America Falling, Capitalism Imploding, and Blockchain Rising: a Q&A with Blockchain News Owner Richard Kastelein

words by Michael Madden

Richard Kastelein, Source: http://d10e.biz/richard-kastelein/

If you are ever in one of those bored, mid-morning dazes wondering what the future holds as you prop yourself up, one-handed against the cupboard beside the office coffee machine, I suggest a conversation with Richard Kastelein. You may not feel reassured but, at the very least, your boredom will no longer be a concern.

A conversation with the Blockchain News owner and founder can start on the intricate workings of Bitcoin and Blockchain – their formation, how they can be utilised for the betterment of society– and end with a discussion on the immorality of banks, the currency of Micronesian islands, and how America is in very serious danger of becoming a nation left behind.

By the time you have collected yourself, you will become ever more aware of why the Dutch-Canadian’s motor-mouthed lecturing skills have been sought out by MIT, Oxford, and the University of Köln.

Fresh from the recent honor of being published in the Harvard Business Review, Kastelein was in fine form, switching between topics at an unblinking speed. The subject hopping of course runs parallel with his own journeyman background. A journalist-turned seafarer, who is now an expert in Blockchain technology, Kastelein is a reformed jack-of-all-trades that has found his niche.

Can you outline firstly, in the most basic of terms, what Bitcoin is and what its relationship is with Blockchain?

Bitcoin came around in 2008 partly as a result of the crash by a group called… or a person, we don’t know, called Satoshi Nakamoto. What was in effect created was the world’s first currency that has no central authority. That’s the basic difference. There is no central bank; we found a way for people to send money to each other through what we call digital assets. That is immutable – it can’t be changed – and the record is there. If I send you a Bitcoin its recorded in the Blockchain that I have I sent you and its locked into a historical ledger.

How did it come to pass that Bitcoin has, not only become a currency, but also a highly popular one in such a small amount of time?

Yeah well what really gave Bitcoin the rise was, unfortunately, the dark web. Weed, hire a hitman, whatever you want to do right? Dope, heroin, smack, coke, all those guys were using Bitcoin as a currency. That was what kinda got it into the underground and started increasing its value because it was being used more. But do you know the first item that was ever bought with Blockchain technology? I think it was in late 2009 but it cost 10’000 Bitcoin to buy a pizza. Do you know what that’s worth today?

 A lot?

$10 million. [Laughs] The interesting thing about money is that it’s a philosophical debate really. What is money? Money is what we as a group determine it to be? Does it have value or not?

So it’s dependent on consensus?

Exactly. There is an island called Yap in Micronesia, nobody’s heard of it, but the islanders there for 700 years have been sailing to another island there about 400 miles away and hacking these huge stone coins out of rock – about 3 metres high – called rai stones. They would sail them back to the island and this was their currency because everybody agreed it had value. Sometimes when sailing back during storms, the stone would fall off the boat and fall 10 miles down and 30 miles away. But they still included those stones in their economy. They didn’t have to see it; they all agreed it was there.

That’s basically a Blockchain. Ok it’s missing a few things like game theory, etc. but essentially it’s about people agreeing upon a value and being able to trade that value.

Despite Bitcoin having the most publicised success, it seems that Blockchain has the most potential for future innovation

Well in 2012/2013 people realised we could do other things with this Blockchain technology that underlies Bitcoin. People were asking “why don’t we use this for other stuff?” So the thing about Blockchain is that it opens up a whole new world of digital assets. Not just Bitcoin, but any kind of asset.

So essentially what we have done is de-centralised and redistributed trust. In finance we can remove the trust authority from the middlemen and have almost zero costs for transfers. Then people think what are other trust agents that we can replace? Well government are trust agents, what can we change about the way we govern? Or how about ID’s and personal records in the health industry?

Source: Institute for the Future

I read that the G20 is interested in using Blockchain, is this good for its development, or a threat to the deregulated nature associated with the technology?

I’m interested in seeing what the corporate world will do. There has to be a bridge between the old way and the new way. So when the G20 says they are interested in exploring Blockchain I’m excited. When the Central Bank of England says ‘we are thinking about a digital currency” I’m like yeah! When the Central Bank of Sweden says the same thing, good good. You guys need to do this.

But for the banks in particular, there must be a worry about how Blockchain could change their industry

The bankers I could care less for, I don’t think they add a lot of value to society other than just making a lot of money. I think Blockchain and technology can replace a lot of what bankers do.

There is no role for the bank. We can do peer to peer lending on Blockchain, I mean there are already things coming in that are going to disrupt them, even outside of Blockchain. It’s their turn. I’m a journalist I already went through that. I woke up one morning and suddenly there were 300’000 bloggers. I had to reinvent what I do.

Beyond banks though, most industries must be nervous about the threat of Blockchain?

Blockchain, Artificial intelligence, Automation, and the Internet of things all have a role to play in this deconstruction of capitalism that is coming. Those four things come together and make an absolute job smasher. So what do we do?

Right now we reward bankers for doing bad. Its profit above everything else and its not sustainable. We can’t continue to grow and grow. We have to find a new economic system. This is why Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, are all experimenting with Universal Basic Income – if you don’t start solving these problems now before you have 60 -70% unemployment then you are going to have people at the gates of the parliament buildings with pitchforks when this time comes.

So you envision Universal Basic Income as becoming a standard part of the Western Society in the future?

Well America is never, never going to do a universal basic income, there’s too many nutcases there, they don’t have a socialist underpinning like we (Europeans) do. We went through 2 World Wars, we had to stick together and get out of those things, Americans never had to come together and solve such large-scale issues.

There are too many elements in American society that brainwash the population to believe that the free capitalism, conservatism drilled into the brains of people by government, lobbyists, and education is the only way. It’s a Corporatocracy. I just hope they don’t bring Canada down with them.