On my Forbes beat I cover many new, disruptive technologies – innovations with their fair share of frothy hyperbole. To balance such froth, I try to bring a measured dose of skepticism, not to be some kind of Debbie Downer, but rather to help people cut through the hype to gain a clearer understanding of the topic at hand.
However, there is one topic – in fact, family of topics – for which I am unapologetically a skeptic through and through: Bitcoin and Blockchain.
As early as 2015, I wondered whether Bitcoin had a real purpose. I poked my stick at the radical Libertarians who hope Bitcoin will lead to the destruction of the global financial system.
I’ve opined on whether Bitcoin’s ‘hard fork’ fix for scalability issues would be fatal to the cryptocurrency, or a the least, whether the fix would be illegal.
I’ve compared Bitcoin to blood diamonds, pointing out that Bitcoin’s illegal uses are responsible for propping up its value.
I’ve also questioned IBM’s longshot bet on Blockchain, and more recently, I’ve listed several reasons to be skeptical about Blockchain.
Given this history of contrarian opinion, you might think I’m somehow prejudiced against Bitcoin and Blockchain.
You’d be wrong.
Why I’m a Bitcoin and Blockchain Skeptic
In fact, I’m a huge proponent of new, disruptive technologies and their applications – Blockchain and Bitcoin included.
As an industry analyst, however, my role is to provide insight into disruptive trends in the market. Given the peculiar characteristics of both Bitcoin and Blockchain, such insight must necessarily come from a skeptical position – not just by me, but from cooler heads generally.
In other words, we need more Bitcoin and Blockchain skeptics. Here are six reasons why.
Read the entire article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/07/30/six-reasons-why-we-need-blockchain-skeptics/.
Intellyx publishes the Agile Digital Transformation Roadmap poster, advises companies on their digital transformation initiatives, and helps vendors communicate their agility stories. As of the time of writing, none of the organizations mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Image credit: Steve Rainwater.
