Crowdsourcing. A hope? A promise? The necessary game-changer through which a new generation can invest more confidently? Scholes has no doubt that blockchain technology will make a huge difference and gives three reasons as to how it will make us better off by solving old problems.

"It’s compressing time," he begins. "The minute you make anything faster, the more difficult it is for people to cheat the system. The second reason is that there’s huge value in making things that are individualized. The transfer of value among individuals that’s coming in the future will allow us to make things more and more individualized because we’ll have a greater range of options and therefore prices." The third reason he mentions is flexibility. "Serving the individual,” he says. “The more data you provide, the more data is provided, the more individuals can become involved. The more individuals become involved, the more efficiencies you have."

Should we fear international trade and globalization?

The fact that people today are frightened when thinking about international finance and globalization leads Scholes to interesting, unusual questions. For example, why do we always talk about global markets and international finance but not about international email? His comparison sounds funny, but it highlights the benefits we all embrace, and then forget about, when we think about growing together as one. "When I email someone in Germany, I don’t think of an international email, I just think of it as an email," he says, ever-optimistic about a world that has previously been defined by borders, moving to a single world identified by transactions.

But he knows that not everyone benefits from globalization as it is today. Those who feel left behind are tempted by extremist parties and their anger becomes the grounds for populism. "In the olden days, when we had a village, we built a moat around it,” he says. “We feared nothing because the moat protected us. But then, unfortunately, from time to time foreign troops came in and destroyed the whole city. So even though you might think you’re protected, if you’re in an isolated world, you’re never isolated because of the forces around you."