Crypto Rico: Blockchain for a Broken Paradise
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2018
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico is becoming an unlikely launchpad for a blockchain boom. Whilst many thousands of Puerto Ricans are leaving the island after the devastation of hurricane Maria, a small group of wealthy ‘crypto-preneurs’, are moving to this US territory. They harbour hopes to reboot paradise using blockchain technology, the revolutionary idea which helped create digital currencies like bitcoin, and bring prosperity back to this financially struggling island
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Five years from now I see Puerto Rico as sort of like almost like the new Rome like in the glory |
| 0:16.2 | golden age. We're not here to avoid taxes we're here to rebuild the world and |
| 0:21.0 | the and the likeness that we think it should be. |
| 0:23.0 | We're talking about bringing technology, but what do you eat when a hurricane comes? |
| 0:27.0 | What do you eat? |
| 0:28.0 | You're not going to eat a microchip, you're not going to eat the technology. |
| 0:32.0 | We need food. |
| 0:33.0 | There's a lot of people in Puerto Rico who don't think technology is the way to go. |
| 0:39.0 | You're with the BBC World Service. |
| 0:42.0 | I'm Raphael La Uchaube and I'm in Puerto Rico. |
| 0:45.0 | Exploring how a new movement that is getting people excited around the world is affecting this tropical paradise. |
| 0:51.0 | A group of wealthy entrepreneurs are looking to kick-start a... this tropical |
| 0:53.4 | paradise. A group of wealthy entrepreneurs are looking to |
| 0:54.4 | kick-start a technological revolution in this US |
| 0:57.2 | Commonwealth saying it will help rebuild the |
| 1:00.0 | islands economy after being pummeled by a massive debt crisis and two hurricanes. |
| 1:05.5 | Their main tool, blockchain. |
| 1:07.8 | Some are calling it the Internet 3.0 and it's the base for something that you might have heard mention at some point. |
| 1:16.1 | Now the digital currency Bitcoin has begun trading on a major exchange for the first time |
| 1:21.0 | in what's being seen by many is a step towards legitimising this digital |
| 1:24.9 | this spells the beginning of the end of the Bitcoin or just the beginning of much |
| 1:28.9 | tighter regulation. This is maybe the most important technology of this the next 10 or 20 years. |
... |
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