[Disclaimer: The views expressed below are solely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer or any organization I advise.]
William Mougayar is an angel investor who has been investigating the cryptocurrency and broader distributed ledger ecosystem over the past several years.
He recently published a book entitled The Business Blockchain that attempts to look at how enterprises and organizations should view distributed ledgers and specifically, blockchains.
While it is slightly better than “Blockchain Revolution” from the Tapscott’s, it still has multiple errors and unproven conjectures that prevent me from recommending it. For instance, it does not really distinguish one blockchain from another, or the key differences between a distributed ledger and a blockchain.
Note: all transcription errors below are my own. See my other book reviews.
Introduction
On p. xxii he writes:
“These are necessary but not sufficient conditions or properties; blockchains are also greater than the sum of their parts.”
I agree with this and wrote something very similar two years ago in Chapter 2:
While the underlying mathematics and cryptographic concepts took decades to develop and mature, the technical parts and mechanisms of the ledger (or blockchain) are greater than the sum of the ledger’s parts.
On p. xxiv he writes:
“Just like we cannot double spend digital money anymore (thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention), we will not be able to double copy or forge official certificates once they are certified on a blockchain.”
There are two problems with this:
- Double-spending can and does still occur, each month someone posts on social media how they managed to beat a retailer/merchant that accepted zero-confirmation transactions
- Double-spending can and is prevented in centralized architectures today, you don’t need a blockchain to prevent double-spending if you are willing to trust a party
Chapter 1
[Note: recommend that future editions should include labeled diagrams/tables/figures]
On p. 11 he writes:
“Solving that problem consists in mitigating any attempts by a small number of unethical Generals who would otherwise become traitors, and lie about coordinating their attack to guarantee victory.”
It could probably be written slightly different: how do you coordinate geographically dispersed actors to solve a problem in which one or more actor could be malicious and attempt to change the plan? See also Lamport et al. explanation.
On p.13 he writes compares a database with a blockchain which he calls a “ledger.”
I don’t think this is an accurate comparison.
For instance, a ledger, as Robert Sams has noted, assumes ties to legal infrastructure. Some blockchains, such as Bitcoin, were intentionally designed not to interface with legal infrastructure, thus they may not necessarily be an actual ledger.
To quote Sams:
I think the confusion comes from thinking of cryptocurrency chains as ledgers at all. A cryptocurrency blockchain is (an attempt at) a decentralised solution to the double spending problem for a digital, extra-legal bearer asset. That’s not a ledger, that’s a log.
That was the point I was trying to make all along when I introduced the permissioned/permissionless terminology! Notice, I never used the phrase “permissionless ledger” — Permissionless’ness is a property of the consensus mechanism.
With a bearer asset, possession of some instrument (a private key in the cryptocurrency world) means ownership of the asset. With a registered asset, ownership is determined by valid entry in a registry mapping an off-chain identity to the asset. The bitcoin blockchain is a public log of proofs of instrument possession by anonymous parties. Calling this a ledger is the same as calling it “bearer asset ledger”, which is an oxymoron, like calling someone a “married bachelor”, because bearer assets by definition do not record their owners in a registry!
This taxonomy that includes the cryptocurrency stuff in our space (“a public blockchain is a permissionless distributed ledger of cryptocurrency”) causes so much pointless discussion.
I should also mention that the DLT space should really should be using the phrase “registry” instead of “ledger”. The latter is about accounts, and it is one ambition too far at the moment to speak of unifying everyone’s accounts on a distributed ledger.
Is this pedantic? Maybe not, as the authors of The Law of Bitcoin also wrestle with the buckets an anarchic cryptocurrency fall under.
On p. 14 he writes about bank accounts:
“In reality, they provided you the illusion of access and activity visibility on it. Every time you want to move money, pay someone or deposit money, the bank is giving you explicit access because you gave them implicit trust over your affairs. But that “access” is also another illusion. It is really an access to a database record that says you have such amount of money. Again, they fooled you by giving you the illusion that you “own” that money.”
This is needless inflammatory. Commercial law and bankruptcy proceedings will determine who owns what and what tranche/seniority your claims fall under. It is unclear what the illusion is.
On p. 14 he writes:
“A user can send money to another, via a special wallet, and the blockchain network does the authentication, validation and transfer, typically within 10 minutes, with or without a cryptocurrency exchange in the middle.”
Which blockchain is he talking about? If it is not digital fiat, how does the cash-in/cash-out work? To my knowledge, no bank has implemented an end-to-end production system with other banks as described above. Perhaps that will change in the future.
On p. 18 he writes:
“Sometimes it is represented by a token, which is another form of related representation of an underlying cryptocurrency.”
This isn’t very well-defined. The reason I went to great lengths in November to explain what a “token” is and isn’t is because of the confusion caused by the initial usage of a cryptographic token, a hardware device from companies like RSA. This is not what a “token” in cryptocurrency usage means. (Note: later on p. 91 he adds a very brief explanation)
On p. 18 he cites Robert Sams who is quoting Nick Szabo, but didn’t provide a source. It is found in Seigniorage Shares.
On p. 18 he also writes:
“As cryptocurrency gains more acceptance and understanding, its future will be less uncertain, resulting in a more stable and gradual adoption curve.”
This is empirically not true and actually misses the crux of Sams’ argument related to expectations.
On p. 20 he writes:
“As of 2016, the Bitcoin blockchain was far from these numbers, hovering at 5-7 TPS, but with prospects of largely exceeding it due to advances in sidechain technology and expected increases in the Bitcoin block size.”
This isn’t quite correct. On a given day over the past year, the average TPS is around 2 TPS and Tradeblock estimates by the end of 2016 that with the current block size it will hover around just over 3 TPS.
What is a sidechain? It is left undefined in that immediate section. One potential definition is that it is a sofa.
On p. 20 he writes:
“Private blockchains are even faster because they have less security requirements, and we are seeing 1,000-10,000 TPS in 2016, going up to 2,000-15,000 TPS in 2017, and potentially an unlimited ceiling beyond 2019.”
This is untrue. “Private blockchains” do not have “less” security requirements, they have different security requirements since they involve known, trusted participants. I am also unaware of any production distributed ledger system that hits 10,000 TPS. Lastly, it is unclear where the “unlimited ceiling” prediction comes from.
On p. 20 he writes:
“In 2014, I made the strong assertion that the blockchain is the new database, and warned developers to get ready to rewrite everything.”
Where did you warn people? Link?
On p. 21 he writes:
“For developers, a blockchain is first and foremost a set of software technologies.”
I would argue that it is first and foremost a network.
On p. 22 he writes:
“The fact that blockchain software is open source is a powerful feature. The more open the core of a blockchain is, the stronger the ecosystem around it will become.”
Some, but not all companies building blockchain-related technology, open source the libraries and tools. Also, this conflates the difference between code and who can validate transactions on the network. A “private blockchain” can be open sourced and secure, but only permit certain entities to validate transactions.
On p. 24 he writes:
“State machines are a good fit for implementing distributed systems that have to be fault-tolerant.”
Why?
On p. 25 he writes:
“Bitcoin initiated the Proof-of-Work (POW) consensus method, and it can be regarded as the granddaddy of these algorithms. POW rests on the popular Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm that allows transactions to be safely committed according to a given state.”
There are at least two problems with this statement:
- The proof-of-work mechanism used in Bitcoin is apocryphally linked to Hashcash from Adam Back; however this does not quite jive with Mougayar’s statement above. Historically, this type of proof-of-work predates Back’s contribution, all the way to 1992. See Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail by Dwork and Naor
- Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance is the name of a specific algorithm published in 1999 by Castro and Liskov; it is unrelated to Bitcoin.
On p. 26 he writes:
“One of the drawbacks of the Proof-of-Work algorithm is that it is not environmentally friendly, because it requires large amounts of processing power from specialized machines that generate excessive energy.”
This is a design feature: to make it economically costly to change history. It wasn’t that Satoshi conjured up a consensus method to be environmentally friendly, rather it is the hashrate war and attempt to seek rents on seigniorage that incentivizes the expenditure of capital, in this case energy. If the market price of a cryptocurrency such as bitcoin declined, so too would the amount of energy used to secure it.
Chapter 2
On p. 29 he writes:
“Reaching consensus is at the heart of a blockchain’s operations. But the blockchain does it in a decentralized way that breaks the old paradigm of centralized consensus, when one central database used to rule transaction validity.”
Which blockchain is he talking about? They are not a commodity, there are several different unique types. Furthermore, distributed consensus is an academic research field that has existed for more than two decades.
On p. 29 he writes:
“A decentralized scheme (which the blockchain is based on) transfers authority and trust to a decentralized network and enables its nodes to continuously and sequentially record their transactions on a public “block,” creating a unique” chain” – the blockchain.”
Mougayar describes the etymology of the word “blockchain” specific to Bitcoin itself.
Note: a block actually is more akin to a “batch” or “bucket” in the sense that transactions are bundled together into a bucket and then propagated. His definition of what a blockchain is is not inclusive enough in this chapter though because it is unclear what decentralization can mean (1 node, 100 nodes, 10,000 nodes?). Also, it is important to note that not all distributed ledgers are blockchains.
On p. 31 he writes:
“Credit card companies charge us 23% in interest, even when the prime rate is only at 1%”
Which credit card companies are charging 23%? Who is being charged this? Also, even if this were the case, how does a blockchain of some kind change that?
On p. 32 he writes:
“Blockchains offer truth and transparency as a base layer. But most trusted institutions do not offer transparency or truth. It will be an interesting encounter.”
This is just a broad sweeping generalization. What does truth and transparency mean here? Which blockchains? Which institutions? Cannot existing institutions build or use some kind of distributed ledger to provide the “truth” and “transparency” that he advocates?
On p. 33 he writes:
“The blockchain challenges the roles of some existing trust players and reassigns some of their responsibilities, sometimes weakening their authority.”
Typo: should be “trusted” not “trust.”
On p. 34 he writes:
“There is a lesson from Airbnb, which has mastered the art of allowing strangers to sleep in your house without fear.”
This is not true, there are many examples of Airbnb houses that have been trashed and vandalized.
On p. 34, just as the Tapscott’s did in their book, Mougayar talks about how Airbnb could use a blockchain for identity and reputation. Sure, but what are the advantages of doing that versus a database or other existing technology?
On p. 37 he writes:
“Enterprises are the ones asking, because the benefits are not necessarily obvious to them. For large companies, the blockchain presented itself as a headache initially. It was something they had not planned for.”
First off, which blockchain? And which enterprises had a headache from it?
On p. 39 he writes: “Prior to the Bitcoin invention…”
He should probably flip that to read “the invention of Bitcoin”
On p. 40 he writes:
“… it did not make sense to have money as a digital asset, because the double-spend (or double-send) problem was not solved yet, which meant that fraud could have dominated.”
This is empirically untrue. Centralized systems prevent double-spending each and every day. There is a double-spending problem when you are using a pseudonymous, decentralized network and it is partially resolved (but not permanently solved) in Bitcoin by making it expensive, but not impossible, to double-spend.
On p. 41 he writes:
“They will be no less revolutionary than the invention of the HTML markup language that allowed information o be openly published and linked on the Web.”
This is a little redundant and should probably be rewritten as “the invention of the hypertext markup language (HTML).”
On p. 43 he writes:
“Smart contracts are ideal for interacting with real-world assets, smart property, Internet of Things (IoT) and financial services instruments.”
Why are smart contracts ideal for that?
On p. 46 he writes: “Time-stamping” and in other areas he writes it without a dash.
On p. 46 he writes:
“And blockchains are typically censorship resistant, due to the decentralized nature of data storage, encryption, and peer controls at the edge of the network.”
Which blockchains? Not all blockchains in the market are censorship resistant. Why and why not?
On p. 48 he mentions “BitIID” – this is a typo for “BitID”
On p. 51 he writes:
“Enter the blockchain and decentralized applications based on it. Their advent brings potential solutions to data security because cryptographically-secured encryption becomes a standard part of blockchain applications, especially pertaining to the data parts. By default, everything is encrypted.”
This is untrue. Bitcoin does not encrypt anything nor does Ethereum. A user could encrypt data first, take a hash of it and then send that hash to a mining pool to be added to a block, but the network itself provides no encryption ability.
On p. 52 he writes:
“Consensus in public blockchains is done publicly, and is theoretically subject to the proverbial Sybil attacks (although it has not happened yet).”
Actually, it has on altcoins. One notable occurrence impacted Feathercoin during June 2013.
On p. 54 he writes:
“The blockchain can help, because too many Web companies centralized and hijacked what could have been a more decentralized set of services.”
This is the same meme in the Tapscott book. There are many reasons for why specific companies and organizations have large users bases but it is hard to see how they hijacked anyone; but that is a different conversation altogether.
On p. 54 he writes:
“We can also think of blockchains as shared infrastructure that is like a utility. If you think about how the current Internet infrastructure is being paid for, we subsidize it by paying monthly fees to Internet service providers. As public blockchains proliferate and we start running millions of smart contacts and verification services on them, we might be also subsidizing their operation, by paying via micro transactions, in the form of transaction fees, smart contract tolls, donation buttons, or pay-per-use schemes.”
This is a very liberal use of the word subsidize. What Mougayar is describing above is actually more of a tax than a charitable donation.
The design behind Bitcoin was intended to make it such that there was a Nash equilibrium model between various actors. That miners would not need to rely on charity to continue to secure the network because as block rewards decline, the fees themselves would in the long run provide enough compensation to pay for their security services.
It could be argued that this will not happen, that fees will not increase to offset the decline in block rewards but that is for a different article.
As an aside, Mougayar’s statement above then intersects with public policy: which blockchains should receive that subsidy or donation? All altcoins too? And who should pay this?
Continuing:
“Blockchains are like a virtual computer somewhere in a distributed cloud that is virtual and does not require server setups. Whoever opens a blockchain node runs the server, but not users or developers.”
This is untrue. The ~6,400 nodes on the Bitcoin network are all servers that require setup and maintenance to run. The same for Ethereum and any other blockchain.
On p. 58 he writes:
“It is almost unimaginable to think that when Satoshi Nakamoto released the code for the first Bitcoin blockchain in 2009, it consisted of just two computers and a token.”
A couple issues:
- There is a typo – “first” should be removed (unless there was another Bitcoin network before Bitcoin?)
- Timo Hanke and Sergio Lerner have hypothesized that Satoshi probably used multiple computers, perhaps more than a dozen.
On p. 58 he writes:
“One of the primary differences between a public and private blockchain is that public blockchains typically have a generic purpose and are generally cheaper to use, whereas private blockchains have a more specific usage, and they are more expensive to set up because the cost is born by fewer owners.”
This is not true. From a capital and operation expenditure perspective, public blockchains are several orders of magnitude more expensive to own and maintain than a private blockchain. Why? Because there is no proof-of-work involved and therefore private blockchain operators do not need to spend $400 million a year, which is roughly the cost of maintaining the Bitcoin network today.
In contrast, depending on how a private blockchain (or distributed ledger) is set up, it could simply be run by a handful of nodes on several different cloud providers – a marginal cost.
Chapter 3
On p. 68 he writes:
“Taken as an extreme case, just about any software application could be rewritten with some blockchain and decentralization flavor into it, but that does not mean it’s a good idea to do so.”
Yes, fully agreed!
On p. 68 he writes:
“By mid-2016, there were approximately 5,000 developers dedicated to writing software for cryptocurrency, Bitcoin or blockchains in general. Perhaps another 20,000 had dabbled with some of that technology, or written front-end applications that connect to a blockchain, one way or the other.”
Mougayar cites his survey of the landscape for this.
I would dispute this though, it’s probably an order of magnitude less.
The only way this number is 5,000 is if you liberally count attendees at meetups or all the various altcoins people have touched over the year, and so forth. Even the headcount of all the VC funded “bitcoin and blockchain” companies is probably not even 5,000 as of May 2016.
On p. 71 he writes:
“Scaling blockchains will not be different than the way we have continued to scale the Internet, conceptually speaking. There are plenty of smart engineers, scientists, researchers, and designers who are up to the challenge and will tackle it.”
This is a little too hand-wavy. One of the top topics that invariably any conversation dovetails into at technical working groups continues to be “how to scale” while keeping privacy requirements and non-functional requirements intact. Perhaps this will be resolved, but it cannot be assumed that it will be.
On p. 72 he writes:
“Large organizations, especially banks, have not been particularly interested in adopting public blockchains for their internal needs, citing potential security issues. The technical argument against the full security of public blockchains can easily be made the minute you introduce a shadow of a doubt on a potential scenario that might wreak havoc with the finality of a transaction. That alone is enough fear to form a deterring factor for staying away from public blockchain, although the argument could be made in favor of their security.”
This is a confusing passage. The bottom line is that public blockchains were not designed with the specific requirements that regulated financial institutions have. If they did, perhaps they would be used. But in order to modify a public blockchain to provide those features and characteristics, it would be akin to turning an aircraft carrier into a submarine. Sure it might be possible, but it would just be easier and safer to build a submarine instead.
Also, why would an organization use a public blockchain for their internal needs? What does that mean?
On p. 78 he writes:
“Targeting Bitcoin primarily, several governments did not feel comfortable with a currency that was not backed by a sovereign country’s institutions.”
Actually, what made law enforcement and regulators uncomfortable was a lack of compliance for existing AML/KYC regulations. The headlines and hearings in 2011-2013 revolved around illicit activities that could be accomplished as there were no tools or ability to link on-chain activity with real world identities.
Chapter 4
On p. 87 he writes:
“The reality is that customers are not going to the branch as often (or at all), and they are not licking as many stamps to pay their bills. Meanwhile, FinTech growth is happening: it was a total response to banks’ lack of radical innovation.”
There are a couple issues going on here.
Banks have had to cut back on all spending due to cost cutting efforts as a whole and because their spending has had to go towards building reporting and compliance systems, neither of which has been categorized as “radical innovation.”
Also, to be balanced, manyh of the promises around “fintech” innovation still has yet to germinate due to the fact that many of the startups involved eventually need to incorporate and create the same cost structures that banks previously had to have. See for instance, financial controls in marketplace lending – specifically Lending Club.
On p. 88 he writes:
“If you talk to any banker in the world, they will admit that ApplePay and PayPal are vexing examples of competition that simply eats into their margins, and they could not prevent their onslaught.”
Any banker will say that? While a couple of business lines may change, which banks are being displaced by either of those two services right now?
On p. 89 he writes:
“Blockchains will not signal the end of banks, but innovation must permeate faster than the Internet did in 1995-2000.”
Why? Why must it permeate faster? What does that even mean?
On p. 89 he writes:
“This is a tricky question, because Bitcoin’s philosophy is about decentralization, whereas a bank is everything about centrally managed relationships.”
What does this mean? If anything, the Bitcoin economy is even more concentrated than the global banking world, with only about a dozen exchanges globally that handle virtually all of the trading volume of all cryptocurrencies.
On p. 89 he writes:
“A local cryptocurrency wallet skirts some of the legalities that existing banks and bank look-alikes (cryptocurrency exchanges) need to adhere to, but without breaking any laws. You take “your bank” with you wherever you travel, and as long as that wallet has local onramps and bridges into the non-cryptocurrency terrestrial world, then you have a version of a global bank in your pocket.”
This is untrue. There are many local and international laws that have been and continue to be broken involving money transmission, AML/KYC compliance and taxes. Ignoring those though, fundamentally there are probably more claims on bitcoins – due to encumbrances – than bitcoins themselves. This is a big problem that still hasn’t been dealt with as of May 2016.
On p. 95 he writes:
“The decentralization of banking is here. It just has not been evenly distributed yet.”
This is probably inspired by William Gibson who said: ‘The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.’
On p. 95 he writes:
“The default state and starting position for innovation is to be permissionless. Consequently, permissioned and private blockchain implementations will have a muted innovation potential. At least in the true sense of the word, not for technical reasons, but for regulatory ones, because these two aspect are tie together.”
This is not a priori true, how can he claim this? Empirically we know that permissioned blockchains are designed for different environments than something like Bitcoin. How can he measure the amount of potential “innovation” either one has?
On p. 95 he writes:
“We are seeing the first such case unfold within the financial services sector, that seems to be embracing the blockchain fully; but they are embracing it according to their own interpretation of it, which is to make it live within the regulatory constraints they have to live with. What they are really talking about is “applying innovation,” and not creating it. So, the end-result will be a dialed down version of innovation.”
This is effectively an ad hominem attack on those working with regulated institutions who do not have the luxury of being able to ignore laws and regulations in multiple jurisdictions. There are large fines and even jail time for ignoring or failing to comply with certain regulations.
On p. 95 he writes:
“That is a fact, and I am calling this situation the “Being Regulated Dilemma,” a pun on the innovator’s dilemma. Like the innovator’s dilemma, regulated companies have a tough time extricating themselves from the current regulations they have to operate within. So, when they see technology, all they can do is to implement it within the satisfaction zones of regulators. Despite the blockchain’s revolutionary prognosis, the banks cannot outdo themselves, so they risk only guiding the blockchain to live within their constrained, regulated world.”
“It is a lot easier to start innovating outside the regulatory boxes, both figuratively and explicitly. Few banks will do this because it is more difficult.”
“Simon Taylor, head of the blockchain innovation group at Barclays, sums it up: “I do not disagree the best use cases will be outside regulated financial services. Much like the best users of cloud and big data are not the incumbent blue chip organizations. Still their curioisity is valuable for funding and driving forward the entire space.” I strongly agree; there is hope some banks will contribute to the innovation potential of the blockchain in significant ways as they mature their understanding and experiences with this next technology.
An ending note to banks is that radical innovation can be a competitive advantage, but only if it is seen that way. Otherwise innovation will be dialed down to fit their own reality, which is typically painted in restrictive colors.
It would be useful to see banks succeed with the blockchain, but they need to push themselves further in terms of understanding what the blockchain can do. They need to figure out how they will serve their customers better, and not just how they will serve themselves better. Banks should innovate more by dreaming up use cases that we have not though about yet, preferably in the non-obvious category.
The fundamental problem with his statement is this: banks are heavily regulated, they cannot simply ignore the regulations because someone says they should. If they fail to maintain compliance, they can be fined.
But that doesn’t mean they cannot still be innovative, or that the technology they are investigating now isn’t useful or helpful to their business lines.
In effect, this statement is divorced from the reality that regulated financial institutions operate in. [Note: some of his content such as the diagram originated from his blog post]
On p. 102 he writes:
“Banks will be required to apply rigorous thinking to flush out their plans and positions vis-à-vis each one of these major blockchain parameters. They cannot ignore what happens when their core is being threatened.”
While this could be true, it is an over generalization: what type of business lines at banks are being threatened? What part of “their” core is under attack?
On p. 103 he writes:
“More than 200 regulatory bodies exist in 150 countries, and many of them have been eyeing the blockchain and pondering regulatory updates pertaining to it.”
Surely that is a typo, there are probably 200 regulatory bodies alone in the US itself.
On p. 105 he writes:
“Banks will need to decide if they see the blockchain as a series of Band-Aids, or if they are willing to find the new patches of opportunity. That is why I have been advocating that they should embrace (or buy) the new cryptocurrency exchanges, not because these enable Bitcoin trades, but because they are a new generation of financial networks that has figured out how to transfer assets, financial instruments, or digital assets swiftly and reliably, in essence circumventing the network towers and expense bridges that the current financial services industry relies upon.”
This is a confusing passage.
Nearly all of the popular cryptocurrency exchanges in developed countries require KYC/AML compliance in order for users to cash-in and out of their fiat holdings. How do cryptocurrency exchanges provide any utility to banks who are already used to transferring and trading foreign exchange?
In terms of percentages, cryptocurrency exchanges are still very easy to compromise versus banks; what utility do banks obtain by acquiring exchanges with poor financial controls?
And, in order to fund their internal operations, cryptocurrency exchanges invariably end up with the same type of cost structures regulated financial institutions have; the advantage that they once had effectively involved non-compliance – that is where some of the cost savings was. And banks cannot simply ignore regulations because people on social media want them to; these cryptocurrency sites require money to operate, hence the reason why many of them charge transaction fees on all withdrawals and some trades.
Chapter 5
On p. 115 he mentions La’Zooz and Maidsafe, neither of which – after several years of development, actually work. Perhaps that changes in the future.
On p.118 he writes:
“There is another potential application of DIY Government 2.0. Suppose a country’s real government is failing, concerned citizens could create a shadow blockchain governance that is more fair, decentralized and accountable. There are at least 50 failed, fragile, or corrupt states that could benefit from an improve blockchain governance.”
Perhaps this is true, that there could be utility gain from some kind of blockchain. But this misses a larger challenge: many of these same countries lack private property rights, the rule of law and speedy courts.
On p. 119 he writes about healthcare use cases:
“Carrying a secure wallet with our full electronic medical record in it, or our stored DNA, and allowing its access, in case of emergency.”
What advantage do customers gain from carrying this around in a secure wallet? Perhaps they do, but it isn’t clear in this chapter.
On p. 126-127 he makes the case for organizations to have a “blockchain czar” but an alternative way to pitch this without all the pomp is simply to have someone be tasked with becoming a subject-matter expert on the topic.
On p. 131 he writes:
“Transactions are actually recorded in sequential data blocks (hence the word blockchain), so there is a historical, append-only log of these transaction that is continuously maintained and updated. A fallacy is that the blockchain is a distributed ledger.”
It is not a fallacy.
Chapter 7
On p. 149 he writes: “What happened to the Web being a public good?”
Costs. Websites have real costs. Content on those websites have real costs. And so forth. Public goods are hard to sustain because no one wants to pay for them but everyone wants to use them. Eventually commercial entities found a way to build and maintain websites that did not involve external subsidization.
On p. 150 he writes:
“Indeed, not only was the Web hijacked with too many central choke points, regulators supposedly continue to centralize controls in order to lower risk, whereas the opposite should be done.”
This conflicts with the “Internet is decentralized” meme that was discussed throughout the book. So if aspects of the Internet are regulated, and Mougayar disagrees with those regulations, doesn’t this come down to disagreements over public policy?
On p. 153 he writes:
“Money is a form of value. But not all value is money. We could argue that value has higher hierarchy than money. In the digital realm, a cryptocurrency is the perfect digital money. The blockchain is a perfect exchange platform for digital value, and it rides on the Internet, the largest connected network on the planet.”
Why are cryptocurrencies perfect? Perhaps they are, but it is not discussed here.
On p. 153 he also talks about the “programmability” of cryptocurrencies but doesn’t mention that if fiat currencies were digitally issued by central banks, they too could have the same programmable abilities.
On p. 160 he predicts:
“There will be dozens of commonly used, global virtual currencies that will be considered mainstream, and their total market value will exceed $5 trillion, and represent 5% of the world’s $100 trillion economy in 2025.”
Perhaps that occurs, but why? And are virtual currencies now different than digital currencies? Or are they the same? None of these questions are really addressed.
Conclusion
This book is quick read but unfortunately is weighed down by many opinions that are not supported by evidence and consequently, very few practical applications for enterprises are explained in detail.
For regulated businesses such as financial institutions, there are several questions that need to be answered such as: what are the specific cost savings for using or integrating with some kind of blockchain? What are the specific new business lines that could be created? And unfortunately the first edition of this book did not answer these types of questions. Let us look again at a future version.
See my other book reviews.