The latest segment of my book The Satoshi Revolution has just appeared: Kiss An Engineer Today. Crypto's quiet revolution in authentication is redefining privacy.
https://news.bitcoin.com/the-satoshi-revolution-chapter-4-kiss-a-computer-engineer-today-part-4/ Excerpt: The transformation of society caused by cryptocurrency is vast and complex, which makes it difficult to sketch. It can be glimpsed in microcosm, however, by looking at a small slice. Consider one issue: authentication. It sounds like a dry and almost sterile topic, but its implications are vast.
Authentication is the process of verifying something or someone to be true, genuine, or valid. It is the backbone of modern finance -– credit checks, background information, references, government credentials — institutions want to vet people within an inch of existence before opening an account or transferring a dollar from one hand to the other. The reason is clear. Government demands a complete accounting of who everyone is and of every cent they own. Government approval and authentication of identity is the modern form of financial reputation. Without government authentication in the form of documents and bureaucratic approval, few things are (or were) financially possible.
The opposite of the authentication of identity used to be true in economic exchanges. In days of barter, or direct trade, the question of identity was not important; character was not necessarily important. A chicken was a chicken was a chicken. It did not matter whether the seller was a devil or a saint, as long as chicken was healthy and fat. A buyer examined chickens, looked at horses’ teeth, and squeezed tomatoes. The authentication focused on the good being traded rather than upon the people involved....
Cryptocurrency reverses the authentication process. It takes authentication back to the barter stage of verifying goods while, at the same time, providing the sophistication of modern finance. Users of the blockchain can be anonymous or pseudonymous, which is the opposite of being authenticated. The focus is all on the “good” involved: that is, the crypto. If the blockchain accepts or authenticates the crypto, then no real identities need to be involved. A bitcoin is a bitcoin is a bitcoin. The people don’t matter.
