Has the crypto boat sailed?
I posted recently about an app I've been working on in the crypto space, but my question is more about the ecosystem and the general perception of cryptos and all that come with them; that is, by your estimation, is this still a viable market to explore?
Given the near constant barrage of negative press and the inability to market anything to do with cryptos (see Google and Facebook banning crypto ads), how can one still make it in this space? Would I do better to pivot towards more "traditional" securities like Forex, futures, etc.
Crypto is only getting started imo. We've passed the peak of inflated expectations and are on our way to the pits of the trough of disillusionment now. While we're there all the big hitters will be quietly developed and emerge as the sector matures.
Not for the companies that aren't scams, most of those companies don't really have a product yet. Be B2B and you should find alot of customers
Ooo. Tough call. Especially since it’s banned on Google and Facebook.
Then again, the early adopters (I think that’s where crypto still is) are loyal Hodlers.
If you build a useful app, you can make some good money.
There an interview about a crypto app that’s doing 300 or 400k.
I personally gained 50% on ADA over the past few days.
If you build it, you’ll just have to find the niche markets yourself instead of relying on Facebook and Google.
Hi, that would be us - https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/8b6064d829
I came into crypto from a developers perspective and was then blown away by being able to tokenize anything and run them on distributed global networks. We're still at the beginning of all this in my mind and I've been through web 1 & 2.
What we are seeing now in crypto is the tip of the iceberg. This will be bigger, I think, than the internet was. I've quit my job, stopped all conventional product development last Dec and am all in on just crypto related projects. This is my life now and I don't expect it to change anytime soon.
We're going to see the tokenization of pretty much everything. That may seem a little difficult to grasp now. It's probably on the same level as trying to explain the effect google, or even github, has had on the world to someone from 1984. "Yah, I understand computers and modems, but a global connected network that's always on where I have access to pretty much anything I want and people build companies and run companies on top of it? What?"
The fact that the media has been in scam mode is because it gets clicks. You think your grandparents had a hard time with email, let alone the web? Well, they'll never get crypto and that mindset prevails in the mainstream media. It's much easier and a better return on time invested to find the people that fail or have scammed or robbed than to provide thoughtful (let alone correct) analysis and commentary. It's not just crypto, that applies to everything in the media nowadays which is why I just don't even bother anymore. I'd rather meet people and talk to them directly over being inundated by nonstop negative 'news'.
Google and Facebook banning ads doesn't phase me. I never found crypto anything through ads anyways. It's been through word of mouth and places like Telegram, Discord, or local meetups. The networks and communities are where discovery is at.
I would encourage people to look for local bitcoin, ethereum, or other blockchain tech related meetups. There are so many ideas being discussed and worked on that it makes my head spin.
I will close with this; I don't see any point in building traditional apps anymore. These players like paypal, google, fb, are all entrenched and 'have won' in their rspective areas. You want to disrupt them? Build a distributed anonymous pki network that a) doesn't spy on people, b) doesn't sell all their data, c) doesn't get routinely hacked, and d) enables transactions at all levels of user content creation (controlled by the user if they want). Make this globally available to anyone without needing to provide a bank account or permission by any government and you have makings of a service that will be typical of the next wave that's coming.
These are just some of the buzzwords and pieces I see people addressing when I talk to them or read about their projects.
Like anything, dig deeper and look past the headlines.. The boat has not sailed - in fact, that anchor is just being pulled up.
I feel stupid and scared with FOMO but I honestly still cannot see how this stuff is really going to deliver (other than speculative gains). I keep wondering what I am missing that other people have understood because as I see it there are massive holes in the underlying tech promise. I've been a developer, often of cutting-edge tech, for 35 years including dealing with very large geospatial and scientific data and working on actual database store tech, so I have a bit of feel for things.
What's wrong with my beliefs below?
Blockchain doesn't provide guarantees of data being safe beyond the token in ledgers providing an unbroken record yet it's being touted as if it magically guarantees privacy.
Blockchains can't magically distribute your data in a performant way. Every time you add an optimising technology that caches you are adding an attack point, much like using micro-services increases the number of attack surfaces.
I get that a distributed ledger of a small token proving identity is a really useful service and read an inspiring article about its use with refugees.
Your assertion is typical of the enthusiasm in this space and I honestly don't understand how you think it can work.
"Build a distributed anonymous pki network that a) doesn't spy on people, b) doesn't sell all their data, c) doesn't get routinely hacked, and d) enables transactions at all levels of user content creation "
How much data needs to be transported for this to work?
What does that do to battery life?
What does it require as an end-user device to function?
How is it guaranteed? By "mining" requiring ever-vaster amounts of electricity? I'm not morally prepared to support such technologies. In Australia, a closed coal-based power station is now economically viable to re-open purely for BC mining. This is horrendous!
Is there a "tragedy of the commons" - if one blockchain-based app requires your device to store several GB of ledger what about the next one? What about the overhead of the next twenty?
Hey Andy,
I've been waiting to reply to this all morning. Very good questions and points. 🙂
Re: the fomo, I think it just is all based on your mindset. I tend to be more optimistic and tend to jump on board things before they have sometimes been proven or brought to fruition. I think it's safe to say that some high percentage of crypto project/tokens will not survive. For whatever reason. Some dumb ideas to begin with, some flat out scams, some have teams that just couldn't make the tech work, some just lose interest.
But that doesn't stop me from trying to see why/how some of these things would be accomplished. Take for instance Sia. Providing rental to the excess storage of devices all over the world. (Same with Filecoin.)
Sia's been battered over the year in regards to their token price, but it's a great idea. RIght now to do this, you have to setup storage on Aws or some other hosting provider. It's not a stretch to think that in 20 years, Sia's concept and use will be as common as opening up a drive on your local computer. In fact, it could be the preferred method because of the price and redundancy.
Lisk (LSK) is another good example of a great idea and very high possibilities. Especially since they're really pushing sidechains as a way to deal with specific app data processing and storage.
And then there's Eos. Dan's projects have all been super interesting and they've cracked, I think, two big issues:
Steemit was one of the projects that really was the aha moment on how users can avoid keeping a wallet to pay for transactions to be run on a blockchain. I won't go into it here, but if you're interested, just search for how steem releases tokens and where those tokens go.
The one elephant in the room with all this is the keys and the wallet. Losing your keys is monumental. Lose them and your recovery seed and it's completely over. I don't have an answer for the best way to fix this other than people have to write things down on paper and/or etch them into steel and lock them away in a safe. Which people do. Apps can do this, but the point of these distributed systems systems is to not centrally store the keys and data online. So, this will need to be fixed in a smart and simple way for the masses to join in.
But with those keys, I can now encrypt anything. Couple your great application with something like Sia or Filecoin or IPFS, and you now have access to an encrypted file system. Now things can securely be stored there. You could then save thes file pointers (hashes) in a blockchain and you could theoretically have a historical record of 'whatever'. Medical records, family photos, tax information, code, etc.
This is high level, it's not a database, it's not optimized, it's not full text searchable, but it's possible. And like I said, I've met and talked to people working on amazing projects that are doing some of these things now. They haven't solved the problems, but I look at this as no different than anyone working in a startup today trying to do something that is hard or doesn't quite exist.
I know this doesn't answer all your points and it's high level, but I think, from what I've seen and read and tried, that these problems will be solved (or most or enough of them will) and the paradigm shift lightbulb will go on for more people.
Blockchain, while a tech used and quoted, is more of a buzzword in my mind. It's not an efficient store at all. I do like the immutability of it, but there's other tech out there now - like dag's (distributed acylclical graph) - that are probably more suited to address the downsides of speed for blockchain. Proof of Stake is also a hot topic now in regards to PoW (altho, I think PoW is more democratizing and more 'correct' than PoS).
Anyway, like I posted earlier, there is so much depth already in this space that it would take a long time to dig deep. But, it's still really fun to talk about and I think there's always going to be a way to make most of these projects work. It just comes down to imagination and willingness to do something...
Cheers!
Hi Nibaru
You're now my official proxy in "serious thinker exploring crypto" as I don't have the time for at least a few months :-D
Because I have spent so much of my career implementing the tech behind things, I tend to dig deep into the HOW and especially where I see a weak point at the intersection of hardware limitations and business model.
One thing which really bothers me about the assumptions behind distributed data is the increasing move to battery-powered mobile devices.
"Providing rental to the excess storage of devices all over the world" sounds attractive and was of course a key plot point in Silicon Valley season 4.
(Fun fact, some of my former colleagues from Realm have been advisors to the show for the last couple of seasons. I detect at least one Frenchman's subtle sense of humour in there.)
However, this runs headlong into battery life and network issues - increasingly, whilst we have COMPUTING POWER on phones, doing lots of radio calls kills battery life.
I just found an interesting Wired article about the premise, whilst writing this response https://www.wired.com/2017/06/pied-pipers-new-internet-isnt-just-possible-almost/ and that talks about the battery issue.
cheers
Andy
🤣 The SV references are killing me - oh man, I love that show. So much of it is nail on the head. They've done a good job keeping with the pulse of the valley (and all the absurdities that go along with it - I live in the bay area, so I've been knee deep in the scene for decades).
Yah, I totally agree with the mobile stuff in that these devices are wayyyy off for any kind of big storage, like blockchains. I still think sidechains could work, but again, it depends on the application.
I've built some iOS apps that use local sqlite and the db sizes are never super big. Nothing like server db's. And even Core Data db's are never close to server side.
Compute power on mobile is impressive. At least the benchmarks are. But you're right, battery, of course, it the big limitation. Device makers have addressed this on the gaming and video side with their specialized silicon and we would probably need something similar if we wanted bigger data on device (which I don't see happening as there's no compelling use case for it).
I first cut my teeth on mobile app development back in 2004 and it was using j2me (oi!...). I've seen a lot of patterns come and go and devices now are (thousands? millions?) more powerful than the razr's that I used to test with. But, it's still about smart clients with the bulk of the dataset processed on the backend where the real power and speed is.
I think for sidechains, depending on the client and data requirements, you could host this on the mobile side. You could run something like how ethereum LES (light ethereum subprotocol) just downloads the block headers. This basically allows for the state to sync up (massively less data fetch and storage) and for any detail, you just fetch that leaf.
This is pretty similar to how mobile apps work now; general state, fetch deeper data when needed. I think once you get a nice server side sidechain service to work, then mobile can still serve the same purpose it does now which is mostly an on-person remote notification geo locatable thin client(tm).
And to me, this is where experience comes in. I take the same approach on my block chain discussions with people, which is, applying the current paradigm similarities and differences to what works now and what has worked (or not) in the past. Because, even though I think this next wave is totally disruptive on the tech side, it's also iterative. Iterative in the way of how we progressed from LAN based desktop apps to web apps or from web apps to mobile apps. Big changes in the tech but once some of the big parts were figured out, a lot of similar ideas could be applied.
Speaking of SV, new ep tonight. 😁
Notwithstanding the currency part, I've seen very few crypto (smart contract) use cases that wouldn't be better handled by a plain old database.
Isn't pivoting from cryptos to forex or binary options like pivoting from viagra to weight loss pills.
I feel like it has. The hype and atmosphere through the majority of 2017 was amazing and unreal, but it's not even close to what it was anymore because people only released scams and bullshit.
I don't think crypto is going anywhere right now. I see a lot of new companies entering the space and even MasterCard has creating a blockchain technology. As far as pivoting towards other securities, you know what they say, "You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket."
Maybe it's a good idea to have an app in both fields so that you maximize your profit. Just my advice.
Unfortunately there are lots of wrong people in crypto looking for a quick buck, running scam schemes, raising money for shitty products... Since the opportunity is immense.
Problem is, everyone I know is working on a crypto app and the competition becomes bigger, there are already 20 ICO rating sites, 50 portfolio apps, 100 coinmarketaps - but if you feel you have an edge somewhere, why not?
I absolutely think that the blockchain technology will have a bright future. What I'm not sure about are the current cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. Bitcoin basically has failed as medium of exchange as it's way too volatile and the current price isn't justified, in my opinion.
Another major issue with Bitcoin is the energy consumption. While the rest of the world is trying to find ways to fight the global climate change, Bitcoin has an energy consumption that comes close to the whole country of Switzerland. I think it's only a matter of time until we see political intervention because of that (maybe even just as an excuse for governments to regulate cryptocurrencies).
However, I think we'll see new cryptocurrencies arise that will be more suitable. We may even see official cryptocurrencies initiated by central banks or governments. Or what about cryptocurrencies initiated by major corporations (just think of an AMZNcoin, Facecoin, GooglePay or whatever...).
Anyway, I think the major cryptocurrencies that are currently available, especially Bitcoin, are good for short term trading (I do that as well), but I'm not so sure about the long-term predictions. If we would have a Bitcoin price of $80, I would be more optimistic, but at $9k+ I see it as a bubble as well. However, I may be completely wrong of course. :-)
I believe the interest of most people in crypto comes in cycles, especially from those who don't understand that well the technology and what it can accomplish.
Most of my telegram/whatsapp groups were completely dead before Bitcoin's recent surge back to ~10k. Now everyone is talking again, getting involved, etc.
When I was building coindatax.com, right after the January crash, I asked myself the same thing. Should I probably move on and do something else? But later I concluded that crypto is here to stay.
It will probably take a while to settle, as we see more use cases and real products in the market. That's both a risk and an opportunity for Indie Hackers as ourselves. Do you want to take a bet and start building something now, and be one of the firsts to join the market, or do you want to start it when there are lots of established businesses around?
Instead of crypto check out Urbit. Its a decentralized technology older than blockchain but complimentary. If bitcoin is money, Urbit is land