Data is the new currency. If there was any ever doubt as to the veracity of this statement, consider the astronomical rise and dominance of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook (Meta) over the last decade or so. These companies are incredibly profitable and practically control the internet. They do it with your data.
Every single one of these companies has suffered data breaches and security issues. You may indeed have nothing to hide, but data in the wrong hands is extremely dangerous; identity hacks can ruin your credit rating, drain your bank accounts, create living nightmares, ruin lives. The abuse of data and its interpretation can influence politics and change the course of history - remember Cambridge Analytica and its Facebook algorithms? More topical is this abuse of data here (FB again).
The spread of misinformation manages to divide and conquer families and nations. Agendas once spread via radio, television and newspapers then debated in person now come directly into the palm of your hand, courtesy of your mobile phone, into your own online echo-chamber of confirmation bias. It infiltrates the minds of your children.
Not only are we experiencing a lack of trust in the institutions meant to guide, protect and serve us, but the diminishing trust in them and our information sources corrupts the fabric of society.
What’s the solution? You could choose to opt out of all these free services and rigorously batten down the hatches with regard to your tech security – a modern day ‘prepper’. This is highly impractical for most of us and yet still has security vulnerability. Or you could store your data on a blockchain (click here for guide to how blockchains work) where any hacker would need to breach every node on a decentralised network to manipulate your data. You may not even have to worry about your private keys (password) as there are solutions for this too.
The future of blockchain will put your data in your hands. Once you control your data, you can choose who has access to it, what level of access they have, how anonymised the data should be, how long they have access to it for, what you might charge for this access or what you might gain for this access, whom to collaborate with, how to form larger data pools that perhaps aggregate your data with other sources to leverage value.. . the possibilities are endless. Don’t fancy attending to this level of detail? Delegate those responsibilities to someone you trust. Importantly, the choice is yours. You can commit to businesses and movements whose ethics resonate with you and can withdraw your support if they are subsequently found to be wanting.
As the technology develops and protocols whose interaction with real world assets succeed, the dystopia described in the opening paragraphs above need not be our future. We may one day be able to hold our institutions and politicians properly to account, with verifiable, unaltered, independent data that can ascertain whether they have delivered or not.
Identifying the winning protocols or blockchains as an investor is no easy task. This is like the rail-road boom of the nineteenth century, or the internet boom of the late twentieth century. Some will enable you to get rich, other projects will die trying to get you there. At GlobalBlock, we endeavour to stay on top of all the latest trends and technologies that will shape this future. If you haven’t already done so, sign up and get in touch.
Rufus Round
CEO GlobalBlock Digital Asset Trading Limited.
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