At the World Economic Forum in Davos, IOHK CEO, Charles Hoskinson spoke about how Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology can help the world solve numerous problems that societies struggle with today. “The whole world is changing,” he said. “We’re going from fragmented siloed markets that live within the borders of countries to one global market.”
On the topic of global warming, Hoskinson said that humans have historically solved these difficult problems by standardization through military — through power. “We don’t want that anymore,” he said. “So in the absence of an empire, how do you then get the world to do something for its benefits despite the fact that we have to take a hit today?”
“This is the century where the dollar is going to recede.”
Further, the IOHK founder spoke about creating an international standard reserve currency, and that the cryptocurrency movement aims to, “kill the Kill the middlemen of necessity, push power to the edges and build systems that are equally fair for the least amongst us, not the greatest.”
He also said that there has never been a time in human life where social systems were not proprietary, but that now the industry is seeing a, “great merging of ideas,” and evolving at a rapid pace.
“How often does a currency evolve? The risk of evolution is too great — you screw it up you have Venezuela. So it could maybe be decades or centuries before you see major changes,” he said. “Today, there are 3000 cryptocurrencies, thousands of ideas about different economic systems and monetary policies, all coevolving and competing with each other.”
He subsequently spoke about how the environmental impact of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining has risen over the years, and that the community is developing consensus mechanisms like proof-of-stake to bring power consumption from all of Switzerland down to a large home.
“The very same technologies and concepts that allow us to have the perfect stablecoin will allow a nation-state to have a perfectly stable currency. And it’s free.”
