Everyone in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency represented in one giant graph
By: Adil Haris
Tags: Consulting, Bitcoin, Problem Solving, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain

The New Entrant

Or the ones who recently got enlightened

How did they get in? Usually referred to by rich crypto mining friends or lead/mislead by a random article on the internet

What do they do? Well, nothing! They don’t really have any opinion about Blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Not just yet. They’re new, thirsty for knowledge and have no clue on what to look for on Google. They would encompass about 75% of the people I’ve dealt with. Most of them would be happy with just the one therapy session. After that, they start tracking all the news themselves and start making intelligent conversations with their friends about crypto and decentralization.

New entrants, after spending some time in this space, move along on the graph and would tend to incline towards one of the following three views:

a. The Bitcoin Maximalists

b. The Bubble Gang

c. The We Believe in Blockchain. Not Crypto (WBBNC) gang

or a combination of two:

a. The Bitcoin Maximalist + WBBNC

b. The Bubble Gang + WBBNC

The Bitcoin Maximalist

Or the ones who keep predicting the $500,000 bitcoin valuations

Why are they so optimistic? A limited supply of crypto, hope for freedom from censorship, oh and the magic sauce — smart contracts!

What do they want? Based on their economic status (among other ulterior motives) they may be trying to -

a. Spread the good word about crypto

b. Shove the good word about crypto down your throat so that you would HODL

c. Shove the good word about crypto down your throat so that you would buy their mining equipment

The Bubble Gang

Or the ones who make uncanny analogies to the internet bubble

Why are they so skeptical? Everything that goes up, must come down. Duh!

What’s up with them? They’re a pretty diverse group of people. Some of them -

a. Have tons of experience, seen similar patterns and sincerely believe that crypto is overbought and is bound to take a dip

b. Are multi-millionaires/billionaires who kinda missed getting onboard the crypto bandwagon

c. Are Jamie Dimon

The term ‘FUD’ (Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt) or the habit of creating FUD is most often associated with them.

We believe in Blockchain, Not Crypto (WBBNC)

Or the ones out there using private and consortuim Blockchains

Who are they? All the banks, financial institutions and many others who simply cannot function with present-day public blockchains (ahem.. Ethereum)

What are they doing? A whole lot of POCs and prototypes wherein they simply want to use Blockchain as a data structure. They often discount other core features of cryptocurrencies which have lent them most of their value(such as the concept of open, incentivized peer-to-peer networks governed by consensus rules). This has resulted in quite a few false use cases being explored which could have been better served with regular database technology (with couple of neat cryptographic tweaks). Nonetheless, this space has seen a few genuine use cases emerge whose feasibility and value-add (in using a Blockchain) are being determined. Only time will tell if the Blockchain promise being proposed by the WBBNC gang would prove beneficial or not.

Now we come to the end of this observation. Please do remember these are my personal views from my experience interacting with clients, colleagues, (rich, crypto mining) friends, and of course, the internet. I don’t favor any one side on this graph, but I do see myself as a person who is keen on bringing some reality back into this space and keeping it clean of some of these decentralized toilet use cases.

Hope you had a good read. Cheers.