The best technology breakthroughs are more than business productivity or consumer conveniences. They connect people to a larger vision, a world of possibility and their best selves. The best products in these categories are beautiful as well, artistic. Airplanes, Lighting, Computer graphics, the Internet, and so forth.

Crypto’s public image would benefit from a positive big picture message, something inspiring and aspirational because people want a cohesive vision and strategy they can adopt in addition to beauty.

People need belief.

An underlying almost religious message that creates a mission driven following. Ideally this will attract curious people who get excited by big hairy problems with lots of upside. People with lots of options who don’t care so much about speculation.

Most blockchain technology (Crypto) entrepreneurs proclaim their token as the answer to some form of money, defined generally as having either one or more of the attributes we’ve all heard Naval talk about:

• Collectible or Art

• Commodity or Store of Value

• Medium of Exchange

• Unit of Account

But if Crypto represents a truly revolutionary technology, doesn’t rebuilding money using these definitions miss the true opportunity? What if looking at all the existing forms of money prevents us from establishing entirely new forms of capital? Bitcoin has been labelled the first new commodity in 50 years. No wonder it attracts maxi’s.

Others predict Crypto will monetize networks as another layer of “the capital stack”, along with senior debt, preferred debt, and equity. This seems closer to the mark. In accounting terms, this might be like quantifying and securitizing goodwill and intangibles.

New technology and culture allows humans to realize resources that previously did not exist, such as photovoltaic electricity, mobile phones, and disc jockeys. Humans invent these out of thin air with nothing but conjecture, argument or experimentation, and they enable leaps in human potential and economic opportunity. Why not invent value from other parts of human existence that nobody has considered yet?

If we are at such a moment today, where we need new ideas to illuminate a path forward, what should we play around with? Looking at recent technology and culture to invent new structures seems a good place to start.

Perhaps establishing a new asset on the foundation new technologies would be interesting. Specifically, turning reputation into a digital asset. Reputation is widely understood across socio-economic class, already facilitates various “transactions”, can be peer-to-peer or built through institutions like universities, does not require central government nor anarchy, and resists quantitative study.

With Crypto we could create a user-owned, neutral and portable digital reputation assets that cut across geographical, political and corporate jurisdictions. These assets could strengthen the personal balance sheets of people in the services economy, and potentially increase the depth with which we view macro economics. Giving us a view into reputation as a form of Social Capital, one of the most important elements of society that we only measure with the narrow lens of financial transactions.

Peer-to-peer reputation people can own, on a global, open network. That sounds like something I could believe in.