Achieving Trust in the Digital Age.

Trust in business is the expectation that the other party will behave according to the four principles of integrity:

1. Honesty — no lying through omission.

2. Consideration — fair exchange.

3. Accountability — accountable for broken promises.

4. Transparency — operating in the open.

Double-entry accounting.

When Luca Pacioli introduced the double-entry accounting system in 15th century he revolutionized the field of financial accounting during the Renaissance period; it solved the problem of managers knowing whether they could trust their own books. However, to gain the trust of outsiders, independent public auditors also verify the company’s financial information.

The Blockchain Revolution.

When Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the blockchain technology with Bitcoin in 2008, he solved what Luca missed in his system — gaining trust of outsiders during an exchange of value without independent public auditors verifications. Blockchains use a cryptographic consensus mechanism to verify and secure transactions as a collective group. [See how blockchains work in detail here]

Blockchain reduces inefficiencies and costs by allowing multiple parties to rely on the same information rather than duplicating and replicating it and having to reconcile it. This mechanism is more accurate and secure, we are all being responsible for maintaining and securing our ledgers, instead of relying on banks, independent auditors and powerful corporations. [See recent cyber attack on Equifax affecting 143 million people]

Blockchain technology could be an important tool for protecting and preserving humanity and the rights of every human being, a means of communicating the truth, distributing prosperity and rejecting fraudulent activities. The first era of the digital economy was about computing and communications technologies. The second era of the digital economy will be powered by a clever combination of computer engineering, mathematics, cryptography, and behavioral economics.

The Market.

The market capitalization of the entire cryptographic industry, as of September 12th, 2017, is around $143 billion - dominated by Bitcoin and Ethereum. Today's entrepreneurs are building protocols, not companies. Companies raise money through traditional venture capital while protocols issue their own blockchain-based tokens on top of existing general-purpose blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum (which is why they are the 2 most valuable blockchain protocols). For the first time, entrepreneurs can monetize directly at the protocol level, not at the application level. [See "The future is a decentralized internet" for more details]

Check out some of my favorite decentralized applications below. Would love your feedback and suggestions to add/edit!

PS. At CountUp, we curated a network of licensed accountants who specialized in blockchain technologies and cryptographic assets. If you are looking for a crypto accountant or want to apply as an accountant, please visitwww.countup.io/crypto

Authenticating identity

Replacing traditional IDs issued by the DMV. The fingerprint is digitized and the personal information is added to the blockchain. Whenever personal information needs to be accessed, fingerprint is a private key that ‘unlocks’ personal information.

Companies in this space:

Civic — Giving businesses and individuals the tools to control and protect identities.

Storing value

Storing currencies, digitalized identities, data and other assets.

Companies in this space:

Filecoin - Decentralized storage network.

Factrom— Distributed registry.

Storj , Sia , CloudWithMe— Distributed cloud.

Lending value

Consumers accessing loans directly from peers. On the blockchain, anyone will be able to issue, trade and settle debt instruments.

Companies in this space:

Salt - Blockchain backed loans.

Exchanging value

Blockchain cuts settlement times on all transactions from days and weeks to minutes.

Companies in this space:

OpenBazar — Peer to peer ecommerce. Ebay of crypto.

Funding and investing

Blockchain automates many functions when it comes to investing in an asset/company and enables new models for peer-to peer financing.

Companies in this space:

LAT— Invest or sell your tokenized assets: from Debt and Equity to Real Estate and Works of Art.

Insuring value and managing risk

Using reputational systems based on a person’s social and economic capital, their actions, and other reputational attributes, insurers will have a much clearer picture of the actuarial risk.

Bitpark — Peer to peer insurance network.

Augur — Decentralized prediction market.

Aragon — Everything you need to run your company on Ethereum.