Not Paying Attention to Blockchain Means Missing the Opportunity of our Generation
By: Rhiannon Payne
Tags: Crypto, Sto, ICO, Blockchain, Bitcoin

Source: Capgemini

At the most recent blockchain conference I attended, Distributed 2018 at the San Francisco Westin, I made my usual rounds mingling and networking with everyone I came across. I made business connections while at the sink in the bathroom, exchanged cards and LinkedIn requests at the hotel bar, and engaged in enthusiastic conversations with a table full of people who had all just met over the catered lunch of deli sandwiches, chips, and coffee.

During slow periods I would venture into the speaker’s room to hear what was being discussed. Early on in the day, these talks consisted of ICO pitches dressed up as explanations about why blockchain will disrupt a given industry, notably real estate and supply chains. I did not stay long for these. But once 3 pm rolled around the shift toward more serious topics discussed by industry leaders took place, and I followed the gravitational pull of attendees away from the social areas and back into the hall.

Of all these panels, speeches, and interviews, there seemed to be one message more prevalent than the rest: “This is 1995 for blockchain.”

1995 for Blockchain

That powerful statement, expressed by Elizabeth Stark of Lightning Labs as well as many others, goes seemingly without the need for explanation. The dot-com boom of the 90s and early 2000s was the greatest financial opportunity of my parent’s generation, and all digital money making pursuits since have been chasing that high.

“The dot-com bubble was a historic economic bubble and period of excessive speculation that occurred roughly from 1995 to 2000, a period of extreme growth in the usage and adaptation of the Internet.” [x]

However, interpretations of the statement may vary depending on who you ask. While the dot-com boom and the beginning of the Internet Age (August 9th, 1995) go hand in hand, I find them to be distinctly different.

To anyone who is truly invested in blockchain and the future, the idea of an economic bubble that can be taken advantage of is second to the long-term potential of the blossoming technology. During the Internet Age, 1995 was the spark that changed our world.

I mentioned all of this during my own panel appearance last week, at a Gyal’s Network event in San Jose, and was genuinely taken aback by the surge of passion I felt while saying those words. At that moment I suddenly felt as if I were Joan of Arc, exclaiming my battle cry in a charge toward revolution.

If you’re not paying attention to blockchain now, I truly believe you are missing out on being part of the greatest social shift and opportunity of this generation. We are currently seeing the seeds being planted for blockchain to fundamentally change the way we transact funds, buy and sell goods, do business, share information, learn, connect, and engage with the world around us — likely within the next decade.

If you’re not paying attention, here are a few reasons why you should start watching (or get involved in) the industry now:

The Industry Isn’t Dying

Let’s get this one out of the way.

When friends ask me if Bitcoin, and therefore blockchain and crypto, is dying due to drops in the market…

A huge misconception is that the growth of blockchain technology is tied to the value of Bitcoin. Despite the market’s recent decline, blockchain isn’t going anywhere. In fact, the industry is only growing.

More money was invested in ICO and STO projects by April of this year ($6.3b) than in the entirety of 2017. Even since the beginning of summer, we’ve seen people approaching the blockchain space in a much more serious way. Products are starting to hit the market (including one of our own — the Artem Game mobile app), and in 2019 we will start to see more companies delivering on their ICO roadmap promises in meaningful ways. Additionally, the rise of new SEC regulations and Security Token Offerings (STOs) has begun to seriously clean up the space, making way for more legitimate businesses and innovators to get involved. We’re just getting started.

We Need Distributed, Decentralized Systems

Engineers, computer scientists, and academics have been talking about the importance of distributed systems as far back as the 1970s.

This is expressed perfectly in a Cornell University presentation from 2001:

in the future, to solve the interesting problems, we will need to get large collections of small machines to cooperate

The idea of many small machines working together to solve problems is the fundamental nature of blockchain. While standard distributed systems already exist, they are still centrally controlled by an organization or government entity, meaning they can be easily corrupted.

With blockchain there is no single point of failure or control. Bitcoin is powered by thousands of nodes run by anonymous miners distributed across the globe, and these nodes work in tandem to keep the ledger up-to-date, both creating redundancies and ensuring that the system cannot be tampered with.

Source: Blockgeeks

Ownership of Personal Data

There are few things as topical and concerning in 2018 as the ambiguous ownership and use of our personal data.

With evidence of Russian interference in the US presidential election through paid social media campaigns and malicious leveraging of harvested user data, there has been a looming question of who has access to our data and how it’s being used behind the scenes to influence us or even steal our identities.

But imagine a world where you have true ownership of your personal data. You can protect it through encryption, you can monitor if and how it’s being utilized, and you could even monetize your own data by loaning it to companies you trust to serve you more targeted advertising. Through a secure, private, permanent distributed ledger, blockchain presents the opportunity for us to finally gain control over our data in a way that no other technology can.

This is the first use case I always cite when speaking to interested newcomers, one I believe is pressing in today’s society in an industry ripe for disruption.

If You Blink, You’ll Miss It

The biggest problem in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space to date is slow adoption due to the complex and time-consuming process of setting up a wallet and purchasing crypto. However, with new consumer products that will run on distributed systems, use of the technology will soon become seamless if not invisible from a user perspective.

If you want to be conscious of the increasing prevalence of blockchain in our digital lives, it’s important to start reading up and engaging with the subject now. Understanding it will be essential for all future jobs related to the tech sector. Now is the time to watch and start participating as it grows from the ground up.