While the Bitcoin Community debates the merits of a bigger block size so as to accommodate more transactions per second (the current rate is approximately 7 transactions per second), the world’s largest corporations – from financial institutions to technology firms – have entered into the blockchain industry with new ideas and protocols to ensure the proliferation of the blockchain.
Still to this day, R3 CEV is onboarding new partners to explore the ways in which distributed ledger technology and blockchain technology can change the world, as Bitcoiners have set out to accomplish.
It’s difficult to approximate just how many millions have been invested into blockchain technology, but the funds available to multinationals corporations far outweighs those of a grassroots bitcoin industry into which venture capital investment has stalled.
In the meanwhile, the bitcoin industry has splintered off into multitudinous factions regarding the bitcoin protocol. While discussion about the block size is the focus of many bitcoiners, the bitcoin industry begins to take the form of the dominant culture around it: hierarchical and at-odds.
The complexity heightens as participating individuals harden intellectually on ideas formed due to their own personal experiences and value systems. That results in proud Bitcoiners such as Roger Ver, who begins citing that “Bitcoin Whales” placing a vote on third-party websites – admittedly, technologically enticing they may be – is a tested process for bitcoin changes to the code.
The result of such a process is the existence of two bitcoin discussions – ones which take place behind closed doors and ones which take place in Reddit, where many bitcoiners actually maintain is a healthy place to debate bitcoin stuff. The one which takes place behind closed doors is where miners, leading bitcoin personalities, business leaders – many of whom have self-reported off the hip bitmillions and maybe wish to defend the value of their fortune – pursue their own interest.
In Forbes, for instance, reported how at billionaire Richard Branson’s bitcoin secret meeting persons they called themselves “The Bitcoin Illuminati.”
In the meantime…
Companies like Kadena, the Killer App, Linux and IBM’s hyperledger, Dabase kindly dismiss bitcoin’s overall potential. Bitcoin is almost a bad word at bitcoin conferences. The ideas of the biggest corporations are far different than the ideas found for bitcoin on Reddit Bitcointalk and many other forums.
While bitcoiners jockey for power in their beloved online creation community, the largest corporations push the technology forward and learn from the mistake of public blockchains like ethereum.
As the world of digital currencies did not exist nearly a decade ago, we might one day bear witness to a revolution in the bitcoin space which sees large corporations wield influence over the bitcoin chain, creating pressure points that act as hubs for know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML), which is what an incorporation must do in order to be seen as a legal enterprise under law.
While it’s an exciting time to be a Bitcoiner, it could be that bitcoin’s largest advocates are left behind, swallowed by more established organizations.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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