A few days ago I purchased some Ether from the Ethereum Project Genesis Sale and was curious what other people though about it. In doing so I was led to this this article by economist Hernando de Soto from 2001 on dead capital. You can read the whole article here, but the stand out thought to me was this: 

"To be useful in an expanded market, capital must first be represented in a property document where it can then be assigned a status that allows it to produce additional value. What most people possess outside the West is not “paperized” in such a way as to produce capital."

According to de Soto's research and findings, there is over $9.3 Trillion in dead capital outside of the West. That is, there are $9.3 Trillion in unaccounted for assets that cannot be claimed by anyone. And this value lies among those who are the poorest in the world. This has happened for a number of reasons such as government bureaucracy, politics, and ignorance to name just a few. Unfortunately, this keeps the poor from being able to make any claims or uses of their property. 

So this is where Ethereum can come into play. The project uses the Blockchain concept (which I explained here) but brings it to a whole other level. Whereas Bitcoin is mainly used as a virtual currency that can be used for transactions, Ethereum wants to be the protocol for any kinds of applications to be built on top of and used. In other words, Ether can be used to transact almost anything.

Think of it like this, most of the protocols that have been created have mainly been targeted towards the financial industry. Ethereum is intended to be as general as possible and allow anyone to create specialized applications for whatever purpose they think up. Suddenly we have a way to start representing those trillions in dead capital again. This could be a truly revolutionary concept if it's successful. It has the capability to register property and give those rights to the poor, which in turn can help reduce corruption and could ultimately be the way to help free up a large amount of dead capital.

This isn't just a pipe dream either. I truly hope and believe more technologists and businesses will start using the tools and platforms that are being created right now to start helping more people in the world. Although I know that Ethereum will be used in many other great ways in the future, what it is capable of changing for many people in the world will be truly astounding. This is definitely an area worth keeping an eye on.