Introduction to Edition 1

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
Peter Thiel, Zero to One

In early 2018, I was on stage talking about how ridiculous “blockchains” and ICO’s were.

My talk was entitled “Blockchain’s AOL Moment” – in honor of the complete failure that AOL became, and the magnificent success that “silly, useless, slow” network the internet had become.
Some people laughed, some got angry, but the smart ones – well – they listened. And in the process, probably saved themselves a lot of money..

This year – I’m going to up the ante.
The word blockchain is still alive.
It’s just moved from the vocabulary of the opportunistic so-called entrepreneurs (a.k.a. morons), to the other end of the spectrum..Corporates. 

Corporates, like IBM and JP Morgan – who we all know, are always late to the party. 
It takes a little time for the marketing department, suffering from FOMO, to get their message across to the board, ie; “we need to do something with this blockchain thing”.

So this year we’ll probably see some ridiculous “enterprise blockchain” stuff appear, but I predict they too will fade away into oblivion, like the ICO’s of the last few years, and AOL 20yrs before that.

So…what important truth do very few people agree with me on?
It’s the ultimate contrarian question isn’t it?
My answer & the inspiration behind this paper:

Blockchain is Dead. The future is on Lightning.

The last few years have been a festival of hype, stupidity and downright madness. 
It’s time to call out & discard the rubbish, and lay a fresh foundation. One of understanding and sense, because it’s only when we remove layers of ignorance that we can experience the lightbulb moment.

In order to learn something new, one must question what it is they “think” they already know.

Welcome, to The Bitcoin Times.

Aleksandar Svetski
February 2019