At this moment most people, who are even aware of it, see the crypto revolution with dreams of riches. For some, that is already happened. Because of that, the gold rush begins. The somewhat natural response is to think of the word “bubble”. Is it true this time?
Our most recent reference point is the dot.com era of the 1990s. Let’s compare. Something new was being discovered. Something no one understood except for a few technologists. Even so, money was being thrown at it by the shovelful. Companies were started with barely anything but an idea or skeletal website (sound familiar?). Millionaires were made, but many millions were lost. Companies rose and fell. The tech stocks’ implosion trigged a major market correction. The technological beast, the Internet, shook off that which did not work. A pesky book selling company did ok.
And yet the Internet itself never went away. It evolved into so much more than its DARPA creators ever imagined.
There is the lesson. What we're doing now is not the final result. We are only in the very first phase of something which, also a technological thing, will destroy bad ideas in its wake. It will suck up capital from all corners of the planet in search of its purpose. That will be what the market demands. What that is, no one knows. Even those of us that have a vision are also nearsighted. It is still a fun journey.
We need the gold rush to bring in the needed investment, to build excitement, to spawn new and better ideas, and to make huge mistakes. Bitcoin is the new gold (for now), the symbol and standard bearer that lures naive hopeful money to the technology, the money needed for the next Google, Cisco, Firefox, Wikipedia, YouTube, Steemit, you name it. This is the market and human ingenuity in action.
Most of what we see and talk about today will not be here five years from now. There weren’t many Amazons that survived the 1990s either. The Internet prevailed, and the crypto world, the new Internet, will also prevail. Although we may not know its ultimate shape, its ultimate uses, its ultimate impact on our planet, we do know it will have as its very fabric privacy, security, transparency, and currency (money, folks).
Let the best ideas win. This bubble is purely a function of the depth of your vision.