Insight Into The Future Of Cryptocurrency

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Are you one who thinks that cryptocurrency and blockchain is confusing and hard? Do you think that a platform like Steem will never succeed because of how complicated it is?

If you do, I hope you will indulge me with this.

I want you to think back to your first experience with email. Unless you are one of the older geeks on here, messing with this stuff in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was a fairly seamless system. Companies such as Prodigy followed by AOL made communication much easier. It was not always that way.

Thus, if you got online anywhere around the mid 1990s or later, you probably saw the potential in the newer technology.

However, it was not so clear in the earlier days. I ask that everyone watch this video (about 6 minutes long) for a refresher of how things use to be.

It is pretty hilarious to look at now. Dialing up to get online sounds crazy, let alone using a rotary phone to accomplish it.

The big question is how many people, at that time in 1984, saw the Internet and email becoming something that the half the human population would be using? Do you think most of them foresaw something such as social media?

I would venture to say most did not.

Personally, cryptocurrencies and blockchain appear to be at the same stage to me. While many look at the single use case, money, there are far greater things that are going to appear. Notice in the video she used it to send email, keep records, and some word processing. Essentially, her computer replaced her at home filing system and typewriter.

The idea of mini-computers being put in people's bodies was only in the realm of science fiction. Yet today, in 2019, most with a pacemaker or defibulator are connected to the Internet.

Are we going to see the same thing with this technology? I am betting there is a good chance on it. One of the things I tell people is to be patient. I saw some commenting how Steem is already three years old. Basically, the feeling is all of these problems should be solved by now.

That is not how technology works. From the time of this video, it was another half decade before the web browser was even invented and a decade away from Netscape.

Now, I do not believe we will have to wait anywhere near that period of time before we see something substantial with this industry. Technology is raging ahead yet there are certain steps that always need to be taken. Development operates at its own pace with ideas building upon each other.

I bring all this up to remind ourselves how things can look bleak in the early stages. Let us be frank: all of us involved in cryptocurrency right now are not only the early adopters, we are the lunatic fringe. We are the nut cases who have the nerd goggles on partaking in something that is too complicated for the average person.

Sounds like the Internet in the early days.

Of course, even if we fast forward a decade, we get this gem. Notice that in 10 years from the first video, mass adoption was not even close.

Certainly, there was a ton of technological advancements between the two videos. The problem was the world did not know about them and those that did, had to be very technically inclined. It was far from a plug and play system.

Thus, when I hear Steem is already 3 years old, I cringe. Give it some time. The entire industry is only 10 and it is only in the last 5 years that saw any major developments. If I am not mistaken, Ethereum, the biggest breakthrough since Bitcoin, started in 2015.

Here is the big key: in the 5 years after the Gumbel video, things exploded. Here is a video I found of a young tandem that was already in operation and starting on their journey to take over the world.

A mere half decade later, a company that was going to become one of the largest in the world already was a year old. Notice how young the Google boys were in that video.

We tend to underestimate the impact of technology in the long term. However, in the short term, we tend to overestimate things because we get impatient. Cryptocurrency is difficult because many look at it as financial when, in fact, it is technological. It is a technology that follows development patterns. Of course, the marvel of it that it is a technology that has a built in financial component to it.

The industry is still in a gestation period. We are developing things that are basic to the experience the next wave of users will enjoy It is akin to laying bricks for a house; one builds upon what went before it.

We are seeing a lot of updates in addition to new innovations. If history is any guide, this will continue at an accelerating pace. I would say it is true for both Steem and the industry in general.

The only question is if one believes that cryptocurrency will succeed or disappear like many other technologies that never made it. If the belief is in success, then a bit of time is needed.

We are still awaiting out "web browser" moment.

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