I know very little about Bitcoin, and I’m almost too afraid too dive into the rabbit hole, but I did enjoy Scott Smith’s Bitcoin is just the poster currency for a growing movement of alternative tender. Instead of the usual discussions around its mechanics, Scott focuses on the reasons for the rise in alternative currencies in general, linking it to globalization and the rise of “formal-informal” markets. He also discusses why Bitcoin itself could be doomed already:

“Most of the action I see is around software development—people getting excited by local currency platforms, or virtual currencies,” wrote [Ken Banks, founder of a global initiative to promote economic self-sufficiency Means of Exchange]. “The problem here is that these are generally being run by techies, and we need to lead with the problem we’re trying to solve, not a cool technology. Most of the software being developed is unusable unless you have a degree in computing, or a server that costs about the same as a small car, and is hard to understand.”

You know what’s coming, right? Yep — this applies not just to Bitcoin, but to all product development. If you lead with technology instead of the problem you’re trying to solve, the resulting product will almost always be too complicated. It reminds me of a great line in the USA Today story Berlin airport fiasco an embarrassment for Germans:

Here, again, technology’s getting in the way: It’s so advanced that technicians can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.

So advanced that no one can figure out what’s wrong with it… Perhaps that’s the problem with Bitcoin, too?