Only this time it’s Blockchain

In A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Burton G. Malkiel writes:

“It was called the tronics boom, because the stock offerings often included some garbled version of the word “electronics” in their title, even if the companies had nothing to do with the electronics industry. Buyers of these issues didn’t really care what the companies made- so long as it sounded electronic, with a suggestion of the esoteric. For example, American Music Guild, whose business consisted entirely of the door-to-door sale of phonograph records and players, changed its name to Space-Tone before “going public.” The shares were sold to the public at 2 and, within a few weeks, rose to 14.”

60 years later we are seeing companies add blockchain to their name with similar results. Castle in the air theory is in full effect and I expect that most speculators are purchasing these shares simply because they think they will be able to sell it to someone else playing the same game for a higher price. Eventually the music stops, it always does. For better or worse I expect the havoc to the public stock exchanges will be mitigated by the fact that speculators can fill their insatiable appetite buy taking part in ICOs and purchasing cryptocurrencies directly. Do I think we are in a bubble? Absolutely. Do I think that blockchain and the potential of distributed consensus will ultimately prove to be useful? Yes. We are in the early days of blockchain and though not much has come of ityet, I think it’s only a matter of time. The bubble will burst, the hype will die, and the people in it for the right reasons will keep their noses to the grindstone and take this to the future where they’ll be waiting for us.