How the Blockchain Can Avoid the Perils of Futurism

By May 7, 2016Bitcoin Business

Martin Hagelstrom is a bitcoin enthusiast, project executive and consultant working on IT projects at IBM.

In this opinion piece, Hagelstrom speaks out against what he argues is the pervasiveness of futurist thinking in the blockchain industry, reasoning that practical solutions are currently a greater need. We have all heard how bitcoin will make it possible for driverless Ubers to fill their gas tanks, visit mechanics and pay for service without any need of human interventions. It all sounds possible, but let’s be honest, it does not feel like something that will happen in the near future.

Today, there aren’t even driverless cars on highways outside Silicon Valley, so to be fair, the car-to-pump transaction is not the blockchain community’s biggest challenge, no matter how exciting or headline-grabbing it may be.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that this won’t happen, but that does not make something a good use case that should be implemented today, or that it should dominate popular discussion.

As a community, we have to be careful to avoid over-emphasizing futurism. Bitcoin and blockchain can solve problems today, but instead of reminding the public of these examples, we often fall back on far-off ideas to state our case and reinforce our arguments.

Again, I am not saying we should stop innovating, or that such thinking is necessary for innovation. But, on the contrary, we need to use this technology to find clever ways to solve today’s problems for today’s users.

I’m just saying, there will likely be more than a few big innovations between now and the time when your smart pet feeding device is ordering its own refills on Amazon or OpenBaazar . Embracing practicality

But what can we achieve today?Probably a much less fancy scenario. Today’s most brilliant Internet of Things device is Amazon Dash, a […]

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