The FinTech Bubble - My Response

posted by Collin Canright on June 16, 2016 - 2:13pm

My response after reading professor Joi Ito's piece at https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/06/14/-the-fintech-bu.html

I agree with the broad strokes of the argument that the rush into blockchain shared public ledger technology is “a bit over its skis”. The focus, as Mr. Ito says, should be on building the infrastructure in a way that works for everyone. Yet it will take years to build a means of exchanging and accounting for value in a way that, to use the terms of groups working to upgrade the U.S. payments infrastructure, is ubiquitous, interoperable, and secure. In the meantime, it likely will be a free for all, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Blockchain mania is terribly difficult to stay on top of, with new developments almost daily. Some of them will lead to tremendous innovations that a measured approach likely would not produce. I assume people overinvest lest they get left behind. Mistakes will be made, and money will be lost. It doesn’t seem so out of touch as dot.com though, and most of this is being built on top of the internet infrastructure that resulted from the last bubble, which may give a leg up this time around.