In the aftermath of the "dot-com boom" of the late 1990s, it seemed like almost all the companies with sketchy and/or outright dumb ideas ended up failing by the time the calendar rolled around to 2005.
We probably saw a loss of 95% of the supposedly "great" ideas that started up and whose instigators hoped to make their riches on the dot-com bandwagon.
Now we get to set the clock forward 20 years and we have the Cryptosphere, a different "New Frontier," but a new frontier, nonetheless... and it's potentially game changing and disruptive.
I say "potentially" because we're actually not there... yet...
We also have a situation in which pretty much the only thing that's required to start a project is having a white paper using the world "blockchain" and a cryptocurrency token... and off you go, to the races! If you think about it, not so different from "having a domain name and an idea," 25 years ago...
But so many of these things have not a leg to stand on... at least not from where I'm sitting.
In essence, I hear the term "vaporware" being thrown around a lot and I believe there's a lot of truth to that.
Now, it would be easy to argue that cryptocurrency is a very different beast from technology companies, in the sense that Crypto is allegedly decentralized and there isn't an actual company to succeed or fail.
Technically speaking? True! But functionally speaking, how much activity and development will continue with a project that started at $2 per token and now trades at $0.00000001? Instead of "bankrupt," we get to use the terms "dead" or "worthless."
But let's take a look beyond that and ask ourselves the question of how many currencies we actually need? Or, more specifically, how many silly memecoins we need.
Again, it would be easy to argue that you can't look at cryptocurrencies and blockchains in terms of a sense of "need," but let's at least consider the fact/possibility that there has to be some degree of viability, otherwise you're just playing around in the sandbox. Nothing wrong with that, just don't try to persuade me that you're a "world-wide game changer!"
Sure I can start "Cat Coin Crypto" tomorrow and issue a bajillion tokens and maybe after a while I've got 50 cat lovers around the world who are sincerely interested in what I'm doing. That might be "freedom," but what's the point, on the greater scale of things?
In essence, that doesn't make what I'm doing viable nor does what I'm doing have a purpose other than to try to cash in on a popular craze.
And so, I ask again the question of how many currencies do we actually need here? And when I asked that question I'm not really talking about outright need as such so much as what is the purpose and ultimate end game of any given proposition?
If we pan out a bit and consider the long term goals and ambitions of the entire industry, presumably we want to accomplish something more than having a reputation for high risk investments, scams, rugpulls and get-rich-quick schemes?
But let's get back to the problem with a seemingly endless stream of largely purposeless tokens... many of which make 7 people very rich and everyone else a pauper.
When it comes down to how we live our lives, we typically have an expectation of a certain degree of ease-of-use or utility of whatever it is we're using. Now, before you dismiss that offhand let's consider for example a metaphorical world in which we have vehicles that are operated not by a handful of different fuels, but by thousands of different fuel sources, offered by thousands of different organizations.
How convenient and practical would it be to have to always find the fuel that your particular vehicle happens to run on? And how convenient would it be to be standing — let's say in your favorite store — and you have to pay in 43 different currencies? That simply doesn't make sense!
And, in a way, that is also how I end up at this point of not knowing how many of the silly "vaporware projects" we have out in the Cryptoshere need to fail.
Maybe it sounds unkind when I say they "need to fail" but surely, in order for something to exist, doesn't there have to be some kind of utility? I certainly think so.
And so we must go about finding the places where the utility is. And we must create that utility, in order to make inroads on the massive task of making crypto more accessible appealing to a broader audience. Just like the early Internet was plagued by an association with porn, predophiles, scams and computer viruses, some of the foundations of what we're doing here are in dire need of being rewritten!
One of the reasons I'm very happy to be part of not only the Hive ecosystem as a whole but also individual communities like LeoFinance, Splinterlands and beyond is because these are crypto projects that are actually creating utility. They have a purpose, aside from just being a potential "Wen Moon?" cash dispenser. In other words it's not just a white paper and a bunch of empty promises.
Now I can completely understand the allure of being into something that runs largely on rumor and as a result of running largely on rumor you can suddenly experience that "100x in a week" gain and earn a Lambo overnight... but I shy away from it because it's really not something that has lasting value.
Besides, if I wanted to gamble, there are perfectly good casinos and lotteries all over the place!
Thanks for visiting my blog, and have a great remainder of your week!
Curator Cat Contemplates Crypto is periodic series of articles and editorial commentaries on Hive, its Communities and the Cryptosphere in general, as seen through the eyes of someone NOT deeply immersed in the technological and financial end of the industry. Equal Opportunity Offender! We've likely got something to piss off everyone, here!
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