Don’t fall victim to Shiny Object syndrome like the Ethereum huffers and ‘magical blockchain dust’ people. At the CoinDesk Consensus 2018 conference today, there was an exchange between Jimmy Song and Joe Lubin:

A back-and-forth among Baldet, Lubin and Song ensued. Lubin sarcastically predicted that the next five years of cryptocurrency innovation would see nothing but “bitcoin 1.0.” Song doubled down, saying “I don’t really see much of this stuff gaining much traction,” he said. Bitcoin, he argued, is “the real innovation here.”

See some of the back and forth quoted here:

"How can you make something decentralized when you're the corporation that's in charge of the development?"

"Blockchain is not this magical thing that you sprinkle blockchain dust over everything and it's okay."

— David Floyd (@davidfloyd512) May 14, 2018

Some bitcoin history for newcomers: The term “bitcoin maximalist” was initially coined as a derogatory term by Vitalik Buterin. This term was later re appropriated by bitcoin bulls as a descriptive term. ‘Bitcoin 1.0’ will become a new catch cry amongst bitcoiners for similar reasons.

This comes down to Bitcoin 1.0 vs Shiny Object syndrome. Shiny Object syndrome is the child-like tendency to just chase after things because they’re ‘new’, rather than rationally sitting back and analysing where the value is. Many enterprises are foolishly chasing after ‘blockchain technology’. These enterprises could more likely achieve a better technological result by using standard database, access management, and backup technology. Blockchains are an inefficient design, unless you specifically need censorship resistance. Blockchain overhype is real.

Second, as it has been pointed out before – much of this is ‘cargo cult‘ thinking. Even if the inventors of these enterprise blockchain technologies are sincere, it’s likely that many investors will be tricked into investing. They may think “Oh I missed the boat on Bitcoin, but maybe I can replicate the immense investment gains of hyperbitcoinization by buying this ICO/altcoin token”. They are not paying attention to the economic principles driving bitcoin vs all other tokens. Remember, the global market for wealth is around $280T USD. The global market for smart contracts could only be a smaller percentage of this number.

Third, as my friend Michael Goldstein points out: in the literal sense – this is actually very bullish. The current version of bitcoin is v0.16. So if in 5 years time, we’re all using 1.0, that’s great news!

"Lubin sarcastically predicted that the next five years of cryptocurrency innovation would see nothing but 'bitcoin 1.0.'"

I'm excited to hear that Bitcoin will finally reach v1.0 and that everyone will be using it! Very bullish!https://t.co/8qcKU7cSxs

— Michael Goldstein (@bitstein) May 15, 2018

We don’t need to sprinkle magical blockchain dust.

Don’t fall victim to ‘Shiny Object’ syndrome. Instead, see that Bitcoin 1.0 as sound money is incredible.