Mail / Motor Vehicles / Crypto

We take e-mails for granted. They are full of junk mail, scams or work. Our real-life mailbox is full of junk as well. Too many sales going on. Most paper flyers go straight to the trash. But there was a time where great cities like Rome were running politics and economies by mail and courier. Armies fought and died based on messages carried on pieces of paper by someone on horse. Fast forward into the computer age and now the military has developed a way for submarines to communicate messages to each other. The internet is born. Now messages are instantaneous. For a time, the systems were too complicated and expensive. Most people didn't know what a computer was and most computers were the size of a building. It was only after computers became mainstream and the internet more accessible when true innovation in mail or message delivery was made. E-mail. Instantaneous mail. Sure, I may be skipping the phone or fax machine helping at getting a message across really fast but my point is the evolution of mail. Think about the implications that getting a long message across faster has had on our economies and lives. Profits have gone up for many industries. Lives have been saved maybe even world conflicts avoided just because of the ability to send a long message fast enough. It's not just the inventions of pen and paper that were important for mail to evolve but the systems that it ran on. Without the roads, infrastructure, utility, etc., the mail would have had a hard time evolving into e-mail. It would have not happened simply because common folk wanted faster mail.

History has a way of repeating itself with great utilities. Necessity, infrastructure and speed seem to be very important. Speed feeds the economy. If it feeds the economy, the economy helps build infrastructure for it and then it evolves into something much bigger. Mail, motor vehicles and crypto have this in common. The evolution of mail to e-mail is a fun introduction that most of us are familiar with. But lets take a look at the impact of motor vehicles on our lives and lets compare that to the emergence of crypto.

Dreaming

The first motor vehicles belonged to nerdy engineers and inventors. It was a niche product. It belonged to people who had an eye on the future and to people with too much money. It was expensive and not practical. The driver needed to understand how it worked. The driver was more of an operator or pilot rather than the driver we think of ourselves today. The first vehicles required a lot of maintenance. Parts were not easy or cheap. If it rained, your vehicle would get stuck on the muddy roads. Most roads were not paved or bricked. So the horse and carriage were still king. Cheaper to maintain, reliable in rain or snow.

Realization

In the city the first motor vehicles thrived. Brick paved roads. The vehicle was able to show off its greatest strength. Getting from point A to B fast. Great way to impress the ladies and show off your wealth at the same time. But someone far more important was impressed. Business owners. The smart ones. Imagine a baker trying to get his bread to as many coffee shops as he can as early as he can. If he gets his bread there first he will sell more. If he can send out more bread, then he can make more bread to sell. It won't go stale waiting to be moved and sold. Some people started realizing that this isn't just a novelty or a luxury. This is an investment or an asset. It proved that speed is very good for business and proved its utility. But it is an expensive asset. Parts are not cheap. Too much for the baker or his delivery service. It is cheaper to maintain a horse and carriage. And although it worked great in cities with paved roads, it didn't do so great long distance or outside heavily populated areas. The government was promoting rural road development but it was mostly to please the bicycle boom at the time. We have realized that it has speed and utility but the revolution is not here yet.

Revolution

The pioneers of mass production understood the customers' needs and created exactly what was needed. Cheaper vehicles and parts. The government wasn't too far behind setting up the first major legislation to fund state road improvement. It was clear, vehicle production is good for the economy, the vehicles themselves help move the economy. Our economy hasn't been the same since.


Crypto, Bitcoin, Meme Coins, The Dream

Now lets go back to the beginning with crypto. Bitcoin belonged to the nerds with an eye on the future. Innovators who wanted to prove it worked. Beta testers. It was niche. For most people it was worthless and useless. But it grew in value. That got people's attention. Now people with too much money wanted to get in on the profits. Bitcoin became the luxury item. Countless other coins came into existence all doing the same thing. Growing in value based on speculated potential. But very much like the beginning of the motor vehicle, crypto was just a niche product with no real utility for major businesses.

Blockchains, Ledgers, Utility, The Realization

Moving money costs money and it's slow. It also needs to be secure. You and I don't notice any of it. You pay at the coffee shop and walk away. Money is taken out of your bank account in seconds. But in reality, money is still moving. Not a big deal for you and me. But it is a big deal when you are a business that moves millions at a time across countries. Value of money changes, changing currencies costs money, middle men want to charge for transferring money. This all adds up to a lot of money when you move big quantities of money.

Crypto with blockchain technologies can work together to create a ledger that records transactions across many computers and keep those transactions secure in a much faster manner that skips middle men and currency exchanges. Just like our realization with motor vehicles we understand its utility and speed advantage but the pioneers are not here yet.

XRP The Revolution

XRP has the highways set up. The infrastructure is here. Just like the pioneers of mass production in the past, Ripple saw the needs of their customers and the economy. The government understands the importance now as well and is recklessly opening the flood gates for crypto investment. Once we step over this threshold our economy will never be the same. Buckle up.

By Edgard R. Gonzalez Summers