Blockchain’s Bitcoin Campaign: Great Advertising … Great Product?

The best way to kill a bad product is with good advertising, and Bitcoin is the ad to end all ads for blockchain technology. People get tattoos of Bitcoin, not Uber. Thus far, Bitcoin and ICOs are blockchain’s two killer apps. BTC’s over 10x increase in market cap in 2017—and the expectation that it will continue (e.g., noted here last month was a conference panel’s 1-year price target north of $20,000)—will likely turbocharge the influx into these apps of entrepreneurial, software development, and big corporate resources. These resources will slosh into a wide range of infrastructure and domain-based verticals, including media. ICOs, bubble or bust, are a way of monetizing the utility of blockchain software development through tradable tokens used by blockchain protocols and decentralized apps. These tokens have already attracted capital raises by legacy media companies (e.g., Kik) as well as whitepaper wizards (e.g., AdEx), and barring complete regulatory Armageddon, are likely to continue to do so.