From Cattle to Cryptocurrency: Offcloud’s History of Money (Part 4)

Here we are at the fourth and final blog post the retraces the history of money from cattle to cryptocurrency. If you have not read the exciting first three parts of this blog series, feel free to visit Parts 1, 2 and 3 right here, here and here, respectively. It helps to fully understand how far we’ve come from and how far we can go with the emergence of new revolutionary ideas.

Plastic money

Part 3 told the story of the rise and fall of paper money and the gold standard. This made the dollar and other currencies fiat money. This means that they are simply backed by the authority of the issuing government, and nothing more.

It is in this era that the Diners’ Club, in 1950, introduced the first cardboard-made credit card in widespread use. A decade later, they finally replaced with plastic. In 1958, American Express Company released a rival purple charged card for travel and entertainment.

Not long after, Bank of America created VISA and a network of competing banks created Mastercard. Since then, credit cards have started to take over our monetary system in particular, and our lives in general. This culture of debt and the weakness of our current financial systems had finally taken its toll on people’s financial security during the recent financial crisis of 2008.

The invention of cryptocurrency

The distrust in this current centralized financial system and in fiat money, the quest for alternatives, and the ever-growing capabilities of computing power, all contributed to the invention of the first decentralized digital currency known as Bitcoin.

Bitcoin relies on using cryptology to ensure trust and fungibility in a theoretically tamper-proof decentralized public ledger called a blockchain. Currently, many financial institutions have begun looking at ways to use the blockchain technology that underpins Bitcoin.

While Bitcoin has gained a notorious reputation as a currency that enables people to buy illegal items online anonymously, it is also championed by the rich and famous and is already an accepted form of payment by many companies like Microsoft and Offcloud.

So, is Bitcoin really the solution to our current financial system problems that everyone has been waiting for? Only time will tell. But one thing is for sure. It has already successfully started a digital currency revolution that has made a dent in the universe.

Offcloud, your cloud-based download manager

Here at Offcloud, we provide an invaluable cloud-based service to all our users, going above and beyond the simple storage that most places have to offer! We also give our users the opportunity to download instantly from BitTorrent directly into your cloud storage account, fetch cloud data to convert and store for use later on, and even make use of the media you’ve saved while you’re on the go. And we proudly accept Bitcoin!

But you can also do all this with a free account, too, giving you the opportunity to really try out the service before deciding to make a financial commitment to a bigger package with extra features! You’ll receive 10GB of storage space and 100 direct download links, so why not give us a go?