50 Years From Now

When you learned history in school growing up I am sure you scoffed at the idea that people thought the universe revolved around planet Earth. After all, scientific technology and astronomy clearly showcased that this idea was false.

However, if you lived around the time of Galileo, the famous astronomer who provided supporting observations for the mathematical model of a heliocentric system presented by Nicolaus Copernicus, you would have almost certainly thought Galileo was a heretic who did not know what they were talking about.

The Catholic Church put Galileo on trial and on June 22, 1633, he was officially deemed a heretic and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

A scientific discovery that is so obvious today was considered illegal just under 400 years ago. It even took the Catholic Church over 350 years to publicly announce that Galileo was right and that their persecution against him was wrong. This apology came in 1992—a little over 30 years ago.

Centuries are a long time.

Humans struggle to think in the exponential so it is nearly impossible to imagine what life was like in the year 1900, much less in 1633 when Galileo was on trial.

I recently read the book Rough Riders by Theodore Roosevelt and it was mind-boggling to me that in the year 1898, how many highly-educated and affluent young men were graduating from college and immediately enlisting to join Teddy’s unit to shortly be shipped over to fight in Cuba.

Just over 120 years ago a logical life progression was to grow up and live a life of manual labor as a farmer or factory worker or join the military.

How far society has come…

Years are long, decades are longer, and centuries are nearly incomprehensible to fathom how much can change.

Jeff Bezos famously built Amazon to the scale it is today by pondering the question of ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ His answer focused on the fact that customers want low prices, fast delivery, and a vast selection. He provided the converse answer where he said that it’s impossible to imagine a future where the customer would want higher prices, slower delivery speeds, and fewer options. By focusing on what wouldn’t change, Bezos found his edge.

That’s on the scale of a decade. If you could sit back and imagine what will still be around in 50 years, where would your mind go?

I think one of the potentially true theories 50 years from now is that people and society will still navigate toward the most sound form of currency. Humanity has naturally done this for thousands of years—generations after generations—from seashells and beads to gold and precious metals.

In a world where inflation does not seem to be slowing down, what is the hardest asset and the form of currency most ready for the world to adopt as a standard?

The answer is Bitcoin.

Of course, there are scenarios where this does not happen.

Much like the internet or the smartphone, there are scenarios we can struggle to predict because they seemingly come out of thin air with no prior technological product to take inspiration from. To think of this, imagine explaining how Googling a question works to someone who lived in the year 1900. Or imagine giving someone in the year 1900 an iPod with headphones attached. They would think you were a witch with magical powers.

The point is, that there are potential ideas that could emerge in the future that make the power of money and purchasing obsolete. These ideas and how I predict they would have to work, would involve the world reaching a near utopia level where every human need or want is provided for freely.

Outside of this reality, I think 50 years from now people will still have a need for using the soundest form of currency available to satisfy savings and purchasing needs.

With this thought, I think 50 years from now the world is increasingly more likely to be on a Bitcoin standard than not.

So in the chance that happens, it may make sense to have some.

Stack SATs.

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