We will always need intermediaries … just what kind?

I spotted a quote this week:

“All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

My mind immediately moved to bitcoin and cryptocurrency and, specifically, Jamie Dimon. For years, Dimon has said that bitcoin is a scam and yet, now, we have JPM Coin and ETFs and other services that JP Morgan provide to trade in crypto. It went from being rubbish and violently opposed to being accepted as self-evident.

It reminded me of another quote by Dee Hock, founder & CEO of Visa, who reflected that: “The person who fights for a dying cause is admired, supported and honoured. The person who fights for a new cause struggling to be born is misunderstood, reviled and attacked. Nothing is more difficult than taking the lead in a new order of things.”

The reason for this reflection is that you are changing the order of things; you are creating a new space that upsets the old order; you are moving the cheese; you are a pain in the neck.

This has been cryptocurrencies charge for years but it is now moving to institutionalisation. The issue with this is that it no longer is bucking against the system; it is becoming the system. The whole thing about bitcoin, going back to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original paper, is that bitcoin was meant to be “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

The problem with this is that you can only do that, transact without an intermediary, if you are confident that you know what you are doing and that you know how to rectify issues, problems or losses on your own. Most people want a third party to manage it for them.

My worst prediction, many years ago, was that the future would be a world without intermediaries. I was TOTALLY wrong.

“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea… Naturally, therefore, common men hate a new idea, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the original man who brings it.” - Walter Bagehot

The thing is that the intermediary today could be technology and the network. It does not need to be a bank or a government. Agentic AI is making this even more likely, as I blogged the other day. This is a new idea: trust in the tech, and yes, this is the pain to human nature: to give up the human contact. We are living in a world of tech dealing with tech on our behalf so we can do other things like … urmmm … who knows what?

By way of example, I could stop blogging tomorrow and delegate to an AI bot. When I go on AI systems and ask questions, they can write for me so, why don’t I do that? Because writing for me is therapeutic. The creative process of thinking is good for me. That’s why I write every day. It’s not for you or for fame; it is to make me feel better by thinking. That’s the key to life and humanity.