On 29 March Sir Tim Barrow, the British Ambassador to the EU, handed a letter to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council. The letter, signed by Prime Minister Theresa May, formally triggered Article 50, thereby starting a two-year ‘divorce’ process that will lead to the UK leaving the EU.

It was a historic but not unexpected moment, since submission of the withdrawal letter had been trailed for weeks in the press and had been set in train almost a year earlier, after the UK’s population voted by narrow majority to leave the 28-member trading bloc in June 2016.

Noise

Brexit may be significant for the British, since it leaves open questions about trading relationships with Europe and the rest of the world, the value of the pound against the euro and other major currencies, and freedom of movement — not least to secure work. It also leaves fundamental questions about the future of the EU, since the departure of one of its leading members and one of its largest trading partners exposes cracks in its architecture and heralds the unwelcome possibility of other countries following suit.

Ultimately, though, to focus on Brexit alone would be to make a mistake. Brexit will contribute to many of the world’s political-economic issues, but can hardly be said to be a driving cause. It is a bellwether or signpost that points to a much wider context, and one that can be seen playing out across Europe and the world. Whatever happens in the coming months and years, Brexit’s effect will be a catalyst at most, and the noise on a signal of far greater magnitude.

It’s curious that such political-economic circumstances should arise at this point in history, since the direction of travel from a technological point of view is so utterly different. There is a fundamental doublethink at work: if not a wilful blindness to the technological realities, then a lack of willingness to engage and leverage them for solutions on a national and international level.

Answers will not come from the state at this point. They will come from the market. It is this shifting reality that ChronoBank aims to tap into, meeting the market where the need is and offering ordinary people a solution that politics cannot.

Populism and protectionism

Political and economic realities have changed almost out of recognition in the last ten years, since the financial crisis. The credit crunch of 2008, which had been hidden below the surface but came to light with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, evolved into a banking crisis and then a sovereign wealth crisis. Central banks avoided a recession becoming a full-blown depression by taking unprecedented action, stretching monetary policy to its limit with zero and sub-zero interest rates, and arguably beyond it with hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and pounds of quantitative easing.

The long-term outcomes have been anaemic growth, if not secular stagnation, with low productivity and inflation holding back wage increases. What began as a problem for the banking sector has spread to all parts of society. And that has sown the seeds for a different problem that is social as well as economic and political. Nearly ten years down the line, we have reached the tipping point at which the number of people who are disadvantaged by the political-economic status quo outnumber those who benefit from it.

The result has been a wave of populist sentiment across Europe and the US, leading — amongst other things — to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the election of Donald Trump as President. Further victories of populist parties are expected in Europe. Whilst these take many forms, the overarching sentiment is one of national self-interest, of withdrawal and isolationism. Of ending existing trade agreements, imposing tariffs — starting trade wars and currency wars, if it appears to give the country an advantage.

Economists vary wildly in their opinions on the potential impact of this. (As Winston Churchill said, ‘If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.’) There may be some benefits, in the short-term; it may lead to mutually-assured destruction. But again, that misses the point. The world is changing. The orthodoxies we accepted in the Great Depression and the lessons learned then are being applied in a situation that is fundamentally different.

Connectivity

It is odd that the political climate is one of withdrawal and isolationism at a time when it has never been easier to communicate. Borders have never been less important from a theoretical perspective, even if they have taken on new political significance in the context of large-scale immigration. It is possible to work remotely, to send money across the world, in a way and with an efficiency that wasn’t even possible ten years ago, let alone the better part of a century. Travel is faster and easier than ever, but greater connectivity and new technologies mean that it is also less necessary.

There is an irony that nations and economies are drawing artificial borders around themselves at a time when online, the borders are disappearing. People communicate and work together readily, without concern for relative location. Working remotely for an office a block away is as easy as working remotely for a company a thousand miles away. Even language barriers are no longer so important due to the use of effective translation software. In the knowledge economy, information is king and information technology is the only infrastructure necessary.

Decentralised working

Cryptocurrencies and decentralised protocols offer another layer of benefits over centralised internet applications and communications technologies. With a centralised platform it is possible to work and to send money over the web, at a cost, and with barriers to entry — albeit much reduced barriers when compared to the alternatives. Using a decentralised platform like LaborX, anyone can find work, and anyone can get paid, quickly and efficiently, with few or no barriers to entry. There are no gatekeepers — or rather, the gatekeepers who are required for security and efficiency take the form of code, or are distributed in such a way that no single person is allowed to make a decision that arbitrarily excludes a worker. Crypto payments circumvent the banking system, interfacing with it only when necessary, at the point of conversion/withdrawal.

LaborX is a market-driven solution. It is fully decentralised. Although some processes and elements require trust in particular entities, it is possible to work and get paid on an entirely peer-to-peer basis. LaborX doesn’t simply ignore national borders; hosted on code run on thousands of computers around the world, it doesn’t know or care they exist.

This is the absolute antithesis of the isolationism and protectionism sweeping the political landscape. It’s a solution to the problems of accessing work, because it’s one that doesn’t filter on any grounds other than ability. In the global labour marketplace, the best person for the job should be able to access the work and get paid accordingly. LaborX enables exactly this, and its code-driven approach means that, on principle, nothing else matters. Individuals may make choices about who they employ, but no one is excluded from the labour marketplace on the basis of nationality or location.

This is what makes ChronoBank such a powerful idea. Bitcoin was launched at a time of economic crisis unlike anything in living memory. Encoded in the Genesis Block are the words from the newspaper headline: ‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks’. It’s apt that LaborX launches at a time when the financial crisis that headline references has mutated into something more complex than we ever expected: a crisis of national identities and relationships, with the concomitant implications for free movement of labour and international trade agreements.

For more information, visit www.ChronoBank.io.