| From the Desk of Don Yocham: Creative destruction.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term in his seminal work "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" in 1942.
It was an elegant way of describing a phenomenon so timeless, that you can hardly think of a piece of technology that hasn't displaced another.
The car replaced the horse & buggy.
CD's replaced cassette tapes.
Digital video and photography replaced film.
The examples are limitless, but during each of these transitionary periods, a superior, new technology replaced an older one.
Many times, companies — and entire industries — crumbled.
Creative destruction.
Imagine being the top horse and buggy maker in town when the "horseless carriage" arrived on the scene.
Do you think they welcomed it with open arms?
No, I'm sure they pointed out all the flaws.
How dangerous it was. How expensive it could be. How much it would cost to maintain.
Congress even set up a Commission to study the potential dangers.
Laughably, they found that the horseless carriage could threaten public safety by "hurtling through our streets" at speeds up to 20 miles per hour.
The horror.
In the technology world, that's called FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
As I've pointed out in previous articles, it's easy to be a critic. Building disruptive new technologies that increase our standard of living and grow our economy takes effort.
So talking heads, naysayers, and legacy industries throw FUD.
It's no different now with Bitcoin.
But as with any viable new technology, it continues to march on and ignore the noise.
Over the weekend, Russia's Ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev said, "Excuse my language, but we don't give a s#!t about [Western] sanctions" (actual quote)
Whispers on the darker corners of the web are theorizing that Putin is holding cash in Bitcoin, muting or even eliminating the effects US sanctions would otherwise have.
Is it true? It doesn't matter.
Also in the past few days, after a court order declared the Canadian trucker "Freedom convoy" illegal, TD Bank froze over $1.1 million donated in support of the protestors.
Rumblings on the internet point to the fact that if the donations had been made in Bitcoin, no singular institution would have been able to appropriate the funds.
Now, don't misunderstand me. Forget the politics of the situation.
Forget your biases and see the situation for what it is.
The above examples are theories based on current happenings in the news.
Whether Russia is holding Bitcoin or not is irrelevant.
The TD Bank funds are already gone.
The fact that people are waking up to the tremendous disruptive power of Bitcoin is the thing you should have your attention on.
When horse and buggy makers were being displaced, they didn't go down with out a fight.
But it was all for naught. You can't fight progress.
Those who understood the future could position themselves properly to gain from the changes taking place.
And it continues today.
Over on the Prosperity Pub Telegram channel, we're constantly talking about the power of disruptive change, including how Bitcoin is starting to take center stage in many different ways and how we can learn to profit from it and stand on the right side of history.
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