It’s for the same reasons that Zooko Wilcox works on Zcash, which he articulated in a great interview with Bitcoin Magazine today. It’s worth quoting in full:
The Internet is an unfinished revolution. I remember what the world was like before the Internet. You didn’t talk to people from other countries! National boundaries were communication boundaries. And you couldn’t talk to or share information with almost all of the people in your own country, either. You were dependent on a small number of personal acquaintances and information gatekeepers.
The Internet changed all that, and it changed the world, and it changed all of our lives for the better. The myriad ways that the Internet has remade and improved our lives is impossible to even measure.
But it is an unfinished revolution, because although it allows you to share information with potentially billions of people, it doesn’t provide a way for you to organize with them. You can’t cooperate with them to allocate resources. You can’t pool your resources with them, you can’t help them pay their bills or make sure they get food, such as by hiring them, buying something from them, or donating to them. And they can’t do that for you. You can’t enter into an enforceable agreement (a contract) with a group of people, unless your group fits into a product from the small number of gatekeepers that control such possibilities.
What is our role in history? I want to be able to look back and say that we played even a small part in reigniting the unfinished revolution. I want to be able to say we were there, pushing for that great transformation that began to wash away the suffocating mass of inefficiency, corruption, and isolation — the transformation that unlocked the potential of billions of humans who had been trapped behind walls — cooperation boundaries! If we can help that happen, and help it happen sooner, before it is too late for so many people, then it will have been worth it, whatever else happens.
If Coin Center can remove just a few regulatory rocks from the stream of innovation, allowing that stream to become a raging river of opportunity and freedom sooner rather than later, then we’ve spent our time well.