QZIn the case of cryptocurrencies, blockchain’s only globally successful application to date, for instance, concerns about interconvertibility or divisibility or the impact of volatility on credit are trivial. They completely underestimate the power of “smart contracts”, self-executing computer programs that can be used to program how any financial metric should behave given a particular scenario, addressing many of the drawbacks usually cited as showstoppers.
In fact, AI-based smart contracts can even anticipate hard to predict scenarios. And virtually any smart contract of the appropriate kind would be cheaper and more adaptable than even the best contracts drafted by the best lawyers.
The real problem of blockchain goes to its roots, to the implicit manifesto which embedded the values of its creators in 2008 into the underlying concept.
At the core of the blockchain theory, first applied to bitcoin, is the idea of transactions between equals (peers) without a trusted third party.