The sharing economy enables everyone to turn any asset (homes, cars, etc.) into a productive piece of capital. Eventually, we may get to a life without ownership. You own nothing. You rent everything. You do this because it’s cheaper: you pay pennies or fractions of pennies per day to have a bed to sleep in, or a winter coat to keep you warm. You scale up or down as needed: maybe your partner moves in, so you swap your single bed for a queen or winter ends, so you return your coat. You are always optimizing. You pay for precisely what you use when you use it – and nothing more. But there’s a challenge: Who “owns” anything when nobody does? That’s where blockchain, the same register that drives electronic currencies like bitcoin, comes in. A peek into the (near) future.
How blockchain can help democratize the sharing economy
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