Dan Elitzer is a member of IDEO Futures, a new ventures team focused on prototyping and incubating new businesses, with a personal focus on ventures utilizing Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Prior to IDEO, Elitzer received his MBA at MIT Sloan, where he co-founded the MIT Bitcoin Club and MIT Bitcoin Project.
This article was written by Elitzer in conjunction with his colleagues at IDEO Futures – Joe Gerber, Reid Williams, Diego Rodriguez, Piper Loyd, Ted Ko and Eric Chan – and was originally published on the IDEO Futures blog .
In the opinion piece, the team look at recent challenges facing bitcoin, and express their belief that bitcoin and blockchain hold as much promise as they did a year ago. Starting runners What is Bitcoin good for, if not an occasional dose of drama? Readers of the recent NY Times piece, The Bitcoin Believer Who Gave Up , have been rightfully concerned about the future of bitcoin. But there remains much more promise for bitcoin and blockchain than readers might glean from this single snapshot.
Yes, there are significant technical and governance challenges for scaling bitcoin. The number of transactions the network can process today is far too low and the security and software development concentrated in too few hands. None of the concerns raised by developer Mike Hearn in his farewell message (to bitcoin specifically; he is now working full-time for the blockchain consortium R3CEV) are news to those who have been following bitcoin closely.
However, these challenges should be seen as symptoms of bitcoin’s amazing success to date rather than its imminent demise. In barely seven years of existence, bitcoin has moved from a fringe technology for libertarians and drug dealers to a commodity valued at over $5 BILLION (with a ‘B’), the basis of over $1bn […]
