Saying Goodbye to the Blockchain Romantics

She previously lead Asia growth initiatives for the cryptocurrency wallet startup Blockchain.

As crypto prices continue to fall, 2018 is ending on a sour note for the global blockchain community.

Ever since the blockchain was conceived, the debate regarding "Decentralization" has been at the forefront of discourse.

Miners and mining machines were never envisaged to be part of the core infrastructure powering any blockchain technology.

The bitcoin blockchain is maintained by the Bitcoin Core team.

While there has always been politics in any process involving people, with regulators now piling into the mix, I predict that the politicization of blockchain will only continue to get worse.

At the same time, if we adopt more transparent algorithms and mechanisms, we can spread any risks currently characteristic of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrency.

Despite the various problems of traditional institutions and organizations, the principles and design assumptions of the blockchain make it difficult to convince me that a large-scale decentralized system will be more reliable than a centralized institution that is regulated, protected and balanced.

For one, it means people who think the blockchain will change everything are being too romantic about decentralization.

If a blockchain project says they are seeking decentralization, and can safely and reliably process 100,000 transactions per second, keep in mind: many have had this goal in the past, and none have truly succeeded.