Where will Bitcoin go in 20 years? Is it the end? Or explode? It's easy to come up with a similar answer. But the future will never be black and white, it will always be full of possibilities. Simply giving a judgment is ridiculous and irresponsible. recently,An article appeared on Medium, authored byDaniel JeffriesIn this article, he made a well-founded prediction about the future development trend of Bitcoin. Forecasts may or may not be accurate. But every prediction he made was not without reason. can inspire us. The article was compiled by 36 Krypton.
Predicting the future is tricky business because it's easy to get it wrong.
But we still have to do it and find the right trend. Since it's been almost 10 years since the Bitcoin white paper was released, I'm going to use a 20-year time frame to predict the evolution of Bitcoin, the blockchain, some other cryptocurrencies, and decentralization.
When I'm old and gray, this post will probably look either downright silly or brilliant.
I don't really care though, I'm working on it anyway.
I'm also going to go deeper than give some conclusions like "Bitcoin will go to zero" or "Bitcoin will become a reserve currency, worth $1 million". Without humility, this is not something anyone can do.
I will look at how technology will transform, and how society will transform.
Although I have successfully predicted future trends and technological developments. But predicting the future, no one can be 100% correct. Arthur C. Clarke, one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, predicted the advent of satellites, GPS, cloud computing, the internet and telecommuting, but by his own admission he overestimated the importance of rockets. And, even when a company offered him a prototype laptop, he failed to predict its importance.
Chaos theory tells us that predicting the future is impossible. But that's not quite true.
we can never predictblack swan eventor completely unexpected technologies (try explaining computers and the internet to an 18th century farmer), but we can do a sort of random sample analysis of tomorrow and predict which direction the main winds will go.
Very few people do it well. In fact, most people predict the future is ridiculous, so before making predictions, we need to understand why we can try to avoid the same mistakes.
the internet will never work
The number one reason people can't accurately predict the future is that they spend as little as five minutes researching it before making their point.
This is not thinking.
withPrimitive lizard brains look a lot likeUnfortunately, many people spend almost their entire lives at this level, and their opinions are worthless when they say they see new trends and directions.
Unfortunately, many people spend almost their entire lives at this level, and their opinions are worthless when they say they see new trends and directions.
The second major reason people make wrong predictions about the future is because the future contradicts their understanding of the world. Think of a company like Kodak,They refuse to predict the potential of digital cinema, because it has been operating under the original model for a hundred years. They have every advantage, but they pooh-pooh it. They saw the past as the future, and they paid a heavy price when the torrent of market developments rushed past them. To see the future, you have to be able to step out of your world, forget about past successes, and step out of the intense confines of your present.
The third major reason people cannot see the future is that it challenges their established positions of power. that's whyOligarchic banker Jamie Dimonand fromprince of a country that just allowed women to drive, see Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a "fraud" or "scam".
They really can't see clearly because they are the main beneficiaries of the current system. Nor do they want to see it. So they resist, even unconsciously. It's just a psychological defense mechanism. The rise of new management styles meant their status was threatened, and they were terrified.
Asking these people what they think of Bitcoin is like asking a taxi driver what he thinks of Uber, or what he thinks of horse-drawn carriages. Their opinions are worthless.
The fourth major reason people screw up their forecasts is because they mistake their opinion for reality. It's just their perception of the world right now, which is already reality, and predictions are often not the same thing. One is a map and the other is a territory. Don't mistake maps for territories.
In 1995, Clifford Stoll of US Newsweek published an infamous article, declaring that the Internet is about to collapse, facing failure. Stoll wrote:
Visionaries saw the future of telecommuting, interactive libraries, and multimedia classrooms. They talked about e-town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and trade will move from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. nonsense.
When you read this sentence, you may smile knowingly, because you will have an incomparable sense of superiority. What an idiot! Who didn't see the coming of the internet?
The answer is: almost no one.
From the perspective of Zhuge Liang in hindsight, this is a certainty.
I bet almost everyone is laughing at the poor guy. But even if they knew what the Internet was in the first place, they didn't see it coming. To be sure, they didn't see the advent of Wikipedia, the rise of telecommuting, or even say that one day they'll buy everything from books to groceries on Amazon.
Actually, the most striking thing about the above statement is not how inaccurate it is, but how precise it is on so many levels.
this is correct.
Read this article and you will find that many of his prophecies are unbelievable!
If you look back at Stoll's view, it's a pretty clear picture over the next 20 years. Let's see:
Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we will soon be buying books and newspapers directly over the Internet.
Stoll saw the future, he just refused to see it. Had he been able to look beyond his own vision instead of interpreting and filtering what he saw, this essay would have gone down in history as the most forward-thinking and most accurate writing ever written. This leads to our next reason.
The fifth reason people make mistakes is being very, very impatient.
To start with Stoll's article: After 20 years on the Internet, I'm confused.
Stoll has lived on the Internet for two decades, and it doesn't reveal anything that surprises or catches his eye. It's easy to think that if something hasn't happened for such a long time, then it never will.
Waiting is the hardest part. It takes patience to let things develop naturally.
patience. patience. patience.
Creativity requires setbacks, failures, and enormous perseverance. Once you expose your ideas to a reality full of rust, gravity and friction, things will fall apart. There is no plan to gain survival to be connected with the enemy. Reality is the whetstone that grinds you or sharpens your mind.
Things take time.
How long does the real innovation process take? A typical example comes fromGeorge de Mestral, Velcro) inventor.
He first came up with the idea in 1941, when he was walking in the woods with his dog and saw a pile of burrs stuck to his fur clothing. From that time on, an imperfect idea took root in his mind for seven years. In 1948, he set out to make his idea a reality, and it took him ten years to get it into mass production.
And, he started his company in the late 1950s, anticipating high demand.
But that didn't happen.
Five years later, in the space program in 1960, Velcro became a solution to the problem of astronauts putting on and taking off their spacesuits. Some other people in the world only care about the solution of the problem, not the idea or ideology behind it. Soon, the ski industry took notice of its application to boots.
From an initial idea to a well-run profitable business, the time period is approximately twenty-five years.
Finally, there is one more lesson we can take from Stoll before we start making predictions about cryptocurrencies.
His biggest mistake is the sixth and final reason why people are blind to the future. He takes current inventions, pushes them forward, and imagines them as solutions to future problems. wrong!
Current inventions only solve current problems. Future problems will require entirely new solutions.
In that article, Stoll mentioned that CD books will never replace physical books. He's right, reading on a CD with a crappy monitor that "rips" your retinas can be a painful experience. But understanding this can help us understand the characteristics of future solutions.
It's almost impossible to know what form these solutions will take, but we can find out what characteristics a solution has so we can recognize it when it emerges.
Let's see how it works:
CDs are bulky. The monitors at the time were so low resolution it was hard to see clearly and they hurt the eyes. Moreover, the computer is also very large and not easy to carry. Even the laptop is a brick and heats up badly. Nobody wants to read a damn thing.
But he didn't notice the downside of physical books.
Physical books are also heavy. They are made of trees! They are easily broken or damaged. When you are carrying heavy things, there are not many books that can be carried.
From there we can see that a good solution is:
Super portable and lightweight.
There is a clear display.
Completely hide data storage from users.
As easy to use as a book. Just open it and read it.
Protect data, if we lose or damage data, we can restore it without needing to buy it again.
Allows you to carry a large number of books at the same time.
Of course, we now know the answer: Kindles and iPads.
Both are easy to use, can completely hide storage media, protect data through networking, and are very friendly to the user's eyes.
A solution starts with figuring out what went wrong, then comes up with the right solution to fix the problem, and correctly defines what features we need for a better experience.
In summary, we have three principles to help us predict the future:
patience.
Observe, don't interpret.
Don't graft today's solutions onto tomorrow's problems.
Well, let's break out of this "crystal ball" and take a peek at the fate of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
Hopefully we have better luck than Stoll, and in the future, this article won't call me an idiot.
We start with a few simple predictions, move on to some more complex and far-reaching predictions, and end with some controversial issues.
We start with a few simple predictions, move on to some more complex and far-reaching predictions, and end with some controversial issues.
1) Bubble burst
1) Bubble burst
People who have been in and out of cryptocurrencies see it as a bubble that will burst, causing prices to plummet.
They are right. But so what? This is not the end of the story. This is just the beginning.
Right now we are in a state of extreme excitement. Its potential is enormous. We can almost experience a decentralized future. Right around the corner!
Of course, that's almost certainly not where it ends up. The bubble will burst.Vitalik is right, 90% of tokens will fail.
But after the bubble bursts, the real future will emerge.
In 8 years of experimenting with crypto, everyone working on the rails of the future, we haven't had much to gain beyond speculative transactions and a few smart contracts. The apps are so horrible they're almost unusable. The moment you press the "send" button and send someone $5,000 over the web, your nerves will crumble. Better hope you copy-pasted that address so your money doesn't just disappear into thin air!
When the dot-com bubble burst, the stocks of many of the largest companies now plummeted by 85%. Yet they survived. Amazon and Google continue to dominate the world.
The same happens in cryptocurrencies.
In this bloody battle, 10% of the projects will become the Amazons, Googles, and Facebooks of tomorrow, and possibly even JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, not to mention future governments, such as digital direct democracy or liquid democracy.
Innovation is hard work. Not to mention you're trying to create something that doesn't even exist!
There are no guidelines, no working templates, no business models to replicate. Nothing at all. You are on your own! Just you and your imagination. Of course, 90% of people and companies fail!
It doesn't matter.
Cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and triple entry accounting may be the most important inventions of the past 500 years, so they don't creep in that good night.
The bursting of the bubble is just the next step. Three years later, this technology will really mature and start running (Rhythm Note: It turns out that this wish is still in the process of being realized).
2) Government cryptocurrencies will thrive
The community won't like this, but there's no question about that.
Governments in many countries will not sit idly by, which will allow them to lose control of the money supply without fighting an uphill battle. Anyone working on a project by now should anticipate protocol-level attacks on decentralized cryptography and design some defenses against them.
To build a distributed and decentralized DDoS blocking network, such asGladiusThat's the first step, but there's still a lot of work to be done. When I talk about the evolution of the protocol, we will discuss some additional defensive encryption techniques.
In the long run, the government will lose the war, probably between 30 and 100 years (perhaps sooner due to war or financial crisis). But in 10 or 20 years, it is expected that government cryptocurrencies will be powerful and dominate the flow of money for many people around the world.
“Nobody’s going to take them!” some cryptocurrency stalwarts might scream out loud.
But ordinary people don't understand what really matters, and they don't see the need for privacy and security, except in extreme cases like war, when their bodies are stripped away. The need for privacy becomes very real when soldiers invade your house and take all your stuff.
Remember Snowden's interview about government surveillance of John Oliver?
Look at the look on Snowden's face when he realizes that ordinary people on the street know nothing about privacy and don't care one bit. Their only concern is whether the government has pictures of their private parts in the files. honestly.
People would adopt government cryptocurrencies without a second thought. They may even think that this is absolutely the right thing to do.
Of course, asNaval RavikantAs pointed out, a blockchain controlled by a country, a company, an elite class or a mob is nonsense.
They are meaningless because the purpose of the blockchain is to distribute power across the system. By not allowing a single organization to arbitrarily control or change the rules, decentralized cryptography and applications provide a strong set of checks and balances to prevent harmful manipulation of the system.
When 5 different banks have a blockchain, it's not a blockchain, it's just a database. A blockchain is only true when the bank, regulators, shareholders and the bank's customers simultaneously hold the keys to the blockchain and are able to neutralize each other's power.
The checks and balances of power are the key!
Government cryptocurrencies would represent a complete and complete reversal of this idea.
But it doesn't matter. They will do it any way they can.
In fact, instead of distributing power, they may seek greater power, giving themselves the ability to track spending by every citizen and automatically collect taxes from wages and sales of goods and services. This is why authoritarian governments are racing to establish official cryptocurrencies. They can't wait to monitor the money in your pocket.
They will ban physical currency, under the guise of one of three excuses:
combat money laundering
stop terrorists
stop crime
Loyalty to current cryptocurrenciesFaithfulGovernment cryptocurrencies will be a very, very bitter pill for gangsters, but they better get used to them.
A better option is to design a hybrid system of both decentralized and centralized encryption now to avoid being swallowed in this "tsunami". It is better to use blockchain to transform the current system and then overwhelm it from within rather than ignore it or make it hostile.
3) Decentralized cryptocurrency will become a parallel economic operating system on the planet
The rise of centralized cryptography does not mean that decentralized cryptography will disappear. Oh, a lot of governments try, but in the end they just can't kill them all. the reason is simple.
The same factors that make it difficult for people to agree on a blockchain will also make it difficult for governments around the world to agree on anything. They can't do it. Some governments will love decentralization, while others will hate it.
Just as some countries are openly opposing them, many others are openly supporting decentralized cryptocurrencies, especially those that have been hit hardest by the dollar’s dominance. For example, some countries in Latin America, Singapore, Switzerland, and many Asian and African countries welcome decentralized cryptocurrencies with open arms.
If all countries disagree, then decentralized encryption will never go away, even though centralized encryption will.
But to stay relevant, decentralized crypto needs to move fast. They need a killer app. Now they are vulnerable. To really take hold, they need this killer app to spread across the globe. It has to be something so indispensable that one cannot imagine life without it.
In a previous post I outlined one possible scenario,That is the gamification of income distribution.But that's only one way. There are many, many other ways. If you're developing a platform now, know that it's a race against time, and that central encryption systems will take root along the way.
4) The killer app of cryptocurrency is not the browser
This is a classic case of grafting an old invention onto a new system.Brave BrowserIt's awesome and I bet I'm going to love it because it'll be paired with a universal payment system,Automatic exchange of cryptocurrencies, but I don't think it's the final interface to the blockchain. I think this might be an intermediate step.
So, what does a killer app look like?
I have no idea.
but I know it should be:
is every way
easy to use
open source
open source
It’s also something completely new and original, one that expands on blockchain’s best features while minimizing its drawbacks.
Perhaps a decentralized AI assistant or attention filter? There will be all kinds of possibilities, so act now!
5) Blockchain is only the beginning of decentralization
The blockchain system is only the first step in the decentralization mechanism.
People are already inventing new things likeandandHashGraph。
It doesn't matter if both projects fail in the long run, because other projects will create another method. This is almost certain.
Over the next two decades, I predict dozens, if not hundreds, of experimental decentralized consensus protocols capable of transactional levels and augmented by artificial intelligence systems.
Chances are that none of these systems were designed by humans.
Conversely, if AI were given a hundred years, they would rapidly iterate on ideas and develop a system that no human can do. They will take inspiration from nature and from insects, plants or other biological systems such as proteins.
One or two of these systems will rule over all cryptocurrencies, become the meta-system that rules them all, unify many different kinds of cryptocurrencies, and run the whole system like a giant fractal with countless sub-networks in it growing up healthily.
6) Cryptocurrencies will become easier to use
The user experience of today's cryptocurrency systems is terrible.
If I type something wrong, or copy and paste wrong, my money is gone forever; if there is a software glitch, my money is gone forever; if someone hacks into my computer or phone, my money is gone forever …
See this trend? Make any mistake and you're screwed. It's like riding a motorcycle on the edge of a cliff, and there are no guard rails.
The core wallet is very difficult to use. When I last upgraded Ethereum, it forgot to keep my private keys, so I had to restore them all. Earlier this year I had an old bitcoin that was stuck on an ancient version of Multibit from 2013. It took me a week to get it out because the software mistook me for sending a transaction that was never actually played.
Imagine if these wallets will still be used five years from now? What happens when quantum computers come along and we need to completely update the underlying protocols of the stressed system?
Normal people will never be able to complete these steps. Zero chance. 20 years of experience in IT has taught me that people can and will screw up their machines in ways that no techie can imagine. Murphy's Law in action.
Worse, you can't reverse any trades, and there's no way to keep it from making mistakes. I predict there will be a lot of algorithmic freezes, rollbacks, secure transactions, and how to self-custody funds and recover stolen money.
Only a system that offers all the features of the old system plus brand new features will achieve mass adoption.
Think again of the CD-ROM books of the 80s. They have a lot of new features, like charts and colors, and you can back them up.
But that wasn't good enough, because CDs were fatally flawed. exist"The singularity is approachingIn his book, Ray Kurzweil calls this a "fake pretender” stage. New technologies have some advantages, but also too many disadvantages, making it difficult to succeed and replace old technologies.
It wasn't until the advent of the Kindle and iPad that e-book readers had all the old features of physical books, such as portability and ease of reading, plus some new features, such as the ability to carry a thousand books at once, so that it could take off quickly.
Encryption has to follow a similar path, from being fatally flawed to bringing untold new power to people and businesses to achieve its dominance.
I also see a lot of systems that we really need that want to pass crypto to your kids. To do this, we need to form pawn shops when necessary, or algorithmic banks, with decentralized cloud or fog services acting as the final arbiters.
Simply separating your keys and giving them to a trusted friend or loved one is not enough. This will be the first solution to be eliminated. Friends may stop being friends, and people get divorced or die or worse. We need something better, fully automated.
Think how difficult it is to pass your bitcoins to your loved ones these days. What if you died tomorrow, or got hit on the head and forgot your password?
Even if you plan for it, it can suck.
You need to create a will, lock your private key and a backup of your wallet in a safe, give the password to a lawyer and hope he doesn't steal it, or a USB drive orTrezor/Nanowon't hang up. You can also create a multi-signature wallet with some friends and family,And hope someone doesn't backdoor or bugcheck into a different version of Github and screw it up. Everything is immature. This is unacceptable.
By the way, if you want to start building a cryptocurrency business that everyone needs, you need to think about solving inheritance. When the time comes, everyone will happily pay you.
I predict that smart contracts and artificial intelligence will automatically generate wills. In essence, the blockchain itself is the bank and customer service department, which may use your biometric token and a third-party verification group, or a decentralized artificial intelligence, to verify your loved ones, or in Automatically triggers when something unexpected happens to you, at which point automatic password and key recovery will stop.
No matter what it looks like, we need control at an algorithmic level so that we can give our money to whoever we want and it won't be snatched or stolen. We also need this system to protect us from accidents, death, and madness.
7) The protocol of the cryptocurrency will be distilled from itself
Currently, all cryptocurrencies in existence are inextricably linked to their protocols.
I hope we can distill the protocols for exchanging, sending and receiving, and securing, saving and storing our cryptocurrencies.
This will mirror the evolution of servers today from bare metal to virtualization to containers to serverless.
First, most cryptocurrencies are not scalable. We can’t even achieve visa-level transaction processing on the blockchain, which is the holy grail of cryptosystems and the subject of much debate.Bitcoin can peak at 7 transactions per second.
Some even see this as an advantage of cryptocurrencies, as it encourages people to deposit and store money, rather than send it.
This is ridiculous.
We should be able to get as much of these currencies moving as fast as possible.
Let's face it, the 1MB limit is nothing more than a protection against hackers. Initially, Bitcoin had no limits. Satoshi then slipped it in overnight without mentioning it or explaining it in the source code. This is most likely just a stupid way to prevent DDoS attacks.
We can and will come up with better protections.
Are you a 1MB follower? What about SegWit2X's 2MB? Maybe you'll move to a Bitcoin Cash blockchain with an 8MB limit?
according to
according toThe Lightning Network folks say, if we have seven billion people doing only two transactions per day, it would take:
24 GB blocks, 3.5 TB/day, 1.27 PB/year
We need to think differently and evolve to design real solutions. For Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to survive, they must change. When quantum computers come knocking, with better speed and innovation, it will be easy to integrate new defense systems and update encryption algorithms.
We can't just stop at Satoshi's vision and assume he thought of everything.
But he didn't.
Frankly, who gave Satoshi the idea? He has left the project. If he really wants to boot it, he'll probably stay on Linux like Linus did. But he didn't. He left it up to the rest of us to figure it out.
So let's actually start doing that.
One way is to abstract all the protocols and run all the old bitcoins into virtual machines or containers. These rules, however, are separate from Bitcoin itself.
This is just one of the ways, but for blockchain to truly be a breakthrough technology, it needs real innovation.
we also
we alsoneed to do this, as it will serve as a defense against hostile actors andAPT (Advanced Persistent Threat)Necessary for protocol-level attacks.NEM architectureis a good start as it includes firewalls etc for node protection.
But it needs to go further to stop more insidious and devastating attacks, and it can't take 4 years to implement a solution.
The best solution might be to download external security rule chains to all nodes in the network, which act as intrusion detection, firewall, and protocol inspectors, along with AI-based auto-evolving rule sets and countermeasures.
think aboutNeuromancer's ICE bar。
8) We will have four major meta cryptocurrencies, plus fifty to one hundred minor cryptocurrencies, and infinite virtual variations of these cryptocurrencies, plus national cryptocurrencies
Right now we're making cryptocurrencies for everything.
Have an identity platform like Civic? Make a cryptocurrency.
Create a decentralized DNS? Be a cryptocurrency and IC0!
Developing a speechless application on the blockchain application? You need a cryptocurrency, my friend!
Actually you don't need a cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrencies will start popping up in different meta categories. At this point, I can only see four types of bitcoins that the blockchain (or blockchain technology) could seamlessly switch to consume services as needed:
Cryptocurrencies for Deflation
User deflationary cryptocurrency
Behavior Token
reward token
Deflationary cryptocurrencies are for hoarding and investing. Their value rises over time and benefits savers. Everyone needs an investment like this, which is why Bitcoin was born in the first place.
An inflationary cryptocurrency mirrors the movement of the U.S. dollar. No one likes to spend bitcoins on a flat-screen TV, because a few years later, as the price of bitcoins increased, they actually spent $175,000. We need a stable, usable cryptocurrency. Think of this as the classic "store of value", Paul Krugman is always complaining and knows we really need these things to buy and sell everyday items.
Behavior tokens are for actions on the network, which should always be free, like voting or sending a text message. These are not microtransactions. There shouldn't be a cost to resetting a password on something. asPeople of EOSSaid, "If you go to Amazon, it costs 3 cents to load the page, and no one chooses to load the page."
Reward tokens are used to incentivize good behavior and punish bad behavior.
You can build the ultimate cosmic system with these four cryptocurrencies. Any other cryptocurrency can be used as a subcomponent with different metadata for those cryptocurrencies.
9) We will learn economics bullshit that we don't know
Who are youstillstillfollower of the austrian free market？
The answer might be, who cares?
All of our economic theories are the conclusions of studies based on limited data from the industrial age. As we experiment with new economic systems in the coming years, all current economic theories will prove to be as good as cave paintings.
That’s what these new cryptocurrencies are made of: microeconomics at war.
This is Darwinian economics.
Some basic laws of economics will still hold, but many laws of economics will be thrown aside. That's because, with blockchain dominance, we'll have real-time economic data on a global scale, not just a bunch of guesswork done with pencil and paper a hundred years ago.
As AI tracks statistics in real time across the globe, we will be able to see its real impact on a country's steel tariffs. We will be tracking global production and manufacturing with incredible precision that will surprise us in so many wonderful ways.
10) There will be DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) that grow into Fortune 500
Most likely to reach this milestone would be a DAO that mirrors an open version of Visa, as it would likely slash transactions and miners in the most dominant network, which would help provide Funding for the future development and governance of the network.
Instead of hoarding all the funds, it will funnel funds through smart contracts to other businesses and DAOs, as well as national and local governments or other non-government entities that are beneficial to the network.
To do this, DAOs must evolve.
Now we think of DAO as a kind of smart contract. This is far from it.
The DAO will need artificial intelligence to help manage and lighten its rule set, and it needs to be able to automatically generate a templated governance model. Governance is everything to a DAO, and there isn't a good scalable model for managing it at scale. Make it an open-source, merit-based workplace. Early DAOs failed because they had what I call "brave new world"The problem.
Everyone thinks they are the boss, and no one wants to take the garbage away.
It's hard to order a paper clip when everyone is the king of the DAO.
To function effectively, a team needs role players and stars. People also have to understand their role and accept it, even if it changes later, because they build strengths and experiences into the system.
Just like in a corporate environment, it can be difficult to manage. How do you in a DAOfire onePeople who don't work? How do you make sure that the person responsible for the security of the ICO is actually qualified and not just elected because everyone likes him?
The automated enterprise and not-for-profit structures of the future will have to develop incredible tools for the changing ways of management and decision-making, and operating protocols that run like code.
11) The gig economy will do well
The WWII generation will have one or two jobs in their lifetime. Today each of us will have five or six servings.
People of tomorrow will have five or six jobs at the same time.
Half of these revenues will be automated and passive, most likely some kind of crypto UBI (national basic income). We will also see the rise of AI-matching job services. The machine will know your abilities and skills and match you with jobs so that you don't have to look for a job.
Imagine a software project that requires a lot of code, say ten trillion lines. Software projects are only getting more complex and will continue to grow. AI will write and test half of it, but people will write the other half. The project will be fed into a distributed, decentralized system that can split the work into parts, analyze them, and, like a project manager, hand off the work to programmers around the world (based on their reputation and skills).
You can think of it as an AI Github combined with UpWork and Mechanical Turk systems.
It can work in manufacturing and a variety of blue-collar jobs.
Artificial intelligence in the Hong Kong subwayPerhaps the first prototype of such a network, even if it is not a perfect analogy. It can predict what will break down in the subway and give engineers a head start. This results in an uptime of 99% for the world's busiest subway.
A significant portion of this will be provided by external reputation banks (Externalized Reputation Banks) management, these banks are driven by the blockchain, just like the scene in the black mirror, will become the cornerstone of social credit tomorrow.
It will be a double-edged sword.
The main challenge is that very few people can agree on what is good and what is bad in a system, and ideology often distorts these concepts into an unrecognizable mess. It's very easy to create a ruleset that enslaves us all if we're not careful.
focus of controversy
I just did some simple predictions just now. Now, let's discuss some issues that are likely to spark heated debate.
12) Blockchain will bring all kinds of evil
Enthusiasts of crypto will have to come to terms with the fact that blockchains can and will bring about as much evil as possible.
Nothing is good or bad. All things exist on a continuum. You can kill someone with a gun, but you can also go hunting to feed your family. Water sustains life, but it can also drown you and even poison you.
designdesignA system, then you just need to know that for systems that manage many aspects of our lives algorithmically, it is likely to be a disaster.
Instead, you should slow down, think hard, and not screw things up.
You should start thinking about all the ways to destroy your system, otherwise you won't be able to defend against it when it gets out of hand. If you don't imagine that a hostile power will harness the power of the blockchain, then you are naive.
I once wrote an article titled "What If Hitler Had a Blockchain?" Frankly, I didn't want to post it because I didn't want to give the bad guys any fresh ideas, but rest assured, it probably doesn't matter. Their "black hearts" are already thinking hard about how to use the blockchain as a system of suppression and control.
Genocide?
Genocide?
yes.
Don't forget, IBM helped the Nazis track their victims with punched cards and helped the Nazis carry out the Holocaust.
What can they do with blockchain? The answer: more horrific atrocities we can only begin to imagine now.
Perhaps you would think that an open system always prevents abuse?
wrong.
If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that open systems tend to tend toward centralization, and given enough time, centralization will break any system to its own ends.
If you're studying encryption, haven't you thought about all the ways passwords can be abused? Chances are then that instead of designing a system to save the world, you created a prison for it.
13) Bitcoin has a 50% chance of survival
Most true believers won't like this, but let's be honest, the 50/50 odds are really, really high here.
The first thing to say is that I hope and support Bitcoin to survive. But we still have to look at this problem objectively and see the difficulties it faces.
Bitcoin has a first-mover advantage. It holds the number one position among all cryptocurrencies and still dominates the global market share, but it faces some major flaws that could spell its demise.
Basically, it's the Model T (Ford's original car) of the blockchain revolution.
you todayon the streetHow many more Model Ts can we see?
Can you transform a Model T to look like a Lamborghini? Can you add complex electronics to it and make it a self-driving Tesla? No.
First, Bitcoin has no built-in governance mechanisms. This is a critical flaw. There are only a few ways to change this situation. first of allSubmit a proposal that almost everyone agrees on, which, as we saw with SegWit, is very difficult. It took four years to be adopted.
The second step is to start a new project and "hard fork" it. This may be the only way to finally achieve this goal. A team might fork it and build governance mechanisms into it, but that's a long shot.
A well-designed, widely distributed cryptocurrency with built-in governance would have huge advantages over Bitcoin and could easily replace it by making upgrades more seamless and smooth.
Responding to an attack by a well-funded hostile force can quickly infiltrate an upgrade throughout the network in hours or days, not years.
How to expand it? We have already discussed this issue. Changing the block size doesn't cut it. This calls for some more drastic measures.
What if some hostile force decides to bring all core developers together? Given the severe shortage of crypto-related talent right now, how easy will it be to replace them?
These are just some of the nearly insurmountable problems. I point this out just to get you thinking. If you can actually spot a problem, you can find a solution to it. But if we only deal with bogus issues like block size limits, we'll get nowhere.
Bitcoin is a beautiful and brilliant idea that has changed the world. It doesn't fail because of fraud or being a scam, only because of its own hardcoded rules, infighting and lack of governance.
Of course, it doesn't have to fail. We can now start thinking about how to sustain it.
As I mentioned earlier, some sort of virtualization or containerization advance that would allow Bitcoin to adapt and evolve by migrating to an abstract set of protocols and defenses would help ensure that Bitcoin not only survives, but able to prosper.
epilogue
epilogue
I've left some bad thoughts in this article because I don't want them to come up. If anyone has thought of this, and done it, there's nothing I can do about it.
Cryptocurrencies represent a fundamental upgrade to the world's economic system. Once they are fully activated and integrated into future global or interstellar networks, the world will look very different from the way we understand it.
Hundreds of years from now, today's economy will look like the feudal economy of yesteryear.
Cryptocurrencies, decentralized applications, and DAOs may even take us to a Star Trek-esque scenario, aspost-scarcity economyThat, but it takes time.
I don't think the singularity will accelerate tomorrow. But that may not be the reality. So, what does this bring us?
Encryption can be good or evil, like everything in life.
