Now that our kids are raised, my wife are looking towards the future. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m getting older and probably need to get prepared for the Golden Years.
What’s next and how do I prepare? Especially financially. How do I build wealth?
Plenty of my writing over the last few years has focused on the five capitals. Capitals are assets for which we all need to operate successfully in life. The Five Capitals are : Intellectual, Physical, Spiritual, Relational, and Financial.
All of these are valuable and although I’ve given quite a bit of attention to the first four, lately I have begun to focus more intensely on finances.
I’ve become obsessed with investing.
Stocks, bonds, real estate, (of course) and a new subject for me–digital assets.
In the not too distant future, every asset on the planet is going to be digitized. Real estate. Stocks. Bonds. Securities. Cars. Boats. Everything.
Digitized so you and I can buy or sell them online from our computer in an online marketplace.
In order to purchase those assets, you will need a digital form of money.
Crypto currency is a fascinating subject. It’s money, but in digital form. Instead of paper cash and a leather wallet, users employ digital tokens and a hard wallet such as a computer or a USB storage device.
Crypto is short for cryptology, which describes the technology and computer code that allows for security and privacy of the information. Blockchain technology makes the online transfer of the currency possible by giving the two parties involved verifiable evidence of the chain of custody.
Bitcoin is the best known crypto currency. As of today, it’s selling for about $10,000 per coin. When it first came out, you could get one coin for 3 cents or in many cases folks were giving it away for free.
I’m not really a fan of Bitcoin as it has no intrinsic value. It’s not tied to a real asset. It’s value is arbitrary. Is Bitcoin worth 3 cents or $10,000? It’s just a matter of opinion because it’s not tied to a reliable and stable asset like gold or silver. It has no utility.
Same goes for the U.S. dollar. Also, tied to nothing. Fiat currency.
The word fiat is latin and means “let it be done.” You know, kind of how parents explain complicated questions to their kids –”because I said so!” Lol.
Fiat currency will be displaced. Digital currency, tied to a real tangible asset like gold or silver, is the future. This displacement will negatively impact many businesses. One is a company called SWIFT.
Currently, they dominate the cross border payments industry. In essence, they settle payments from one entity to another even though they have different currencies. For example, an institution in the U.S. sells a product or service to someone in China. China pays in Yuan, yet SWIFT allows the U.S. entity to collect in Dollars.
It’s cumbersome and expensive to translate one currency to another and SWIFT profits from the transaction. However, their technology was built in the 1970’s and hasn’t been improved much since.
SWIFT knows that crypto currency and blockchain technology threatens their very existence yet they seem to be fighting the change.
Instead of fighting the technology, wouldn’t it be better if they adopted and embraced the technology?
Years ago I heard Gary Vaynerchuk tell his audience, “everyday I try to put myself out of business.”
Brilliantly, Gary realizes that your competition, or technology, will ultimately put you out of business, so why not beat them to the punch.
What about you and me? Should we put ourselves out of business?
How you and I operate today is obsolete. Eventually.
In our business life.
In our personal life.
Change is coming and along with it will be exciting opportunities.
Let’s put ourselves out of business.
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