One of the things holding crypto/blockchain back has been the lack of diversity in the industry. By diversity, I don't mean the tokenism typically used as a substitute for diversity. Throw a few token Black and Brown faces in the mix. I mean, actual diversity of perspectives and life experiences.
Bitcoin started out as an online meetup for nerdy, white libertarians and has expanded to nerdy white men and white men in finance with a few black and brown specs sitting at the kids table along with a few women. This has changed and is rapidly changing as some of the most practical use cases have appeared in Black and Brown countries, mainly around remittances, and as Asia has taken an increasingly leading role in the sheer number and size of blockchain-based businesses, not to be outdone by the West. Africa is also playing an increasingly important role in bringing blockchain down from the clouds and actually using it to improve people's lives, having already revolutionized mobile payments with m-pesa.
However, the western capitalistic mindset still dominates the conversation and thinking around blockchain technology development. As with most technology developed in the West, it rarely lives up to it's full potential and a lot of people are usually left behind, somebody or somewhere left in ruin, with relatively few people reaping the majority of the rewards. It happens so often that they'll have you believe it's human nature or the natural order of things. Not so. It's just a feature of the extremely flawed and primitive European culture. Sustainable, advanced civilizations have lasted for thousands of years on this planet before Europeans came along.
You may be surprised by my use of the word primitive there because you've been led to believe that civilization = technological development. You think a city like London or New York is an example of advanced civilization, while a tribe that has existed for 1000 years deep in the bush in West Africa is primitive. I would question the level of civilization of a society that allows billionaires to exist while any human is starving or can put a human on the moon, while destroying the planet that human has to come back to. Technologically advanced, but spiritually and socially primitive. Allowing these people to continue to dominate the conversations and set the narratives around the future of blockchain is like letting a toddler manually pilot a space shuttle. Just irresponsible.
All that is to say, blockchain will not solve many of the human-generated problems it's supposedly meant to solve because these are not problems that need a technical solution. They need a cultural solution, and out of that culture, the proper technology will be developed to address it. Crypto is no magic bullet.
Blockchain could help solve inequality, create a more sustainable monetary system, or give the poorest among us access to the financial tools they need to climb out of poverty. But it won't if the same people that created these problems are left in charge of creating the solutions. To make it plain, basically, white people (men and women) who operate with a Eurocentric mentality under the global system of white supremacy will not use Blockchain to solve any major issues in our global human society. These are the people who've screwed it up. They are incapable of operating in any other way because they're entire culture is built on hierarchy, dominance, linear thinking, and, most importantly, fear. Their collective consciousness is ruled almost entirely by fear and perceived lack, and they will have you believe this is human nature. It is not. It is primitive and base, and we should stop supporting this delusion.
Hunger is not a technological problem, it's a matter of misplaced priorities. We have the technology to end world hunger today. Hell, we've had it for decades. We choose bloated military budgets and short-term corporate profits instead. Inequality isn't a "fact of life" and it isn't because there isn't enough to go around. There's plenty of everything we all need, if you value life and community over individual material possessions.
If people with Eurocentric ideals are allowed to dominate blockchain like they've tried to dominate everything else on this planet, they will only use blockchain to create a more efficient form of what they've already created, which is death and destruction via the global system of white supremacy. White supremacists will only use technology to be more efficient white supremacists and any benefits that happen to accrue to anyone else will just be side effects. It is foolish to believe the people that literally "discovered" entire continents and attempted to wipe out the people WHO WERE ALREADY THERE, will suddenly change their M.O. because of a new technology. This may seem harsh, but anybody who studies even a little bit of non-whitewashed history cannot deny it without major cognitive dissonance.
Technology will not fix your culture. The point is...for once...the European minority should take a back seat and let the more civilized majority drive this one without their incessant interference and need to dominate everything. Now, of course, the whites and their token Black & Brown agents of white supremacy won't just allow this to happen, so it's incumbent upon the global majority to step up and take charge and control our own blockchain narratives and shush the colonizers when they inevitably try to come in and meddle in grown folks' business.