5 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2021
    1. With blockchain, trust comes from the network itself. Instead of simply trusting a middleman institution, we can trust the blockchain code. The way that the blockchain is built means all parties in the system, not just the ones involved in the transaction, come to an agreement on what the facts are. And once they agree, a new block is added

      Trust in blockchain

  2. Jan 2021
    1. unlike a traditional computer, a blockchain computer can offer strong trust guarantees, rooted in the mathematical and game-theoretic properties of the system. A user or developer can trust that a piece of code running on a blockchain computer will continue to behave as designed, even if individual participants in the network change their motivations or try to subvert the system. This means that the control of a blockchain computer can be placed in the hands of a community
  3. Jan 2020
    1. This is just the tip of the innovation iceberg in a new deep-truth reality that is here today

      In a moment of crisis for truth and trust, it is encouraging to encounter the term deep-truth and may offer a valuable term that is both accessible and powerful in advocating not just against what we despise but for what we hope to see in a better world.

    2. This is just the tip of the innovation iceberg in a new deep-truth reality that is here today

      In a moment of crisis for truth and trust, it is encouraging to encounter the term deep-truth and may offer a valuable term that is both accessible and powerful in advocating not just against what we despise but for what we hope to see in a better world.

  4. Jan 2016
    1. This has implications far beyond the cryptocurrency

      The concept of trust, in the sociological and economic sense, underlies exchange. In the 15th-17th centuries, the Dutch and English dominance of trade owed much to their early development of instruments of credit that allowed merchants to fund and later to insure commercial shipping without the exchange of hard currency, either silver or by physically transporting the currency of the realm. Credit worked because the English and Dutch economies trusted the issuers of credit.

      Francis Fukuyama, a philosopher and political economist at Stanford, wrote a book in 1995, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, on the impact of cultures of trust on entrepreneurial growth. Countries of ‘low trust’ have close family culture who limit trust to relations: France, China, S. Italy. Countries of ‘high trust’ have greater ‘spontaneous sociability’ that encourages the formation of intermediate institutions between the state and the family, that encourage greater entrepreneurial growth: Germany, England, the U.S. – I own the book and (shame on me!) haven’t yet read it.

      I thought of this article in those contexts – of the general need for trusted institutions and the power they have in mediating an economy, and the fascinating questions raised when a new facilitator of trust is introduced.

      How do we trust? Across human history, how have we extended the social role of trust to institutions? If a new modality of trust comes available, how does that change institutional structures and correspondingly the power of individuals, of institutions. How would it change the friction to growth and to decline?

      Prior to reading this article, I had dismissed Bitcoin as a temporary aberration, mostly for criminal enterprises and malcontents. I still feel that way. But the underlying technology and it’s implications – now that’s interesting.