Abstract

Thanks to the Internet and more recently, blockchain technology, the world is waking up to a political, economic, social and technological renaissance. The next two decades will result in a fundamental shift in human interaction, sharing, and freedom. All aspects of vertical and horizontal markets will be affected, including Finance & Banking, Healthcare, eGovernment, Communications, Information Technology (IT) and the Internet of things (IoT).

This series is presented in three parts and will analyze society’s paradigm shift in behavior and present a vision for the future. In this first part, the creation of virtual communities is explored, fueled by blockchain innovation and explores the evolution of the crypto sphere.

Introduction

Some inventions are taken for granted as if destined to be. New paradigms are woven into the fabric of our lives so nuanced that we forgo the lineage of its development. The internet is a classic example, where baby boomers[i] and generation-x[ii] reflect on a time when the Internet wasn’t even part of their vocabulary. We had questions, but nowhere to find answers. Our queries fade, and we moved on. Millennials now say, “OK Google” “Siri” or “Alexa” and get answers, with a side of dopamine. It has taken a few decades, but the internet has broken down the borders to information flow. Now the cyber-generation is taking their next steps in the global dissemination of content.

The introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrency is a culmination of social trends that favor open-source systems over proprietary systems, freedom over suppression, and privacy in place of monitoring. Before discussing blockchain let’s first bring Bitcoin to the forefront. Similar to email being the first application of the Internet, bitcoin was the first application of blockchain. In hindsight, it seems that the two were introduced in the wrong order, but it was rather clever because a useful application was immediately introduced to highlight the resilience of the infrastructure. The alternative would have been creating blockchain first and hoping the world would figure out how to use it. That may have also worked but may have taken longer. The potential of blockchain has now been recognized as transformational in practically every industry. Bitcoin and blockchain have not only brought on an evolutionary but a revolutionary paradigm in how our society behaves.

“What was once extraordinary, soon becomes normal.”

The internet was a disruptive force for many industries over the past few decades. Millennials[iii] are oblivious to paying for long-distance phone calls, waiting weeks to get a response to their letter, or the 74 minute limit of CDs. Throughout the ’90s and ’00s, the internet disrupted just about every industry in the world, including entertainment, computing, and communications. But no one dared to disrupt the finance industry until 2008 when the alias known as Satoshi Nakamoto[iv] wrote the white paper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. It may have taken several years for the world to notice, but this challenge, “the religion of money”[v] controlled by centralized powers of a “monetary system [that] has its own intrinsic logic of growth”[vi]. Bitcoin set in motion a complete disruption of financial markets and introduced what is now known as “virtual currency”[vii] or “cryptocurrency”[viii]. Nakamoto arguably made a significant dent in just ten years of its inception, introducing financial services that are modified to utilize the crypto ideology.

At the Gettysburg address, on November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln closed by saying “- and that government, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. It is poignant to reference these words in today’s changing the world. For the first time in history, the world has a virtual currency that was created by the people, for the people, and of the people. A currency not controlled by a central power and lives autonomously and free in cyberspace.

With blockchain considered as the biggest invention since the Internet, what’s next? How is society changing because of bitcoin, and what is expected from its underlying technology? Which areas in our social-economic behavior will change due to this new technology and how will this affect the lives of our children’s children?

About the Author

Gabriel is the co-Founder and General Manager at Adel Ecosystem Ltd. He is a seasoned sales and marketing expert with over 25 years in senior positions at Motorola, VeriSign (acquired by Symantec in 2010), and SecureWorks (acquired by Dell in 2011), and Cognitive Security (acquired by Cisco in 2013). He is a blockchain entrepreneur, with strengths in international business strategy. Gabriel has a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics from McMaster University in Canada and expert knowledge in blockchain incubation, cloud computing, IT security, and video streaming, and Over the Top Content (OTT). Gabriel also runs his own company, Euro Tech Startups s.r.o, creator of MyKoddi, and manages a professional blog.