This has been an interesting week for cryptocurrencies.
Market cap dropped over 40% in the last days and is more then 60% down from its all-time-high at the beginning of this year — after an incredible bull-race last year.
It is already recovering though which in my opinion is due to the Feb 6th hearing between the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and the chairmans of the SEC and CFTC. It is a great view on the current thinking of the US government on cryptocurrencies and I recommend you to view the archived webcast here.
To me the takeaway of that session is that a majority of the committee recognises that blockchain has huge potential, the government should enable innovation, but more protection through regulation and education is needed in order to protect investors, especially within the ICO space. Hopefully more budget will be released soon which can be used to hire skilled resources to help fill this current gap. So overall, very positive.
State of Maturity
Above intro shows a little bit about the current maturity of this space. Innovators and technologists are building and iterating at a breakneck pace. People claim we are already at blockchain 3.0. Millions of dollars are being raised in seconds due to the crowdfunding nature of current blockchain projects. Speculation and scams are common day practice. We are still very much in the storming phase. At least that is my view of the public sector.
If we look at the private/business sector, big organisations have projects looking into or even departments dedicated to blockchain. Proof-of-Concepts and pilots are underway to test and learn. This happens entirely in-house, with consultancy firms, or in partnership with blockchain startups. I expect this to still be technology driven for the coming period before it will include business processes and we are still several years away from full implementation cq adoption — but happy to be proven wrong in the comments.
The Plan
It is thus the perfect moment for me, a tech-driven digital marketing and business process specialist, to get a full understanding of blockchain, both from a technology and business perspective. I fully believe that blockchain is a game-changer. I want to be prepared and I want to be part of this change, and am going to dedicate time and effort to do so.
So where to start? There is already so much written and you can easily get lost in this sea of knowledge or noise. My rough plan is as follows:
1. Dedicate 3 months full-time to "Learning Blockchain".
I have been researching already these last months, but I cannot give the right amount of attention to the multitude of parellel projects. So after having successfully ended my project assignment, this will be my focus for the next 3 months
- Month 1
In the first month, time will be split between: - Technical fundamentals
How does blockchain work, how does data flow, and why does it happen in that way. Starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum and working my way up. - Business application
What business benefits would be achieved by implementing which use-cases using that technology. - Technical Analysis
Every kid must have had a dream once to work on Wall Street. Even though I have no intention to become a day trader this is an interesting skill to learn, looking at the current cryptocurrency public space. - Months 2 & 3
Whilst continuing with above activities, in month 2 I would like to start discussing with people in my network their current thoughts on blockchain and how they see it being used within their industry. This could be with global enterprises -both client and vendor-, with (blockchain) startups, or with like-minded people.
Month 3 is not set yet and will be formed based on status of work done above.
2. Weekly blog posts
I would like to share this journey with my network and whomever is interested and am committing myself to write a weekly post. I expect more people are interested on taking a similar step and I would be glad to share my thoughts, resources used, and insights with the wider group.
This of course also has benefits for me. It (1.) keeps me focused with weekly deadlines and (2.) it informs my network that I am interested in opportunities within the blockchain space after 3 months. A true win-win-win it seems.
Next week
So this week I have been forming my reading. Had read Down the Rabbit Hole by Tim Lea - a great business oriented book around blockchain. A bit repetitive at certain moments, but that is good at this point in time.
I also read the white papers for Bitcoin and Ethereum but will deep dive and dissect them next week. Also for next week: find and understand a cryptocurrency classification/overview, and read a second book. Looking forward to it!
Any questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else. Just leave a comment below.
