What You Need to Learn to become an Expert in Blockchain Tech
Study Mechanism Design, Distributed Computing, and Cryptography
A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money when the crypto bubble pops. To be honest it’s not worth the time to study the market and try to figure out when it will pop because frankly, no one knows.
A better approach would be to look at the underlying fundamentals that are driving this global phenomenon. It is truly a revolutionary technology, and changing your career and entering the blockchain space will pay dividends long term, but you need to be careful about how you approach it.
If you start day trading, researching ICOs, or doing anything else that is short-sighted, your success will not last. Everyone looks intelligent in a bull market. Even if you’ve heard this saying before, you’ll probably still experience some amount of confirmation that your trading ability is above average. It is how we humans are wired.
The Fundamentals
You’re probably thinking what you should be doing to get involved in the blockchain space, and it is quite simple. Study the underlying computer science fields that gave birth to blockchain technology. These fields are Cryptography, Distributed Computing, and Mechanism Design. Alone they have all been studied for years, but when Satoshi Nakamoto brought them together it created a new revolution.
Studying these will greatly mitigate your risk if you get involved in this space. It is a more robust knowledge base to have compared to being a crypto investor, or even a Solidity developer, as it is less certain that Solidity will be around in 10 years, compared to these computer science fields Knowledge in these fundamental fields is highly sought out in the blockchain space, and the amount of people putting in the hard work to learn these topics are disproportionally skewed to the amount of money flying into the space, meaning it will definitely be worth your time to study them. These fundamental topics have been around for decades, and have not changed because of some hype cycle. Wether the bubble crashes or falls, this tech is here to stay.
Cryptography
Cryptography is one of the most essential concepts to understand of our day and age.
In short, what this implies is that as our assets are becoming more and more digitized (think about how much data is worth, and how the largest companies in the world are all data aggregators) we are going to have to secure them with more advanced cryptography to keep them safe.
In a world with physical assets (gold, paper money, etc.) locks, castle walls, and bank vaults secure assets. In the digital age with digital assets, encryption algorithms are used. Expect this trend to continue.
Comparing this to a past with a large amount of physical assets, we can look at medieval Europe. Feudal lords worked extremely hard to protect land, which involved physical protection mechanisms such as a horse riding knight that strong-arms peasants into plowing the fields.