I like that we live in times of change, financial change I mean.

Throughout history we have had large changes, things that caused great upheaval in society and industry. Major changes include the invention of the steam engine and all the industrialisation it brought, the the invention of the internal combustion engine and airplanes. These brought huge changes in wealth and working practices. The biggest change was the development of computers and most recently the proliferation of the internet to the current stage of being in everyone’s pocket.

Now we are on the cusp of the biggest and most disruptive change of all, being the replacement of paper money issued by governments with a store of wealth that is independent of national borders and specific currencies.

I am fascinated and look forward to the developments that are on the way, disruptive as they will certainly be.

The blockchain based coins and tokens are the first wave of change. Already, I find that the transfer of money (fiat money) through banks feels as though it should be abandoned for being so slow, expensive and inefficient.

Already there are financial instruments based on Bitcoin, Etherium and other coins. I can transfer value between different organisations in a matter of minutes and start earning interest that is paid in a cryptocurrency.

At the time of writing, Jan 2021, banks are now planning to pay negative interest rates. In normal language that means that you have to pay a fee to keep your money in the bank. My crypto coins pay me interest (daily) and are currently increasing in value.

In the long run I expect the coins to more or less stabilise in value, something the official currencies have never been able to do. Bitcoin has been constructed so that there is no potential for inflation, something that is so good at the moment that even large organisations have started to buy it to avoid the inevitable inflation that will follow the current huge increases in liquidity.

So, my thought for today is that simply by buying some bitcoin I have stopped inflation from eroding the buying power of my money. It is called Hodling, a work coined by a typo.

This is one use of crypto, there are many more that I will talk about, there are others that I know little about and others still being developed. Exciting times!