Cryptocurrency Retrospective - Session 1 - The Good, Bad, Ugly

Leveraging the tools of the trade for a breakdown on whats good, bad and ugly in the cryptocurrency space. Anything goes and participation is recommended. BBT Carter plays the Scrummaster leading the world through this interesting time in cryptocurrency. With the heavy pullback, constant bickering on twitter between projects/people in the space, fear of oppressive regulation, realities of some fraud (bitconnect, countless icos) and the constant barrage of negative and though swaying social media and news... where does one turn to help systematically break down what's good, bad and ugly in the space.

BBT Carter takes this issue head on and LIVE to help provide structure on how to get those thoughts collectively down. Using a methodology leveraged in the agile toolkit, we will start with a action normally well into a sprint cycle, the Retrospective.

Twitch Stream (was after YouTube)

In the stream and subsequent whiteboard capture this session we gathered the following:

The Good:

• Innovation (Atomic Swaps)
  -- Excellent for DEX (Decentralized Exchanges)
  --Would be nice to see implemented in a mobile wallet, functionality like JAXX and ShapeShift
  --Ability to move between currencies and maintain point to point vs. Centralized Exchanges

• Lighting Network
  --Helps answer some of the scaling issues
  --Multiple Cryptocurrencies can take advantage, code portability (Litecoin was first, coins like Ravencoin can too)

• EOS Testnet Live
  --Operational since Dec.
  --Needs incentive or onboarding guide for developers to be incentivized to work/provide content for testing
  --Functional and not vaporware, published plan to go live in 2nd Qtr

• Data Security
  --Proven use cases in data immutability
  --Audability use cases live with many asset management solutions on mainnet
  --Many Permissioned/Private implementations on Microsoft Azure, AWS and IBM instances with Hyperledger ; eventual cross chain implementations are envidable

• Large Companies finding value in Innovation (Ford with collaborative traffic flow)

  -- Ford, Bosch, IBM, Accenture, Oracle and more building test solutions on incentivized models to see how they work in a test capacity. Their contributions to open source projects such as hyperledger and on chain scaling can be reviewed for potential uses in future cryptocurrency. Bottom line, innovation works both ways and that's a good thing.

• Multiple Payment gateways operational
  --Abra, Uphold, Robinhood, Coinbase and more...

The Bad:

• General Education for Cryptocurrency for Masses
  -- Average person on the street still does not have a basic understanding
  -- Testing this theory out, trying to open a new bank account was met with resistance when mentioning some of the income being deposited came from educating people on cryptocurrency on social media. Immediate uncomfortable exchange on how they would potentially not except our setting up of an account. Bottom line, general and basic education on Cryptocurrency is critical to large scale adoption and it can't be linked constantly to bad behavior.
  --Part of the solution was to identify good content and education providers, create a singular good list to go to. Please post any links to streamers, youtube, blog, references to channels that help.

• Price of Cryptocurrency (Market)
  -- Not much one can personally do here, however undeniably a majority of the traffic in cryptocurrency was in December. As the interest has pulled back, so has the market and some may think this is a chicken/egg conversation
  -- Potentially fake volume (Wash Trading); other fraudulent activity
  --Potential bannings
  -- Multiple recent hacks (Japan Exchange, Mt.Gox Sales, Ethereum Wallet 300m)
  -- Easy and accessible access to go from fiat to crypto and back, worldwide will be huge
  -- Innovation and breakthrough on scalability will drive a huge recovery potentially.
  -- Improved Development quality, less bugs, less drama on impacts with various currencies
  -- Utility establishment
  -- Fake News
  -- Regulation (KYC and AML imo is a good thing to drive back fraud and bad dudes) but some regulation may impact harder than others

• Transaction Speed of Cryptocurrencies
  -- Transaction speed at volume is a huge risk
  -- Attack or not on bitcoin in December, excessive transaction volume showed what happens if blocks are full. Price of transaction goes up exponentially. Need to cure transaction issue.
  -- Only way to adopt major application, disruptive technology at scale is to have supporting transaction speed. If millions of people are using bitcoin, in real time, potentially only 15k or so at the same time can use it without getting into a expensive situation.
  -- Realities are if disruption is a thing, it needs to operate at massive scale.
  -- Some currencies this is far more important than others, but layer 2/3 systems need to be put into order

• ASIC's
  -- Negative effect on Network Effect (less people partake in the currency, losing the advantage of grassroots distribution and exposure traditional mining yields on the one to many connections it creates with personal ecosystem
  -- Centralization
  -- Anticompetitive model, private companies, hidden agenda, execution and roadmaps. Limited accountability
  -- High Risk for investors for specific hardware
  -- Existential circumstances create potentially devastating results (i.e. preorder miner, then cryptonetwork forks)

• Complex of Code
  -- Limited amount of developers
  -- Not quick entry into space, risk of interpreting code quickly as new developer
  -- Bad code created in smart contracts can cause 300m contract failures
  -- Incomplete development languages
  -- Blockchain Code Universities being established, even one raising capital through ICO Academy (potentially good thing)

• ICO's
  -- Huge amount of fraud
  -- Duedillegence nearly non-existence, most come from non-certified youtube TA posters, with huge amounts of influence essentially reading the marketing material and doing some basic searches on linked pages to make a 'qualified' interpretation.
  -- Not many with any sort of product, even after 8+ months post raising capital
  -- Many Promise technology that is not even on the 'emerging' category, would require raw assembly and C development to bring into any state of development
  -- Good 'intentioned' ICOs, that have proven business operations, intelligence and even some development are behind curve on producing any content or limited content due to lack of blockchain developers.
  -- All are being considered a 'security' by SEC which will require registration etc

• Banks Banning
  -- Some banks have started to ban Cryptocurrency user accounts
  -- Rules by some are for Credit only, but others include "ANY" activity, including buying from Coinbase
  -- Censorship on your personal money should be fought, may require changing of banking facility.
  -- This requires bank administration and decision makers to get educated on cryptocurrencies when discussing what will be part of their TOS.
  -- What banks set in their TOS with 'credit' accounts is subjective to the banks business rules

The Ugly:

• Twitter Fights
  -- Key individuals in the space (especially blue checkmarked people) have a individual responsibility if they are communicators in any space. Using their platform to project negativity toward other people or projects is questionable. Direct attacks are cheap and people should block and unfollow
  -- Lot of people seemed to bring up Roger Ver's behavior as what not to do with a platform or promotion
  -- People will be passionate on a project, but with a large audience and influence at your disposal take a second and reflect on your projection. Social Media doesn't forget and multiple implementations of side chains now write your tweets to blockchains (*ironically) so the eventuality, it will may bite back.

• Public Fighting i.e. Coin Wars
  -- This was a lot like twitter fights, but responses seemly was about the differences on coins and fights between founders live, on youtube, on 'john oliver, yes, mainstream media is guilty too' ; should be healthy competition and not striking at the knee's of your competitor. Compete on the same level, outcode, provide a innovative solution
  -- Create the approach, process, benefit and key differentiator on the coin you prompt, code for and contribute to. Useable, verifiable and actionable information on currencies play MUCH better than the shill or marketing ICO type jargon. What's it do, how's it do it stuff...

• GPU Price Gouging
  -- Last few months have been harsh not only on pricing of cryptocurrencies, but pricing on the GPU and general PC market for multiple parts. This falls within Supply and Demand commercial capitalism but still, 3-4x pricing is crazy talk at a retail level.
  -- As another wave of growth in the cryptocurrency space occurs, new coins, new algorithms, new consensus and effort models come out (like distributed computing models) there will be another wave of demand for consumer GPUs. It's the way these things work now. The cat is out of the proverbial bag that there is amazing amounts of compute power on demand. It's not if, its when and the GPU market needs to prepare for the next round.

• Security / Hacks
  -- Cryptocurrency, Private Data, Exchanges, Cloud Data ... nothing is fully secure. Data and Personal data and info is a lot like a cryptocurrency algo saying its ASIC resistant, not ASIC Proof. Nothing is ultra perfect and secure.
  -- The current penalty for failure of having even one misstep in cryptocurrency (key exposure) and your completely wiped out. This is not a long term winning solution, this is not going to win over the masses. The penalty for failure sucks and our own personal operational security needs to get better as a society in general. This is probably the leading risk in all of cryptocurrency adoption.
  --The general masses are never going to mass adopt localized hardware wallet security. Period. This is great for us now that understand how to use it, or choose offline wallets; however mass adoption need robust (probably centralized) solutions. This goes behind a 'lazyness' or inability, it's down to the simple actions of the way humans work.
  -- Innovation on secure ease of use, backup and recovery will go a long way in the space

• Exchanges
  -- Potentially huge issues with exchange liquidity regarding Tether
  -- Potential regulation, such as cease and desist on exchanges using Tether could be a huge impact on echo-system
  -- Any exchanges using USDT should ensure they have counsel engaged with US SEC Regulators to ensure they dont get a love note from their department
  -- Big honeypot for hackers, exchanges still remain risk at impact/attacks. Regulation, Accountability and Audits....much in the way existing CFTC and CBOE accountability and other financial institutions would help consumer protections.

• Fake News
  -- Key influencers to get the first note out on information sometimes push the narrative of fake news; Do we even know if Bitmain actually has a real ethereum asic yet, only 'credible source' is a 'wall street analyst?!?'
  -- CNBC's constant meme cycle on twitter seems decoupled from the professional news network side.
  -- As we had every few days, 6 months ago, Countries, Banks, Central Institutes 'banning' just to find out they were investigating. Articles are constantly updated on multiple news sites. Live editing on major news sites are ramped so people see different versions ... blockchain snapshots of sites might need to become a think. Iterative approaches are fine and part of society, but complete deletion and no record of original context may have lead people to react on a position, sell or even buy. Some accountability on what you report if your a 'trusted source'.