Shrek: Ogres are like onions. Donkey: They stink? Shrek: Yes. No. Donkey: Oh, they make you cry. Shrek: No. Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin’ little white hairs. Shrek: No. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers. Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. … [Read more...]

In my post on the Getting Started With Cryptocurrency, I laid out what I would recommend as a 101 curriculum from understanding Bitcoin and cryptocurrency technology. Consider this the 201 list. I’ll start with long-form articles and series, then more academic papers and finish with project-specific whitepapers. Longform Articles Fundamental Challenges With Public Blockchains by … [Read more...]

In 1994, Nick Szabo, a legal scholar and computer scientist, coined the term “smart contract” to describe the ability to embed contracts, a legal construct, into computer code. With the emergence of a blockchain ecosystem, the excitement around smart contracts has picked up. In this article, I’m going to explore what smart contracts are and why it’s valuable to combine them with blockchain … [Read more...]

There’s been a lot of talk about security tokens recently. But what is a security token in the first place? How do they work? And how might they impact your job or business? That is, why should you care about them? Before diving into the rest of these questions, it makes sense to first start with: what is a security? A security is a fungible (mutually interchangeable) financial instrument that … [Read more...]

There’s a lot going on in the world of Bitcoin and it can be hard to keep track of it all. This report aims to offer market participants looking for a one stop shop regarding the current state of Bitcoin. We cover valuation, technology, regulation/legal, and different ways of getting exposure. This is not meant to read cover-to-cover so if one section is of particular interest, please feel free … [Read more...]

In an op-ed for the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman wrote that “cryptocurrency enthusiasts are effectively celebrating the use of cutting-edge technology to set the monetary system back 300 years.” In Krugman's view, the sweep of monetary history has been one of increased efficiency by a transition away from commodity money (e.g. gold and silver) towards fiat money (e.g. the US dollar). … [Read more...]

When will bitcoin and the broader crypto market crash (again)? Or crash farther? I think the place to start thinking about this is why are crypto markets so volatile in the first place. Perhaps more importantly, is that volatility a bad thing? I believe there are a few reasons for all the volatility in crypto markets. We’ll start with the most obvious ones and work our way to the least obvious, … [Read more...]

This is a long article answering the question "How Does Blockchain Work?" to a non-technical reader. You can download a PDF version of this post below. The first blockchain was conceptualized by an individual (or group of individuals) known as Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. It was launched the following year in January 2009 by Nakamoto as a core component of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, where it … [Read more...]

Short version: Social scalability is the core idea behind what gives bitcoin value and makes it such a powerful and important technology. “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the … [Read more...]

Though crypto networks are often compared to private firms, a better analogy is to compare them to cities. Like a city, a crypto network is a community of loosely affiliated individuals who agree on a set of rules for how they live and work – laws for cities, protocols for crypto networks. Unlike firms, cities and crypto networks are organized from the bottom up rather than the top … [Read more...]

TL;DR There are a few blockchain supply chain use cases which have the potential to restructure the industry. One particularly impactful use case is making it easier for small suppliers to get more financing on better terms. Most of the blockchain applications emerging right now are effectively porting existing solutions onto the blockchain (Uber for the blockchain, Airbnb for the blockchain, … [Read more...]

Commentators often try to compare the current stage of the cryptocurrency ecosystem to the internet years. But are we in 1990? 1995? 1998? An equally valid comparison is to ask where we are in democracy years. The United States, the first modern democracy, ratified the Articles of Confederation in 1781 following the end of the Revolutionary War. They served as the "operating system" of the … [Read more...]