Blockwisely

The market crashes overnight.

You open your phone and your balance is suddenly much lower. Headlines shout that billions have been wiped out. Social media fills with fear, anger, and accusations.

And then a quiet question forms in your mind.

Where did the money go?

Did it disappear?
Did someone steal it?
Did it evaporate the moment the charts turned red?

The strange thing is this. Even though it feels like money vanished, it did not go anywhere mysterious at all.

Nothing was burned. Nothing was erased.

What happened is something far more ordinary, and far more important to understand.

Because once you see where money really goes during a crash, markets stop feeling like chaos and start making sense.

Let us walk through it slowly and clearly.

What Price Really Means
Most people treat price like truth. They see a number on a screen and assume it represents real, fixed value. Something solid. Something stored somewhere.

It does not.

A price is not a guarantee. It is not money sitting behind an asset. It is not even a fair estimate of value.

A price is simply the last deal that happened between two people.

Imagine a coin called ABC.

At 10:00, one person wants to buy ABC and another is willing to sell. They agree on ten dollars. A trade happens.

At 10:01, the chart shows ten dollars.

This does not mean every ABC coin in existence is now worth ten dollars. It only means the most recent trade happened at that price. The market is just reporting the latest agreement.

Now imagine the mood changes.

At 10:02, fear enters the market. Buyers are less confident. One buyer says, “I will only pay eight dollars.” A seller, worried the price might fall further, accepts.

A trade happens at eight dollars.

Instantly, the chart updates. The price is now eight dollars.

Nothing was destroyed. No money disappeared. No value was stolen. Two people simply agreed on a different number.

This is why prices can move so fast. Markets are not machines deciding value. They are crowds of humans reacting to fear, hope, and urgency. Every new price is just the latest opinion expressed with money.

Once you understand that price is an agreement and not a truth, crashes stop feeling mysterious. They become moments when many people suddenly agree that they want out more than they want in.

What Makes Prices Go Down
Prices do not fall randomly. They fall when selling becomes stronger than buying.

At every moment, the market is a conversation. Buyers say how much they are willing to pay. Sellers say how much they are willing to accept. When sellers become more urgent than buyers, prices move down.

This shift rarely comes from one cause.

Sometimes bad news appears and fear spreads quickly. People rush to sell before things get worse. Sometimes traders used borrowed money to buy, and when prices dip, they are forced to sell whether they want to or not. Sometimes large holders sell big amounts at once, flooding the market. Other times, buyers simply step away, waiting for lower prices, leaving sellers with no choice but to accept less.

Most crashes are a mix of all these forces.

One drop creates fear. Fear creates more selling. More selling pushes prices lower. Lower prices create even more fear. The cycle feeds itself.

Prices fall not because money vanished, but because human behavior changed. The market reflects emotion in real time, and fear always moves faster than confidence.

“Billions Lost” and the Market Cap Illusion
This is where confusion peaks for most people.

Imagine ABC again.

ABC is trading at one hundred dollars.
You buy one ABC for one hundred dollars.
There are one million coins in total.

The market now calculates total value like this:

100 dollars multiplied by 1,000,000 coins equals 100 million dollars.

This number looks powerful, but it is important to understand what it really represents. It is not one hundred million dollars sitting in a vault. It is not money that can be withdrawn.

It is simply a calculation based on the latest price.

If the next trade happens at a lower number, that entire calculation changes instantly, even though no large sum of cash moved anywhere.

This is why market value can rise and fall so dramatically. It follows price, and price follows people.

When ABC was trading at one hundred dollars, the market cap was one hundred million dollars.

When panic selling pushed the price down to sixty dollars, the calculation changed to sixty million dollars.

Almost immediately, headlines appear saying the market lost forty million dollars.

That wording makes it sound like forty million dollars was pulled out, stolen, or destroyed. That did not happen.

What changed was the price used in the calculation.

Market cap is nothing more than the latest price multiplied by total supply. When the latest trade happens at a lower number, the entire market cap adjusts to match it. No truck carried money away. No vault was emptied. The screen simply updated.

This is why market cap can change by huge amounts in minutes. It is not tracking cash flows. It is tracking the most recent agreement between buyers and sellers.

Once you understand this, those dramatic “billions wiped out” headlines lose their power. They describe a change in pricing, not money disappearing.

Imagine a world where blockchain came first where people already send money across the internet in seconds, own digital wallets instead of plastic cards, and trust math instead of middlemen.
Now picture someone trying to pitch a brand-new idea: “We should start something called a bank!”
You can almost hear the laughter.

The Pitch No One Asked For
A nervous entrepreneur walks into a room full of crypto natives. He clears his throat.
“Okay, hear me out,” he says. “What if, instead of controlling your own money on your phone, you gave it all to us?”
The room goes quiet.
He continues, sweating slightly. “We’ll keep your money for you. You won’t have access on weekends, but we’ll let you withdraw during office hours if you show enough paperwork.”
A voice from the back: “Wait, you mean we can’t move our money 24/7?”
“Uh… no, but don’t worry! We’ll give you an app that looks modern, but all transactions still take two to three business days.”
The audience bursts out laughing.

If Blockchain Came First
If blockchain had existed before banks, the concept of banking would sound like a downgrade.
You control your money? Gone. Now someone else does.
Instant payments? Forget it. Wait in line.
Global transfers? Only after high fees and a long approval process.
Transparency? Nope. Your money disappears into an invisible system, and you just have to trust it’s there.
People who grew up with blockchain wallets would find banking ancient — like using a fax machine to send a meme.
“We’ll Keep Your Money Safe”
The banker continues his pitch:
“You can’t actually see where your money goes but trust us, it’s in good hands. And if we make mistakes, we might lose it or freeze your account. But hey, we’ll send you an apology letter.”
A blockchain believer raises an eyebrow. “Can’t I just verify everything myself on the blockchain?”
“Well,” the banker stammers, “we prefer to handle the records privately.”
“In other words,” the audience says in unison, “you want us to believe you without proof.”
Exactly.

The Problem Blockchain Solved
The funny thing is, this isn’t far from how traditional finance works today.
For centuries, people had to trust banks because there was no other way. The idea of a public, tamper-proof ledger seemed impossible. But blockchain changed that.
Now, money can move directly from person to person, anywhere in the world, without a middleman keeping score. The blockchain is the scoreboard that is open, global, and fair.
That doesn’t mean banks are evil or useless. It just means they were a solution for a world that didn’t yet have blockchain.
If banks were invented after blockchain, they’d have a tough time convincing people to give up control.
We’d laugh at the idea of waiting days for payments or paying fees just to move our own money. We’d question why a small group of people should control what the rest of us can or can’t do with our finances.
But in reality, we’re living through that transition right now - from the bank-first world to the blockchain-first future.
And one day, when our grandchildren hear that people once waited three days for a transaction to clear, they’ll probably say,
“That sounds like the Stone Age.”
And they’ll be right.

Last Sunday, my mother asked me what I actually do for work. I told her, “I work with blockchain.”

She looked at me the way she used to look at the TV when the remote stopped working – confused, mildly suspicious, and ready to blame me for something.

So I decided to try the impossible: explain blockchain to her without using a single fancy word. Here’s how it went.

Step 1: Start with Her World
I said, “Mother, imagine you have a big notebook. In it, you write down who borrowed sugar, who owes you for Christmas gifts, and who still hasn’t returned your Tupperware.”

She nodded. “That’s your blockchain,” I said. “It’s a record of everything that happens but here’s the twist: everyone in the neighborhood has the same notebook. Whenever you write something, everyone writes it too.”

Her eyes narrowed. “So they’re all copying me?”
“Exactly,” I said. “That way, if anyone tries to cheat like erase the fact they owe you sugar, everyone else’s copy proves they’re lying.”

Now she was smiling. Step one: success.

Step 2: Make It Real
“Okay,” she said, “but why can’t I just use my notebook?”

“Because yours can be changed,” I told her. “If someone sneaks in and tears a page or spills tea on it, you lose your records. Blockchain doesn’t let that happen. Once something is written, it can’t be erased or edited. It’s permanent.”

Step 3: Explain the ‘Chain’
I continued: “Each page in your notebook is like a block. When a page fills up, you start a new one and link it to the old one like a chain of pages. That’s why it’s called blockchain.”

“And what happens if someone changes something in the middle?” she asked.

“Then the chain breaks. Everyone will see something’s wrong. It’s like trying to sneak a fake photo into the family album, everyone notices because the story doesn’t fit anymore.”

She chuckled. “Your cousin tried that once. Didn’t work.”

Exactly, Mother. Blockchain agrees with you.

Step 4: Connect It to Her Life
Then I said, “Remember how you used to lend money at the women’s group meetings? Imagine if everyone there could see who borrowed, who paid back, and who’s still pretending to forget. No arguments, no missing money.”

Her eyes lit up. “That would’ve saved me a lot of trouble,” she said.

“That’s what blockchain does,” I said. “It keeps records in a way that everyone can trust without needing a middleman or a big boss.”

“Think of it this way,” I told her. “Blockchain is like your notebook, but indestructible. Nobody can rip out pages, and even your cat sitting on it won’t erase anything.”

She laughed. “Now that’s useful. My cat ruined more than one recipe book.”

Step 5: Show the Bigger Picture
I went on. “Bitcoin runs on blockchain. It’s like digital money that lives inside this shared notebook. But that’s just the beginning. People now use blockchain to track coffee beans, vote safely, store medical records, and even protect art from being copied.”

She nodded slowly. “So it’s not just about money. It’s about trust.”

And there it was. Mother had just nailed the definition of blockchain in one sentence.

Step 6: End on a Simple Note
When I finished, she said, “So it’s like everyone keeping the same notebook, where no one can cheat and everyone can see the truth?”

“Yes, Mother. That’s blockchain.”

She smiled, poured some tea, and said, “Well, I might not mine Bitcoin, but I like this notebook idea.”