Another Earth

Okamoto Ken
Sep 3, 2018 · 5 min read

I used to live in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the opposite side of the world from Tokyo for five years from 2011. At that time I used to go back to Japan periodically, 3 to 4 times a year and travel over 30 hours till check-in after leaving my home every time I traveled. The Earth is big.

In 2008, Mr. Thomas Friedman wrote a famous book called “The World is Flat”. In the book, he foresaw that the development of the Internet and the development of China and Indian economies will unify the world and bring everyone under the same conditions.
After one decade since his book was published, his reliable assertion has become a reality. As far as software development is concerned, there are no borders any more. The software development engineers may choose any city and English as an official language company around the globe where you want to live and move. Or move oneself may be an old fashioned-concept. Such developers work from home. If there is a communication tool in the Internet, they will do their work on their computer. Then, they select projects that motivate themselves to participate. It is important to understand that companies discussing whether or not permit side-jobs of their employees are out of the preference of those smart developers.
As often explained, blockchain is all about value transfer. What does it mean by the context above?

The biggest achievement of the Internet is connecting the world with an information network and flatten it. Thanks to the power of the Internet, the world’s information gap has narrowed, and internet service companies based on information such as Google and Facebook who have read the current trends steadily grew to be one of the world’s largest enterprises. Ironically, the following year after the book “The world is flat” was published, the era of blockchains has begun with the publication of the famous Bitcoin’s paper in the Internet by a person named “Satoshi Nakamoto”.

Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned P2P electronic money system without border and barriers. Considering its broader ambition, the humble release of the paper to the Internet has been instantly spread to the world by enthusiasts and has created a cryptocurrency bubble in 2017.
Although a lot of discussion has been done on the intrinsic value of Bitcoins, most of it is about its proper marketcap. However, the main invention of the Bitcoin in our view is based on the fact that is has come up with a mechanism that can obtain consensus democratically in an environment even where participants are considering only their own interests, and the consensus made in P2P network enforces the transfer of the value.
So what is the transfer of this value? Taking Bitcoin as an example, Bitcoin is an asset value, and its transfer means that the number of Bitcoin is transferred from Alice to Bob in P2P manner. The important point of it is that it is P2P which connects the world. It means that another world made with a blockchain value transfer network without borders and barriers was created.

If labor contracts are signed in this other world, if real estate is traded in this other world,. Banks are desperately starting researching blockchains, same as the media had started studying unknown internet with fear, in order to protect their businesses 20 years ago. That’s because the world where potentially banks are unnecessary is already there.

Although most people have not noticed yet except some people doing crypto business, there is already another world on the other side of the Telegram, where provision of labor services and financial services is already there by skipping existing traditional scheme.
I don’t believe it is for tax evasion purpose among the participants. But it just makes sense for everyone to use. Send one message to the responsible person and talk on the spot at the audio or video conference if necessary. And the compensation is by Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Even if the global information exchange is invented in the Internet era, it was and has been very difficult to physically go beyond borders, and only some adventurers or big enterprises were able to enjoy that profit. Now if a boy who speaks fair English in the street around the corner somewhere in the world can become a part of the project team.

Even if the government makes an awful obsession for this movement, it spreads in P2P as if it is laughing at. No one can stop it. What is needed by the government is to understand the reality and to create regulations for blockchain era citizens from a global perspective in a way that is compatible with the other world.
For example, a Japanese company asked Indian freelancers to work with smart contracts in the future. There is no way to prove that that amount of money has been paid for service provision. It does not show any difference in the history of trading that the amount was sent for money laundering. Will the Taxation Bureau read the code of smart contract? Probably they will read it if necessary.

However, the counterpart’s information is only the address of the crypto. No one knows whether it is from a resident in Japan or a resident in the country on the opposite side of the planet. Nevertheless, since the ordering side can not help doing it as a filer, they will just manually manage the cryptocurrency transaction history and record how much they have made remittance to whom. We just hope the recipient will do the same.

The degree of difficulty and the scale complication have been dramatically expanding. Do you see it as a fraudster selling fake money called cryptocurrency or do you want to explorer this other world with those who have entered earlier? It is your choice.
For us, we have been seeing the excitement of the world of blockchains since the inception, as large as we had witnessed the power of the internet for the first time in our 1990’s college days. We are believing this P2P world will make the world better simply because we know that there is already another earth exists on the other side of our smartphone where the value other than information is being transferred without border. And it just makes sense even when you think of existing global business expansion.

BCL Foundation

BCL Chain is the Japan's first public chain for enterprise blockchain service. Also visit https://bcl.foundation

Okamoto Ken

Written by

BCL Foundation

BCL Foundation

BCL Chain is the Japan's first public chain for enterprise blockchain service. Also visit https://bcl.foundation

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