Cryptonetworks and why tokens are fundamental
This is the big picture and it most aligns with how I feel about this emerging space.<p>There&#x27;s a problem with developers and cs people and that is that they are looking at one small spec - the blockchain data structure. From there, the work their way up through sensationalist headlines and shout &quot;blockchain is crap, it should go away, we don&#x27;t need more &#x27;money&#x27;, this whole space with its ico&#x27;s is a scam!&quot;, etc, etc.<p>But it&#x27;s not a scam. It should not go away. And, it is the future.<p>No one I think is debating that the &#x27;blockchain&#x27; (I&#x27;m referring to the bitcoin data structure here) is slow. Anyone that holds on to that nugget is entirely missing the point and needs to grab their 56k modem and 386 and go hunker down in the closet, because that&#x27;s their mindset.<p>Bitcoin (and other tokens) are not valuable because of their slow data structure. They are valuable because, like the article says, they are permissionless and globally distributed (immutability is also key and not mentioned).<p>If you think that is not important, you are fooling yourself. It&#x27;s a revolution just as big as webapps were over non-connected desktop apps. Just as mobile was over desktop web apps.<p>Take my super high level case of &#x27;blockchain&#x27; medical company (I use this when I talk to people about why this next wave is important).<p>Currently today companies own your medical data. If you move from one medical provider to another, in order to get your history over to the new provider, the new guy has to either call or request a fax of that data and then double enter it into their system. <i>Maybe</i> this exchange is automated but I doubt it.<p>What happens when you leave that company? New company has to go through the same laborious process. And so on and so forth.<p>This is today&#x27;s problem: silo&#x27;d data &#x27;owned&#x27; by various companies out there. The end user&#x2F;customer has little power because they own nothing. They are at the mercy of that data because companies do not want to share (they want to corner markets and destroy competition) and companies do care enough about securing &#x27;your&#x27; data, so thieves then break in and steal it. It&#x27;s funner for them to build teams, have company parties, tout their prowess and expertise in the press. Securing data and making it interoperable - not very fun or profitable.<p>What (smart) people are working towards is turning this equation on its head and encrypting and distributing globally all the data. So, instead of using 10 medical companies throughout your life, the potential is to use a distributed system that stores your data in some kind of &#x27;blockchain&#x27; (zoom out an think an immutable record of your entire health history) that only you have the full pub&#x2F;private key(s) to. (Yes, wallets and keys are a potential problem here and we&#x27;ll have to work more towards making recovery easier. This is a big, deep topic in and of itself.)<p>This is not far fetched. We already use ssh keys on remote servers where root has the ultimate permissions and then we can add&#x2F;remove users at will with their own keys and permissions. So, we understand conceptually how to use pub&#x2F;priv keys with regard to access. It&#x27;s not a stretch to start figuring out how to apply this to global data and companies and teams have already been doing this.<p>Of course, the &#x27;old&#x27; medical companies would have to use this system as well and they probably will go kicking and screaming since the data to _them_ is not as valuable because they are not in control anymore. But to _you_ it is. It really is _your_ data and you can take it wherever you want over your lifetime.<p>This is a total paradigm shift of how tech companies will need to operate in the future.<p>Tokens, blockchains, dlt&#x27;s, yah, they&#x27;re all buzzwords. But so are saas, elastic ip&#x27;s, spa&#x27;s, and load balancers. There was a time when you didn&#x27;t need any of those things and now, they&#x27;re part of everyday life even if you don&#x27;t know it.<p>So, hate if you will, but I already know people working on things like this. Tokenization, dlt&#x2F;blockchain&#x2F;dag, gloabal pki access, true micro txn&#x27;s - these are all things already in play and we&#x27;ll see more and more of them in the coming years.