Decentralised payment technologies like Bitcoin are able to give people a sense of financial freedom and empowerment, especially for persons that are disenfranchised.
This is according to Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation (HRF). Gladstein addressed the SingularityU South Africa Summit in Johannesburg this week.
He told the audience that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data, if not used properly, can turn very authoritarian.
The HRF, which studies societies, authoritarianism and governing structures, has found incredible benefits in decentralised governance. If citizens are controlling their own data, this makes total government surveillance impossible, Gladstein noted.
He is of the opinion that Bitcoin, which functions in a decentralised database, can prevent digital dictatorships and promote more democratic ways.
Bitcoin is interesting because it is a money network that nobody owns, Gladstein stated.
"There is no CPO, no boss and there is no one in charge. It is a community-powered network. It is the first time in human history that I can send money to you and nobody can stop it. I can download an open source wallet, or you can download an open source wallet, and all we need is access to the Internet.
"We don't have to provide a name, and we can send value to one another and no one can stop it and that to me is a radical revolutionary concept.
"Until Bitcoin there was no way to globally transact without a third party. This is unstoppable money and that is its key value proposition. A transaction, in this case that contains value, can be done in a way that no government can sensor and no bank can freeze. This is important for people that are disenfranchised. I believe it's a key anti-authoritarian technology; it's an upgrade in the way that humans network."
Although Bitcoin adoption is still in its early stages, he believes it will disrupt financial monopolies. "In Zimbabwe, for example, the government has come up with so many different schemes to print more money and this, of course, gets people very angry because it starts to destroy society. Bitcoin is kind of an experiment to kind of check that behaviour.
"When you think about the evolution of the phone, in 1990, phones were very expensive, hard to use and the user interface was awful. Today, almost everywhere people have phones and they don't just do basic things like texting and calling. People do their banking and social media on their phones.
"So you have to think that Bitcoin could evolve in the same way. Right now one of the main critics is that it's not very fast but that wasn't the reason it was created. It wasn't created for speed; it was created for censorship resistance."
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