Thread by @chuckwilliams37

@bquittem Software failure always occurs in 3 areas:
User failure - it didn't deserve the needs of the end user
Organizational failure - the business/org' s needs weren't met

Technological failure - technical debt, leapfrog threat, or other intrinsic/extrinsic factor caused obsolescence/1

@bquittem Bitcoin is an interesting study in software risk mitigation (which I've been ding most of my career) so I'll share out thoughts because this is my latest favorite thought experiment/2

@bquittem I'll start with technological failure because this is the area I'm least familiar with, and have the least to offer:
Statistically, the bitcoin network has 99.983% uptime over 10 years since the genesis block. The decentralized, antifragile nature of block construction, /3

@bquittem propagation, and replication of all three aspects of data, software, and messages establishes a hardened technological base. Additionally, looking to the models of Linux and other open source, technologically speaking, bitcoin's failure may only be in its ../4

@bquittem Inability to adapt quickly enough to technological threat. So technological failure for bitcoin doesn't look like a hack, nor a take down of the internet (bitcoin can survive this), nor a bug (too many eyes and tests). Technological failure for bitcoin looks like obsolescence. /5

@bquittem For bitcoin, like the Linux model, obsolescence will come strangely, and either slowly by way of realization of developers when the old model is obsolete they jump ship, or fight it because of their hardened beliefs and tribalism, or quickly because the obsolescence is obvious /6

@bquittem On business/organization failure of bitcoin:
I love this one the most because it is the most variable, volatile, and human oriented piece of the bitcoin software production. Most organizations fall in business software production because the goals of all business stakeholders /7

@bquittem Weren't aligned at the beginning of the project. If one reads the bitcoin white paper, one can derive many intended goals from Satoshi Nakamoto, and I think he/she/they did the best they could in acquiring, refining, and hardening a set of purposeful goals that outlined /8

@bquittem a robust future for bitcoin because the framework of the goals embodied in the white paper encompassed a lot of the needs of end-users and the technology. In negotiation, "he who frames it best wins", and the white paper was solid on good goals for stakeholders. HOWEVER, /9

@bquittem The white paper is so maddeningly and excitingly absent of goals for "who makes decisions about this"! I should go back and read it, but working from memory I know that miners choose whether to run the software, & developers choose and agree on what code should be written, but/10

@bquittem I feel like the goals of the miners, developers, and end-users are left out. It's almost scary how devoid the guidance is in this area. There seems to be some deep NLP shit/or Psyops at play there with how *absent* the guidance is in this area, and that is why I get SO EXCITED/11

@bquittem Because this means that FAILURE of the BITCOIN ORGANIZATION IS OUR FAULT. If you agree with me that bitcoin is essentially a gift to humanity to wrest control of money-power away from central banks and governments, then it's on us to treat it as such, and care for it thusly/12

@bquittem So failure in the bitcoin business/org looks like one/all these:
- a breakdown in developer/miner/end-user communications
- mismatched or misaligned incentives (power leans too far in one area)
- all out war (yes with blood, capital controls, etc) from gov'ts & central banks/13

@bquittem Finally (and this is where I focus as a developer, UX professional, and product owner) end-users. On my resume I quote Tron, a childhood favorite film of mine. I say "I fight for the users". In software, believe that end-users are generally underrepresented. In the boardroom, /14

@bquittem in the scrum meetings, in the whiteboard sessions. There are many, few, isolated champions who live with empathy in their work, who care for end users, and fight against the tide of technologists and marketers who work to deadlines and requirement lists, but those few/15

@bquittem those few, but growing numbers of empathic designers, product owners, user researchers, UX designers & developers are working from limited knowledge of the human mind. They work against titans of industry with charts & marketers with power point stories and cunning politicking/16

@bquittem ... This story is playing out right now, worldwide, on a grand scale in the cryptocurrency/bitcoin space. The technologists, the marketers, the business owners, the miners, the developers, the designers, the researchers & academics. We are ALL END-USERS, AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL!!/17

@bquittem So, failure in the area of end-users for bitcoin, is to serve any of us less than a competing offering, and/or to be obsoleted by a competing (more desirable) technology, and/or to be killed or capital-controlled by our respective governments/banks.

What makes this failure /18

@bquittem So fucking interesting is that all of these are actually happening in varying degrees around the planet. This is NOT a "binary operation", and therefore #Bitcoin's end-user failure cannot/will not be clear and sudden. Only in hindsight. That makes it the most epic Black Swan /19

@bquittem Event in human history. We get to be here to witness it, and it's incredible.

/20 (end)