A Good Bet

Like others, I write to process information that’s swirling around unanswered in my head.

This Bankless podcast offers up a bunch of ideas that I’ve ruminated on for a bit.

Josh Rosenthal is a historian and entrepreneur who outlines two important historical shifts that share similarities.

The first shift is from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and Reformation.

In the Middle Ages, life was extraordinarily tough: you were confined to a small area, you owned nothing, and you had no access to information.

During the Renaissance and Reformation, however, inventions such as double-entry bookkeeping and the printing press enabled a new, non-ruling economic class to spread ideas more easily and challenge authority.

The second shift is from closed to open computer networks.

More specifically, Josh stresses that with blockchain technology, value can be created and owned online in transformative ways.

One use case that resonates with me is Baxus, a spirits marketplace.

Spirit collections have always been valuable — but authentication, valuation, and financing are tricky if those bottles are tucked away privately.

Baxus stores its clients’ bottles and facilitates trading … and, it mints an NFT for each bottle, allowing anyone to view on a public blockchain a bottle’s proof of authenticity and ownership (+ pricing) history.

Then, there’s liquidity.

Since Baxus can integrate with other protocols, owners can borrow against their bottles.

This appears to be a new type of financing, one where code creates trust, and interested parties don’t need to win approval from a third party to participate.

Now, I don’t know how one matches these types of benefits for this asset class without blockchain technology.

One theory is that this is the way forward: the technology will continue to improve, use cases will gain traction, and the winners will create such a good client experience that most users won’t realize they’re even interacting with a blockchain.

As Josh mentioned, it’s a good bet to spend a little money and time participating onchain.