I’ve been following crypto coin and token initiatives for quite some time, mainly because a few of the players in the space have done a good job positioning in the edge and fog computing markets, two areas I have covered and promoted for the past two years.
I am not an investor in any cryptocurrency and it’s highly unlikely I will ever invest in the crowded, continuously evolving and increasingly turbulent coin industry.
There are hundreds and hundreds of coins in the market today. Many have struggled to gain traction after an initial coin offering (ICO), several have proven to be scams and many have failed.
It’s an interesting space, for sure. Many of the developer, research and scientific teams working on coin initiatives have exciting stories to tell. Interesting white papers and use cases published by coin marketing and research teams abound.
But I haven’t seen any significant differentiators from some of the most visible players in the altcoin space. Beyond a handful of vertical specific applications and some well publicized use cases, leadership appears – at least at this stage of the game – to be up for grabs.
There’s a lot of marketing hype associated with the coin industry. This is driven in part by the many large – and often extremely aggressive – communities that work hard to up the visibility of the coins they represent across almost every social media platform.
I regularly attend and cover a wide range of #nyctech events. I’ve gone to four New York City Meetups focused on three different coin initiatives this year.
Content for every one of those meetings focused largely on use cases and marketing collateral. But curiously enough, no presenter ever discussed how the coins they represent relate to the use cases reviewed at these sessions.
Last night I went to the Economics of Data, Decentralization and Distributed Ledgers Meetup in Manhattan. The panel was sponsored by IOTA New York City and featured IOTA’s Kevin Chen, Wikimedia’s Kaitlin Thaney, tech writer and VC McKenna Walsh and Ed Maguire from Momenta Partners.
Chen highlighted autonomous vehicles and smart city applications as potential use cases for the IOTA platform.
These two Industry 4.0 initiatives are currently experiencing phenomenal growth in markets around the world. So it was not a surprise to hear IOTA discuss these use cases last night.
It was a bit of a surprise however, to hear McKenna Walsh’s view on the coin market.
When asked by an audience member what she thought of the state of the coin industry, Walsh responded by saying that she believes a bloodbath is coming and that almost every coin will fail.
Walsh went on to say that coins making it through the turmoil that will likely occur in 2019, should consider reorganizing to focus on specializing in one use case, and then grow from there.
In a crypto market seemingly under constant pressure to perform, this could be very smart advice for coin enthusiasts, investors and marketers. – Russ DeVeau
I took the pictures above at last night’s event. Top image, from left to right – Kevin Chen, Ed Maguire and Kaitlin Thaney. Bottom left image – Ed Maguire and Kaitlin Thaney. Bottom right image – Kaitlin Thaney and McKenna Walsh.
Related:
-IoT in New York City – an open standards point of view
–Mingling with the Knightscope #robots in #NYC!