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Shaping the future of finance

Order or chaos … you decide

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I’ve been isolating too much and watching too much TV. Binging on Netflix, Amazon Prime and such like, almost every film I watch seems to be the same. Good versus Evil and Order versus Chaos.

Half of society seems determined to make everything sunny and bright; the other half seems determined to destroy, disrupt and make everything bad and mad.

Maybe that’s the way it is. Maybe that is our world. I don’t think so, but the movie industry likes it that way. I’d say, luckily, that only 1 in 10 want anarchy. Most of us just want a nice life.

This is where regulation versus innovation steps in. We have regulations to make a nice life; we have innovation to change that life. It’s not order versus chaos or good versus evil; it’s just progress versus stagnation.

Thing is that order versus chaos is a very hard balance. Whether it’s 1 in 10 or 2 in 5 or 1 in 2, humans are always antagonising each other. We see this in racism, sexism, ageism … all -isms. People fight. We are not harmonised and living as one; we are bitter, arguing, sitting in our own little lockdown bubbles.

Thing is that regulation and order and good exists for a reason. It’s there to create a good society that helps all of us live a good life. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? After all, do you want a bad society to live a bad life?

So, when I bring this back to crypto currencies – I had to, didn’t I? – do you want a good or a bad life. Do you want good currencies or bad? Do you want order versus chaos? Do you want regulations or madness?

This is the balance with which we live today.

For me, I’m always leaning towards good, order and regulation. That makes me a statist. For others, they lean towards chaos, madness and deregulation. I’ll call them libertarians. Which camp do you sit it? Which camp wins? Which camp is the best?

Order versus chaos. Regulation versus innovation. Structure versus madness.

Sure, it’s hard organising our world but what I see in movies, on TV, in my head … is the same thing every time. Government wins.

I love the idea of libertarianism (another -ism!) and decentralised, democratised and distributed, but there will always be a higher order. There will always be people managing the network, whether it’s online or offline. There will always be those who govern and those who are governed. It is the way our world works.

Look at any society – human or animal – and there are leaders and followers. There are those who organise and those who are organised.

Therefore, when we look at crypto and distributed currency systems, it’s all beautiful in theory but, in practice …

… there are those who govern and those who are governed.

CBDCs – Central Bank Digital Currencies – will win. The libertarians will hate that message, but that’s the way the world is. Good versus evil; order versus chaos; regulation versus innovation. Tough. Live with it.

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Chris M Skinner

Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...

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