The Beauty Of The Blockchain
By Perianne Boring for Forbes
This post marks the launch of my new blog on Forbes, The Beauty of the Blockchain. I have the great privilege and honor of serving as the Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world’s largest trade association representing the blockchain industry. In this role, I work with hundreds of entrepreneurs, companies and investors who are building out the future of finance with blockchains; as well as public policymakers who are composing the legal and regulatory frameworks for these technologies. At the Chamber, my job is to help facilitate an open dialogue between industry and government to promote innovation, jobs and investment.
In the interest of full disclosure, please note that the Chamber of Digital Commerce is a non-profit entity. I hold no economic interest in any company in this industry, however I do hold and use digital currency for my personal use. I strive to keep myself non-biased and work with the highest integrity. The Beauty of the Blockchain reflects my personal views.
The Beauty Of The Blockchain
Blockchain technology has such a wide range of transformational use cases from recreating the plumbing of Wall Street, to creating financial sovereignty in the farthest regions of the world. While analyzing technology evolution of the last 20 to 30 years, from microprocessors to mobile telephony, to the internet, it is clear that with blockchain technology we have an incredible opportunity to create real economic change and freedom in the world.
Satoshi Nakamoto gave us a true work of art in his white paper and in the bitcoin blockchain, where for the first time ever a digital currency could be traded without the need for a third-party. Taking that one step further, Nakamoto’s invention of a distributed ledger system has opened up a new platform for secure and open data sharing. Similar to how the internet fundamentally changed the way we share information, today we have a new open platform for innovation that is going to revolutionize the way we transact as individuals, governments and business (and machines too).
This point is further enunciated by Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings: “You should be taking this technology as seriously as you should have been taking the development of the Internet in the early 1990s.”
There is real beauty in the innovations that are being developed using blockchain technology, some of which include:
- Micro-transactions
- Peer to peer sharing economies
- Decentralized autonomous organizations
- Digital identity (passports, social security, birth certificates, etc.)
- Smart Contracts
- Prediction markets
- Property ownership (land titles, stocks, bonds, etc.)
Blockchain technologies have the potential to transform financial and industrial markets, challenging corporate boundaries and can add radical transparency to the public sector.
The Beauty of the Blockchain will include an analysis of these use cases and others, detailed accounts of real-world applications of blockchain technologies, like the Delaware Blockchain Initiative, and interviews with the world’s most notable blockchain thought leaders and pioneers. There is also a real competition underway between different types of blockchains – from public to private, and proprietary and permissioned distributed ledgers. Technology, politics and finance (and power) will all factor into how this competition will ultimately play out. I warmly welcome you all as readers of this blog, and look forward to sharing news, innovations and insights into this burgeoning and beautiful ecosystem.
First appeared at Forbes
