3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
2.5 Social Disruption
It is important to note that phasing in smart contracts and other blockchain applications within
the financial and legal sectors will likely create some social upheaval in the form of job
displacement. Given that Luxembourg’s main business is banking, as well as its supporting
infrastructure, consideration will need to be made for redirecting and re-deploying large parts
of the workforce as frictionlessly and productively as possible.
One possible scenario is that many who now work in these evolving sectors can be re-deployed
through Luxembourg’s aggressive push to support new technology development in the
entrepreneurial sector, feeding the very change that is being created in an extropic value loop.
With their accumulated financial expertise, these “new” workers might also find employment in
the emerging global microfinance and microlending, which may also tie into the tokenization of
assets.
2.6 Green Finance
Smart grids, smart homes and buildings, renewable energy and decentralized community-based
energy governance are definitely coming. Because these will be constituted by many different
transacting entities and machines -- in one, important segment of the Internet of Things -- the
Blockchain will become the base infrastructure for regulating the flow of money and energy
across this intricate web of relationships. It will provide a mechanism for automatically auditing
and assessing the vast array of energy and environmental information flowing from these
otherwise independent devices in different jurisdictions and markets, as well as market-pricing
mechanisms needed to optimize resource allocation. As Vienna-based energy startup Grid
Singularity is showing, the technology can be used to assess the myriad forms of data emerging
out of this complex system and thus empower public electricity administrators to finely tune
energy distribution at the lowest cost with minimal carbon emission. 268
268 Lacey, S. “The Energy Blockchain: How Bitcoin Could Be a Catalyst for the Distributed Grid,” Greentech Media,
February 26, 2016. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-energy-blockchain-could-bitcoin-be-acatalyst-for-the-distributed-grid
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