My views on blockchain technology

We all hear daily about how Bitcoin and hundreds of other varieties of crypo-currencies leverage blockchain technology but the emotional aspect of wealth volatility associated with Bitcoin means that Bitcoin grabs all the headlines while the underlying blockchain technology is still relegated to geekdom.  The goal of this post is to present my views on why blockchain is much bigger than Bitcoin and why blockchain is likely to have a far greater future impact on our society that Bitcoin has or will.

Before I go into this I want to say that I am not a crypto or blockchain expert and that my views have been formed but not dictated by other online content including YouTube vids, articles and the like.  One of the skills that I think I have is the ability to understand a thing past the technology itself.  At least I like to think that is the case (and I have also proven that to be at least somewhat true over my career in high tech).  Additionally, with true, broad understanding comes insight which can then be used to form informed opinions that lead to actionable predictive powers. At some point everyone can explain the tech but it is still left to only a few to understand the broad implications of it as well as ways to profit from it.

The vision of blockchain is to add simple verification to many things that require trust today.  It puts the "verify" into "trust but verify".  It removes third parties from that duty thus removing their cost from the process while also eliminating these key holders as a target for corruption.  Why is this vision important to me? Simply because I have a long stated view that the past 50 years of rising liberalism, which has now peaked an is in rapid decline, created above all else what I have referred to as a Trust Ponzi. Driven by the need and desire to consume more products from more people in more places, consumers have have blindly bought into the notion that centralized trust management, AKA big brother is not only a good thing but unavoidable.  This has led to short sighted people gladly abandoning their freedoms in order to attain prosperity. Of course history teaches that there is no lasting prosperity without freedom and so if the USA/global west has any hopes of leading into the future, it needs mechanisms that will unwind this need for centralized trust (which leads to centralized corruption) without giving up the potential prosperity associated with dealing with a more diverse set of people.

The power of blockchain is that it creates a public domain ledger consisting of chained sequences of events through time.  Each subsequent event is cryptographically inserted into the ledger's timeline such that is is impossible to retrospectively change either the ledger entry contents or the order that it occurred in the chain.

The genius of block chain is that it is decentralized cryptographically secure ledger with copies existing all over the Internet.  Detection of a corrupted copy of the ledger is trivial using common crypto tools and techniques and can thus be built into ledger-reading software easily.  When a corrupted copy is detected it can be easily overwritten by a verifiable trusted copy.  With blockchain technology there is no central authority with the keys to the kingdom and that eliminates yet another opportunity for corruption.  Much of big government exists because of the need for a shared ledger that tracks many things including ownership of property, compliance certifications for industry, vehicle registration and tracking, etc.  But the government itself has become a massive single point of failure due to its centralized nature and the fact that information is power and power corrupts.  The genius of blockchain is that it is the beginning of the end of big centralized government.  It is the path toward smaller, more effective and lower cost government which is honest not by voluntary action but rather by nature of the fact that everything is written down and that political victors cannot change history.

The leverage of blockchain is huge.  The ledger is readable anywhere by anyone over the Internet and the contents of the ledger are secured by virtually un-hackable 256 bit encryption.  Both the Internet and encryption are super mature and ubiquitous.  They are commodities.  Blockchain leverages these commodities.

The applicability of blockchain is massive. Blockchain is a way to document a series of events in such a way that people will be careful what they put into the indelible public record.  Those who lie in a blockchain will be writing their own arrest warrants and their own ledger entries will be proof of their guilt in a court of law.  Blockchain ledger entries remove ambiguity from the public record.  They remove the "he said-she said" of nefarious political actors as well as the Orwellian concept of "facts" (i.e. officially sanctioned lies) and the omnipresent "memory hole".  It will become ubiquitous because the ease of inputting and subsequently reading records is so high and the overhead and cost associated with doing these things is so low that honest businesses will gladly participate actively in them.  Those with nothing to hide will tout that fact and use it as a sales tool.  The dishonest will no longer be on par with the honest simply by lying to say that they are.  The honest will have a chain of documented and verified events which they will know they cannot go back and change later if someone calls bullshit on them.  The record of what they said was true will be open to all to review. 

The usability of blockchain is Obvious.  Put a QR code on anything and you can, with a simple app, immediately see a timeline of verifiable, in order events associated with that item.  Its like having a package shipment tracking id on everything we interact with.  The visible progression toward the goal will build trust:
For example, is that Chinese made anchor chain really 316 stainless and does it have the stated working load strength?  Today you have to TRUST the advertising on Alibaba.  But tomorrow with blockchain you will see the provenance of the chain in terms of its manufacturing materials and process.
    - raw materials ordering
    - record of processing including where and signed off by which individual
    - record of testing with countersignature by those with verified equipment (all verified by a branched blockchain which is included with the testing record of the anchor chain.
    - record of paying taxes
    - complaints or praise for the product
    - EVERYTHING you want to know and more, all in one place, all in a format that cannot be changed or altered after the fact to cover up lies, etc.

The many honest corporations out there will love this because right now they have to market and sell against many who cut corners or outright lie about their cheaper products capabilities.  They take advantage of the notion that talk is cheap and end consumers don't really know what to believe about product claims. 

At some point a well defined blockchain based ledger becomes commonplace for every industry and it becomes expected that your customers and competitors can review your product ledger easily.  Yes people can lie about what they did or did not do.  But what they cannot do is un-tell that lie or make up some story about it being a misprint, etc. later on.  The blockchain never forgets and the blockchain cannot be altered retrospectively.  Those who write down lies in this kind of environment are doomed to failure. 

People will lie to other people when face to face but what they are much less likely to do is to not care about their electronic reputation.  That's because when you lie to a person you know the limit of the scope of that lie.  If there is ever a debate about it you can always claim that the whistle blower on the lie is crazy or themselves a liar.  It becomes he said she said, your word against mine.  Blockchain removes all of that wiggle room for scammers leaving entities to either prosper by the veracity of their own truths or to wither and die at the hand of their own lies.