Introduction

Welcome to this book In Algorithms, Blockchain & Cryptocurrency: Implications for the Future of the Workplace, we are taking a long position on the eventual future effects of the combination of three (and the many more accompanying) technologies, which in our view will combine to produce a world of work entirely alien to what we currently recognise. In this world, we imagine considerable, if not total, platform-based self-employment facilitated by blockchain-based smart contracts and remunerated by global cryptocurrencies. We would hope that this does not become a simple race to the bottom, as history would prophesise, but in fact through a partnership with the state and unions, becomes a future where workers’ rights and conditions are improved and inequality decreases. A big ask considering historical precedent, but one that we believe is possible. However, ultimately excess profitability which arises from a new style of working, must be (mostly) reallocated to the worker, and this is where the state must come in.