KYC, or Know Your Customer, originated from national security measures and aims to ensure that individuals accessing financial services are trustworthy. However, simply matching identities with databases fails to address deeper issues of trust in digital interactions, such as verifying the authenticity of users on platforms like Twitter or Uber. The challenge lies in the infinite creation of fake identities versus the limited number of real individuals, highlighting the need for a more robust system to identify and mitigate bad actors in the digital space.
