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...]
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Cryptocurrency & Blockchain
Markets Are Eating The World
For the last hundred years, individuals have worked for firms, and, by historical standards, large ones. That many of us live in suburbs and drive our cars into the city to go to work at a large office building is so normal that it seems like it has always been this way. Of course, it hasn’t. In 1870, almost 50 percent of the U.S. population was employed in agriculture. As of 2008, less than 2 … [Read more...]
The Best Intermediate-ish Crypto Resources
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...]
Will Smart Contracts Eat the World?
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...]
What is a Security Token? A Comprehensive Guide to How They Work and Their Impact
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...]
State of Bitcoin (Fall 2018)
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...]
Cryptocurency and the Turkey Problem
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 Crypto Crash (Again?)
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...]
Blockchain Explained: How Does Blockchain Technology Work?
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...]
What Gives Bitcoin Value? Or The Most Important Idea In Cryptocurrency
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...]
Why the ‘Worst’ Crypto Networks Will be the Biggest
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...]
Blockchain Supply Chain Use Cases: A Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity?
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...]
Why Is Bitcoin Valuable ?
On almost every dimension, Bitcoin is worse than its centralized counterparts like Paypal or Chase. This is true not just of bitcoin but almost all decentralized cryptocurrency protocols. They are slower, more expensive, harder to scale, and offer worse user experiences. So why is bitcoin valuable? Why are other decentralized applications valuable? Transactions on the Bitcoin network are … [Read more...]
Will Cryptocurrency Protocols Be Fat or Thin?
Some are thin. And some are fat. The fat one has A yellow hat. Dr. Seuss — One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish Joel Monegro’s fat protocol thesis is one of the most important ideas for understanding cryptocurrency. Published in 2014, the thesis states that, on the web, value accrued to the application (app) layer: companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon. While … [Read more...]
The State of Cryptocurrency Investing: End of 2017 Edition
I attended the 2017 Consensus:Invest conference to try and get a feel for the current state of the cryptocurrency market and how it was being perceived by the finance industry. It gave me a good picture of current state of the market, so I thought I’d publish my notes on a few of the panels here. TL;DR (Or Major Themes) There is a generational gap — This is the first conference I’ve … [Read more...]
You Want Democracy? Try A Hard Fork
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...]
The Blockchain Man
The term Organization Man is a rich one. From it, we can conjure up an image and a life. It’s a man, not a woman. He’s white, standing somewhere between 6’0 and 6’2. He has a strong chin and medium length light brown hair parted on the left. He walks from one meeting to the next wearing a dark suit with a pressed white dressed shirt and dark Oxford dress shoes. His wrist holds a watch – … [Read more...]
Four Books To Better Understand How Cryptocurrency Works
When we look at new technologies, our natural tendency is to project them onto the same paradigm we understand right now. When media companies looked at the internet, they initially assumed that it would just be another way for people to read the same content. And, indeed, the first media sites online looked much like their print counterparts. Yahoo!'s homepage in the 90's was not unlike the … [Read more...]
The State of Cryptocurrency: 2017 Edition
I went to the 2017 Blockstack Summit to try and get a feel for the current state of the cryptocurrency technology and market. Many of the people I follow in the cryptocurrency space were either attending or speaking, including Naval Ravikant, Nick Szabo and Balaji Srinivasan. It gave a good overall picture of current state of the technology, so I thought I’d publish my notes on a few of the … [Read more...]
How to Get Into Cryptocurrency: The Best Cryptocurrency Resources
I was getting started with cryptocurrency in 2012 when I first heard about Bitcoin. I didn’t “get it.” Terms like decentralized, distributed and disintermediation piqued my interest, but I lacked the technical understanding to really understand what I was looking at. I needed a class in cryptocurrency 101, some help getting started with cryptocurrency. I started reading up in 2015, wading … [Read more...]