Unblocked

Afterword

THE OPPORTUNITY AND THE HOPE ARE HUMAN

The time is always right to do what is right.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I did not dedicate this book to my children lightly.

After many months of writing and editing, I printed and read my entire manuscript on paper for the first time.  I noted, with irony, that moving this book about bleeding-edge technology from pixels, where it had lived so long, to a stack of paper that I could hold in my hands helped me reconnect to what I’d written. From my first glimpse of the alternate future that decentralization could trigger, I have believed this is an important moment in our collective history. But as I turned that last page and slipped on my shoes to take my dog for a long-needed walk, I was feeling this even more deeply.

I hadn’t made it one block before I ran into a neighborhood dad. This man was practically dripping children. He had a baby cradled in his arms. One twin toddler was trying to untie his shoe. The other was wrapped around his leg, and her friend was using his belt to anchor a climb up his leg. “Hey!” he shouted from across the street. “When should I buy bitcoin?” Word had been getting out in my neighborhood that I was writing about blockchains, so I had been frequently peppered with questions while walking the dog.

As I approached, the three toddlers dropped what they were doing en masse and turned their attention to my dog. Good thing, because this time, my Dear Reader, I added a swear when I whispered, “It does