Crypto Tribalism Is Holding Back Blockchain

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of CoinDesk's advisory board and a senior advisor of blockchain research at MIT's Digital Currency Initiative.

The evolution of CoinDesk's annual Consensus conference mirrors the changing makeup of the cryptocurrency and blockchain community.

The inaugural 2015 event's 500 attendees were dominated by true believers in bitcoin, along with its subversive goal of replacing fiat currency and traditional banking - though, with Citibank as a sponsor and many bankers present, the conference was also a modest blockchain baptism for the financial establishment.

"Permissionless" cryptocurrency purists accuse established enterprises of co-opting the technology to produce watered down blockchain models that protect their incumbency.

With the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators considering a more draconian stance against cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, a more united front among all who believe in this technology's sweeping potential could help ensure a more constructive legal environment for its development.

Their idea is that if an immutable blockchain ledger can overcome mistrust in the record of money and data transactions, people will have a more reliable foundation, a shared record of the truth, upon which to forge the human bonds needed to write the necessary "Off-chain" business contracts that put those transactions in motion.

If the many non-cryptocurrency use cases for blockchains, such as supply chain and Internet of Things applications, are to succeed, we're going to have to devise workable, off-chain trust arrangements by which people and machines input data.

If the parties to a transaction either voluntarily agree or are compelled to reverse a prior transaction, a blockchain's "Garbage" can, in effect, be removed.

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