JOI ITO (mit media lab chief): My view on the current situation of Bitcoin and the Blockchain »

http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/02/22/my-view-on-the-.html

1 Like

“If you try to build “something like Bitcoin but better!” it will
probably turn out insecure, underwhelming, and will go against the the
fundamental principles that give Bitcoin the potential to be as
impactful to banking, law and society as the Internet has been to
media, communication, and commerce.”

—> what did JOI have in mind to write such a Bitcoin-saturnist statement?

1 Like

It’s very similar today with Bitcoin and the Blockchain. There are a small number of people who understand cryptography, systems, networks and code and are capable of understanding the Bitcoin software code. Most of them are working on Bitcoin, while some are working on Ethereum and other “related” systems and a few more are scattered around the world in other places. It’s a community including some who have been around since the 90s, before the Web, going to crazy conferences like the Financial Cryptography conference. Like any free and open-source software community on the Internet, it’s a bunch of people who know each other and mostly, though not always, respect each other, but which fundamentally holds a near monopoly on talent.

Unfortunately, the wild growth of Bitcoin and now “the Blockchain” has caught this community off guard from a governance perspective, leaving the core developers of Bitcoin unable to interface effectively with the commercial interests whose businesses depend on scaling the technology. When asked “can you scale this?” They said, “we’ll do the best we can.” That wasn’t good enough for many, especially those who don’t understand the architecture or the nature of what is going on inside of Bitcoin.

Not sure how I would comment out that statement – depending on how I view PhDs.
But joi is defending his industry here… lol