The Staketime Continuum: How $FLASH is the Time Travel of Money

You may have have heard the term “money now is worth more than money later”, but what does this actually mean?

How is capital in the present worth more than capital in the future? If we can travel into the future of the physical world, why can’t we travel into the future of the financial world?

Flashstaking is the concept of locking money today and earning money from the future. All done in a decentralized, instantaneous, and permissionless manner. Let’s dive in to see how it works.

In the physical world, a portal is a gateway that connects one location with another location. What makes them unique is that when a person goes through a portal, they don’t have to travel the space between the two locations.

In the financial world, a flashstake is a gateway that connects the value of today with the value of tomorrow. What makes them unique is that when a person locks their capital with a flashstake, they don’t have to travel the time between the two values.

To put it simply: flashstaking allows anyone around the world to redeem money from the future. Here is an example.

1. The date is March 22nd, 2021. A person named Vitalik has $100.
2. Knowing his $100 will be worth less in the future, Vitalik wants to do something with his money, today.
3. He decides to flashstake his money 365 days into the future.
4. Immediately, Vitalik is sent $25 to his wallet.
5. One year later on March 22nd, 2022, he gets his original $100 back.
6. Vitalik nets $125 in the process.

Sounds cool and all, but how does all this work? Where is the money from?

In the famous scene from Back to the future, Marty McFly time travels into the future with Doc and immediately asks “Where the hell are we?!”

Doc responds that the better question is “When the hell are we?”

Understanding that where and when are two different dimensions each with their own coordinates may set a solid foundation to grasp the concept of flashstaking.

When we think of $FLASH, we must understand when it is coming from and why it has value.

The reason you may be hesitant to lock $1000 for a year is because you understand that money now is worth more than money later. But why is that?

The first, and probably most understood answer here is inflation. 

Every single second, US Dollars are diluted by the printing of more dollars. When this happens, our buying power decreases. When our buying power decreases, the money we have saved loses value relative to what it will be worth in the future.

We don’t need to go too far down this rabbit hole as inflation is a concept most people already understand and why so many people are attracted to Bitcoin. 

If you want to see a social experiment of a million dollar hyperdeflationary currency we created in 2019, go here.

The second and sometimes less understood reason why money has more value today is because of opportunity cost. In other words, if I have money now, I can use it to make more money. If I don’t, I will lose that opportunity.

While inflation and opportunity costs are two different concepts, they do have one commonality. They are both invisible. 

We don’t see our savings account decrease every day and there is no exact market value of what we are losing on a daily basis.

Flashstaking puts a visible market value on opportunity costs and allows you to claim it, today. All upfront for extended periods of time.