Twice in a Lifetime
I’ve been a technologist since I first played with an Apple ][+ with a lower case chip. In the mid 1990s I knew that the internet was a game-changing technology. In 1997 I founded an internet company named Perficient, and it went public in 1999. Today the company still uses the logo that my college roommate created, employs thousands of people globally, and has a market cap well over half a billion dollars.
The dawn of the internet age was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a technology entrepreneur. I never thought I would see an opportunity like that again.
Sometimes lightning strikes twice.
The technology shift that is occurring right now feels exactly like the internet in the mid 1990s. It’s a completely different paradigm, and requires completely different tools. The first paradigm shift (the internet) created mass information exchange. The second one (blockchain) is going to decentralize everything.
First Big Target: Decentralize Money
People no longer need governments to issue currency in order to store or exchange value. It takes a minute for the gravitas of that statement to sink in. As you would expect, the more authoritarian the government, the harsher their reaction.
The problem with cryptocurrency today is that the value has grown faster than its utility (the protocol). The value of bitcoin has corrected substantially 5–6 times already. It’s not a good way to buy a pizza or your groceries yet. When reality doesn’t meet expectations, corrections will happen.
Blockchain Critics
The critics will say that the first blockchain was created almost 10 years ago, and yet it’s still not widely used. Which is an accurate statement. The internet was created in 1983, and people said the same thing about it in 1993. If you remember back then, we didn’t even have Javascript, SSL, RSS, or CSS. Technology revolutions take a while to fully mature.
This Time Wealth Creation Will Be Decentralized Too
In the Web 2.0 world, a very small group of venture capitalists were able to invest in the best companies and make big returns. Facebook, a highly centralized company, is worth about $500B. Bitcoin is completely decentralized, and is worth about $300B. The most highly valued traditional company in the Bitcoin ecosystem is probably Coinbase (about $1B). The venture capitalists will certainly benefit from that $1B, but people all over the world are benefitting from the $300B market cap of bitcoin.
As a technology entrepreneur, when a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity comes your way, you make the most of it.
