The End of the British Queen: Where is the Financial Future under Web3?
In this era of upheaval, risk management is always the top priority for each and every one of us.Author: Encentive
The Extinction of the Era Lighthouse
Just yesterday, on September 8, 2022, the longest-serving monarch of the United Kingdom, as well as the monarch of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and many other countries—Queen Elizabeth Alexandra Mary—passed away. Her death marks the end of an era, and over thirty countries around the world will soon reclaim and reprint their legal tender (as shown in the picture). With her passing occurring in the first year of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, people worldwide are in mourning, beginning to assess the possibility of a third world war, updating new trading plans and post-event action plans. As ordinary people, what can we do at this pivotal moment of great change in our era?
The Traditional Financial System Has Fallen Behind the Needs of the Times
Since the birth of Bitcoin after the global financial crisis in 2008, it has existed as a "supra-sovereign currency," with a limited total supply of only 21 million coins. The vast majority of people do not deeply understand the concept of "limited supply." Aside from Bitcoin, almost everything that human society can access in its current civilization stage does not have a limited total supply; even gold is continuously being mined anew.
There is an old saying in China: "In chaotic times, buy gold." However, if we look at modern Chinese history, we find that this saying is statistically incorrect, as the vast majority of ordinary citizens are simply unable to safely store, transfer, and use gold for transactions. Only the upper elite with certain capabilities can truly "use gold."
In other words, over 95% of Chinese citizens have been constrained by fiat currency for five thousand years. Once the situation becomes turbulent, the fiat currency in hand depreciates to worthless paper, financial situations become strained, and the ability to withstand risks becomes almost zero, leading to life-threatening situations at any time. This year's depreciation of the ruble has caused many local residents to worry daily about their meals, and the cost of relocating due to the ruble's depreciation has consumed almost all their liquid cash, forcing them to start accumulating wealth anew in a foreign land after reaching middle age.
Therefore, in today's increasingly turbulent times, we must gradually learn to detach from traditional physical wealth storage and payment methods, as well as the centralized financial payment networks. Every ordinary citizen needs to start understanding and learning to gradually integrate the use of decentralized financial networks into our daily lives.
The Internet Industrial Revolution—Web 3.0
Decentralized financial networks are built on blockchain technology. Unlike centralized internet, users utilizing financial services on decentralized internet will not be prohibited or restricted from normal financial payments and wealth storage due to local reasons from any sovereign country. During turbulent times, there may be regional node restrictions due to sanctions from certain sovereign countries, but there will always be alternative methods to achieve normal financial usage. This is the advantage of supra-sovereign digital currencies; an ordinary citizen cannot normally transfer gold or use bank payment settlement systems under such circumstances.
However, due to the high threshold characteristics of decentralized networks and the continuous appreciation of Bitcoin over the past decade, transaction fees on the Bitcoin mainnet have also risen sharply. Consequently, the usage of cryptocurrencies has gradually shifted towards international trade bulk transactions and some gray and black industries, specifically in the B2B (business-to-business) realm, which is still far from the daily lives of most people.
The birth of the Ethereum network has given each of us the opportunity to access and use cryptocurrencies, but currently, it is still limited to using digital currencies to purchase digital assets like NFT avatars, which is still far from our daily necessities. Therefore, the vast majority of people using decentralized financial networks are merely using them for asset storage, while daily life payments are still made with fiat currency.
Leading 6 Billion People Globally to Become Supra-Sovereign World Citizens—SaaS—Encentive
The world's first SaaS (Software as a Service) that integrates compliant fiat and digital currency payments, Encentive, greatly reduces the threshold for everyone to use digital currencies in their daily lives in a simple and user-friendly way. Users only need to have a digital wallet to safely pay digital currencies to one or multiple digital wallets without entering complex wallet addresses.
If the payment recipient lacks knowledge about digital wallets, users only need to spend a few seconds DIY (customize) a fund pool, send the fund pool network link to the other party, and once they learn to use the digital wallet, they can receive the funds. This is a rare blessing for those who have significant financial transactions daily, especially for business owners, who can securely pay multiple suppliers, employees, or clients without entering anyone's wallet address, allowing them to simply enter the link to receive the funds without worrying about operational risks from traditional decentralized payment errors.
If the other party has no knowledge of digital currencies and is uninterested, Encentive collaborates with Alchemy Pay and Binance, leading compliant fiat payment service providers with licenses in over 70 countries, allowing anyone accustomed to using compliant fiat currency worldwide to convert their digital currencies into local compliant fiat currency anytime, anywhere, alleviating concerns for those accustomed to using digital currencies about whether the other party has knowledge of digital currencies.
Imagine if all your financial transactions outside of daily necessities were completed through a decentralized network. As wars escalate and global situations take a sharp turn, how much of your wealth could be affected? For individuals with less frequent and smaller financial transactions, Encentive provides wealth management services. Any trading clients who provide liquidity for transactions through its liquidity pool will receive a share of the transaction fees as profit.
The difference between providing liquidity on Encentive and elsewhere is that Encentive is a decentralized protocol audited by authoritative auditing agencies, just like Uniswap (the largest decentralized exchange). It offers higher transaction fee sharing while avoiding the risk of capital loss due to platform collapse or fraud that traditional liquidity providers face.
In this transformative era, risk management is always the highest priority consideration for each of us. The death of the British Queen should not signify the death of noble virtues. If finance is a skyscraper, then integrity is the foundation beneath it. Upholding the traditional Chinese virtue of trust aligns perfectly with the Encentive team's commitment to achieving a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) culture through "Code is law," transitioning from "Don't be evil" to "Can't be evil."
Because without trust, there is no economic flow; bad money drives out good; trust costs rise, and the cost of economic activities in society increases. When the cost of social cooperation matches or even exceeds the value created by synergy, the economic system begins to decline, and our lives will inevitably become worse.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. ------ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
