Markets go up, markets go down. Let's keep our focus on what really matters: the technology that will empower billions of people

Photo by Daniel Jensen

Sometimes it feels like a large portion of the crypto community are gold-diggers that only love cryptocurrencies based on it's ability to make them rich.

The constant talk and speculation about how the markets are performing and the panic that ensues when the market goes down seems to be a massive part of why it is so unstable.

I get it: we all want to get rich. We all have dreams, we all want to be more financially independent, travel more, live more exciting experiences and quit the job that we hate. I totally understand why people want more money and are fed up the peanuts they get from their jobs. The thing is though, when you focus solely on money it is very easy to lose focus on the more important things.

The crypto world is not simply a money making machine, and it's important to remember that. Crypto is about disrupting every industry there is by removing the middleman entirely and democratising the process.

Here are three examples crypto-ecosystems that are ready to disrupt the old way of doing bussiness:

Allow the poorest people to participate in the global market

Photo by Ben White

Projects like Electronium, that is focused on facilitating peer-to-peer micro-transactions using your mobile phone, show an incredible potential facilitating the poorest people of the world to transact independently of how corrupt their government is.

In countries Zimbabwe, that has been brutally destroyed by hyperinflation, there has been a huge surge in users of cryptocurrencies as people look for alternatives to their incredibly corrupt financial system. Crypto can quite literally save millions of lives by removing the dependency these economies and their people have in their corrupt central banks and governments. Maybe we should discuss this a little more and talk less about getting lambos and how this or that coin 'going to the moon'?

Empower people to borrow money without being held hostage to predatory lenders

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Ethlend is an incredibly disruptive technology as it will allow a completely peer-to-peer lending system where people will be able to set their own interest rates without the need for predatory lenders who often give the poorest people the worst deal and the richest the best. With the ability blockchain will give us to turn everything into digital token- houses, farms, gold, or any other asset we have, it is easy to see how this could revolutionise lending. Everyone that has some sort of capital but needs a different sort to achieve something will be able to with this lending platform. Have land but need money to buy more animals for your farm? Tokenise a part of your land and use that as collateral to borrow the money.

The potential of Ethlend and similar projects goes far beyond making you rich.

Give people the ability to buy directly from the manufacturer

Photo by Jezael Melgoza

Imagine being able to buy everything you normally buy from supermarkets directly from the manufacturers? You can buy your meat and vegetables from your local farmers, and all your favourite food and household items without paying the supermarkets a premium. This is what projects like INS are hoping to archieve.

This technology removes the need for giants like ebay and amazon and gives people and companies the power to buy and sell with each other without any intermediary whatsoever. It creates a level playing field that is impossible to destroy or corrupt. Now that's something to get excited about!

I don't know if any of the individual projects above will succeed in the end or not. What I do know is that this technology is getting ready to disrupt every industry we know and remove a lot of the middle-men of the world. So when you see all the markets in red, when you see pessimism spreading about how 'this is the end of crypto', just remember: this technology is here to stay. How manipulated the markets are and who the big players are is irrelevant at this point. If we stay focussed on the technology, on how it can save lives and empower billions of people, we will win.

However, if we buy into the panic when the market goes down, we are buying into the manipulation that the big players are trying to achieve. Invest long-term, research your investments in depth and get excited about the technology that will empower people. Live your life and stop refreshing CoinMarketCap every few minutes. That is how we ultimately achievee liberation from a system that is built on financial slavery.

Photo by Pablo Heimplatz