Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies a Topic of Interest at this Year’s World Economic Forum
Author: Daniel Graf
From the Future of Blockchain council to the panel on Fake News versus Real Politics, this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland offered a wealth of information on energy, global economics, the environment, and on the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
There was a brilliant panel at Davos on the Crypto Asset Bubble, which featured some top economists, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller and Cecilia Skingsley, Deputy Governor at the Swedish Central Bank. While the title of the talk may put off some crypto-enthusiasts, there were some fascinating takeaways regarding the potential of digital currency, among other topics in macroeconomics.
Referring to Bitcoin, Dr. Shiller stated, “It seems to me it’s technology for something else. It’s gone viral, as a currency.” Shiller stressed that, while impressed with the technological foundations of Bitcoin, he doesn’t believe it will be “a permanent feature of our lives. We’re over emphasizing Bitcoin. We should broaden it out to blockchain, which will have other applications.”
Meanwhile, Skingsley gave with a historical perspective on money and how we define it.
“It must have price stability,” she explained. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies aren’t stable enough to function efficiently as money.
“They can be called an asset. Fine. But they aren’t a very good version of money….because it’s not a very stable store of value,” continued Skingsley.
Both efficiency and the environment were on the agenda in a presentation by Jon Creyts, Managing Director, Rocky Mountain Institute. His presentation incorporated an intriguing fusion of blockchain and the world’s energy issues. For more information, read his paper, Can blockchain help us to address the world’s energy issues?.
Creyts’ presentation was prefaced with some sobering statistics on the carbon footprint of distributed ledger technology. According to digiconomist.net, who tracks such things, Bitcoin — and the mining process to validate the exchange of it — currently requires about as much energy as a mid-sized nation, ranking 53rd on a global energy-use-scale.
By 2020, this power requirement is projected to grow and match that of Denmark. The article explains, “The continuous block mining cycle incentivizes people all over the world to mine Bitcoin. As mining can provide a solid stream of revenue, people are very willing to run power-hungry machines to get a piece of it.”
However, the WEF presentation offered hope. Creyts detailed an innovative energy solution that could be offered on the blockchain. The paper lays out “an Internet of Energy,” through which smart contracts could link both energy consuming and energy producing devices (think wind turbines and solar cells on the supply side, and electric batteries, smart thermostats, or other IoT appliances on the demand side).
The article details a “fusion of these three blockchain characteristics: cybersecurity, low-cost transactions, and automation that will allow us to integrate a grid of centralized power plans alongside distributed renewables.”
Blockchain wasn’t the only item on the agenda at this year’s WEF, nor was technological transformation. But it might have been difficult to escape the discussions around the topic of“fake news” and the extent of its political ramifications. Speaking on a panel, Fake News versus Real Politics, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales encapsulated the current media paradigm quite nicely when addressing a question on the impact of the advertising model on the democratic discourse:
“The advertising only business model has been incredibly destructive for journalism. One of the most encouraging signs that I’ve seen in the last couple of years is the incredible surge in digital-only subscriptions to the New York Times and other quality papers. People are finally understanding, hey actually, we need to pay for quality journalism.”
He may be onto something. According to a 2017 Gallup poll, a meager 16 percent of Americans trust the information they read on the Internet. Trust in print journalism had been declining for decades but actually spiked up since the 2016 U.S. presidential election for list of obvious reasons, as the poll touches on. A similar 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy offers further details on this sentiment:
- Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that inaccurate information on the Internet is a major problem.
- Americans say it is harder rather than easier to be informed due to the number of information sources today.
- More than eight in ten adults in the U.S. believe that the news media are critical or very important to democracy.
Journalism is facing a challenge with the business model itself, something discussed by the WEF panel at some length. Today’s model relies on click-throughs, which are bread and butter for advertisers.
Wales emphasizes that journalism “can’t compete” if the business model for journalism relies upon clicks that are the revenue driver of advertising algorithms.
What advertisers can charge depends not just upon clicks, but user engagement, retention, and other measures on the likelihood of an actual purchase by a reader. That might be good if you’re trying to sell a cool product that appeals to a particular channel or social media affinity group. However, it’s probably obvious to state that getting lots of clicks is not synonymous with any sort of measure of accurate or responsible news reporting.
There are other means to encourage user participation and reader engagement. Micropayments done on the blockchain could monetize articles and help transparency. Decisions on what content to publish — under a rigorous set of standards — could rest with the audience. This model is the structure Decentralized News Network (DNN) is currently rolling out.
About DNN
DNN is a news curation platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain. It’s our goal to encourage the dissemination of factual, unbiased political news by incentivizing accountability at all levels of the news consumption process. We’re news for the people, by the people.
Read our latest stories on the DNN Medium channel. Visit the DNN website to learn more about our project. Stay up-to-date with the latest project news by following our social channels: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can also join our project conversation on Slack, Telegram, and Reddit. Our DNN token presale is currently live. To participate, contact presale@dnn.media.
We’re currently in need of journalists, writers, readers, and editors to test out our Alpha updates! Check out our website today, and let us know what you think. Participating in our Alpha will earn you bounty stakes for our DNN Token.
