Conclusion

Summary

At the beginning of this book, I wrote that the blockchain stands at the intersection of three great themes of modern society: technology, money and democracy. At its heart, the blockchain is a technology for democratizing money – along with many other aspects of our daily lives. Its aim is to use advances in cryptography and computing power to improve the way that our economy works and to give us all greater control over our information, our data and, ultimately, our lives. In the Age of Technology, this is what democracy is supposed to look like. Not a day goes past that we do not hear laments about the stranglehold that big technology firms like Apple, Google and Facebook have over our online identities. Giving power back to the people is an elegant solution to this problem. But decentralization also has its drawbacks. It can be chaotic. It can be confusing.