Just a fad: Buy the product or own the factory

After buying my very first real computer at 16 (I had an Amiga 500 earlier), I asked my mother for the internet and she had no idea what I was talking about as not only was she non-technical, it was 1995. Since she didn't know if what I was asking was legit she asked my oldest brother who responded with,

"The internet is a passing fad."

This meant that I didn't get an internet connection until almost 3 years later.

People subscribe to all kinds of fads with a great deal of fervor, however, like every person I have ever known that has gone vegan, very few have the drive to see it through and stick to the plan. When it comes to going vegan, I do not know a single person that has remained completely so and even the best of them "cheat eat" from time to time, like a celibate priest who only has sex with prostitutes on weekends.

With Bitcoin reaching 11 years of age in January, most people still consider it a fad and perhaps this moniker is correct, considering it has yet to be adopted by the mainstream. However, one has to consider what is holding it back? If we consider the internet fad of the 90s that has completely changed the world in which we live and will continue to do so going forward, including carrying blockchain transactions, it was supported by industry and government from the get go. Bitcoin is driven by individuals who often don't like governments much at all. It is a different kettle of fish.

However, after the last years and despite the players in the industry being largely amateurs and enthusiasts, it has not only survived, but thrived enough to force the hands of corporations, governments and financial institutions to hedge their bets and make forays into the world of blockchain and crypto. They themselves are largely disorganized at this point and don't seem to quite know how or what they are going to do with it, which is probably why the legal considerations are so sketchy.

But, crypto isn't like a fad diet or flash in the pan gadget or app, as it is not the end product at all, it is a tracker of all transactions. This is actually something anyone who invests into crypto should understand,

the token is not the game.

Imagine going into an arcade full of games and buying a bag full of tokens and ten excitedly walking out of the place as if the only reason is to collect tokens. However, the whole purpose of the arcade is to sell tokens and of course the food and drinks as add on sales. The games that take the tokens to play are hooks as in order to play, one has to pay.

When it comes to crypto, use case is what is going to make or break any token in the end as speculation will subside and long-term investment mindsets set in. Stability has to supplant pump and dump schemes eventually as investors will become more and more risk adverse, and this means they will look to put their investment into assets that have use case. With the challenges that are going to befall traditional assets and the consumers that prop them up in the coming years, the increasingly "safe bet" may be in businesses that utilize crypto, or at least take a hybrid approach to limit fiat exposure.

Many of the businesses are going to fail as they are not going to be able to manage the volatility of the early crypto economy. I think this is one of the strengths of Steem, for as of now, it doesn't rely solely on the value of the currency to operate and due to the decentralized nature, the costs and risks of operation can be spread far and wide. We have also seen that despite the dramatic drop in value over the last two years, many of us are not only still here, but we are buying in more heavily.

There are many who see this industry as a fad or insignificant, but the fact is that it hasn't even got close to fad status yet, even after the nonsense pump of 2018 as that only took the market cap to near a trillion and was far from mainstream. Pennies.

Where we are now is more like the internet in 1978 - before personal computing became a viable product. At that point, there was little interface between the internet and the public, but once the likes of IBM, Microsoft and Apple started pushing PCs and making users, then there were enough computing nodes to start launching the internet to the public.

What we are missing in the crypto scene now are the interfaces between the blockchain and the public, even though Steem is here and has been doing this for nearing 4 years already. Steem is kind of like those message boards in the mid-80s. However, we are not in the 70s, 80s, 90s or 00s - we are going into 2020.

All of the infrastructure of the internet is in place and half the world's population hold a smartphone in their hand each day and are used to downloading and using applications and, the social networks can disseminate information rapidly. How long until the fad really strikes?

But this isn't a Yo-Yo craze, there is going to be real value being moved along the blockchains and quite a number of people from all over the world are suddenly going to find themselves in a vastly different earnings bracket. When millions of people across the globe suddenly sprout economic wings and become a financial force, many more are going to want to start getting into the game to grow their own new feathers.

When we look at something long enough, all of it is just a fad, including countries, empires and species. However, just like how we have changed significantly over the last 2 million years of our evolution, fad-like technologies will advance and shift depending on the way they are used and misused. The beauty of the Steem blockchain is that while at every moment the conditions are the same for all users based on the known code, that code can continuously be reimagined and implemented to better serve the user base.

You might not be content with the way things are today, but it is part of the process of change and perhaps, you are not the user of the future either. The great thing is though that through Smart Media Tokens, just about anyone can create any kind of experience for themselves and a user base they choose to serve. Many will try, most will fail - but some will hit the sweet spot and attract massive user attention and retention.

I have never been one to get into fads or what is considered popular, but I have always wanted to be an early adopter. You see, what my brother didn't realize about the internet is that it wasn't a fad because it wasn't a product, it was the infrastructure that all future fads would be built upon.

Buying a product isn't an investment, owning a piece of the factory is.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]