The Demons and Angels of Progress: BlackCoin Ecosystem, Industry, and EvolutionHaving newly taken up the mantle as head of the BlackCoin Foundation, I thought it a good moment to step to the podium and offer something of an overview - where we've been, what's brewing lately, what's imminent, and, broadly speaking, what kind of vision is building for the year to come. A 'State of the Union' address, as it were, with a few revelations, a smattering of history, some personal reflections, and a good dose of encouragement about the months ahead.
At 8 months of age, BlackCoin is stepping into a new phase of its existence. I'll call it 'Phase 3'. Phase 1 began with Rat4 triggering a kind of decentralized Big Bang, sending a massive shockwave through the primordial soup of Altcoin. Therewith, a strangely huge, bright cluster of matter, energy, money and mind-power began its rapid expansion, leaving a 1500-page trail of btctalk thread, no small degree of ideological gang warfare, wild price chart action, and a barrage of POS aftershocks throughout the cryptosphere.
Then came Phase 2: the quest for order. We saw the inception of the Blackcoinpool, the BlackCoin Foundation, CoinKite integration, the new btctalk thread, the /r/blackcoin reddit, and Blkfeed where I am writing now. We saw well-organized initiatives like L'Isle sur la Sorgue in France. We saw rat4's implementation of POS 2.0, and a progressive mitigation in price volatility. We saw the release of the BlackCoin Music Video and its immediate rampage across social media. And then two things happened. Two 'Phase 2' explosions: David Zimbeck birthed his magnum opus, BitHalo/BlackHalo, and Joshua Bouw went to China. These two monumental steps, combined with all the other incremental developments mentioned above, have planted the seeds and set direction for where we are now.
Phase 3 as I see it is about two things: The creation of value, and the full arrival of BlackCoin technology on the world stage of business and finance. These go hand-in-hand.
While Bitcoin has begun to step meaningfully beyond the embryonic isolation of its first few years as a strange new tech experiment, Altcoin can scarcely be said to have done so. It functions mostly as a developer playground/sandbox on the one hand, and a zero-sum game on the other, where traders (and some thieves and bullies), hang out and try to take each others money. Such value as there is, is mostly in forward-looking potential. The price-action on our markets, however, is little more than the daily scorecard at a poker game. There are only so many chips on the table. They change hands. That's it. And while this game is intrinsic to all markets, even the most mature ones, it is not the basis of industry. Value is. And BlackCoin is now on a mission with all guns blazing to make that happen. For some indications about how, read on.
A large part of my work since wrapping up the BlackCoin Music Video (and even before and during production), has been in outreach to the business world, outside crypto. Persistent efforts over many months have yielded results, not least of which has been a great deal of steady buying. Many new players are at the table now. And many old ones have withered and are gone, often to the tune of 50-100K BC at a clip, and most especially during periodic heavy sell-offs. But the new hands are not like the old ones. They are not the cynical, coin-hopping P&D sleezebags we know all too well. They are established businessmen, buying-in with an intent not only to hold, but to build. They are a new breed, and a new brain-trust. I am amazed by the flow of fresh ideas they generate, and by how ready, willing and able they are to facilitate new contacts and connections across a multitude of industries. And not only to suggest but also back new initiatives. Including a new tech start-up of my own, about which more will be said in coming weeks and months. The new network is growing. This is life in Phase 3.
I'll bring this post to a close by recalling the great industrialist, Henry Ford. He did not invent the automobile (just as BlackCoin did not 'invent' crypto). The Stanley-Steamer had come into existence already a decade earlier, as the ultimate in turn-of-the-century 'personal-tech'. What Ford did was to provide a series of catalytic design and production moves that resulted in a mass-scale paradigm shift. He pushed the automobile through that watershed moment, to that click-point where suddenly everyone just saw that the automobile was no mere tech-toy for the idle rich. It was the future of transportation.
I'll leave it to the master-debaters, quibblers and hair-splitters to argue over the merit of my analogy. I'll even spice it up by stating my opinion that BlackCoin's PoS 2.0 is to Proof-of-Work what the internal combustion engine was to the steam engine. Now go have a field day. For additional entertainment and history lessons, have a look at the FUD campaign waged against Ford by the Stanley Motor Carriage company: see the sub-heading, 'Obsolescence' in the Wiki here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Motor_Carriage_CompanyNow, onward and upward for BlackCoin!
And PS: my motto going forward is: "You can have any color you want, as long as it's BLK."
Yours Truly, Jabulon
