Bitcoin as a Novel Financial Game
Bitcoin and fiat money are not cousins. They are on entirely different branches of the family tree.
READ MORE
Czarist America Looks to Conquer Crypto
Get ready, crypto community, because the czars are coming for you! On Monday, June 4, the Securities and Exchange Commission appointed Valerie Szczepanik to a new position: “associate director of the Division of Corporation Finance and senior advisor for digital assets and innovation,” known informally as the “crypto czar.”
READ MORE
Smart Contracts Don’t Leave Humans Out of the Picture
Blockchain enthusiasts often focus on the potential for smart contracts to replace biased and fallible humans with cut-and-dry computer code. But this emphasis on code over humans can confuse both the definition and true potential of smart contacts.
READ MORE
The Threat to Bitcoin from Quantum Computing
This week, it was my pleasure to sit on a panel with Gavin Brennen of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, a physicist and one of the world experts on this topic. He presented a very nice paper that examined this question in some detail. He began with his frustration over the headlines that swept the tech world last October and November. They were as alarmist as they were misleading. He set the record straight.
READ MORE
Bitcoin vs. the Mobile Phone
Bitcoin is cheap and easy to use. But it has a long way to go before becoming widely accepted.
READ MORE
Bitcoin Is Not for the Faint of Heart
Blockchain technology could be as big as they say. The particular assets and governance models behind them are subject to the market test, both in terms of the price and their ultimate viability.
READ MORE
Cryptocurrencies and Small Businesses Have Similar Failure Rates
The fact that about half of altcoins failed or came close to doing so over five years is a promising sign for that market, rather than an indictment of anything not named Bitcoin.
READ MORE
Five Reasons We Don’t Know What the Future Will Look Like
We love to prognosticate, but it’s impossible to do so without severely glossing over the complexities of the real world. That leads us to false dichotomies, like “Blockchain technology will change everything” versus “Blockchain is all hype.”
READ MORE
Financial Freedom Means Learning to Love Uncertainty
It is the great presumption of public policy that some people with power, resources, and status can know what is true, and therefore what must be better. This is in contrast to the lowly actors in the marketplace who must deal daily with the problem of not knowing. To navigate life, to find profitable investment opportunities, to discover what it is that society needs now and what can wait, is the great challenge of material life. But the state takes a different route. It declares what is true, attempts to freeze the process of life, and then impose it as a matter of law.
READ MORE
Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed Payment Mechanisms
Dividing the world into “centralized” and “decentralized” obscures important features of the bitcoin protocol. A more sophisticated lexicon would leave scope for “distributed” processes.
READ MORE
Just Say No (to the Petro)
Venezuela recently launched its own cryptocurrency. If recent history is any indicator, investors should steer clear.
READ MORE
