Dynamite piece from the World Economic Forum - you know, the Davos people - that just arrived in my inbox. In it, Aengus Collins writes about a healthy dose of skepticism that should be applied to all things blockchain.

Maybe he's been watching the ICO bubble, or taking a look at crypto prices over the last few days; or, maybe more accurately, he spends his time looking at the technologies themselves and trying to figure out one of the best questions you can apply in any discipline.

What business problem are you trying to solve?

It's a great piece, and I highly recommend you read it - during a break from trading crypto and posting on Steemit - to know how the other side is thinking. There are a few jarring lines:

"Looking down the wrong end of the telescope"

Quoting: Anecdotal evidence suggests that a growing number of organisations are looking down the wrong end of the telescope at DLTs: instead of bringing their problems to the table and assessing whether DLTs might help, they are bringing DLTs to the table and looking for problems to which the technology might be applied.

If you think in the context of the ICO bubble, you can see where this is going. If you spent any time around IT executives in the past dozen years, you have probably heard "in the cloud" attached to hordes of things - many of them that may not have actually needed to be...in the cloud.

Wild, crazy assumptions that the blockchain will solve a ton of problems also begs the question: are we creating problems that don't exist, just to use blockchain to solve them?

Using a sledgehammer when you need a stapler

Another quote: "what might the unintended consequences be if the idea took root of replacing socially grounded methods of generating trust with technologically distributed methods?" The author talks about "troubling consequences, such as echo-chamber phenomena that have contributed to levels of fragmentation and polarisation serious enough to have prompted concerns about the health of democracy itself."

Think of this in the vein of the US election - Hillary had the political and technological machine necessary to slam dunk her way into the presidency; but, like an internet of things gone awry, it turns out all the toasters and coffee machines were talking to each other about how great they were, while a good chunk of others were gravitating toward the other candidate. You know what happened there.

Bringing me to a point of my own: this bubble mentality around blockchain, bitcoin, cryptocurrency and the like runs the risk of creating an uber-niche that has its own language and culture and systems and processes, but is so outside of the mainstream that it shuns those who don't speak the lingua franca and becomes its own uber-bubble.

The Gold Bugs!

The other point I want to make - my own point, not represented in the article - is the risk that we are becoming like the gold bugs. Gold is the only true currency! Gold needs to be in everyone's safe! You need to store your gold offshore! You should look at gold mining stocks! When the BLANK hits the fan, you'll want to own gold!

Is bitcoin and its ilk becoming the new gold? Maybe. Are we in our bubble talking about it with the same fervor of the gold bugs - many of whom get dismissed by professional traders and investors? Maybe.

Is that a bad thing?

Well, if the narrative goes off the rails so much that we become akin to those who quote a sitcom and only one sitcom in all of their conversations - you know the types - then we're likely running that risk.

A New Narrative?

Let's think about this. What narrative makes sense for blockchain technologies, for bitcoin, heck, even for Steemit?

Is it technological - e.g. "distributed ledgers allow everyone to double-check the work, and keeps systems from being gamed by the man?"

Is it sociological - "connect, trust, use social proof and digital proof to show your value to the world?"

Is it economical - in the "global macroeconomic" sense of the word - "it's the new central bank?"

Let's talk about this...what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

I think it's an important discussion to start having.