Has the cryptocurrency industry matured enough? Untold Stories, with Charlie Shrem and Ryan Condron (Part 2/3)
The second part of the talk focuses on the maturity and development of the crypto industry and how mining can help rebalance global, renewable energy grids. Remember to check YouTube to watch the full conversation.
Read the first part of the interview here.
Have we matured enough?
Remembering the early days of the crypto community brought back the debate of Bitcoin’s dominance and altcoins use cases. “It’s almost selfish to believe that Bitcoin is the only one, and I still believe that,” confessed Charlie. However, he recognizes the value of other cryptocurrencies: “But at the same time, as the community grows, there are a lot of different blockchains and a lot of different coins that can do a lot of different things.”
Ryan, on the other hand, believes that the distrust of original Bitcoiners towards altcoins comes from years of questionable projects releasing: “In 2013 we saw so many crap coins coming out. We had everything from Bill Murray coin, Ron Paul coin, Cosby coin. You name it, and there was a coin for it, so we got really defensive,” he explained. So when other crypto projects like Ethereum appeared, it was easy to be suspicious about them. The hard part is digging through the pump-and-dump schemes to find the real gems.
According to Titan’s CEO, 2015 was the turning point, “I think Ethereum and a few of the other projects that came out in 2014 or 2015 broke the mold. They started showing that there’s this new functionality that could be added into these decentralized ecosystems and were very useful.”
Fortunately, this is starting to happen again right now. “We see a lot of amazing tech that came out in 2016 and 2017 that are now getting launched into the community three years later.”
Although it’s positive to see this diversification in the crypto ecosystem, it comes not without significant challenges. “I think there needs to be a maturity coming into the industry in the near future around organization. We have a lot of really cool projects, but most people don’t know what they do or what to use them for.” Ryan sees a future with several layers of organizations and automation around switching between the different networks based on their functionality and users’ needs. It’s a complex structure but a much-needed one for an ever-growing ecosystem.
The evolution of the crypto industry
So how has the crypto ecosystem truly evolved from those times? According to Ryan, the most relevant development seems to be regarding DeFi. Nonetheless, we should be cautious, as this is a double-edged sword. We have already seen many DeFi protocols being attacked by hackers, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to their users.
However, Charlie is optimistic that the community can and will recover by learning from these attacks. In fact, he sees some resemblance with common scams that were very popular in 2013, which helped many people identify bad actors and dishonest behavior.
This situation will become more important as the ecosystem keeps growing because the stakes will only get higher. As Charlie concluded, “we have to be critical” of the way we’re taking as an industry to maintain balance. Which led him to ask a great question to Ryan: Given that he’s been in the space for almost ten years, is he happy with where we are today as an industry and a community?
“There are many cool things to build but also many bridges, roads, and tunnels that still have not been completed. We keep building on top of the different layers, and sometimes we ignore the underlying infrastructure of these networks,” said Ryan.
Take what we’re doing with the Lumerin network, for example. We’ll tell people about the project and show them the routing infrastructure and protocol we’re building. And they sit there and scratch their heads and think, “Wow, I totally forgot about mining.” The underlying infrastructure behind the blossoming projects that keep popping up in the crypto space is not to be forgotten, as we can still make many improvements to it. And it will be critical in achieving healthy network scaling.
Mining and the renewables grid
Speaking of the underlying infrastructure of blockchain networks, and given the nature of Titan’s activity, proof-of-work had to come up at some point. And on that topic, a crucial factor is energy.
We won’t try to hide the fact that mining is an energy-intensive industry. Everyone knows that. But we will argue that it is not the environmental disaster some people accuse it of being. Actually, most proof-of-work critics overlook the fact that mining incentivizes the use of renewable sources of electricity. And if that weren’t enough, it also balances large-scale power grids.
“What people don’t realize about electricity grids is that they have to stay balanced. Production always has to equal load. If the load goes up, production has to go up. If production drops, then you’re going to have blackouts,” explained Ryan. “You can’t just have standing electricity on a wire,” he added. Indeed, power is constantly flowing through the grid, and if people don’t use it, it can become overloaded.
Complicated, right? Well, with renewables, it’s even more. Take solar energy, for example. “You can’t stop the sun from shining on the solar panel and generating electricity.” Yes, there are different mechanisms to cover the panels and create shade, but it isn’t cost-efficient at scale. “So when you have a city like Palm Springs that has a huge amount of solar electricity, in the winter, when people aren’t running their AC units, all that electricity has to go somewhere. Because the solar panels are producing energy whether it’s being used or not.”
How do you handle a situation like that? In 2016, California had to pay Arizona to take electricity off its power grid because it generated so much power that it couldn’t consume it nor ramp it down. However, mining provides a more straightforward, profitable solution.
“The proposed model is to build renewable energy at scale, so you have 100% renewable energy. In the middle of the summer, when everyone’s running the AC units, you build enough solar panels to cover all that electricity needs. Now, in winter, when all those solar panels now are not needed, you’re going to have a huge amount of excess electricity,” asserted Ryan. “If we build a mining facility to counterbalance that renewables grid, in the winter, we can mine cryptocurrency when all that excess electricity is not being used by the power grid.”
It’s pretty revolutionary. As Charlie put it himself, crypto mining “is completely changing the game” of how we manage electricity.
Do you want to learn how we can re-build the world using cryptocurrency? Read the third and last part of the interview here.
Titan is actively working to optimize mining and make proof-of-work cryptocurrencies more accessible and democratic. If you liked this story, make sure to subscribe to our blog and sign up for our weekly newsletter. You can also visit our social media through the links below. We’ll be glad to have you!
