In the madness of the daily seismographic wiggles in cryptoland, the opportunities behind blockchain technology itself seem to have gotten lost in the wind. Investors look to be forgetting that currency is only one application of blockchain. What about everything else?

People are comparing cryptomania with the late 90’s dot com era, but the comparison is missing one important difference. During the dot com era the craze wasn’t zeroed in on one specific application of the internet. Money was flying into every stock purporting to do any kind of business using the internet. Cryptomania suffers from a unique and very focused tunnel vision. Even within the single blockchain application to currency, most of the focus is being dedicated to a single currency within that market – Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and its various forked incarnations.

There is another important reason to widen our view of blockchain outside currencies entirely. While governments may give cryptocurrencies regulatory problems in an attempt to keep their own currencies dominant (a move we just saw in South Korea yesterday), the same can’t be said for other blockchain applications that don’t encroach on hallowed state-controlled ground. Currency markets are monopolized by governments for a reason, but other markets and by extension their blockchain applications are much freer and present much less danger for investors in terms of government encroachment.

So what tradable companies are focusing on blockchain generally these days? There are not many yet, and even fewer on a major exchange. The two on the Nasdaq are Overstock.com (OSTK), and Riot Blockchain (RIOT). Overstock was the first retailer to accept BTC back in January 2014, and according to its filings 0.25% of its sales are in BTC. Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is a believer in sound money and is associated with the Mises Institute, so in retrospect it’s not surprising that he of all people made the first move. Overstock has logged about $5 billion in sales since January 2014 when it started accepting BTC.