Bitcoin 2.0, a vision on cryptocurrencies and the disruption they will cause

Lorem Ipsum

BITCOIN 2.0
It’s the platform, not
the currency, stupid!

Sander Duivestein
Patrick Savalle

A bitcoin vision by @duivestein and @patricksavalle

Introduction
Bitcoin is big news. The digital cryptocurrency is on the frontpage of every
major newspaper. People compare the bitcoin rage with the tulip mania,
they call it a new ponzischeme. The digital valuta is only invented to
support criminal activity. But guess what, bitcoin is not about the currency,
that is just a small part of the whole story.
The story of bitcoin is complex. In this research paper we hope to explain
that the bitcoin currency itself is ‘just’ the next phase in the evolution of
money. From dumb to smart money. It’s the underlying platform, the
Bitcoin protocol aka Bitcoin 2.0, that holds the real transformative power.
That is where the revolution starts. According to our research there are
several reasons why this new technology is going to disrupt our economy
and society as we have never experienced before:
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Similar to when the TCP/IP, HTTP and SMTP protocols were still in
their infancy; the Bitcoin protocol is currently in a similar
evolutionary stage. Contrary to the early days of the internet, when
only a few people had a computer, nowadays everybody has a
supercomputer in it’s pocket. It’s Moore’s Law all over again. Bitcoin
is going to disrupt the economy and society with breathtaking speed.
For the first time in history technology makes it possible to transfer
property rights (such as shares, certificates, digital money, etc.) fast,
transparent and very secure. Moreover, these transactions can take
place without the involvement of a trusted intermediary such as a
government, notary, or bank. Companies and governments are no
longer needed as the “middle man” in all kinds of financial
agreements.
Not only does The Internet of Things give machines a digital identity,
the bitcoin API’s (machine-machine interfaces) gives them an
economic identity as well. Next to people and corporations,
machines will become a new type of agent in the economy.
The Bitcoin protocol flips automation upside down. From now on
automation within companies can start top down, making the whitecollar employees obsolete. Corporate missions can be encoded on
top of the protocol. Machines can manage a corporation all by
themselves. Bitcoin introduces the world to the new nature of the
firm: the Distributed Autonomous Corporation (DAC).
This new type of corporation also adds a new perspective to the
discussion on technological unemployment. The DAC might even
turn technological unemplyment into structural unemployment.
Bitcoin is key to the success of the Collaborative Economy. Bitcoin
enables a frictionless and transparent way of sharing ideas, media,
products, services and technology between people without the
interference of corporations and governments.
Is your business ready to be disrupted? Are you?

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“Beware the mania for Bitcoin, the tulip of the 21st century.”1
This statement was recently made by Jean-Pierre Landau, a
professor of economics, in an opinion article for the Financial
Times. Alan Greenspan, the former president of the Federal
Reserve also completely dismisses the digital coin: “It’s a bubble.
It has to have intrinsic value. You have to really stretch your
imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I
haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.” 2

It’s not the digital currency, but the underlying platform that will
cause an enormous market disruption
There is a lot of confusion about bitcoin. It is reallly hard to define
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the “ irreducible core” of bitcoin. Part of the problem is that a
clear definition of the digital cryptocurrency and a good
explanation of the workings of the underlying platform is missing.
The other part of the problem is that lots of people only focus on
the volatility of the valuta and the “fact” that the money is
invented to support criminal activity. Most importantly, Bitcoin is
still in it’s infancy, just as twenty years ago when the internet
protocols TCP/IP, SMTP and HTTP were introduced. Their impact
was not understood at the time. And that’s not so strange. Futurist
Peter Schwartz once said in his book “The Art of the Long View”:
“The single most frequent failure in the history of forecasting has
been grossly underestimating the impact of technologies. […] The
reason we underestimate the impact of science and technology is
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that they are so difficult, if not impossible, to foresee.”
Talking about bitcoin, there are basically two camps. The
economists are dismissing bitcoin as a new ponzischeme. While
technologists view bitcoin as the biggest invention of this decade.
Who do we have to believe? Marc Andreessen, co-founder of
Netscape and partner with venture capital firm Andreessen
Horowitz, made the following statement in his article “Why Bitcoin
Matters”: “Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and –
I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.” 5 So what does Andreessen envision
that the economists don’t see?

It’s not the digital currency, but the underlying platform that
will cause an enormous market disruption. Bitcoin is more
than just another currency, it’s “an Internet” for registering
and transferring property. Thanks to the Bitcoin protocol
(crucially distinct from bitcoin, the currency it underlies), for
the first time in history it is possible to transfer property
rights (such as shares, certificates, digital money, etc.) in a
fast and transparent way, which cannot be forged. Moreover,
these transactions can take place without the involvement of
a trusted intermediary such as a government, notary, or
bank. Anyone who fully appreciates these attributes will
immediately acknowledge the tremendous value of Bitcoin.
In this research paper we will not discuss the shortcomings of
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the digital cryptocurrency bitcoin, on “why bitcoin could fail” .
Instead we will focus on the underlying Bitcoin protocol, on
the platform, and attempt to clarify it’s importance. It’s our
vision that the biggest trend for the coming years is the
realization of the Collaborative Economy. It is the power shift
from big, centralized, bureaucratic hierarchies to technology
driven distributed networks of individuals and communities.
Bitcoin is key to the success of the Collaborative Economy.


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Bitcoin is a decentralized way
of recording and transferring
ownership rights (not just of
money) in the presence of
untrustworthy parties, without
the need for a trusted
intermediary
The Specter of Crypto Anarchy
“A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto
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anarchy.” This is the beginning of the “Crypto Anarchistic
Manifesto” by Tim May. This first sentence in the manifesto is
a nod to the 1848 “Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. Just like the communist manifesto, the crypto
anarchic manifesto is about dispensing with government
interference. In this case, the advances in information
technology will stamp out government regulation.
According to May, computer technology was about to reach
the point where it is possible for individuals and groups to
communicate and perform transactions in a completely
anonymous manner. Two entities can exchange messages,
transact business and enter into contracts, without ever
knowing the name or legal identity of the other party. Thanks
to cryptography, interactions are untraceable and tamperproof. The result could be that governments might lose
complete control of the economic marketplace.
May’s prophecy was already known in limited circles in 1988.
However, the document wasn’t actually published online until
1992. In the meantime, it has taken on a cult status among
techno-anarchists. The arrival of Bitcoin has led some financial
experts to now take the manifesto very serious. Some of them
refer to several Dark Web initiatives, like the online black
marketplace Silk Road or Assassination Market, a kickstarter
for assassins, to explain how bitcoin is changing our world into
a true dystopia. However, most experts believe the Bitcoin
protocol will cause a revolution equal to the Internet itself.
After all, who would have thought that email would end up
making the paper letter, fax, and postcard obsolete back in
1997? Just as TCP/IP, HTTP and SMTP, the Bitcoin protocol is
now in it’s infancy as well.
Art by http://carbonism.deviantart.com/

“Bitcoin is the biggest invention
since the wheel, internet and
Italian Tiramisu”
Unknown expert

We are at the beginning of a development that will change the
world in a revolutionary way, we have never witnessed
before. Just as Google, Napster, Youtube, Facebook etc. have
transformed the way we interact with content, the Bitcoin
platform will revolutionize the world of finance. Contrary to
the early days of the internet, when only a few people had a
computer, nowadays everybody has a supercomputer in it’s
pocket. Bitcoin is going to disrupt the economy and society at
a speed we have never witnessed before. The Bitcoin protocol
is a “Big Bang Disruption”8 that will kickstart an age of
accelerated innovation. Bitcoin truly turns the world around.


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In contrast to a bank’s ledger, the bitcoin block chain can be inspected
by anyone. Bitcoin transactions are completely transparent. This
allows for complete financial openness.
A Network Where Trust is Not Needed
A problem mathematicians have been working on for a long time is
how different parties can know if information exchanged online
represents the consensus, without the need to rely on a third
party. Until recently, this was considered impossible. This problem
is also known as the Byzantine Generals’ Problem. To quote from
the original paper defining the problem: “[Imagine] a group of
generals of the Byzantine army camped with their troops around
an enemy city. Communicating only by messenger, the generals
must agree upon a common battle plan. However, one or more of
them may be traitors who will try to confuse the others. The
problem is to find an algorithm to ensure that the loyal generals
will reach agreement.”9 In a system with intermediaries, it is
always possible that one of the parties is consciously or
unconsciously filtering or changing information. The solution to
this problem must by definition therefore be a system where trust
is not needed. This requirement can only be met by decentralized
systems.
When creating digitally money, solving this problem is crucial, how
else can we know to whom which coins belong? The mysterious
Satoshi Nakamoto, the presumed creator of the Bitcoin protocol,
managed to solve this fundamental problem. And while doing so,
stumbled upon something much bigger. Bitcoin is a decentralized
way of recording and transferring ownership rights (not just
money) in the presence of untrustworthy parties, without the
need for a trusted intermediary. The network in its entirety acts as
the trusted party. In a system like this, ownership rights can flow
through the Internet like ‘normal’ content (from e-mail to video
streaming) already does. And no one can dispute or counterfeit
who has ownership. It is safe, transparent, and mathematically
secure.

The foundation of Bitcoin is the block chain. For Bitcoin, the
block chain is what a ledger is for a bank. A normal bank has
stacks of money locked up in a safe, with a corresponding ledger
recording what money belongs to whom. This is essential. The
ledger is managed centrally by the bank. This is why all
transactions go through that bank.
With Bitcoin, the ledger is decentralized. It is duplicated across
the entire network. No single individual controls the ledger
because everyone simultaneously controls the ledger. The
network as a whole keeps track of which bitcoins are assigned to
which wallets (Bitcoin addresses). Transactions simply pass from
wallet to wallet. It is similar to how cash or physical goods are
exchanged, but with the reach of the Internet. The decentralized
nature of the block chain has many advantages. One of these is
the impossibility of censorship (financial or otherwise) by a
single party. There is also no single point of failure.
In contrast to a bank’s ledger, the block chain can be inspected
by anyone. Bitcoin transactions are completely transparent. This
allows for complete financial openness, e.g. for public
institutions, charities, etc. By default the “account numbers”
(Bitcoin addresses) that are added to the block chain are
anonymous. This provides Bitcoin users with a choice between
anonymity or transparency. People who publish their addresses
allow a direct view of their money flows, while people who
succeed in keeping their addresses hidden (which is difficult)
remain anonymous. Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous.
Bitcoins at a particular address can be spent by providing a
corresponding unique key (a code). In normal use, this isn’t
visible, because the wallet software manages it. However, it is
possible to copy, print, or share the codes. To ensure that


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“Personal computers in 1975, the
Internet in 1993, and – I believe –
Bitcoin in 2014”
Marc Andreessen (Netscape)

bitcoins are not spent twice (=the problem of double-spending) and that only valid
transactions are added to the block chain, all computers in the network must
compete with each other to calculate a checksum (a cryptographic puzzle). The
first computer that finds the solution may initially add the transaction to the end
of the block chain.
As more computers confirm the solution and start using the new block chain to
add new transactions, the found solution will increase in probability. If the
majority of the computers are searching for the same, correct solution, invalid
transactions will automatically end up in a dead branch of the block chain and
become extinct due to a lack of consensus. In practice, a transaction is safe after
six or more confirmations. All this cryptography gives bitcoin its classification
‘cryptocurrency’.
Successfully adding a block of transactions to the block chain is rewarded with
newly created bitcoins, and is therefore called “mining”. Mining is Bitcoin’s
solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem. And while this mining reward is the
strength of bitcoin, funding its own growth, it recently almost turned against itself.
To be able to forge a fraudulent transaction, one must control the majority of
computing power allocated to the ‘mining’ of bitcoins, which currently is
equivalent to that of the top 500 of supercomputers. Cloud mining collective
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Ghash.io almost reached that majority and had to promise not to break the
market in order from keeping its customers from leaving en masse. Theoretically,
this risk should reduce as the number of market participants increases.
The algorithms are designed in a way that only a fixed number of new bitcoins are
generated each day. This number decreases every day. This means that the
maximum number of bitcoins will have been generated some time in 2140. A
Bitcoin economy therefore has a predictable monetary basis with monetary
inflation theoretically ultimately decreasing to zero, leaving consumption and
production as the only drivers of so-called ‘natural’ price inflation and deflation.
However, with mining rewards from bitcoin generation decreasing, we will
probably see the need for an increase in associated transaction fees.

The Birth of the “Internet of Money”10
Bitcoin is the end of “dumb money”12. Thanks to Bitcoin, money is now
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programmable, “it’s a money platform with many API’s” , which allows countless
financial innovations to be created. The possibilities are virtually endless and often
quite unexpected. Examples include fraud-free voting systems, digital rights
management systems, new types of air miles or freebies, and festival coins for
buying drinks. Imagine a car rental company issuing bitcoins linked to their fleet of
rental vehicles. Each vehicle can be unlocked and started by using a corresponding
bitcoin. People can book the car online and use this digital currency (which can be
encrypted on their smartphone in a special app) to drive the car when they are
entitled to do so. And, if they are in a hurry, the driver can issue micro-payments
to other road users to get out of the way.
Or what about a NSA-proof version of Twitter? Recently a fully decentralized P2P
microblogging platform, named Twister14, was created by leveraging from the
open software implementations of both the Bitcoin and Bittorrent technology.
Bitcoin could ultimately give rise to a completely new generation, economy even,
of distributed and decentralized companies15 and services. Combined with
decentralized production technology such as social collaboration they can even be
virtually leaderless, self-organising corporations.

Bitcoin also makes it possible to automate all kinds of processes
related to a transaction. The protocol contains several features that
allow for payment conditions to be set, transactions to be voted on,
and illegal use to be prevented, among other things. The Bitcoin
protocol lowers the threshold for engaging in transactions. Not only
because the transaction itself will be cheaper, but also because it
will be simpler to manage any risk involved in the transaction.
Before Bitcoin was discovered, similar networks had been
experimented with for decades. That is, Bitcoin didn’t just appear
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out of thin air. It’s the story of the “Long Nose of Innovation” all
over again. Bitcoin is “simply” the first network to have solved all
the associated technological problems.
Since Bitcoin has come into existence, many comparable
cryptocurrencies have arisen. One of the more promising ones is
Mastercoin, it’s built on top of Bitcoin and makes it possible for
anyone to create their own cryptocurrency. The Mastercoin
protocol is an open source project that will add many new futures
to the Bitcoin block chain. In the near future Mastercoins will
facilitate the creation of new asset classes, such as stocks or other
ownership certificates, and create a variety of automated "smart
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contracts" (as already was explored in a 1997 paper by
computer scientist Nick Szabo).
The Ripple network is a another promising example of such a
network. Although this platform has its own currency (currency
code “XRP”; Bitcoin’s currency code will probably be “XBT” instead
of the currently used “BTC”), it is basically currency agnostic, so it is
just as easy to use euros or dollars. The Ripple network makes
exchanges and other automated facilities possible, allowing
frictionless currency conversion. International payments are
possible at the speed of the Internet, from wallet to wallet, also
without the need for a bank or bank account. This could provide the
billions of unbanked people around the world with easy access to
the international money market (assuming that they have internet
access).
Ripple’s so-called “chains of trust” speak to the imagination.
Everyone has encountered the situation where debts are settled
within a group of friends. Some time ago, Pete borrowed 3 dollars
from Elsa, and Elsa is now asking Pete to settle her debt of 2 dollars
to John, after which Pete would only owe 1 dollar to Elsa and Elsa
would be debt-free. Ripple allows this debt-exchange game to be
carried out on a global scale. Paying smaller amounts becomes
mostly a zero sum game, with existing debts (IOUs) being
redistributed between people who trust each other. What Ripple
essentially is suggesting, is a “Next Level” economy.

Machines with an Economic Identity
The Internet of Things enables all types of objects to be connected
to the Internet, such as computers, smartphones, refrigerators,
windmills, tiny sensors the size of a grain of sand, etc. Each object
has its own digital identity that can be controlled. The Bitcoin
network makes it very easy for these objects to also have an
economic identity, in addition to their digital identity. For example,
the refrigerator can negotiate with the windmills in the area about
energy use given certain conditions. The block chain doesn’t care
who’s using it. “On the block chain nobody knows you are a
fridge.”19 Bitcoin makes these transactions simple and reliable.

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This will completely revamp the traditional division of roles
between people, organizations, and machines. The Bitcoin
protocol enables a “smart” machine to participate as a third
economic agent alongside humans and organizations in the
marketplace. It’s “[T]hings are going to get very messy indeed.” 20
Companies are already having difficulty implementing B2B, B2C,
C2B, and C2C models. This problem will only grow with the advent
of B2M, M2B, C2M, M2C, and M2M markets.
In this “futuristic” world a soda machine can be an independent
economic entity, that is responsible for managing and selling its
own store of drinks. It will be a machine that, in addition to selling
drinks to consumers (M2C), will also be able to place orders with
companies (B2M). It can even place orders with consumers (C2M)
to fill its store. This will of course entail questions about who
exactly is legally and economically responsible, if someone were
to get sick from a can of soda from one of these machines, for
example.
And what to think of a service that is accessible on the internet
that plays a simple game of chess. Each time you play a game, you
have to pay the service a small amount of bitcoin. When the
creator of this service dies, the service dies with him, because the
bill of hosting this service isn’t paid for anymore. But now we
have bitcoin, so it can be a completely valid situation where this
service has it’s own bitcoin wallet. Each time someone plays a
game of chess, the money for this service will be transferred to
it’s wallet. The money earned from this service can than be used
to pay for the hosting. “So basically Bitcoin will power the next
generation of corporations. The real value of Bitcoin lies in
economies that don’t yet exist.”21

The Dawn of Decentralized Autonomous
Corporations
In August 2011 Marc Andreessen published an essay “Why
Software Is Eating The World”22 in the Wall Street Journal. In this
article Andreessen describes how companies like Borders, Kodak,
Disney and Nintendo are having difficulty with the digital
revolution. “More and more major businesses and industries are
being run on software and delivered as online services—from
movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners
are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that
are invading and overturning established industry structures. […]
Over the next 10 years, the battles between incumbents and
software-powered insurgents will be epic. Joseph Schumpeter, the
economist who coined the term “creative destruction,” would be
proud.”
One year later Andreessen was interviewed by newspaper USA
Today. In this conversation he sharpened his vision: "The spread
of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories.
People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by
computers what to do. [...] There's no such thing as median
income; there's a curve, and it really matters what side of the
curve you're on. There's no such thing as the middle class. It's
absolutely vanishing." 23 Basically, “Average Is Over”24.

“The real value of Bitcoin lies in economies that don’t yet exist.”


“Bitcoin isn’t a tulip, it's a torrent. It is to finance what Napster was
to copyright - and if this one is stamped out, another one will appear.”

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In their book “The Second Machine Age” (2014) authors Andrew
McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, both at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), argue how the history of work can be described
by the role that automation has played. They distinguish between
two periods. In the First Machine Age, the Industrial Revolution,
technology reinforces human muscle power. These machines are
controlled by humans. In the Second Machine Age machines and
intelligent software are automating cognitive tasks. They are
climbing up the DIKW hierarchy. Google’s self-driving cars and IBM’s
Watson demonstrate that artificially intelligent machines can make
smart decisions. These examples of emerging technologies show
that “the relationship between humans and machine is redefined” 26.
Machines are taking over control.
Automation is the replacement of human labor by machines or
computers and computer programs. Automation normally starts
bottom up. In their book McAfee and Brynjolfsson also define
automation as a bottom up process. In the First Machine Age, bluecollar workers are replaced by machines and in the Second Machine
Age intelligent software takes over the jobs of the managers of the
organisation (the white-collar workers). The Bitcoin protocol turns
this automation process upside down. Automation starts top down.
Right now we need managers to pursue the mission statement of
the company. “But what if, we can encode the mission statement
into code; that is, create an inviolable contract that generates
revenue, pays people to perform some function, and finds hardware
for itself to run on, all without any need for top-down human
direction?”27
Such a company already exists. Bitcoin is the first prototype of a real
decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), where the bitcoin
holders are the equity shareholders of Bitcoin Inc. Stan Larimer,
president of Invictus Innovations, defines a DAC as follows:
“Distributed Autonomous Corporations (DAC) run without any
human involvement under the control of an incorruptible set of
business rules. (That’s why they must be distributed and
autonomous.) These rules are implemented as publicly auditable
open source software distributed across the computers of their
stakeholders. You become a stakeholder by buying “stock” in the
company or being paid in that stock to provide services for the
company. This stock may entitle you to a share of its “profits”,
participation in its growth, and/or a say in how it is run.”28
Another example of a DAC is Namecoin. It is a corporation that is
basically a decentralized service, a decentralized Domain Name
System (DNS), that allows you to register and buy a .bit domain, by
purchasing it with Namecoins, that are especially designed and
created for this goal.
A plausible scenario for a DAC could also be a fully automated
speakers agency that acts on behalf of its keynote speakers.
“Speakercoins” can be issued that can be bought by people,
companies, conferences that want to hire one of the speakers. The
DAC takes care of the bookings by automatically managing the
agenda of their presenters. After a keynote has been given the DAC
automatically pays the speakers by transferring the money from it´s
wallet. Think bigger and a DAC can even be an employment agency.
The possibilities of DACs are endless. In the future every person and
every object will have it´s own personal DAC that takes care of it´s
business. Personalized DACs act like Google Now on steroids and in
a worst case scenario they will become a true “Daemon”29.

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"When angels and venture capitalists invest in bitcoin-related
business models, they are investing in a survivable protocol – a
protocol that will survive political institutions" – John Matonis
The New Nature of the Firm
In 1937 Ronald Coase published a groundbreaking article: “The
Nature of the Firm”30. In it he posed a very simple question: “Why do
firms exist?”. In his research he came up with the concept of
transaction costs to explain the nature and limits of firms. Companies
exist primarily because the underlying coordination mechanisms of
the market aren’t perfect.
During the Industrial Revolution hierarchies became the dominant
way to organize the world. Untill now it has been the most efficient
way to overcome the transaction. The internet makes it possible to
cut down in transaction and communication costs. By doing so, the
internet introduces a new kind of firm, almost by definition. The
Dentralized Autonomous Corporation represents this new nature of
the firm: a company where software is in control. Hal Varian, Chief
Economist of Google, calls these new firms “micro multinationals”
and believes that these companies will rule the world in the coming
years: “If the late 20th Century was the age of the multinational
company, the early 21st will be the age of the micro multinational:
small companies that operate globally.”31

Bitcoin Is Capitalism 2.0
Within a few years we will see many new and different types of DACs
- powered by initiatives like Invictus Innovations, Mastercoin, NXT,
Ethereum - that will replace centralized commercial services such as
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, eBay, stock exchanges, Spotify, Netflix,
ISP’s, Gmail, online sportsbooks, voting booths, SSL, cloud storage like
Dropbox, and much more. Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook
etc. have disrupted various industries around the world. Soon it will
be their turn to be disrupted by these DAC’s. “The DAC that creates
the best automated model for both investors and customers in a
particular market will be able to come out on top. This is capitalism in
its purest form.”32 The Bitcoin block chain offers a platform that isn’t
controlled by anyone. Everybody can participate voluntary and the
system cannot be manipulated by governments, corporations,
bankers etc. So no more crony capitalism.

Art by http://carbonism.deviantart.com/

The currency application of Bitcoin was version 1.0. The block
chain is Bitcoin version 2.0. Bitcoin 2.0 is real capitalism. It
enables a market with true self-regulating behavior, as Adam
Smith ment with his “invisible hand”. Individuals can make
profit, and maximize it without the need for government
intervention. “Bitcoin 1.0 is monetarism 2.0 and Bitcoin 2.0 is
capitalism 2.0”33 as Max Keiser so eloquently said in one of his
reports.
A frictionless and transparent marketplace that is executed on
top of the Bitcoin platform will put a lot of pressure on existing
companies. They are not used to compete with automated
services and DACs. Companies will have to make decisions with
the speed of the internet, which is by definition impossible.
These companies will “try to preserve the problem to which they
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where once the solution” . But the dramatic changes in business
will unearth a major gap between traditional approaches to
strategy and the way the real world will work. It is “the end of
competitive advantage”35 as we know it.

Bitcoin Shortens the Lifespan of
Companies
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In their book “Built to Change” the authors Edward Lawler and
Chris Worley analyzed the Fortune 1000 list. This list contains
the thousand largest U.S. companies ranked on the basis of
generated income. The study shows that a total of 35 percent of
the companies in the top 20 are new in the period from 1973 to
1983. In the subsequent period of ten years, again this
percentage increases to 45 percent. From 1993 to 2003 this
figure amounts to 60 percent. Over the years, the percentage of
new companies that enter the top 20 increases. In the book, the
authors propose an important question: “Any bets as to where it
will be between 2003 and 2013?”

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In the article “Big Business ... The End is Near” an answer to this
question is given. If the above trend continues, more than 70 percent
from the list of the Fortune 1000 companies will be replaced.
Gabriel Weinberg , the founder of the DuckDuckGo search engine,
states in his blog post “Software is eating the Fortune 500”: “We
should eventually be seeing bigger companies form and rise faster
and faster over time. Not only should they pick off huge incumbents,
but they should also pick off each other in faster waves.” 38 In the near
future, new companies will emerge that will achieve tremendous
growth within no time and thereby undermine the position of
established organizations. To prove his theorem Weinberg has looked
at the Fortune 500 list since 1955. His research shows that an
accelerated change is noticeable. Companies stay less and less years
on the list. After a few years, most companies disappear from it and
their place is taken over by another one.
The same trend can be seen in the S&P 500. Research by Richard
Foster, a consultant with the company Innosight, shows that the
average life span of a company listed on the index has declined
tremendously. In 1958, the average life span of a company was 61
years, in 1980 this has fallen down to 25 years and now it´s only 18
years long. His prediction is that it will decrease even more in the
coming years and the life span will eventually approach 10 year. In
less than a hundred years, the life span of companies has decreased
by 83 percent.
According to Scott Brinkler technology advances exponentially, while
organizations absorb changes logarithmically. Brinkler states that “the
great management dilemma of the 21st century is the relationship
between these two curves: technology is changing faster than
organizations can absorb change. [...] To succeed, technology
management must explicitly address how those technologies will be
absorbed into the operations and the culture of the organization.” 39
Bitcoin will have an effect on the lifetime of existing companies.
Possibly it will accelerate the trend of decreasing life spans even
more.

Bitcoin 2.0 is Key to the Success of the
Collaborative Economy
As we head into 2014, one trend will tower above them all: the
power shift from big, centralized, bureaucratic hierarchies to
technology driven distributed networks of individuals and
communities.This shift happens in two phases of sharing. The first
phase started with social media. By using all kinds of social media, like
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat, peope are now used to
share their thoughts and media online. The second phase is the
sharing of the physical world, the sharing of products, services and
technology in the same seamless manner when using social media.
AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Kickstarter, TaskRabbit and Coursera are the first
companies that are guiding us into this future. Jeremiah Owyang, a
former Forrester analist, has dedicated his working life to this
movement. He defines this Collaborative Economy as follows: “The
Collaborative Economy is an economic model where ownership and
40
access are shared between people, startups, and corporations.”

10

By sharing ideas, media, products, services and technology “the
Collaborative Economy focuses on eliminating excess and waste
in today’s overbuilt and over-owned world.”41 We are entering a
new era of human-to-human commerce where companies and
governments are no longer "the middle man". “The future will
be less of a "one-to-one" or "one-to-many", and more of an "allfor-one", "one-for-all" model where everyone benefits that
participates.”42 The role of the company in this new economy is
changing rapidly. The crowd is the new company and Bitcoin 2.0
will be the frictionless and transparent mechanisme that
empowers these new kind of companies in the Collaborative
Economy. “It’s a massive paradigm shift in how we live, work,
play, travel, create, learn, bank and consume.”43 Is your business
ready to be disrupted?

Adapt or die
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, once said: “The Internet is
the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t
understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever
had.” The Bitcoin protocol might even dwarf the Internet in this
regard in the coming years. New business models where trust
and control will be carried out in a completely new way and the
Internet of Things will lead to a new economic agent – “the
machine” – being added to the existing economy. The idea that
machines can participate autonomously in the economic
marketplace raises concerns about (technological)
unemployment. The fact that the Bitcoin block chain even
supports decentralized autonomous corporations makes it even
worse. Will the machines take over?
Like any powerful technology, Bitcoin can either be seen as a
Pandora’s box, or as a step towards Utopia. Bitcoin just obeys
the First Law of Technology: “Technology is neither good nor
bad; nor is it neutral”. Asking yourself whether Bitcoin will fail is
like questioning yourself whether technology can be “uninvented”. It is much better to experiment and innovate with
this new platform. The best strategy is to build a startup that
cannibalizes their own business model. A strategy thay enables
companies and governments to quickly adapt to the changing
circumstances, if they wish to survive. It’s Digital Darwinism!

2014: The Year of Encryption
Seeing Bitcoin as little more than just another currency, and
using bitcoins initial large exchange rate fluctuations to label the
44
coin as “evil” , is to seriously underestimate Bitcoin. Similar to
when TCP/IP, SMTP and HTTP were still in their infancy, the
Bitcoin protocol is currently in a similar evolutionary stage.
Bitcoin may never fully reach maturity as a currency, but given
the fact that it’s underlying protocol is open source, similar
initiatives will emerge using its key design elements, and one
day cross the finish line because it is the “fittest”. “Bitcoin isn’t a
tulip, it's a torrent. It is to finance what Napster was to copyright
- and if this one is stamped out, another one will appear.”
Bankers, stock brokers, insurance companies, notaries and the
like are in for a wild ride and they won’t enjoy it…

"Technology advances exponentially, while organizations absorb
changes logarithmically "


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Kearns, Jeff, “Greenspan Says Bitcoin a Bubble Without Intrinsic Currency Value”, Bloomberg, December 4, 2013
Gendal Brown, Richard, “What is the irreducible core of bitcoin?”, January 25, 2014
Schwartz, Peter, “The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World”, Currency Doubleday, April 15, 1996
Andreessen, Marc, “Why Bitcoin Matters”, New York Times, January 21, 2014
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May, Tim, “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”, November 22, 1992
Downes, Larry and Paul Nunes, “Big Bang Disruption: Business Survival in the Age of Constant Innovation”, Penguin, January 7,
2014
Pease, M., R. Shosthak and L. Lamport, “Reaching agreement in the presence of faults”, Journal of the ACM, 1980
Neal, Dave, “Ghash.io promises not to break the Bitcoin market”, The Inquirer, January 13, 2014
Dourado, Eli, “Bitcoin Isn´t Money, It Is the Internet of Money”, The Umlaut, January 8, 2014
Maney, Kevin, “The End of Dumb Money”, Newsweek, January 15, 2014
Antonopoulos, Andreas, “Bitcoin is a money platform with many APIs”, O’Reilly, May 29, 2013
Finley, Klint, “Out in the Open: An NSA-Proof Twitter, Built With Code From Bitcoin and BitTorrent”, Wired, January 13, 2014
Doctorow, Corry, “Bitcloud: Bitcoin-like "distributed autonomous corporations" that replace Youtube, Facebook, etc”, Buzzfeed,
January 17, 2014
Buxton, Bill, “The Long Nose of Innovation”, Businessweek, January 2, 2008
Morris, David Z., “Bitcoin is not just digital currency. It's Napster for finance.”, CNN Fortune, 21 January 2014
Szabo, Nick, “Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks”, Open Journal Systems, September 1, 1997
Gendal Brown, Richard, “On the blockchain, nobody knows you’re a fridge”, October 23 , 2013
Rao, Venkatesh, “The Mother of All Disruptions”, Ribbonfarm, October 11, 2013
ruletheworld, “Dawn of Autonomous Corporations”, BTC Geek, October 21, 2013
Andreessen, Marc, “Why Software Is Eating the World”, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011
Mullaney, Tim, “Jobs fight: Haves vs. the have-nots”, USA Today, September 16 , 2012
Cowen, Tyler, “Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation”, Dutton Adult, September 12, 2013
Brynjolfsson, Eric and Andrew McAfee , “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant
Technologies”, W. W. Norton & Company, Januari 13, 2014
LeHong, Hung and Jackie Fenn, “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2013”, Gartner, August 9, 2013
Butarin, Vitalek, “Bootstrapping A Decentralized Autonomous Corporation: Part I”, Bitcoin Magazine, September 19, 2013
Larimer, Stan, “Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics”, Let’s Talk Bitcoin, September 14, 2013
Suarez, Daniel, “Daemon”, Quercus, February 4, 2010
Coase, R.H., “The Nature of the Firm”, Wiley Online Library, November, 1937
Varian, Hall, “Micromultinationals Will Run the World. And cheap robots will help them do it”, Foreign Policy, 15 August 2011
Torpey, Kyle, “The Implications of Crypto Assets Part 1: A History of Bitcoin Stock Exchanges”, NewsWax, January 13, 2014
Keiser, Max, “Keiser Report: Capitalism 2.0 (E551)”, YouTube, January 18, 2014
Kelly, Kevin, “The Shirky Principle”, The Technium, April 2, 2010
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Harvard Business Review Press, May 14, 2013
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February 7, 2008
Furr, Nathan, “Big Business ... The End is Near: Why 70% of the Fortune 1000 Will Be Replaced in a Few Years”, Forbes, April 21,
2011
Weinberg, Gabriel, “Software is eating the Fortune 500”, June 3, 2012
Brinkler, Scott, “Martec’s Law: Technology changes exponentially, organizations change logarithmically”, June 13, 2013
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Schwartz, Peter, “‘Collaborative economy’ will tower above all trends in 2014”, The Globe And Mail, December 18, 2013
Stay, Jesse, “The Blockchain and the "All for One, One for All" Demise of the Centralized Server”, Stay N'Alive, November 25, 2013
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11

Lorem Ipsum

Sander and Patrick are available for public speaking and workshops through
http://thenextspeaker.com/
They can help companies and public institutions make the transition into
the age of cryptocurrencies and other disruptive technologies.

Adapt or die! Contact tessa@thenextspeaker.com

Sander Duivestein

Patrick Savalle

Sander is a professional speaker, author
and researcher with VINT, the Sogeti
Trend Lab. He has written several books
and reports about social media, cloud
computing, the Post PC era, Big Data and
the Internet of Things. It´s his mission to
inspire clients on the impact of new
technologies on people, businesses and
society.

Patrick is the founder and designer of
https://mobbr.com, a network payment
system for the anytime anyplace
economy. He is author of multiple books
and creator of Sogeti’s TeamPark, a
method for integrating social
collaboration into the enterprise. Patrick
is an expert software architect.

Bitcoin 2.0, a vision on cryptocurrencies and the disruption they will cause

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Bitcoin 2.0, a vision on cryptocurrencies and the disruption they will cause