We can’t deny the popularity of Bitcoin grows day by day. It’s due to the fact that it became a worldwide sensation because of its unbelievable price surge last year. From just around $800 in December 2016, it peaked to $20,089 one time in December 2017. If you invested $10,000 in December 2016, you already have $250,000 in your pockets when you sold all your Bitcoin in its highest price. That’s just a wild guess for regular investors to invest $10,000 in Bitcoin but we all know that many people can even splash 100 grand or a million in a single click of a finger especially the whales.
Aside from Bitcoin, alternative coins also known as “altcoins” rode the popularity of cryptocurrencies. The two most famous altcoins are Ethereum and Litecoin. Just like Bitcoin, they also experienced sudden surge in price.
This year, a platform powered by blockchain technology will rise to disrupt current crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Its name is Acorn Collective.
What is a cryptocurrency mentioned above you say? Also, what is blockchain technology? Before we proceed, I’ll explain briefly how banks use our money. I’ll also be having a short introduction about the concepts of blockchain and cryptocurrency for the sake of the newbies and non-technical ones.
The Banking System
People deposit to banks so they can store their money away from theft and unexpected circumstances like floods, earthquakes, and other calamities. Banks give interests to your deposits but their interests are very low. The amounts you entrust to banks are being used for the Stock Market, Foreign Exchange, loans (housing, car, personal, etc.), insurance, and other forms of investments.
Banks get their profits there which they give back as interests. For most people, it’s a hassle-free investment because you just put your money in banks and earn interests. If we analyze further, there are problems arising from this kind of scenario.
Privacy and Identity Issues
Before we even open an account, banks ask us to submit many documents as requirements. The examples of these documents are employment records, proof of income, and national identification cards like Passports and Driver’s License. Since they’ll be having our identification documents, it’s not hard to think that they may have the tendency of using our documents for malicious activities.
Centralized Entity
A bank is a very good example of a centralized entity because we put our money in a centralized place or storage. They have our money and they also have our identity. What do you think will happen if there is a hacking incident to that bank? Yes, every government has their own insurance policies but it will take a very long time, even months before that incident will have a resolution. The resolution may not even be favorable to the depositors.
Powerless Depositors
Since banks are centralized, the power is not being upheld by the people. If banks want to impose higher interest rates, they can always do it. They can always impose higher penalties than usual on late payments of mortgages. Our money is with them but we don’t have full control with it.
Blockchain Technology
Treat blockchain as an interconnection of all computers around the world. You just run a program and everyone will be interconnected. Blockchain is a distributed ledger wherein all interconnected computers in that blockchain have all the information and transactions of that blockchain. Computers doing the transaction of a blockchain are called “miners”. The primary objective of miners is to handle and update the transactions of everyone in the blockchain.
Cryptocurrency
There are two kinds of cryptocurrency: coins and tokens. Coins can be mined while tokens can’t be mined. In a specific blockchain lies a single kind of coin or token unless it’s based from another blockchain such as Ethereum. People in that blockchain are the ones dictating the price of the coin or token through trading of that cryptocurrency.
To earn profits, traders apply their technical analysis on the charts to make an estimated guess about a cryptocurrency so they can buy low and sell high. Because of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, the three primary problems by using banks were solved. How?
Since blockchain is about decentralization, there will no more central entity that handles your money and even your identity because blockchain is the interconnection of all the computers in the world. You’re fully private again because you don’t need to give your identity documents to the banks anymore. Even though there may still be hacking issues, it would then be almost impossible because you need to update everyone in the blockchain for the hacking.
To date, there are already around 2,000 coins and tokens available in the world of cryptocurrencies but during my recent research, there now comes an application to change current crowdfunding options in the world.
Acorn – Integrating Blockchain and Crowdfunding
Based from the whitepaper of Acorn, it wants to disrupt current crowdfunding ecosystems by introducing a platform where there will be less to no fees for crowdfunding, all legal and non-harmful projects can be listed, all non-restrictive countries around the world will be allowed, and early adopters will be given rewards. Acorn wants to create an all-in-one crowdfunding platform where projects can be funded by the crowd and they will also have a marketplace where the products will be bought from them. Since Acorn wants to disrupt current crowdfunding systems, there will be no transaction fees when projects get funded compared to the usual 2% - 5% asked by its main competitor Kickstarter.
In my opinion, Acorn has a future to have widespread use in the world of crowdfunding. Why? Because not only Acorn is powered by the blockchain technology, it also has the features of a crowdfunding platform and marketplace while being more secured, decentralized, and the power of information are fully handled by the users and not by the banks.
Since I mentioned in this article the main goal of traders to buy low and sell on a higher price, Acorn will be holding their Initial Coin Offering (ICO) starting on April 28. The price of their Oak token during the public crowd sale will be $1.40 per token.
To know more about Acorn and its underlying technology, just visit their website at https://aco.ai/ and start by reading their white paper.
Disclaimer: This is not an investment advice. Invest at your own risk. Invest only the amount you can afford to lose.
Website: https://aco.ai/
Whitepaper: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1PbmmXatTeAODdsWUl4bmRJOW8
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAcornCollectiveICO
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AcoCollective
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/HI_eCBG0fCRCl1ja-d5JDg
Medium: https://medium.com/@Acorn.Collective
Author: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1767289