There is no doubt that the leadership of any project, company, or country is an important component of its success or lack thereof. This is likely because humans often gauge the integrity of a venture by consciously and subconsciously determining if they can trust the person(s) who are responsible for the venture. There is also an essential trust that is established by simply knowing there are human reputations (egos) at stake if a project does not perform well. This is why it is beneficial to have transparent leadership (responsible parties), for a given venture.
Conversely, there is an extra risk in concentrating a large portion of a brand’s goodwill (subjective values, largely based on public perceptions), with one or two people. What if those people die, or become severely impaired, or fall victim to a reputation-tarnishing scandal? From JFK being shot, to Nixon’s Watergate scandal, there have been many significant events throughout history that shook the stability of the United States, but part of what keeps the country from spinning off into permanent disarray is the fact that there are so many other established and credible people and processes to keep the country running well.
Although Bitcoin is not operating even close to the scale of the US government, there are some beneficial correlations to note. For instance, the processes built into Bitcoin’s protocols make for a well-defined, thus more fair and reliable, system. However, the fact that there is no officially designated leadership to represent any significant direction changes (i.e. forks) or malfunctions (i.e. hacks, network issues, etc.), can put Bitcoin at a perceived disadvantage.
Perhaps this is how Bitcoin’s creator wanted the brand to develop; truly decentralized, with no central authorities beyond the technology that runs the network. But truly decentralized technology will have a psychological hurdle to address until the technology itself can be sufficiently trusted. For now, brands that have transparent, robust, and trusted human representation will likely have an advantage over brands that do not.
Here is a supplementary video to this article: “WHOIS Satoshi Nakamoto?”
Thanks for following the “Bitcoin’s Relative Prowess” series!
🙂 Kendi
Website: cryptkeepers.club
FB: Kendy Land
Twitter: @kendinomics
