The Tech Whisperer by Jaspreet Bindra

Author:Jaspreet Bindra [Bindra, Jaspreet]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9789353056605
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-09-29T22:00:00+00:00

Added to this volatility are scams. Bitcoin, to the unsuspecting public, has been touted as the latest get-rich-quick scheme: ‘Give us your life’s savings, we will invest them in Bitcoin for you, and double your money in three months. Don’t believe it—see this graph, this is how it is going up. This is because it is on blockchain, and blockchain is the best thing since sliced bread. Or Dutch tulips. Or dot-com stocks.’ Besides sheer gullibility, one of the reasons this happens is because Bitcoin and other crypto is seen as a speculation instrument (like a stock or some hot commodity), rather than for its intrinsic value. This mania, like all others, will continue for some time, until sanity prevails. Actually, if you look at the prices of cryptocurrency, it is evident that sanity is starting to prevail.

Another problem is that crypto is also the favourite monetary instrument for criminals dealing in unsavoury stuff on the dark net—porn, drugs, sometimes weapons. This is unforgivable but in many ways is expected. Most technologies tend to start off this way—the first use cases are discovered by the bad guys. Think of the Internet—among the earliest use cases, and perhaps the first business model, of the Internet was pornography. VHS won over Beta in videotapes, not because VHS was more superior, but because it was just easier to copy and therefore pirate.

In my opinion, the march of digital currency is inexorable. So is the emergence of distributed, P2P money. Governments should be well advised to regulate the same, rather than just ban it. In some sense, this is like an earlier ban on dark film on car windows and windshields. This was supposed to reduce harassment and molestations in cars and reduce crime. Banning dark film on car windows does not reduce rapes, the root causes are different.

Many other countries have taken a far more enlightened stance. Canada, the UK, Singapore, Sweden, Dubai, Japan and many others actively encourage blockchain adoption and have a more laissez-faire attitude towards crypto. This is not to say that they are not regulating it in some way or the other, but there are no outright bans and denunciations. Some of them are outliers—Mauritius announced itself as ‘Ethereum Island’. Venezuela, out of a reasonable amount of desperation, launched a petro-backed digital cryptocurrency. Countries like Switzerland and the UK are regulating cryptocurrency, much like they would regulate any new technology. In certain cases, there is self-regulation; in some countries, central banks take the ‘sandbox’ approach of containing the spread of the currency; in others, there are know your customer (KYC)-based regulations.

But perhaps the country which has become the poster child of Blockchain is Estonia. Estonia, a tiny country of 1.3 million people and 2222 islands, became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994. The poor, resource-deficient country has reinvented itself as a high-income, technology powerhouse. Wired magazine called it the ‘most advanced digital society in the world’. They have built e-Estonia on the back of many technologies, the primary of them being blockchain.

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