Bitcoin at $19,000 and what it has to do with your website

Bitcoin touched $19,000 this week. Our inbox has changed accordingly. Three people asked whether we build "blockchain websites". One asked if we take payment in Ether. A restaurant asked if it should accept Bitcoin. Here is our honest answer to all of them, from people who build things on the internet for a living and have watched a few waves come in.

The technology is interesting. The websites are not.

We have looked at a lot of coin projects this autumn, because clients kept sending them. Most of the websites are the same: a countdown timer, a whitepaper nobody read, a team page with LinkedIn photos, a roadmap that ends in "moon". They are not products. They are pitch decks with a buy button.

The tell is simple. Ask what the thing does for a person who does not care about crypto. If the answer takes more than a sentence, there is no product yet. There is a token.

What booms are good for

They pull talent and money into an area for a while, and a few real things get built underneath the noise. That happened with the web in 1999, with apps in 2010, and it will happen here. The real things will not need a countdown timer. They will work, quietly, and people will use them without knowing what a ledger is.

If you are building something like that, we would love to help. If you are building a countdown timer, we are not the right studio.

Should your business accept Bitcoin?

If you sell to people who ask for it, and the payment processor handles the conversion so you are not holding a coin that moved 20% since lunch — maybe. For a restaurant in Amsterdam in 2017: no. iDEAL, cards, cash. Nobody is choosing a lunch spot by whether it takes Ether.

The word not to put on your homepage

"Blockchain." Unless you are literally building one, it tells visitors you are chasing a trend, and trends date a website faster than anything. We have redesigned enough sites with "Web 2.0" still in the footer to say this with confidence.

Build the thing people use. Put the price on it. Make it fast. That advice survives every boom, including this one.

We will revisit this post in a few years. Either way, it will be interesting.