Trust is the cornerstone of socioeconomic success and geopolitical balance. Our current world is exhibiting a massive trust deficit. Distrust is resulting in socioeconomic failures and geopolitical angst. Blockchain’s superpower is trust. It is time to mandate blockchain businesses to rebuild trust, success and balance across global systems.
Geopolitical agitations, the war in Ukraine and elsewhere, famine, climate crisis, inflation, supply chain problems, and financial market turmoil are a few of humanity’s many challenges today.
Let’s talk about trust
The world is in need of and must trust again. Blockchain is a technology built upon integrated trust. Where there is trust, there can be progress. Given these tumultuous times, blockchain must be treated not as an alternative but as an incumbent — a catalyst technology that enables confidence and builds trust.
The recent World Economic Forum theme “Working Together and Restoring Trust” showcased that the world has lost trust in institutions. Global leaders must urgently encompass blockchain businesses’ solutions already in motion to solve the deficits in trust and rebuild a better future. In turn, blockchain businesses must rightly demand their mandate as global reformers and builders of trust.
The WEF takes place annually in Davos, Switzerland, the country that is home to the world’s most mature blockchain hub — Crypto Valley. Concurrently, during the forum, the blockchain business community convened from all over the world, not inside the formal forum walls but in the adjacent Davos Promenade. Here was found precisely what the world needs: security, transparency and trust. Blockchain and cryptocurrency businesses descend on Davos each year to share their superpower and demonstrate that it is in humanity’s best interest to begin mutual interaction and trust. It is time that blockchain tech’s superpower is given a mandate.
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The new human mindset seeks trust
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, business has emerged as the most trusted institution in the past three years. Business’s most significant advantage is competence. This ability to get things done has led to an increased reliance on businesses to step in where the government has failed. At a time when the world has been challenged, the stakes for firms failing to take a stand and engage on economic, societal and geopolitical issues have never been higher.
Humanity is recovering from the aftershocks of a global pandemic, enduring many geopolitical terrors, and trying to prevent its climate and ecology from failing. People trust less and seek meaning and a fairer way of interacting and transacting. Structures such as governments, financial institutions and media are under distrust and scrutiny. The new human mindset insists on transparency and accountability regarding how things are done, governed and regulated. Entities, whether commercial, societal or state, must reach out and react to satisfy the new mindset of the global population.
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Over 1,000 companies exiting the Russian market in the months since the Ukraine invasion is evidence of the new value standard humanity has placed on business — and not forgetting what the global blockchain community has done to help this particular conflict.
Blockchain businesses have a superpower: providing trust to enable humanity’s new mindset to come to fruition.
Blockchain’s superpower is trust
Blockchain businesses are competent, built by experienced pioneers, tech wizards and big thinkers. We must take pride as a global industry that we are creating new economies and rebuilding trust by enabling new ways to interact and transact in a transparent manner — as demanded by the new human mindset.
We are creating a transformation through our technology’s capacity to build trust, but we must begin to reach out to the centralized world in which humanity is still lingering and show the way forward. More than any other business sector, we have the best tool in the toolbox: a tech to offer new ways of organizing processes, handling information, and guaranteeing transparency and trust. Improving trust is blockchain’s superpower and provides the foundation for governments, citizens and businesses to trust one another.
Blockchain is no longer an experiment — it is catalytic tech. Look at what the first inning has achieved: a cryptocurrency market and financial inclusion for so many. It is changing functions and services, including land registration, education, healthcare, procurement, supply chains and identity management. It is generating not only new digital asset formats but new universes and new economies. Blockchain brings trust.
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Developing sustainable solutions for humanity requires a clear understanding of how blockchain businesses are already solving global challenges. Centralized global entities at a business level are already working with blockchain, and institutions will follow. As they do, the leadership of blockchain businesses must stand up, lead and be counted. After all, we created the trust capability of blockchain.
Africa is an example of blockchain enabling trust
This is particularly evident in the case of Africa. Many citizens in African countries are unable to trust institutions that we take for granted and have no access to the global financial system. Instead, Africa has self-administered a recipe for trust — blockchain tech.
In this regard, Africa is symbolic of the new world, a world where trust is rekindling. First, the continent has great economic potential, with a young population and impressive gross domestic product growth potential. Second, the adoption of new technologies, especially blockchain and crypto, is remarkable. True to the motto “when challenges become opportunities,” Africa is consistently solving challenges, creating opportunities, and building a future on the blockchain.
In Africa, blockchain technology gives people the opportunity to trust and participate in a socioeconomic system whose fundamentals allow for inclusion, independence and security.
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Blockchain business leaders must mark their global trust mandate
As blockchain leaders, we must recognize our superpower and assert our trust mandate as enablers of a better future. Sharing our capabilities while accepting our responsibilities as a business sector, we have the power to enable the new human mindset whose fundamentals are seeking trust and transparency and new ways of interacting and transacting.
It is imperative that blockchain leaders recognize that humanity has placed its trust in businesses to create a firmer future. Blockchain businesses are already making the world a better place by creating transparency and trust. Let’s show the world our trust mandate.
I invite blockchain business leaders to write to at least one government official explaining how their blockchain expertise is super empowering for a better future. In this way, we are marking our mandate.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Mathias Ruch is a driving force in the development of the global blockchain startup ecosystem. As CEO of CV VC, he manages a portfolio of nearly 50 investments, and as co-founder of CV Labs, he is at the heartbeat of Crypto Valley in Switzerland. At the Swiss Blockchain Federation, he leads the internationalization of Switzerland’s expertise. He has founded, managed and achieved multiple successful exits.