What Blockchain Companies Can Learn from Henry Ford

This originally appeared in Coinme’s weekly newsletter: The Coinster.

One of our favorite podcasts in the office is Off the Chain, a podcast hosted by Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano. I was listening back to an episode this weekend about a wide range of topics, but the key takeaway for me was this quotation from Meltem Demirors:

“This is a battle for hearts and minds. If we look at big innovations or shifts, it’s always about a battle for hearts and minds. For hearts and minds to shift, we need to move away from the moral high ground and look at what the next billion bitcoin users will look like.”

I look at it this way: After he created the assembly line, if Henry Ford spent months focused on explaining the technical details of how to build combustion engine or wrote 5,000 word articles describing how the innovations to the assembly line were going to lead to the collapse of the horse industry, we would not talk about him the way we do today. Instead, Ford’s message was simple: This makes your life easier.

Frankly, the general public does not need to know (or care) how the technology behind digital currencies work. They don’t need to read your white-paper. All they care about is how your product will make their lives easier. That is not to say that the work that has been done on the technology in this industry doesn’t matter, because it does, but if everyone who owned a car were required to know how it worked, you would see a lot fewer cars on the road.

This upcoming year, we will see the public’s focus shifting towards projects with real-world use cases of digital currency and blockchain technology. These are the projects that can drive adoption and value to the entire ecosystem, and we will be here to help you understand the implications of the underlying digital currencies associated with those projects!

Cheers!

Dom is the Director of Engagement for Coinme and an Advisor for Token Forum.

You can connect with him on LinkedIn.