Daniel Austin from GRIN Technologies gave a presentation on how big data and the internet of things are driving changes in the nature of money. He argued that within the next 5-10 years, digital transactions will dominate globally and the evolution of digital currencies will be driven by big data and metadata. Further in the future, money may take on more autonomous and self-aware properties as it converges with human and monetary evolution. By giving money sufficient autonomy and awareness, it could potentially preserve and transfer wealth across very long timescales.

1. BIG DATA AND THE FUTURE OF MONEY
How Information Evolves
Daniel Austin
GRIN Technologies, Inc.
“The Connected Life Company”
daniel.austin@grintech.net
2nd Annual Big Data Conference
September 8th , 2014
V2.0

2. ABOUT GRIN TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
• Founded July 4th 2014
• “The Connected Life Company”
• Developing Systemsware at the Intersection of Big Data and the Internet of Things
• Coming in Q3 2015: The Connected Life Server ™
• A Platform for Connecting People, Places, and Things
• Examples: Connected Car Showrooms, QSR Drive-through, Retail Engagement
• Smart People Working Hard to Solve Real Problems

3. THREE BIG IDEAS FOR TODAY’S TALK
1. Big Data (and Big Metadata) are Driving Big Changes in the Nature of Money
Itself
2. The Witnesses Principle: Big Data, Security, Privacy and Identity
3. Evolution of Money Towards Autonomy and Self-Awareness

4. BEYOND PAYMENTS
• Payments are only a single aspect
• Our existing financial systems don’t
scale for a world of 10 billions
• More important is wealth creation
• Big Data

5. MONEY IS A MEASURE OF ORDER
World
We add order to the system by doing work on it –
creating and adding value by opposing entropy
Big Data is a means of imposing order on large
volumes of data over long periods of time
Predictability also contributes to stability
Transparency is key factor

6. BIG DATA LETS US ASK BIG QUESTIONS
How much of human behavior is predictable?
How much of the distribution of wealth is purely
historical?
How much control can we have over our own data? Is it
really yours?
The answers may make us uncomfortable.

7. THE CONVERGENCE OF THE IOT AND BIG DATA
It’s not an accident that these
technologies are coming together at
the same time; the IoT wasn’t possible
before we had solutions to Big Data
problems.
Things
Big Data
Big Metadata

8. By 2020 everyone, everything and
everywhere will be connected in real
time. More than 50 billion connected
devices will be used in the
Networked Society.
Source: http://www.ericsson.com/thinkingahead/networked_society

9. LAYER 8 HYPOTHESIS
• You are a Node on the Internet!
• The Internet Connects People, Not
Computers
• Humans are Machines that Turn Data into
Information

10. ARE YOU A BIG DATA PROBLEM?
• Each person will generate roughly 25 petabytes of data over the course of a lifetime
• Users have little control over collection and storage
• Email, documents, receipts, bills (!), your car, music, books…
• Pervasive computing multiplies the problem
• Majority of data valueless out of context
• Security & privacy risks may outweigh the benefits ?!

11. METADATA EXPLOSION
“Big Metadata” is a bigger problem
than Big Data
Austin’s Law: “The Amount of Data to
be Crunched Will Always Exceed the
Computing Power Available.”
What are these companies’ data
retention policies?

12. SECURITY, PRIVACY AND
PERVASIVE COMPUTING
• Security Is Protection from Harm
• Privacy is Filtering Data Based on Context and Identity
• The Separation of the Self from the Group
• Persona v. Identity
• These are sometimes contradictory ideas

13. PRIVACY & SECURITY AS COMMODITIES?
Our ability to process Big Data problems will open the door to recording a great
deal of personal information – your Connected Life ™ is valuable.
As the value of security and privacy goes up, they will naturally come to be sold
on the market as commodities. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to afford them
yourself.
How much of the data about your behavior can be kept truly private, given our
ability to collect and manage Big Data systems?

14. THE “WITNESSES” PRINCIPLE
• Cellphones are “things”, so are security cameras…
• “When There’s a Witness to Every Act…”

15. IN A WORLD OF
TEN BILLION PEOPLE
AND THEIR THINGS…
• Everyone will be connected – to each other
• Privacy will disappear
• Security (and Civility) will increase
• Witnesses are a good thing ™

16. EVOLUTION: DIGITAL MONEY
Currency Overlay
• A means of digitizing the value of
money (in existing currencies)
• Respects the sovereign currency
system – transparent and credible
• Allows for digital storage and
transfer of funds
• Provided by commercial services
• Reduces anonymity
• Made possible by Big Data
Virtual Currency
• Standalone (convertible?) currency
• Lies outside the sovereign currency
system
• May be subject to instability
• Irreversible transactions offer high
levels of anonymity – but at high risk
• May not enjoy the trust factor
associated with nation-based
financial systems

17. EVOLUTION: MONEY AS AN APPLICATION
Digitally encoded currencies are only the first step
Need to add application functionality
Information
Money
Create Read Update Delete

18. OBJECT-ORIENTED MONEY
Encapsulates Data and Transactions
May include its own predictive models
Allows for indeterministic, autonomous activity
Conditional Behavior
Smart Money dedicated to specific purposes or people
Designed to preserve and distribute stored value – wealth – over time

19. SELF-AWARE MONEY?
What if you wanted to send $1000 into the future,
say 1,000 years?
We need a means of preserving and transferring wealth across
longer timescales than existing currencies allow
By giving money sufficient autonomy and awareness we can enable
action on our behalf over long periods of time.

20. PROGNOSTICATION - TIME HORIZONS
25-50 years
Unification of
Financial and
Monetary
Systems
Human,
Monetary
Evolution
Converge
Self-aware
Financial
Instruments
5 -10 years
Money as an
application
Monetary Flows
Accelerate e^x
Privacy,
Security As
Commodities
1st Autonomous
Money Models
3-5 Years
Digital X-actions
Dominate
Globally
Evolution of
Digital
Currencies
Big (Meta)Data
Drives
Big Money

21. THANKS!
“When everyone’s life is connected, that’s when the
Singularity will happen.”
Daniel Austin
GRIN Technologies, Inc.
“The Connected Life Company”
daniel.austin@grintech.net
http://www.grintech.net
@daniel_b_Austin
@GRINTechInc