This is an opinion editorial by Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin developer, educator and entrepreneur and programmer with over 20 years of experience.
We've all heard the hype. Nano-technology, quantum computing and cold fusion. They're supposed to come real soon and change everything. Tiny machines that build skyscrapers from dirt. Computers with enough computing power for general AI. Cold fusion that will give us limitless clean energy. They've been a part of public imagination for decades.
These technologies have entered the public consciousness through popular magazine articles written by people that fancy themselves as scientists and engineers but are closer to second-rate sci-fi writers, the kind that think putting the word "blockchain" in a story makes them all hip and in-the-know. Their speciality is writing fanciful stories promoting some defunct economist's vision rather than saying anything realistic.
Stories about the difficulty of achieving something won't get many clicks and require far more technical aptitude, so they write stories about how a breakthrough is imminent. Not coincidentally, there's usually some call to action about how we must do something, like fund some agency or invest in a company or cancel critics! It's suspiciously like an altcoin marketing scheme where much is promised and little is delivered.
Promises, Predictions And Credit
That similarity between altcoins and these hyped technologies is not a coincidence. They both operate on the same principle. Hype the hell out of something to get money and run away before people discover that the hype doesn't match the substance. They are promising something to get money now for a non-existent return.
This should be familiar because this is how scams work. Promise, never deliver and make excuses. This pattern is endemic to the fiat monetary system. Whether they realize they are scamming is really immaterial. The result is that
