Topic: Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin vs. the Mobile Phone

– May 26, 2018

Bitcoin is cheap and easy to use. But it has a long way to go before becoming widely accepted.

READ MORE
Screen Shot 2018-05-21 at 11

Bitcoin Is Not for the Faint of Heart

– May 21, 2018

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

Stablecoins

– May 17, 2018

Can stablecoins compete with existing government currencies?

READ MORE
MG_0515

Cryptocurrencies and Small Businesses Have Similar Failure Rates

– May 15, 2018

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
MG_0509

Five Reasons We Don’t Know What the Future Will Look Like

– May 9, 2018

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
Screen Shot 2018-05-06 at 2

Financial Freedom Means Learning to Love Uncertainty

– May 6, 2018

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

– April 18, 2018

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)

– April 16, 2018

Venezuela recently launched its own cryptocurrency. If recent history is any indicator, investors should steer clear.

READ MORE

Bitcoin and the Dodo-Bones Theory of Money

– April 16, 2018

The fact that Anderson’s theory of money seems to fail the Bitcoin test forces us to question our long tradition of issuing new coins that contain precious metals, or banknotes redeemable for some other, already valuable instrument.

READ MORE
MG_0416

Smart Contracts May Be Revolutionary, but We’ll Still Need Lawyers

– April 16, 2018

Many people who are bullish on blockchain make grandiose claims that the technology will completely overhaul industries and institutions. But these claims often ignore the complexity of the real world and misunderstand what revolutionary technologies actually do.

READ MORE
winter

Thus Does the Crypto Winter Endeth

– April 13, 2018

There will be another winter. And another. To get the best sense of the potential here, it’s best to look at the price, not day to day, but on a logarithmic scale. Here is where we can see the potential of the technology. That has a much more meaningful significance than the fickle judgments of seasonal news hounds that make the difference on the daily margin.

READ MORE
MG_0328

Could the Blockchain Revolution Use a Dose of Pragmatism?

– March 28, 2018

By focusing almost exclusively on disruption, blockchain proponents can ignore the important role of adoption by existing players in finance and other industries.

READ MORE