2015 was the year the narrative changed. Bitcoin is out, blockchain is in. Attend any financial conference and you’ll hear panels about the brilliance of private distributed ledgers. Private blockchain initiatives like R3 CEV have attracted over 25 of the world’s top banks to participate. Airports everywhere are displaying Bloomberg Markets’ recent cover story, featuring Wall St. tour-de-force Blythe Masters sitting elegantly behind a celebratory banner, “It’s All About the Blockchain.” Even investors who have long backed Bitcoin startups now make sure to convey in their promotional copy that they’re involved with “exciting Blockchain ventures.” What’s your blockchain strategy? Bro, do you even blockchain?
The ascent of this term in the media and financial industry has been dizzying.
And “Bitcoin,” as a thing somehow distinct from “blockchain,” has been left by the wayside, ignored like an embarrassing relative at a family gathering.
Some of us have been amused by this development, but many confounded. Why is everyone talking about the blockchain, and ignoring its central fuel, Bitcoin proper?
First, let’s understand why the change in narrative had to happen, why it was necessary and indeed inevitable.
Bitcoin, to many in the world who have casually heard about it, is an uncomfortable and cryptic creature, existing somewhere between Ponzi Scheme and “money used by bad people.” Didn’t Bitcoin go bankrupt in Japan? Wasn’t the CEO arrested? To others, it’s just downright weird and unnecessary. Visa works just fine, thank you.
More importantly, though, to professionals in the money realm – to bankers and investors and financial regulators – Bitcoin is an awkward and annoying development, a technology almost all of them dismissed as absurd and useless, and yet it keeps growing. Bitcoin promises a dangerous world without strict top-down financial control. Terrorism. Think of the children. Bitcoin made the term “fiat” a thing, and when something has a name, it can be critiqued. Every day Bitcoin exists, it demonstrates the naive idea that money may be able to work without central planning. Worst of all, Bitcoin brings with it an obnoxious cult spouting proletariat nonsense like “financial privacy is a human right,” and “money should move faster than an anvil FedEx’d to Singapore.”
What respectable banker wants to deal with that?
And while the technology brings with it vast promises of financial innovation, these cannot be discussed in terms of “Bitcoin,” because this term brings with it all the aforementioned baggage. One cannot discuss Bitcoin in polite company, for the conversation may veer into one of monetary theory, human rights, massive sovereign theft and bank fraud… better stick with the weather.
But how do you convince your boss or shareholders that you’re keeping pace with innovation? They read the news, they know that disintermediation is a thing. At the edges of their mind, they have a sense that, perhaps, charging $45 to send a money transfer message is neither logical nor sustainable. As Jamie Dimon recently warned in his annual letter to shareholders, “Silicon Valley is coming.”
Enter “Blockchain.”
Read more : http://moneyandstate.com/its-all-about-the-blockchain/
