The Economics of Blockchain Protocols | Primoz Kordez – Medium

September 7, 2017

Individuals can be included in various roles in the system, and the protocol is set in such a manner that these individuals are rewarded or punished according to their completion of tasks. This means that there is a symmetry or a so called “incentive discentive model” — beside receiving a reward for a successfully completed role, an individual can also be punished by having its staked cryptocurrency “burned”. Whenever possible, the protocol evaluates an individual’s contribution independently and rewards or punishes them accordingly; when the protocol does not have this ability, this decision is left to the market.

Source: The Economics of Blockchain Protocols | Primoz Kordez – Medium

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Utility Coins or Crypto Assets? Token Terminology Is One Big Gray Area | CoinDesk

September 7, 2017

“The majority of ICOs that are happening now are in fact securities and should follow the standard process for securities offerings. They are fooling naive investors into believing that they are buying a piece of decentralized infrastructure when, in fact, they are only buying the promises of the management team.”

Source: Utility Coins or Crypto Assets? Token Terminology Is One Big Gray Area | CoinDesk

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ICOs: 10 things that cool me off | Hacker Noon

September 7, 2017

… most projects are about deep tech but very rarely address the business aspects: how they will grow their audience and adoption, how the token will gain in value beyond the speculative activity of a token once listed in an exchange. I want to know if the company has the ability to build a real business and not just a great tech. You can find this answer also in the profile of the team, if they have a good track record or deep expertise in the domain they are addressing. But in my experience this topic is just simply too many times ignored. And for a reason: it is REALLY hard and difficult to get something marketed right.

Bottom line: Blockchain is supposed to disrupt the way Trust is built. If you can’t send positive signals of trust during your ICO process who will trust you for your mission

Source: ICOs: 10 things that cool me off | Hacker Noon

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How Will The Blockchain Change Venture Capital Investing?

August 25, 2017

A few months later into 2017 came a very informative article from Richard Kastelein going into detail on why VCs should care about initial coin offerings. Although it raised several important points, two jumped out at me: 1) ICOs could mean the liquidation of a significant portion of venture capital investing allowing for the democratisation of the space in a way that equity crowdfunding hasn’t quite done so yet, and 2) the return on investment is significantly higher. Hence, if adopted en masse, swathes of

Personally, I think that the intersection of VC and blockchain technology will result in the coming-of-age of liquid equity-style crowdfunding for blockchain innovations at the protocol level — this is being kicked off by projects like Ethereum, Tezos, Cosmos and Filecoin amongst others, and funds like Polychain. I’m completely sold on the idea that altcoins are here to stay and VC needs to get ready for it, but it’s important to remember that despite all the hype there is still a lot of noise around these tokens and many people still don’t understand what they are, how they work and why they have intrinsic value.

Source: How Will The Blockchain Change Venture Capital Investing?

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The centre cannot hold: The shift towards decentralized systems | BetaKit

August 24, 2017

The online content economy is also in disarray right now. Fake news and anonymous trolls are bringing out the worst in people, allowing them the megaphone of the internet without the social (trust) constructs from real life. This is because the internet grew before there were any strong trust frameworks that could be applied — it shows the danger of a decentralized system without appropriate trust and reputation systems.It may take significant time to rebuild a healthy interaction space, but there seems to be more room for improvement than there is for further degradation. Frameworks for reputation-based pseudo anonymous systems are now maturing and leveraging technologies such as blockchain to find the right balance between anonymity, reputation and accountability.

Now, or soon, many industries will be at the pivot point. This is due to software, blockchains, AI, robotics and other technological progress which now allows for trusted decentralized systems that are also highly efficient. More decentralized models will become just as efficient — and perhaps more efficient — than their current centralized counterparts.

This means that new markets will be attacked from different positions on the System of Control spectrum. Highly decentralized or lightly decentralized, a new breed of companies will threaten existing business models and customer motivation, as much as they will their technology and product. Even more middle men will be cut out, as decentralized entities rethink where the value in the system truly lies.

Thanks Chris for the share.

Source: The centre cannot hold: The shift towards decentralized systems | BetaKit

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Congressional Candidate Accepts Bitcoin Donations for 2018 Election Cycle | Bitcoin News

August 24, 2017

The US Federal Elections Commission (FEC) gave approval for political candidates to accept bitcoin back in 2014. According to the rules, this is a kind of “in-kind” donation, and each donor has a $100 cap on what they can provide. Once the candidate accepts it, they have 10 days to sale the bitcoin and place the returns into their campaign fund. An official document went into more detail:

Source: Congressional Candidate Accepts Bitcoin Donations for 2018 Election Cycle | Bitcoin News

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