On August 27th, Dr. Craig S. Wright took the virtual stage at the Baikal Blockchain & Crypto Summit 2020 to explore why Bitcoin is invaluable in the era of data, and why Bitcoin will allow individuals to value and profit off of our interactions in the future.
The purpose of Bitcoin
“Bitcoin isn’t what you’ve been told it is,” said Dr. Wright. “It’s not this system designed to be innocuous and get around governments and all that. It’s designed to have a record so that people cannot change what they have been doing; so that they cannot alter the fact.”
Many people are familiar with BTC, which is the primary, most popular form of money on the dark web, and the currency of choice for criminals around the world. However, Bitcoin was not meant to be used for illicit activities; the value in Bitcoin is that it creates truthful data that cannot be altered.
“Currently we have a problem regarding the concept of robustness,” said Dr. Wright. “In a lot of scientific papers, the ability to replicate data has not been there because people tweak things and change the results so that they get what they want to report. Now if we had a system where all information is available, and no one can leave out outliers and change what they want to report on, whether it’s scientific papers or political polls, anything like this, we will have far more robust data. And that’s something that bitcoin allows, an immutable source of truth, evidence that you can value and resell.”
If data is already valuable as is, just think of how valuable truthful data is. Beyond the truthfulness that data recorded to the Bitcoin blockchain has, data on the Bitcoin blockchain puts the individual who generates the data in control of their information. This allows the individual to own—or even sell—their data themselves for the very first time.
Owning your data
“We live in a world where if you are getting something for free, the giver is taking something,” said Dr. Wright. “Any gift, anything that they are giving you, comes with a cost.”
Dr. Wright went on to provide examples of this; you use Google for free because Google is making money off of your data. You use Facebook for free because Facebook is making money off of your data. You use Twitter for free because Twitter is making money off of your data.
However, Bitcoin is going to change this narrative. Bitcoin allows its users to own and value their information. When you own your own data, you become the Google, Twitter, and Facebook of your information. You can choose to sell it or you can keep it to yourself. Either way, you get to decide what you want to do with your information and are not at the whim of some tech giant that lets you use its platform for free since you are the product that they are selling.
Bitcoin is going to be the mechanism that brings this change to the world; the Metanet embodies this vision and will be the commercial version of the internet. It is only a matter of time until more individuals start building on this new internet that allows everyone to benefit.
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
