Over the past one year we have seen a meteoric rise in digital assets, most especially cryptocurrency. The bull run of flagship cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was just the tip of the iceberg as other altcoins like Ethereum, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, etc., all had massive runs in 2021. More notably, Solana has had an 11,000 per cent year-to-date increase. Prior to 10-12 years ago these types of returns were unimaginable in the financial system. So what changed?
If we track back a little bit, after the US government spent over $420 billion through TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Programme) to bail out banks that triggered the subprime mortgage crisis and 2008 recession, a lot of confidence was lost in the financial system and a person or group of people called ´Satoshi Nakamoto´ launched the first cryptocurrency – Bitcoin. They decided to develop a decentralised digital currency with the hope that it becomes the digital currency of the world and put the people in control of their currency as opposed to the government.
Decentralisation was at the fulcrum of the innovation around blockchain, and as Spencer Bogart, General Partner at Blockchain Capital put it “After all, the entire point of a decentralized blockchain is to provide a hard-promise — an immutable ledger with open, non-discriminatory participation.” Admittedly, he recognised that decentralisation hinders efficiency and throughput in the blockchain.
