Guest Writers

In its seven years of existence, Bitcoin has gained wide mainstream attention with its disruptive potential in finance. Yet, currency is just its first application. The technology’s other potential lies in affecting governance and law. Democracy has weakened in the existing systems of governance. With concentration of power created through hierarchy, ordinary people are kept out of influencing policies or participating in vital decision-making. In this lock down system, many politicians do not represent true interests of the people and those who do are often blocked out.

Six years since the invention of the blockchain, more people are beginning to see the powerful political implications that this technology brings. People from diverse backgrounds have been weighing in on its disruptive potential. While libertarians embrace the potential of cryptocurrencies to break up monopolies of the ‘too big to fail’ banking and payment companies, the rise of this technology was met with skepticism by many socialists.

The 2008 financial meltdown and disclosures of secret documents in recent years exposed widespread government overreach and corporate fraud and abuse. As trust in traditional institutions began to sag, global uprisings were spawned to find solutions outside of electoral politics. In the midst of these deep systemic breakdowns of governance, a decentralized solution emerged with a breakthrough in computer science. As the revolutions on the streets began to wind down, perhaps nobody expected the rise of the blockchain.