This essay couldn't be more pertinent in regards to a recent experience I had. I attended a cryptocurrency / general data protection awareness event that was hosted by very respectable figures in the space. The event was held at a bar that was split in half to accommodate for event attendees as well as general punters who had gone to the bar to have some drinks and wind down after a day at work.

Half-way through, as the panel was discussing the recent events regarding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, a chant broke out from a group at the back of the bar (People who weren't there for the event), and the chant was as follows: "We don't give a f**k!" - they repeated this until their interest in interrupting the event waned and they soon returned to whatever discussion they were having prior to the ingenious idea of besieging us with needless noise.

At that moment the panel fell silent and everyone in the room seemed to collectively reflect on what we were witnessing. Several seconds passed before one of the speakers broke the silence and said "This sums it up. It seems that the people who are concerned with issues of digital privacy and data protection are a minority, whilst the rest of the population don't give a f**k."

I'm sure that I wasn't the only one to come away from the event thinking that this might be a very long slog to mass adoption. If people cannot realise the severity of what happened with Facebook, and if people can't realise how careless they can be when sharing private information on extremely public platforms, and if people can't realise that there are legitimately bad actors with malicious intent that would love nothing more than to get their hands on as much information/data they can on the general populace, then I just don't know what it will take to convince them that a permissionless blockchain could potentially play a significant role in resolving all these issues.

Ultimately I do believe that enough awareness can be raised to turn the tide, but it seems like we'll likely require an impetus with profundity akin to a digital Franz Ferdinand moment.