Blockchain: It's Not Just About the Money

Panel Context & Demographics:

• Moderated by Stacey Warden (Milken Institute) with a mix of investors (Charlie Noyes, Pantera Capital) and application builders (Patrick Moynihan, Eric Miller, Pete Martin, Ashish Gadness).
• The panel confirmed all five for-profit companies are currently generating revenue.

Core Technology Definitions & Philosophies:

• Charlie Noyes (Pantera): Describes blockchain not as a "Google Doc" distributed database, but as a social coordination experiment using code and incentives (immutability, consensus) to force optimal human behavior without traditional intermediaries.
• Patrick Moynihan (Blockchain Industries): Defines the shift as an economic revolution driven by distrust in government currency debasement, arguing that incentive models ("gamification") can replace burdensome regulations.
• Eric Miller (CoinCircle): Defines tokenization as splitting data/assets into cryptographic chunks to represent partial ownership or rights, enabling programmable mechanics like automatic dividends.
• Consensus Mechanisms: Noyes notes the industry is moving from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, Delegated Proof-of-Stake, and sharding (e.g., Plasma) to solve latency and scale issues, aiming for Visa-level transaction speeds (7,000 TPS).

Specific Use Cases & Applications:

• Voting (Votem, Pete Martin):
  • Solves low voter trust (e.g., 2/3 of Americans distrusted 2016 election results) by providing instant, verifiable certification.
  • Uses "Proof of Vote" consensus where independent nodes verify results (e.g., Radio Hall of Fame results certified in 20 minutes vs. 2 weeks).
  • Addresses the "garbage in, garbage out" problem via math-based hashing that rejects invalid transactions.
• Supply Chain & Identity (BankQ, Ashish Gadness):
  • Creates "economic passports" for refugees and workers in extreme poverty who lack transactional history or identity verification.
  • Focuses on "last-mile traceability" to prove existence and harvest history, enabling access to banking without reliance on central intermediaries.
  • Avoids "garbage in, garbage out" by requiring both the producer and the buyer to sign off on ledger entries.
• Tokenization (CoinCircle & Blockchain Industries):
  • Enables the tokenization of real-world assets (e.g., real estate REITs) and compliance integration (KYC, AML, investor accreditation) directly into digital wallets.
  • Aims to bypass traditional IPO bottlenecks while maintaining regulatory compliance through programmable identities.

Regulatory & Security Perspectives:

• Regulation: The panel generally rejects the "Wild West" narrative, asserting that responsible blockchains integrate with KYC/AML laws; however, they debate whether code should be protected as "speech" or if it can be shut down.
• Immutability: Noyes and Moynihan argue that decentralized networks cannot be functionally stopped (unlike centralized servers), creating a "crypto-economic arms race."
• Privacy & The "Right to be Forgotten": A major disagreement exists; Gadness argues users must own/monetize data, while Noyes warns that permanent immutability makes concepts like the "right to be forgotten" legally and technically difficult to resolve (e.g., storing illicit content on a public ledger).

Market Risks & Future Outlook:

• Hype Cycle: The group acknowledges the current phase as a "trough of disillusionment" following the peak of hype, comparing current failures to early e-commerce struggles.
• Investment Strategy:
  • Noyes: Advises rigorous due diligence; currently favors Bitcoin for its "digital gold" immutability and Ethereum for its network effects and community, though admits the winner is "totally up in the air."
  • Miller: Focuses on building and investing in cryptocurrencies for established companies (e.g., MakerDAO, Augur).
  • Martin: Suggests investing in sectors personally understood (e.g., voting, supply chains) where the investor believes in the social impact.
  • Moynihan: Warns investors to only risk capital they can afford to lose entirely due to high volatility.
• Timeline: Gadness predicts mainstream data ownership and privacy integration on blockchain within 15 years; Noyes believes the next decade will see the technical maturation of the technology.

Key Disagreements & Controversies:

• First-Mover Advantage: Noyes believes only Bitcoin has a defensible first-mover advantage; others argue third-generation chains (EOS, Cardano) will surpass current leaders (Ethereum).
• Currency vs. Utility: Gadness argues the value lies in solving human struggles (identity, supply chain) rather than currency speculation, whereas Noyes notes that currently, the only clear value discussion is ephemeral currency.
• Technical Viability: Noyes expresses skepticism that current "provenance" or "data ownership" pitches work in practice, calling them "ludicrously difficult" to design, while the builders argue they are already solving these problems for specific demographics.