Crypto Tribalism is slowing Blockchain

Michael J. Casey is the chairman of the CoinDesk advisory committee and principal research advisor in the MIT digital currency blockchain initiative.

The evolution of the annual CoinDesk Consensus conference reflects the changing composition of the community and blockchain cryptocurrency.

The inaugural 2015 events 500 attendees were dominated by true believers in Bitcoin, along with their subversive goal of replacing the fiat currency and traditional banking - although, with Citibank as a sponsor and many bankers present, the conference was also a baptism modest blockchain for financial establishment.

On the contrary, last week's fourth installment boasted 7,500 attendees, from 104 different countries and captured a complete cross-section of the economy that included everyone from automakers and insurance companies to government agencies and even a fast food chain.

The expansion has come at the expense of cohesion. This large tent community is grappling with internal divisions that are both disconcerting and unpleasant for foreigners.

"Permissionless" cryptocurrency purists accuse companies of co-opting established technology to produce watered-down blockchain models that protect their incumbency. For its part, the company criticize the first to adopt as naive idealists whose complex solutions are not practical in the real world.

Promote, within the purist crypto itself sub-community, there are internecine battles between proponents of different views of Bitcoin while a fierce competition between the so-called "altcoins," whether Etereum, XRP, EOS or hundreds more.

Accusations of frauds and personal attacks against different developers are commonplace in "crypto Twitter," a social media environment that is now synonymous with mockery, La amargura and ad hominem attacks.

This conflict is inevitable. It is even useful, insofar as it forces developers to improve their projects' code.

But with the Securities Commission and other regulators considering a more draconian stance against the cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, a more united front among all those who believe in the sweeping potential of this technology could help guarantee a more constructive legal environment for its development. .

Not everyone will want in the present. Purists who excelled in the early development of Bitcoin rightly point out that the cryptocurrency DNA is oriented towards resisting regulation. "Give it," they say, Bitcoin visualization, Monero and other paraphors cryptocurrencies mainly as safe for their wealth and less as social tools for the construction of a disintermediation, frictionless economy.

But now they are in a minority. Those who have swelled the ranks of the community tend to focus on the great potential for humanity in general, through multiple use cases and believe that the achievement that requires accommodation with politicians, regulators, and the general public is cautious.

There is a big gap between those points of view, one that comes down to how each approaches the question of trust.

The hard-line crypto libertarians strive for a "hopeless" ideal, the notion that the management of one's assets and the exchange of value with others should not require relying on any third party, institution, machine program or software.

On the contrary, most of the others, including many of the newcomers from the community, see this technology as a way to improve trust, not replace it. His idea is that if an immutable blockchain accounting book can overcome mistrust in the record of money and data transactions, people will have a more reliable basis, a common record of the truth, on which to forge the necessary human ties to write the necessary "off the chain" commercial contracts that set transactions in motion.