Throughout history, the greatest technological unlocks have been ones that allow for an increased level of interconnectedness and facilitate a transfer of information, across time, and space. In a world where you cannot coordinate humans, devices, or capital, a large degree of resources are spent (or misspent) duplicating efforts, trying to do the same thing without division of labor or specialization.
In other words, coordination can be seen as a force multiplier which greatly increases the efficiency of time or capital invested, especially when applied to parties which are otherwise distributed.
For instance, in remote areas of Papua New Guinea there are over 800 local languages developed independently due to isolation and separation by mountains and forests. You see the same in the Andes. Once people starting transcribing information in books, they could be translated and mass distributed, not only across regions, but across generations.
Throughout the 20th Century, the lines of identity have been drawn along where you born and what you believed in. In the 21st Century, the world is becoming increasingly balkanized and what you spend your time on and what assets you own are becoming clearer metonyms for identity. Take, for instance the subconscious signaling of brands on social media, or the signaling of a prestigious rank or weapon skin in an online game.
As humans go ‘terminally online’ it is clear that cryptocurrencies and digital assets will play a major role in coordinating the formation of new capital, aligning objectives, communities, and incentivizing new behavior which is useful to other groups or autonomous agents. We previously wrote about how crypto could drive everlasting datasets for large language models.
If AI is an intelligence boom which pits entropy against cryptography, limited only by the quality and quantity of data that can be readily ingested, crypto is a coordination boom. When the dust settles on the era of cryptocurrencies, it seems likely that the most meaningful lasting consequence on the world is not a single application or asset but rather the ability of crypto to mobilize a fleet of humans, devices, or autonomous agents to perform certain activities or behaviors for a reward. Crypto does this by being an economic value transfer layer for the digital era, truly, money over internet protocol.
As people take their talents, knowledge, time, and capital online, it only makes sense there is an incentive coordination layer to match.