The Buzzing, Blooming Confusion of Blockchain - notun/sanctioned GitHub Wiki

There are very smart, very wealthy people with strongly held opinions on the nature and feasibility of blockchain-based technologies. Billions of dollars are circulating in the space, with opinions of the nature running from "New Paradigm!" to "Another Bubble" to "At least tulip speculators ended up with nice flowers." In my more cynical moments, I've wondered if blockchain and cryptocurrency are more akin to Virtual Reality technology in 1994, or Virtual Reality technology in 2018. What I mean is that very smart and talented programmers and businesspeople have invested tens of billions of dollars in the VR space, and yet, there is very little mainstream adoption (and profitability) in the space. Some would argue that the push for virtual reality technology ended up creating and expanding the very mainstream, and very profitable video game industry. Software which was originally designed for a niche use ended up becoming much, much more than the sum of its parts.

Part of Thiel's "Zero to One" contrarian business philosophy seeks to know "what important truth do very few people agree with you on?" and the rancorous debate over the actual value and feasibility of blockchain technology clings to this question. Warren Buffett publicly derides bitcoin, but Berkshire Hathaway is a major shareholder of Bank of America and JP Morgan--two banks with notable investments in blockchain technology. The Bank of America has more blockchain patents than any other company, and JP Morgan is quite notable in hiring Zooko Wilcox for the use of zero-knowledge proofs.

Economics is often derided as a social science of dubious assumptions and a sense of reflexivity that leaves it helpless to validate some of its own assumptions. The emergence of cryptocurrencies provides economics with an experimental platform.