I would buy a house from a real estate agent only if they accepted one thing. Not my cash. Just my Bitcoins.

You don’t have to live in Dubai anymore where real estate is going in terms of Bitcoins. The future is alive and present everywhere else. Bitcoin was used recently to pay for a new house in Texas. You don’t have to ask Amazon Alexa or Siri if Bitcoin is accepted somewhere near you. Sooner, but not later, it’ll eventually reach you. Like that cup of coffee from Starbucks, that you can buy with Bitcoin. Yup, there’s an app for everything.

We should have known that digital money would eventually reach us as a society. From gold to paper and then eventually to plastic cards. It only makes sense as technology makes a greater appearance in our lives that it becomes part of it. You might as well start introducing your phone to your wallet. You’ll be using both a lot more.

Bitcoin, which was first established in 2009 introduced the world to digital currency. From that point on, it has been growing and trending gradually throughout the years. The main users of Bitcoin and all  other forms of digital currency call themselves ‘cryptocurrencies’. Why a name so cryptic and hidden? Ironic when you already know about it or can willingly do your research. Even more ironic when that currency is established on one of the most public forms of technology. Yes, the blockchain.

The blockchain is only complex and cryptic to those who designed it. That’s why we have programmers and computer science majors. But when it comes to understanding it, you might think of yourself as one of the Facebook founding computer engineers,  because it really was that easy. The blockchain is a public ledger that technology and cryptocurrencies use to record any move, transaction, data that everyone is able to see. There’s still one question. Where does the cryptocurrency and public ledger connect to?

If technology has done one thing, it’s shown us that the tech bubble popped. And it has thrived ever since it burst onto the scene. Now everyone has specs of soap in their eyes. What it really did was decentralize everything, almost everything. This big trend of decentralization only came after products we purchase became more convenient. That was never enough. Products became faster. That still wasn’t enough. Now they are decentralized. You have full authority over everything you use.

You know what decentralization reminds me of? Democracy, power to the people. It wouldn’t be wrong for Americans to say “hey we had decentralization first.” And they would be absolutely right because that’s what a democracy is. Now that democracy, is extended to your money and the businesses you interact with. Some of these cryptocurrencies, as many as they are, actually give the everyday person votes and power to make a change within a company as a customer. That’s a step up from giving a review and rating a company.

Forget about where it all starts. At this point, it all seems crazy how fast and how much the world is changing. You even have competitors of Bitcoin within your own city of Springfield. Bitqy which was explained to me as, “Bitqy is attached to the commerce market and is spreading at a much faster rate than bitcoin, which primarily had it’s slow start with the techies (people of technology),” Bruce Wong who is a chiropractor in Hawaii also a user and advocate of Bitqy. As it goes, each Bitqy (currency) is a shares worth of the company. The same public ledger and decentralization applies to it as well. There are already over 20 businesses alone in Springfield, let alone the masses it has over the nation.

Full disclosure I do have Bitcoins. Another full disclosure I also have Bitqy. Whether America adopts its own digital currency, just to stay ahead, I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you this: I’m standing where you are. So much is going on with the world that we can barely tell which direction we are looking in. But each night I go to sleep, I know tomorrow is waiting, even past midnight. In 24 hours or less, tomorrow will be here. If America prepared democracy for the world, then I’ll prepare myself for the future. All before today’s past.

Leo Borgelin can be reached at [email protected].