Catholic entrepreneur Matthew Pinto of Philadelphia, seen in this undated photo, said Catholic teaching encourages the faithful to approach new technologies, such as cryptocurrency, with both hope and caution. (CNS photo courtesy of Matthew Pinto)
By Gina Christian
PHILADELPHIA — A Catholic author and entrepreneur is inviting the church to engage with new technology poised to revolutionize not just finance but society itself.
Matthew Pinto, founder and president of Ascension Press and non-profit financial firm The Genesis Group, will host the first Catholic Crypto Conference on the 17th-18th. November in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Taking place both in-person and online, the conference will feature more than 25 Catholic and non-Catholic experts speaking on topics that many believers may find unfamiliar or intimidating, such as blockchain, cryptocurrency, Web 3.0 and the metaverse.
The faithful should be willing to explore such technologies with the “hopeful expectation” that they are “divine sparks from the Lord through the channel of human ingenuity,” Pinto told CatholicPhilly.com, the news website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
All of these developments stand to profoundly reshape human interaction in the coming years through the use of “decentralized networks”, which work to “actually create a more egalitarian environment, where individuals are able to act, live and communicate with greater freedom, ” he said.
Invented in 1989 by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, the Web – which is part of the Internet – was the first of the technologies to drive such decentralization, enabling scientists from around the world to share information on an automated basis.
The term “metaverse” was coined a few years later by author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, which describes a virtual reality that characters regularly enter.
In 2021, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg adopted Stephenson’s term (without a business relationship) to rebrand his social media platform, now part of an online ecosystem that over the past three decades has become increasingly interactive and immersive.
Web 3.0, which overlaps with – and is often confused with – the metaverse, is now looking to remove the involvement of banks, Big Tech and other institutions to enable “users to own and exchange digital assets without relying on third parties”, which Wei Shi Khai of LongHash Ventures noted in a February 2020 commentary for Nasdaq.
This initiative rests on blockchain, the technology that underlies cryptocurrency: digital currency that relies on encryption algorithms while serving as both a form of payment and a virtual accounting system.
The origins of blockchain are shrouded in some mystery. The 2008 white paper introducing Bitcoin as “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system” was written by one Satoshi Nakamoto, whose actual identity remains unknown — fittingly, since the prefix “crypto” itself derives from the Greek word for “hidden.”
Nakamoto proposed a system that recorded digital currency transactions, maintaining a ledger across linked computers. Timestamps create a “proof-of-work” that forms a record of transactions, which is broadcast through nodes, or participating computers running blockchain software, across the network.
Bitcoin and competitors such as Ethereum and Tether have become household names, representing market capitalizations in the billions of dollars.
Still, Pinto admits that the prospect of shifting to massive decentralization remains staggering for the average person.
“These concepts are so new, because we are so used to older systems,” he said. “It is difficult for us to understand what this could mean.”
At the same time, Pinto sees the technologies “in a strange way as part of the unfolding of salvation history itself.”
“I believe that everything that is created is seen by God as either morally neutral or good, and in some way can be used in the human experience,” he said.
Pinto added that cryptotech’s “trustless” environments, which eliminate third parties, actually point to Catholic teaching’s emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that social regulation should take place at the lowest possible level.
The Catholic Church itself provides a model for balancing concerns about regulation and autonomy, he said.
“It’s very centralized, but its lived experience is a decentralized one (as found) in the parish,” Pinto said.
Above all, he encourages clergy, religious and lay people to attend the conference with a “catholic instinct” that “considers creation with hope and prudence”.
“We have to (consider) these things now,” he said. “They can be used for the greater glory of God and for the common good of the values of the Gospel.”
