I like creating websites, I’m not sure why. It gives me a sense of ownership and stake in the greatest invention ever made by man, the internet. You know the feeling after getting a title deed for the land you have worked for and bought, that’s the feeling I have when I launch a website.
Then the journey of making it a top destination for information people need gets me going. It’s long, painstaking and needs a lot of self-motivation but soon enough, things begin to happen and you are in this crazy adventure where you never want to leave.
The motivation
I do this almost every day, scouring the internet for helpful content I can summarize for readers of my website. So it wasn’t long before I would stumble upon a concept that would completely alter my idea of something very integral in our lives; money. This thing disorganized my thoughts and I’m glad it did because if it didn’t, I would still be thinking we live in a good-enough world with good-enough equality and freedom.
Well, we don’t, and blockchain will tell you why. Since the beginning of civilization, the idea of centralization of important aspects of life such as leadership, power, money etc has been the backlog of our progress.
We believe that as long as there is a central organization we can trust to safeguard these aspects, we shall be fine. That has never been the case. More often than not, these central bodies break our trust and use their position to subvert the will of the people.
For instance, democracy is defined as the power of the people for the people and by the people, an implicit definition in my view. Our leadership, the central body of power, is the reason why we are suffering especially in Africa. It’s like a curse.
Leaders originate from our backyards, people you play with and struggle with. Yet when bestowed with the power to lead us, self-interest takes lead. It’s no longer about the wish of the people. And we go to bed everyday thinking we can trust these people to safeguard our democracy. That’s pure ignorance.
When we give our hard-earned cash to the banks, we are not only entrusting them to keep it safe for us. More importantly, we want them to safeguard the value of our money. Yet what do they do? They formulate figures on their books and magically produce and loan out money at high-interest rates.
Consequently, they make money out of thin air beside the high operation fees they charge us to move money around. Our money loses value and at the end of the year, we withdraw the principal and interest thinking we’ve made genius financial choices. Yet in general, the purchasing power remains the same or is even less.
These are just a few of the examples of the illusion that centralization of anything results to. We trust human beings and systems built by people to faultlessly safeguard our interests.
I haven’t even mentioned the elections fraud we practice in our country in the name of exercising democracy and the land ownership fiasco rendering loyal citizens homeless in the hands of the powerful and rich.
It’s just crazy and in all honesty backwardness.
Enter blockchain.
The basic idea of blockchain technology is to decentralize and render brokers useless. The first and most perfect application of blockchain technology was in 2007 when an unknown person under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin.
Satoshi defined it as a digital currency that people from every part of the world can use to anonymously transact instantly and directly to each other without brokers (banks) and high costs. Satoshi built the technology using cryptography and made the code open source for everybody.
You might wonder how different it is with the current methods of remittance such as Paypal, credit cards, Western Union and the likes. Well, allow me to describe the steps involved in both scenarios.
Sending money
Anne of American Bank (US) wants to send $100 to Kamau of Equity Bank (Kenya). She initiates the transaction though her phone to the bank. American Bank accesses Anne’s account and reduces her balance by $100.
It then deposits this amount in Equity Bank’s Account in its logbook and instructs Equity to credit Kamau’s account with $100. Equity Bank then claims the $100 from American Banks Account in its logbook. In the end, Kamau has $100 in his account, and American Bank owes Equity Bank $100.
This process commonly referred to as correspondent banking enabled by SWIFT does not whatsoever involve money being moved from one place to another, it only involves balancing of accounts.
Besides, it takes long and has high transaction fees which are charged on both Anne and Kamau. Anne might have to spend $10 to send $100 and Kamau receives $95 after 3 days.
Don’t forget that these transactions are recorded by both banks and logged into your ‘financial data book’. If anybody in power, with money or technological might, wants to know how you spend your money, they can get this information.
Sending bitcoin
On the other hand, if Anne wants to send $100 worth of Bitcoin to Kamau, all she needs to do is log into her digital wallet and initiate the transaction upon which $99 worth of Bitcoin will be credited in Kamau’s bitcoin wallet in minutes.
The transaction will be anonymous courtesy of secret keys used, actual digital money will be transferred between individual addresses, and the cost of this transaction will be very minimal; meant to sustain the public ledger (blocks) maintaining the transactions made globally.
Of course, there is so much more happening behind the scenes but the basic understanding of the cryptocurrency technology is that real digital money is sent between people, without a central body or brokers, the information about the transaction is kept secret, and the cost of sending money is very minimal.
The mission
This idea was exciting enough for me to launch this website, Koinsoko.com. I cannot claim to know so much about blockchain and crypto but I desire to educate myself and others about it because I believe in this technology.
Cryptocurrency has the potential to transform the financial system as we know it. It is the future. It returns so much financial freedom and privacy to the people. Yet that’s not the most exciting part about it.
Blockchain technology is immensely powerful and effective enough to streamline very many aspects of our world. Just imagining the things it can do would take you a lifetime. I’m excited about this, and I wanna be part of it.
Koinsoko is aimed at covering all aspects of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Its mission is to make this information easily understandable and absorbable by the mainstream world.
We want you to understand why this is your best shot to true democracy, freedom, justice and leadership. Blockchain is power to each of us.
Believe it or not, it’s the technology that will transcend the internet’s achievements.