What do you think this means for the future?

We hear nonstop about the impacts of technology, but we sometimes lose sight of the way that decentralized networks are actually upending power dynamics that we took for granted for a loooong time. We’ve had anecdotal evidence of these impacts for more than a decade, but this is the first study I have seen (I’m not an expert in this topic so I might be wrong) that documents how mobile finances are impacting disadvantaged communities.

What are the implications — for local autonomy, political structures, and equity — that are developing out of this slow growth of decentralized power? If banks are no longer the arbiters of who is financially worthy and who is not, how does that change other power structures?