How Soon Is ‘Soon’?
You ever get an ‘earworm’, a song playing over and over in your head on repeat? For me, it can be triggered just by reading a single word. I can walk by the sugar in a grocery store, and that’s it…Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” (in the name of love, of course) is locked in my head for a week.
It can be quite annoying, because I’m a big music fan — not the most knowledgeable ever, but still pretty encyclopedic. So, reading all this ‘soon soon soon’ stuff in the Bitcoin SV community triggered an old classic to play in my head nonstop.
How Soon is SOON? That seems to be the key question lately; someone’s even trademarked it (ha). Luckily, as the earworm was triggered, so was my inspiration!
British Indie Music and Bitcoin
Who knew there was so much crossover between British indie rock and Bitcoin?? There’s even a long-lost [spoof] Morrissey track explaining how to use Bitcoin! Ironically, the instructive lyrics are much closer to accurate than anyone in the HODL crowd could tell you:
Bitcoin
It’s like a digital currency
You buy it on the internet
I’m not sure how you use one
I think you print it out
And then you take it to the Trader Joe’s
La-ya-ya-ya-ha-ha…
If you’re a Morrissey AND Bitcoin fan, it’s worth the 26 seconds to watch this James Corden clip on YouTube.
Let’s Discuss The Smiths
Speaking of Morrissey…The Smiths are one of my favourite bands. Surely you know the importance of The Smiths in Britain’s (and the world’s) music history? They came to be in 1982 in Manchester, England, also home to other iconic musicians such as the Buzzcocks, Joy Division/New Order, The BeeGees, Herman’s Hermits, The Verve (technically from Wigan, but close enough), Oasis, Elbow, and on and on.
The Smiths’ singer/lyricist Steven Patrick Morrissey (‘Morrissey’, ‘Moz’, the ‘Pope of Mope’, etc.) and lead guitarist Johnny Marr are considered by many to be the top writing duo since Lennon and McCartney. The band’s eventual success got the better of them, leading to a split just four years after their first album.
But their second release, a compilation called Hatful of Hollow (applies to many in ‘crypto’, don’t you think?), included a throwaway B-side entitled “How Soon Is Now”.
“How Soon Is Now”
“How Soon is Now” became an unlikely huge hit and is the one song that non-Smiths fans everywhere will know. You’ve heard it at dance clubs and on the radio. You’ve heard it on TV. You may have seen it used to sell Canadian beer (Labatt Ice!) and witchy programming like the 1996 film The Craft and TV series Charmed (both cover versions).
With all of this ‘SOON’ chatter, the song has been playing on repeat in my brain, so let’s examine Morrissey’s mournful lyrics:
You say it’s gonna happen now
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See I’ve already waited too long
and all my hope is gone!
‘Soon’ Isn’t Enough?
So what is all the ‘soon’ fuss anyway? It seems that some Bitcoin SV observers believe that when an enterprise or government body announces it is building something on Bitcoin SV, the expectation is it will be live nearly instantaneously as if ‘announcement = LIVE’.
We have seen announcements of buildouts from EHR Data, kompany, GeoSpock, Zumo, UNISOT, and the country of Tuvalu, to name but a few, organizations that are growing at fast paces in healthcare, regtech, IoT, payment systems, supply chain, and government registries! But they may not yet be contributing the hoped-for steady stream of transactions onchain.
These Things Take Time
Why not, the ‘soon’ crowd asks? Most of these announcements were made months ago! Why aren’t these live yet? The Smiths will tell you why: Because “These Things Take Time”! (Released as an ‘extra’ B-side to “What Difference Does it Make?”, their third single, January 16, 1984).
Please remember that announcements never = ‘LIVE’! For LIVE cannot happen right away; ‘LIVE’ takes time!
Those of you with programmer backgrounds should understand the bottleneck quite well: Developers already have their very busy pipeline of buildouts to deal with! They already have months-worth of their ‘swim lanes’, their ‘sprints’, their Gantt charts of priorities.
Then the bosses come along and say “cool, now we’re gonna move a bunch of this onto the Bitcoin SV blockchain.” Understandably, this latest project has to get in line behind the others that have to be completed first!
Additionally, in many cases, there are workshops to be held, with the enterprise or government in question and perhaps some customers/constituents…then more ‘design sprints’, proofs of concept, testing, possibly regulatory and other government body approvals, etc.
Let’s not forget the businesses and governments may be working with partners such as nChain, Fabriik, Elas Digital, TAAL, etc., who also already have their pipeline of customers and contracts, whose IT teams have their own ‘swim lanes’, ‘sprints’, Gantt charts, etc. and deadlines to meet.
Well, I Wonder!
So….is it any wonder that these things take time? It shouldn’t be, but some of us have run out of patience and are perhaps distracted by talk of coin prices, market cap rankings, and this or that nonsense DeFi coin. Find your focus, dear lost souls!
And consider this — “Well I Wonder” was the B-side to “How Soon Is Now”, when it was later released as a single in 1985 after being included in the second studio album Meat is Murder. Was this prescience or coincidence?? After all, many consider The Smiths to be god-like! You decide.
Jokes aside, building (or moving) key aspects of a growing business onto Bitcoin SV really does take considerable time; it’s likely to be a few quarters before we see significant added transaction volume from these kinds of announcements.
Meanwhile, don’t make the mistake of giving up because it’s taking longer than you’d hoped! Don’t cry yourselves to sleep like a 1980s teenage Smiths fan! To quote fellow Mancunian band Oasis, “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”!
Put another Way, Don’t Lose Faith!
After The Smiths broke up in 1987, Morrissey immediately launched a solo career to great success and has put out 13 studio albums and countless singles. The third studio album, Your Arsenal, including a song entitled “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday”.
At some point over the ensuing years, Morrissey became friends with one of his heroes, David Bowie, who later covered this song on his 1993 album, Black Tie, White Noise. Somehow things went off the rails from there, leading to the demise of their friendship, but I digress.
The song, a sad one (it’s Morrissey, after all…) about longing for love, includes these lyrics:
You say that the day just never arrived, and it never seemed so far away, still, I know it’s gonna happen….”
I will tell you the same: I know it’s gonna happen! And here’s the thing…so do you! These large organizations have already done their homework and made their decision. It’s happening, it’s on, the building is underway.
So, don’t be like Bowie and Morrissey! Don’t give in to your worst impulses, throw in the towel, and give up. Let ‘soon’ do its ‘soony soonish soon’ thing and run its course. Stick with Bitcoin SV; you’ll be glad you did.
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