원문 보기
Like many of you, I live a fast-paced, bustling life filled from dawn to dusk with ever-changing professional demands, needs for my family, and ever-changing personal needs. Before I start to tell you about blockchain and how it works, let me start by sharing a day in my life. When I wake up, I wake up to the alarm I set on my iPhone and check the weather so I can decide what to wear.
Before I get out of bed, I look at my phone again and check my Binance and Coinbase accounts to see how my cryptocurrency investments are doing. I did well. So, I buy yet another CryptoKittie for my eldest daughter, Delia. I order my groceries on Alexa, have them delivered to my front door. I pay the ski dues and the swim team dues with Bitcoin online.
And before I leave the house, I remember to upload those two photos of the girls to Facebook so that their grandparents can see them from coast to coast. While I'm out, I check my phone again to see if the FedEx I ordered is actually delivered to my house. I jump in my car. I turn on Spotify and listen to the playlist that my younger daughter created for me.
I start singing. When I return home, I jump onto my computer and get that homework assignment in for the master's program I'm working on. I've done all this before 9:30 a.m. I sound like a wildly productive person, right? Great. Yes and no. These online conveniences at a dangerous cost. When I use the internet, I leave intimate traces of my life and my family's life out there.
I send deeply personal information to many, many companies. These activities I've just shared with you create what is called my digital identity. And guess what? You all have one, too. But you don't own it. Let me say that again. You do not own your digital identity. So, who does? A governmental institution?
A bank, perhaps? But it's not. It's the companies. The owners of your digital identity are the big tech companies, some of which are worth over a trillion dollars today. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Twitter. Is this a problem? Why should you care? Why do I care? When I signed up for online services, I gave companies the ability to make me their product.
What do I mean? All of these activities I just described include accompanying information about me that's bought and sold. It's called personal business data. Companies collect it, mine it, monetize it, and buy and sell it, just like I buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Your data is listed as an asset. Did you get a check from Facebook, Amazon, or Google this quarter for the profits they made on you and your digital identity?
I know I didn't. I signed up for services. I did not sign up to be a product. I believe this must change. You have a right to the ownership over your data. It is your asset. And you should look at it in your portfolio that way. You need the ability to privatize it, monetize it, or donate it to the charity of your choice.
This is your right. This is my right. It's a human right. With the ease of the digital age, we've all benefited in many ways. My life is infinitely easier because of my digital identity. I'm enthralled with the promise of this new technology, especially the power of blockchain. In fact, I believe in the power and the utility of the second iteration of the internet that I founded a blockchain advisory and development company even after my husband politely asked me to stop talking about blockchain at dinner for 6 months.
Blockchain will be a turning point for us all. It has been for me. But never like I expected. I was recently asked by the UN to be a founder on a task force of 50 CEOs to attack global problems with blockchain in conjunction with the 2030 sustainability goals. There, at the conference, I was confronted with information that changed my life, the direction of my career, and my mission as a citizen on this planet.
I also discovered that as a blockchain entrepreneur, I was uniquely positioned to help. Did you know the following? Over 1.1 billion women and children are undocumented and vulnerable to the sex trafficking and industrial slavery. The trafficking of children and young women is a $150 billion a year global industry.
Every 4 seconds, another human being is abducted or taken into indentured slavery. Without a valid proof of identity, the most basic human services are out of reach. Critically, this represents a real danger to the most vulnerable children, women, young boys, and immigrants who are uprooted and fleeing war, violence, poverty, and sometimes even their own families.
These are staggering numbers. But, there is a solution. We can use blockchain. The UN Assistant Secretary General believes in this as well. He said that, quote, "Leveraging blockchain technology can save the lives of millions of children." So, here's the slide you're waiting for. What is blockchain?
I could give a 5-hour talk. That's usually what it takes. But, suffice it say, blockchain is a list of a list of records which are linked cryptographically with a type of math. This ledger is stored on a computer that's distributed and decentralized around the world. This is different than how your information is currently stored today.
Stored on server farms, centrally. Think of your bank. Your information is stored on their server, which makes it easy to hack. But blockchain is different. Every time a record appears and is added to the blockchain, a copy of that record automatically appears on all the computers on the blockchain around the network.
This makes it very secure because no one person can alter or change the data. You can just add to the data chronologically. We can use blockchain in a twofold approach to help stop these crimes against those that are most vulnerable. First, remove the ability to forge fake identities for buyers and sellers and the people they exploit.
Second, give everyone in the world a digital identity that only they can sell, control, or manage. If Walmart is moving to blockchain in order to track and manage the salad grower growers, we as people deserve the same safeguards. After all, aren't people more important than lettuce? We can fight for the rights of those who cannot do it for themselves.
For those caught in the vicious cycle of human trafficking, we need a radical new solution based on blockchain technology. Blockchain can stop human trafficking with the following actions. First, remove third-party institutions that manage and monetize digital information. Establish sovereign digital identities as a human right.
Create those identities on a platform that can't be changed, hacked, or forged. And then lock those identities with a cryptographic key. Imagine a modern-day social security number. How would this work? Let me take you to Katete, Zambia. When I was at the UN sustainability conference, I thought about how I needed to return as quickly as possible to Katete to bring an onboarding platform for all the young girls, children, and women who don't have an identity.
Let's meet a Zambian of 11 named Melindy, who I met in 2006. Melindy is very poor and lives with her only elderly grandmother and 23 other cousins, but she is smart. She knows that without proof of identity, her choices in life are limited. She goes to a local market to buy produce and look at the village bulletin board.
On the board, she sees a flyer created by me offering to help her create her digital identity and teach her how to use it, go to school, or monetize it. But there's an equally compelling flyer also on that board. However, this one offering a digital identity is false. It is a trick by human traffickers set up to bring in those who are most vulnerable.
Curious, which address does she go to? She goes to the address of the second flyer. Before she can knock on the door, someone sweeps her up, and she's gone. She has now been sold into human trafficking. Blockchain could have given Melindy a digital identity through biometrics, voice recognition, iris recognition, even gestures.
Birth certificates, hospital records, any form of paper that's make someone identifiable is just not available in the places that we're talking about. Now is the time to take control of your identity. If not for you, for your children, your grandchildren whose pictures you put on Facebook, or Melinda.
Remember the 1.1 billion citizens of the world who have no digital identity. For most of us here, a compromised digital identity is inconvenient. We all remember the Equifax hack, did everyone lock their accounts? Inconvenient, yes, but not a matter of life and death. You are valuable. Your digital habits, actions, efforts, and patterns are worth more than you ever know.
And you should have the power to capitalize on that value, or at the very least, control who has access to it. It is time to take back your identity and bring control and privacy to your life while forcing accountability and transparency on the global tech titans who built their empires on your back and your data.
Blockchain is so much greater than cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin. It's a foundational shift in digital standards, a new paradigm in computation, analysis, processing, and possibility. One of the most exciting aspects about blockchain is the untapped potential it has to fight human trafficking. I believe in the power of blockchain and I'm confident that it will change the world.
I pledge and I ask you to pledge with me to use this technology to empower millions of people to live freer, more fulfilling lives with management of their digital identity. Thank you.
Comments 0