Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

decentralization. Bitcoin is the

instantiation of decentralization as a

digital currency, but decentralization

could be instantiated in many ways, such

as smart property, delegate democracy

governance services, and community-

based credit bureaus. In short, we start

to see the world of possibility, or the

world as possibility, as French

philosopher Deleuze would say. 162

Further, we need to have tools for

realizing this possibility; in the

generalized conceptualization process,

blockchain-related concepts become

ready at hand or available to us, as

Heidegger would say. 163

In this fomentive environment, we can

more easily create new conceptssuch as

GoToLunchcoin or Whatevercoin,

applying a fuller conceptualization of

coin in the cryptocurrency sense to a

new situation. A coin or apptoken

becomes a signifier that facilitates some

application. I as a community member

have earned some coin or token by

performing some service like mining

(transaction ledger administration) or

via crowdfunding that I can burn, spend,

or use in the network to acquire or

consume something of value. In this

sense, GoToLunchcoin is earned free

time from work completed in the

morning that can now be spent in

refreshing and re-energizing. The

economic principle of a cycle of

resources expended and replenished is

invoked. In this more elemental mode of

concept generation, we can more

immediately and intuitively understand

the innovations of other ideas as we hear

them. For example, if we heard of

Precedentcoin in the legal setting, it

would be easy to quickly intuit that it

would likely be the apptoken or

remunerative coin for performing the

function of establishing precedents, and

that there is probably some sort of new

decentralized peer-based method for

doing so.

New conceptualization can shift thinking

back and forth between the levels of the

general and the specific. An example of

specific versus general thinking is the

notion of an economy. An economy at the

immediate, already-specified level is

people buying and selling things, but at

the higher, more generalized conceptual

level, it is the production and

consumption of things of value.

Blockchain technology at the immediate,

specified level is a decentralized public

ledger for the recording of

cryptocurrency transactions. Blockchain

technology at the higher, more

generalized conceptual level is a new

class of thing like the Internet, a

society’s public records repository, a

high-resolution tracking system for

acknowledging human activity, a

revolutionary organizing paradigm for

human collaboration, an anticensorship

mechanism, a liberty and equality

enhancement tool, and a new organizing

model for the discovery, transfer, and

coordination of all quanta or discrete

units of anything. These are just some of

the things that blockchain technology is

at this higher level. Comprehending

blockchain technology at this more

generalized level—with so many

meanings of “what it is” conceptually—

helps to demonstrate its significant

potential impact.

Currency, Token, Tokenizing

Currency is just one idea that the

cryptoeconomy is forcing us to rethink.

One traditional dictionary definition of

currency is “a system of money in

general use in a particular country.” This

definition is already almost humorously

and hopelessly outdated by Bitcoin’s

transnationality, not to mention that a

“system of money” connotes centralized

top-down issuance and sovereign

control over money supplies. A

secondary definition is perhaps more

useful: “the quality or state of being used

or accepted by many people.” This

claim is more applicable for

cryptocurrencies, as we notice that

although there is nothing backing Bitcoin

like a gold standard, there is also

nothing backing fiat currencies. What

“backs” currency is the high adoption

rate, being accepted by many people, the

populace buying into the illusion of the

concept of money. If more people were

to accept the notion of cryptocurrencies

and begin to use and trust them, they too

could become as liquid as fiat

currencies.

Just as the term Bitcoin can be used in a

threefold manner to denote the

underlying blockchain ledger, the

Bitcoin transaction protocol, and the

Bitcoin cryptocurrency, the term

currency is being employed similarly to

mean different things. In the

cryptoeconomy context, one relevant

way that the word currency is being

used is in a generalized sense to connote

“a unit of value that can be earned and

used in a certain economic system,”

which is then likely to be fungibly

tradable into other economic systems.

The nomenclature coin could just as

easily be token—that is, a digital token

or access or tracking mechanism for

different activities. There could be

Appcoin, Communitycoin, Apptoken, or

other terms all referring to different

kinds of economic operations taking

place within a community.

For example, the Counterparty currency

(XCP) grants access to special features

such as the ability to issue new assets,

like a new appcoin, with the

Counterparty protocol or economic

system, that will be at any time

convertible to XCP or Bitcoin, which is