Beware of blockchain

“Blockchain is revolutionary ! Everybody should use blockchain ! We should put everything on the Blockchain !!!!!”
 
A blockchain for tree planting sustainability program , or  blockchain for webcam models,   or a blockchain for Alchemy projects ….the uses are endless. Just google any idea and most likely you will find a blockchain project on it.
 
The truth is, BLOCKCHAIN has become a marketing term. Starting in 2017, we experienced an explosion in the cryptocurrency market. Blockchain started being touted as the new innovation that will change the world.
 
A lot of people stepped into this emerging industry to take advantage of this hype. New companies began to amass millions in crowd funding and VC capital through ICOs for blockchain projects that had no viable use cases. To this day, there is a continuous flow of new blockchain initiatives with only a handful that seem promising.
 
Lack of knowledge of blockchain and its purpose has made lucrative “business” opportunities for scammers and fraudsters. In 2018, a company misleadingly added the word blockchain to their name to successfully boost their share prices. And around 2015 with one of the biggest scams in crypto history, OneCoin marketed itself as the crypto financial revolution - claiming to be blockchain solution to rival Bitcoin. To this day it has no blockchain but rather managed to build a ponzi scheme that has stolen an equivalent of 4 Billion euros around the globe from people eager to make money from the blockchain revolution. As the crypto adoption grows, scams continue to cause volatility in the cryptocurrency market, a recent notable case of Plus token scam which liquidated or laundered thousands of Bitcoin and Ethereum onto the market. It is speculated to have caused the sudden drop in Bitcoin and Ethereum price in early December 2019.  
 
Blockchain is part of our 4th industrial revolution – a Web 3.0 digital revolution with IoT and 5G/6G integrating global economies using digital currencies. The most disruptive innovation will be new monetary, financial & corporate systems running on the internet as autonomous entities using concepts like P2P cryptocurrencies, DApps, & DAO built on top of decentralized blockchains.

These new concepts and their impacts on our lives are hard to grasp for most people – therefore it easy misguide people on what is really blockchain.

To start your education on blockchain without getting into heavy technical details - read the following short blogs the Birth of Blockchain, Blockchain vs DLTs, Not all Blockchains are the Same, Bitcoin the original Blockchain.

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