As the winter passes and we step into the warmth of spring, we must think of what are the most impactful steps that we can take to improve our industry.

When I took a month off work to reflect on where we are and contemplate where we are going, it is these steps that I was seeking to identify.

We have talked about the importance of global regulatory standard for the blockchain industry. As you know, Malta is leading the way, and many countries are quick to follow, so for today, we will leave it at that. Let us come back to this subject in a couple of months, give the regulators time to implement.

For today I would like to capture your attention on something that’s equally as important… education.

There is a lot of talk about the importance of getting the attention of more developers to the blockchain industry. There is nothing new about that. The only thing I can add to it is that for us to find solutions to technical issues like scalability and speed we need to draw the attention of at least mid-level engineers to this tech.

Distrust

This should not be a problem, right? It is a fascinating and exciting field, or so it seems. It appears that a lot of sound engineers look at the crypto industry with distrust and disinterest.

Why? In my opinion, a big part of it is due to lack of experience and business knowledge. As I discussed in my earlier article – “Bitcoin was born in a world of freedom” – we are running a huge deficit of people who understand how this industry works. As a result, we are paying a costly price for what is obviously ‘self-education’.

I do believe that learning while doing is excellent and, in fact, it is the most valuable knowledge when we learn through experience.

There is nothing wrong with bootstrapping your company and slowly scaling it from angel to seed to A+rounds. All one needs is the spirit of entrepreneurship and dedication. Lack of knowledge in the early stages is not mission critical as the amount of money that each mistake costs is relatively small.

But in the crypto space, we must be more careful, as by nature an early stage company, a team of only a couple people who are often entirely inexperienced or, at best, underqualified end up with massive amounts of money. That’s a huge problem, and no wonder many serious developers and business professionals do not want to deal with blockchain altogether.

Avoidable mistakes

I believe that a significant step toward improving the whole industry lies in business and general blockchain education. Just think about how many outrageously expensive mistakes could have been avoided in 2017 and 2018 if non-technical executives of ICOs would have gone through a blockchain business and application course first.

I do believe that most of the failures we observed, for the most part, are due to lack of knowledge and not malaise play.

I decided to lead by example and inspire by action. So, I attended a blockchain executive program at Kingsland University. I am glad that I did; it was time well spent. I support education. And even though before my course I was already equipped with reasonable experience of being in the industry a little over five years, I found it useful. I see value in my ability to say that I am a certified Blockchain business executive now.

Business education is a necessary solution for many existing problems in the blockchain space. Many of which can be eliminated by providing much-needed baseline knowledge. There are more and more programs that are coming online at different universities. If you are a business professional, I encourage you to dedicate some time to take one of these programs and follow my lead. And if that’s not on the table for you for whatever reason, at least hire somebody who cared to do so.

I believe that through education and regulatory infrastructure we will see best practices become the norm which is key to broad adoption.