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“Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

— Bill Gates

Be more efficient

Greetings, my precious virtual friends.

I’ve missed you and I hope you’ve missed me too. 

Since we’ve been apart, I made a hilarious and misguided effort to “learn more about crypto.” 

My newest take is that if you’re brand new, it’s easy to get started, and if you’re super native, it’s easy to go deeper on your expertise du jour. But if you fall into the purgatory of knowing a lot but not like…a lot lot, it can be hard to know which way to go. 

So I thought, okay, Alex…you work at a company that is a top crypto information business…all the geniuses here have been where you are…just ask them what to do.

So I did. 

The overwhelming advice was to just start with the companies themselves. Look up what they do and natural rabbit holes will follow. 

So I did. 

And I know more now! But I’m not here to take you on that journey today. No, no — my value to this audience is not in knowledge sharing but in self-deprecating humor and accurate yet spicy hot takes. 

This was my observation: The number of crypto companies that use the word “efficiency” on their homepage and/or in their primary marketing is bananaland. It’s almost everyone. I’m not going to blow up your spot in case you (correctly) market with us, but you know who you are.

Now, for individual companies, you can see the logic. In the grand scheme of the whole crypto ecosystem, at the point in time you do only what you do, in that very specific moment, it might be efficient.

But if you put all the pieces together, I think we can all agree crypto isn’t efficient. 

Here’s a metaphor. 

Let’s say I’ve borrowed a book from my sister. We’ll say that because it’s true that I have a book I need to return to her. It wasn’t very good, but don’t tell her I said that. 

I live in NYC and she lives in North Carolina. Let’s say I choose to return the book by driving it to her when I did not have any other reason to be in North Carolina. So I get in the car, drive eight hours, knock on her door and hand her the book.

Then I turn around and say, “Wow, did you see that immediate transfer of ownership?” Instantly I transferred my wealth to her and we can both see the evidence of the transfer…efficiency! 

You can’t cherry-pick the parts that work. 

For example, I personally find it exhausting that bridging is a thing and I hope we can all agree it should be a short-term solution. 

The lack of interoperability between networks is like…if I’m going to visit my sister in North Carolina and I can only take a car OR a train OR a plane. 

They individually all have downsides. A train has obvious geographical and network limitations. Planes are the fastest but you might land quite far away from your destination. Cars are the slowest and — statistically — the most dangerous. 

But because we are eternally-optimistic crypto people, we wouldn’t even debate the downsides in this metaphor. You would say, “I am staunchly a car person because it has the benefit of taking you door-to-door and trains and planes lack infra.” 

After all of the dust settles on this debate, someone has to realize that taking a car to the airport is imperfect, but much more efficient.

I get that what I’m describing is sort of bridging, but it’s not really. But I said what I said, so there. 

Also, for being an industry that aims for mass adoption, it’s not very efficient to scale.

I recently learned about blockchain bloat which is honestly the most relatable thing I’ve encountered in crypto to date. It’s where a blockchain gets too fat and can’t fit into its favorite jeans anymore so it just sits on the couch and complains about how it’s so fat it can’t move. 

Crypto desperately wants to be Joey Chestnut, but sometimes it’s more like that guy who threw up on someone trying to do the 9-9-9 challenge (you eat nine hot dogs, drink nine beers and do it during a baseball game, so for nine innings).

A baseball and hot dog metaphor during the Olympics? Who could question my patriotism now?

Okay, so the networks communicate worse than a dude with a mouthful of hot dog, and even within the networks we’re struggling to scale efficiently.  

I have one last thing to say. It’s annoying but I have to, and it’s not, like, great for the environment. 

I honestly think some of the coolest environmental technology innovations are going to be a product of crypto, but for the time being I don’t think we’ve earned a high-five from Gen Z just yet. 

All I’m sayin’ is…we use the word efficiency a lot. Arguably too much, given we haven’t earned it.

I think we can earn it. I think we should. And if you believe, as I do, that the current ethos is to hide in infra because we’re afraid of failing at apps, then it’s the perfect time! 

Take Uber to the airport. Eat like an athlete. Compute greener. Be efficient. It's our duty and our mandate. 

I love you and I’ll miss you,

— Alex Gray

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