Why Blockchain will have its Internet Moment.

 It is hard to think that the internet was ever in doubt.

But it was.

American Express had to have a board meeting to vote on whether it would have a website.

Can you imagine having a meeting today in your company today to vote on whether to have a website? Ridiculous, huh?

The dot.com bubble of early 2,000 invoked the famous front cover with Jeff Bezos, which read: Amazon: Bomb.

We tend to look back in time with greater certainty about the internet than we felt back then.

Hindsight provides a level of certainty that was simply not there.

“First it was tulips, then it was shares in the South Sea Company. Now the dot.coms have been added to that dubious hall of fame - the roll call of speculative bubbles that have punctuated the history of financial markets.” The Guardian.

But despite all the doom and gloom, the internet companies kept building. And the customers kept on coming.

Folklore has it that the smart money went into the internet in March 2003 and never left. That was the INTERNET MOMENT.

The smart money, who had initially ridiculed this thing, had a collective moment of ‘Ooooo’… this thing ain’t going away.

That it was not a fad, and this would change everything.

They invested. They stayed invested.

They were not the first. But they were not the last.

They saw beyond what the naysayers and the cynics were saying.

They invested time learning about it and its potential.

They ignored the crowd.

Ignoring the crowd pays well.

“A founder isn't blinded by the conventional wisdom of the present, they've recognised the patterns of the past and see the clues to the future, now” - Henry Joseph-Grant

Right now.

If you read the newspapers, the blockchain/crypto is a bubble. A scam. A Ponzi. That is the crowd talking again.

You must ignore that chatter and find out for yourself what is going on here.

The smart money is doing that right now.

You need to be doing the same.

The first question to ask here is who has the most to lose from the new technology?

The Chairman of JP Morgan says you are stupid to buy bitcoin, but at the same time, the company is registering the JPMorgan wallet so it can take advantage of the technology. It is also training its sales workforce to know how to sell Bitcoin to its High-Net-worth clients.

Hmmm.

Credit card companies have blocked your card from being able to buy cryptocurrencies on any exchange. Yet, they are spending hundreds of millions on buying blockchain companies, so you will be able to buy crypto from them.

Hmmm.

You would be well served to take their words with a pinch of salt. But you should watch like a hawk on a lamppost what they do. That is a better guide to where they think the future is going.

*They just want to get to the future before you do.

As I said, we have a small window of opportunity.

Now on a £100,000 bank transfer, it will cost you around £1500 to send it. And it will take 2-3 days to land with the other person? I speak from experience. The cost of that was crazy high. That is their margin. That, when multiplied millions of times a day, is billions of pounds in profits a year. Trillions, even.

“Your margin is my opportunity.” Jeff Bezos.

The blockchain is going to eat them alive.

Of course, they want you to think it is a scam.

In the 1930’s cigarette brands used doctors to tell you it was less irritating to the throat and healthy for pregnant mums. And the crowd bought it.

Your job is to be the lone wolf: To see the signal in the shadows.

Conclusion.

Now, if you gain the knowledge while the crowd listens to the noise, your business will take advantage of this, and the future will be kind to you.  You will no longer have to worry about money. That is all good, but is there more to this thing?

But what if you zoom out a little…

The question here is can the blockchain be a net positive force in this world?

This is why it could be…

“Blockchains are an open data substrate that allow for verifiable computation inevitably make it such that this will be a net good for the world. And then it is up to the builders, the investors, and the early participants to dial the knob to maximum impact versus minimum impact within this net good substrate.”

Chris Burniske.

This is a bit of a mouthful if you are not a geek but put simply it speaks to transparency.

If you are a middleman, you will be against this. The banks are a middleman. Between you and whom you want to give the money to. Remember that £1500 fee? They want to keep that. That is their margin. A nice one.

This also speaks to a new ownership economy.

To help you understand that I need to zoom out a little further…

As a society, we have gone from a Monarchy to a Democratic society. And, as the history books remind us, it was a messy process.

But, with the rise of the digital world, another fiefdom has been built.

The new digital fiefdom.

This time it is not about controlling land but attention.

This digital world has been built with proprietary code, with proprietary data. And the new monarchy controls the world’s attention.

Arise, King Zuck.

“Now you labour for King Zuck, and King Zuck makes all the rules. We just take it. You have no control or governance rights against King Zuck. You either toil on his land, or you go elsewhere. And don’t exist.”

We spend so much time in digital worlds; the question we must ask is do we accept the new monarchy?

Or do we build one which is much more democratic?

“Of the people, by the people, for the people.

(With blockchain) All the promise and tooling are there to allow us to do it.”

There is no doubt it will be a messy process; disruption always is.

But blockchain will have its internet moment.

The future is coming.

Our job is to understand it BEFORE it arrives.

That is why we are holding Cowshed on May 11-14th. West Wales

Hope to see you there.

Bring your doubts and worries.

More info: Search cowshed.org

If you curious but still unsure if this event is right for you, we can arrange for you to jump on a 15 minute zoom with Tatsuki.