And how do you know that you’re mad?’

‘To begin with,’ said the Cat, ‘a dog’s not mad. You grant that?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Alice.

‘Well, then,’ the Cat went on, ‘you see, a dog growls when it’s angry, and wags its tail when it’s pleased. Now I growl when I’m pleased, and wag my tail when I’m angry. Therefore, I’m mad.’

Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

Today’s news are just bizarre. They read like something from anti-utopias or weird trips to beyond the looking glass. Yes friends, we are living in a world where characters of Lewis Carrol and George Orwell seem to have jumped off the pages of books and straight into our daily lives.

Check out this article about creepy Amazon door cameras that watch and record everything in the neighborhood. I gues someone watched Sliver with Sharon Stone one too many times. It is hard to get surprised by all the insanity perpetrated by the tech giants of the FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) fame. In case you haven’t noticed they all think 1984 is an instruction manual, except Orwell forgot about VCs. Doors that actually watch and record passersby! Soviet communists dreamed about such a technology.

But you know what, we are not helpless. There are lots of ways we can defend normal life, not the least of which is creating alternatives to big brothers (or at least cousins) with large capitalizations. Bitcoin and Torrent paved the way for that. Peer-to-peer technology is amazing today.

In case you did not notice, I love Bitcoin. But somewhere along the way a strange thing happened. Many Bitcoin maximalists got into denying the power of blockchain to do anything other than what Bitcoin does. It is not hard to see why. Anyone who wanted to knock Bitcoin used the “Blockchain is great, it is Bitcoin that sucks” charade. Particularly hilarious was this attempt by Michael Bloomberg and Lloyd Blankfein at pushing this line

However, the response “Blockchain sucks, it is Bitcoin that matters” is equally wrong. This is the logic of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. You cannot simply draw opposite conclusions on everything from the “Blockchain, not Bitcoin” crowd and stay logical. Blockchain is way to transfer value in a decentralized manner, without a trusted party. This is useful in just about any human endeavor, because just about anything requires an economic ecosystem where value is transferred. So no, blockchain is not overhyped; just like internet business was not over-hyped in 1999, despite losing 80% of market value in 2000.

In particular, blockchain can help us get rid of Facebook, Twitter, and Google and yes, even Amazon. You can start educating yourself and building something to keep us out of digital prison. Or you can join us as we are building out decentralized alternative to Facebook/Twitter and Amazon. The bets test starts on Jan 3rd, 2019. If you join during beta test, you will always have Founding Member status in the network, but most importantly you will be building a freer world.

Here is more info on the project:

We all know that current social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others have grown too powerful and are using that power to bad ends. We need decentralized fair platforms where power is not wielded arbitrarily by a small group of people.

That is why we are releasing a new decentralized platform called Pocketnet. We are launching a beta test on January 3rd, 2019 and you are invited to be part of it. If you join the beta test, you can actually shape the network that will act like David to Silicon Valley’s Goliaths. Pocketnet is open-sourced and peer-to-peer. On Pocketnet you own your subscribers, you sell your own advertising, and nobody can take what you built away from you. All revenue on the platfrom is shared between participants, there is no corporation. Pocketnet can be launched on any computer around the world, no shadow banning possible, because anyone can verify what happens.

Pocketnet uses blockchain technology, but very differently from any cryptocurrency.

To check out the project and join beta test go to pocketnet.app.