How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blockchain
It’s time to start learning about this revolutionary new technology - your investment portfolio depends on it
Disclaimer: Nothing that is written here should be regarded as investment advice or as a recommendation regarding a course of action. I’m neither a crypto expert, nor an expert on investing. I’m simply a crypto enthusiast who works as a full time software engineer at the YC-backed startup Quartzy. I have nothing to gain financially by offering people this information. You can check out my credentials for yourself here. Do your own homework on this subject, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
I’m sure that if you’re reading this article, you’re at least a little intrigued by the idea of cryptoassets and blockchain technology. You may have even read some articles with sensationalist titles extolling the virtues of a certain cryptoasset or Bitcoin, or conversely, why Bitcoin is a bubble. This is neither of those. In writing this, I hope to explain to people why I think that blockchain technology will change the world in a way that any non-techie can understand. It would certainly help to have at least some understanding of this technology, and for that I would point towards someone more qualified than myself. I’ve found the writings of my former instructor, Haseeb Qureshi, to be an invaluable resource, and would recommend this article in particular.
I think that the core concepts behind blockchain: peer to peer networks without a central authority (or server), verifiable and unchangeable ledgers keeping track of activity along a chain of events, and the ability to transact between parties without requiring trust between those two parties are all extremely important ideas. These ideas are vastly important to both governments and corporations around the world in ways that most people can’t even begin to fathom.
Banking is the most obviously disrupted industry in this space. We’ve seen through Bitcoin how networks can interact and communicate without having to rely on a central authority (the bank’s servers and databases) to determine how much money is in each user’s account (cutting out the middleman). I can think of at least 20 other different use cases for this technology, as can thousands of other Silicon Valley engineers like myself. Many of these technologies are already being worked on. There are many examples of interesting use cases for this technology. Some of my favorites include https://earn.com/ and https://steemit.com/ (these companies are already backed by some of the biggest VCs in the Valley).
One of the first cryptoassets that I ever got interested in is Bitcoin (back in late 2012), which it sounds like people are at least slowly becoming familiar with. I still think that Bitcoin has a long term potential as an alternative store of wealth (think internet gold), and as a way for criminals and government officials to launder money across borders. Bitcoin is currently the preferred method of transacting on “dark” web sites to let people buy guns and drugs sent through the mail, but that will change. As an alternative to transacting between parties, Bitcoin has a lot of shortcomings. For technical reasons that I’m not yet qualified to try and explain, Bitcoin can not and will not replace traditional banking, PayPal, or Venmo-style transactions.
I have become progressively more interested in Ethereum as a sort of improvement to Bitcoin’s core technology, the blockchain. Coinbase.com makes it easy for people to buy and sell Ethereum for US Dollars, and is one of the most popular exchanges in the world. Ethereum has many of the same properties as Bitcoin, with the key difference being that people can literally write code (called smart contracts) onto what is called the Ethereum Virtual Machine (think a computer that lives entirely on the internet). This concept is so far over people’s heads these days that the only people investing in this space are the open minded people who have enough money to pay experts to advise them (or to just dump money into every new crypto they see), and industry-specific people who can see the potential for themselves.
I know that a lot of people who grew up on traditional banking values are seeing many of these cryptoassets as the equivalent of penny stocks. Some of them are. However, unlike bullshit companies that pump and dump their stock, these cryptoassets often represent an idea, and a technology more so than a share of any single company. For example, the same way that Ethereum provides additional functionality that Bitcoin doesn’t have, there are cryptoassets being created that are optimized for very specific use cases (look at LiteCoin, Bitcoin Cash, etc. which allow transactions to occur and be verified far more quickly than Bitcoin, or require less computing power to achieve the same functionality). This is much the same way that programming languages work. The popular ones are popular because they work in a specific way that ends up being universally recognized as superior and thus adopted on a large scale.
I strongly believe that adoption will also be the key driver in which of these technologies succeed. In a lot of cases, numerous companies will be built around a single cryptoasset, or existing companies will adopt one of these technologies and implement it into their existing technology. Microsoft and IBM are just two that have already started doing this — banks will have to follow suit or be decimated.
In many ways, this is like the infancy of other technologies like the computer or the internet. A lot of people also thought that these ideas were mostly smoke and mirrors and didn’t see any reason to learn how to use them. Even today, ‘digital natives’ are growing up without feeling the need to learn how to use technology in ways other than getting through school or work, surfing the web, and sharing on social media. But there are smart people out there who recognized the potential of these new technologies and built companies around their ideas. These cryptoassets are the new Apples and Googles. Over 10,000 new ones were created this year alone.
People with a finance background might therefore look at this as the new dot com bubble, but that’s a poor analogy. There is certainly a lot of hype and misunderstanding in this space, but investors and speculators aren’t necessarily relying on individual companies in order to make returns. They’re relying on the technology being useful and therefore widely adopted. With crypto, you can almost do the equivalent of directly investing in “the internet” as a concept, and not just as a bunch of companies and stocks. I think that long term, “the internet” has proven that it’s not just a fad, and I can assure you that blockchain technology won’t be either.
The question then becomes how to wade through all the shit out there and figure out which technologies will prove to be useful. I wouldn’t yet consider myself a crypto expert by any means, so my personal plan is to continue learning about and trying to understand the benefits and shortcomings of various cryptoassets. Living in Silicon Valley keeps my ears so deep on the ground that I’m digging worms out of them. Finally, I plan to rely on my own intuition, as I’ve always had a good eye for business opportunities and a proven track record with investment plans.
In the past, my biggest shortcoming has always come down to my being too trusting. When Mt Gox was hacked in January 2014, I was robbed of all of my Bitcoin. I now know how to put crypto assets into “cold storage” (not on a 3rd party’s servers) so that it is literally impossible to hack them (part of the beauty of crypto). It’s also important to diversify, and I wouldn’t suggest investing (or maybe speculating is the correct term here) everything in Ethereum alone — it’s my biggest bet right now because it currently has some of the strongest adoption and use cases.
Governments all over the world are scratching their heads at what to do about this new technology. It’s an uncharted area and has already given rise to one of the greatest criminal tools of all time. An amazing part of this technology though, is that everything is decentralized and happens through the internet, so pretty much all that governments can do is criminalize the exchanging of these cryptoassets. However, any attempts to stop development on these technologies will effectively leave these countries’ governments in the dark ages, while their citizens will still be able to skirt any regulations as long as they have the internet.
I think we’re at a pivotal moment where non-tech-oriented people are only now waking up to the idea that Bitcoin isn’t just fake internet gold, and that there are other cryptocurrencies out there that aren’t just a different “brand” of Bitcoin, and can be evaluated entirely on their merits. It’s only a matter of time before people start seeing the light when this technology begins to disrupt industries all around the world.
