In this video, Joshua Henslee discusses the short-term thinking that plagues the digital currency industry and explains some of the consequences. You can watch the video directly or read a summary of what is discussed below.
Short-term thinking and its links to social media
Henslee begins by discussing the rise of social media and its effects on the behavior of users. Among other negative impacts, Henslee believes this has a considerable impact on the memory and attention of those addicted to it.
Henslee notes how when different global events occur, platforms like Twitter have an incentive to keep users engaged for as long as possible because of their ad-based revenue model. Therefore, they keep feeding users anything and everything to trigger their emotions and keep their attention, causing users to forget the last thing and move on to the next thing in rapid succession.
This can also be seen in the digital currency space. One meme coin after another captures the attention of traders and speculators, and before one has finished pumping, another has caught their attention. Most people are only interested in quick, short-term gains from pumps. In Henlee’s view, even two years is short-term, and to get to long-term, people should start thinking in blocks of five years or more.
For coins like BSV, linked to an ecosystem full of long-term thinkers who want to create real value, this causes the majority of the market to dismiss it as not worth looking at. However, Henslee rightly notes that even BSV has offered superior returns to many traditional investments like bonds. People forget that even 7-10% is traditionally considered a good return on investment. Many people’s expectations are distorted, and when they compare BSV to other coins, it triggers either disinterest or jealousy.
Seeing the big picture going forward
This 48-hour mindset also causes its victims to not be able to project forward into the long-term future. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Henslee reminds us. He thinks that, in general, BSV users do have a longer-term mindset. He’s highly optimistic about what’s happening in the ecosystem. He notes that many BSV users and developers don’t even use social media, so it seems quieter than it is in reality.
Again thanks to short-term thinking, we don’t look back far enough, either. We don’t remember the Ford Model T and how innovative it was at the time, nor how things have evolved since. We don’t remember Jeff Bezos in his office with a spray-painted Amazon sign 20 years ago. Likewise, we don’t remember that this industry started with Bitcoin, and it was the only relevant digital currency until around 2015. Another good example of short-term thinking in the space is the recent NFT craze. Just a year later, many of these NFTs are forgotten or worthless, and users have moved on to the next thing.
However, Henslee is surprised at how fast things are changing and believes that 2022 will be a very interesting year for BSV. We’ve already seen 10 million on-chain transactions in a day, and BSV is growing quickly. He believes that much of what is going to happen will blindside the average user who is stuck in short-term thinking mode.
Watch: CoinGeek New York presentation, BSV Blockchain: It’s About Time
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