n BLOCKCHAIN
has increased every year since Vermont passed the
first one in 2015.
California universities are in on the action
too, with three of the top 10 universities for block-
chain classes in the world located here: Stanford,
UC Berkeley and UCLA. Locally, UC Davis has a
student-run blockchain organization supported by
a team of professors and a blockchain club at the
Graduate School of Management.
Not everyone believes the visions of blockchain
evangelists. Jimmy Song, startup veteran, develop-
er, programmer and partner at San Francisco-based
venture capital firm Blockchain Capital, told an
interviewer last September that in 2013, he began
looking at a lot of blockchain projects as potential
investments. Many of those “purported that they’d
be changing everything. … A lot of those projects
have gone nowhere,” he said. At the blockchain
world’s biggest conference in May 2018, he told at-
tendees that most blockchain projects won’t fix the
problems they aim to because they don’t eliminate
the need for a trusted third party, according to
news accounts of the event. Onstage, he bet another
speaker, Joseph Lubin of blockchain giant Ethere-
um, that blockchain technology won’t have any sig-
nificant use in five years. (It’s unclear if the bet was
ever consummated.) Why is he a partner in a block-
chain venture capital firm? He believes in block-
chain’s use in powering Bitcoin but not much else.
Blockchains aren’t unhackable and can be
breached if an outside entity gains control over
at least 51 percent of the computing power. This
is what happened to cryptocurrency Ethereum
46
comstocksmag.com | April 2019
Classic in January, leading to the theft of more
than $1 million worth of the currency, according to
news reports. Though that was the first incident of
its kind, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that
the development of quantum computing — tens of
thousands to millions of times faster than current
systems — could use its massive power to defeat a
blockchain’s encryption. (Of course, quantum com-
puting also would put our current centralized sys-
tems at risk.)
DEATH OF A MIDDLEMAN
But if Song is wrong and the proponents are proph-
ets, blockchain applications will upend how trans-
actions happen. Take real estate. Imagine logging
in to your computer to access your credit data,
which is stored on a blockchain. Your data are pub-
lic — stored on thousands of computers — but no
one can tell that those data are connected to you
because your identity is protected by a strong cryp-
tographic key that you control. And the data is near
tamper-proof because it’s on a blockchain.
When applying for a home loan, borrowers can
make their entire credit history — not just a score or
snapshot — instantly available to lenders. Lenders
bid, and the borrower picks the best deal. Increased
competition and no more preapprovals or long loan
applications, with lenders taking 30-60 days to
make a decision.
That’s the scenario envisioned by Graham Mc-
Bain, who directs the McClellan Innovation Center,
cofounded Sacramento blockchain startup Lay-
erOne and is a former real estate agent. (LayerOne