Funeral for the Blockchain

With Apologies to Mark Antony.

Friends, colleagues, internet strangers, thanks for your time.
I'm writing to bury blockchain, not to praise it.
Speculative excess lives long after the pop;
But good ambition evaporates in the flash.
So let it be with blockchain. Noble promoters
Have told you their token will change the entire world.
That's a lie, perhaps a scam or a grievous fraud,
And the blockchain has answered for it grievously.
Today, despite all distributed best efforts
(These are devoted entrepreneurs, remember;
Just confused between activity and progress),
The blockchain's funerary has found your inbox.
Data ought to be my friend, faithful just to me,
But don't fix that, tokenize everything instead,
Push hordes to mine monetary pluperfection.
The dream was money freedom, in both speech and beer,
Labor paid promptly, with no skimming off the top:
Were dreams of humane money just too ambitious?
Traders have all lost the meaning of investment;
And our beautiful blockchain is stuck trading scrip.
Yet promoters crow they are all changing the world,
Their enrichment is just lucky coincidence.
True decentralized currency, free of borders,
No middlemen. It was never going to work:
Intermediation pays too well, hype is free,
And deep down, everyone wants their very own lambo.
Sure, our greed is good, an honorable impulse.
I speak not to disprove some internet strangers,
But to remind of the real world I know well.
You stretched towards the unbanked once, not without cause
Why insist on speculation, then, to save them?
Self-interest! The unbridled free market beast,
Which leads men to lose all their reason! Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin beside the blockchain,
And I must pause till it sees some utility.

You can watch my somewhat more serious Blockchain keynote at CFA Society NY’s 2nd Annual Blockchain Conference here.