Cryptocurrency is the buzz at one Venice barbershop

LOS ANGELES — At Benjamin Veloz’s barbershop, a shave and a haircut aren’t two bits. At right this moment’s worth, it is .0021 of a Bitcoin. Veloz owns “The World Well-known Venice Barbershop” within the so-called “Silicon Seashore” space of Los Angeles.

Veloz has been accepting cryptocurrency for companies rendered since 2017 after a dot-com financier sat in considered one of his barber chairs and supplied up a tip.  

“I had a really, very clever tech man, inform me that blockchain was the longer term,” Veloz stated as he minimize a buyer’s hair in that very same chair. Blockchain is the expertise behind cryptocurrency.

Veloz instantly started buying and selling in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. When he first accepted the foreign money, one Bitcoin was price about $1,000. On the day Spectrum Information visited his store, Bitcoin’s worth was hovering at round $50,000.

Veloz has earned some huge cash buying and selling in cryptocurrency or “crypto.”

“I am hoping to make much more,” Veloz stated. “I believe we simply scratched the floor.”

Actually, Veloz stated digital foreign money did much more than make him wealthy.

“Crypo saved my life, man” Veloz stated. “I’d not be right here with out it.”

Through the COVID-19 shutdown, Veloz could not work remotely like different folks within the workforce. He could not “Zoom” his prospects and minimize hair nearly.

“Payments had been nonetheless due. Hire was nonetheless due,” Veloz defined. However he was capable of take among the cash he had invested into cryptocurrency and hold his enterprise afloat. 

Cryptocurrency dominated the information on the finish of 2021, with big-name celebrities similar to Matt Damon plugging digital foreign money, and LA’s iconic Staples Middle was rebranded as Crypto.com Area.  

Heading into 2022, Veloz has full religion and credit score in cryptocurrency.

“I am all in!” Veloz stated.

Robert Sherman is most decidedly not “all in.” He does not personal Bitcoin or any of the opposite dozens of cryptocurrencies similar to Ethereum, Litecoin or Dogecoin.

Nevertheless, Sherman, an administrator on the David Nazarian Faculty of Enterprise and Economics at California State College, Northridge, is aware of fairly a bit about Bitcoin and digital currencies usually. He has labored within the monetary markets his total grownup life and has studied the latest phenomenon surrounding cryptocurrency and its underpinning expertise: blockchain.

One cause Sherman won’t put money into cryptocurrency is its volatility. And, regardless of his information on the topic, he refuses to foretell cryptocurrency’s path going into 2022.

“I believe anybody who says they’ve an concept of the place Bitcoin or cryptocurrency goes,” Sherman stated from his campus workplace, “they both do not know, or they’re being disingenuous. I do not wish to prognosticate, as a result of, frankly, I believe there’s an excessive amount of of that happening, and I believe it is irresponsible.”

However Sherman will hold his hat on one factor: Cryptocurrency is right here to remain.

“No, it isn’t going away,” Sherman stated. “The genie isn’t going again into the bottle. The proof of idea is firmly established. The expertise is confirmed.”

That expertise is blockchain, the distributed information that’s shared amongst hundreds of computer systems on the web. Within the case of cryptocurrency, no central authority—like a financial institution—controls it. And, Sherman stated that’s the reason futurists ought to hold their eye on blockchain, not cryptocurrency, which is unstable in the intervening time.

In 2021, the digital foreign money was within the information for its wild swings in worth and “FOMO”—folks’s “worry of lacking out” if they didn’t put money into cryptocurrency.

“The primary utility of blockchain that has turn into well-liked is cash,” Sherman stated. “And what’s extra unstable than cash?” However the blockchain expertise beneath digital foreign money may be very safe and sound, Sherman stated. Every transaction requires a number of authentications amongst many computer systems throughout the web.

“That is the explanation why blockchain is so safe,” Sherman defined, “and really tamper-proof.”

He stated it’s also the explanation why, in 2022, blockchain will enable monetary firms to supply completely different merchandise similar to fee programs and “sensible contracts.” 

“There are some actually elementary issues that may be solved with blockchain,” Sherman stated. For instance, he stated, firms will be capable to commerce carbon credit rather more effectively utilizing this blockchain.

Dr. Lene Martin agrees. She runs Pepperdine College’s Blockchain Division. Blockchain, she stated, will enable monetary establishments to decentralize their transactions. “De-fi,” or decentralized financing, will decide up in 2022.

Nevertheless, conventional banking firms are additionally beginning to dabble into cryptocurrencies. And that, Dr. Martin stated, will pull improve cryptocurrency’s acceptance amongst a wider viewers.

“I believe as we see extra institutional capital piling into cryptocurrencies,” Dr. Martin stated, “I believe that plenty could have extra belief in it.”

Martin additionally stated that in 2022, there shall be elevated legal guidelines and laws relating to cryptocurrencies, which, since they don’t seem to be “minted” or sanctioned by anyone authorities are inherently “lawless.” 

Nevertheless, some students, Sherman included, suppose governments will wrestle with this for a while.

“(Cash) is essential a part of their political system, their society,” Sherman stated. “Whenever you now have a foreign money that’s outdoors of any nationwide management, and, in actual fact, is world, and that’s run by a community, that’s problematic for any nation.” 

However Martin stated that this decentralized, anti-authoritarian side makes blockchain so revolutionary.

“Folks can really start to personal their very own identities, their very own cash and their very own information,” Martin stated. “That is the age of autonomy.” 

And that autonomy contains one other blockchain utility that Martin stated will experience excessive in 2022—NFT’s, or non-fungible tokens. NFT’s are information which are distinctive and owned by a person.

And, again on the barbershop, Veloz is carrying an NFT. It is a crude picture of a hen referred to as “Thugbirdz.”

“I personal the rights to this picture,” Veloz stated, pointing to his T-shirt. “It’s $40,000 NFT.”

In response to Martin, utilizing cryptocurrency in on a regular basis transactions would be the exception, not the rule. Digital foreign money shall be thought-about an funding going into 2022.

“(In 2022) folks will maintain it for its future worth,” Martin stated.

That is precisely what Veloz does.