One of the most responsible people creating a research effort dedicated to cryptocurrency in a large American university is pronounced against the initial offerings of coins (ICO).
Addressing attendees on the second day of the Scaling Bitcoin conference at Stanford University, Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, gave a passionate talk about complex systems that were trying to think hard wider societal impacts than Bitcoin could have. rejected that these motivations should be purely economic.
Extending this criticism, Ito is attacking ICOs, or sales in which newly created cryptocurrencies are offered to buyers as a way to boot open source protocols, going as far as affirm that those who practice this practice steal money. from an under-educated public.
Ito told the crowd:
"The problem is that we create a system in which people can pump or throw and speculate. Anyone who has issued an ICO must sit and meditate: do you improve the society or do you unfairly of money? "
On the other hand, Ito defined the "whole point" of cryptocurrency as the use of technology to prevent societal ills resulting, he said, from economies defined by government currencies and institutions necessary for their use.
Ito described the problems he sees in the chronic sector – going so far as to make comparisons with the Internet bubble in terms of possible repercussions on cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin, whose community largely disapproved of the practice
"I do not want to be involved in a business in an ICO, because we are in a period of history, it attracts all the wrong people." Even if you had to run a perfect ICO, I think still attract the wrong people, "said Ito.
Still, he expressed his optimism, the spinoffs that would result would force the bad actors, allowing the remaining bitcoin builders to collaborate better and build for the future.
In particular, Ito supported the idea that cryptocurrencies should think more about their intent than their value, one of its examples concentrating positively on the island economies of gambling games. online role as an example of restrictions that can increase the value of an asset.
"Does making money make us happier? We have this really stupid currency that makes us be greedy and I think we want to think of ways to break that pattern," he said. he continued.
Internet but bitcoin
Elsewhere, Ito discussed the history of the Internet and the formation of its various protocols, as well as the conditions in which they were allowed to flourish.
Ito then defined large companies like Cisco and AOL as those that eventually developed by relying on networks formed by communities that, in his opinion, were not motivated by profit. . At the same time, however, he wished to point out that these networks have developed substantial commercial value, eventually even defying successful partitioned business models.
Here, Ito compared San Francisco's startup Coinbase to AOL and R3 in Mintel, showing how successful blockchain companies today must provide a full stack of services that could one day be served by networks. open.
Still, Ito defined Bitcoin as the blockchain network best placed to successfully gnaw these layers, even though he called the market "pre-TCP / IP" by describing where he believes the development is in. relationship with the internet.
Notably, his comments have also given a voice of support to the technical community around bitcoin, one that has often been attacked by companies as shortsighted for its conservative design approach.
Ito said:
"We have not won the battle yet. [But] I think the interesting thing is that Bitcoin Core has a lot more brain firepower than any other network. "
Image via Pete Rizzo for CoinDesk
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