Apple’s Wozniak Calling the Blockchain Kettle Black

The co-founder of Apple and Bitcoin supporter went on record yesterday saying that he thinks that blockchain today shows all the signs of a bubble.

Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve jobs in 1976 and is widely considered the man behind the engineering of their first computer, was on stage Tuesday at the NEX technology conference in New York talking about the future of blockchain technology. As he sees it the hype around blockchain today is much like the early days of the dotcom era. He told the audience: “It was a bubble, and I feel that way about blockchain,”

As a large portion of the early internet companies promising great things so will those using blockchain today was the overall message Wozniak was putting out. Though he believes in the potential of the technology calling it “decentralized and totally trustworthy”, he also believes that it is going to take time to see companies fulfill their promises. “If you look now you say all that internet stuff happened, we got it, it just took a while,” Wozniak said at the NEX conference before adding:

 “It doesn’t change in a day, a lot of the blockchain ideas that are really good by coming out early they can burn themselves out by not being prepared to be stable in the long run.”

Was Wozniak being ironic or just using selective memory while talking about hype and the benefits of a decentralized technology?  As the co-founder of a company that took product hyping to a new level, while maintaining proprietary software and hardware in order to keep consumers locked into a circle of upgrade and replace, it seems he would know a lot about one and not much of the other. The grandiose centralization of Apple’s products has made it billions of dollars, while consumers still have minimal control over “their” devices aside from what the mothership allows.

Apple is responsible for many breakthrough products in its history, starting in 1977 with the Apple II, but it has also created some spectacular washouts because their devices don’t play well with others. From the Newton to Firewire, Apple’s obsession with keeping their tech secretive is the epitome of centralization and if that is the case, doomed to be left behind by decentralized companies in Wozniak’s own estimation.

Wozniak illustrated this perfectly when he said Ethereum will outlive the current hype bubble because of the platform’s utility. A utility that comes from allowing companies like J.P. Morgan to develop smart contracts as well as independent developers to create apps.

Though Wozniak is known as a Bitcoin Bull and still calls it “just amazing,” he sold all but one coin during the height of the tokens value.  As he was quoted by CNBC “All of the sudden it was way down, then way up in the sky, I got scared, and sold everything but one bitcoin.” Showing he knows how to bail out when a “bubble” is bursting.

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