Overstock CEO Patrick M. Byrne’s gives CoinTelegraphCT r: 33 his comments at Money 20/20 Europe conference on the first public offering of securities to be recorded to a distributed blockchain ledger , and how smart contracts will disrupt government-citizens relations.
Thursday Overstock has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Georgeson Inc to act as information agent in its upcoming public offering of blockchain securities.
CoinTelegraph: How would you describe smart contracts, and what expects us?
Patrick Byrne: I used to think, when I heard of smart contracts, about this saying of Warren Buffet that something not worth doing isn’t worth doing well. I really didn’t see the use case for smart contracts and what’s really wrong with our current system. However, I have realized that was really short sighted of me and may be the most destructive thing that is going to happen in smart contracts is the disruption of various government activities. Ultimately, the government is a body that is created by citizens and in contract with the citizens to perform certain duties. You could reduce a bunch of those obligations through the blockchain. This may be the big use for smart contracts. For example in the US we have the Congress which allegedly figures the will of the people on say how much to spend on the Navy and then takes that much out of the economy and puts it into the Navy. If you had a digital or a blockchain economy, you could program it so that 4% of every transaction or every exchange goes into the government coffers and we collectively decide through some social mechanism how much to spend on the navy. You would both get a more accurate representation of the will of the people and you would disrupt it. The […]
