Lately I have been involved in a number of discussions about distributed systems, delegated authority structures, cryptocurrency and smart contracts. The hope of many is that cryptocurrency will avert inflationary trouble entirely and help the public hold government in check. There is also hope that smart contracts will magically turn Africa into a paragon of high trust economics and a trade powerhouse of its own accord.
I decided to record my thoughts on this here:
The TL;DW of it is that while these are really great things to hope for, and not impossible goals, the idea that crypto technologies are going to manifest profound levels of social change on their own is misguided. The social and political problems much of the world is facing today are due to an erosion of trust and flagrant, repeated violation of trust and faith from every actor at every angle. In short, the West is moving from a high-trust social model to a low-trust social model and Africa is and has ever been suffering from low-trust social models. Crypto isn’t how that is solved.