But first, a story

I remember a time when I was young and had the inevitable, “my Dad is better than your Dad” arguments with my school mates. “Oh yeah, well my Dad is..” bigger, stronger, faster etc. Eventually the conversation would come to, “yeah well my Dad makes X money at his job.” or some sort of juvenile rendition of that.

So I asked my Dad how much money “we” make.

He calmly asked me why I wanted to know and I told him of the arguments my school mates would say about their Dads. He simply said it’s nobody’s business what we make and you should never tell somebody. I asked why and he said something along the lines of,

It doesn’t matter what we make and that’s not how you want to judge or be judged by others. Our money is our business and it’s private.

So sensing a lack of sufficient maturity level in my eyes, he didn’t tell me. I would later come to realize that wasn’t an argument I would have won.

Economic Identity

The proposition of blockchain offering one to “be your own bank” has a fairly distinct disparity of trade-offs. With great power, comes great privacy and security concerns. It seem that for many people, managing money at a basic level is a weakness. On the other hand there are entire demographics that would love a chance to establish economic identity under a regime that actively undermines all attempts for financial advancement. Various levels of this can be seen in markets across the globe. The rich simply get richer and the poor poorer as a built in standard of a broken financial system.

I believe that Cardano has a proposition for the future where economic identity and access to a financial ecosystem is available to everybody as equally as can be asked. With the state of the world as it is, it’s not always feasible to participate without a layer of anonymity, to secure privacy with a blockchain economy and in some cases, personal safety.

I believe this revolutionary opportunity of independent and private economic identity is the HEART of the Cardano ecosystem.

I have the significant fortune that I can talk openly about my opinions of my government, and not fear waking up with my assets being seized or being incarcerated under unsubstantiated charges because I might speak against the wishes of those in power. I don’t have to operate in concern my financial activities might be exposed by my own family members, to a regime that wants their cut or needs to oppress financial independence or even just to set precedent.

I believe we can have impactful members of the Cardano community from all circumstances and it’s arguable we need to have economically oppressed representatives the most. I hope that this perspective resonates with the delegators of the Cardano community. I would love to continue the conversation.