Is Cryptocurrency a Bad Word?

According to the Google search bar, a cryptocurrency is defined as:

“a digital currency in which transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralized system using cryptography, rather than by a centralized authority.”

I have a few questions about this absolute meat grinder of a sentence. I will write them below.

1. didn’t we learn to not define a word by a word in like second grade? A cryptocurrency is a digital currency? That wouldn’t fly in middle school and it shouldn’t fly now
2. why do i feel like the only thing missing from such a disgusting definition is a word like “synergy?”
3. who wrote this and have they ever heard of a blockchain?
4. can we agree to never put decentralized and centralized in the same sentence ever again? (after this one of course)
5. if this definition doesn’t work for Bitcoin but also doesn’t work for Ethereum but also doesn’t work for Ripple, then, ummmmm, what’s the point?

Cryptocurrency is a word that makes no sense when talking about what Bitcoin and Ethereum and DeFi has become.

I think calling them cryptoassets would be fine.

Cryptocommodities would be meh.

Digital assets is on a better track.

Anything with “currency” on the backend is languishing in the early 2010s.

The problem is that the world of cryptocurrencies has evolved into a world of tokenized networks specializing in different sectors of finance.

Bitcoin is a digital savings mechanism. BTC takes the characteristics of gold and moves it into a digital and decentralized network where supply is finitely capped and each transaction painstakingly audited.

Ethereum is a decentralized contract platform that allows parties to enter into digital agreements with automated transacting capabilities without going through a middleman.

DeFi allows for lending and loans and trading in a decentralized cloud on top of the Ethereum contract platform.

Callling these things “cryptocurrencies” would be like calling the internet a “intermail.”

The internet took off because of email in the mid-late 90s and then boomed from there. We do not call the internet “intermail” just because email was the first popular use case.

Just because these digital assets were first introduced as currencies doesn’t mean that is how they will always be.

So I vote for the end of “cryptocurrencies” and the birth of “digital assets.”

Let’s get classy, San Diego

Digital Asset Prices

Bitcoin: $33,969

Ethereum: $1,075.29

Ripple: going to zero ew

Uniswap: $6.27

-Kram