I woke up and said hello to my 18-year old nephew this morning, and while he was dealing with some phone issues, I asked him if he wanted to know anything about cryptocurrencies, what would it be?
“History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants.” ~Ted Kaczynski
The same question most of us in the crypto world are slammed with routinely arose again as he asked “How do I get started?” It’s not an easy answer, especially when I am NOT a financial advisor. I could answer the question in a hundred different ways and still feel I fell short, so instead, I am formulating a solution to why I cannot answer the question easily. I’ve told him to download BRAVE and starting gathering BAT; I’ve told him to get signed up on COINBASE and go through KYC verification and begin accepting Earn funds (Coinbase Earn now requires webcam/mobile pictures at the time of KYC, which I’ve now had to do twice) and to focus on the established currencies as many are near-worthless or going nowhere anytime soon.
Realizing this isn’t an issue exclusive to my nephew, I’ve realized I have heard that question from all age groups. I began to explain that there are countless cryptocurrencies to influence his decision-making positively. Each has different functions and risks. It would take time to teach him each one, and more are being developed and expanded upon every day. I asked for a more specific question, but he had trouble forming one because he is entirely unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies. In this, I see the real issue - he always has questions for me, so to see him struggle to find one tells me too much.
Generation Z represents the generation born after Millenials, also known as Centennials, born between 1996 and 2010. My nephew turned 18 a couple of months ago and should be precisely the type of demographic exchanges and other crypto services should be chasing. Instead, most of that money is going to millennials and even as far back as the Baby Boomers & Generation X - my parent’s generation from back around 1965 and the generation before that.
Millennials are often targeted as “a trouble generation” in social media, and what’s worse - I fear for them more than my generation in a variety of ways. I laugh about being considered a part of the problem by previous generations as they were the ones who handed my generation this mess.
A younger friend of mine from Vermont, belonging to this Generation Z demographic, shied away from becoming a writer in the Cryptowriter community despite being intelligent and interested. He was too concerned he was “too late into the crypto game.” Despite my encouragement, he declined to humor the idea and thanked me for offering him to vouch for him. He felt he had already missed all the action and would only be wasting his time.
First of all, while those who held Bitcoin and other coins/tokens in their early days made out like bandits and became millionaires, the profits were only getting started. For whatever reason, many people in the younger generation seem to think that, because they weren’t born during the “Bitcoin Boom” they have missed out on cryptocurrency-related opportunities. They could not be more mistaken as Bitcoin demonstrated us by breaching its all-time high recently and still holding at $19,145 USD not far below it, but that does not account for the sheer volume of money being held in a vast array of cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), XRP (Ripple), Uniswap (UNI), and many other altcoins. There is more money in crypto now than there ever has been, and counting.
There is then the fact of cryptocurrency going mainstream with PayPal, Google, and many other corporations and merchants, but they are not quite there yet. The ongoing implementation process means Generation Z and generations after will be the generations we hand the keys to the castle to and educate them so they may continue to implement the currencies and blockchain tech we have worked so hard to develop and promote. The best way to educate the new generation is to point out flaws in our current financial system and quickly relate to the material rather than compare it to Robinhood stocks or CashApp, which takes them backward in time and progress.
Once their generation understands the problems we are attempting to solve with our previous generation’s aftermath, they will see this is an evolutionary process. It is crucial for them to become a part of it for it to succeed. Crypto is a gift to the world; we can only keep it if we continue to give it away; without social support from the youth, our days would be quite numbered. Furthermore, people in this age bracket are crucial to keeping the progress we have made in a forward momentum.
Not long ago, I wrote in response to Mark Helfman’s article focusing on Bitcoin and Millennials, and shortly after, actions taken by the IRS reaffirmed my projections on how gray markets such as cryptocurrency would be handled by the US judicial system. The IRS is now putting cryptocurrency gains at the top of their 1040 tax forms, and my fears are realized: we need far more social support to move to true decentralization and move away from FIAT. Who will get us there? You? Me? All we’ve managed to do is keep cryptocurrencies popular and growing in use, and we are far from throwing our FIAT, aka “Legal Tender,” in the fire for tinder, which is currently illegal.
No, real change doesn’t happen so quickly on such a large scale too often. It will be Generation Z and those after that who make the decisions and the impact needed for financial freedom and equality. They must choose between two systems and decide for themselves how they want to operate when the day comes for one to outlive the other. For the sake of all people, I hope they succeed in realizing we have come to this crossroads for a reason. We do not want to be controlled. We want control over ourselves - and so does Generation Z; they just don’t fully understand the scope of things yet, but they are very interested in learning!
The youth needs to understand that we are not just seeking to make money; we are seeking financial freedom from oppressive government regulations. Do you feel your government has been earning its taxes for the last four years, or far longer? I surely do not, but I still stay within the law. However, as I’ve said before - the laws are changing. Who will change them 20 years from now?
What we teach the children of today will inevitably lead to the outcome of this battle, a war among ourselves for autonomy. It’s a shame people such as Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) were subjected to MK Ultra LSD mind-control experiments (that’s a fact, it is declassified) only to be turned loose feeling lost in a hopelessly broken system, voiceless and suffering to the point where he turned away from society & technology entirely and began seriously injuring and killing people in order to get his writing published on a mere continental level.
I recommend the Netflix series “Manhunt - Unabomber” as it shows there was more to the story than some crazy man in the woods who liked to blow stuff up; that is a tragic waste of intelligent human life. I suppose it never occurred to him that in numbers, he could have had a voice forever while remaining free and non-violent.
With deep consideration I’ve decided to dissect Ted’s book (arguably a manifesto, although written in a doctoral thesis format) and disprove every point made against technology in his “Industrial Society and its Future” and demonstrate that we can put an end to technology being used for the worse, being the only species that actively destroys its own environment, and use technology to improve human lives without dumbing down children glued to screens all day long, removing them from a natural setting.
Again, I find myself trying to reach common ground between people with very different idealisms. If I can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, I believe far more people would follow me than would follow a man locked in a cage full of rage. Despite what he has done to others, I feel terrible for that man, he reveres nature, is mentally ill and alone in his thoughts and suffering, likely to this day outside fan mail from neo-Luddites. Ted was born in 1942, also known as The Silent Generation. The irony of this is not lost on me.
We can have the best of both worlds. But, we need the numbers for it to happen. Kaczynski is a mathematical genius, and rather than working on blockchain tech, he was building bombs alone in a cabin. Can you imagine the impact he could have if he had gone the other way, the progress he could have offered the world? We are a minority, but in time we will be the majority; may we succeed in using truth as our weapon over violence.
As always, comments and suggestions are highly encouraged.
Stay smart & Stay safe.
-Thomas Wolf
This article was originally published on Voice.com
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