Overstock’s Patrick Byrne: I feel the blockchain revolution is my victory

By April 12, 2016Bitcoin Business

Wall Street is facing a protocol upgrade iStock In sudden and sad news, Overstock.com Inc. founder and chief executive Patrick Byrne has been forced to take an indefinite personal leave of absence to battle stage 4 hepatitis C. He contracted the infection in 1984 in China "when a barefoot doctor sewed up a head wound under less-than-ideal conditions".

Wired reported the story as a major blow to the global Bitcoin and blockchain effort. They are correct. Byrne’s t0 (tee zero) project is the only effort that has brought the spirit of Bitcoin and real decentralisation to capital markets, as opposed to a half-way approach that changes a bit of reconciliation here and there.

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Byrne spent longer than a decade trying to arraign Wall Street for its iniquities, during which time he was smeared, investigated and written off as insane, only to see the whole system come crashing down because of the very things he was railing about. He is conciliatory in vindication, however. In an interview given to IBTimes right before taking medical leave, Byrne said:

"I’m not trying to start fights anymore. And I’m not in the business of bayoneting the wounded. I feel the blockchain revolution is kind of my victory. I don’t care whether I win it, someone else wins it. The fact is the blockchain revolution is going to accomplish all these things I was after 10 or 12 years ago.

"And actually when I’m at these financial conferences speaking, I feel kind of awful for people, frankly, because I think this is an extinction event. I think that in five years a very significant fraction of people and companies are going to be so disrupted. I feel I’m looking at people, many of whom are going to lose their jobs. I have this […]

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