Consensus and Blockchain Week in NYC was for the most part not that exciting according to many reports, with NO MAJOR announcements other then more hype and more in fighting among the core developers. More people did attend this year showing the growing interest in cryptocurrency. Probably the only excitement I heard about was the Ripple event hosted by Snoop Dogg. Noticeably absent were the Ethereum people, including Vitalik. There was also very little buzz about Bitcoin, with new projects bashing the BTC instead and trying to promote their interests. So of course, with all this drama there won't be any market confidence for BTC or ETH and the altcoins.
BTC core developers Johnathan Corgan and Jimmy Song were the most vocal about Consensus week's lack of focus. Corgan called out the event as "Cargo-cult engineering". Corgan twittted:
“It’s like all the popular kids (Blockchain) are publicly bashing the geeks and nerds (Bitcoin) while privately trying to copy their homework."
Jimmy song also stated, in front of JP Morgan panel of executives, that BTC is the only real innovation in this space, forget about the altcoins. I’m sure Roger Ver might be having a tantrum at that moment since he couldn’t mention Bitcoin Cash as better than Bitcoin.
To sum it all up, Consensus 2018 did not bring much good news to boost the market. It actually took a dip during the week with a sea of red on exchanges. Now the talks themselves were full of speakers selling their projects in the hope you drink their kool-aid. This project is “going to the moon” and “get your lambo soon” is becoming the expectation. There was no panel to talk about Ethereum’s latest developments. There was lack of focus on scalability and the improvement protocols, so nothing innovative worth mentioning. It seemed more like the keynote speakers were doing marketing about how their projects were better than Bitcoin, but did not ever explain exactly why. IMOHO, based on the math and engineering, Bitcoin is still the only true implementation of a cryptocurrency that really works. Even if it is a big slow database, it still has room for improvement in design. That’s what Corgan and Song felt should have been the focus and not talks of some new best thing that nobody is even sure will work. We are all just arguing about which algorithm works best, but have developers forgotten the first principles thinking — “We build systems to solve problems … not to speculate on prices.” Perhaps the good thing from all this is that now the views on cryptocurrency have changed. Businesses now see the potential they have to offer, with blockchain technology in particular. This is much needed exposure to keep the public's interest in not just Bitcoin, but the altcoins as well. That is the path toward more mainstream acceptance.
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