The Crypto Journey
I was first exposed to cryptocurrencies and blockchain in 2014. At the time, I became enamored by the technology. I understood it to be an infrastructure that could disrupt many existing systems that affect everyone day-to-day.
From then to now has been a journey. And the more people I meet on this journey, the more I see a pattern which has emerged whereby others hit similar stages of understanding, awareness, and (often false) excitement. This document is my attempt at articulating the crypto journey along with the patterns and characteristics within it.
Cycles
To begin, I want to identify a lexicon to describe the cycles of my journey. It is essentially a microcosm of the Gartner Hype Cycle.
Apex of Salvation: Throughout the journey, there are multiple points where you see the promise of blockchain. This promise grows into a sense that blockchain can cure all ills — an Apex of Salvation. You become blinded by reality, overly optimistic about the challenges that lie ahead, and exuberant at the possibility of blockchain salvation (h/t Brett Scott for pointing this idea out).
Trough of Despair: The Trough of Despair is when reality hits. It is when you begin to understand the friction that the world has and will continue to create, to prevent the promise of blockchain from emerging. Everyone inside the space is an idiot and those in the Salvation phase are ignorant zealots. No one understands how the world works!
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Chord Striker: Information inputs periodically strike a chord of the journeyman, allowing you to move a step forward. Everyone has their unique set of interests, catalysts, and other mechanisms that provide the environment for which the chord will be struck. There are some chord strikers that are similar among large swaths of people. There are also archetypes among these chord strikers whereas others are unique to the individual. Because of this challenge, finding the right chord strike that fully engage the individual is a complex endeavor — one that often takes time and multiple iterations until the chord is sufficiently struck.
Feeding Frenzy: An extension of the Chord Striker is the Feeding Frenzy. This is the lubricant of the journey — the mechanism that (often swiftly) moves one from the Apex of Salvation to the Trough of Despair, and back again — sometimes in minutes!
Instigated by the Chord Striker, the Feeding Frenzy causes you to go deep, consuming vasts amounts of information in the vein of the struck chord. You are often annoying to others in this phase, as the struck chord is all you think about and all you are able to discuss. Those you fail to infect will run from you; others whose chord you are also able to strike become compatriots on your journey to the Apex of Salvation. (I’ve found that my Feeding Frenzies towards the Trough of Despair are often, but not always a lonely affair!)
A note on a corollary to the Apex of Salvation: the Apex of Ignorance: The Apex of Ignorance is when you spend 10 minutes reading about Bitcoin and then choose dismiss it to anyone that will listen. You hear Bitcoin described as: A ponzi scheme. Or a tulip bubble. Or fake money. Or a fad. Or its ilk.
I agree that Bitcoin still may fall from grace. The promise of salvation via technology blinds us all to what the future will really look like. However, if you ascribe any one of these historical metaphors to what is happening, it signals you are missing other facets or perspectives through which this movement can be looked at. For example, let’s take a look at the argument that Bitcoin “isn’t backed by anything”.
Traditional fiat money is backed by the government. This is the system under which the world’s economies have functioned for centuries — it is no wonder anything different than this is difficult to grok.
Bitcoin, however, is backed by the network. Yes, this network is new and possibly immature. However, the network so far has secured over $100 billion in value and it continues to grow. Yes, it can falter or fail. However, to say it isn’t backed by “anything” signals that you have not yet thought about what it might mean for a decentralized network to back money.
A better argument is that Bitcoin is backed by a potentially unstable network. This is hard to refute and it also shows you have at least tried to evaluate the new paradigm Bitcoin has introduced.
With that settled, the following is a more detailed description of the journey.
Blockchain as a Technology
The first cycle that most everyone I have followed as they become aware of blockchain is to understand it as merely a technology. You will hear things like:
“it’s a better database.”
“It’s trustless!”
“It’s immutable!!”
And my favorite:
“I don’t believe in cryptocurrencies, but I believe in blockchain.”
For many this particular Feeding Frenzy is fierce, causing them to jump quickly to the nearest news camera, podcast, or conference stage from which to preach. Many, I’ve noticed, take a while to budge from this particular Apex of Salvation. You will notice a cacophony of buzzwords spewing from their mouth, with little understanding of their true meaning.
Blockchain Bingo
Onward!
For me, I did not find the right chord striker to budge from this first apex of “blockchain as a technology” for over a year after my first introduction. In the interim, my interest languished. I’d still listen (and luckily, I still held what I had bought to dabble in cryptocurrencies). It wasn’t until I started going to Meetups around Austin in late 2016 that the right chords were struck for me encouraging me to move forward.
But, the trough of despair came hard and fast in the form of “Holy shit! How the hell do I even try to understand this?”. Fortunately, I was neither paralyzed nor intimidated by this challenge. My despair dissipated quickly and I got to work learning more.
I realized that the technology is interesting, but the passion behind the space was intoxicating. People from all walks of life were engaging. Smart people. People different than me in most every way. I had the good fortune of traveling a bit while in this stage and discovered that the same thing was happening far and wide, only with different people in different contexts. This is a global movement as much as a technology. I became enamored with the people I was meeting, and captivated by the ideas, concepts, and prolific creation happening around the world.
This segment of the cycle for me lasted eight months or so. I engaged in a feeding frenzy, talking to whomever I could, reading whatever I could understand. Then, I decided that the time was right to start a company to begin sharing my observations. I had no idea where I was going — I just knew I wanted to feed!
*image credit: http://www.matttravaille.com/2011/chomp-chomp/
My next apex was not nearly as severe, or entrenched. I’ve noticed that the more apexes I hit, the less entrenched they become and the more easily I moved forward in the cycle. Now, it is as if the amplitude of my journey cycles are becoming less and less severe. I drank the Ethereum kool-aid.
That chord was struck when I attended a particular Ethereum Meetup. By this point, I had been to many such Meetups in town. The overall growth of the cryptocurrency market was in hyperdrive by this point, doubling or even tripling within the last few months. Attendance in general at the Meetups I attended swelled from <10 to at least 30–50 people.
At the Ethereum meetup, I was struck that a) most everyone was a developer (today’s most coveted human capital trophy), and b) every one of them was “playing with” Solidity in their spare time. (Solidity is Ethereum’s native programming language). The project was (and still is) attracting the free time of some of the most coveted resources in today’s economy. That’s a big deal.
I moved away from this apex a few months later after speaking with a friend that was a Bitcoin maximalist. Bitcoin maximalism basically means that the primary Bitcoin protocol is the one and only method by which the broader promise of blockchain will be fulfilled. All other ideas and projects will eventually fold into Bitcoin, causing it and only it to enjoy further hypergrowth in market value. I didn’t then and still don’t fully drink the Bitcoin maximalism kool-aid, but I do not dismiss it out of hand either.
Tempered Optimism
I have now reached the status of what I call “Tempered Optimism”. I am still very bullish on the overall premise that these emerging technologies are the basis for a transformative shift in how we think about and design the systems with which we interact every day. This shift will affect culture, society, and eventually the core ideas of a corporation and government as they exist now.
That being said, I have also become more aware of the reality of the current world as part of this journey. Often the catalyst for me to move from an apex is the realization that X and Y existing entities will not allow such a vision of the future to come to light, either by ignorance or by wielding their existing power. Conflicts will ensue and sometimes the emergent system will win. But, in others, it will not. At the least, the emergent systems will be affected by these fights, for both good and bad.
If cryptocurrency-based systems are to usurp material portions of the existing economies of the world, these shifts of value will not be quick, nor will they be without (often significant) friction. That being said, the systems emerging as these theories and ideas coalesce and iterate are fascinating to observe. This rub between the old and new excites me.
Onward to more cycles of gross elation and paralyzing despair! Join me on this journey! -Brandon (www.blockintel.co)
