There is a wide array of factors that go into success, and today it seems that everyone is over simplifying every issue.
It seems like every news story simplifies every issue into small and simple sound bite.
The secret to success is this…
The secret is …it is not that simple.
It is true, having a simple main point helps make an effective article. It is not true that it is an accurate, complete or appropriate. If people want to understand things, they need to understand them in the appropriate context. They also need to have some idea of all of the surrounding issues and the factors that go into them.
For example:
You can’t make bread without flour.
It is true you can’t make bread without flour.
But flour is not the only ingredient.
To make bread, you need flour, salt, oil, sugar, and water.
To make bread, you need an oven, a pan, fuel for the oven, time to bake it, a knife to cut it and a plate with butter to serve it.
There is also a process of making bread, where you need to properly mix all of the ingredients, let it rise, then punch it back down and knead it.
One would also be wise to grease the bread pans, so the bread come out easily.
There are many steps, and I am sure I missed a few, but you get the point. While making bread is potentially a simple, process, it is also a complex process that can have many fails.
My time in Cryptocurrency has been interesting, I have seen a number of different projects and have continually looked at different ones.
The problem these projects have is getting all the right ingredients and getting them all mixed together in the right way.
Crypto-currency has done well or above average in technology. It has failed though in many other ways. If crypto is going to change the world, it takes other factors to be a success.
These factors are important. Math might be the flour of Crypto currency, and developers might be the cooks, but there is so much more that is needed.
If you want to change the world with bread, you need a lot more than just flour.
Now, not to try to over simplify the issue, I think most people realize that bread takes both flour and an oven to make. But it is much more complicated…
What does it take to make flour? Flour depends on having grain –usually wheat. Wheat depends on having farmers. Farmers need land, land rights, fertilizer, tractors, fuel, transportation to markets, spare parts, knowledge of the price of wheat, money to plant, rain to water, fertilizer to help make it grow, pesticides in order to kill off the bugs, silos to hold the grain. These are a few of the factors that go into having wheat. There is a similar list, for sugar, oil, salt and water.
To make the flour, one needs to have a mill, a man who can run it. There needs to be availability of the wheat, packaging, power to run the mill, a market to sell it to. There needs to be trucks, a viable business model, a reputation, pest control, quality control, agreed upon health standards.
Now when it comes to producing packaging, one needs to have paper bags or cloth bags to put the flour in, they need to have ink to print on the bags, standard definitions of what the item is. What is organic verses non-organic flour?
One also needs to have marketing of the product, quality control for testing and so much more.
So how does this all relate to crypto? Well Bitcoin has been a success, but it has a major problem. It has figured out one or two levels of needed ingredients, but there are so many other factors that it, and many of the alt coin projects have failed to implement properly.
It is true, anyone can run to github and grab some code. Anyone can also open up a cookbook and follow directions. But cooking a loaf of bread is different from running on bread company.
It is not for a lack of trying or a lack of wanting, that people fail. Lots of people open up new business every year. And many of them fail.
It is hard. The skill sets that go into being a developer are different from the skill sets that go into being a farmer, a miller, an artist, a marketer, or anything else.
It gets complicated because you have developers doing things they shouldn’t be doing. Developers should not be doing politics, artistry, public relations, public policy and more.
Each of these skills needs to be appropriately appreciated, and done by people who have those skill sets.
I am not a particularly artistic person. I will never paint a Mono Lisa, and I am ok with that. I understand that, but I can appreciate good artwork when I see it. That said, I know that all projects need to have good user design, good graphic design, good logo design going into to them.
A good logo, and branding can do a lot for a project. And a bad logo can hurt a project. Deciding on a good logo, is difficult in a decentralized world. It can be done and it has been done.
We all know a project needs salt, but how much salt, what type of salt and when the salt should be added are difficult questions. Sometimes breads may put less salt in the dough, but then sprinkle sea salt crystals on top of the bread just before it is baked.
If you want to sell a bread, out in the market place, you have to out compete the other breads. You need to have a better tasting bread, a cheaper bread or a bread that is better in some way.
And it can’t be all things to all people.
There are a lot of factors to success in any project. And many people might know some of the factors of success. Getting the right mixture, getting the right cohesion and getting the right implementation are difficult. This has been where crypto currencies have failed.
Credit card companies, cash, checks, and banks have hundreds of years of experience. They know all the “factors to success.” They have implemented them down to every level. The advantage of the modern farmer is that if he wants to, he can open up a book and knows the exact type of wheat to plant, when to plant it, when to fertilize it and what all the factors to success are. This is in a book, the guide has been written. He, his neighboring farmers as well as the people that sell the supplies, all know and will tell him, what he needs. There is trust, there is a community, and there is support.
If you are not a farmer it is hard to appreciate the value of such a thing. The fact that the farmer can go down to the local store and say, hey, I got this bug eating my crops, or no, I have been a farmer for 20 years, this is different, I have been buying supplies from you I need you to come out and look at my field.
In a decentralized world of crypto currencies, it is hard to get the right balance. Projects take advertising, analytics, hardware, software, customer support, a team atmosphere, newcomers need to be welcomed not tricked, fooled and scammed.
If crypto currencies are truly going to be successful, they need to learn to compete within the real world. Everyone is guessing how much salt to add, and when to add it. It works for a while. Yes, crypto has been successful, we have made bread and it is being eaten and consumed, but now, there is little incentive to do the things that need to be done. Who is going to pay for an expensive customer survey that is going to address the issue of how much salt to add? And who is going to run tests to make sure the right salt is added at the right time. That is not my job.
I see Crypto’s failing on customer relations. I see them failing on security. (people and exchanges keep getting hacked) and I see them failing because people do not want to be associated with what they have become.
When one is setting up a decentralized organization and trying to arrange all of the factors that go into success, it is hard to impossible to get everything perfect. Paying bitcoin miners is important, but it is not the only factors. One needs to have enough miners, but miners are not marketers, or analysts or artists or customer service representatives. And getting all of these factors right is difficult. Companies fail all the time, and they are constantly reinventing themselves to keep from failing. But with these decentralized organizations, needed work does not get done.
The farmer might know the bread is too salty, but hey, no one wants to listen to me. And some customers might like it that way and others do not. And everyone might want the farmer to use less chemicals and produce and “organic bread,” but with no “state certified organic board,” there is no way to “prove” his is “organic.” And the miller might have a rat problem. But there is no health inspector, and so why does the miller care if there are rats in the wheat. He sells the flour by weight and rat poop weighs something too. And someone has posted photos of all the rats in the wheat online, and everyone knows rats exist and there is no marketing board to take consumer complaints of all the rats in the food. Some people might even get sick, but there is not body keeping track. There is not university professor to prove rats are bad, some just say, hey they add to the protein content. The baker says, hey my job is just to mix it up and bake. It is not my job to do marketing surveys, or do security. When someone is hacked in crypto currency, there are major bad consequences. And when people fail to act and when there is not a way to “solve” these problems. It has consequences. All the scammers in crypto are like the rats in the wheat. No one is doing anything, or people are doing very little. There are suggestions and actions that can or could be taken. Without the right actions, this bread loses its appeal.
There can be a lot of reasons why the bread is not selling. Studies need to be done. Statistics need to be complied and actions need to be taken. It might be a rat problem, it might be a marketing problem, it might be a something else. One of the great benefits of centrally managed projects is people can come together, do a study, decide on a plan and make changes. That said, when you don’t have a system in place that allows this to happen, when you don’t have the information flowing to the right decision makers and when you don’t have corrective actions being taken it is hard to improve upon and push forward the needed changes. This is the challenge that decentralized organizations are having. They are stumbling on organization, implementation and on being what the consumers need and want. It is not simple, it is not complicated. It is not one thing, it is many things. That said, all of those factors must be taken into account.