John Biggs is CEO of stealth bitcoin startup Freemit and a former editor at TechCrunch. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Gizmodo and Men’s Health.
In this opinion piece, Biggs argues that the bitcoin community has become complacent in its quest for financial change, standing by as institutions seek to stamp out its more revolutionary impulses. You say you want a revolution. Fine. But act like it’s coming, not like petulant nerds intent on destroying a burgeoning industry from the inside. At this point in the bitcoin lifecycle, the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and naysaying we’ve been hearing is mostly true. The network is abysmally slow. The use cases are half-baked and consumers will receive no implicit benefit from bitcoin over, say, swiping their Visa card.
The bitcoin 1.0 experiment is, in short, over.
But, I would argue – and you will probably agree – that bitcoin and related technologies aren’t an experiment any more than TCP/IP was an experiment or HTML was a shot in the dark. Just as the first web pages looked ugly as sin, the current state of bitcoin is in the same position.
These technologies point the way to the future, but we’re letting that future be controlled by those who will be quickest to destroy it. Death by distraction
Transferwise, Revolut and the banks with their "blockchain-like contracts" are sucking up the oxygen necessary to go forward with a true Internet of Value.
While we dick around over block size and who is angry at whom, the powers that be are quickly and mercilessly tearing into everything that we have worked hard to build.
I have watched this industry move from "To the moon!" optimism to a world in which big banks pay lip service to [bitcoin creator] Satoshi Nakamoto […]
