Is Bitcoin A Decentralized Corporation?

Intro

A few years ago I read a great cyber-punk sci-fi novel titled Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan and in it the protagonist stayed in a hotel that owned itself. In the novel it was an AI computer that operated from within the hotel, the AI computer owned itself and it also owned the hotel. The AI ran the day-to-day operations and greeted the guests and so on and so forth.

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While this was an interesting and out-of-the-box concept it was set in the future, it had an AI and it seemed to me to be something that was unlikely to happen in my lifetime. Well fast forward to today and the bitcoin/blockchain revolution.

Recently I came across a video by Bitshares which describes a Decentralized Autonomous Company. In it they compare the bitcoin blockchain to some of the main attributes of a company:

1. Bitcoin has employees: The world-wide network of miners who compete to be the first one to discover the nonce and the related hash of each block in the blockchain can be compared to employees. Maybe in this case they are more like freelance employees but they work for the blockchain nonetheless.

2. Bitcoin has customers: If you send bitcoin to anyone you are a customer using the product of this "company".

3. Bitcoin has shareholders: If you own bitcoin (more specifically the private key to the bitcoin) then you are a shareholder in the bitcoin "company".

4. Bitcoin has revenues and costs: The costs of the bitcoin company are the hardware and the electricity of the mining activity (as well as some developer costs). The revenue of the bitcoin "company" are the rewards and fees that come from validating the next block in the blockchain.

5. Bitcoin has voting rights: Both public and private companies make their large strategic decisions via voting. For a private company it is the private investors in that company. For a public company it is the shareholders. For bitcoin it is the miners who get to vote, other coins have the coin owners do the voting.

So it can be argued that cryptocurrencies bear a lot of similarities to a company, in this case it is a decentralized one that no single person owns.

The Possible Future

Now imagine a future in which a blockchain is created which, for instance, buys and operates hotels (or convenience stores, or apartments, or online games etc.). The customers would pay for the service with the blockchain's coin, the blockchain would hire and fire real world employees, the blockchain would pay the employees in its cryptocurrency, the blockchain would have those who own the coin vote on strategic decisions. No one person would own this company or decide its direction.

Some people are trying to do this with exchanges. Currently you have to go to an exchange like the NYSE for stocks or the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for commodities or Coinbase and its competitors for cryptocurrency. Soon, however you may be able to do this with a coin and its blockchain and related software. It looks like Bitpay is trying to do that although no doubt it has competitors.

Closing Words

It appears that the future is indeed going to be more decentralized with less government and corporate control even in the area of how companies operate. No one can say whether this will improve the general lives of people or not but it will at the very least be interesting to watch it unfold.

Disclosure:

I do not own the Bitshares coin (aka BTS), I do not know anyone involved in the company and am not affiliated with it in any way. I just like the idea that they are bringing to the world.