“Blockchains are simply distributed transaction processing engines. The technology allows data to be stored in a variety of different places while tracing the relationship between different parts of that data. To most people trying to explain Blockchains like to compare it to a ledger. A transaction, such as a coin that changes hands or a new device that is added to a network, is recorded on the chain and anyone can trace what has happened. Fortune tech, Stacey Higginbotham, May 29, 2015
What if we lived in a world where global access to money was available to everyone? Money can go around the world at the speed of digital as a cooperative and decentralized peer-to-peer process, without the need for a top-down banking system. Trust relationships occur automatically through permissionless and digitally signed transactions, destroying the inevitability of poverty. Would this represent a giant step for humanity?
Such is the utopian dream of technology developers. The next generation of computer networks is preparing to surround the world for the greater good. Welcome to the world’s anticipated blockchain (financial) transformation.
Ignore it at your own risk.
My article from May 2016, The power behind the throne, discusses the mostly uninformed, but steady, advance towards a cashless society through blockchain technology, and my thoughts on who really benefits. It could end as a giant leap for the banking industry, achieving omnipotent control over our financial transactions. A Bloomberg article, Inside the secret meeting where Wall Street tested digital cash, May 2, 2016, cited representatives from Nasdaq, Citigroup Inc., Visa Inc., Fidelity, Fiserv Inc., Pfizer Inc. and other attendees.
Enter 2017 and the documentary produced to inspire and excite: The Blockchain and Us. Some say that 2017 will be the year this technology moves into the mainstream; others say it is too risky.
The infomercial-type documentary features “leaders” from countries around the world extolling the virtue of open source money, the foundations, and the bottom-up cultural shift initiated by Bitcoin in 2008. Blockchain technology and its potential impact are Compare to how the introduction of the airplane changed society; The structure of the financial services industry alone is said to go 100% digital in 20 years. Furthermore, blockchain technology is expected to:
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Affects all industries as a “value” platform with military grade cryptology
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Create a generational change in technology, an opportunity capable of “lifting people out of poverty.”
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Accommodate what they called “smart” contracts
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Make a profound change in how the Internet could be used to create new forms of value and new ways of transacting value.
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Create more jobs with automation
There you have it … Blockchain and Us. However, naysayers, like me, cannot see the corresponding personal benefit. Deliver the miserable financial privacy we have left through cash to Goliath’s banking industry? It occurs to me that we may not have a choice, as “little” people seem to be the units of income simply for travel.
That said, using cash and paying as you go has obvious and perhaps not-so-obvious benefits:
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Choice
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Privacy Transaction
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No bank interest charges (overdrafts, credit cards, loans, lines of credit, etc.)
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Possible supplier discount of 5% on request
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Tax liability that has destroyed the use of credit
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Curbing the instant gratification mindset encourages easy credit
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More personal time when keeping up with debt means working harder / faster
I believe that living in a material world makes it easy to forget that the full definition of wealth includes more than accumulation. The intangible wealth of personal well-being and peace of mind is priceless until overlooked and underestimated. Instead of the utopian dream, imagine this: We no longer make purchases we don’t need, with money we don’t have to impress people who don’t really care about us. If more people got used to using cash, we could strengthen our own money management skills to generate real wealth and also send a message to those who own the gold.
