Thread by @marting

10 years from now - it's 2027, we'll look back and say, how did the financial system not see all this coming?

back in 1995, I worked at Morgan Stanley - we took netscape public. A year later, I left to join CNET.

there were about 30 million people using the web. I remember many investors doubted the viability of the web.

Internet and web protocols were bigger than Netscape, CNET, or even Amazon.

those Internet and Web protocols enabled the digitization of Information.

they enabled 3 things: permissionless publishing, aggregation and exchange of information.

today, blockchains are the most exciting set of protocols and technologies I've seen in over 20 years.

because blockchains enable the permissionless storing of value, aggregation of value, and exchange of value.

web protocols enabled information to be programmable. blockchains are going to make all kinds of assets programmable.

back to internet and web protocols of the 90s. media was disrupted of course, but Amazon, Alibaba and others are slowly upending retail.

based on the digitizing of information: products and prices. amazon didn't outdo walmart on logistics. amazon digitized info.

so as "disruptive" as the last 20+ years have been, it's really only been because tech companies have digitized information.

for the first time, thanks to people like Ian Grigg and Satoshi Nakamoto, we know we can digitize assets.

and assets are much much bigger than media and consumer retail.

Insurance revenues are 50% larger than the global media business. Financial services is over 5x as large.

gold is $7.5 Trillion. Narrow money is $38 Trillion. Broad Money is $95 Trillion.

the asset markets are massive. and until blockchains came along, they were basically UNTOUCHED by digitization and disruptive forces

no more. I can send my mother money via bitcoin without going through my bank hours, without paying $35 wire fee - she gets it in 10 mins

and let's talk about "trusted" intermediaries. As @NickSzabo4 has written, vulnerability to a trusted 3rd party is a security hole.

blockchains are going to expose these "trusted" intermediaries who extract raging economic rent and impose tons of friction.

blockchains will chip away slowly, then rapidly, as user #s go from millions today to tens of millions, then quickly hundreds of millions.

the financial services industry represents 7.2% of US GDP and globally, takes in about $13 Trillion annually. That's going to all be in play

Think of the disruption still going on from the digitization of information based on protocols that are 20 years old.

think of how our global economy will change as money and other assets get "digitized" by decentralized and programmable blockchain protocols

and the digitization of assets may not even the most disruptive part of blockchains...but that's for another day. #end.