Investing in Blockchain

Like many of you, I'm heavily invested in the future of crypto-economics.  Like you, I believe that we're just beginning to see the possibilities that are unlocked with the advent of fully decentralized consensus systems.  Many of us go through waves of discovery; with each step we re-evaluate how deep the rabbit hole goes.  We understand that this is way more than just a currency, it's a technological revolution.  The effects on banking, governments, media, and healthcare will be like nothing we've experienced since the industrial revolution.  

However, we still have many steps to fully realize this new world.  Much like the early years of the internet, you can sense where the technology is headed but due to the lack of infrastructure and public adoption, many of the possibilities will have to wait.  For example, home loans are a great candidate for disruption with smart contracts and could be built today if we had large enough digital assets.  You'll be able to match investors with home buyers, cutting out the middleman to benefit both parties.  Traditionally, the home title is used as collateral in case of default.  However, in most countries today, home titles residing on the blockchain as a digital asset are not supported by the court system.  Changing the legal system will understandably take time and public support, but we've begun to see progress in this area.

I believe that the easiest way forward is to make blockchain technology seamless to the end user by building it into technology that people are already familiar and comfortable with (see Steemit).  Once blockchain technology becomes the backbone of many of our systems through short-term economic wins, it will be seamless (and inevitable) to drive widespread public adoption.  Many businesses have strong financial incentive to use this technology to streamline costs.  This is the carrot-on-the-stick to drive innovation in this technology which will legitimize blockchain in the public eye and be a stepping stone towards more radical social and economic disruption.

To this end, I've decided to take my investment in blockchain further and dedicate my time and effort into helping bring blockchain to the masses.  I'm happy to announce that I'll be joining the Blockchain team at Microsoft.  On this team I'll be working with enterprise customers, prototyping blockchain-based solutions to disrupt a number of different industries, from finance to travel.  Microsoft Azure is working to commoditize blockchain technology, creating strong paradigms that make it easy for companies to experiment in this exciting, new space.

To see the cool things this team is doing, check out their blog:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/topics/blockchain/