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Zach Harvey is the CEO of Lamassu, an active and active supplier of cryptocurrency vending machines.
The following is an exclusive contribution for the 2018 year of CoinDesk under consideration.
Emotions were high during the debate about the size of the bitcoin blocks (each side believed that the bitcoin would be damaged by the triumph of the other), and they are high on the bear market this year. People are once again listening to the soothsayers, who shape their cryptic vision on market sentiment, and while there are many who report loyalty to the cause, some are here only for fast rewards, both social and monetary.
I am disappointed to see the toxicity in this small community of cryptocurrencies, but it does not surprise me.
In particular on Crypto Twitter, it is the environment itself that reward the group, we think we are seeing. Previously independent thinkers are rewarded for compliance and are punished for dissent. While it is easier to resist threats in groups, it is more difficult to create and progress without being open-minded. We see similar patterns in politics and even in nutrition debates.
That said, I have to say that it is my experience that Twitter's toxicity does not move to offline interactions. I have met many bitcoiners on both sides of the block, and I can not remember once I have heard any toxicity in person. In reality, the opposite is the truth, it is always a pleasure. I would like to mention the names, but I do not want to blow their hard covers.
To quote Ian Mackaye from Fugazi, the tough guys are all "motherfuckers who eat ice cream". I mean that, in the most affectionate way.
Instead of checking the daily charts, it would be better to serve the majority of crypto-enthusiasts to revel in encrypted scripts such as Tim May's Encrypted Anarchist Manifesto and Wei Dai's b-money paper. Both are excellent memories of why we are here in the first place. (If you look at a chart, create the BTC: USD logarithmic chart. It has the best chance of predicting the future.)
Bitcoin is activism, not a quick scheme to get rich or a startup platform. The bitcoin point is to regulate bad laws and to democratize bad policies by circumventing harmful application.
Any system, software or hardware, based on the blockchain or otherwise, that contributes to these objectives deserves attention.
Likewise, any software or hardware project that fails in this way interests me only once they modify its fragility. In this regard, decentralized exchanges and ICOs have no value in their current form, but DEX or ICO v2.0 or v3.0 may end up being decentralized and powerful tools to prevent oppression in all its forms.
Go Gig (and boring)
In 2012, my brother Josh and I printed bitcoin postcards to be distributed to the Students for Liberty regional events across the east coast. At the time, it was mainly the libertarians who embraced child technology and this was our activism.
At the beginning of 2013, for the International Conference of Students for Freedom, we decided to do something a little more wild, we wanted to show these young people how bitcoins work. We built a small orange box that accepted the bills and sent the bitcoin transactions. Not only has it been a great success at the conference, it has reached social media and we have begun to arouse interest from the media and potential buyers.
This was our chance to bring our bitcoin passion to the next level. We founded Lamassu and started producing ATM bitcoins, a machine we now call "cryptomats".
We jump forward nearly six years and we are still going strong, still supporting bitcoins and there is a booming industry that produces machines that help people buy and sell bitcoins. From the beginning, our activity has always been more linked to activism than to pure short-term profit. The business decisions we make are a mix of what we need to do to succeed and stay in line with our techno-libertarian ideals of privacy and decentralization.
Our main objective has always been to introduce as many people as possible to cryptocurrencies. And so our software is free, open source and without a license. We do not charge the cryptomat operators for any commission for using the machine and hosting their servers. End users who use machines never have their coins stored for them by operators, but they are required to actually use bitcoins to get it.
Overall, the cryptography industry is very different from that of others in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Lately there has been little drama.
We have seen healthy and constant growth. And the field is made up of quality companies, like our main Genesis and General Byte competitors, who have endured radical bear and bull markets. All of these are very important for the ecosystem, yet perhaps a little trivial in terms of the cycle of news. No ICOs, no mass hacks and the companies involved have at most millions of revenue, not billions.
But at the same time, I think it's the kind of boring cryptovers' need. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary people around the world use cryptomats every month to get small amounts of bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies directly into their wallets. No bank, no third-party custody, no waiting.
It's still the easiest way for a user who uses cryptography for the first time and the cryptomats there are in the world, the more they become useful and reliable. Thumbs per inch, line by line.
BUIDLERS on the roof
The hardest part for bitcoins was $ 0.10.
The exponential growth since it became the norm and would take something extraordinary to derail. As such, we need to think about what happens when a growing population of the world starts to own bitcoins. Will the next financial crisis push the bitcoins towards the mainstream? What happens if this really happens, but does not yet exist a valid user interface to protect people from loss, misuse and the lack of protection of their funds? Will they end up trusting people to help them?
For me, this is still the biggest question in the crypt. I do not doubt the success of bitcoins and other key cryptocurrencies, but I'm worried that things will get complicated when central banks finish the tricks.
At Lamassu, we held our head down, working to improve our angle to the still unresolved problem of the crypto user interface. We have aggressively hired programmers and customer support staff and expanded our manufacturing facilities.
We have strong competition, but it is mutual respect. I know our competitors do it for the same reasons we are, an ideology deeply rooted in bitcoin at the center, to free money and markets from powerful brokers.
The main point of bitcoin is that people help themselves, but it is our job as a supporter of making this easy. Before people can actually use, store and secure their coins, the safer it will be when the bank is hit. So that we do not build blockchain skyscrapers, no lifts to go up them.
Do you have a strong vision of 2018? News via e-mail [at] coindesk.com to send an opinion to our 2018: Year in Review.
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