Giving Compass' Take:

• Blockchain, like any potentially transformative new technology, would benefit from shaping by effective altruists who can help to move the technology in the direction of positive impact. 

• Do you agree with this premise? What are potential barriers that may prevent effective altruism from impacting blockchain technology?

• Learn how blockchain can be harnessed for development. 

Blockchain could be a crucial piece of a macro systemic phase shift that could solve coordination problems and prepare us for upcoming problems associated with increasingly large/fast technological change. However, this phase shift is incredibly unlikely and tricky to execute, so it could make more sense to concentrate on more clearly impactful/solvable problems.

Effective Altruists Should Shape The Implementation of Any High-Impact New Technology

  • Humans create new technology that has immense impacts on society.
  • Profit-motivated incentive structures define how that technology is developed.
  • The EA community should bring the EA perspective into any new technology with humanity-level scale.
  • Blockchain is a high-impact technology, therefore EAs should be part of shaping it positively.

New “Organizational Technology” for Coordination and Motivation
The high-level idea here is that blockchains are a new kind of “Organizational Technology” that enables new kinds of coordination and motivation.

The Opportunity to Direct A Massive Redistribution of Wealth
The high-level idea here is that the appreciation of cryptocurrencies redistribute/create substantial amounts of wealth. Though it’s possible to look at this wealth from a macro perspective (by looking at the total market cap of cryptocurrencies around $300B), I find it much more powerful to look at individual cases. At the end of 2017, MIRI raised $2.5M, 66% of which was from crypto. There’s a wealthy Bitcoin investor who is donating $86M to charity, and they gave $5M to GiveDirectly at the end of 2017.

Read the full article on blockchain and effective altruism by Rhys Lindmark at Effective Altruism Forum