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Today, economist and Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, wrote in the New York Times, that Bitcoin is taking us back 300 years in monetary evolution. As a result, he predicts all sorts of bad things.
A significant basis for Mr. Krugman’s argument is that the US dollar has value because men with guns say it does.
Is Bitcoin erasing 300 years of monetary evolution?
Running with the metaphor that fundamental change to an economic mechanism represents ‘evolution’, I think a more accurate statement is that Bitcoin is not erasing the lessons of history. Rather, it is the current step in the evolution of money. Of course, with living species, evolution is a gradual process based on natural selection and adaptation. With Bitcoin, change is coming up in the rear view mirror at lightning speed.
Continue reading “Is Bitcoin Erasing 300 years of Monetary Evolution?” »
Xage (pronounced Zage), a blockchain security startup based in Silicon Valley, announced a $12 million Series A investment today led by March Capital Partners. GE Ventures, City Light Capital and NexStar Partners also participated.
The company emerged from stealth in December with a novel idea to secure the myriad of devices in the industrial internet of things on the blockchain. Here’s how I described it in a December 2017 story:
Xage is building a security fabric for IoT, which takes blockchain and synthesizes it with other capabilities to create a secure environment for devices to operate. If the blockchain is at its core a trust mechanism, then it can give companies confidence that their IoT devices can’t be compromised. Xage thinks that the blockchain is the perfect solution to this problem.
Continue reading “Xage secures $12 million Series A for IoT security solution on blockchain” »
What do the Gallic Wars and online shopping have in common? The answer, believe it or not, is cryptography. Cryptography is the cement of the digital world, but it also has a long history that predates the digital era.
Most people do not realize that cryptography is a foundational element to our modern society. At it’s heart cryptography is about access to data, and controlling who can see and use it.
Continue reading “How cryptography enables online shopping, cloud tech, and the blockchain” »
Blockchain developers won’t be at peace until every single thing in the world is on blockchain. Or, so it seems.
Web developer Rui Gomes has created Lighting Spin — a web app that lets you play roulette over Bitcoin Lightning Network.
The app lets you wager anywhere between 1,000 Satoshi (approximately 6¢) to 100,000 Satoshi (approximately $6) per round. All you need to play the game is load your balance using a wallet service with support for the Lightning Network – like Eclair, for instance.
Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk — about half my annual professor’s salary — all to deliver some insight on the subject of “the future of technology.”
I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig.
After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.
After having been given $1,000 by his grandma at only 13-years-old, Erik Finman, now 17, made the risky decision to invest in the notoriously volatile Bitcoin market.
When he was 15, only a year and a half later, he liquidated his Bitcoins, making a cool $100,000. He’s now crowdfunding his very own VR headset. He has been featured in Time Magazine, Mashable, CBS News, Business Insider, The Times, BBC, and more.
Continue reading “Teen Makes $100,000 Through Bitcoin, Crowdfunds VR Headset” »
I get this question a lot. Today, I was asked to write an answer at Quora.com, a Q&A web site at which I am the local cryptocurrency expert. It’s time to address this issue here at Lifeboat.
I have many PCs laying around my home and office.
Some are current models with fast Intel CPUs. Can
I mine Bitcoin to make a little money on the side?
Other answers focus on the cost of electricity, the number of hashes or teraflops achieved by a computer CPU or the size of the current Bitcoin reward. But, you needn’t dig into any of these details to understand this answer.
You can find the mining software to mine Bitcoin or any other coin on any equipment. Even a phone or wristwatch. But, don’t expect to make money. Mining Bitcoin with an x86 CPU (Core or Pentium equivalent) is never cost effective—not even when Bitcoin was trading at nearly $20,000. A computer with a fast $1500 graphics card will bring you closer to profitability, but not by much.
Continue reading “Extra PCs laying around? Why not mine Bitcoin?” »
Some market observers worry the solutions to problems the new technologies offer might become the causes of other problems. With AI gathering steam and large amounts of data flowing to empower machine learning, how to protect privacy in a region where the use of personal information is loosely regulated has become a pressing question.
Filing taxes using blockchain in Indonesia. Growing better crops in Vietnam with artificial intelligence. Sending rockets into space in Singapore. Southeast Asia is quietly emerging as a breeding ground for new technology.
Continue reading “Is Southeast Asia the next Silicon Valley?” »
