Freedom Philosophy: The Future of Cryptocurrency

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Bitcoin Futures, cryptocurrency

“People trust code too easily. One single missing word in code can make it a target for hackers and a nightmare for users” – Richard Ma, Quantstamp Co-founder

The desire for cryptocurrency has never been stronger. Amidst the greatest technological revolution in our species’ history, we’re seeing the erosion or our various national currencies’ purchasing power.

Typically with innovation, an individual’s paycheck purchases more, but with our unprecedented innovation our paycheck purchases less and less.

This fact has infatuated libertarians and inspired programmers. As one of the infatuated ones rather than the innovators, I’ll write about the problems others have solved.

In 1971 the U.S. dollar was determined by the value of gold, which was trading for $35/ounce. Today gold trades for $1300/ounce (USD) while $35 in 1971 only has the purchasing power of $200 in 2017. There’s a remarkable difference between the $200 a U.S. Federal Reserve note will purchase compared to an ounce of gold.

Our purchasing power has been eroded. In spite of the unparalleled computer revolution, our purchasing power continues to diminish.

Those who control the supply of currency appreciate their wealth and those who work for the currency have their wealth depreciated.

Then, in steps cryptocurrency to emancipate us from such oversight; no longer do we need to labour for eight hours a day for something our governments will determine the value of.

No longer will our retirement savings have their value in the hands of others. We can use cryptocurrency to make our purchases, and our governments cannot determine the supply of that, which is to say they cannot determine the value of it.

There are thousands of defunct American auto-manufacturers. Knowing which three would be dominating the market in 2017 was a difficult task for investors. Seeing the migration to cryptocurrency is one thing, knowing which one possesses longevity is quite another.

Cryptocurrency carries with it a major setback. Parity, for example, had a flaw in their software causing their users to lose $30 million in funds due to hacking. These software flaws translate into huge levels of skepticism.

People won’t migrate to Venezuela because they’re skeptical of the economy. In order for our currency to migrate to cryptocurrency, we must first overcome the skepticism that comes from these hacking leaks.

The most exciting ICO – initial coin offering – I’ve seen in quite some time overcomes this limitation. Quantstamp carries with it the intriguing notion of a software audit.

The software, smart contracts that avoid transparent exchange of currency without the middleman of the government, are written by humans and therefore subject to error.

Hackers unethically study the code of ICOs looking to exploit it, funneling cryptocurrency funds into their own accounts.

Bitcoin will offer miners the capacity to use their computational power to mine additional bitcoins. Quanstamp offers the same to their miners; yet these miners aren’t solving random mathematical equations, they’re auditing Quanstamp’s software – looking for exploitable errors.

Rather than incentivizing solving random mathematics problems, Quantstamp incentivizes securing their code from vulnerabilities.

Whatever the future for liberated currency holds it must overcome the limitations of software vulnerabilities – the key limitation to cryptocurrency.

Quantstamp represents the future, overcoming the software limitations with free market solutions.

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Brandon Kirby

Brandon Kirby has a philosophy degree from the University of New Brunswick and is a current MBA candidate finishing his thesis. He is an AML officer specializing in hedge funds in the Cayman Islands, owns a real estate company in Canada, and has been in the financial industry since 2004. He is the director of Being Libertarian - Canada and the president of the Libertarian Party of Canada.

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