John McAfee: Why the word 'bubble' cannot be applied to bitcoin

History is peppered with innovations that changed human culture beyond recognition. One such innovation was the adoption of agriculture. Prior to this adoption the great thinkers within society struggled with how to determine when to break camp and move to more fruitful lands, or how to limit the size of a village so that sheer numbers did not quickly deplete the available food in a new area, or how to design lodging so that could be quickly dismantled for a sudden move.

Imagine how these great thinkers must have struggled to comprehend a world in which the village never moved; where the size of the village was inconsequential; and where lodging was constructed of immovable stone. There would be nothing in their contextual understanding of their culture that would allow them to comprehend the end product of the emerging new world.

I believe that the Blockchain is, even now, ushering in a new economic and social paradigm that will rival, if not exceed, the impact that agriculture had in human society.

The idea that has clouded the waters for many is the idea of 'Decentralisation'. There has been much hype for dozens of years about the mind-bending potential of decentralisation but little or nothing has come of it. The reason is that no-one has been able to solve the problem of distribution required to power these decentralised systems.

Distributed, decentralised systems have an inherent power that literally obsoletes centralised systems. This is obvious even to the most casual observer. We have known this for decades. It was not until the arrival of the Blockchain, however, that we had a tool capable of melding "decentralised" and "distributed" into a single unit within which no central authority whatsoever was necessary. The distributed ledger, maintained by no-one, accessible to all and validated by consensus is the tool the world has been waiting for.

Those who understand this tool see immediately the absurdity of words like "bubble", "investment", etc. when applied to cryptocurrencies. These thought leaders use bitcoin to buy and sell, and those who use bitcoin exclusively as a currency and use no other currency - and I personally know dozens who do so – couldn't care less about what bitcoin is worth in dollars.

These people see, and have seen for some time, that the old paradigm constructs are meaningless in this new world.

It is like the first pueblo cultures being warned by their past sages that they will perish in their stone houses when it is time for the village to move. They understood that the concept of "moving" had no meaning in their new world.

Likewise, what people see as a bitcoin "bubble", from the perspective of the new paradigm, is merely the predictable and systematic devaluation of fiat currencies that will continue, with obvious ups and downs, until all fiat currencies reach the zero point.

As the relative value of bitcoin temporarily drops, they will point to this as proof of their understanding. It won't matter. The reality of this new world is what it is. Those who understand will be the leaders of this new world.