We have liftoff! The Digital Transformation of Money was launched yesterday, the 29th of October, at the Malaysian Writers Fest organised by the Malaysian Writers Society. The organisers did a fantastic job together with GerakBudaya in hosting all of the authors and guests. And of course, all this would not be possible without my publisher Edwin Marsden of Marsden Advisory Resources.
There were a number of familiar faces who attended and got themselves copies of the book. It was really amazing to see you all there. Thank you!
There were good interactions and interesting questions posed by the guests who wanted to know more about the book. Why did I write this book? What are some of the things that I found really interesting during my research? Why do people need to read this book? Here's what I have to say to all that...
Everyone has probably heard of Bitcoin. You’ve also probably heard of how it is the worst thing to have been invented and that it’s a scam. You’ve also probably heard that it is the thing that can save mankind.
It seems like there is no greater polar opposites on the two sides of Bitcoin.
Why? What even is Bitcoin? How does it even work? And why should I even care?
Let me begin by asking a couple of questions…
Have you ever felt like no matter how fast you run you’re still falling behind?
How would you feel if I told you that your hard-earned money and labour is being stolen from you every single second of every single day?
And more importantly, what even IS this thing we call money?
Writing a book had never really been one of the things that I set out to do for myself. What motivated me was the observation of how broken our global monetary system is and realising that we are on the precipice of irreversible damage.
Many of us, especially in the working class and the lower income groups probably feel financially encumbered in such a way that no matter how fast we try to run, we seem to always either stay in place or still fall further behind.
We see systemic issues everywhere from debt slavery, institutionalised theft through inflation, preference for instant gratification, glorification of wealth, money that is based on usury, and the forced constant pursuit for yield at any cost.
These are but a few examples of where our global civilisation has moved in the wrong direction.
As we head closer into a fully digitalised world, we now stand at a major crossroads. We could move in a direction where the foundation of our digitalised civilisation is built on the principles of openness and freedom, or it could be built on the concentration of power and control.
To this end and in my opinion, nothing is more critical as a fundamental building block to our civilisation than what we end up using as money.
This is what motivated me to write this book; I wanted to help anyone understand the digital transformation taking place right now.
This understanding is crucial as it can help anyone take the right steps to protect themselves and their labour.
More importantly, I hope it can also spark transparent and constructive dialogue between the people and policymakers on how the digital transformation of money can help secure and strengthen our individual human rights as opposed to being the catalyst towards a much darker world than the one in which we currently live. But I can’t do this alone and I need your help. So…
You’ve probably heard of some of these terms like cryptocurrencies, NFTs, web3, central bank digital currencies, stablecoins, and all those other tokens and whatnot. But did you know that we probably wouldn’t even be talking about any of them today if Bitcoin didn’t exist?
But how are they different, how will it affect us, and why are the global banks investing huge resources into developing their own digital currency?
In my book, you’ll uncover those things as we explore some of the use cases of Bitcoin and then we also go into the pros and cons of digitalised money.
What are the benefits that we can gain from it?
But more importantly, what DANGERS and THREATS are lurking when it comes to those central bank digital currencies and other centralised cryptocurrencies?
I also illustrate how Bitcoin’s blockchain works and made it more accessible, so that anyone can now have a basis for comparison between centralised and decentralised digital currencies.
I wrote this book to help any one of us, so that we can be better prepared to navigate through what is potentially on the horizon.
It’ll help anyone understand the basic building blocks, give them the right foundation to ask better questions, and make informed and unbiased decisions.
As a final thought, I’d like to leave you with a profound insight that was generously shared by Datuk Dr. Arif in his foreword to my book: at the end of the day, it all boils down to one single question: and that question is - should someone have control of money or should no one?
How humanity chooses to answer that question will determine the very fate of our species. And we have to make that decision...now.
So…
That’s my book and I hope you’ll join me on this journey. Thank you.
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