Ripple Labs CTO Warns of Blockchain Dystopia

By August 20, 2016Bitcoin Business

Longtime blockchain developer and enthusiast has warned blockchains could bring about a dystopia in new essay. Stefan Thomas, Chief Technology Officer at Ripple Labs, a leading private and public ledger company, wrote an essay titled “The Subtle Tyranny of Blockchain.” The blockchain industry, he writes, foresees a blockchain revolution across a swathe of industries like finance, international trade and health care. He also evokes the Bitcoin block size debate in the essay, in which he suggests social consensus represents an obstacle to the deployment of blockchain technology. “Blockchains are a pain to work with,” penned Thomas. “Harmony and consensus are valuable. But harmony taken to the extreme becomes a detriment. In the Lego Movie utopia, ‘everything is awesome’ only on the surface. Behind the scenes, there is tremendous diversity and a rapidly changing world, which doesn’t match the established consensus.” A picture of the authoritarian President Business from “The Lego Movie” graces the essay. Thomas is somewhat of a proponent, still; he runs the website weusecoins.com – “a single resource” where the currency is “explained for the average non-technical user.” Blockchain has received nearly a quarter of a billion dollars so far this year. The largest technology companies (think IBM, Microsoft), and the largest financial institutions in the world (your bank) are investing in research and development for Bitcoin technology. The foundation for their experimentation is Ethereum, but their technology will likely pair together new distributed ledger technologies for a secure and more efficient end-result. Distributed ledger and blockchain technology is designed to do one thing: track payments, improve back office processes, securities and derivatives, health records – everything. But, as Thomas’ essay poses, what if there is a darker side to blockchain technology? Thomas is perhaps best known among hardcore bitcoiners for his YouTube video , “What is […]

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