Bitcoin was built for times like these.
If you remember, Bitcoin was born out of the financial crisis of 2008. While governments were scrambling to bail out industries and age-old institutions, people were looking for alternatives that would allow them to protect themselves and their livelihoods.
Now, the legacy financial system is facing its biggest challenge since 2008. The chaos surrounding Silicon Valley Bank and the subsequent fallout has reinforced our need for trustless, decentralized self-custodial technologies that protect consumers first and foremost.
Trust has been – and still is – mostly provided by centralized intermediaries. While the centralization of trust does have its advantages, we have seen time and time again that these advantages are often a double edged sword. In the past year alone, they have put the lives of everyday, ordinary people at the throes of forces beyond their control more than once.
Our immediate mission at Trust Machines is to unlock the true potential of the Bitcoin economy. This means tapping into the opportunities associated with the world’s most secure and decentralized blockchain by ensuring that Bitcoin is the final settlement layer for applications.
But our mission actually has much wider ramifications that extend beyond the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Ultimately, we’re focused on building trustless technologies that empower everyday people around the world by ensuring that they, alone, have full control over their assets. We want to make sure that they, alone, can decide what to do with their funds and resources. We want to give them, alone, the power to take the best course of action for themselves.
In other words, we want to give anyone the power to weather any storms that occur when legacy institutions come up short.
And while Satoshi described Bitcoin as, primarily, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, their white paper ultimately emphasized the absence of a third party. Such an absence allowed each peer to retain full control over their assets in this electronic cash system.
The impact, however, was far greater than that. As our CEO Muneeb Ali mentioned in his first blog post for Trust Machines, Satoshi had presented a framework to provide trust without centralization in an open, permissionless setting. What’s more, that framework could be used for many applications that extend beyond the operations of digital assets.
Therefore, though the most recent banking sector meltdown isn’t necessarily the sign of a larger financial collapse, it does stress the need for alternative technologies and systems that prioritize the individual user without third party involvement.
And that need extends beyond just the financial sector. The same need for trustless technologies can also be applied to our societal and governmental functions as well.
That’s why we believe in the transformational properties of decentralized technologies and, as such, why these same technologies should be built on Bitcoin.
Whether we’re making developments to Bitcoin’s inherent infrastructure (like sBTC) or exploring use cases that hinge on decentralized trust, we want to give every person access to the decentralization, security, and durability that the Bitcoin blockchain brings. It is these technologies that, ultimately, puts the decision making power in the hands of those who really need it.
And that’s the main takeaway that everyone should glean from our current circumstances. Regardless of Bitcoin’s market moves, the focus should be on building a future where every individual is enabled and empowered to take action.
We just happen to believe that the Bitcoin blockchain – and its potential for trustless technologies – will be the biggest enabler of this.
