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Long Reads Sunday #33.
Jack takes the Lightning torch. An exchange founder death strands $190m. A new plan to resuscitate Mt. Gox. Skirmishes in the ongoing battle between privacy and surveillance. Crypto finds a new mortal enemy in MMT?
Strap in, fam, it’s long reads time.
Jack takes the Lightning torch. An exchange founder death strands $190m. A new plan to resuscitate Mt. Gox. Skirmishes in the ongoing battle between privacy and surveillance. Crypto finds a new mortal enemy in MMT?
Strap in, fam, it’s long reads time.
2/ Bet you didn’t think you’d read about Mt. Gox here on LRS in 2019, eh? @BrockPierce announced a plan to bring the infamous exchange back. Not without controversy, of course, as witness by the comments in this thread.
3/ Speaking of Gox, @TuurDemeester did an interesting little exercise comparing BTC circulating supply to gold reserves. By analogy, the Mt. Gox Trustees currently control an amount of BTC bigger than the gold reserves of the Swiss Central Bank.
4/ Still, let’s be real. Even with some good ol’ fashion Goxian controversy, the most exciting thing on crypto…err Bitcoin Twitter this week was @jack accepting the Lightning torch #LNtrustchain
5/ For an awesome visual history of the Lightning Trust Chain - a global experiment showing off the power of the technology and the strength of the community initiated by @hodlonaut - check out this awesome video by @TiKawamoto
6/ To me, the event was more than just cool advocacy for Bitcoin. @jack isn’t just a public figure, he’s the head of one of the largest global content networks in the world. What might that mean? Well..
7/ If Gox & Lightning aren’t enough to spice up your week, how bout $190m of funds being locked up forever after the founder of Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX passed away? Boy oh boy is there a lot going on with this story. Start here:
8/ In the wake of the …fishy…news, @tayvano_ went HAM on the forensics, with her research convincing her that Quadriga didn’t, in fact, have cold wallets for ETH.
9/ My guess is we’ve barely begun to see the fallout of Quadriga.
@propelforward wrote this timely paper about the legal ramifications of private keys
while @iamjosephyoung flagged this more personal story of loss
@propelforward wrote this timely paper about the legal ramifications of private keys
while @iamjosephyoung flagged this more personal story of loss
10/ I’ve said before that the battle between privacy and surveillance is one of the most important of the coming generation. @coincenter released a phenomenal report this week arguing that cash/private transactions are essential to an open & free society
11/ Interestingly, @TheStalwart also wrote about this exact point in this great thread breaking down the intellectual battle between Bitcoiners and Keynesians (and why they’re not as incompatible as one might assume)
12/ One of the projects at the heart of that battle for privacy is Zcash, who were themselves all over the discourse this week after revealing the successful addressing of a flaw that could have opened the crypto up to counterfeiting
13/ One discussion prompted by the Zcash vulnerability is whether privacy belongs only on Layer 2, being too unsafe for Layer 1.
@derek_hsue looked at a different layer 1 privacy chain, @grinmw, through the lens of governance medium.com/blockchain-cap…
@derek_hsue looked at a different layer 1 privacy chain, @grinmw, through the lens of governance medium.com/blockchain-cap…
14/ Governance continues to be one of the themes of this year. @Melt_Dem built on thoughts about governance from her recent #Aracon2019 presentation in this post/thread, arguing that, currently, on-chain governances are trending towards oligopoly
15/ Speaking of Aragon, the company shared more about its forthcoming payroll tools, which allow employees to claim salary as frequently as every block. Particularly interesting in the context of this thread re: crypto/payday loans
16/ Pay Day loans are far from the only part of the existing financial infrastructure that crypto could remake. If you’re looking for a good 101 primer on #DeFi, I recommend this recent piece by @tehoban1 medium.com/@tehoban/defi-…
17/ @avichal wrote about prospective crypto disruptions to traditional financial infrastructure not from a Wall Street perspective but from Silicon Valley, looking at seed capital, founder vesting, liquidity lockups and more
18/ Speaking of legacy investors, @DavidJN79 and @AriDavidPaul both wrote about the current state of their thinking around the “blockchain, not Bitcoin” mantra.
Check out David’s essay
Then find Ari’s thread:
Check out David’s essay
Then find Ari’s thread:
19/ For those interested in helping institutional investors wrap their head around investing in the new space, you could do a lot worse than all 10,000+ words of this overview on smart contract platform investing by @katyaandme on the @nomicsfinance blog blog.nomics.com/essays/investi…
20/ I’m always glad to see so much engaging with investors outside of crypto. This is going to get even more important as Modern Monetary Theory - which is basically diametrically philosophically opposed to Bitcoin - becomes more prominent
21/ If you’re just trying to catch up on and wrap your head around MMT, here are some resources:
+Twitter thread collecting overviews
+The high level from @epsilontheory epsilontheory.com/modern-monetar…
+Twitter thread collecting overviews
+The high level from @epsilontheory epsilontheory.com/modern-monetar…
22/ Re:macro context, I found this thread by @CMcgarraugh fascinating. The argument is in part that crypto is such a natural response to macro that the viciousness of this correction is in part about disappointment that it’s not ready for prime time.
23/ And speaking of the correction…as always, we’ve gotta ask…how close to the bottom are we? In this thread, @MustStopMurad looks at a slightly different type of indicator - tweets about Bitcoin - and finds himself just as gloomy as with price charts
24/ Still, if the market isn’t great, the march of building, discovery and learning continues unabated. @jbrukh checks in on what we’ve learned about crypto protocols and value capture since the Fat Protocols thesis from a couple years back
25/ On the theme of learning and improving, @twobitidiot takes the broad and growing critique of market cap as an indicator to the next level and suggests some tangible ways to improve it - specifically to improve how we measure token supply.
@twobitidiot 26/ @MessariCrypto also announced its second group of participants in the Messari Registry - a self-regulation initiative designed to make crypto more transparent and generally above board
27/ These sort of improvements are an essential part of the development of the industry, as is better regulation. On that front, check out @PatBerarducci’s recap of SEC Commissioner @HesterPeirce’s recent speech touching on crypto innovation.
28/ Finally, to the extent that the implications of crypto aren’t just about new investment opportunities but improving people’s lives, it’s worth keeping track of where that’s actually happening.
29/ To that end, check out @PeterMcCormack’s recent Venezuela update with @alegw @gianfiorella @cryptonomista
and then check out this tremendous analysis of LocalBitcoins
and then check out this tremendous analysis of LocalBitcoins
30/ And that’s it for Long Reads Sunday #33! As always, let me know what else was great and what I missed. Subscribe to get LRS via email here: getrevue.co/profile/nlw
Fresh thread from @cyber_hokie. Reminds me of one of the great challenges of our time - if the choice is complicated freedom or uncomplicated contentment (even at the cost of freedom) - what will people choose?
Can already tell that this thread on lasting memes is going to turn into a good one.
