How Exactly Is Blockchain Supposed to Change the World?

Rowan Walrath wrote yesterday about bitcoin. She talked to Pai-Ling Yin, a professor at USC:

While cryptocurrency investment has a “bubble element,” she says, that doesn’t mean blockchain has no value. To put it simply, blockchain is an anonymized, decentralized system for managing data and keeping accounts, and while it’s most commonly associated with cryptocurrencies, it has potentially far-reaching implications for the future direction of the internet….Does this mean investors are right to value bitcoin at $20,000? Not necessarily, Yin says. “It’s high for now. Let’s put it that way,” she says. “There could be a time where the valuation we see now does correspond to the value of what the technology is.”

I should admit up front that I obviously don’t “get” bitcoin, but I really don’t get Yin’s comment. In what way should bitcoin reflect the value of the technology behind it? Owning bitcoin doesn’t give me a patent on blockchain technology, after all. There’s tremendous amounts of technology that go into making a penny too, but it’s still only worth one cent.

Anyway, blockchain. It’s an interesting technology. As Walrath says, it’s decentralized. That means it’s a way of conducting reliable transactions without having anyone in the middle to verify them. This has some potentially interesting uses, but only if you care deeply about not having anyone in the middle. The Visa network, for example, can process billions of transactions quickly and accurately, as all of us know since we use our credit and debit cards every day with no hassle. Transaction processing per se is not a problem that needs solving. However, all the transactions are managed by Visa. If you don’t want Visa to know what you’re doing, this is a problem.

It’s not clear to me just how widespread this desire is. Drug dealers and money launderers, obviously, like to keep a low profile. Ditto for organizations that are banned from using the banking system. And of course, anyone who’s just generally paranoid. But how big a market is that? It doesn’t seem all that big to me. But then again, I don’t get it, do I?

Plus there’s the issue of just how blockchain manages this reliable, decentralized verification of transactions. The answer in the case of bitcoin is that thousands of computers around the world are engaged in bitcoin mining, in the hopes of getting rich. In the course of that mining, they maintain the blockchain. That’s all fine, but how does blockchain work when there aren’t thousands of people around the globe with a profit motive to maintain the blockchain? Beats me.

I dunno. Blockchain is an interesting technology, but I continue to have a hard time seeing it as revolutionary. I guess we’ll just have to wait to see.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate