I met a bunch of college students at the MIT Cryptocurrency Bootcamp. Here was my advice…

Hint: Don’t be stupid like us

Last week, I travelled from Silicon Valley to Cambridge, Massachusetts to speak at the MIT Cryptocurrency Bootcamp. The event was a week-long intensive workshop where 25 exceptional students learned about hardcore cryptography, live coded blockchain applications, and developed entrepreneurial skills to guide them through startup life.

They say a CEO should strive to be surrounded by people smarter than he is. Well, that was easy to accomplish with this group.

Superheroes in training.

I shared my ongoing experience at the Boost.vc accelerator building my startup, PopChest, and geeked out on using blockchain technology to power our community-supported video platform. Along the way, I tried to offer advice from the perspective of someone that’s not an engineer.

The Strength and Beauty of Being Different

My background is in the entertainment industry. So, when I see a problem I generally relate to it in the language of film and television. Since the Satoshi whitepaper kicked off this new age of cryptocurrency, blockchain development has been stunted by a dynamic that is similar to what we saw at the birth of the motion picture camera.

In the late 1800's, Thomas Edison (…who was like Elon Musk on crack, Adderall, and steroids) was instrumental in creating the motion picture camera. In addition to the early equipment, he also built “The Black Maria” which is widely seen as the first American studio.

Their movies were horrible!

Early footage from The Black Maria.

That’s because they weren’t what we now consider to be movies at all. Rather, they were “filmed theater”. The first films were, literally, a motion picture camera pointed at a theatrical play. This is the worst of both worlds. You get neither the nuance of a live theater performance nor take advantage of the creative opportunities afforded by this new technology. Total lose-lose.

We find ourselves recreating the same mistakes with bitcoin and blockchain technology.

Here we have “peer-to-peer electronic cash” and what’s the first thing we do with this decentralized currency? Put it all in an opaque, centralized pile like the ones at Mt. Gox, Cryptsy, and Bitfinex! Now, we lose the benefits of a truly p2p network while sacrificing the protections of the legacy financial system. Again, total lose-lose.

Combatting the human tendency to use the new thing to recreate the old thing is a major challenge and opportunity for the entrepreneur.

From “filmed theater” to “cinema”

Eventually, things changed in American filmmaking. We started to move the camera and create a new level of dynamism within the frame. Editing gave us the ability to transform space and time simply by rearranging the order our minds process images. A new way of communication that used its own language, its own aesthetic, and its own rules came to life.

The people and companies that master new technology on its own terms are the ones we continue to celebrate.

“Citizen Kane”. A great work of American cinema.

Who will be the blockchain version of Welles, Disney, Kubrick, Lucas, and Spielberg?

In the end, I didn’t offer advice as much as I issued a challenge. Don’t chain yourself to the way things have always been done. You have fresh eyes to see the world anew. The best way to predict the future is to create it. Now, go build tomorrow!