Millennial's dilemma. Is Cryptocurrency Imaginary Money?

Is Cryptocurrency imaginary money? Is it for real? Can you buy things using cryptocurrency? Will my current money become obsolete in the future? What are all things I can buy with Cryptocurrency? What is Bitcoin? Is it a fad? If I get Bitcoin, will I get rich? Is it wise to put all my money into Crypto?

These are some of the things that went through my mind hearing about this new thing. Welcome to the world of confusion and jargon and “I know better than you” and “I won’t share the secret with you”. This is a series of articles where I try to understand what the heck is Cryptocurrency.

Why am I doing this? The only motivation is FOMO or Fear of Missing Out. I don’t want to be like my previous generation who struggled with smartphones, Whatsapp, Insta status, etc. At a time, when the younger ones were posting reels and changing status in a matter of seconds and becoming YouTube millionaires. We used to make fun of older people who don’t know how to use the new-gen social media tools (I strongly recommend watching the Malayalam movie “Home” on Netflix).

I am afraid that my kids will talk to me only if I talk about games, tokens, NFT, metaverse in the future. I am not exaggerating, my 12-year-old is always immersed in Minecraft. Immune to human emotions and talks only to people who play Minecraft. He doesn’t know the real name of the close friend (relative) whom he was playing sitting next to each other in my relative’s house.

After a short visit of around 2 hours, I asked him, what did you talk to your friend. “NOTHING,” he said impassively. I was surprised at the response.

Curious, I pondered, “What were you doing for the last 2 hours?”

“We just played.”

?Not knowing the name of the person, not talking to him, not looking at his face, not knowing which class he is studying. But they are connected and buddies in the virtual world, whenever there is free time they want to be online and play with each other.

Hard truth! If I need to get his attention and get him to talk to me, I needed to learn Minecraft. I asked him what is the rule of the game, he says there is no rule as such, you just play. Surprised I again asked, what is the objective of the game, he says there are no specific objectives (well there is a dragon you need to defeat or something), you just play.

His answers were not quite what I was looking for it seems. Intrigued, I ask him what is it that you mine in Minecraft is. Then came the list of technical jargons, about some items, clicks per second (CPS), graphics card requirement, Special keyboards, servers, community. Overall my brain couldn’t process much and got more confused.

He told me this game is downloaded more than 1 billion times and there are monthly 140 million active users. There are YouTube channels dedicated to live streaming how to play Minecraft. I was not surprised about that, But I was surprised that there are thousands of followers watching how the game is played. For my kid, it is better than watching a movie.

I could play the game, but this was heights, watching some guy playing Minecraft on his PC as a recording. WTF, but then I thought that’s what we also do, we don’t play cricket or basketball, we just watch our stars playing, his stars are the top gamers. Reality struck me there, this is inevitable. Did you know that the gaming industry is worth 180 Billion USD now, which is more than the Hollywood and the Music industry combined and will grow to USD 380 Billion in the next 5 years.

Netflix will die with us if it goes like this!

Coming back to Cryptocurrency, I thought if I don’t learn it now, I will miss out on something. Is it a fad or is it worth learning? I don’t know it yet. I have started the journey and am inviting you as well, I attended Crypto Expo 2022 in Festival Arena, Dubai ( https://cryptoexpodubai.com/ ) recently, 16 and 17 March. The average age of attendees would be around 30 Years. Few grey-haired people like me would have skewed it to this, else it would be less than that. The venue was bubbling with energy, enthusiasm, new ideas, new concepts, new systems, new ways of doing business, new ways of making money, establishing connections, an entirely new world – “Metaverse” as they call it.

The second part of this series is – “Understanding FIAT Currency and basics”