There are many reasons to invest in crypto in 2022. Let’s go through a few.
Financial
Cryptocurrency is the lodestone of the deregulated financial — DeFi — market space. The DeFi industry purposely exists outside the traditional financial sphere and its influences in order to democratize the wealth-acquisition process.
Whether or not this is a good thing depends on whom you ask, but DeFi is, unquestionably, revolutionary: Traditional money — which in the DeFi space is called fiat currency — is subject to geopolitical influences and the arbitrary whims of heads of state. Crypto isn’t.
Cryptocurrency is also unaffected by bank collapses and the ups and downs of the traditional stock market, which often has something to do with geopolitics in a way antithetical to the spirit of DeFi.
Cryptocurrency suggests to many a stable financial future free of government molestation or the restrictions of traditional banks whose discrimination has kept some classes poor while elevating others’ unearned wealth.
Political
Cryptocurrency is a threat — or so some world governments see it. Cryptocurrency is outright illegal in these countries:
- Algeria
- Bangladesh
- China
- Egypt
- Iraq
- Morocco
- Oman
- Qatar
- Tunisia
Other nations, however, are amenable to crypto. For instance, the government of El Salvador has granted cryptocurrency legal tender status alongside its standard national currency, the U.S. dollar.
But a government taking a friendly line on crypto can be just as damaging as if it banned it altogether: El Salvador and Venezuela — the government of which issues its own cryptocurrency, petro — seem to be using crypto as a way out from under brutalizing inflation and scarcity, or rather as a smokescreen to cover up their desperation in front of the rest of the world. And when governments have a hand in crypto regulation, we’re hardly talking about a DeFi market anymore.
But properly contextualized, cryptocurrency represents a wealth-accrual opportunity for the world’s poor. Many governments that have so far taken a disinterested line on crypto are financially repressive in a general way; they run the banks, and do so poorly. Crypto, then, grants their subjects the sort of financial self-determination they couldn’t possibly have otherwise.
Social
For the international poor, crypto may be a lifeline in the wake of government-directed financial shipwreck.
But what about those nearer us?
The pandemic has immiserated a portion of the once-robust American middle class. Amid supply chain disruptions, uncapped inflation, and an all-around troubling geopolitical outlook after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a sense of stability is hard to come by.
Cryptocurrency may offer just that stability. Bitcoin price has remained steady throughout the pandemic — it’s even increased slightly year by year — and the introduction of low-cost and fragmented cryptocurrencies and NFTs offer those outside the traditional financial sphere investment opportunities that are otherwise beyond them.
The increasing digitalization of every aspect of life worries some. But crypto, and especially NFTs, offer a sense of authenticity in a meta-world without tactile goods. As crypto trading platform FTX puts it, “You can see who owns virtually every NFT, if you’re curious” — that is, you can show everyone that you own your NFT, and the banks can’t take that away from you.
Get Out There!
Make 2022 the year you take your financial future into your own hands. Investigate the crypto space and see what you can make of it.
