Are we Ready to Embrace Blockchain Technology?

Last Friday evening was an eventful one, having been invited to attend the Computational Law and Blockchain Festival organized by Banistmo Bank in Panama at one of their offices in the city along calle 50 for those familiar with Panama.

This was no ordinary Friday taking into account the that previous day was quincena –pay day – in Panama and this implies that for the next few days, the city would be a buzz with activity and have everything almost coming to a halt. The quincena is always characterized by more cars on the roads, more petty accidents, shopping and so on… because every one in the city has happy pockets smiling from the pay checks and that is recipe for chaos in the city in terms of traffic.

The event was slated to start at about 6pm and as you can imagine it is peak hour for traffic therefore in order to make the time for the event, naturally one had to set off early with at least an hour of anticipation. For some reason the waze navigation system was not working so well and ended up directing me to two different offices citing these as the event location. Fortunately, since I had an hour’s allowance, I was able to make it on time for the event. However, It so turns out that most of the first timers at the vent had had a similar experience as I did.

Being my first time at this event, I was looking forward to the interesting topics on the agenda to be discussed given my new found excitement about blockchain technology. There were a total of about six topics to be discussed and these included the following:

a) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how this can be used
b) FIAT parallel economy, how do crypto currencies operate and how do they complement the world today?
c) Blockchain and Smart Contracts
d) Blockchain and financial markets
e) Blockchain and registry of Navel vessels /legal services
f) Demonstration of how smart contracts work.

As you can observe the topics are pretty relevant to the current dynamics in the blockchain and crypto world. But for purposes of this article would like to limit my focus on a couple of issues that I believe pause discomfort to any layperson once they start examining the above.

Will start by examining AI and the rife talk of it being a threat to future Jobs and disrupting the job market as we know it. I think this is a genuine concern and may be it should push us to acquire skills that will be needed to ensure that both AI and the futuristic job markets thrive and complement each other. This will contribute to better and faster adaptation to embracing AI in its various forms. Does it constitute a threat? Yes of course if we do not polish up our skills to adopt and adapt these new tendencies.

Smart contracts are the other issue that I feel stand out and will certainly do modify the way we interact businesswise or otherwise. Although there are some similarities between the smart and traditional contracts, it is important to point out the stark differences between the two. One of the most striking differences is that the Smart contract is an objective contract thus operates with a cause and effect system whilst the traditional contract is subjective to interpretation. This implies that Smart contracts are not flexible – it is what is stated – and not subject to change unlike the traditional contracts that are flexible and subject to change.

The question therefore is, Are we ready to change and adapt to embrace these new technologies? Please feel free to contribute to the conversation in the comments section below!!

The event was well attended and taking into account that it was a Friday, the organizers did a good job of providing some beers and pizza to accompany the event. In effect it was great evening even for those who were not able to grasp anything from the event, at least they left on a good note to start the Friday evening.