Why I’m All About Cryptocurrency — For Now
It Is Silly Season in the Land of Cryptocurrency that's for sure..!
This might strike you as an extraordinarily bizarre story. But even more bizarrely, it’s becoming ordinary.It is officially silly season in the land of cryptocurrency. To borrow a reference from the show Portlandia, this is the “put a bird on it” stage of crypto, where seemingly every multinational company, small business, and fledgling entrepreneur is desperately slapping blockchain onto press releases and venture-capital pitches. Some of these companies might conjure an actual consumer business from this exercise in magical word choice. So far, most of them are doing no such thing.
Blockchain. Cryptocurrency. Bitcoin.
There, I mentioned the three names that are getting an excessive amount of attention these days. Companies like the once-proud Eastman Kodak and the never proud Long Island Iced Tea Corp., as well as others that you’ve never heard of, are invoking those three words just to increase the value of their shares.
I figured, why not do it to get readers?
Here’s the way it goes. From this time forward (or at least until my next column), this will be known as the Fake Currency Column. It will be about things that people invest in that they will come to wish that they hadn’t.
At the most basic level, it is a record of information stored on a network of computers. When people use a cryptocurrency like bitcoin to buy a pizza, a kilogram of illegal drugs, or a yacht, these digital transactions are approved by a network of computers around the world running bitcoin software. Each batch of these transactions—a “block”—gets a cryptographic code, a copy of which is posted to every computer in the network. These blocks are permanently linked to each other in a “chain” of publicly approved transactions that cannot be edited. Thus, blockchain.
Is bitcoin and its brethren being used for illegal activities? Absolutely positively. That’s what they are best for.
Might North Korea be using bitcoin to get around sanctions? Damn right. I already wrote that the US Department of Homeland Security is investigating. And that’s probably why China and South Korea are trying to crack down on bitcoin.
Could people lose their money “investing” in bitcoin? Don’t use the word “could.” They will lose their money once the big shots get tired of playing their games. (Ask Warren Buffet if you don’t believe me.)
There will be more blockchain startups for payments, banking, escrow contracts, legal documents, intellectual property, investment strategies, voting systems, and more. The crypto industry may get smarter. But on the way there, things will probably get dumber.
