Have you ever wondered what happened to those who lit the street lamps in the evening? And the coachmen? What happened to the supply chain that built carriages? Most of the time you listen to those worried about the future of the unemployed, ask yourself what happened to all these professional figures of the past. No famine has starved Western society. No wave of unemployment has pervaded the economic environment of the nations of the first and second world due to the disappearance of these figures. The division of labor has brought out new jobs, which have allowed the re-routing of the previous ones into more efficient and productive courses. Productive for whom? For consumers, who are kings in a market economy. They decide who to reward or not based on two simple conclusions: buy, or refrain from buying. The hostility towards tools that can reduce work is concentrated among the employees of specific companies that contemplate their purchase. Usually the population does not worry about it much. In reality, it does not matter to the population how goods and services are produced.
Customers act in their own interest. They are always looking for better deals. They do not ask what kind of tools has made possible those deals. They do not ask how many employees have been hired or fired following the use of these tools. In this case, “what can not be seen”, i.e. the unemployed workers, are on the side of those who favor the free market. In the last 250 years Western states have not been successful in limiting the use of new tools that can reduce the amount of work. This is why the West has experienced considerable economic development, decade after decade. Employees are concerned about the use of such tools, but unless they are members of unions, they probably will not be successful in persuading the state to limit the introduction of a specific instrument, in a specific sector, into a specific company. Politicians do not respond unless the workers fail to convince a lot of voters in the next elections. Companies in a specific sector are more likely to mobilize large amounts of money for electoral campaigns than workers.
There is another important economic factor that hinders the introduction of large restrictions on the use of new instruments: most of the production increases are not due to the use of new instruments; they come from the increase in the efficiency of computers and software. It is much cheaper to improve software than to invent, patent, manufacture, sell and distribute a machine. As production is distanced from manufacturing and approaching services, restrictions on the use of machinery become less and less relevant. There is almost no political resistance against the introduction of specific software into a specific business activity. This is good news. We are told that the use of computerized robotics will lead to mass unemployment. So far there is no evidence to support this claim. In any case, what can the state do about it? How can it restrict the implementation of software updates?
The answer is, it simply can not. Likewise, the emergence of cryptocurrencies represents a socio-technological change capable of rendering certain types of work obsolete. In particular, intermediaries, such as those in the banking sector and in the legal sector for example. Needless to say, there will be a certain resistance at the beginning and above all a campaign of denigration against the new thing in town. Then, given the inevitability of change, as it has always been since efficiency and time saving are essential for most of individuals, we will try to support emerging technology looking for opportunities not to fall behind. This means that all those promising realities will be “incorporated” or will replace the obsolete ones, going to gain huge market shares in a sudden way.
The more the client will be the focus of the new realities, the more their chances of success will increase.
A CASE OF STUDY: MELIS WALLET
The prerogatives proposed by the world of cryptocurrencies is to allow individuals to bring into their hands the economic and financial fate of their savings. No more paperwork to compile, no more terror that a state agency can spy on your movements, no more trust in third parties to manage what you earned with hard efforts, no more embezzlement by banks of customer deposits through fractional reserve banking. Remember, state measures designed to “protect” the population from evildoers are not directed towards the latter, but to keep honest and law-abiding people in an enclosure. If the state was really able to eradicate crime, it would have already been successful, while all the measures put in place have failed miserably. Not to mention the funds dedicated to this fight!
All that is left is an account in red and criminals who can get away with it. Cryptocurrencies, in this context, are not a means to commit illicit acts, they are the means of defense of most people against the actions of criminals. Individual responsibility returns to the importance it had long ago, before the paternalism of central institutions cradled the minds of unsuspecting individuals and stole their souls. In this context it is interesting to analyze a market experiment in which I was able to test the potential. Its use case focuses on individual responsibility and on the ability to look after one’s own affairs without the involvement of third parties or the dependence on third parties. At the expense of dedicating cumbersome portions of time? No, because efficiency and time savings are conjugated in it.
All the custody processes we were used to in the past are improved in an environment suitable for cryptocurrencies. This is exactly what is delivered by the Melis wallet. First things first, what is a wallet? A wallet is a software in which cryptocurrency users can store their tokens. Which ones? Those supported by the wallet itself. In Melis case, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash (though many more will be supported in near future). Being in search of a practical, efficient and intuitive solution to the need to store cryptocurrencies, I came across this jewel of software able to combine what we were used to with old accounts and the news brought by cryptocurrencies. It is unique in its genre, precisely because it leads customers through a transition to a new world, reassuring them with features already known.
One of these, for example, is the ability to make transactions by applying multiple signatures. That is, without the presence of the minimum number of signatures, chosen when creating the account on the wallet, it is impossible to move the funds. This option, for example, can be a great appeal for the board of directors of a company or simply if you have a co-registered account in the family. But its use is not limited to a single device, it can be expanded to a range of other devices such as smartphones, iPads, laptops, etc. The important thing is to safeguard the backup phrase with which to enable access to available funds, if any of those devices may break up. Obviously the first device in which you install Melis will be the primary one — bearing specific features in respect to secondary ones— but this setting can be changed at any time in the general settings screen.
For security purposes, there are two other very interesting settings: the ability to hide some accounts on your secondary devices and spending limits. The first feature allows users who suffer an external attack on the wallet, or are robbed of a device on which they have the wallet, to hide certain accounts by clicking on the general settings screen. Only the primary device will be able to see them all, while others will not know of their existence and will not be able to spend the money deposited. The second feature can be set daily, weekly, or monthly, so you can keep an eye on your expenses. Not only that, but in case of an attack by bad guys, once the spending limits have been exceeded, the remaining funds can not be spent any more; moreover, if you want to change this setting, it will become effective after the time limit set for the spending limit will pass (E.g. if a weekly spending limit is set, you will have to wait a week before the change becomes effective — if you changed the spending limit from weekly to monthly).
Even those who choose to use a single account can take advantage of greater security by indicating the signature of the Melis server as an additional protective measure to the basic ones. In this way the two-factor authentication code will be indispensable for transferring funds, and not a formality as in the case where there is no server signature. All these are measures to ensure the user the maximum protection of their funds in line with a wide range of solutions to their needs. In this way, obsolete intermediaries are canceled from the equation, either absorbed in new sectors emerging on the basis of new standards or by hiring those individuals who are better prepared to face changed market conditions.
In both cases, the dynamism of the market pushes the economic environment towards those shores where the needs of the market players are satisfied. There is no central planning that holds, there is no static program that can keep up with this unpredictable change and impossible to trace in advance. Only farsighted entrepreneurs are able to better frame the future demand of customers and consequently offer that product capable of representing the essential summae of what they are looking for.
Cryptocurrencies, therefore, together with all those services that may arise from their adoption, undermine all those systems that over time have settled thanks to the privilege of a central authority, which has done everything to change the market environment so that it would helped its protected. It did not work. It never works. The pretence of knowledge of the central planners will always lead them to hit the same wall: human action is a market force superior to any imposition dropped from above. In fact, individuals are the best controllers of themselves as the best saboteurs.
CONCLUSION
Everywhere we look, we will both notice the creative power and the “destructive” innovation: the threshers reduced the agricultural occupation, then the tractors threw the threshers out of the market; the telegraph and the railways put the communication systems based on the horses out of business; the cars put the horse industry out of business; the mass production of fabrics “destroyed” the demand for handmade objects; the department stores “destroyed” the smaller shops, now the discounters “are destroying” the department stores; videotape rentals changed the film industry, Netflix and others “destroyed” videotape rentals, while Napster’s success (despite its illegality) predicted the end of the old music industry; China’s growth and outsourcing have reshaped traditional industries in developed countries.
Economic progress reduces employment in one place, and allows the creation of new jobs in the service sector. During the job-clearance process, enormous economic development can multiply per capita production within one generation, positively influencing all social classes. In the same way, the innovations in the world of cryptocurrencies and the emergence of new activities linked to it will replace those inefficient services that are now unable to satisfy the needs of market players.
The current one is not the end of history and of the world. It is only the end of the obsolete intermediaries.
