Bryan Daugherty, Global Public Policy Director for the Bitcoin Association, is a subject matter expert in blockchain ESG & information security, cybersecurity, commercial blockchain development, and enterprise transformation. He's also a certified cryptocurrency investigator. Bryan is responsible for informing lawmakers of blockchain and noticing technology's latest research and innovation. 

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the utility of blockchain and bitcoin. While the media links them to speculative crypto markets, the combination of bitcoin and blockchain has broad implications for data security and improved commercial transaction capabilities. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Status quo: People misunderstand the purpose of blockchain and assume it's inexorably linked with crypto mining. The focus is on the least important aspect of this technology: the tokens. It's created a mindset that blockchain tokens are a speculative financial instrument. 

• The main ingredient for disruption: We can disrupt the status quo by reverting to the initial purpose of blockchain and Bitcoin, according to the original Bitcoin White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. It describes an honest network that provides microtransactions and data security. The tokens are a tool to get to the underlying technology: smart contracts, automation, data integrity, data storage, and data analysis. 

• Most online users don't realize that all data is vulnerable. It can change and does change. Blockchain systems provide a highly secure, resilient system for data immutability. 

• Blockchain systems have stagnated because they haven't been scaled up for mass use. If the technology could reach the kind of transaction processing capacity of companies like Visa, blockchain applications could expand dramatically. 

• Environmental concerns about blockchain1 would actually decrease with greater use. It takes the same amount of C02 to process a thousand transactions as it does to process 10 million transactions. The per-transaction energy cost would decrease with increased transactions. 

• Using blockchain for transaction processing would provide companies with real-time data about their customers and speed up customer service improvements. 

• Creators could use blockchain-empowered social media to retain verifiable, monetizable ownership of their work without a middleman application like Facebook or Youtube. 

• Scalable blockchain could be an upgrade to today's internet, allowing direct verification of data, eliminating the middleman, and reducing transaction fees for consumers. 

Quote of the Show 12:19  

"So, you know, there's so much misunderstanding about just the technology in general. And, you know, because of that early misunderstanding of maintaining one megabit blocks,... it incentivized others to find ways to scale, you know, other ways. And so now we see that all the, all the time with the Lightning network or, you know, these off-chain solutions or moving to a different consensus mechanism. But the reality is, any of those, you know, decisions really draw back from the benefits of what blockchain or Bitcoin specifically provides, which, you know, is this very secure, resilient system for data in, you know, immutability." 

 

Links: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bwdaugherty/    

Company Website: https://smartledger.solutions/  

 

Ways to Tune In: 

Amazon Music — https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/eccda84d-4d5b-4c52-ba54-7fd8af3cbe87/disruption-interruption 

Apple Podcast — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disruption-interruption/id1581985755 

Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/show/6yGSwcSp8J354awJkCmJlD 

 

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