You could say that cryptocurrencies are a new way to redistribute wealth, or destroy the banks but I think it has more to do with how humaity tries to settle an old story. How to exhange things at a universally accepted way.
Many generations had passed before Lydia came up with an idea how to make trading easier and more efficient. In these times, the majority of people had some land and lived as farmers. There were slaves and rich aristocrats as well and a plethora of colorful mini countries, citystates and also empires with different and highly complex societies. All of them had different products, means of production, climate and infrastructure. This premodial soup of human communities had the same emotional makup as we do and they needed systems and institutions to make their lives easyer.
They knew if they had access to something that is rare in their area they could get rich but it is alwasy risky. You would have not been able to profit if you exchanged grain for marble, because your polis wanted to build a temple for your god but on the way back home you find out the grainsilo in your hometown was burned down by accident. Your shipment worth nothing and you might not be able to sell it for grain if it is lacking in your area as well.
That is why you need a way to protect your wealth with other means. In a way you need something you can sell all the time. The use of gold, silver and sometimes iron and a huge variaty of other intresting tools created a universally accepted way to exchange wealth but it was hardly designed. Of course each step was somebodies idea but it is a thecnology that has emerge than something invented. Because it required the buildup of trust.
Every time you saw that you are fairly safe with a sum of gold, you sailed home happily and less stressed out knowing gold will not go to zero in value or rots away like grain. As more and more people had similar experiences, it become a useful technology. Nobody really know the value of gold, but everybody agreed that it has value and the frequent exchange of goods created some kind of a ledger. Obviously without a modern day institution it worked differently, as a sum of all agreaments.
Our times has a similar problem, because we need to restructure our economic system. With the rise of highly centrelized banking and economy, the market is hugly different and favors those who has access to its full potential. It caused a monopoly over this tool in exchange for our trust.
Now we can see a historic moment where we invent our new tools in order to repair the trust in our ledger systems and when it is done it will be way more efficient than any previous one. Humanity will be able to produce and trade much more freely and as a consequence we will get much better prices for our work. Maybe it has already been invented and all we need to wait.
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