Travis Kling is the Chief Investment Officer and Ikigai. In this interview, we discuss the need for decentralization, Bitcoin as pristine collateral and whether we’re living in a simulation.

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Google, Facebook and Amazon are still relatively young companies, formed in the slipstream of the internet. They rose from a mass of competition to dominate not just the internet, but to become some of the most powerful organisations in the world. Such is their power that they are changing society in profound and concerning ways.

At the same time, there has been significant erosion in trust. The Iraq War and the sub-prime mortgage crisis combined to generate widespread disillusionment with the status quo. This was funnelled into social media’s new echo chambers with algorithms that stoked fear and anger. We are still struggling to deal with the results.

A major issue of concern is that the next wave of technological innovation is expected to be overwhelmingly disruptive: AI and robotics in particular have potentially unlimited capacity to revolutionise society. If we don’t resolve the issues caused by centralization now, the future for democratic governance looks bleak.