The next type of investments that I’d like to take a look at are cryptocurrencies. There is a lot to unpack with crypto and there are tons of fancy words that are used that confuse outsiders. I’m going to attempt to explain why crypto is important and why it has seen such an increase in value. As of this writing, Bitcoin (the most popular cryptocurrency) is valued at $58,680.70, and the next most popular coin, Ethereum, is at $1958.41. Luckily for us, you can buy dollar amounts instead of one full bitcoin.

The way I like to explain crypto is through an example that was given by one of my favorite YouTuber’s, Andrei Jihk, I’ve talked about him before so I won’t introduce him. Here’s what he said summed up as best as I can phrase it. There are three types of human civilizations, the first type is most similar to our current earth. The first type is a planetary civilization, basically meaning everything we do is tied to one planet, and you collect energy from the planets host star, (in our case this is the sun). Type two, opens up to stellar planetary, which means that life is possible on multiple planets, in this type of civilization, humankind is basically immortal (as a species) because if there is a threat to the planet they are on, then they can travel to a new one, this is something we are far away from, and we only really see this in movies. The last type is galactic, where we can travel between different galaxies (yes, like Star Wars). So now you’re probably thinking, “okay, but what does this have to do with bitcoin”.

In order for us to transition from where we are now into a type one civilization, essentially everything needs to be decentralized. Around the world English is the most common second language, so English is our type one language. We can connect with anyone around the world through social media, which has become a type one form of interaction and entertainment. Another thing that needs to happen is to have one main currency. If you’ve ever traveled outside of the states then you know how big of a pain it can be to convert your money from the US Dollar to another currency like euro’s, yen, etc. This is inconvenient and unnecessary. What if there was just one currency that everyone used, this is where bitcoin comes in.

Cryptocurrency is decentralized, and isn’t owned by anyone, unlike our current money systems where a government has control over the money. This is critical to becoming a type one civilization because the key to a type one civilization is decentralization.

Now, if none of this matters to you, I understand completely, this is a really nerdy topic and most people don’t care about this, they just care about how much bitcoin will rise and when they should sell. I’ve stuck to just bitcoin and Ethereum because these are the biggest two projects and they are the most legitimate forms of crypto, that in my opinion, won’t be going away anytime soon.

Hopefully this made for a good introduction to cryptocurrency, I will also be doing a more in depth look specifically on crypto investing within the next couple weeks but I wanted to try to first explain what it is and why it’s important.