Local author Steven Sidley talks about his new book ‘It’s Mine: How the Crypto Economy is Redefining Ownership’.
Bruce Whitfield interviews Steven Sidley on The Money Show.
Every week The Money Show interviews the author or reviewer of a new or trending business book.
This week Bruce Whitfield talked to South African author Steven Sidley about his latest offering “It’s Mine: How the Crypto Economy is Redefining Ownership”.
Sidley says the book is not one filled with technical jargon and more about the philosophy behind crypto.
He does provide Whitfield with a summary of how the blockchain works however, for those still mystified by it.
In about 2020, early 2021, it became evident to me that what was happening on the blockchain was much more than cryptocurrency. If you asked anybody what blockchain was about they’d probably say bitcoin or cryptocurrency, but all around us there were these strange creatures that had suddenly grown out of the swamp… NFTs, the
metaverse, Web3…Steven Sidley, Author
All of these things were suddenly rising in 2021 and upending entire industries and were you to ask anybody in the know, what was the common thread, they would say the blockchain but that was not the right answer.
Steven Sidley, Author
We don’t own our money and you can’t suddenly put your money on the blockchain if it’s in rand, but we can certainly put our money on the blockchain if it’s in Bitcoin or a stablecoin or any of the many other blockchain creatures that are available to us.
Steven Sidley, Author
A fair part of my portfolio is on the blockchain – it has value, and governments have no access to it, at all. I can use it to buy things, it does not suffer from a depreciation of the rand because it’s attached to stablecoin, so it is true that I own my own money on the blockchain.
Steven Sidley, Author
The blockchain is a database, no more or no less. There’s a record of transactions chained together since the very first transaction. Using Bitcoin as an example… it is a database of every single Bitcoin in transaction from the very first transfer of ten Bitcoins in 2010.
Steven Sidley, Author
So it’s a database that exists on hundreds of thousands of computers in identical form. Why – because those computers are not collaborating with each other… so for anybody to try and take control of this monetary system they must take control of 51% of those hundreds of thousands of computers, which they can’t do. That’s where the term ‘decentralisation’ comes in… with all these computers it is very difficult to cheat… It is mathematically unhackable.
Steven Sidley, Author
It’s the most financially inclusive monetary system in history… you simply have to have a computer in order to make it work, or a cellphone. It’s financially inclusive to the extent that there are hundreds of millions of people who are undocumented in third world countries who now find a way to protect their wealth by having it on a blockchain.
Steven Sidley, Author
It is simply a better monetary system… and I specifically wrote this book for people who know nothing about how the blockchain works… who want to know – on a principal and philosophical and psychological basis – why this
stuff is so important to us at this point in time…. It will be mainstream in the next decade.Steven Sidley, Author
Description on Amazon:
‘Crypto’, a loose term that means many things to different people, only entered the public consciousness within the last five years or so, now evident by the volume of public discussion, commentary and analysis spread across every conceivable media outlet.
Cryptography has been around for millennia, but Bitcoin only arose in 2009, and it was the spark that has taken crypto from a small group of enthusiasts into a many-tentacled creature, now attaching itself to an astonishing number of projects across all manner of applications, challenging both public and private power centres and long-established norms as it spreads. Starting with the emergence of cryptocurrencies, a whole new host of life-forms have emerged – NFTs, the metaverse, Defi, Web3 and DAOs – all of them changing the very notion of ownership.
It’s Mine digs into the history and concept of ‘ownership’, which ecosystems nurture it, and where we are now. Filled with anecdotes, observations and interviews, the book takes an entertaining and accessible look at how Bitcoin made its mark, how its technology is being re-purposed to enable a revolution, and (in non-technical terms) how it all works. It explores how these new crypto ‘life-forms’ will interact with the rest of the virtual and physical world, while making some very rich and some very poor.
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