In today's environment, where the uptake in crypto adoption and shifting monetary paradigms make daily headlines, perhaps revisiting history could offer valuable clues about our financial future.
Going back to the core principles and original ethos of crypto, it's clear that it began as a fundamentally libertarian movement, fuelled by aspirations for decentralization and independence from central authority. In the groundbreaking Bitcoin whitepaper published by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, the vision was distinctly clear: establish a network of blockchain nodes that enable genuine self-custody, empowering individuals to take complete control of their digital assets and transact directly peer-to-peer, without the need for intermediaries or trusted third parties.
If we look even further back, history teaches us that every successful system of value exchange fundamentally depends on stability and predictability. People and businesses need to trust the medium of exchange for trade to thrive. For example, if a merchant expects that an apple will cost roughly the same tomorrow as today—in whatever currency they are transacting—they can price it confidently today, ensuring predictability in their margin.
Achieving this trust, stability, and predictability has historically been the fundamental role of central banks. Continuing our historical exploration, until 1971, the U.S. Federal Reserve provided this trust by backing its currency with gold reserves, making the U.S. dollar convertible to gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce throughout the Bretton Woods era. From ancient times, human society has placed intrinsic value on gold and precious metals—"In gold we trust"— and this trust was the foundation that created stability and predictability in the value of the U.S. dollar.
Returning to our contemporary moment, perhaps the future will blend crypto's libertarian desire for self-custody and decentralization with the stability historically guaranteed by central banks. Stablecoins—already facilitating over $27 trillion in transactions last year—have moved beyond niche status and are now an integral part of the global financial system. Their appeal lies in maintaining a reliable 1:1 peg to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar, providing a bridge between the crypto ecosystem and traditional finance. Further, pro-crypto political momentum in certain regions is accelerating their mainstream adoption. In more peer-to-peer modes of transacting, stablecoins allow merchants to avoid intermediary fees and settlement delays—aligning with crypto’s ethos of independence from third parties. And in countries with volatile local currencies, accepting stablecoins pegged to more stable fiat can offer protection against inflation. So it could make a lot of sense for a merchant to accept a stablecoin in exchange for that apple.
While stablecoins could fulfil the role of being a medium of exchange for everyday transactions, Bitcoin might serve as tomorrow's 'digital gold'—a globally trusted store of value—due to its divisibility, portability, known scarcity and durability: the very same qualities that made physical gold valuable across civilizations. To illustrate durability, consider an apple—if we continue using it as our example, an apple rots after a week, while Bitcoin or gold can be stored for years and still buy us a fresh apple whenever we want it. Echoing humanity's longstanding fascination and inherent trust in gold and metals—something seemingly ingrained in our collective DNA—perhaps metal cards will become the preferred physical form factor for everyday spending and asset protection alike. These cards wouldn't just facilitate common transactions (like purchasing that apple) with traditional and emerging currencies—they could also securely store private keys on embedded, tamper-proof chips. This would seamlessly combine genuine self-custody of digital assets with convenience and (cryptographic) security.
Only time will reveal how these historical lessons and contemporary innovations finally blend, shaping our future financial landscape.
