Thinking Critically About When Blockchains Go Mainstream

One of the best things about blogging is the community that pops up around it and the feedback and growth that comes from it.

That’s why in 14 Rules of Growth Marketing, I was so maniacal about the community of advocates. In an open/collaborative world, you are going to be MUCH, MUCH better off.

Today’s example comes from blog reader Mark Annett of Annett Enterprises. He offered to do a critical review of “Blockchains in the Mainstream: When Will Everyone Else Know?” the free PDF I curated with 33 of biggest names in the blockchain world.

For an inspiring read of how to look at this e-book (6 months down the road), enjoy below. Mark has made me (and all of us) better off by thinking so critically about the issue.

Take it away, Mark…

As promised, I read through the PDF from start to finish. It is a wealth of great information but it is a bit much to digest all in one sitting. I probably would have preferred it to be 3 shorter documents that were themed somehow.

Since you said you were interested in my feedback I am going to share with you my main impressions and reflections on reading the essays (sorry for the length but there was a lot of great content).

There were gold nuggets in each one of them, which is why I read to the end but there were also a lot of common themes, which made it tempting to skip ahead. (Note: If they were broken up into multiple documents the redundancy would have almost seemed deliberate if properly spreat out. Also, it did seem to me that when there was a page two that was always where the best content was because they were getting past the common themes.

I also noticed that the essays were heavily Bitcoin weighted and while reading, I wondered to myself if these had been Ethereum folks whether or not the essays would have been different and if so how.

The sections that you highlighted in the essays were often the most important pieces of the text and I actually use them to relay much of the rest of my comments.

I totally agree with Eric Voorhees: that “few people care to disintermediate banks…they do care, however, to interact with each other, to create, to explore, in new ways.”

While I agree with Jeff Garzik that the “…the improvement of people’s lives and the empowerment of individuals begins with the accelerated mainstream adoption.” I believe that if you look at the history of the web this comes later.

I am actually more in agreement with William Mougayar that “we need to see more cases where central authorities are no longer a requirement for operating a business or service.”

If you look at the history of the Internet one of the things that really made it take off was the most main tream/non-main stream activity of watching porn. The early Internet was driven by new opportunities to make money in new and unconventional ways.

Personally, I don’t believe blockchain is ready for the mainstream yet. It has to go though what I call the entrepreneurial enablement (or side hustle) phase first.

This is exactly why Jake Brukhman exclaimed, “Steem is the only blockchain that can boast tens of thousands of mainstream user accounts…”. Because it enables a whole new bunch of people to make a little extra cash through a side hustle of blogging. Storj is similarly interesting because of its ability for people to make some coin by monetizing their personal data. If your friends are making money then you don’t want to be left out.

Per Ryan Shea, “People care about innovation. They know that it means progress, it allows economies to grow, and it creates jobs for them and people they know.” However, I believe this only comes about after the side hustle phase has been successful. It is being left out of making money that really motivates people.

We need more “porn” like opportunities to really make the blockchain thrive, before mass adoption will occur.

Personally, I believe it is actually telling to look at the adoption of the crypto currencies by alternate markets.

For the porn industry use of Bitcoin has been steadily growing, https://news.bitcoin.com/porn-industry-adopt-bitcoin-payments/ predominantly based upon the fact that purchases aren’t showing up on your credit card. People actually think they have higher anonymity, in spite of the apparent contradiction that there is a permanent public record of the purchase on the blockchain. However, I don’t believe the adult industry has found its app yet. It’s new way for people to make money. They are simply accepting it as another form of payment. If they are using Bitcoin here then they will begin to use it more and more elsewhere.

The marijuana industry is similarly in the way it is jumping into crypto currencies but it also doesn’t have it’s app yet. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entrepreneurs-look-to-bitcoin-as-big-banks-stay-on-sidelines

This is not true for the online casinos, which are proving to be hugely successful with their provably honest gambling apps. Because it is supposedly honest, people mistakenly believe they can make money and this will be huge for them.

_Honest gambling may do for blockchain what the porn industry did for the Internet but is I don’t believe it is really enabling new people to make money (the house always wins) in the same way that porn did so it remains to be seen.

Thanks for creating this thought provoking collection of essays and I hope my feedback was useful.

As promised, I read through the PDF from start to finish. It is a wealth of great information but it is a bit much to digest all in one sitting. I probably would have preferred it to be 3 shorter documents that were themed somehow.

Since you said you were interested in my feedback I am going to share with you my main impressions and reflections on reading the essays (sorry for the length but there was a lot of great content).

There were gold nuggets in each one of them, which is why I read to the end but there were also a lot of common themes, which made it tempting to skip ahead. (Note: If they were broken up into multiple documents the redundancy would have almost seemed deliberate if properly spread out. Also, it did seem to me that when there was a page two that was always where the best content was because they were getting past the common themes.

I also noticed that the essays were heavily Bitcoin weighted and while reading, I wondered to myself if these had been Ethereum folks whether or not the essays would have been different and if so how.

The sections that you highlighted in the essays were often the most important pieces of the text and I actually use them to relay much of the rest of my comments.

I totally agree with Eric Voorhees: that “few people care to disintermediate banks…they do care, however, to interact with each other, to create, to explore, in new ways.”

While I agree with Jeff Garzik that the “…the improvement of people’s lives and the empowerment of individuals begins with the accelerated mainstream adoption.” I believe that if you look at the history of the web this comes later.

I am actually more in agreement with William Mougayar that “we need to see more cases where central authorities are no longer a requirement for operating a business or service.”

If you look at the history of the Internet one of the things that really made it take off was the most main stream/non main stream activity of watching porn. The early Internet was driven by new opportunities to make money in new and unconventional ways.

Personally, I don’t believe blockchain is ready for the mainstream yet. It has to go through what I call the entrepreneurial enablement (or side hustle) phase first.

This is exactly why Jake Brukhman exclaimed, “Steem is the only blockchain that can boast tens of thousands of mainstream user accounts…”. Because it enables a whole new bunch of people to make a little extra cash through a side hustle of blogging. Storj is similarly interesting because of its ability for people to make some coin by monetizing their personal data. If your friends are making money then you don’t want to be left out.

Per Ryan Shea, “People care about innovation. They know that it means progress, it allows economies to grow, and it creates jobs for them and people they know.” However, I believe this only comes about after the side hustle phase has been successful. It is being left out of making money that really motivates people.

We need more “porn” like opportunities to really make the blockchain thrive, before mass adoption will occur.

Personally, I believe it is actually telling to look at the adoption of the crypto currencies by alternate markets.

For the porn industry use of Bitcoin has been steadily growing, https://news.bitcoin.com/porn-industry-adopt-bitcoin-payments/ predominantly based upon the fact that purchases aren’t showing up on your credit card. People actually think they have higher anonymity, in spite of the apparent contradiction that there is a permanent public record of the purchase on the blockchain. However, I don’t believe the adult industry has found its app yet. It’s new way for people to make money. They are simply accepting it as another form of payment. If they are using Bitcoin here then they will begin to use it more and more elsewhere.

The marijuana industry is similarly in the way it is jumping into crypto currencies but it also doesn’t have its app yet. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entrepreneurs-look-to-bitcoin-as-big-banks-stay-on-sidelines] (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-13/pot-entrepreneurs-look-to-bitcoin-as-big-banks-stay-on-sidelines)

This is not true for the online casinos, which are proving to be hugely successful with their provably honest gambling apps. Because it is supposedly honest, people mistakenly believe they can make money and this will be huge for them.

Honest gambling may do for blockchain what the porn industry did for the Internet but is I don’t believe it is really enabling new people to make money (the house always wins) in the same way that porn did so it remains to be seen.

I really enjoyed John Quinn’s analysis of why the Music Industry, which “ostensibly has a great use case for blockchain” isn’t likely to happen because of entrenched interests.

Sadly, why I totally agree with Cyrus Maaghul that “blockchain as a decentralized technology, …offers the world an opportunity to revolutionize the current healthcare system by shifting control of the data from centralized authorities to the hands of the rightful owners of that data, the healthcare providers and patients,” I can’t concur that “this is particularly viable, not to mention exigent, in the United States”. It is the word viable that I dispute. The reasons he spells out that it is viable is that it is an “entrenched in a system rigidly controlled by electronic healthcare records companies, for-profit hospital systems, middlemen exchanges, and insurance companies” make it the very thing like the music industry that make it so far into the future that it is not worth considering here in the US. I have a health IT company in the space and we are estimating that a private company would need to raise billions through an ICO to have a chance at making an impact with regard to eliminating insurance companies. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense for government with a single payor health system to walk down this road.

This was why I truly found Robyn Scott’s essay on the Unlocking Blockchain in Government so enlightening. I was totally unaware that “in Estonia, …the government already uses blockchain in its tax and business registries, and is planning to extend it to citizens’ medical records.” The US we is being crippled by healthcare spending and we are losing our place in the world economy because of it (China is now the biggest economy). This was absolutely the most important essay for me because of the potential for governments to wage economic war trough implementation of the blockchain. We in the US are going to be the loser in this fight because our systems are so entrenched.

Thanks for creating this thought provoking collection of essays and I hope my feedback was useful.
Sincerely,
Mark