Hamlet Loves Decentralization

“What a piece of work is a man!” cries Hamlet as he laments Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s savage double-cross. They morph from Hamlet’s childhood friends into sleazy middlemen, spying on behalf of King Claudius. The divide between man’s potential for trust and life’s double-dealing, rotten reality lays Hamlet low in depression.

Life is riddled with middle-men like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, fronting a smiling, back-slapping facade while secretly plotting your demise, or at least angling for a payday. The middle-man is everywhere, all the time. He is your cashier at the grocery store, swapping money for produce; he is your broker when you rent an apartment, your salesman at the used car dealership.

The most energizing idea to blockchain entrepreneurs is eliminating middle-men, bridging trust gaps between transacting parties with cryptography, accelerating transactions, and slashing fees: like eliminating the $5 billion Western Union charges its customers to move $80 billion around every year.