My First Job

I remember my first job as a kid, was delivering the Star Weekly magazine. It was a weekly magazine, and I earned my first money ! No digital worldwide money back then, it was coin and paper dollars.

Canadian Dollar Trust

And so started my believe and trust in the Canadian Dollar. I grew up, had more jobs, earned more money, became a salesman and business owner and earned commissions. Everyday me and every Canadian with a job, earned dollars that we took home to our families.

Currency and Trust

Why do we use our paper currency ? It seems to comes down to Trust. We trust that the paper dollars we are given, will be good to buy the things we need in our everyday lives.

Block-chain & Cryptocurrency

I remember hearing about a block-chain and cryptocurrency a few years ago. I thought, why would I have any interest in that. I don’t worry about what value of the Canadian dollar unless I am buying something from the US, and know that there will be an exchange rate on the currencies.

Foreign Content Investing

Years ago, when worldwide investing became available to Canadians for the first time, there was concern that Canadians would invest all their money abroad, and so a 20% maximum “foreign content” limit was put on an investment portfolio. That rule was abolished a number of years later.

Web -1.0 -2.0 -3.0

As I understand it, the Web 1.0 was simply information on a website that people could access. It was like read only files. Then Web 2.0 came along that allowed people to create website content with Blog Posts like this one. Now there is Web 3.0, which allows users to own secure business transactions like investing, buying and selling cryptocurrency and NFTs ( Non Fungible Tokens ) .

Block-chain Features

What makes the block-chain special is –

the block-chain can only be appended not deleted.

the parties do not need to trust each other, only the system

no one actor can force the block-chain to change

This is the current state of the science and it will develop over time.

Thinking About Worldwide Money

I am starting to see that just like with investing, things are now worldwide, not just country wide. I live in Canada, a good country with a good government and a fairly stable currency.

Other countries are not so lucky. Some have unstable governments, or a currency that gets devalued, and there is less security for financial assets.

If you live in one of those countries, maybe you would consider investing your money in a cryptocurrency to find currency stability and maybe a good investment.

Currency Trading

I remember reading that worldwide currency trading was the largest financial market in the world. I assume it is the largest, because the world trades with currency or money from some country. Most every transaction worldwide is done with one currency or another, unless you are bartering.

Worldwide Currency

Now citizens of the world who have a smart phone, are now able to participate in cryptocurrency systems that exist outside their own countries.

Bitcoin

The most well known cryptocurrency in the world, is Bitcoin. But there are over 9000 other crypto-currencies according to Statista.

https://currency.com/how-many-cryptocurrencies-are-there

Buying With Cryptocurrency

Will there be a day when we buy our groceries with cryptocurrency ? Telsa for a time would accept payment of their vehicles with Bitcoin cryptocurrency. I don’t think it will be this year, but if one company tried it, then others will too, in the future.

Governments Looking at Crypto Too

Even governments don’t want to be left behind. The US government is considering starting it’s own cryptocurrency, which has been nicknamed the Fed Coin. Watch a video on it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWWd99AJPmg

Learn More

If you know little or nothing about cryptocurrency, search for it on Youtube, there are some good videos. Here are a couple I liked –

Blockchain Expert Explains it on 5 levels

To a – child, teenager, adult, grad student and expert. Interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYip_Vuv8J0

Crypto Masterclass – is a deeper dive – 1 hour 40 minute video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuz44fwkEz0

The speaker says – engineering for the first time is affecting economics, thru Bitcoin, a digital token, that respects the conservation of energy.