Bitcoin

By Josh Stark & Bruno Lulinski In the Year in Ethereum 2021, we published a chart comparing the total transaction volume of the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains. Last year, Ethereum transferred approximately $11.6 trillion (ETH and ERC-20s), and Bitcoin transferred approximately $4.6 trillion (BTC and USDT). After publishing, we saw a graph from Galaxy Digital claiming that in 2021 Bitcoin had settled $12.41 trillion USD: ...

A few months ago Parker Thompson, a well known Silicon Valley VC, tweeted that “the concept of crypto-economics is stupid. It’s economics. Inventing your own word is just an excuse to ignore well-understood concepts.” The term “cryptoeconomics” causes a lot of confusion. People are often unclear on what it is supposed to mean. The word itself can be misleading, as it suggests that there is a parallel “crypto” version of the whole of economics. This is wrong, and Parker is right to mock such a generalization. ...

Note: initially published on Medium under the pseudonym Creole In the third post, we explored how blockchains can serve as a platform for what I called “value technologies” — things that act like currencies, shares, or rewards points. In this post, we take this idea further. Many people now believe that blockchains will let us build things more complex and more interesting than the simple value technologies discussed above. We can write software that can itself control currencies, shares, or rewards points. This “software agent” would be more like an independent economic entity. Living on the blockchain, it would be able to send, receive, or hold money — whatever it was programmed to do. Maybe it even provides a useful service to people, or to other software, for which it is paid. ...

Note: initially published on Medium under the pseudonym Creole You’re a little early for work that day and decide to walk to the far Starbucks instead of going to the close Starbucks. The close Starbucks is one of those ones they cram into a rough corner of an office building, halfway between the fire exit and a fern. The far Starbucks is glass and wood and gleaming like a Starbucks should. You arrive and wait in line to buy a coffee. ...

Note: initially published on Medium under the pseudonym Creole In the first post I wrote that blockchain technology will make it cheap and easy to transfer money. In the second post we took a brief look at what that world might look like. But blockchains won’t only be used for money. The same technology that makes it possible to cheaply and easily exchange digital currency is being adapted for other types of value, like shares of company stock or rewards points. The focus in the industry right now is in adapting blockchain technology to be suitable for the exchange of financial assets, and a staggering amount of money and energy is being invested into creating those platforms. ...

Note: initially published on Medium under the pseudonym Creole You wake up to a slow pulse on your phone. Your PO account has received its monthly payment. You lazily wake the screen and thumb approval to the standard division: 45% (0.00005600 BTC) to mobile wallet [x1f8K…nb7] 50% (0.00006220 BTC) to savings [ICICI x1f9H…m4e] 4.8% (0.00000597 BTC) to MSF_KL [x14hY…8e9] 0.2% maintenance of PO Account [0] That’s just your stake, of course. The rest goes to your mother in Munnar, and some cousins in Trivandrum. The money comes from a variety of sources, which you know because every few weeks you’re obligated by the wallet to flick through a screen containing details of each. You understand: when the State, ASEAN, or some rich billionaire’s kid gives you and a 100 million other people hard cash, they want you to know who to thank. ...

Note: initially published on Medium under the pseudonym Creole This is the first post of what I am calling Creole. The object is to convince a general audience that blockchain technologies like bitcoin and other “digital currencies” will have a large impact on our world. This isn’t a popular view. Today it is difficult to even explain what bitcoin is, or how a blockchain works. Proponents too-often rely on dense technical explanations, or vague gestures towards far-future use cases. To many this sounds dodgy. If this new technology is so great, why can’t you explain it? ...