A series of random crypto thoughts: marketing and privacy
Enhancing not Disrupting
Just a suggestion to the world of marketing for cryptocurrency.
This attitude a lot of us have or have had, is not so healthy. "Crypto is going to take over the world and mess up existing businesses, haha." A new buzzword is disruptive. It is a bad buzzword to use, even if accurate.
From a marketing perspective, it is better to play friend and market yourself as adding value instead of disrupting. It is less likely to make people weary, including others in the industry and people in government as well.
Improving industries rather than disrupting them. Also, when we go on strong libertarian or anarchist tilts in some of our wording, it probably does not do us many favors in the long run.
A lot of people are either too arrogant or naive about how trends play out, to really understand cryptocurrencies in the long run threaten real currencies, or that other crypto projects threaten existing industries. It is better if they just stay daft on this point, because there will be less fight-back.
Think of how the US dollar was gradually subverted by insider dealings in the US Government. And every step of the way it was presented as a good thing for the American people who really put up no resistance. This is how a crypto take over should be played out. Rather than taunting our ideological enemies, far better to just be kind and friendly with them until it is too late some decades in the future, when the economics force the situation in crypto's favor.
Food for thought.
Crypto Needs a Privacy Specification - Not just more privacy projects
Ideally, I think crypto needs privacy standards implemented, and I think this could be achieved by a specification. Like in the US, we have electric standards for devices. If you have ever heard of the IEC, they create technical specifications for electronic devices.
Likewise, I think crypto needs to flesh out what privacy really means, and how it is achieved, and develop a standard for privacy on crypto projects. This could be done by an independent rating agency that creates a specification, and maybe even goes as far as certifying projects which have met compliance with privacy specifications.
In the long-run, Steemit's methodology is no good. People should not be able to see account balances and so on.
The reason we need this movement strong is that blockchain threatens privacy such as much as it could benefit it. With blockchain either things are extremely public, or extremely private. Extremely public can be great, such as one project that intends to archive the internet to prevent censorship: https://www.archain.org/
Extremely public, though is bad for a lot of situations, and that is where we need extremely private. My view is that a currency like Monero alone does not come close to solving this. What about all the other projects? What we need is a specification, that projects could optionally migrate to in the future when we realize collectively, that it is time to enhance our own privacy on systems such as Steemit... or possibly make a private fork of a given network to make a privacy project that meets specifications.
This is another reason Steemit could not beat something like Facebook in the end... not enough privacy on this system to run it like a Facebook account.
Seems like adding more privacy any government starts panicking ((::
Have you looked at ZCoin for privacy?
Zerocoin was developed into ZCash according to their website. ZCash technique for privacy requires that the original authors did not hide a backdoor in the encryption so they could mint unlimited coins:
https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trusted-setup-ceremony
Also there is the notion, you might want selectively public transactions. Not sure what extent ZCash allows that.
I recall Zig Ziglar explaining that most of the time there are two ways of getting your point across. His example was telling his sweetheart, "Your face could stop the hands of time." or, "Your face could stop a clock." I agree that the marketing of cryptocurrencies would be better served by showing how crypto will improve and enhance business rather than disrupt or destroy it. Imagine trying to get the local business person to begin using Bitcoin by talking about how it will disrupt business. You will be shown the door very quickly.
Hey there - great article
This stuff intrigues me too. I know where you're coming from re part one of the above: I'm not a libertarian: not even close. I (personally) believe in the good of collective communities and even (gasp!) taxation. Seriously.
But that's beside the point here, suffice to say that extreme libertarian (or even, to be honest not so extreme) freaks ordinary people out. A lot. So toning it down in the marketing is probably a really good idea.
Regarding the second part of your piece - about privacy - I'm not sure about the conclusions that a) steemit needs to be like Facebook or that it it even wants to; and b) Not sure that privacy mode might not be able to be built into future versions of steemit.
But I definitely agree on the need for privacy in blockchain land broadly.
How would a 'specification work? (feel free to reply via a new post when you've had a think 👍)
A specification would probably not force people to use a specific encryption, or too specific of privacy tech. But for example, it might require masking IP's in some manner of who is sending, it might also require an analysis of what type of systems are used to make a transaction private... whether the system itself hides the transactions in some way, or there are adequate dumby / false transactions to sufficiently make it private. I think tech masking the originator's IP address is pretty essential for privacy tech going forward.
So it would be an outline of principles I think, and what sort of systems manage to uphold those principles in their design. Once we have gone farther in this area, we might reach a point where there is best practices and we could simply have a technical list of things to implement to make something private the best way possible.
Thank you for the article. I saw that you resteemed the "Pocket" genesis post. What are your thoughts on this project? As soon as my tokens were confirmed I broke the news to my wife. She immediately asked for a new car. I told her that we would probably have to wait a few years first. 😀
LoL, I'm not sure Pocket will become much, but I would expect Pocket to eventually trade on the exchanges. I would peg it's initial market cap somewhere between 3 to 10 mil. There are plenty of worse things trading above 3 mil on exchanges, so using comparative analysis, it's worth that just based on the method of launch and the novelty.
If other people want to give it a future by making things for it, could rise in value.
some kind of privacy is required but its transparent !!
great post!!!