What's my retirement plan? Cryptocurrency |
Posted: December 2, 2017 |
Things are not as they used to be five decades ago. A lot has changed; we’ve experienced sweeping technological changes, astounding medical advancements, and the tenets that generally drove society have not been left untouched either. From TVs to cars, to hand held devices, to the way we consume music; it has all changed for the better. So what a time to be alive, right? We live in an era when science has discovered more about the world and its workings than ever before in the existence of the human race. From the sound of it, we seem to be living in a utopian society where everything is right where we want it when we want it. It could be better though. For the large mass of twenty-somethings still floundering in the choppy waters of unemployment, the future is grim. That’s not counting the growing numbers of young people in their mid and late twenties still trying to figure out a retirement plan that won’t disappoint them just a couple of years before they begin their retirement. Young people are slipping into a period of ‘waithood’In the Baby Boomer years, things were pretty much straight forward; you finished college and slipped into a comfortable job with security. Young men married early and women in their early twenties were already tending to a family of 2 or more kids. Fast forward to 2017 and young people are coming out of college uncertain about what path their career or marriage life will take. ‘Waithood,’ as BBC called it, is a period where young adults just realizing the full extent of their freedom can’t move out of their childhood homes. The main reasons for this being lack of employment opportunities and money among other factors such as high rents. Research by Hollad and Barret, a health company, reveals that young people today are waking up to tougher days than what was the status quo 40 years ago. An encounter with a 25-year-old woman with a job but no family is commonplace these days. More so, most people are not even working in their fields of training. Older generations see the new generation as a bunch of hipsters moving from one job description to the other without really advancing their career lives. The banks have not made it any easierAfter the mortgage bubble went bust in 2007, causing the economic crunch that pushed hundreds of thousands out of their homes, banks-investment banks in particular, lost the faith of their customers. Whole retirement schemes and savings were wiped out as one large corporation after another went under. Since then, people have been waiting for the new savior to emancipate them from the firm grip of the banking system. The savior seems to come from the most unexpected quarters, a savior with nothing to do with complex economics. In fact, most people have not wrapped their heads around it a decade or so after the unveiling of cryptocurrency. Is cryptocurrency the new way to secure your retirement?If you are an enthusiast of cryptocurrency news, you must have heard of bitcoin or Ethereum or Litecoin. All these are cryptocurrencies and they may be the future of investment and are even forecasted to overtake FIAT money in the coming years. Cryptocurrencies have a decentralized model that proves their longevity and security. No government or institution controls them, and no single entity can manipulate their value at will. It sounds like the perfect standard for anything you would consider money and it gets better. Cryptocurrencies offer all the services you get from a bank, only cheaper and much more convenient while concealing your personal information. People who are new to the field might understandably approach it with apprehension, but those who have already dived in are making a killing just trading coins. Cryptocurrencies are known to fluctuate in price in the most spectacular ways and this is how most people capitalize on their stakes. Unbelievable as it sounds, bitcoin is now worth $10,000 a unit! A little bit more on how cryptocurrency worksBreaking down how cryptocurrencies work would take a whole other piece and I doubt you’re willing to go through the entire intricate process. For this reason, I will explain what miners do, how transactions are recorded and what makes the value of cryptocurrency fluctuate so spectacularly. Miners create new units of cryptocurrency by performing complex math problems and coming up with the solution. This typically needs high computer processing power, which is why no single entity can mess with the value even if they wanted to. Large data firms with enormous processing power have cropped up in the wake of the cryptocurrency boom and they still couldn’t manage to have enough cryptocurrency to sway the value. That’s how complicated it gets. As for the transactions, which take minutes to complete, each one is recorded on a blockchain which is basically a chronology of all the transactions done in a network. These fortify security since they cannot be altered in any way and provide evidence of transactions. Why do cryptocurrencies swing in value so wildly?The answer to this is pretty simple. The cryptocurrency with the most acceptability usually takes off, leaving the other competing for attention. A higher acceptability means more people are going for the cryptocurrency which in the basic rules of demand and supply sends the price skyrocketing. For this reason, the novel cryptocurrency, bitcoin, has been enjoying a higher value than others for some time now. Ethereum, a close competitor has also taken off and commands a high value as well at the moment. The whole field is speculative and some information about one currency can send it to its knees or prove to be its big arrival. The best thing about these fluctuations is the incredible ability of a cryptocurrency to recover from a low value to something acceptable. As Forex News Live reported, we can expect to see a continuation of growth as the predictions for 2018 look good. So what does your retirement have to do with cryptocurrencies?If like myself, you have thought about trying your hand in cryptocurrency, you are not at all on the wrong track. There are numerous ways to invest in cryptocurrency, which come with the benefit of long-term financial security. The most popular among them now is investing in an initial coin offering (ICO). These are typically held when a cryptocurrency is launched where interested parties can buy a fixed amount of currency. The other way is to invest in tech startups that focus on the development of blockchain technology which is currently shaking up the norms in many industries. You can always just buy and hold coins. While not entirely foolproof, investing in cryptocurrency is among the safest ways you can use your money to create wealth. What’s more, you will be investing in an industry that is bound to keep growing and that should come with its own good.
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