Performance issues are an engineering optimisation task. The history the Internet swallowing industries. Lightning Network outpacing innovation of VISA. Don’t hire a blockchain consultant — ask people from the music, movie, or phone industry when they realised the Internet was going to eat their business, what they did to try to stop it, and what they would do differently now. If you are staking the survival of your business on “the engineers who built the Internet can’t figure this out,” you’re in trouble.

This is part of a talk which took place on December 6th, 2016, at the Bitcoin Cologne meetup in Köln, Germany: https://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Cologne/events/232687726/

Watch the full talk here: https://youtu.be/Rrj8sjHJthU

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Innovators, Disrupters, Misfits, and Bitcoin – https://youtu.be/LeclUjKm408
Disrupt Conference: What is Bitcoin? – https://youtu.be/LA9A1RyXv9s
Bitcoin and the Banks: Five Stages of Grief – https://youtu.be/43Ucj6_Erb0
Why developers are leaving banks – https://youtu.be/GqOZ4IAQ-xQ
Embrace the Good, Reject the Fear – https://youtu.be/38U0BQQLzK0
The Lightning Network – https://youtu.be/vPnO9ExJ50A
Bitcoin, the Lightning Network, and Streaming Money – https://youtu.be/gF_ZQ_eijPs
Microfinance and streaming money – https://youtu.be/xs6hUcfuX9w
The Scaling Rites of Passage – https://youtu.be/rZi86_ovB3Y
Scaling and the block size debate – https://youtu.be/4IT4s-6T__k
Separation of money and state – https://youtu.be/jGmtRA9S7_Y
ICOs and financial regulation – https://youtu.be/Plu_WX3Gs8E
The end of vampire-squid financing – https://youtu.be/yyXOQG5iNWo

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/

He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.

THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Money-collection-Andreas-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

MASTERING BITCOIN: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042

[NEW] MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Programming-Open-Blockchain/dp/1491954388

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Music: “Unbounded” by Orfan (https://www.facebook.com/Orfan/)
Outro Graphics: Phneep (http://www.phneep.com/)
Outro Art: Rock Barcellos (http://www.rockincomics.com.br/)

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19 COMMENTS

  1. I thought that taking transactions off the blockchain was bad from a security standpoint and that lightning network takes transactions off the blockchain.

  2. This should be even quicker than that because Bitcoin is much simpler to deal with than our telecommunications industry as a whole and because this technology deals directly with currency there is more incentive in every aspect of this development

  3. I understand the point made about the existential threat to a number of industries, but even in his anecdotes Andreas reveals some of the concerns cautious managers may have with this technology:

    Timing – Although Andreas as right about the future of internet replacing phones in 1989, it took around 20 years for that prediction to come to fruition, and even today there is still a market, albeit smaller, for regular telecoms services. If a company had attempted to jump in on the internet at that stage, they most likely would have wasted money on false starts, lost ground to their competitors, and ignored other opportunities for growth in the industry at the time in favour of hype. This will likely to apply to many businesses who buy into the blockchain hype at the wrong time in the wrong areas.

    Full replacement – Similar to the argument with telecoms, many of the other industries that have been disrupted by the internet still survive, and have tended to outlast a typical internet company (there are big exceptions and major internet successes, of course). Moreover, there are plenty of industries where the internet hasn't (yet) entirely transformed their business model, and the dotcom bubble is a classic example of certain markets misunderstanding the value proposition of the internet. I think we can see a similar pattern in the ICO's of today.

    None of this is to say that the blockchain isn't a revolutionary technology, or that many people in last 10 years haven't been far too quick to disparage and dismiss the whole space. But I do think that Andreas in his "get with the times you corporate dinosaurs!" speeches can be too dismissive of genuine concerns held by business towards the technology. In many cases, the causes of one generation of businesses to be superseded by the next are more systemic and linked to the structure of a corporation (the influence of share price for example), rather than managers or business people simply being myopic or arrogant.

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