Crypto currency only as decentralised as the people who use it

In the last few months I have been getting more and more into cryptocurrency. I had always planned on incorporating a financial section for my magazine and some good friends of mine, who are immersed in that world, are working on some articles for me. However, if I am honest, I only envisaged it as playing a minor part of my vision for UltraViolet. However I recently attended an ICO (Initial Coin Offerings) event and got chatting with a lot of start-up founders about their coins and it opened my mind to the potential power that not only crypto, but the blockchain, has to offer. I realised It isn’t just a commodity to trade – it’s also a concept that can be a platform for a lot of beneficial change in the world. I will go into this in more detail in a subsequent article where I will share my experiences of a recent visit to RocketSpace in Angel, London where I chatted in depth with a number of ICO’s. They were surprisingly open to my take on things, recognising that perhaps there were other ways of bringing in new converts thus taking crypto into a wider space and creating a bridge with the outside world. I feel we all gained a lot from sharing our ideas and views. There is so much more to talk about on this which I will develop in my RocketSpace tour when I can get all the pictures and info together.

Crypto has all the possibilities to bring about massive change for society or to create the same old eco-systems of power, abuse and greed. This is why I feel the opportunities that are evolving now are really exciting but that real change in the world has to come from within us. We have to get out of the mind-set of ‘I must get all the money and to hell with everyone else’ and try to create a joy and passion in sharing with the world in the form of exchange for real change to happen. The way I see it is crypto creates the possible platforms but the change within allows it to happen. I see crypto as an open platform that can bring about great change but only if, and it’s a big if’, crypto remains as decentralised as the people who are setting up the coins and the people trading them

What I find exciting about crypto and the blockchain is that it reverses the dynamics of supply and demand. I have noticed the world has become so focused on ‘I need this’ and when creative people have to pay heed to specification and cost, a lot of the soul and the magic is lost from the end product. Blockchain allows us to reverse this attitude and instead create from the soul and then see who wants what we have created. It allows people’s offerings and knowledge to be valued and exchanged in a pure way rather than them having to fit their talents into a box to create something that conforms to more perfunctory requirements. It’s a platform where we can say this is what I have, if you want it we can work on an exchange.

Working as a photographer I have noticed more and more that clients no longer choose me because of the style of my work. Their first questions is ‘what is the cheapest you will work for?’ or ‘can you do something like this for me?’ It has become rarer for a client to say ’I love your style please create something magical for me using your gifts’ and this is a shame because a lot of my best work has been without the pressure of a client. I was initially chosen for my vision but then often not allowed to actually use it. This is where I believe that blockchain offers the ability to be selected for your vision not someone else’s. It allows us to give the power back to the artist to find an exchange for their work and becomes a sharing of talent, skills and wisdom.

I love the possibilities that the blockchain is bringing but we have to also keep focusing on the change within ourselves. If we want to live in a different world we have to have a different energy inside of us first. Change first and foremost comes from within.