IFTF Blockchain Futures Lab Institute for the Future

In Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Rushkoff examines the reasons why the digital economy – which was touted as a great democratizer – has left so many people behind, including even those within the tech industry. He lays out an alternate vision for a sustainable prosperity system he calls “digital distributism,” which makes use of the kind of peer-to-peer mechanisms that power Uber and Airbnb in a way that “optimizes the economy for the velocity of transactions between people rather than the accumulation of capital from people.” The role of blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer transactional networks figures heavily in the brave new digital distributism world, says Rushkoff, because it allows individuals and small groups to route around the rent-seeking gatekeepers who corrupted the eco-system in the first place.

When computer scientist Andreas Antonopoulos first heard about bitcoin in 2011 he dismissed it as “nerd money.” Six months later he happened on bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s now-legendary white paper from November 2008. This nine-page, innocent-looking document was a blueprint for replacing large swaths of the financial services industry with a globally-distributed encryption-based transaction network that wasn’t owned by anyone. 

Nakamoto’s white paper blew Antonopoulos’ mind. “This isn’t money,” he realized, “it’s a decentralized trust network,” with applications extending far beyond digital currency.

Antonopoulos says he became “obsessed and enthralled” with bitcoin, “spending 12 or more hours each day glued to a screen, reading, writing, coding, and learning” as much as he could. He wrote, “I emerged from the state of fugue, more than 20 pounds lighter from a lack of consistent meals, determined to dedicate myself to working on bitcoin.”

Five years later, Antonopoulos’ work has paid off. The 43-year-old entrepreneur is one of the most respected experts in bitcoin and blockchain technology, and he regularly shares his expertise with businesses and organizations around the world. His 2014 book, Mastering Bitcoin, was called the “best technical reference available on bitcoin today,” by Balaji Srinivasan, the CEO of 21.co, and received high praise from Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation.

In January 2016, Institute for the Future launched Blockchain Futures Lab, a research initiative and a community for “identifying the opportunities and limits of blockchain technologies and their social, economic, and political impacts on individuals, organizations, and communities over the coming decades.”

I interviewed Antonopoulos to get his thoughts on the current state of blockchain technology and where it’s headed. What he had to say was surprising and enlightening.