Trust, Privacy and Bubbles
Trust, Privacy and Bubbles
Good Day! This is my weekly newsletter, with a dose of insights into the future. The topic of this newsletter is the exponential times we live in, hence the title of f(x) = e^x, which is the (natural) exponential function.
Recently, I launched my new concept The Digital Speaker and you can now book me as an avatar or hologram. Also, my tech trend prediction for 2021 is out, read it here!
How a Trustless Society Will Improve our Privacy
My latest article:
Trust is a fundamental good that, while largely intangible, is key to the functioning of practically every meaningful interaction in society. Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise the way we leverage trust - and even change the nature of trust. Not only in digitally rendered transactions, but also in everyday life. Although most blockchains are pseudo-anonymous, there is a technology gaining traction that enables trustless transactions without breaching your privacy. Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) is a method used in cryptography to prove ownership of a piece of knowledge, without revealing the content of that knowledge and it will bring back privacy that most of us thought to have disappeared.
Three Useful Nuggets of Information
My weekly tips from around the web to get you thinking.
1. Central bankers say cryptocurrencies are a bubble.
Bitcoin just blasted through the $10.000 mark, after only passing through the $5000 mark just seven weeks ago. Now, the world’s central banks are responding with the Central European Bank referring this price increase to be Tulip-like. (Reuters)
2. America's biggest bank moves to anonymity.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon may call Bitcoin a fraud; the American bank is serious about adopting blockchain technology. Now, JPMorgan is collaborating with anonymous cryptocurrency Zcash because of their Zero Knowledge Proof technology. (MIT)
3. Cryptojacking enables hackers to steal from poor
countries.Cybercriminals aren’t ignoring poor nations when it comes to ransomware. Instead, they use anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero and Zcash to extract value from poor countries. (Cyberscoop)
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is The Digital Speaker, a world-leading futurist and global AI keynote speaker who helps leaders decide what AI, and the technologies that follow it, mean for their business. He speaks to leadership teams at their retreats and to conference audiences worldwide, and his WAVE framework gives them a way of deciding that they keep using long after he has left the room. His Intelligence Age Scorecard measures how ready an organization is across the four WAVE pillars.
He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney, is a Certified Speaking Professional and Global Speaking Fellow, and ranks among the world’s top futurists on the Global Gurus list (#1 in 2025, #3 in 2026). Salesforce named him one of its 16 leading AI voices. He has written six books, most recently Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, writes the Synthetic Minds newsletter on Substack, and founded Futurwise. Talk to his digital twin on WhatsApp: +1 (830) 463-6967.
