Currency Hype vs Business Model Change

Every second person you know is trading on crypto currency. It has now become the main street casino punting. Many countries are clamping down on this for illicit money laundering and people are scrambling to create new exchanges in the dark web. 

Step back and step out.

Do not miss the real power of the technology behind. The Distributed App world on Ethereum ( in many ways not very dissimilar to Apple app store or Google Play Store) has many applications that are rewriting business models in a number of industries. From automated claim processing triggered by trusted reference data ( Farmer gets paid insurance money when weather.com confirms draught in a region) to transparent running of lotteries, the applications are end less. They are removing middle agents/ knocking down traditional cost structures and bringing transparency that never existed in many industries.

Media does not talk about this, there is no 'hot stock tip to make quick buck' and nobody talks about these.

Agreed that the underlying blockchain technology has its teething troubles, has to overcome some objections but so did e-commerce in its early days. How many of us were comfortable banking online or using credit card online ? Today it has become passé. Same thing will happen to Blockchain. The teething troubles will get ironed out, it will get more secure and the adoption will spiral. 

The true power of Blockchain is not in the headlines on Bitcoin prices! It is in destroying a traditional industry business model for a better one!

Elephant and million blind men

we all know the story of Elephant and 4 blind men ( no offence to the male gender!) 

Something similar is happening in the Startup world. There are some exceptionally strong technical folks who want to make a mark in the world but dont know the business context where their technology skill makes sense.

Ask them the use case / ROI/business justification of technology and they draw blank.


On the other side are the marketers/business folks who can sell anything in the world but are peddling 'me too' stuff wasting their time/money/resources.

Ask them about their plan to stay competitive with a sustainable moat and future proofing and they are short of breath.

Complicating this situation is the lack of respect for the other side. Technical /Delivery folks do not respect marketers and marketers look down upon the technical folks as clueless about the world. 

The % of people who make themselves rounded to know all facets of a business is so small - its one more reason world has 1% rich folks and 70% middle class!

It takes more than one skill to make money and make a business. You can only benefit from appreciating the value everyone brings to the table and more importantly a well rounded you is more critical to this world!

Is Reskilling part of your financial planning?

Business and Innovation cycles are getting shorter and industries are getting disrupted on a daily basis , be it the DistributedApps on the Ethereum platform or Amazonisation or startups in west coast/Bangalore/Israel/Ireland.

While job categories are disappearing, the implication is that skills you learnt a decade ago are not relevant any more. Reskilling will need to repeat every 10 years if not earlier in your active work life. While many plan for retirement and healthcare, very few plan funds for reskilling in later parts of life.  

It would be prudent to plan funds every 10 years as reskilling funds as part of your financial planning.  

This also might mean that you better invest in specific skills that you can learn and deploy in shorter times at smaller costs , rather than spend lacs/thousands of dollars to get one degree.

Better spend 50k every 5 years to learn new specific skills quickly rather than spend 200k in one go .