With the recent price downturn in the digital asset markets, inexperienced investors face a tremendous loss of money. The affected only recently have started to ask the question: what kind of a so-called digital currency have I actually bought? Is there any value to it, or have I been scammed?
This is a result of the democratization of finance, which is depicted as solely positive. It indeed has positive sides, but the negative ones are barely mentioned at the moment.
What democratization of finance means is the easy access to financial services. That in itself can be a progress. However, on the way to these financial services, the easy access opens the door for certain people to take advantage of others, primarily via information asymmetry.
Bitcoin inventor Dr. Craig Wright warned in 2019
Digital assets were and still are a handy tool for financial crime of all sorts. With a lot of social media marketing effort and techno-babble, investors who have not even read the Wikipedia article on blockchain started to deploy noticeable amounts of their net worth into ICOs, NFTs, and so-called “cryptocurrencies.”
More than three years ago, Bitcoin creator Dr. Craig Wright published an article titled The wheel of time is not on an axis. In the article, Dr. Wright described the democratization of finance as a revolt—with a reactionary response to it to be witnessed in the future.
For anyone unfamiliar with these terms: a revolution usually means a sudden change in…
