Opinion: Bert Bosman – the 180 use cases of blockchaintechnology
By Bert Bosman (Linkedin) – Wow. I cannot believe the skepticism in the media these days. Yes, of course, we now have entered the trough of disillusionment, but this fact is so well-known that journalists all over the world should be ashamed not to talk about it. Of course, they would have to invest in actually studying a subject a bit… and who has got the time for that when you need to produce stuff all of the time?
So many articles about this amazing new technology called ‘blockchain’ and the power that it costs to maintain the bitcoin network, but not even the slightest realisation that ‘media itself’ is feeding the world with a lot of crap on a daily basis. You wonder about the cost of energy on that. Didn’t they have an economics class in journalist school or ‘on the job’ lately? Or could it be that there’s a different incentive here? Maybe they just don’t want to see the other side of the coin? ( yes, pun intended… ; )
Maybe this discussion that we’re having plays very well into the hands of some key players? And maybe it’s the only way to keep on living for most of the traditional media outlets. What if it actually is their only way out? These ‘artificially created attention markets’… again and again… bring advertisement money to the table. Money that goes more and more into the deep pockets of some of the very big players. If only there was something that we could do about that. Mmm…. let us think for a second of what might be a solution to this problem? 😉 Of course that would mean a lot of people would have to start doing things differently, and that usually doesn’t go overnight.
Fake news
Let’s talk a bit more about ‘hypes’ and ‘creating fake-news’. Those interesting ‘publicity tools’ that are so hardly needed to maintain all of those old-economy jobs. What if the big media companies that are still standing tall today wouldn’t be necessary anymore? All of those people that go to all of these offices on a daily basis, mostly to copy all of this information that is flowing around in our society, what if there can be a better and more sustainable way of producing content?
What if those ‘journalists’ actually could do some proper research for instance? What if ‘fake news’ and ‘hypes’ wouldn’t exist, or at least wouldn’t be so goddamn mainstream? Mmmm… what if you would add the advancements of the ‘lightning network’ in the coming years to producing actual trustworthy content? Lightning payments for articles that are really worth something to the public. Could that even be possible? I wonder what you would need for that.
Decentralisation
Yes, fortunately there’s a tendency towards ‘decentralisation’ in all of our markets. You can have one guess what development stands at the core of this process. Or what is, or will be, so necessarily needed for security in these new markets that are arising? * And not to worry, I know decentralisation comes in many flavours. We can have a different discussion about that alone, but I just think that we haven’t had an opportunity like this in the past 500 years.”
I believe that we should try to grasp what it is and try and experiment with it. Oh wait, let’s see… that’s exactly what we are doing. And yes, also the scammers are doing that, and the people who don’t have a clue, and a lot of inventors. If there’s new possibilities to explore, or if we can do things differently, criminals, inventors and ‘stupid explorers’ are usually the first ones to dive in. And then there’s also those thousands of intelligent developers just working on the product. Improving it day by day. Constantly shaping it. They usually do not like journalists, so you’ve got to put in some effort to actually go out and find them. If you can even have a talk with them. I wouldn’t underestimate it. They are very busy people too.
*.. and for the ones who didn’t get it, yes Bitcoin already provides the security that decentralised markets around the world so badly need! If there’s any energy cost at all…
Yes, I really said it. If there is any energy cost at all! But I mean that from a broader perspective. Let’s look at it 10 or 20 years from now. And the fact remains that Bitcoin is already providing a lot of digital security. Trust me on this one. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking about anything blockchain anymore…
The Correspondent
Unfortunately, instead of all of the very successful funding rounds last year, a very interesting platform didn’t make it last month to get the proper funding. But not to worry, they certainly won’t be the last to try and these new journalists are not defeated that easily. They have the ability to see that the markets will flourish again and that they can go for another round. As a matter of fact. They are still working on the product right now and my bet is they will get the proper funding they need very quickly. Why? Well, because of economics and blockchain of course. It pays to deliver independent, inclusive, and ad-free journalism today already. Just look at the crowd-funded model of the Correspondent!
Okay, and I’ll forgive the Correspondent for a stupid article here and there… the good journalists make mistakes too! 😉
Scams or not… all of the money that ‘was lost’ is still flowing around because of blockchain technology. That’s a proper use case in itself, and if we get big enough, we just might save the whole world from the coming crisis.
Token economy
So… is ‘blockchain’ following a perfect example of the Gartner cycle? Yes, it seems very likely. A lot of hype was created, a lot of people dove into this new technology and a lot of people were trading, scamming, making up ideas, got funded, and went back to school again just to explore all of the basics of economics, and to get a better grasp of this new development. I wouldn’t be surprised if we would look at some of the actual numbers in a few years that we would see that ‘blockchain’ has been the number 1 most advanced worldwide course of economics ever. The biggest wave of spreading knowledge that has ever existed in the history of mankind.
Second of all. All new token economies that were created in the last couple of years are solely made possible by the blockchain. If there would have been no blockchain, all of these experiments wouldn’t be happening. If you do, or cannot see all of those developments, then you should only dive into the subject more deeply. Without focusing totally on one aspect by the way, because that just might create a bit of a tunnel vision too.
Because of time efficiency issues (I gotta run too to keep up with all the real developments in crypto ; ) I borrowed the last bit of my article from something that was already out there. No need to put any energy into work already done right. Ow wait.. doesn’t blockchain make that more possible also? 😉
10 Things you can do on the blockchain that you can’t on the web.
As for the ‘180 real use cases’ of the title. Sorry, that was just a typical case of misinformation. Or wasn’t it? Out of the ten arguments stated above, you can easily find hundreds of projects working on a different aspect in different industries.
I’m not going to do all of the research for you, but if you want to find out more, come join us at BlockDam, every Tuesday in the Beurs of Berlage. We are exchanging knowledge and are working on creating a DAO to explore better ways of cooperation. It is a new way of working whereby you are the one who stays in charge in the end. I think a lot of people are looking for that use case. It just might be the next killer app! After Bitcoin of course… ?
“You can’t make the perfect salad when most of your vegetables are still growing in the garden.”
Ps. This quote I also got from the article… alone this platform ‘medium’ has hundreds of thousands of articles with real developments in blockchain and crypto. Please go explore it a little before you judge about the advancements of a new technology.
