Game of Protocols and Candlesticks

A competition among players is challenging if they know what they are competing with. However, if they are to row their boats on a bicycle contest, then we have an unprecedented degree of misalignment. Certainly, they will either end up loosing for real or dream of finishing the line - winning in illusion.

Such is the world of the crypto market we are in today. If you have been monitoring every movement of these crypto coin prices, chances are - you are most likely invested in any one of this rowing participant in a cycling race. A wave of green charts indicative of a positive earnings, increases the scale of your "feel good" meter of a self made price predictor (though in reality, it makes no difference to a blind betting). And a ripple of red charts highlighting a negative turn of event, erases what you have just earned from your "feel good" register, sending shivers to your vein - prompting you to adjust the finish line further again. In reality, you have not moved an inch in the actual world of competition you have just participated in.

For clarity's sake, let us step back and define the very essence of the crypto rivalry (the tournament) that you have just involved yourself with. In a tournament, there will always be one winner - a zero-sum game. Such is the nature of the crypto market you are in. And the players (the crypto coins) are in the field trying to win that game.

What is the game? A Protocol Game. It is a game on which the winning rule (the protocol) is set to govern the exchange or transmission of data in the next generation of the Internet. It is a battle of protocols where every participant is incentivized to outshone the other. Not a friendly environment indeed, but a domain where one is set to annihilate the other.

For the non-techies, imagine the Internet. It does not make any sense to keep two Internets alive while half of the world is surfing Internet A, the other is browsing Internet B. Only one must survive.

If the Internet analogy does not fit well with you, then imagine Facebook competing with Friendster and Google+. It does not make any sense to keep a third of the world in Facebook, while the other two thirds are liking every posts they can see in Friendster and Google+. This is inefficient and will initially result to users creating different accounts on each network and eventually ditching what they see as irrelevant. Again, ending with one dominant social network.

For now, the crypto market you are watching is mostly represented by coins competing to produce the best candle stick a buyer (the you) will get attracted to. That is OK if and only if the competition is all about creating the best candlestick. But you have to think twice, and should peek in with an open mind and curiosity if one of the player has started building the electric grid as he invents electricity. It is not a race of the candlestick anymore.

The truth is, one player is already building the Metanet that will subsume the rest. Like it or not, Bitcoin SV that is.