The crypto autumn brings storms to the eternal fiat winter
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
– William Shakespeare
As the official and ‘meteorological’ summer came to an end this week in the UK, storms dumped overdue rains onto the land and all thoughts of droughts had turned to deluges and Autumn.
September may prove to be not only the wettest month, but also the one when any figurative bonfires warming up this Albion-Jerusalem may finally have been p*****d upon.
Woe will become us, the new leader of broken Britain shall be the ex-Liberal Democrat and potential antichrist Liz Truss who will take us to places of horror and Pound Sterling will begin to go to zero as money-printers run out of economic sense.
This is where we are.
Total volatility and chaos. Inflation rampant, the workers rebelling and civil unrest inevitable when the poor belatedly decide not to fear the rich any longer… and when the rich will realise it’s time for them to be very scared of poor people.
Not happy days.
In the crypto world, all eyes are on September 15 when Ethereum will move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake and this will literally create a fork in that particular road. What could possibly go wrong?
We hear much talk of crypto summers and winters, but not much about crypto autumns, where currencies can, er, ‘fall’ (sorry) or ascend. And we are undoubtedly in a crypto autumn, but that’s better than being in a fiat winter when the sun is unlikely to ever shine again.
We have never recovered from the deferred-depression that was created after the 2008 financial crisis. The prime-pumping of the world’s major fiat currencies being further inflated by the global pandemic, then war and now economic disarray.
Nothing in the fiat world is sacred or scarce anymore. Its previously weird value system has no sense or force either.
Value has always been about scarcity, whether that is difficult-to-mine minerals, great works of art, backstage access or watches and dresses that designate status and power.
This is where we are.
So crypto is also that. As volatile as things are, what is more scarce? Crypto or fiat?
Forget the Ponzi-screamers and the scammers and the NFT-mountebanks, crypto is going to be the currency of the metaverse and all the spaceships of the future. Fiat is going to be antimatter, dark matter, whatever matters.
Crypto’s future value, however, will surpass all land prices and stock exchanges, because its currency is not based on fiat, but that of itself.
Happier days.
This crypto autumn will be the season of great content, unlike the words of Gloucester in Shakepeare’s Richard III that are cited at the top of this article, when he reveals his, and his countrymen’s, fear of winter.
And Gloucester is not alone. This winter will be fearful for many people and not only the so-called poor. Sterling pots will be ravaged and banks may go on the run; the smart people probably got out months ago.
But it really is different in the crypto autumn, in spite of Ethereum’s potential chaos in mid-September and the fiat-whores trying to pull down its power. The New World order is happening and it’s going to happen faster than the Bank of England raising interest rates or energy companies upping caps.
Crypto will be a sanctuary of value and scarcity.
This is where we are…
… happy crypto days are here.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day, crypto? You’re damned right!
Monty Munford is a tech journalist and an advisor for the DeFi privacy organisation Sienna Network and in the past decade has helped more than 40 companies raise money and exit for a total of £1.4 billion.
He is also a keynote speaker/emcee/moderator/interviewer at prestigious events around the world and has spoken at more than 200 global events interviewing figures such as the late John McAfee, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Wozniak (twice in Beirut and Vienna), Kim Kardashian (once in Armenia), Amitabh Bachchan, Ghostface Killah, ZZ Top, Guns N’ Roses and many others.
He was previously a weekly tech columnist for Forbes in New York, the Telegraph in the UK and continues to write regularly for the BBC, The Economist, The FT and… City AM.