Initial generations of any technology follow a nearly identical pattern of over-enthusiasm and over-investment by hobbyists reaching the same limitations and failing to circumvent them.
The subsequent generations of technology put greater investment in the hard work of solving the limitations, and paying the high cost of reorganizing the entire model if necessary.
This is why first movers do not generally make the money that later movers do.
I’ve said for years now that :
(a) the idea of title registry and fractional shares as a medium of exchange, itself is brilliant, but;
(b) proof of work requiring waste heat is a pretty bad design,
(c) transaction processing time under proof of work is a bad design.
(d) lack of posting (rolling up fragments into a single new share and retiring the old) is a bad design.
(e) lack of federation and sharding is a bad design. (look we invented a division of journals and ledgers for a reason.)
(f) btc are shares in a vulnerable network and as such a token money substitute persistently retaining that vulnerability,
(g) ***I predicted that centralized, monolithic versions of the idea using mainstream technology and maintained by the treasury and banking organizations will succeed where distributed systems will not, for the simple reason that the user interface for, security of, response time for, archival ability for, and insurability by an insurer of last resort capable of restitution of losses, will have all the utility advantages without any of the weaknesses.***
(h) hence the distributed nature of the technology which makes research and development by individuals and teams possible, and provides a cheap means of financial speculation on these technologies, is not as valuable as the fractional share and record of title, and all we are doing is free research and development for the state, and the private banking network, check cashing networks, etc.
I am extremely thrilled by the ICO model and self issuance of fractional shares because it totally screws big finance.
I’m extremely thrilled by the ability to create a portfolio of digital monies that can only be used for certain exchanges – this will solve the primary problem remaining with that thing we call ‘money’.
I am thrilled that we might create something on the order of a gold backed fractional share reserver to remove fiat money from circulation as a defense against inflation, and restoration of the possibility of comparatively lossless saving.
However, I have zero faith whatsoever in the durability of any form of encryption, or any distributed software, until there is a firmware revolution – which is a long way off. Two part keys have been with us since we cut tics in sticks of wood – literally since we evolved speech.
I haven’t been wrong so far. It is very unlikely that I err.