Private and Public Blockchains

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Was driving down the road and saw a barred owl. See it?

A post shared by Jeff Carter (@pointsnfigures) on Aug 1, 2019 at 5:43pm PDT

A photo of the day.  Was driving down the road by my place up North when I spotted an owl flying.  It stopped to take a peek at me and I snapped a photo.

One of the things I have noticed about companies building out blockchain innovation is that they almost are all private blockchains.  The ironic thing about cryptocurrency is that it was supposed to be decentralized, public, and open.  Private blockchains are not that different than a regular old private clearinghouse.  This means that the proprietors of the private blockchain can charge outsize rents for using it.  Look at CME’s profit margin.  It approaches 70%.  That’s because they own their own clearinghouse, and get a lot of profit off selling the data that the clearinghouse helps them generate.

One of the things I have heard a lot of people say is that they don’t believe in cryptocurrency, or the coins, but they do believe in blockchain.  It’s pretty easy to believe in blockchain, especially when you are working with a private blockchain.  There are gatekeepers.  That fits easily within the corporate frameworks and current market structures of today.  You don’t look weird if you say, “I believe in blockchain but not cryto.”

In order to have a truly decentralized open public blockchain, you have to have a coin associated with it.  If the chain is creating value, the coin will have value.

So far, Bitcoin and other crypto coin value capture is just in the speculation.  It turns out, speculation and dreaming has a lot of value.  The true value will be created when something open, public and usable is created where all you need is to own a coin, or a alloted amount of coin to utilize the chain.