The Real Value in Bitcoin / Why ArawakX Matters
HINT/SPOILER ALERT: It's not the nonsensical price of BTC
Because of my decades of experience in capital markets structure, people ask me often enough about emerging technologies. It is no surprise that family, friends, clients and colleagues express interest in this whole “crypto thing.” While they are interested, they are also intelligently cautious, having seen the near-daily headlines about sleazebag scamsters like Do Kwon’s ridiculous “stablecoin” Terra, or about how so many very smart people have had millions of dollars stolen from them in a blink of an eye. What is this whole “wallet” thing anyway and why has “Bitcoin” gone from $0.0009 in October 2009 to $69,000 in November 2021 down to $19,500 today?
The simple answer is that BTC which is the symbol for “Bitcoin” that experienced this insane, irrational and wildly volatile price ride has nothing to do with the Bitcoin that was described in Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper. That Bitcoin was designed not to be a wild gambling token but as an insanely low-cost monetary value transfer protocol to enable near-zero-cost payments. Such a system creates wide opportunity for the entire economy to grow, most especially offering opportunity to historically fragmented, less-capitalized communities and nations.
ArawakX is an exchange created specifically to use the decentralized nature of blockchain technologies to provide huge new capital investment opportunities for the fragmented communities in the Caribbean. Have a listen to the exchange’s founder and CEO as he describes their business model.
We at Messy Times love nothing more than great, driven people building businesses and developing communities on principles of free choice and rational markets. Founder, Chairman and CEO D'Arcy Rahming has deep experience to show that the only way to foster better economic and social development is through private capital growing the economic pie with more participants, rather than governmental zero-sum approaches to cutting up a pie that already exists.
ArawakX launched in August 2021 and will become the greatest offshore destination for capital inclusion and broadened capital markets. Technology makes it possible; D'Arcy and his team are making it happen. #Enlightentaimnent doesn't get any better!
Do yourself a serious favor and listen to the whole discussion. You'll be glad you did and be a whole lot smarter at the end, or your money back.
Get involved at https://www.arawakx.com/
Feel free to drop questions either for me or for D’Arcy in the comments below.
The more you ponder this new exchange’s business model, the more you will come to understand that the real Bitcoin - now being called BSV for “Bitcoin Satoshi Vision” - is a very powerful enabling set of tools to create opportunity and prosperity for fragmented communities that can enjoy the benefits of geographical centralization without having to be physically centralized at all.
Low-cost transactions mean, for example, that an online business charging 3 cents at a time can actually make money, which is impossible in a world where VISA and Mastercard charge 3+% of a transaction. Bitcoin as a tool for robust business infrastructure, not as a gambling token with no inherent value, will change the world for the better.
The recent history of BTC’s price will no doubt be written about by economic historians for centuries, the way the Dutch Tulip Bulb Craze is. Long before then, people will use Bitcoin-enabled apps and services billions of times a day, without knowing anything about how it works. Almost no one can describe the combinatorial mathematics that go into call routing - that doesn’t stop everyone from using their mobile phones without any trouble at all.
Unfortunately, ArawakX failed in its aspirations and closed in early 2024. You can go do your own research about what happened but I would use this as an opportunity to remind you that the great promise of true blockchain is to avoid having intermediaries (like an exchange) stand between investors and companies in the first place.
The smart thing about ArawakX was its use of a distributed ledger (blockchain) to enable people spread across hundreds of small islands to create a virtual centralized exchange, in order to get the benefits of capital markets that people living in more concentrated locales take for granted.
ArawakX's failure is NOT a failure of blockchain's utility. It was I think a more mundane reality relating to traditional capital adequacy rules for a centralized exchange. I gather they simply did not generate enough listing and trading business fast enough to develop a proper exchange regulatory capital cushion.