Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon have established themselves as monopolies across a multitude of industries, from search and smartphones, to social media and ecommerce.
Their dominance and global influence has led many in the media to label this group as the “Four Horseman”, an ominous biblical reference to the Four Horseman that bring the World to its end through an apocalypse.
However, like all monopolies, these companies are not immune to the ‘innovator’s dilemma’, a phenomena that occurs when leading organizations lose their market leadership, or even fail, as a result of new, unexpected competitors rising and taking over the market.
The “four horsemen” have been known to tackle the innovator’s dilemma through aggressive acquisitions. Examples include Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion and WhatsApp for $19 billion, and Google buying Youtube for $1 billion.
With each new deal, talented and ambitious founders traded in their independence and control for life changing sums of money, forever eliminating the possibility of what could have been had they decided to take on the market leaders.
Blockchain technology has created an entirely new emerging market, where a handful of brilliant founders are pioneering a decentralized revolution using technology that promises to be more secure, efficient and fair for everyone. It doesn’t take a genius to guess where the Four Horsemen are secretly looking to infiltrate next, but unlike the sweep of accusations that occurred over the past 10 years, something tells me that today’s new kids on the block are less inclined to “sell out” to the man.
Last week, rumors were circulating that Facebook was looking to acquire Coinbase, and a few months prior, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin revealed that he was pouched by Google to come and work for them. As expected, he humorously put the decision up to a vote on Twitter.
For the founders of successful blockchain projects, there’s an inherent recognition that what they’re building is more than just another cool app, but an orchestrated social experiment powered by decentralized technology.
A system like the Ethereum blockchain requires rules of governance, a community of developers numbering in the thousands, and highly complex consensus mechanisms that must find a delicate balance between security, privacy and speed.
As if that wasn’t difficult enough, Founders like Brian Armstrong, Changpeng Zhao and Vitalik Buterin are faced with the same level of scrutiny that decade-old publicly traded companies’ experience, despite running what are still technically ‘startups’.
The challenges are immense, yet we can already begin to see glimpses of the long-term rewards that await the founders who operate these blockchain companies: billions of dollars in wealth generated, and a solidified status as industry pioneers. It’s safe to say this is more than what today’s tech giants can offer.
Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google have created a reality in which technology is present in every aspect of our lives, which unfortunately comes at a price of lost privacy, and restrictions to autonomy and free speech. The defending argument has always been that these are private companies that can do as they please, and if you don’t wish to compromise your privacy and autonomy, simply don’t use them.
Fortunately, with the rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms, there truly is a better alternative, and right now, nothing could be more dangerous than the idea of regaining our online privacy and autonomy through the blockchain, only to have it ‘bought back’ by the centralized corporations who stole it in the first place.
Decentralization is the primary value proposition that was sold to us by a handful of successful founders who millions of people now look to for a way out of the corrupt, censorship filled corporate structures imposed by the Four Horseman.
To turn around and cash out now would not only destroy the authenticity of these founders, but also the prospects of a truly decentralized, censorship resistant future.
This post was first published on: Jul 3, 2018
