Blockchain: Societal Impact

I think non-financial
use cases of blockchain are just emerging.

The biggest such application
currently are NFTs or non-fungible tokens,

which represent unique assets,
things like collectibles primarily today.

But there's been an explosion
of representing other types of assets,

things like carbon credits, real estate
securities and those kinds of things.

Fundamentally,
you can think of blockchain as creating

more efficient usage
or exchanges in almost any arena.

One way to use
blockchain is to track energy

and how it's used throughout a grid
and being able to then

help people figure out how to use it
much more efficiently.

Any time where there's like a contract,
the participants

they need some level of trust, right?

And usually we bring in lawyers
to do that, and that's great.

Lawyers are an awesome solution to that.

They're also an expensive solution
to that.

Blockchains can create situations.

They can't solve every problem,
but they can create situations

where we don't necessarily
need a lawyer to be involved

because things that the lawyer would take
care of can happen on the blockchain

in a way that everyone can trust.

Currently,
when we upload photos or videos,

we don't actually have ownership
over that data.

So there's a huge opportunity in terms of
how do we communicate with people that we

love, but also how do we create online?

What excites me

most about blockchain is the opportunity
to deal with the wealth gap.

Blockchain enables opportunity
because in this space

we get to de-identify ourselves
and now I'm able to interact with people

anonymously or pseudo anonymously,
just as a series of numbers.

My public key and I can participate
in any type of use cases that I want

without having that regulation
preventing me simply because

I'm of a particular demographic
or a particular gender.

My hope for the future of blockchain
is that we find ways

to solve problems
that we haven't been very good at solving.

Financial inclusion’s
an obvious one blockchain technology

either by itself will solve this problem

or it will push governments
to put in more sensible regulation,

to have more sensible policies on access
that will solve the problem.

The thing that keeps me up at night
that I'm really worried about

is that we will wind up,
whether accidentally or deliberately,

rebuilding the same biases
that we have in our existing system.

There definitely are

environmental impacts
when it comes to blockchain technology.

With Bitcoin, it's proof of work, and
proof of work requires energy consumption.

But the value that Bitcoin brings is much
higher than that energy consumption.

The environmental impacts are disastrous.

In the case of the proof of work
technologies, that’s bitcoin as an example.

So proof of stake
is another form of consensus system.

We have stakeholders that stake on a

on a blockchain
to say that this block is valid.

So using proof of stake, we're actually
not expanding any electricity usage.

A lot of people believe that
it's less decentralized.

So I think you're going to see blockchain
reducing its own carbon footprint.

Meanwhile, providing

technologies and abilities
that will help improve things outside

of the blockchain space.

I believe that cryptocurrency

and blockchain are going to continue
to grow and be widely adopted.

It's true that it goes through cycles.

Sometimes we'll see a massive run up
and then a correction.

But if you zoom out over these
from one cycle to the next,

it continues to grow
at a really rapid pace.

My biggest concern with blockchain
technology is that it's developing

very fast, but the regulators and
governments don't really understand it.

They don't know how to regulate it.

They will eventually, but short term,
they don't.

And it's important to agree
across countries, not just in one country.

It's already become a

an underlying layer for lots of systems
and applications worldwide.

And so it's pretty difficult to,
at this point, stop using blockchains.

Do I think decentralized, permissionless
open networks are here to stay?

I certainly hope so.

And I think Bitcoin's demonstrated
that they are at least

at what seems to be over
a decade in existence.

Will the new ones survive?

It's really anybody's guess.

It's impossible to know. For any new thing

we need a lot of evidence to believe that

it's really going
to be the next big thing.

And in the case of blockchain,
we just don't have that evidence yet.

Blockchain's Helping push the technology.

It's pushing
ideas, it's pushing competition.

But sometimes the first mover

isn't the one who wins.