build your first block before the chain
I do have to confess, I’m pretty new in the blockchain game. I bought a very small amount of bitcoins this year for the very first time. In fact, I even don’t own it because I bought it through Revolut and I’m not in control of my crypto wallet. I may talk about this Bank later. I also must be careful and not mix cryptocurrencies and blockchain. In my point of view, it’s like comparing dollars and tcp/ip : a currency and a technology. I do think blockchain is a long term technology, I’m not an expert it’s just a feeling. Look at this British company, On-line PLC changed its name in 2017 to On-Line Blockchain PLC… The company saw its shares climb nearly 400%.
Regarding cryptocurrencies, I am still a little bit skeptical about it… For now. I may change my mind after more investigation. I think all these powerful governments will end up by trying to regulate/legislate cryptocurrencies. On the other hand the cryptocurrency market size is expected to grow from USD 1.6 billion in 2021 to USD 2.2 billion by 2026 so it won’t be dead in a few years. Currently it’s still the far West so it will evolve a lot and this will be fascinating.
As you can see, it is very difficult to talk about the blockchain without thinking about bitcoins (cryptocurrencies) and vice versa. Both are linked, the blockchain is the technology and Bitcoins is the application on top of this technology. It’s pretty much like HTML and the Internet. You can see in the past a lot of similar examples. Sometimes you need to have 2 or 3 major technological advances to have a new application which can shift an entire market. For example, if you add virtualization and high speed Internet, you can see the rise of cloud computing. If you have the brilliant idea to introduce the concept of elastic load balancer, you end up to be the best in this new market and you’re rich as Jeff Bezos with AWS (the real cash machine of Amazon). It was the same with railways, incandescent light bulbs, phone, telegram, Internet… and blockchain. Yes really, I do think blockchain is this kind of game changer and you may have noticed, I am not the only one.
It’s like discovering a new world, it’s like a gold rush. Many people are already in business for several years in this new world. Few people are already rich in this gold rush, some others are already dead. This is the Far West, the wild wild west, be careful. If you had bought 10 Bitcoins in 2013 for roughly 130$, Today you would be able to exchange them for 400 000$. Recently, 616 ancient bitcoins have just come back to life. No transaction has been recorded with them since 2013 and they have been moved again almost 9 years later. It’s like finding a treasure. I also like the success story of Binance, a self made man who was able to build maybe the strongest Crypto Exchange in the world in less than 4 years.
The other side of the story is the people who lose all their cryptocurrencies because they have left it in the account of their exchange platform and this platform has been hacked. When your bank is hacked your money is guaranteed, not with cryptocurrencies, you are your own bank, you are in charge of his security. I can also see almost every week new hacks, frauds or thefts related to crypto. As said, it’s the Far West, only the strong survive.
Only the strong survive or maybe only the smartest. In this digital world your strength is your brain not really your physical body. During the gold rush, you can be rich if you fight with others to find the biggest gold nugget or you can be the one who sells shovels to all these people. I think it’s pretty difficult to find the new killer app in this blockchain/crypto world and it's even more difficult to grow a business around it. I guess it would be more interesting to be the one who sells and maintains blockchain infrastructure to all these people who try to be the best in the crypto rush.
So let’s learn, how to create a blockchain, how to run it, how to sell it, what can you do with it ? If you are interested, I suggest starting with the basics (just like me, as I’m writing this, I have no answer to all these questions yet). Let’s try to build your first block before trying to build the chain and we’ll talk about it later, stay tuned.
https://hackernoon.com/learn-blockchains-by-building-one-117428612f46
Vladimir