INNOVATING A CRYPTO UTOPIA: WAYS FOR BOLSTERING CRYPTOCURRENCY IN THE DECENT WORLD

1. Introduction
As technology improves and society progresses, the digital age is making a greater impact on the world every day. The growing prominence of mobile, IoT, VR, and AI technologies means that the way we perform transactions is constantly changing. The advent of cryptocurrency has the potential to change the way the world transacts; a global digital currency could revolutionize outdated banking systems, bypass expensive cross-border transfer fees, and provide financial services to those that are currently excluded.
However, the current reality is that cryptocurrency is still far from being considered as a mainstream payment system; it is currently more akin to an investment than a means of payment. For instance, on January 1, 2017, there were 19,535 Bitcoin wallets worth $1m or more. At the time of writing, there are 154,600, an increase of nearly 800%.

This is a sign that people see cryptocurrency as a way to get rich quick due to price speculation, rather than purchasing coins to use for their utility value. In order for this to change, specific strategies need to be employed to cultivate a cryptocurrency utopia.

This essay will outline various strategies and use case scenarios that could help stabilize the price of cryptocurrency, increase its intrinsic utility, and ultimately drive it to becoming a viable and sustainable payment system, specifically focusing on Bitcoin. By creating a more stable and less speculative environment, it is hoped that future price volatility can be minimized and a desirable, consistent level of deflation can be achieved.

2 Importance of Cryptocurrency in the Real World

Cryptocurrency is often defined as digital money. It is an online version of cash. It is used for transactions and purchases. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized systems, based on blockchain technology, a type of distributed ledger. Decentralization means the transfer of authority and values. Unlike centralized systems transferring authority and value simply from one entity to another, decentralized transfers move value or authority from one party to another, to everyone across the entire network with no middleman and no third party, at the same time it is moved instantly and securely from one party to another.

This suggests that cryptocurrencies are separate and different from centralized digital money and central banking systems. Decentralization itself is a revolutionary concept, it enables the transfer of authority and values using the internet and it allows a direct peer to peer value exchange. No longer beholden to physical and geographical constraints, cryptocurrencies enable access to economic and social processes for billions of potential users. Because cryptocurrencies are software-based and deployed on the internet, the transfer of value can be instant and global without any credit or exchange rate fees. Cryptocurrencies have the potential to enhance social, economic and political inclusion in developed countries and to be a fundamental building block for financial inclusion in developing countries.
The inclusion of the unbanked and underbanked in lesser developed countries is a global relay of value and economic interaction, finance is the foundation of economic interaction, production, and exchange. At present, the state of the banking system and remittance services often deny those in need of economic participation a chance to develop their own wealth and exchange with others.

This is due to the fact that there are billions of people continuing to rely on barter and subsistence trade because they do not have a means of identity to allow them to access banks and financial accounts. Identity in the modern world is essentially an information existence that is recognizable and usable in a stated context with relevant institutions and systems, the identity information today is largely held and processed on computers and it should be possible for people to create secure identities that are usable structured data.
The type of identity most taken for granted in Western countries is legal identity, the reality is however that roughly a sixth of the world's population does not have any officially recognized identity. It is difficult to prove legal identity without specific identification credentials and the best means of reliable identification is often provided by digital identification systems. These systems are the foundation of remote and decentralized services and in today's times they are most effectively utilized with ID credentials, there is a real dynamic and potential for digital ID system development to change the global human society by empowering each person with identity.

The identification systems and ID credentials that we use today are essentially digital data issued by a trusted party and stored on a computer, there is no intrinsic reason for these credentials to not also be stored and issued as digital data.
Digital money and cryptocurrency are native to computers and the internet, digital ID and credential systems are arguably the low hanging fruit for financial and economic system development with cryptocurrencies being the high hanging fruit.

3 Challenges Faced by Cryptocurrency

In fact, developing a new industry faces innumerable challenges. A crypto utopia will definitely have its set of challenges and problems. The main problem out of all will be governance.
A crypto utopia is borderless and decentralized. Trying to twist the reality of nations and borders into one that the crypto industry seeks is a monumental task and one that will come to a conflict of interests. In a world without borders, which laws are the ones to follow? Laws will govern territory and jurisdiction. In a borderless world, there exists no lack of governance and sovereignty.

This does not mean that it does not exist. It does mean, however, that it will be even harder to avoid conflicts over them. This can be seen in events such as the hack of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, DAO, a smart contract and organization which was meant to codify and automate contract and organization rules using the blockchain.

This hack led to a contentious hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain. This action showed a lack of governance of Ethereum was not sufficient to deal with the potential conflicts of interest. For a crypto utopia to function well, there needs to be a comprehensive form of governance in which conflicts of interest can be avoided. Simulation and modeling may be a key tactic in order to prototype such governance systems before real-world implementation.