Pain Relievers for the Digital Age

tl;dr: People are fearful and sense a loss of control and agency in their lives, even if they may not realize it or have just accepted it. Decentralized systems could be digital pain relievers.

Anxiety. Fear.

We all have it.

Whether we collectively have more or less than we did a few years ago can be discussed.

However, I suspect that the advent of social media on top of the 24/7 Internet-fueled news cycle makes things worse.

Daily, we hear stories of death, destruction, and deceit wherever we turn.

Combine that with macro issues like Brexit, Trump, Hong Kong, Kashmir, trade wars, climate change, Russian meddling, and abuse of our personal data by the likes of Facebook and Equifax and it’s understandable why people feel like they have little control over their lives.

It’s scary.

And, I suspect, many people are not even aware of the pervasive discomfort they feel as a result of all the assaults on their sense of security.

Even worse, when they are aware of it, there’s added anxiety from the belief that there’s nothing that can be done about it.

The corporations are too big. The bad news is everywhere.

It’s like a chronic pain in your body that, despite visits to doctors or medicines and remedies, doesn’t alleviate the suffering.

So, you just figure out how to live with it, believing that’s just how it is.

This may be the real marketing opportunity for decentralized systems with their key feature of personal control of data and value.

It’s not about blockchain.

It’s about the ability to take just a little bit of control back from the forces that now control so much of our lives.

Today, many people have heard about blockchain and Bitcoin, but they think of it as a technology.

They don’t yet realize that it’s a new type of pain relief.

It won’t make ALL of the pain go away, but it will start to help.