When Satoshi created bitcoin, he solved an old problem for implementing digital cash. So called "double spending" was an issue that had troubled experts in the fields of math and cryptography for quite some time. To put it simply, prior to bitcoin, there was no trustless way to confirm that digital cash transactions did not consist of previously spend amounts, without consulting a central authority.

Cryptocurrency and the Conflicting Interests of Technology Giants

Of course, the technology giants and banks wouldn't be able to monetize open source community projects like bitcoin and Ethereum. Instead, they send representatives around cryptocurrency and finance conferences worldwide, to pitch their agenda to corporate executives.

Some corporate projects are now going as far as to propose that their own "blockchain" systems could be used for real-world use cases; securing the circulation of tangible objects. Corporate influence might be too far reaching as we're now even seeing state regulators promoting their agenda.

I bet you'd love the look on the face of a state-funded researcher that's being asked "what happens to your blockchain-secured supply chain tracking system if someone puts your proprietary sensor under a cube of ice instead of refrigerating transferred products?"...

The praise such lobbyists get is simply unfaire when you compare what they have achieved compared the otherwise shunned ICOs and tokens on Ethereum's blockchain. There independent developers have created entire ecosystems with millions in USD value being transacted every day using tokens of functional projects.

Politics and Corporate Interests

Politicians, regulators and executives of public service enterprises related to the field of finance are often invited in cryptocurrency-related events. One Greece's own EU parliament MPs, Eva Kaili, is a prime example of this. Like several other officials, she spends more time attending conferences as an invited speaker other than voting in parliament sessions. And she's not the only one. Politicians and executives of state enterprises in Malta and Cyprus are also common offenders.

But can government officials really be blamed? Its hard to say. Aside of the fact that MPs skip representing their voters in parliament to receive fully paid vacations while they're hailed as progressive by the crowd attending conferences, there virtues of corporate investment might make politicians think that they're doing the right thing.

In the eyes of politicians, high-skilled employers get more work, corporate profits get taxed, new businesses open, universities get more opportunities to cooperate with companies etc... The EU in specific is slowly but steadily constructing policy and granting funding based on certain notions about blockchain that appear to align more with corporate interests.

The Fragile Future of the Blockchain

While corporate investments keep flowing to blockchain-related ventures, they might be contributing to the "blockchain space" being deemed as a bubble. Imagine a few years from now, after all the investment, de-regulation and man hours, what if no real world use had proven to benefit from the "blockchains" that corporations were working on? Investors will back out, developers will have to find work in other fields and politicians might scale back favorable regulation, thus hurting crypto-finance through collateral damage.

The inconsistencies of the rationale behind using a blockchain without a cryptocurrency backing it are many. Just to name a few:

POW is an integral part of the robustness of digital transactions (in terms of security) via the blockchain, lack of such makes any blockchain less secure.

The disassociation of a digital cash currency from blockchains removes the core common interest of participants to keep the system secure and remain neutral.

Inserting real world information into a blockchain can prevents trustless transactions as it introduces an opportunity to lie, something that would be with the way crypto transactions are propagated nodes for equal cross-validation of purely digital information.

To make a long story short, false advertising about blockchain technology by corporations is an issue that affects all people using cryptocurrency. The promoted notion of disassociation between cryptocurrency and blockchain tech does a disservice to cryptocurrency's ecosystem. What we can do about it is to try to use any influence we have as a community in promoting facts to combat this trend.

You can help by writing in your social media, posting on your blog, writing to newspapers, talking to MPs... And don't forget, next time you have the opportunity to speak publicly against any corporate executive or official in a relevant event, use your mic time to state some of the many inconsistencies in the marketing for "blockchains" without crypto. If even a penny of investment is prevented from benefiting falsely advertised blockchain platforms, it's still a win for cryptocurrency.