 You probably heard I'm an expert in Bitcoin. I want to talk about something else completely trust The Dunbar number is defined as the maximum number of people who can be in a community and We see this in nature again and again even among other social animals like chimpanzees or wolves or bonobo monkeys About a hundred and fifty members of a community can relate to each other just simply based on Ties of family and acquaintance. You probably know intimately about a hundred and fifty people Your brain is designed to have that limit How do we exceed that limit? Exceeding that limit essentially is the definition of civilization For thousands of years Human beings have found ways to gradually increase the number of people they can relate to and organize Creating ties between neighboring communities and to do that first. We had to invent language but language was not enough so we invented religion and Religion was not enough so we invented money and Gradually we kept making the organizations we could build bigger and as these organizations got bigger We started building Monuments to these achievements The pyramids in Egypt are a demonstration We can collaborate and organize tens of thousands of people over decades to build monuments that last and Our civilization has continued to grow and build on this promise The industrial revolution Created new models for us to organize new models for us to collaborate and the primary model of the industrialized Revolution is the bureaucratic hierarchy the organization the institution the corporation a Pyramid scheme a System that looks like the Egyptian pyramids where? Actions are taken at the bottom Decisions are made at the top and information must flow up and be concentrated But there's a problem with this scheme and the problem is that power also flows up and is concentrated And at some point once you make the organization big enough The person making the decisions or the people making the decision have too much power and not enough information They are far away from the place where decisions are being acted on and they cannot see the consequences of those decisions and Power corrupts the more you have the more it corrupts and now the Organizations that through the scientific method and the industrial revolution brought us to this globalization to the Internet to all of the amazing things we've built as a civilization the Fundamental units that help us decide that help us collaborate that help us organize are Failing to scale we cannot make decisions on a global scale about simple things or About important things we cannot solve the problems that we have enough money to solve like poverty or climate change And the reason we can't is because our fundamental Organizational unit is failing to scale to the demands of a global planet How do we fix this on? January 3rd 2009 Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin and Most people think that this invention was about money, but it wasn't it was fundamentally about trust You see the internet has given us this Fantastic opportunity to be able to scale communication to a global level. We can now communicate effectively At numbers of billions of people all around the world without barriers without borders Blind to ethnicity nationality race religion age ability or any of the other things that confuse our communication and Yet many important things on the internet are centralized They still have the fundamental construct of a bureaucratic hierarchy corporations that require decision-making at the top of unelected leaders Who decide on the social structures and rules of our most important applications and functions and yet? They are far distant from the users. They serve Organizations like Facebook and Google, but so many others too The internet has scaled communication, but it cannot scale decision-making and the reason for that is trust We do not have a platform to scale trust We do not have a platform that allows us to create trusted decision-making without hierarchy until January 3rd 2009 Because once you understand what blockchain technology does you understand that this is not about currency Currency is just the most obvious application once you can build a completely flat Non-hierarchical peer-to-peer network that allows you for the very first time to take trust and Move it from being a system of institutions bureaucracies and hierarchies Into becoming a protocol a flat Network that allows you to engage in trusted interactions with others without an intermediary without a corporation without a hierarchy and we can make this technology scale so we can now Have trusted decisions governance Social decision-making on a massive scale without giving power to the few without creating These hierarchical organizations that have managed to get us this far, but cannot get us any further This model of trust is gradually seeping into the consciousness of the world People are beginning to realize that we can do a lot more than just currency with this technology We can build voting systems. We can reimagine the corporation itself Create ad hoc Associations between people who come together to create new projects and applications without leaders in This system of trust there are rules and these rules are very easy to determine and very predictable in their outcomes But there are no rulers and we have never before in history had a system of rules without rulers and What happens when this technology is unleashed on the world? The world's governments rise up and say thank you. This is the solution. We've been looking for we no longer needs to make Hierarchical decisions finally we can scale no They say this will only be used by criminals Pornographers ransomware it subverts the state. We cannot allow it We must regulate against it. Who gave you permission to do this? You didn't ask the regulator you didn't ask the parliament to start organizing on a massive global scale We did not ask for permission and Yet here it is it is happening on a massive scale and it is growing Exponentially and it will shake the world to its foundations Because it is a system of social organization that delivers equality as a feature and Works at massive scale almost every important innovation in history Starts off being illegal or Unregulated all of the interesting things that happened in technology were started by people who forgot to ask for permission Because the regulations themselves the laws themselves are written by hierarchical Institutions to serve the incumbent corporations that need those laws to protect themselves from competition The model that we are disrupting is not finance It is hierarchy and the rules were written by hierarchy and of course these systems break those rules Well, guess what? Skype was illegal and they did it anyway Uber was illegal and they did it anyway Airbnb was illegal and they did it anyway and everything interesting in the world Starts off being illegal self-driving cars started rolling in California Without permission and they were illegal and they did it anyway You are startup founders When you decide how to build your next application be bold be brave break a few rules Don't do criminal things Think of morality first And rules second break the mold Don't ask for permission Innovate faster than they can write the rules Create the next world the one you want your children to live in one that is free from hierarchy One that allows us to collaborate across the world Peer to peer which means person to person We can't change the world, but in order to that to do that we must not ask for permission We must be bold. Thank you