The Boston Globe: Could crypto help close the racial wealth gap?

May 5, 2022

Read on The Globe’s Innovation Beat: Could crypto help close the racial wealth gap? Hint: We don’t know yet. By Diti Kohli Globe Staff

“Black people are already participating in this space to a decent degree,” said Damon Cox, the head of next practice at MassChallenge, at the recent “How to Boston While Black” summit.

Also at the summit, Brandon Tory, an ex-Google engineer, touted the possibilities of web3 — a “transformative” (but speculative) vision of the World Wide Web where crypto, NFTs, and the distributed database technology known as blockchain are the norm.

“This technology has the potential to be an equalizer,” said Tory, who runs Formless, a Boston music technology startup that employs the blockchain. It could topple the corporate structure — think banks and governments — that are the foundation of the Internet today. Instead, communities of color could complete transactions without answering to a higher centralized power, he added.