Is the Canadian government really adopting cryptocurrency?
Ever since Andreas M Antonopolous appeared before the Canadian senate on October 8, 2014 in order to help develop a trajectory for Cryptocurrency, we have seen a developing trajectory of the Canadian government not only taking a generally lax approach towards CC but also actually taking it on into its operations.
On January 20 (read), the Canadian government announced it will be studying how to make the allocation and distribution of research funds on the blockchain in order to enhance transparency. In fact the goverment was described as "innovation-obsessed" which is an interesting, and I would say appropriate choice of words.
If we follow the Canadian government that it was actually around a year ago that, on February 28, 2017 when we saw the direction recommended by Antonopolous develop into an initiative. The article posted on Global News reported that the government would be looking into using blockchain for the distribution of funds and grants.
While Global News is a major news source, the same news was published a day earlier, on January 19 on Newswire, a more technical but lesser known news source.
In fact here we can read more specifically about what is happening, which is that The National Research Council of Canada, the department responsible for distributing grants and funds for research is now launching trials, not just considering and studying like it was in February, but launching, on Catena Blockchain Suite (https://explorecatena.com) that will allow data sets to be published openly online. It is possible that it will be using Ethereum, and I personally believe likely, although that remains to be seen and if it is launched on Ethereum, as the technology develops we will see what happens 3, 5, 10 years down the road. The Blockchain publishing prototype can be seen openly launched.
This is fascinating piece of news as see the government of Canada adopting blockchain for the purposes of governance. Granted it is a small branch of the Canadian government, it is still an important development.
In fact, in Canada blockchain technology hits home quite hard, with Vitalik Buterin being a Canadian. The January 20 article on Global News also reported on Buterin polling his followers in November of 2017 to ask what they would like to see Blockchain most affect with a clear victory going to government at 44%. Looks like the Canadian government is listening.
Back in February of 2017 Canada was found to be ranked third in Crypto adoption, but that has changed with the growth and explosion in China, Korea and Japan and Canada being a country of only 36 million compared to the hundreds of millions of Asia Pacific.
Jason Abbruzzese of Mashable asks what happens when governments get involved in crypto and suggests that their priority is the opposite of the ethos of Blockchain's decentralization. That is, centralization. The objective of Canada's grants and funds department is transparency, although transparency is a stated value of Canadian governance and has been for quite some time. So what we're seeing is a reiteration and implementation of those values. What does that mean? I believe that Jason is right. Corporations and governments are going to adopt blockchain for what they do. It will up to new start ups and companies to transform the world into something new. But I don't think we can just kick out centralization. I think that centralization and decentralization will just have to continue to co-exist. The cool thing is that blockchain has much more potential in developing and benefiting decentralized applications than centralized ones.
Do you agree with this idea?
Good read. Lots to think about.