by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright April 2019
One of the places nanotech has made a big impact on business is in the Bitcoin Boom -- a boom that has now become a fad and is likely to fade into obscurity soon. But while it boomed it made big business for companies such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices that made the chips that supported cryptocurrency "mining" -- the intensive computing required to support the blockchain activities that are at the heart of cryptocurrency activities.
Cryptocurrencies first appeared in 2014 and Bitcoin quickly became the most famous. The early goal of these currencies was to replace nation-oriented monies with something nation-independent. That goal was never reached but what the cryptocurrencies became instead was a place to store wealth and increase it -- they became gold-alternatives rather than money-alternatives.
In that role they took off and became popular and high-profile. As that happened then coming up with chips and companies that could support their computing style -- block chain computing -- also took off and became popular.
Blockchain computing is computationally intensive -- each transaction takes a lot of computing power to complete. So as cryptocurrencies boomed the demand for chips and companies that could handle the these specialized computing activities boomed as well. The term for doing this style of computing became "mining". This relates to nanotech because specialized chips to do this computing became popular. One example is the company Nvidia boomed as it supported this activity with specialized chips it designed.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies boomed between 2014 and 2018. Their values and the volume of transactions both increased substantially. But in 2019 the interest has declined. This activity as a gold substitute has diminished in interest because the value of Bitcoin has stopped booming, and over the last six months of 2018 it has instead declined dramatically in value. This has dramatically reduced its popularity as a gold substitute.
As a result there is a good possibility that cryptocurrencies are now becoming a fad rather than a new pillar of finance.
If interest in cryptocurrencies continues to decline, then the industries that service this industry will decline as well. Those that stay successful will move on to new opportunities. Those that don't move on will decline as the industry does. They, and the industry, may become one of the "remember when" activities of the 2010's.
This 31 Mar 19 WSJ article, Raising Money in the Crypto World Has Gotten a Lot Harder The market for initial coin offerings, which boomed last year, has ground to a halt by Paul Vigna, talks about how the cryptocurrency market is fading.
From the article, "The ICO market is dead. Just about, anyway.
Startups raising money via initial coin offerings brought in just $118 million in the first quarter, according to data from research site TokenData. In the same period in 2018, companies raised $6.9 billion."
"ICOs began in 2014 but exploded in 2017, when the software to run an ICO was standardized. That made it easy for startups of any size to try to raise money from the public. Cryptocurrency prices were also soaring, which emboldened investors to try their luck."
This 28 Mar 19 Economist article, Flaws in Bitcoin make a lasting revival unlikely The latest boom and bust invite comparisons with past financial manias, also talks about current cryptocurrency problems.
From the article, "The speed with which the bubble inflated and then popped invites comparisons with past financial manias, such as the Dutch tulip craze in 1636-37 and the rise and collapse of the South Sea Company in London in 1720."
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