By Dan Ikenson. (Forbes). May 2, 2024
Innovation is essential to economic growth and higher living standards. Better tools and techniques that make us more productive are requirements of wealth creation. Still, innovation attracts its fair share of skeptics whose fears about where new technologies may lead are ripe for exploitation.
Helming the regulatory agencies in Washington, today, are many who seem to prey on fears about the nefarious misuse of technology or how innovation will send our jobs and way of life into obsolescence. Yet, with every new wave of technological uptake, the U.S. economy has created more and better paying jobs than existed before, owing to the increasing abundance produced and invested. Such progress would be impossible without entrepreneurs and their innovations.
Consider blockchain – one of the most important innovations to emerge from the financial technology revolution of the past couple decades. Blockchain is most commonly associated with cryptocurrencies—digital currencies that users exchange through decentralized computer networks—and is valued for its ability to reduce the time, cost, and security risks of transactions. But new and evolving applications will amplify the utility of blockchain in a wider variety of industries – that is, unless regulators kill it in the crib.
Read the full piece here: Forbes