Yes, Crypto is still early days

They say patience is a virtue. But markets, at least the parts and participants that we hear about every day, like quick hits. Long-term investors may sleep better at night, but they don’t get much time in the spotlight.

However, when it comes to crypto development, patience has paid off. Networks launched in beta with big promises of rapid growth have ended up faltering due to rushed design. Others – like Bitcoin – that have grown slowly and organically have stood the test of time, despite acute stress testing and powerful enemies. Even these slow-moving networks have shown significant progress in terms of user growth and global awareness. Nevertheless, the growth arc and global understanding of this new technology is barely underway.

Noelle Acheson is the former head of research at CoinDesk and Genesis Trading. This article is an excerpt from her Crypto is macro now newsletter, which focuses on the overlap between the changing crypto and macro landscape. These opinions are hers and nothing she writes should be taken as investment advice.

Critics accuse the crypto ecosystem of failing to come up with a clear utility (despite global evidence to the contrary). They accuse us of hiding behind the “we’re still early” excuse. These are generally people steeped in traditional marketing ethics who expect clear and tangible results after only a few years of development, and they believe that the perceived fact that these results have not materialized means they never will. I even recently heard someone insist that the internet didn’t take that long to get going.

Well, not quite: ARPANET, the forerunner of today’s massive network, sent its first message in 1969 – html and the first globally accessible websites didn’t appear until 22 years later. Seven years after that, a renowned economist still insisted that the Internet was hardly relevant. We are only 14 years into the development path that was sparked by the processing of the first bitcoin transaction in 2009. Imagine where the industry will be in 2031, 22 years after blockchain’s equivalent “first message”, and the kind of redundancies it will create. still few seven years after that. We are still early.

Even the longest-lived blockchain, Bitcoin, is still evolving. The community is currently caught in a debate about whether it should be used for non-fungible tokens. On the one hand, we have those who believe in the power of evolution, experimentation and the lack of gatekeepers. On the other side, we have those who worry that “silly images” clog the network and degrade the use of payments.

On the periphery are those who insist that bitcoin (BTC) will never be used for payments. In emerging as well as not-so-emerging markets, many already do. In sum, even Bitcoin’s utility is still debated, just as its technological potential is being explored and expanded.

How can we not be early adopters when we are still discussing technology standards, let alone applications? Historian and economist Carlota Perez talks about cycles of technological adoption: First comes the installation phase where the infrastructure is built, then comes the implementation phase when the technology is widely adopted. It’s clear that we’re far from widespread adoption—we don’t even agree on what that means yet. Not only are we still in the early phase of installation, we are also trying to establish a new technology base with fragmented initiatives pursuing new use cases on a global, fragmented stage.

Moreover, we do so with strong regulatory opposition. This is frustrating, but understandable: Blockchain technology isn’t trying to improve widgets or help us move faster. One of the main goals is to transform how we act, and thus technology is perceived as a threat by today’s gatekeepers. Arguably, economics should change slowly because there is so much at stake. But resistance to change also poses a material danger to social cohesion.

People with at least a passing acquaintance with history know that our civilization moves in cycles, each driven by a radical new technological innovation. It remains to be seen whether blockchain technology will usher in a new cycle or continue to build on the one initiated with the rollout of the internet – I personally think the earlier, but either way, just 14 years on, we’re early.

Critics are right to call us out for sometimes hiding behind the “early” excuse to explain bad behavior and lax code review. Just because we’re a young ecosystem doesn’t mean we can’t do better.

In turn, however, we can call out those on the outside looking in as they criticize us for not doing more, for not trying harder, and for not succeeding despite the audacity of the change we want to see, and the colossal the obstacles that have stood in our way from the beginning. We can call out vested interests, those who put the static before the dynamic, and those who are more interested in the practical than the meaningful.

Back in 2014, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen compared the state of Bitcoin then to the Internet in 1994. I disagree with his diagnosis: When he made his comments, Bitcoin was more like the Internet of the 1980s, still figuring out what it wanted. be and how it can be useful.

But here’s the thing: Most of us couldn’t have invested in early internet companies. That generation opportunity was limited to venture capitalists and their accredited investors. However, with the blockchain ecosystem, investing in early opportunities is open to anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world. And often the investment is not – as in the 1990s – in a shell or packaging that represents the technology. Now the investment can be in the technology itself.

When will we no longer be early? When mainstream coverage is as much about adoption and new applications as it is about asset price movements. When technology stops scaring the crypto-curious. When regulators see new financial applications as opportunities rather than threats.

That day may seem very far away at the moment. But it’s not – whether it’s five, 10 or 20 years from now, the crypto ecosystem is unlikely to let up or even slow down. Anyone who has ever built anything lasting knows that persistence, on a grand scale, wins. And that change can seem a long time coming, until the moment it starts to happen quickly.