Like it or not, it's a phrase that dates back to Mark Twain that has far more baggage than some strict analogy made up on the spot. For instance Chris Dixon here[1] suggests that Heroku and Akamai sell pickaxes, not dynamite as a service or scalable ore transport systems.
All I'm doing is defending the GP's use of the phrase, which was absolutely valid. Perhaps you'd have used a different analogy, but it doesn't invalidate his. No quantity of curt denials you care to throw my direction will change this.
My lord, it’s an expression, it’s not literal. Pickaxes in this metaphor are any and all tools in between an individual and their target. You would be totally right to say banks are selling pickaxes in the current financial system.
The idea behind the phrase is that when a ton of speculation money is flooding in to a market, you should make money by proving services to the speculators, not by speculating yourself.
Creating mining hardware is actually more speculative than an exchange, because you're picking winners and losers based on what your hardware can accelerate.
Selling pickaxes to miners has been used to describe platforms like CDNs or game engines like Unity. The fact that there is something called a miner in this context is a red herring.
I guess they could be the pickaxe salesman depending on how you frame it, but that's just who they are. I guess I'm bringing in actual PoW mining which the analogy has nothing to do with.
I don't think they are speculating though, they are simply doing what they do and have always done. Provide a means of exchange from national currency to digital assets. It is up to the people who build around these protocols to create more ways of utilizing these digital assets through services.
It's hard to say what's going on in this market but I don't think it's a bust. A lot of money went in really fast and then huge sell offs from Mt Gox recovered bitcoins. Bitcoin is still somewhat interconnected in price with most altcoins because of pairings, and any major selloffs seem to drag the whole market down. I think it will mature in time and more people will actually utilize cryptocurrency and not just buy it for speculative reasons. Value will be established over the next few years as practical use grows.
Well it is still very young and business innovation moves slow and cautious. Also regulators have not fully decided on a few issues that are very important regarding digital assets. I believe there is a lot going on behind the scenes of a lot of major companies right now though. Mostly in terms of hiring and r&d. Even Facebook is hiring blockchain engineers. I think this will all develop in time.
