John McAfee’s Blockchain Future: The DeLorean, Satoshi Nakamoto and the End of Government (Podcast Promo)

“There will be no banks — there will not be a centralized function of anything” — John McAfee

For the promo edition of the UAE Tech Podcast, we talked with John McAfee to catch a glimpse a future in which physical money, centralized banks and government as we know it no longer exist. This future will be powered by a technology known as the ‘blockchain.’

For McAfee, the blockchain will introduce a new period of history even more profound than the digital revolution of our own time. In this future epoch, real power will no longer reside in the hands of governments or global financial institutions. Instead, “all economic power” will be vested in the hands of ordinary people.

It’s a compelling vision for everyone who believes in small government, at the same time as globalisation. But is it real?

Al Bawaba business sat down with McAfee to try and find out.

In America, the UK and CommonWealth John is a household name.

For our listeners in the Middle East, McAfee is the mind behind the first ever commercial antivirus software sold to Intel in 2011 in a deal valued at $7.68 billion dollars.

This conversation with McAffee is not UAE specific, but it does highlight two themes at the center of this series. The first is how emerging technologies like cryptocurrency are breaking down national borders and established financial and political systems.

The second is how governments themselves are responding to co-opt or merge with these very same technologies.

In addition, there’s also a discussion on Bitcoin exchanges “ran by criminal organisations,” how John Delorean imported drugs to help build his fabled car, and why side-stepping government before it tries to regulate crypto-exchanges is on McAfee’s mind after a trip to China in 2017.

Listen and subscribe on Itunes here:

Originally published at www.albawaba.com on November 19, 2018.