Conference Presentation, Panel
Blockchain: It's Not Just About the Money
Milken InstituteStaci Warden, Ashish Gadnis, Peter Martin, Erick Miller, Patrick Moynihan, Charles Noyes
- The Milken Institute plans to issue a digital currency, "milk coin," to fund its operations.
- Eric Miller anticipates that storage solutions for tokens will emerge "this year," driving significant adoption and enabling tokenization of vast non-traded asset pools with programmable features like automatic dividends.
- Predictions for public blockchain transaction speeds indicate a capability to reach Visa or MasterCard levels (7,000 transactions per second) within the "next few years," potentially through third-generation chains like Cardano and EOS utilizing proof of stake and sharding.
- Charles Newer projects that blockchain technology will achieve its intended technical capabilities within the "next decade," while acknowledging that alternative models like Hashgraph could offer superior speed despite open-source communities ultimately prevailing over closed systems.
- Specific timelines for project launches include Charles Newer expecting projects to launch on Ethereum within the "next two years," correcting a previous 2020 prediction to 2022.
- Ashish Gadness and Charles Newer both foresee personal data ownership, provenance, and privacy integrated into blockchain systems occurring within 15 years, though Gadness notes current systems for this purpose are virtually non-existent.
- Patrick Moynihan predicts that incentivization models will eventually replace burdensome regulations, with government systems potentially being bypassed only if they can incentivize behavior without regulation, while acknowledging a need for responsible policies to prevent negative outcomes like money laundering.
- Eric Miller expects blockchain to resolve data integrity issues by ensuring equal participation rights for all transaction parties, potentially leading to a "Netscape 2.0" scenario that surpasses current public blockchains.
- Charles Newer suggests blockchain could evolve beyond finance to govern broader social coordination through better market design and incentives, though he remains unsure of the ultimate trajectory and notes that the technology's future form may not be a blockchain.
- Ashish Gadness predicts that blockchain combined with IoT will become mainstream for solving issues like supply chain transparency and slave labor, with his platform BankQ aiming to provide an "economic passport" for mothers in extreme poverty.
- Pete Martin plans a public sale and Series B investment for Votem later this year, expecting the platform to build a globally scalable voting system that is mathematically more secure than current election infrastructure.
- Predictions regarding value include Charles Newer identifying Bitcoin as having the most defensible "digital gold" thesis with the Lightning network expected to enable larger, faster transactions, while currently favoring Ethereum for smart contract dominance due to network effects.
- Risk factors include the technical difficulty of designing personal data systems, the "ludicrously difficult" current state of non-currency value propositions, the potential for EMP or "fat-tell events" to eliminate the technology, and the ongoing regulatory challenge of balancing growth with the prevention of illicit activities.