From the outside, it seems like you could easily view the crypto cup as half empty or half full. But there is no sense of panic among crypto insiders. At least not the insiders I spoke to at the Crypto Invest Summit in Los Angeles.
Falling prices? “Not worried” was a typical response.
No great blockchain products? “They will come,” was the refrain. (The gaming industry was the most prominent bet here.)
Scalability problems? “Tools are getting developed,” they said.
Bitcoin and other blockchains are too slow? “Platforms will be much faster two to three years from now,” most people said. (One person told me he expects them to be 100 times faster within three years.)
Change is coming.
How fast is in the eyes of the beholder. It’s probably faster than you think but slower than you want.
It’s not just a tech issue. It’s a cultural one too.
Culture resists change. Slows it down. Society needs time to understand and absorb it.
Steve Wozniak reminded the crypto conference audience of this basic fact: “Change (is) happening slowly, just like how the internet evolved from its early dial-up days.”
But at the end of the day, it’s going to be the quality of the tech that determines outcomes.
Coders and product developers have their work cut out for them.
Crypto needs a series of great and useful products to drive acceptance and adoption.
Hard-to-solve technical issues still need to be conquered. Security, privacy, scaling, speed, interoperability and user interfaces all await dramatic upgrades.
To quote Wozniak, “Change is great, but you don’t want to give up stuff inside the blockchain that you had outside the blockchain.”
Half empty or half full?
I try to bring a clear-eyed perspective.
I see incredibly useful blockchain projects being built… but I also see a lot of crap out there.
It’s not that different from the startup space. Startups need to be extraordinary to be successful. So do blockchain companies.
I think the crypto space will always have its share of duds.
What I’m counting on is that investors will get smarter and make sure these duds (some of which are scams) don’t attract funds.
This article – and this service – is part of the solution. So are the crypto recommendations we make… with plain-English explanations for why we like certain coins.
We love it when high-quality crypto projects get rewarded with ample capital and frivolous ones get punished with negligible capital flows.
Knowledge and a serious approach to crypto investing matters.
Just hoping that your investments will work out? Hope gets you broke. Get educated.
A part of that education is to keep following us.