Quora Corner -- Do you think blockchain may change the world in the next 5 years?

Sometimes I post Quora answers on my steem blog. Here's one more -- what are your thoughts? Reply below!

Do you think blockchain may change the world in the next 5 years?

Five years maybe not. 10–15 years, probably.

It just takes a while for the technology to develop and for people to find new and novel applications. Social media took about a decade to change the world (Six Degrees to Facebook) and I think that’s an apt comparison. Like social media, cryptocurrency changes how people interact with each other.

From what I see and hear, businesses are using blockchain to do what they already do. That’s natural and healthy. When the internet came out, businesses built intranets. When electricity came out, businesses installed light fixtures and bought light bulbs. When desktop computers came out, businesses replicated their mainframes. That doesn’t really change the world, though. It wasn’t until new businesses built these technologies into their structure that the true transformations happened (respectively):

• Ecommerce and communication
• Power plants and electronics
• Home offices and PCs

Only then did people see the transformational potential of these technologies (respectively):

• Free, instant connections between buyers and sellers without intermediaries.
• Power you could distribute to anything connected by wires.
• High-quality computing programs individuals could buy and use.

We’re only scratching the surface of blockchain and it seems most people don’t realize the real value of the technology:

You can decentralize anything without sacrificing control.

It will take a long time for people to wrap their heads around this. I wrote a short book, Consensusland, to introduce people to the concept through an allegory about a fictional country that runs on cryptocurrency. Look for it later this year.

I don’t know specifically what things blockchain will change. Right now, the big feature people are latching onto is the “one universal record” that blockchain enables. This has implications for international shipping, law enforcement, and healthcare, and any industry that spends a lot of money tracking the movement of documents and things. You can now let anybody handle any document with certainty that the document will not be forged, records will not be lost, and ownership will change hands only when the system permits. That’s a big deal.

There are also really interesting projects to leverage cryptocurrency as payment networks, social networks, decentralized asset exchanges, and business development platforms. It'll be interesting to see how these turn out.

In another question, I was asked to think about blockchain as it relates to investing. I would guess the result will be:

• Decentralized exchanges replacing traditional brokers and traders.
• Distributed apps that enable traders and investors to easily create trading platforms or switch between trading platforms. Think “AirBNB” for finance (TD Ameritrade, Merrill Lynch would be “hotels” in this analogy). You no longer need the services of a brokerage for clearing, processing, certifying, etc.
• Amazing potential for micro-trades.
• Frictionless movement of massive amounts of money within a portfolio.

I suspect the “killer app” will be something out of left field, though, likely based on cryptocurrency. E.g., a YouTuber moves to dTube and now has an easy way to reward subscribers and build a brand; a first-time homebuyer sells shares of his house to collect cash for a down-payment; a rider joins a car-share ecosystem where participants buy and sell riding tokens as needed to get/give rides.

These things are hard and costly to do without cryptocurrency, but very easy with cryptocurrency.