1/ Suffering from disorientation and cognitive dissonance around blockchain and Bitcoin. It’s time to stop the craziness.
2/ First, Bitcoin. The technology is a fantastic engineering achievement. But, a Bitcoin is a thing that costs several thousand dollars in capex and opex to create, and then can’t be used for anything.
3/ Bitcoin is just not fast and efficient enough to be used as a currency. Also, Bitcoins do not exhibit beauty, or tell stories, or have any of the other aspects that give intangible objects value.
4/ Anybody who bought into Bitcoin any time after mid-2017 and hasn’t already sold is probably going to lose their money.
5/ Right now, the Bitcoin miners, and long-term holders (like me), are selling into the inrushing wave of suckers, who will be left holding ephemeral digital vapor.
6/ Governments try to protect their less-clueful citizens from self-injury incurred by dangerous driving, patent medicines, and Ponzi schemes. Time to get serious about Bitcoin.
7/ Now, blockchain. There have been billions in venture investments, many proofs-of-concept and pilot projects, and an endless stream of excited press releases.
8/ So, if it’s actually generally useful, someone somewhere should be getting dramatically good return on these investments, seeing hockey-stick revenue ramps. Where? *crickets*.
9/ I went looking for real actual production applications, and looked hard, and what I found was laughable.
10/ I believe there may well be some good blockchain apps out there. But if it were an ubiquitous wave-of-the-future thing, that wave would have started to come ashore.
11/ Geeks would be quietly installing the technology and putting it to work without telling their CIOs, just so they could get shit done. Not happening, that I see.
12/ I don’t know anyone really technically credible, who is not building/selling blockchain/bitcoin, who is still a believer in either.
13/ Which makes it so weird to see the ongoing announcements and launches and consortia and ICOs. To me they all look like Wile E. Coyote after he’s run off the cliff but before he’s noticed.
14/ If you’re a geek who people ask about technology, please start telling your friends and loved ones to stay away from cryptocurrencies, and from blockchain tech investments.
15/15 This kind of shit discredits my profession. It hurts people. I wish it would stop. Please help stop it.
[PS: If you share my concerns, consider a retweet.]
