Vitalik Buterin speaks on the bitcoin bubble and running a $125bn Ethereum blockchain
In a wide-ranging conversation with the Financial Times, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discusses why he thinks Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went into a bubble late last year, and what it’s like to be both running and developing on the massive Ethereum blockchain.Co-founders Andy Bromberg and Ramon Recuero dive deep on scaling CoinList
In this deep-dive with Y Combinator, CoinList founders Andy Bromberg and Ramon Recuero discuss their motivations for starting the service, as well as what the key ingredients are for a high-quality token investment opportunity. The duo also shares their stance on ICO regulations, and reveal what regulations they think will be next to come down the pipeline.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov is hellbent on using crypto to take control of privacy once again
Durov operates with a healthy level of paranoia when running his messaging service (which recently announced its record-breaking IPO earlier this year), and for good reason. Telegram is focusing on using cryptography to secure its users data at all costs, and recent moves to boost security have attracted widespread attention, from the Russian government to the FBI.
Former Mt Gox CEO reveals all about the crypto exchange’s notorious 2014 hack
After years spent underground after the massive hack at Mt Gox, its former CEO Mark Karpeles has emerged to redeem himself by telling the full story of what really happened during the final days of the exchange. The entrepreneur is now seeking to clear his name, and is still searching for new ways to retrieve that 650k Bitcoins that are still purportedly missing from the exchange.
Here’s how 21.co CEO pivoted its service to Earn.com, and sold the platform to Coinbase for millions
21.co was once an ailing bitcoin mining company, but after Balaji Srinivasan was appointed CEO, he embarked on an ambitious mission to pivot the service towards a premium email-based model. After an intensely difficult time spent turning the business around, Earn.com began to turn a profit, and just last week, it was sold to Coinbase for $120m.
Making a case for why upgradeable Ethereum smart contracts should be commonplace
One of the often-overlooked features of smart contracts is that they’re immutable, meaning that upgrades currently can’t be performed on them. However, there are a number of good reasons that smart contracts should be upgradeable – not the least of which is that patches could be applied to neutralize security flaws in real-time.
The easiest way to think about proof-of-work is as a decentralized clock
Proof-of-work is one of the key ingredients of blockchain technology, as it allows transparent tracking of user activities on the blockchain. But it can also allow users to establish without ever communicating – this is important to recognize, as it illustrates how the blockchain is effectively a decentralized system of timing.
These are the many implications of re-creating centralized applications in a decentralized way
Decentralized social networks are still in their infancy, but have the potential to upend the way many social applications are run today. When turning a centralized application into a decentralized one, however, there are some key implications to take into account – including setting a quality incentivization system, and ensuring that users fairly self-govern their content.
Hard forks are desired by many, but there will always be a heavy price to pay
Hard forks used to be community-driven ingredients for further developing a given platform, but now they’re in danger of turning into a justification for a profit-driven business strategy. Chain splits like these can be lucrative, but in general, they’re not desirable as they generally lead to more divisions in the crypto community. |
