It’s one thing to read about cryptoeconomics and another thing to actually do it. I had been reading about Bitcoin in the abstract from 2009, but it wasn’t until I became an owner in 2013 that I began to realize the implications of this technology.
My boots were on the ground, as they say, and I saw and experienced things I never imagined possible. A money and payment system in one application? Made entirely from code? Invented by an anonymous programmer and gradually adopted in a globally distributed system run by hobbyists? The whole thing seemed crazy.
I wanted to know more. So I organized one of the earliest national conferences on the topic in Atlanta, Georgia, in October 2013, when the Bitcoin/dollar exchange ratio had reached $100 from $14 at the start of the year. My purpose was to bring economists and technicians together to develop a better understanding of what exactly was happening.
On Friday, nearly four years later, I attended an exciting and passion-filled blockchain meetup in Atlanta. The Bitcoin price floats around $2,500, but this is off from a high that nearly touched $3,000. Many of the people who attended my first CryptoCurrency Conference were there again, but this time was different. Instead of being curious onlookers, many people in the room were part of what we might call the digital 1%: immense earnings based on speculative investments that paid off.
The New World
Now times are getting serious. The biggest banks and brokerage houses are on board. Tens of thousands of blockchain startups exist. There is a crowdfunding campaign for a new digital service and token nearly every day.
There are so many white papers being issued that no one can keep up. For all the world, it looks like Tulipmania except that this is what many people have claimed for eight years, during which time a new world has been born.
During Tulipmania, you were right to be suspicious because tulips had always been around. They didn’t represent anything new. The blockchain is something completely new: a new technology for porting adaptable information bits into immutable bundles to move cheaply and quickly across geographically non-contiguous lines.
