On June 2, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buerin posted a series of tweets on Twitter, sharing what the 12 years from 2008 to 2020 mean for cryptocurrencies. Vitalik Buterin believes that the field of cryptocurrency is constantly evolving and changing, and we need to carefully observe and adapt to the new reality.
Here is what Vitalik shared:
From 2008 to 2020, what do these 12 years mean for cryptocurrencies? I have already said this in some new online meetings held recently, but I would like to share:
Bitcoin was born in essence from the financial crisis. In that situation, either the banks are misbehaving, or the government has over/underestimated/wrongly controlled the financial industry, or they have rescued too many banks, or printed too many dollars.
Bitcoin itself is mainly a financial instrument. Ethereum is obviously not as financial in nature, but even so, there is still a fact that most of the applications improved by the blockchain involve processing some form of coins/tokens/money.
Yes, the Federal Reserve Banknote Printing Machine is really useless. But this is only a small part of what is happening, even if inflation is “declining” rather than rising.
Eventually, cryptocurrencies will be highly correlated with broader economic trends. This does not mean that the cryptocurrency cannot be protected from other things (such as political obstacles/interference), but it does mean that the narrative about the cryptocurrency needs to be adjusted.
So my conclusion is: compared with the past decade, in this decade, finance will become relatively less important, and the cryptocurrency field needs to adapt to this reality. Even within the financial sector, development priorities are changing in an orderly manner.
Fortunately, there are many types of Ethereum applications (and other chain applications) that are not limited to the financial sector. Decentralized anti-censorship information release and communication, decentralized community/governance/DAO, DAO for content planning, etc. All these are important tasks.
In the field of financial applications, I want to say that the success of stablecoins shows that what people want is not to get rid of the US dollar at the moment, but to enter the cryptocurrency environment, where they have more options to use their money.
They have the freedom to quit.
For many marginalized groups, financial censorship (especially insidious second-order changes where middlemen are quietly used to legally block legitimate use cases) remains a problem faced by many marginalized groups, and cryptocurrency can help.
However, I do believe that we need to make a wide-ranging transition from “cryptocurrency is finance” to “cryptocurrency is also decentralized governance, organization and community”, and this is happening.
After all, even for the encryption field itself, the public interest and community are very important.
To put it bluntly: The following mentality is indeed the scope we should expand now-just reforming the currency is not enough.
2016-2020 is a period of ideological adjustment. Many old ideologies and alliances are dying, and many new ideas and alliances are being born. The hills and valleys on the battlefield are shifting.
The field of encryption requires careful observation and adaptation to new realities.