[MUSIC] Okay, we're almost there. In this video, we'll look at the last of our seven design principles underlying blockchain. Our seventh and final principle is inclusion. We think the economy works best when it works for everyone. That means, lowering the barriers to participation. We can do that by creating platforms, so that everyone can take part in the economy and prosper from their reference. One problem that solves is poverty. By including more people in the economy. If you're watching this video, the Internet probably seems like it's everywhere but that's actually an illusion. Most of the world's population is still excluded, not just from access to technology but from access to the financial system and to economic activity. Despite its promise, the Internet hasn't really delivered prosperity to all. Sure, it's helped establish companies provide jobs for millions in the emerging economies. It's also lowered the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, and it's given the disadvantaged access to opportunities and to basic information. But that's not enough. There's still 2 billion people without a bank account and in the developed world, social inequality continues to grow. In developing countries, mobile phones are often the only affordable means of connecting. Most financial institutions have mobile payment apps combining cameras and QR codes. Consumers at the bottom of the pyramid still can't afford the minimum account balances, minimum payment amounts, or transaction fees to use the financial system. Its infrastructure costs make micropayments and microaccounts unfeasible. And a lot of these people don't have an identity either. The blockchain breakthrough is making a stable payment system available to all, regardless of where they live or how much money they have. Satoshi Nakamoto designed the BitCoin blockchain system to work on the Internet but it can operate without it if necessary. Satoshi imagined the typical person would interact with the blockchain through what he called Simplified Payment Verification mode. This mode works on cellphones. It lets anyone with a flip phone participate in a market as a producer or a consumer. There's no bank account required, no proof of citizenship, birth certificate or even a home address, no identity. You don't even need a stable local currency to use blockchain technologies. Blockchain drastically lowers the cost of transmitting payments of any sort. They can serve as a bank account. They can help people obtain credit and invest in their future. And it supports entrepreneurship and participation in trade, even global trade. In developing countries, the situation of course is worse. The entire banking system could be inefficient or corrupt. Central banks of failed states often print money to keep the government running. But the increase in the money supply debases the currency. If the local economy really tanked, as it did in Cyprus, Greece, or Venezuela, these central bodies could freeze the bank assets of whomever couldn't afford a bribe. Meanwhile, the wealthy store their assets in more stable currencies, causing their native currency to lose even more value. Then what happens to the poor? Whatever money they have becomes pretty much worthless. Any foreign aid can get siphoned off by corrupt officials and other chiselers. Who add friction to every attempt at helping their people. The Australia micropayment service called Mobile Handset Initiated Transactions, or mHITs for short, has launched a new service, BitMoby. BitMoby lets consumers top up their mobile phone credit by texting mHITs, an amount of Bitcoin. This is available in more than 100 countries. And remember mobile phones are the key to banking and financial independence in the developing world. There's also enormous potential in using blockchain to safeguard property records. These records, titles, deeds and so forth are a huge issue in emerging countries. In many places, there's no trusted entity where you can register land titles. Blockchain can allow people to claim, I own this property, and back it up with verifiable proof. With proof of ownership, they can then use their land as collateral for loans, or for credit, to improve their lives. Another important thing to consider is the problem of bandwidth. High end user bandwidth tends to increase by 50% each year. Low end user bandwidth tends to lag to or three years behind. To keep the Blockchain inclusive it needs to be accessible at slower data speeds. So we must consider the full spectrum of usage not just the state of the science of high end users. But the slow tech and the sporadic power outages of users in remote regions of the world's poorest countries. So what are the implications of how block chain makes the economy more inclusive? Later in the course, we'll tackle the issue of what we call the prosperity paradox. How the first era of the Internet benefited many but overall prosperity in the Western world for many more, is no longer improving. Our economies are growing, but the middle class is shrinking. The foundation for prosperity is inclusion. And blockchains can help. Of course inclusion has multiple dimensions. It means participation by people of all social, economic, and racial background. It means an end to discrimination based on health, gender, sexual identification or sexual orientation. It means dropping barriers to access because of where a person lives, whether a person spent a night in jail or how a person voted. It also can mean an end to glass ceilings of the old boy networks. It means change for the better.
