Every so often, corporate business blushes its latest fad speak. Disruptive. Paradigm shift. 2.0, 3.0. Game changer. For about half a decade now, blockchain technology has been the phrasing du jure among ecosystem corporatists and assorted scammers. It’s weak jingoism employed to disguise against real innovation, cryptocurrency. Blockchain is just a damn database, a giant spreadsheet. I’ve officially had an ass-full of it. Knock it off already. WARNING: Language quite salty ahead!
Also read: Québec Premier: We’re Not Really Interested in Bitcoin Mining
Blockchain Without Bitcoin is Just a Database
Stanford University Computer Science Lecturer Cynthia Lee created a bullshit detector. Dr. Lee answered an off the cuff provocation by Wall Street Journal columnist, Christopher Mims. Exasperated, he Tweeted about the possibility of “a browser extension that replaces ‘blockchain’ with ‘multiple copies of a giant Excel spreadsheet.’”
She went to work on Google Chrome. The result instantly sweeps away mounds of stupidity, shelves of inane TED Talks, and bullets god awful gurus of modern finance. And it’s glorious. Fuckery from Porsche, for example, loses its heart-pounding intensity: Porsche becomes the first auto manufacturer to utilize multiple copies of a giant excel spreadsheet.
Her fanciful github project worked so well, it turned meta once she jumped back on Twitter to share the hilarious product, correcting even her previous Tweets. Articles suddenly lost their edge. Initial coin offering projects immediately were revealed for the mostly fraud they are. It’s especially helpful for those new to the space, the crypto idea.
In the mainstream press and the global corporate world, cryptocurrency is reviled. It is hated. Its users are thought to be straight trash. Don’t ever forget that. That it derives from distinctly polemical anarchists who were bent on leaving government forms of money makes it all the worse. There is absolutely no reason for the financial system undergirding media and business, insulated and protected by the status quo, to do anything other than what they’re doing: portray cryptocurrency as a plaything for geeks, drug losers, terrorists.
Blockchain Tech Talk is Insidious and Undermining
This is why blockchain tech talk is so insidious. The legacy financial world cannot stop the phenomenon, as it jumps, memetically, from person-to-person. It constitutes exactly no threat now, especially when at the height of its popularity late last year, cryptocurrency’s main brand, bitcoin core (BTC) laid a colossal egg through retarded wait times and ridiculous fees, souring the first user experience of millions — millions who won’t return. But also do not for one second peg traditional financial pros as stupid.
They were saved by bitcoin core stubborness, no doubt. We cannot know how many would’ve held on or been inspired by decentralized currency if their initial experience was pleasurable. The run-up, however, is there. It is a fact of history. Bitcoin was ready to break out and do something huge.
