you know, a lot of very smart people as said, have been trying to figure out marc andreessen, inventor of the web browser, was tried originally to put money as widget into the browser. elon musk, the original predecessor to paypal, was originally as a digital money project. but none of these very smart people could figure out this problem. and because of that, even though the web has transformed our world in profound and important ways, we still rely basically on middlemen for all sorts of transactions both offline and online. now, these middlemen are familiar to us, of course there's banks and brokerages and other financial services companies, but increasingly big tech companies, what we call digital conglomerates, are acting as the economic of commerce online. and overall, these middlemen perform some important roles right? they establish the identity of people in transactions who the buyer, who's the seller, who's the sender who's the receiver? they do all the business logic clearing and settling, record keeping and so forth, and they establish trust between parties and for doing so