Whenever I think back to the first time I used crypto, it amazes me to see how far we’ve come. This was in 2013 when I was still a fresh-faced university student at Technical University Delft. Bitcoin blew my mind the first time I heard of it. Then it blew my mind again the first time I used it. I remember rushing to tell my classmates that this technology would disrupt society unlike anything our generation had never seen before, though convincing anyone of its world-changing potential was hard in those days. But I knew I was in. Almost a decade later, I can confidently say that it is happening as I predicted.
The token ecosystem has already seen several evolutions over its short lifetime. Bitcoin gave rise to a variety of forks and permutations, while Ethereum pioneered smart contracts and the birth of decentralised finance and NFTs, technologies so revolutionary that they could prove as disruptive as the printing press—or the Internet itself (Ethereum was also what inspired my co-founder David Hoggard and I to launch Monolith, the world’s first crypto wallet with a VISA debit card for real world spending).
If it was difficult to keep up with crypto in the early days, now it’s almost impossible. We have tens of thousands of tokens, dozens of blockchains, and myriad exciting use cases. By 2030, the number of tokens and ways we use them across blockchains will explode.
While we’ve already seen useful applications surface, tokenization will offer many more weird and wonderful use cases over the years to come. In fact, it’s likely that some of the most promising use cases for tokens don’t exist yet. There’ll be tokens for everything, and we can be sure that they’ll transform the ways humans interact with each other and the world. That’s why I’m excited to be here.
But if crypto is to live up to its potential, we must eliminate the entry barrier and work to help enter this new economy. Discovering tokens should be easy, but it takes a lot of learning to get started. David and I hope to change this by optimising for discovery via our new product, token.com. Launched in Brazil this month, we’re focusing on presenting key token niches to customers through curated sets called Collections. We’re taking this approach because we think it’s important to make tokens more accessible to the world. In the future, we hope that tokenization will enable everyone on the planet to invest in their interests and truly shape the world around them.
Crypto is currently caught in a slump, but my conviction in the ways tokens could change our society has never been stronger (so if you invested and you’re feeling down right now, I’d encourage you to stick around). The big picture here is a freer world that we collectively shape with our investment choices. It’s a world where everyone could be empowered by money and the playing field is level for all—and that’s definitely a world worth fighting for.
Mel Gelderman, CEO of token.com
Read more via CoinTelegraph here.
Please note: Investing in cryptoassets is risky. Due to the volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market, investors run the risk of losing their funds when they make an investment. Returns from cryptoasset investing are not guaranteed, therefore users should always be aware of the risks.
