You should be able to take advantage of smart contracts in many ways, and in many situations, if you just understand smart contracts are a way of managing contingencies.
READ MOREFinancial privacy and autonomy are important. But cash and cryptocurrencies are not the only means to those ends.
READ MOREIt is not hard to find commentary on the internet indicating that Bitcoin is bound to fail. But there is no reason to think that cryptocurrencies will disappear.
READ MOREUsing an encrypted digital ledger – one that substitutes hashes for trust – eliminates vast numbers of layers and time. Time and trust equal counterparty risk. Automating this with blockchain drops the costs to a small fraction while increasing certainty.
READ MOREFinancial intermediaries that might not stand a chance against blockchain technology were it allowed to develop in a vacuum instead might be strengthened by it.
READ MORETen years have passed since Bitcoin was introduced, and it still isn’t used much in online commerce. Will the Lightning Network get it back on track?
READ MOREMMT is an academically-garbed attempt to overcome the unwelcome fact that governments are as bound by economic limits as firms and individuals are. Yet liberty always triumphs.
READ MOREIn a recent NBER working paper, Barry Eichengreen argues “there is no straight line from commodity money to fiat money and from there to crypto.”
READ MOREWith perfect hindsight, we construct narratives about how technology changes the world. The internet flattened the world. Cars replaced horses. But what we miss, the often-catastrophic messiness during those transitions, is so much more interesting.
READ MOREBitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have a bad reputation. But they can be used to avoid high inflation and the effects of pernicious capital controls.
READ MORETechnology rarely does what we hope or predict it will do. In a year of falling exchange rates and failed ICOs, Facebook’s co-option of blockchain technology might be the best news for the industry of 2018.
READ MOREThe blockchain technology is essential when trust is sufficiently weak, monitoring is sufficiently costly, privacy is sufficiently important, or security is of sufficient concern.
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