{"id":8517,"date":"2018-07-09T21:11:23","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T21:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=8517"},"modified":"2018-07-11T22:01:16","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T22:01:16","slug":"eddie-hughes-mps-think-tank-report-on-why-the-uk-needs-a-chief-blockchain-officer-whatever-a-blockchain-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/07\/09\/eddie-hughes-mps-think-tank-report-on-why-the-uk-needs-a-chief-blockchain-officer-whatever-a-blockchain-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Eddie Hughes MP on why the UK needs a Chief Blockchain Officer … whatever a “blockchain” is"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eddie Hughes<\/a> is the Conservative MP for Walsall North. He works with Freer UK,<\/a> a libertarian-leaning think tank set up by a group of Tory MPs. They’ve just published his report: “Unlocking Blockchain: Embracing new technologies to drive efficiency and empower the citizen.”<\/a><\/p>\n

The report is full of exciting ideas \u2014 but only the excitement, and not the necessary substance.<\/p>\n

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My blockchain career<\/h3>\n

Hughes has mentioned blockchain a few times<\/a> in Parliament. Jemima Kelly from the Financial Times spoke to him for FT Alphaville:<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m just a Brummie bloke who kept hearing about blockchain, read a bit about it, and thought: this is interesting stuff. So I came up with this idea:\u00a0blockchain for Bloxwich.<\/p>\n

Maybe in some ways I have not completely understood what the application could be, but the idea that transactions are more secure, auditable and unchangeable could have applications for my constituents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a case where someone of good will has reasonably thought “there’s no smoke without fire” \u2014 and not realised just how many fog machines are in play.<\/p>\n

To be fair, the blockchain hype is immense<\/em> \u2014 and you bet the blockchain marketers are actively targeting politicians, as with the awful EU motion<\/a> a few months ago.<\/p>\n

It’s very easy to conclude there must be a “there” there\u00a0\u2014 that with all this hype, there must<\/em> be a core of substance under it.<\/p>\n

Riding the hype<\/h3>\n

The paper’s introduction is unadulterated blockchain boosterism. There are many misunderstood details,\u00a0e.g.<\/em>, “whereas \u2018Ethereum with Casper<\/a>\u2019 will be public but permissioned.”<\/p>\n

The report quotes several other “blockchain” papers that have no technical detail either\u00a0\u2014 but lots of juicy hypotheticals. It’s the same list of hypotheticals you’ve seen a thousand times,<\/a> copied and slightly garbled yet again.<\/p>\n

This is the cycle of blockchain hype\u00a0\u2014 someone says something that sounds really cool, someone else quotes it misunderstanding it, and they all re-quote each other in circles. The actual content is never substantiated \u2014 but it all sounds terribly exciting!<\/em><\/p>\n

All the claims in “Application opportunities” are future-looking, and, if you check the references, very tenuous indeed \u2014 lots of nontechnical survey opinions that blockchain is the future and you could save billions … from people who aren’t in fact using it in production.<\/p>\n

The libertarian promises of Bitcoin<\/s> Blockchain<\/h3>\n

Bitcoin was predicated on extremist libertarianism<\/a> \u2014 not just a political leaning to less regulation, more freedom, less restrictions on business and so on, but absolute anarcho-capitalism with no regulation.<\/p>\n

(The book that does the research on extreme libertarianism in Bitcoin is The Politics of Bitcoin<\/em> by David Golumbia\u00a0\u2014\u00a0UK<\/a>, US<\/a> \u2014 which was essential to chapter 2<\/a> of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain<\/em>.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

These promises are the subtext of the remarkable claims of blockchain \u2014 keep in mind that the disparate technologies that have been marketed as “blockchain” have only the hype around a particular set of unlikely promises<\/a> in common \u2014 and Hughes heard the whistle.<\/p>\n

The paper goes hard on libertarian ideals \u2014 the “fundamentally liberalising approach to data storage” of DLT and blockchain, “why supporters of classical liberalism \u2014 lovers of freedom \u2014 should embrace these kinds of new technology” and “we can use a mix of classical liberal values and new technologies to strengthen individual freedom and improve the life chances of all.”<\/p>\n

This is clearly the attraction of blockchain ideals for Hughes \u2014 but he doesn’t substantiate how this follows at any point, taking it on faith that blockchain will automatically achieve it all.<\/p>\n

Hughes likes blockchain claims of bypassing middlemen:<\/p>\n

So, it could be argued, for example, that the government should not create a cryptocurrency in which every penny can be traced, but rather that it should use the opportunities of these new technologies to forge a banking system that decreases costs, inefficiencies, and the need for \u2018middle-men\u2019 intermediaries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anarcho-capitalism doesn’t work in the real world, though. So what we see in practice is that the cryptocurrency world has rapidly recreated the full panoply of financial middlemen\u00a0\u2014 but incompetently.<\/p>\n

Estonia! Dubai!<\/h3>\n

Hughes is very taken with “The Estonian model” \u2014 the fabulous success of Estonia’s KSI Blockchain … which isn’t even a blockchain.<\/a> Hughes was thoroughly convinced by the reports from Estonia (the country he’s talking about in this tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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I took the opportunity at PMQs today to highlight the benefits of #blockchain<\/a> technology, which in some countries has saved upto 2% of GDP. My blockbuster paper on blockchain will be published by @Freer_UK<\/a> later this month. pic.twitter.com\/5Ues1p2itw<\/a><\/p>\n

— Eddie Hughes MP (@EddieHughes4WN) June 6, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n