Cryptocurrencies and blockchain are not the road to riches for all
Andrew Sheng says this much-hyped technology has so far failed to earn the trust that enables financial transactions in the real world, especially when the total security it promises has already been compromised by hacks and fraud
Technology has created lots of jargon that most of us don’t understand. Most of us have mental blocks against new things that we don’t understand. Some people are born clever. Some become clever through hard work. But many appear clever by using jargon others don’t understand.
Do we have a mental block when it comes to blockchain?
Most brilliant ideas are actually very simple. But experts exist to make life very complicated – otherwise there is no need for experts. You consult a lawyer because he or she can simplify your life but make life very complicated for everyone else, for a fee.
The revolutionary idea behind blockchain is that we do not need the present system where everything must go through a top-down node that knows everything about us. The internet changed everything because it claims that you can remove every middle man.
We need banks because we trust them more than other parties we do not know. We pay the bank to pay our bills, and the bank transfers the money to the other party’s bank through the central bank’s books (because they trust the central bank more than each other).
