Bitcoin SuperConference Diary. Day 1.
Tim Draper: pied piper of Hamelin
Author: Ilia Stechkin
Yesterday our team, Daniil Kruchinin, CEO, Jevgenijs Vainsteins, Strategy director advisor of the project (from Canonical) and Toan Nguyen, adviser responsible for our business development in Europe (from e-Shelter) presented the platform in Germany, at the the Crypto Assets Conference. And I was left in Israel to prepare the next step of our road show. All day long I’m chatting with our fantastic community and team and thinking about the results of the Bitcoin SuperConference in Dallas I visited last week.
…After Richard Jacobs’ opening remarks, Tim Draper, a famous venture capitalist and crypto enthusiast, spoke about Blockchain, Bitcoin and how they are transforming industries, government and society. His first message was tongue-in-cheek. He said that venture capitalists provided bad service at a high cost. Frankly speaking, I know a lot of entrepreneurs that would agree with him. But then he made the same claim to banking, insurance, health care… And again he is perhaps more truthful than he would like to be. According to Mr. Draper, that’s because all of these industries are heavily regulated by government. That’s why they are what they are. “But even if the government collapses, — he said — you still will be able to use Bitcoin”.
Then he said that smart contracts can completely change our legal system and proved his statement with his personal case: “I already made the first smart contract in Estonia”. But here is the question: who is guaranteeing the “unbreakable” smart contract if there is no regulation: no law or court that could protect your interests? There is only reputation, but it could not be enough in some cases. Yes, government usually has the monopoly to control currencies for years. But we take it for granted because we presume the government is responsible to guarantee that we’ll be able to buy something with this money.
He brought us to the brave new world of freedom and honesty, where people share the same values and rules are clear, and everyone obeys them: “I predict that in five years you will not be able to pay fiat money in Starbucks. Barista will laugh at you!” Seems great, doesn’t it? But we need to remember that Mr. Draper is the part of the system. At the very beginning he said that he as a venture capitalist was under the strong pressure from the state. What is the pressure per se? Taxes, I suppose. Another problem for the big capital that needs to be global is local regulations. Cryptocurrency is the way to kill two birds with one stone. But that’s the battle between corporations and states, and has nothing in common with freedom. He said: if crypto is illegal in China, founders are moving to Japan, because their authorities are going to make Bitcoin the national currency. That’s right, firstly because traditional venture capital is closed for the regular startups, and secondly because of the guarantees that Japanese government are going to add to the Bitcoin’s value.
But as the blockchain community we all faced the issue that shows that big money is not happy to compete with crypto. I’m speaking about Facebook’s attack on the ICO announcements. The Big Brother changed its politics. So a lot of startups were disconnected from their audience in a moment and nobody cares about their needs, rights and freedom. It seems like someone was just looking for Bitcoins but the price was too high… That’s the way big money grows.
After the first set of reports we joined the Social Wallet booth in the exhibitor’s zone. I chose this project because they were doing the tool that allows a user to transfer tokens easily via social media accounts, including Facebook and Twitter. They are using API and as the application they are already approved by Facebook. And they are not talking about cryptocurrency or ICOs. Actually they are just making tokens the part of our everyday social practice… So publicly Facebook is struggling blockchain, but technically it is already the part of the ecosystem.
To be continued…
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