Trust. Can You Put a Price Tag on It?

How many industries are built on trust? I would argue nearly all of them, but let’s focus on one: money.

Do you trust your bank, the institution safeguarding your money? What happens if a technical glitch prevents you from accessing your banking app tomorrow? Where is your money?

Trust may be the most important commodity in any industry.

But what is trust, really?

By definition, it’s a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.”

Throughout history, trust has been a feeling built on the actions of individuals or entities, with the human element being key to its foundation.

Here’s the catch: the very human element that builds trust can also betray it.

How can trust be so valuable when the same element that creates it can also undermine it?

In mathematics, we’d call this the variable that needs solving — the factor that can cause the entire structure to crumble. To address this, we seek to eliminate that vulnerability.

By removing the human element from trust-based relationships, we rely on machines and algorithms, which lack emotions and cannot deceive. But that raises a new dilemma:

can you truly trust a machine?