One thing Satoshi Nakamoto underestimated was greed. We underestimate it too. Let's correct our mistake.
We're starting to enter the dark ages of crypto. It's not too late yet, but it is going to be. WATCH OUT.
From Wikipedia:
The [black] plague created a series of religious, social, and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history.
From @intelliguy:
The birth of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology created a series of political, social, and economic upheavals where greed has profound effects on the course of alienating mainstream adoption.
STOP FOR A MINUTE. PAUSE. READ THIS, AND THINK.
First, let me tell you the good news, because there is a LOT of good news. New, fascinating decentralized blockchain projects are emerging every day. The best of the best get the greatest traction and are the most well known.
Competition is always good. It drives innovation, research, development, and speeds the launching of new tools so the public can benefit from them sooner.
If we had true trustless, provingly fair financial systems, that allowed the banked and unbanked to participate, the world economic system wouldn't be in a state of turmoil that it is today.
If cryptocurrency and blockchain technology was a train, it is speeding down the line with an unchartered destination. You can either get on the train, or watch it whiz by...
...but what if that train was going too fast to make the next turn? What if it was about to derail itself?
Here's the bad news.
One thing Satoshi Nakamoto underestimated was greed. We underestimate it too. Let's correct our mistake.
Bitcoin was released as an experiment, open source, for these reasons:
a) The code could be audited by anyone. There was nothing to hide
b) People who wanted to contribute its development could, and those developments if worthy and decided by consensus would make it into the core code.
c) The coin was forkable, to allow other related projects to compete with Bitcoin
Of course Satoshi Nakamoto knew that greed was a significant factor, but the blockchain and consensus could handle it; in fact it thrives on it.
With one single exception.
We're clouding the space with our greed by creating new tokens. Go look at coinmarketcap.com, we have tokens coming out like they are going out of style.
LET'S BACK UP FOR A MINUTE.
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_coin
The key point of difference between a token and a coin is that a coin is issued by a governmental local or national authority and is freely exchangeable for goods or other coins, whereas a token has a much more limited use and is often (but not always) issued by a private company, group, association or individual.
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY IS FULL OF ODDBALL TOKENS
Well they can be exchanged. Some tokens are worth more than other tokens.
Why?
Let's get to REAL REASON why...
From a developer's aspect, it is much easier to create your own token for these reasons:
1. You don't have to buy any existing token. Create your own, they're free.
2. You can decide how many you get, or you can mine them yourself early before anyone even knows what you're about to build. Put up an announce thread, hint at what it is, before too many people realize it and words travel, release the chain FAST and mine away.
3. As the creator and developer of the token, you become the government of that token. (Yes, I know all about delegates, witnesses, consensus). But at some point, you are the initial government who starts the roadmap.
Now let us look at it from a user's aspect.
1. Did a new token have to be created? Probably not. This same technology that powers this new tool or application could have made use of existing tokens that I already own.
2. So I either buy this new token by investing more of my money, or I sell off some of my other tokens and then trade them for this token?
3. So now, I have to add this token to my growing list of other tokens?
4. Now I must buy, sell, trade, and predict values of all these other tokens? I don't want to be a daytrader while I make use of these blockchain technologies. Keeping track of my holdings in so many tokens is too confusing.
DO YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING YET?
Let me lay it out really, really, simple.
Developers will argue until the sun goes down, each and every day, that they can't possibly make use of a standardized token, because another blockchain may cease to exist that created that token.
Developers will say that our project doesn't control that other project, nor do we have any developmental control of that other project.
Regular users don't care. They are the ones we must appease.
SO DEVELOPERS ARE MAINSTREAM ADOPTION
OVER HERE AND REGULAR USERS ARE OVER HERE
The great wall of China separates them both.
So what do we have today?
The dark ages of crypto. The dead-cart drivers are walking down the streets, ringing their bells, and yelling "bring out your dead".
That's right... developers who have abandoned their projects. Pump and dump scams. ICO's that never really go anywhere in the long term.
It's like a bubonic plague.. Let's just keep creating new tokens until we drown in them.
This ends only one of two ways:
1. Either we correct our mistake, and find a way to have cross-platform solutions that use the same token
OR
2. Centralized banks with centralized governments will do it for you, and you will not like the implementations, regulations, or prohibitions.
Did you know there are approx 180 recognized circulating currencies in the world? But the majority of them are geographically based?
This is the internet that we're on right now.. and we're not geographically based.
So why the heck is there 653 currencies on coinmarketcap.com ?
1. Have we lost our minds?
2. Is greed causing this problem?
3. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by over complicating this space for regular people?
I can answer the last 3 questions.
YES, YES, and YES.
HELP ME:
I plan to speak more about this on the Fri Oct 7th mumble radio show if you click on this link to ANOTHER post and vote up the @intelliguy comment there.
I do not follow you. Crypto´s are the worlds first free market currency reform. off course it is going to be a bumpy road, because there are competition, hackers, new infrastructure coming and going etc etc... that´s what is needed to get to the best solution possible.
The present monetary system is controlled and issued by a few select people with guns. That is the absolute worst possible type of money you can think of, this side of barter
In short form:
We're not going to gain mainstream adoption, if we keep complicating this space. The majority of new users are going to get so confused when they get here, we're going to lose them.
The present monetary system makes it easy for people.
Crypto creating tokens all over the place non-stop makes it difficult for people.
The most important part: Every day that passes, the sand is drifting through the hour glass.
Personally, I hope there will be even more.
S. Nakamoto democratized the creation of monetary system... We can't stop people from creating, copy/pasting. And that is what they do with Bitcoin source code. The best way to hedge this "creation" is not to have the whole planet using solely the Bitcoin protocol (This is a sort of centralisation to me) But it is to let everyone create their own monetary system.
Oh, I never suggested the whole planet use soley the Bitcoin protocol. I should have made that clear.
As an example:
Let's talk about the web. They have "standard" protocols like HTTP for a reason. Not everyone needs to create their own protocol. That's how the internet works to the benefit of everyone.
If all of a sudden new web standards say we now have "653" web protocols, believe me visiting websites would be a lot weirder. Sometimes generally accepted standards work really well on the internet. We could consider some of these in the design of cryptocurrency projects too.
I expected this argument. But it is not a fair analogy. These protocol (TCP/IP on one hand, Bitcoin on the other) are not from the same nature. One is about finding the common ground for connection and communication and the other one is about creating digital assets.
From day one, 'the market' didn't feel the need to create hundreds of TCP/IP protocols. While it is in the nature of the blockchain to create hundreds and millions of different digital assets. Nobody decides if we should create more protocol of one kind or not. It is in the nature of the protocol.
Greed is a driving force. While I do understand why we should pay attention to our own greed and not be overwhelm by it, whether we like it or not, it contributes to put people to work, to try and create company that will be useful to the community.
Most startups fails, it is the same with this new generation of blockchain organisations. Most of the crypto will fail. Should we stop this? No. On the contrary. Why ? because the bitcoin ecosystem move carefully but too slowly. Other entrepreneurs want to push new ideas, if the bitcoin ecosystem refuses, the best thing is to create another projects. That is why you have Ethereum, Steem, Next...
I observe the crypto space for a while now, and I have seen that at first, it was only scam coins with no additional value proposition besides Bitcoin. Now, the landscape has changed, if you look at the first 30 cryptos, you'll see that the value proposition of those token are more and more about providing another service than money.
What are "we" exactly? There is no we who decide. Just independant people and teams who choose different paths because there is no reason to choose a common one. Moreover, I think that regular people will come into this space through very different ways. Steemit for blog is a good usecase. Incent with Merchant. ArcadeCity for ridesharing, Dash as well for the money ...etc It is less about complexity than possibility of adoption.
So while you propose that 'we correct our mistake', I really think that there is nothing to correct per se. The crypto ecosystem as a whole is breathing, metamorphosing continuously spreading in every direction. It is not a monolythic ecosystem that is going to hit a wall.
Sorry working on phone... I forgot to say thanks for a thought provoking article.
Sometimes we need to see the forest and stop looking at the trees. The forest looks pretty daunting to a new person coming to crypto, and I hate that. Glad you enjoyed the article.
Like @kyusho I was unable to read/respond to this immediately, but man I'm glad I finally did.. It's a great, thought-provoking article indeed. I'm new to crypto (Steemit only, weeks ago) and I'm glad to get some of the history, and ins and outs better now. TY
Lots of the different tokens provide various services. Bitcoin for example is 'simply' a store of value in the sense that it is hard to obtain. You can buy it, sell it, but there's only one way to 'get' it and the way you 'get' it is limited.
It is the simplest token and serves the purpose it was created for.
We also have something such as Ethereum which is not only a token but a service platform that has a need to utilize their own tokens in order to effectively use their service. While Ether(ETH) is a store of value, it is also something that you can use.
But yes, I do see what you're getting at. Lots of coins are completely useless and have been created for so called pump-n-dumps and others have been just test-tokens in order to learn of the technology.
Blockchains and such are still, arguably, in early development. You mentioned the need for a one-token-over-all-others, a better alternative might be a decentralized, user-friendly exchange, something like Openbazaar but for any and all cryptocurrencies. Because all(most) tokens provide something different it will be up to the market that decides which ones will remain.
My ideas are also at an early stage. That's why I went public with them, to get the conversation started. There are some unique properties of things like Java Containers, XML, VMWare/Virtual Machines, that encapsulate data and code to make things more portable. These are technical examples that techies can understand.
When it comes to decentralized monetary systems, portability and ease of use are key. At this early stage, we're not there yet. However our early stage is soon going to be swept from under us by the mammoth conglomerates that run the world.
Now, I'm not anti-government, or anti-corporation, to a 100%. There is a large grey area, that good government and good corporations can exist. They need our help though, even if they don't ask for it.
But until we can move towards are more usable system of competing blockchains in the same space, all we're doing is building API's, toolkits, source code, proof-of-concepts for the rest of the world who will take this and furnish their own system. Past experience shows that even public blockchain technology, you can still corrupt the space. So we'll still end up with corruption in this space, but the mainstream layman will get sucked into that too, since we failed to deliver a mainstream adoptable product in time.
We are already moving inside of a space where blockchains are able to compete with one another as they all are global and seek to provide the different services/functions I mentioned earlier better than their competitors. But it does seem like it's competitive as amongst friends who share similar ideas of concepts rather than competition between rivals. I'm looking at Storj and Maidsafe teaming up together rather than trying to outperform or outservice the other. I believe they both started out as a decentralized file hosting platform and they have both evolved way beyond that at this point. Maidsafe being more of a decentralized-everything kind of a thing and Storj focusing solely on hosting files in a decentralized network of nodes.
The part of building API's, toolkits, source code etc is done by the rest of the world, not for rest of the world. While the goal is, yes, as you say to furnish their own systems with the new tech. Some of them might aim to take aspects of decentralization and centralize it further. It's probably not out of the question for banks to create their own cryptocurrency but it is just what the crypto community hopes won't happen, at least not to the extent of putting decentralized currency down.
Others might seek to incorporate and replace their old tech with the new.
The only way for Bitcoin, as an example, to be corrupted is to integrate functions of corruption into the code itself. Which is why it's necessary for Bitcoin to be open source and open for auditing by everyone so that if any shenanigans actually does go down a fork is possible.
The finished adoptable product itself is what will determine when exactly is 'on time'. There is no deadline the product must meet, what's important is simply that it works.
I'm not sure if there will ever be a portability issue as it is run on the internet and on every online node across the globe simultaneously. So as long as there is internet connectivity it shouldn't be a problem. I might be misinterpreting you though.
In regards to government being involved in this, of course & absolutely, why should they not be right? It's a great way to alleviate the government of tons of work and pass it on to a network where users can perform their own governmental functions and possibly automate most of them.
What if we can have the people govern themselves with minimal effort, wouldn't that be something to strive for? Replace government with governmental smart-contracts.
You said "Past experience shows that even public blockchain technology, you can still corrupt the space."
What experience are you referring to?
In the sense of the space being corrupted by bad actors, I'm totally with you on that. But if not I'm not sure what you're referring to.
This is one of the reasons I'm on the radio tomorrow (hopefully) to discuss this with the people present in the channel. It's a long roundtable discussion to get it out right. Email type posting takes too long. :)
I'm thinking of Bitcoin XT vs Bitcoin, or Eth Classic, vs Eth
I'm also thinking the "Richlist" of every coin that was minable.
I'm also thinking every ICO where they fundraised first, and build very little later. Or don't follow their own roadmap. Where they don't make good on their promises, and the investments take a dive for the worse.
I have dozens of examples, but that should be enough to see some..
The time line, is that we have a decentralized community trying to build things that are adoptable for mainstream use. If we don't work together in some very specific areas, we will fail to gain mainstream adoption.
It is that sole lacking point, that opens the door for proprietary, government implemented chains that will take over this space "mainstream". It's happening right now.
It would have been better to have finished, useable products, what were user friendly, and interoperable now, so by the time big business and govt came in to dominate the space and feed it to the public, we would have already been there.
We're going to miss the boat of opportunity the longer we take.
hi @intelliguy, just stopped back to let you know that your post was one of my favourite reads yesterday and I've included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read my comments about your post here.
I thoroughly enjoy the layout of your steemit ramble. If anyone hasn't seen how @shadowspub does it, take a look.
thank you @intelliguy for your kind words.
@intelliguy
Greed is Good. We are all greedy.
note 1: Your post is pointless. There is no way to make a planet agree on something.
note 2: "We" <--- no such thing. Ever.
Strange, I thought the planet all agreed that air is good, and we should all continue to breathe it.
Doesn't the planet agree on anything? Does the planet agree that we have gravity?
bullshit analogy. Oxygen is not an opinion but something the biology of this planet needs to flourish.
"The planet" i meant humans. no need to be an idiot to evade the original argument. (but i guess you have to justify somehow that douchebagged name)
Excellent. I can always see the caliber of the person I'm speaking with, when they use profanities freely like you've done, in order to make their point.
For the record, my name has nothing to do with intelligence. I've already hidden a hint in one of my other blog posts as to what it pertains to.. I did that early on, because I knew a person, such as yourself would show up and finger point at me for it. :)
Feel free to put me on mute so you don't have to see any more of my posts.
P.S. I wasn't attacking you. I was simply showing that in some cases, yes, the planet [humans] can agree on some things.
You still didn't even address the "we are all greedy" part.
Why put you on mute? Do you know how many followers i get from exposing crap from other people's posts? :)
You're right. Greed is an inherent human trait. I am greedy too, just like the next guy. Just not at the expense of killing what I'm greedy about. Greed here has gone to an extreme, and its time people consider the possible outcome which won't be in our favor. Anyway, sorry you thought my post was pointless. I'll find out if everyone agrees with you in time.
I haven't read all the comments yet. @intelliguy this is a great post. Where there is a profit to be made there will always be greed. As long as we can cash out our cryptocurrency I don't care what kind it is.
Like anything else IMHO all the countless types of cryptocurrency will never make it. In the end it is what/ or who backs it that counts.
Man started out trading rocks...lol .. let's see where this takes us. I'm in :)
Special shout out to my friend @steevc for pointing this post out to me.
Interesting info, and the exploding number of currencies does give me cause for concern. At the time of this posts writing there were 653 cryptocurrenices. Today, only 8 months later, we have 752 according to https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/
TL;DR. Summary of what I read was 'ninja mining'. Yes, but it's hardly a problem because it's pretty hard to get anyone to notice a new crypto-bill anyway. And who has got the time to research it all anyway. Not even everyone knows of bitcoin yet, let alone the more talked about cryptos.
YOU use TL;DR??? That's hilarious! :D
Interesting points, but once you understand Steem, you will realize that it stretches far beyond the points you put up, it uses the "human greed" and creates a connection between developers and the regular users.
On the new tokens thing, your probably right, most of those coins are indeed created for "pumb and dump" and only a few, really a few are "worth something".