocked and then everything changed. And yes this time it is different!
The power of sending money to someone without going through a central banking system is profound, a transaction that cannot be tampered with by dark forces, and be under no illusion Bitcoin has rocked the people in power to its core, and they don’t know what to do next.
Society needs to structurally change…
I have been in technology for over 4 decades and seen mainframes, mini computers, the PC revolution and the birth of networking (from its packet switching roots) and then the Internet. Each having a profound impact of peoples’ behaviours, the nature of work and productivity and the rules of the bigger game that is being played out.
What I have learned is the Blockchain technology offers a structural transformation to society both good and bad. Previously technology has also been held back by those that feed the hierarchy of power, making the tech conform rather than unleash its potential. Where core systems were designed around draconian Tax, Legal and Accounting structures have since strangled businesses, a centralised ‘system of record’ that forces all parties to have keep their own version of the truth. A system that supports the power games of those calling the shots, as this is what it was designed for. A system based on post industrial revolution structures entering mass manufacturing where the nature of work was designed and packaged to be measured in a hierarchy that became the school of management for almost 100 years. Infecting all businesses with frictional costs, a landscape for politics and imposing layers of unnecessary management in industry.
“A generation of worthless and unnecessary jobs backed by regulation to make sure certain people had a role and could drink from the trough”…
Insurance products designed to be sold through layers of distribution, sales people and brokers. Then my favourite parasites — the Independent Financial Advisor. How much profit margin is in a product designed to feed these layers, pay the commissions and allow miselling on mass. Insurance is one big ‘Ponzi Scheme’ as it is predicated on new money coming into the top to pay out at the bottom, if it pays out at all. Pensions is another failed product, a scam; then we have mortgages another failed product that robs people and Medical Insurance designed to be sold and not claimed, aimed at the people with money.
Bitcoiners dont want to be employed…
There are a couple of issues. When people realise they have been sold a lie and Bitcoin offers something different, they want to take back control. The Liberation journey begins offering new tools to create your own economy, be your own bank and to trade the value you hold, without friction. This is the crypto way. The Millennials don’t want to work 9–5 sit in an office or commute to work. They demand the flexibility to do other things and live an entirely different lifestyle with many becoming ‘digital nomads’.
I witnessed my dad commute for 35 years everyday missing out on so much, and as a child I only saw him only on the weekends. The labour force has changed and big companies don’t know how to deal with it, attract and retain talent, because for this generation working for a large company represents the ‘treadmill’ that you get on, that burdens you with financial obligations that never stops until you retire and then die.
Then we have Generation Z, they have few social skills, can’t look you in the eye and many have ‘digital damenture’ which will have a profound impact of the workforce. It is all changing before our very eyes. Technology liberates the information making everything accessible, something some states don’t like (China, North Korea) as governments that concentrate power more than the western economies (who do allow allegedly free markets to work and for some to make money) and ‘extraction economy’ preferring to keep the people dump and in the dark as they rely on “Ignorance to be Strengthened” and for government, this means they embed it.
All at Once
Bitcoin is part of a tech wave that I call all at once, and where the Bitcoin Blockchain is one of several technologies that by themselves will have a profound impact; Deep learning, Virtual Reality, Quantum Computing, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and therefore the magnitude of change we can expect will dwarf anything we have seen thus far. I have some idea of the impact of these technologies but all at once in a decentralisation model is the most interesting and the most scary, for some.
Think, Elitism, the Establishment, the Upper Class, Royalty these are intertwined through history with politics that set the rules, makes laws and decide how they want the people to behave. These constructs are all centralised like managing a business where hierarchy within a capitalist system allows the resources and wealth to be owned by a handful dictates the dissemination of power that flows from top to bottom of any organisation. That is until you build a decentralised or autonomous (DAO) business where rules, consensus and decisions are handled differently. Where responsibility benefits are shared and behaviours is set by consensus.
Where do we go from here?
I wanted the people to understand the potential of this technology and why I go from country to country evangelising about Bitcoin and the Blockchain, its use, its liberating power and encouraging people to get involved.
Whether people like it or not if you were an adult in 3rd Jan 2009 when the first 50 BTC was mined and a few were sent from Satoshi’s wallet to Hal Finney (thought by some to be Satoshi anyway) you became part of the Bitcoin Generation, like being 18 in the Sixties, this is your ticket to the best show in the world.
When the people of the western world find out they have been sold a lie, when the unbanked find out they can build new commerce and create a life for themselves, when accountability through transparency will call out governments that lie, distort the facts, where the truth about climate change is revealed, they cannot hold back renewable energy or allow organisations to tamper with our food chain, the chains come off.
The politics of government has no accountability. Too many things decided behind closed doors. Too many lies by those with vested interests fed by a Capitalist model that is fundamentally ‘usafe’… It is Bitcoin’s time to shine although in Act I Scene II the we expect the Bitcoin Generation to do great things and I look forward to ACT 5 Scene IV of the story in the years to come.
“Ignorance is what they rely on, don’t feed it!”
Judge the Bitcoin Generation by actions not by the Fake News…
Copyright 2019 Nick Ayton