Technology For Bad Guys

Bitcoin, and particularly the blockchain technology was supposed to change the world. That was 15 years ago. And the world went crazy indeed. Particularly in the startup / VC world blockchain was the only thing that counted. Fast forward to 2024 and we barely have a trace of that. I mean Bitcoin still exists, mostly as a (very niche) speculative instrument. And also serves very well the dark communities. I complained on that back in 2021. About half of Bitcoin transactions serve illegal activity.

And even if legal - the speculative and mining for money part - it does not do any good either. Investment groups have been reigniting decommissioned power plants. Generating air pollution. And noise - to the extent that people decide to sue Bitcoin "mines" operators.

Generally speaking - it is useless.

Enter now the 2024 and the Artificial Intelligence craze. Myriads of promises and tons of "cool" demos. Again the startup and VCs have gone crazy about it. But the net gain for societies? More chaos coming mostly from the ever present "deep doubt" era we found ourselves in. Troll farms fighting each other and a situation when the first question we ask on any news item is: is it real or fake again?

We are about to see the outcome of the US presidential elections. I have bad feelings about the day after. Whatever the outcome, it will not be trusted and there will be thousands of conspiracy theories about who skewed the results and how.

Of course there is hope we will get some gains from AI over time. The question is if the gains are worth the turmoil?