Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts

by David Gerard

It turned out in practice to be a magnet for enthusiastic amateurs with stars in their eyes and con artists to prey upon them, with outcomes both hilarious and horrifying.

Bitcoin and blockchains are not a technology story, but a psychology story: bubble economy thinking and the art of the steal.

Even if Bitcoin could replace conventional currencies, it would be an ecological disaster.

Computer programmers are highly susceptible to the just world fallacy (that their economic good fortune is the product of virtue rather than circumstance) and the fallacy of transferable expertise (that being competent in one field means they’re competent in others). Silicon Valley has always been a cross of the hippie counterculture and Ayn Rand-based libertarianism (this cross being termed the “Californian ideology”).