“Beam me up, Scotty” is a quote that is etched in the heart of every science fiction fan. The seminal Star Trek from the sixties is well known and well loved, and this quote has become part of our cultural lexicon. Importantly, this show predicted many things that are a part of our everyday life right now – things that seemed outlandish at the time. Let's start with the communicator, a flip‐phone device that allowed our beloved crew to communicate with each other over vast distances. Clearly with cell phones we have that now. Then, of course, there was the ability to speak to a computer and get information. Siri and Alexa have checked that box as well. Meanwhile, on the ship's bridge, Lieutenant Uhura had an earpiece in her ear which allowed her to hear conversations, communications, and information directly and privately. Yup, thank you, earbuds, we've got that too. Of course, the transporter allowed the crew to move vast distances instantaneously. (Okay, okay, we don't have teleportation yet, but we're pretty sure scientists are working on it, and given the rest of the predictions that the show made it would not surprise us at all if teleportation is someday a reality.) The point of all of this is that things that seemed far‐fetched and made no sense 50 years ago are now commonplace today. The future, it would seem, is often not as far off as it seems. We can ignore it or step into it; the choice is ours.

Up until now we've mostly been unpacking and explaining core aspects of the world of crypto and blockchain, but in this chapter we're going to look ahead to the future that is unfolding and provide a preview of the impact this technology may well have.

The Future of the Metaverse

Today technology around the metaverse is still young, although there are multiple commercially available virtual reality headsets that allow us to experience alternative worlds. What is important is that we will be able to operate inside of a virtual world and, although young, this technology is much farther along than you may expect. During the pandemic, I could strap on a headset, beam into a virtual world, and have a conversation with family on the other side of the country. Our avatars were blocky and the environment was crude, but the experience was eye‐opening and the technology was much more advanced than I had anticipated. Competition to create “the” metaverse is fierce, with major corporations striving to dominate. At the same time, blockchain upstarts are also pursuing their own vision. Who wins is not important, although we expect that, like most things, it will ultimately end up in a duopoly, with a couple of metaverses being ubiquitous, similar to how Apple and Samsung have ostensibly chopped up the smartphone market. The point is, sooner than you realize, we'll be able to engage virtually in much the same way we do today and we expect we'll quickly evolve from the blocky avatars today to slick, lifelike personas that get closer and closer to being indistinguishable from reality. Just as the Matrix films represented a virtual world that our heroes were trying to get out of, before long we'll have virtual worlds that everyone is trying to get in to!

The Future of Sovereign Data

One of the great impacts of the world of Web 3.0 considers the fact that we can own our own data. Data is held in cryptographically secure wallets, and each wallet is controlled by a person. Wallets can be attached to applications, websites, and stores, and data can be transmitted only with the consent of the owner of the data. Let's explore how this might look.

If you've made it this far, you now understand what happens when a bitcoin is sent from person to person. We all know that your money can be transmitted only with your consent, but this gets far more interesting when applying the same principles to data. Let's unpack the concept touched on earlier, that all of your sensitive personal data could be stored in an NFT that you and only you control. This token cannot be changed without your permission and, importantly, it cannot be used or even read without your consent. It is not stored or controlled by any third party so it cannot be hacked, reducing ID theft, nor can it be monetized or ever used without your permission. You may choose to let third parties read subsets of the data, such as your driver's license number, Social Security number, or birthdate, but not every piece of data about you needs to necessarily be released and none of it is controlled by anyone but you. Now, you may actually choose to share your data and maybe even sell your data to certain companies for their use, but this is always and only with your consent. Health records are an obvious example. Complex laws have been written basically as a solution to the fact that so much of your health data is in so many hands. In fact, it's so spread out that sometimes it's even hard for you to gather all of it. What if, instead, you had an NFT of all of your health information? As long as you can prove that it is your data, which you can with your private keys, you can share it with whomever you want. By the way, this doesn't mean that you can modify your record as desired. This NFT could be set up so that only licensed doctors (with your permission) could modify it and, importantly, every modification would be trackable. Importantly, you also don't need to rush around to many doctors and insurance companies filling out forms asking them to release your data to you. You own your own data. You control your own data. Period. As with many other aspects of new technology this whole thing needs to get fleshed out properly, but the potential exists now, so it won't be long before this becomes commonplace. This will also, however, require a change in mindset and increased personal responsibility, but ultimately we see this as a good thing as well.

The Future of Money

We've spent so much time talking about the technology that we'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about the future of money. While Bitcoin jockeys to be the reserve asset of the digital world we encourage you to think of it more like gold. It's a reserve asset of limited qualities that becomes a store of value. Transactions in the future between two people will be done via digital assets that represent the monetary tools with which we are most familiar. Of course, we're speaking of the dollar, the euro, and other fiat currencies.

Stablecoins, which are representations of a government‐backed currency such as the dollar, gain all of the benefits of blockchain technology. Stablecoins are backed 1–1 with the underlying currency, so if you have 100 USDC, you can exchange it for $100. Stablecoins allow us to transact as peers in the same way that we do cash, but with the benefits of transparency, immutability, and decentralization. With cash getting ever more scarce, we see stablecoins as the future of transactable money.

Of course, governments do seem to like some sense of control, so they have their own answer, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). You will certainly be hearing a lot about these in the future. The digital dollar, noted earlier, or currencies like the digital yuan are already gaining strides in China. We have to point out that these are not, at least today, blockchain‐based implementations. These are digital representations of a currency we already know and love – but in a digital format. The distinction here is that CBDCs will have a counterparty that is in control. Just like Visa really has the final say‐so on what is on your credit card statement, the government will have the final say‐so on your digital dollars. It is important that they are not conflated with cash because, unlike USDC stored in your wallet, any digital dollar ultimately is granted use by Uncle Sam. Of course, the convenience that they provide will promote their use and this really isn't an issue for most people, but just like some prefer cash today, some will opt for the blockchain counterpart.

The important takeaway here is that the money of the future will for the most part not be physical in any way. This gives us additional benefits not only of convenience, but the ability to transact something of value in both the physical and virtual worlds, blurring the line between realities. If this sounds far‐fetched, know that this prediction isn't really one of the future; it's already happening today.

The Future of the DAO

When we look back into the past we see that the concept of a company is not really all that new. We can trace the concept of individuals banding together as a legal entity as far back as Rome's Collegium from 49 BC,¹ while in the modern era many look to the East India Company, set up by British merchant adventurers and granted a royal charter of Queen Elizabeth I in 1600,² as the grandfather of all corporations. Rather than debate this, one thing that is generally accepted is the concept of a modern organizational structure in which we generally have an executive, a managing partner, or CEO who is accountable for ensuring that the company functions and is the ultimate decision maker for day‐to‐day operations. This executive in turn reports to a board, a small group of individuals also focused on the company's well‐being who will vote on corporate matters and provide direction. This has been the go‐to structure for getting things done and, while there are variants such as limited liability companies (LLCs) and partnerships, they all generally result in one or a few individuals ostensibly being in control of that entity. The point being, it's been a while since we've had anything really innovative or new in the world of legal entities, and we certainly don't have entities today that are governed by everyone involved.

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), as we learned in Chapter 5, takes the concept of decentralization found in blockchains and applies them to an organization. A DAO has no central authority. Instead, a DAO is managed by governance tokens, and those who hold them get to participate in how that organization is going to function. DAOs, like blockchains, are run by software that is publicly visible and verifiable – everyone knows the rules of the game and is considered by many to be the ultimate in shareholder empowerment. Furthermore, there is no one person or small group of people that stand to get paid if the company goes well, as all monies earned are distributed to the token holders.

DAOs are going to change everything, because they are not subject to the whims, desires, or biases of one (or a small group) of individuals whose actions often change to ensure that things turn out in their own best interest. Never have we seen such a glaring example of this as the implosion of FTX and Celsius. In both of these cases, decisions on governance were ultimately made by their respective CEOs. Because Celsius was a centralized play at common DeFi concepts, let's explore what this could have looked like as a DAO. Alex Mashinsky was CEO of Celsius and, as we have learned given its bankruptcy, his interests and choices weren't necessarily in the best interest of Celsius' users. Imagine, however, if a company like Celsius was a DAO that did basically the same thing – collateralized lending and yield earning.

Just because we can, we're going to call this fictional DAO Fahrenheit. Let's go on to suppose that Fahrenheit issued crypto assets called FAHR to everyone that deposited funds into the company and that these FAHR tokens were used to vote on governance. Those who are directly involved using Fahrenheit's products and services would then be participants in the rules and initiatives for Fahrenheit. We're not saying that this would have worked flawlessly but I don't think it's a stretch to say that it certainly couldn't have turned out much worse and, importantly, customers of Fahrenheit would have a real voice.

DAOs also open up the opportunity to have expansive two‐sided marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb that function without the need of the actual company, Uber or Airbnb! Instead of a corporation, we simply need smart contracts – software that pairs up each side: drivers with riders, property owners with renters, and so on. This opens up a whole new world where buyers and sellers of almost anything can interact directly, without a central organization. Platform businesses, which are two‐sided marketplaces, have shown to outperform and win against competition. One of the best books to read about this is Platform Revolution by Jeffrey Parker, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary. Companies like Uber and Airbnb proved out the model and blockchain technology now makes it easier than ever to create a two‐sided marketplace.

The concept of a DAO is still very new and, look, there are plenty of bugs to be worked out. There are some cases where centralization may well beat decentralization and vice versa. It's also very likely that we'll see some hybrids of this in the future. There are naturally a ton of questions about efficiency, operations, and so on that, quite frankly, aren't resolved yet and that we aren't going to tackle in this chapter. Ultimately, however, what we want to leave you with is that the outcropping of the blockchain revolution is that we have the ability now to have self‐governed organizations that are transparent and genuinely working in the best interest of their customers/users/constituents while reducing human bias. We have groups acting in concert to do things that are in the best interest of the group, and that is powerful.

The Future of Companies

Let's extend this concept and really look at the future of companies, because the structure of companies will change, too. Of course, we will still have corporations and limited partnerships and the legal entities established in case law and overseen by the various regulatory and government authorities that provide their legal rights. It's how people come together and how that might be upgraded that will change, all to meet a more dynamic market.

Companies will always have owners, management, and labor. What may change in the future is how groups of people organize to meet common goals and objectives. For example, in the future, Uber (we're just picking a name out of a hat here) may not consist of one primary legal entity with departments of people working under like customer service, operations, finance, technology, partnerships (drivers), and business development (demand, those who seek rides). There may be one primary legal entity that becomes a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC) and then multiple DAOs that report to the DAC. Each DAO will have its own set of goals and objectives, with a management team as a part of the DAO whose primary purpose is to guide that DAO to meet its objectives. They in turn recruit labor to join the DAO and work on its behalf to serve the goals of the organization. There may be token‐based economies inside each DAO that drive the incentive structure to deliver on whatever goals are set forth within the DAO. This would allow resources and talent to pool much more dynamically. As well, by using an economics‐based incentive structure for each group (DAO) under the one company DAC, there is a mechanism to align incentives between owners, managers, and labor.

Practical Examples

Most new technological revolutions start with the adoption of new clusters of innovation. The first big push in the adoption cycle is to re‐create something we can already do but do it a lot more efficiently (or, better, in several ways). This time around, most of the focus with crypto has been to implement traditional financial services in a decentralized way and to view tokenized assets like stocks in the past – to invest in them and trade in them. But the big step into the future isn't about doing what we can already do. It's about being able to do something new or to do something so differently as to bring about a paradigm shift.

With blockchain technology, peer‐to‐peer transactions allow us to respond to the market much more dynamically. And that's what's going to happen. More markets, interacted with much more dynamically. We would like to walk you through two scenarios that almost everyone can relate to. This peek into the future may show what the world might be like in the years to come. How humans organize to produce in an economy, the methods, tools, and practices, is going to shift wildly.

The Technology Exists Today

We'll wrap this up by noting that it's the technologies that exist today that make all of this possible. The first is the tokenization of assets, as we've discussed in previous chapters. The second is the ease with which a two‐sided marketplace can be implemented. Both are possible due to blockchain technology – we just have to see it come to fruition.

Yet these are just a few markets and marketplaces that show what the evolution might look like. It's the dynamic nature of markets that will shift and those who can respond and adapt to the ever‐changing world will be the ones to capitalize on it. It's the adoption and application of technology that drives this process. Those who can adopt the new technology and apply it are the ones who will win out against the competition. Those who don't will go the way of Blockbuster.

A New Long Wave Economic Cycle Has Begun

Toward the end of 2022, OpenAI released a project called ChatGPT. There are some great TikToks explaining why it's so powerful.³ ChatGPT is an AI platform where the user simply asks questions or has a conversation with the AI. It's a natural‐language user interface that feels much more “human” than typing into forms on a web page. And it's powerful. Unbelievably powerful. Let me explain.

As a user, you go to the OpenAI website.⁴ You create an account by entering your name and cell phone number (and in doing so you do give up your privacy). You are now provided a prompt where you can ask questions and give instructions in a natural language format. Something like, “Write me a 500‐word essay summarizing the book The Great Gatsby.” And guess what? It spits out a 500‐word essay summarizing the book! No shit. It really does.

So, what are the ramifications of a free tool that does so much? The Age of Information is dead. It's matured. A new long‐wave economic cycle is beginning. I call it the Age of Autonomy^® and I write extensively on the new technological revolution that's upon us. You can read it in my first book, Crypto Investing in the Age of Autonomy.⁵ Long‐wave economic cycles are driven by technological revolutions. We've had five in the past 200 years.⁶ From the Industrial Revolution to electrification, to railroads, to oil and automobiles, to the Age of Information, we've seen cycles play out throughout history.

When a new cycle begins, it changes the nature of how economies work and how people generate income, and it changes them drastically. Many information workers are now going to be in the process of dying. If you're a radiologist, a software developer, a lawyer, or any infomation worker take note, because the global economy won't need as many in the future. Why do we need radiologists when there's an AI program that can read an X‐ray better than humans?⁷ Why do we need software developers when the average person can ask ChatGPT to write a program in Python that will build a website for them?, Why do we need lawyers when anyone can ask ChatGPT to read a contract, interpret its meaning and intent, and evaluate certain risks and parameters? The possibilities are mind‐boggling. Now, that doesn't mean we won't need any doctors or software developers or lawyers, but it does mean we'll need fewer of them. It's going to change the game of the 40‐hour workweek and going into an office and all the things we've built as standards for the Age of Information.

The future will look quite different, and I'm talking about a decade, not 100 years, from now. We're going to need to rethink how society functions. For if there are fewer information worker jobs and software is now producing a large part of the global work product, what does that mean for tax receipts the government gets to run the country with? The ramifications are large, vast, and wide.

That doesn't mean, though, that the future is bleak. For what can we be doing instead of rote processes that can be done by software? We can get more creative. And that could be quite an interesting future to be a part of. The people who are early to understand these big changes are the people who can profit and prosper from their newly gained insight. The first people who start using ChatGPT in the small businesses are the ones who will create vast amounts of monthly income that will outweigh any salary they were getting from their old job. You'll see. Better yet, you'll participate because now you're in the know!

What's Next?

Buckminster Fuller challenged us with his famous statement, “We are called to be architects of our future, not victims of it.” We love this quote, as it sums it all up. With it, Fuller describes exactly the phase we are going through now with the advent of blockchain technology. The world is changing, and this train has left the station. Wants, needs, desires, goals, alignments and outcomes, collaborations and competitions are all going to be pushed way past what we can possibly imagine under the current circumstances and constraints. More will be at stake. Much more will be won and lost under the new paradigm.

So then, from our perspective there is really only one question to answer: Will we participate in the future that is in front of us? Or are we going to stand by idly while it thunders forward? Our intent in authoring Crypto Decrypted is to empower you to be participant because this is happening whether you like it or not.

Remember that the human imagination can be quite big. How big? Well, we'll find out together, won't we?