“My colleagues have purchased all kinds of cryptocurrencies, including meme coins, with varying degrees of success.”
Cryptocurrency exists everywhere today, including Sea to Sky.
Major companies like BlackRock have invested billions of dollars in Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency market is expected to boom under President-elect Donald Trump. However, the impact of cryptocurrencies varies from person to person.
According to the survey, 43% of young men (ages 18 to 29) have purchased or traded cryptocurrencies, about half of young women, and older generations are gradually purchasing less.
However, 5% of Gen
So what are 43% of young people doing with cryptocurrencies?
First, it’s important to understand the basics of what cryptography is. From my conversations with my grandmother, I learned that for some older generations, it’s a very foreign concept.
Almost a century ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and the United States abolished the gold standard, and 53 years ago, President Richard Nixon abolished convertibility between the US dollar and the metal.
Today, we are witnessing a shift towards cryptocurrencies, particularly non-governmental currencies in the form of Bitcoin (BTC).
BTC has similar properties to gold in many ways. BTC is decentralized, has limited supply, and fluctuates with an agreed upon value. However, they differ in important ways. Gold weighs 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter, but Bitcoin is completely electronic and easily transferable, making it much more attractive to trade.
Cash was originally introduced to greatly facilitate transactions, but at the cost of making the currency completely under government control. Since BTC is independent of inflation, Bitcoin is effectively resistant to it. Governments cannot print more Bitcoins.
However, this new currency has some limitations. Gold has many of the same properties as BTC, but from a “currency” perspective, gold’s weight is advantageous in some ways. Having a currency like Bitcoin, which is traded frequently and therefore constantly changing in value, may be beneficial for traders. However, once you start trading Bitcoin in your daily life, problems can arise.
For example, you can’t set a price for Bitcoin because its value changes all the time. It is difficult to exchange goods and services when the value of the currency being exchanged is uncertain. The only way to avoid this is to adopt Bitcoin, which has no relative value to adjust to, which is not possible today.
Today, young people are buying more than Bitcoin.
My colleagues have purchased all kinds of cryptocurrencies, including meme coins, with varying degrees of success. And while some of these meme coins have significant value (Dogecoin currently has a supply of around $150 billion), most of these types of transactions resemble high-stakes gambles. Masu.
These coins are plagued by fraud and can be profitable if a high degree of expertise is applied, but in reality this is not the case. What is more commonly happening with these coins are trends. A new meme propagates on the internet, someone creates a coin based on it, kids buy the coin for the meme, and lose money when the coin ultimately fails.
This may be a valuable lesson for a kid who just lost a paycheck, but it’s also a warning. While there is a lot of money to be made with cryptocurrencies, there is also a lot to be lost.
Thomas Legg is a Year 12 student at Sea to Sky Corridor.
