Andreas Antonopoulos 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'm working with IFTF on Blockchain Futures Lab, and I interviewed Antonopoulos to get his thoughts on the current state of blockchain technology and where it's headed. You can read the full interview on Medium.
You cannot create global finance and economic inclusion on the back of a carefully controlled show-us-your-papers identity-based system where everything is tracked. What you create is a global surveillance dystopia. Our entire financial system is heading into this thing where everything is surveilled. Bitcoin is heading in exact opposite direction. No identity by default, from weak pseudonymity to a stronger and stronger anonymity as time goes by.
As a result, it doesn't do borders. It doesn't care about borders. It doesn't do Know Your Customer. It doesn't do Anti-Money Laundering. It doesn't do those things because those things are bourgeois concepts of the privileged financial elite. Those bourgeois concepts have a four-billion-people-in-poverty price tag.
Here's the audio of the interview:
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