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Dear Hacker Noon reader, It’s easy to say, “prioritize work life balance” — when you already have a good life. It’s easy to say, “prioritize a good night’s sleep” — when you’ve already made enough money today. It’s easy to say, “prioritize diet and exercise” — when you have someone else cooking you a nutritious meal and a new Tesla parked in the garage, waiting for you to drive to the gym. You know what’s not easy? Making something from nothing. Sometimes, you’re going to have to prioritize “it” over you — if you want to “it” to live long and prosper. That’s the startup life. Here’s the top reading on 3 must read , and 14 trending posts in It’s all a circle! tech stories Software Development . 📖 📖 📖 3 Must Read Tech Stories by Ex-Googler Dear Facebook, “Download My Archive” is Broken and That’s Not Okay Stephen Cognetta by author, engineer and serial entrepreneur Gamifying the Delivery of Money Daniel Jeffries by Former #TU Director of Products at Telefonica How Amazon is winning the battle for the Home Operating System Jorge Serna 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 💻 14 Trending Software Development Posts by Bookvar Software Engineer A crash course on Serverless with Node.js Adnan Rahić by Engineer Awkward Moments in JavaScript Asana Greg Sabo by Software Developer Common Excuses Why Developers Don’t Test Their Software James Jeffery by PHP Developer Dealing with Data Migrations on Multi Tenant — Laravel Marco Aurélio Deleu by Laravel/React Senior Developer Delete Your Code Ruairidh Wynne-McHardy by Software Engineer Eloquent Relationships Cheat Sheet Mahmoud Zalt by Programmer ES6 for beginners Srebalaji Thirumalai by Catawiki Developer How we make npm packages work in the browser Ives van Hoorne by Connoisseur of code, country music, and homemade ice cream Making audio searchable with Cloud Speech Sara Robinson by Continental-ITS Backend Software Engineer Solving Mastermind with Go Ludi Rehak by The Beauty of Go Kanishk Dudeja by Tech Lead on the UI team for Major League Soccer Up and Running with Universal Components kurtiskemple by Computer Science Professor Walk This (JavaScript) Way Baptiste Pesquet by Zendesk Senior Product Manager Why Isn’t Agile Working? John Cutler Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted. Kind Regards, , David Smooke AMI

Get Ahead in Tech… By Reading on Saturdays

Hybridism

Chainlink is an Oracle Network for Hybrid Smart Contracts. Acting as an interface between real world data and blockchains, it is often referred to as a . It provides the necessary inputs for smart contracts to execute. Those inputs, in their larger sense, are “Knowledge” or the “Truth” about an event, price, or anything imaginable. They are generated through a pre-determined consensus mechanism by a decentralized network of Oracles. Such services are vital to blockchains as they cannot communicate with the real world themselves. Much like sovereign states, they don’t communicate with each other either. This is not ideal as many different infrastructures like Ethereum, Solana, Zcash, Bitcoin, and Algorand each emerge with a specific set of skills and attributes. Some are good at security, others at speed, scalability, or privacy. Middleware As of today, most Oracles simply provide price feeds, while other protocols focus on necessary things like Off-Chain-Computation or Randomness, which are often used as scaling solutions. It is both cheaper and faster to do the work off-chain and prove that it has been done, rather than having every node perform and verify the same computations. Nodes or miners can then solely execute State Changes. While most Middleware choose to focus on one protocol, Chainlink is trying to bundle many different services through various networks of Oracles. As laid out by its founder in a recent , the end goal is to allow for smart contracts to not only communicate with the real world but also between each other and across different blockchains to leverage the best attributes of each infrastructure. For example, a single smart contract could be split and use Ethereum for custody while using Solana for transactions thus achieving both security and speed. A sort of blockchain agnostic solution to the . Chainlink would simply act as an “abstraction layer” and allow individuals or enterprises to interact with any chain through one single interface. To paraphrase Sergei Nazarov, it wants to become a “Universal Gateway” or the “Internet of Blockchains.” presentation Blockchain Trilemma Blockchain bridges already exist. They are mostly used by non-native assets to gain access to DEFI and other services through a process called . They have been criticized by as unsafe because a breach of security in a smaller side-chain through a or bug can be contagious. The recent 300m proved him just right. Wrapping Vitalik Buterin 51% attack Wormhole Hack Chainlink’s planned Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) is somehow different as it acts as a communication protocol rather than a side-chain. By removing smaller side-chains from the equation and simply acting as a messaging service between main-chains, it should inherit their security. Central Banks Digital Currencies (CBDC), which would most likely have their own infrastructure, could be bridged onto the Ethereum DEFI scene, providing much liquidity and . Chainlink also plans the introduction of a decentralized Anti-Fraud network to monitor the integrity of the data transmitted. Hyper Adoption While CCIP still seems utopic and must yet be proven and tested, Chainlink’s economics are not. Most middleware still subsidize activity on their network with funds raised during their ICO or through VC financing rounds. Many of Chainlink’s oracle networks are on the other hand already profitable and can survive based on transactions fees only. Financial Health attracts more users through Trust, as would be the case for any traditional institution. This in turn allows those networks to add further services such as CCIP, Proofs Of Reserves (Audits), Keepers (Computation & Automation), or VRF (Randomness) to traditional price feeds and offer more value than stand-alone protocols. As more and more Oracle nodes join the network and compete for the fee opportunity, the network’s value accruing mechanisms will also be further enhanced by the development of Staking. While both node operators and contract holders already need LINK to interact, Oracle networks also must stake LINK. Dishonest behaviour is discouraged by the slashing of one’s stake. The proceeds are not burnt but rather given to the whistleblower. As of today, the Chainlink smart contract chooses the node according to a reputation system when matching requests. The reputation is based on their stake and other factors such as speed or up-time. As the node infrastructure quality grows, it is likely that many will become evenly matched on all qualitative aspects. At this point, the ones with the largest stakes will become the chosen ones. Nodes competing for fees will have to buy more LINK tokens or borrow them on the open market. As the finite supply of LINK slowly vanishes, yield opportunities will arise for investors. We have seen what had happened to the price of Ether as the “burn rate” increased due to the demand-driven increase in transaction fees. Combined with the infinite amount of real-world use cases that will require Oracles and the potential of CCIP, it is no wonder that people like Eric Schmidt (Google) or Christian Catalini (DIEM, LIBRA) have joined the project. We also understand the importance of governance at this stage and that its centralization might be a necessary evil to bridge the gap between today’s institutions and truly decentralized blockchains. However, as Chainlink’s role expands, we hope that governance is slowly assigned to a large enough number of token holders. In the end, Knowledge and the institutions in charge of its record-keeping and propagation should belong to the people. Providing that transition is smoothly executed, Chainlink could become one of the main providers of Institutional Knowledge across many aspects of society, a real “Middlemachine” ( ). Mario Laul, Placeholder Vc

What is Chainlink? - Intro to the Oracle Network for Hybrid Smart Contracts

One of the key benefits of blockchain technology and crypto projects is their ability to reduce the costs of networking. . Startups can bootstrap digital platforms solely by relying on early adopters and investors to compete against established players without the need to resort to traditional funding. (Catalini & Gans) With incentives primarily geared towards users or other providers of key resources, early adopters are keen to experiment with those platforms hoping that the increased network activity results in greater diffusion thereby increasing the value of the native crypto asset. The increase in price of the token attracts further users thus generating a positive feedback loop. While investors might focus on the potential token appreciation, others will need to derive a utility from participating in that ecosystem. That utility can come in the form of a better interface, simply being an alternative to established market players or other factors. While network effects can be mostly attributed to the nature of blockchain technology itself, research at MIT has also shown that “who” those early adopters are can substantially influence the diffusion of a product or technology ( ). Catalini & Tucker Their research shows that when a technology is first adopted by Natural Early Adopters (NEAs) as opposed to the masses, overall diffusion is greater. While there is no clear definition for NEAs, most of them share the need to be special. Tech-savvy crypto users with privacy and performance concerns certainly fit the part. Think about early FireFox users or those running a Metamask extension in their Chrome browser. Instagram influencers, but for techies. Brendan Eich, Brave’s founder, experimented with the power of NEAs first-hand when Firefox did a search deal with Google many years ago. Despite having only a few million users at the time, the deal became highly lucrative. Google’s co-founder, Sergei Brin pinned the success down to Firefox users: They searched better, refined their searches better and bought a lot more… Cryptography and cryptocurrencies have been at the centre of since inception. Brave and its Basic Attention Token (BAT) The browser blocks ads and protects privacy by cutting Ad Tech companies out of the value chain allowing Ads to be better targeted and value to be shared in a more equitable way between users, advertisers, and publishers. Like Brave even uses Zero Knowledge Proofs to protect users’ privacy while satisfying advertisers’ need. Zcash, The browser’s adoption has so far been greater than that of the token, most probably because of the inconveniences associated with the opening of a custodial wallet and that of making micro payments on the costly Ethereum blockchain. This however does not mean that early Brave adopters and users are not crypto enthusiasts, quite the opposite. Most Brave Ads are in fact . crypto focused In continuation of its efforts in making the browser a , Brave has just launched a browser native self-custody wallet. This will please current users, encourage them to use BAT, but also attract a whole range of new users: Crypto Traders, Gamers, and all types of users. The wallet, like BAT is not only Chain Agnostic but also permits users to swap tokens on the fast and cheap blockchain or make micro payments when using Dapps, hanging out in the Metaverse or tipping content creators. It is a full-blown Decentralized Exchange (DEX). Super App Metamask Solana This should foster the Basic Attention Economy which until now has suffered from the high transaction costs of the Ethereum Blockchain leaving users and creators unable to incentivize themselves in any meaningful way. Brave is attracting NEAs across many different verticals. Some users might be attracted by its privacy, speed, or crypto wallet capabilities. Others by the ability to live their crypto life at the tip of one single application. For most, the browser has just become a decentralized bank, wallet, and crypto broker. As for investors, they should look at the sum of the parts. And the loop goes on…

How Brave Browser Gained the Favor of Crypto Enthusiasts

While “Tokenization” and NFTs have made strides in the art world and allowed some digital marketplace like to go mainstream it so far has had less success in the music industry. Decentralized streaming music services like have appeared but their scale and usage are still limited, and music is still sold to users as a fungible item online. Opensea Audius On the one hand, blockchains are only starting to resolve scalability and network latency issues. On the other hand, most of the music rights reside with legacy labels limiting the potential userbase, and thus networking effects of such decentralized services. Established music streaming services organizations like Spotify or YouTube Music currently benefit from substantial market power within their ecosystem. To paraphrase , as platform operators, they allocate rents between content publishers, users and advertisers who all rely on both their scale and their accumulated knowledge. Christian Catalini While Blockchain Technology can help such services better capitalize on the “New Content Economy” (Accenture.com) thanks to its ability to establish property rights at a finer level (Catalini) it also poses threats to the current balance of power within their ecosystem. Moreover, the rapidness at which the technology can be used to scale networks without the need for a traditional central intermediary when combined with the right “cryptoeconomics” also poses a competitive and existential threat (Catalini). Spotify or Youtube Music do not need to experiment with blockchain or “tokenomics” for funding purposes nor to build a network, but they could benefit from introducing a token in order to slowly change the way value is allocated in their ecosystem and to create new marketplaces. They should harness all their accumulated knowledge to do so. When launching a coin, Spotify and Co. should design incentives that promote the creation of “new content” without damaging their relationship with legacy music labels while leveraging their position as collectors of data to continue satisfying advertisers and curating their content. A way to do that would be to create two new “marketplaces” on their current music platform. One would focus on new artists with no current association with any labels and the other one on exclusive content from existing artists. On both marketplaces, content can be defined as music, exclusive audiovisuals, concert tickets, memorabilia, or any type of artist-related assets that can be tokenized. Artists can auction content or set it at a fixed price. The rationale in having 2 platforms is that the one with “known” artists will help in establishing a real benchmark value for the '“SPOTITUBEcoin” without the need for excessive liquidity. If “SPOTITUBE” was to list assets of unknown value with a token of unknown value, it would have to flush the market with liquidity and content to enable a price discovery. If a “U2” new exclusive release costs 1 “SPOTITUBEcoin” and the new song from an unknown artist cost 0.1 '“SPOTITUBEcoin” it gives users an idea of the potential value of the new artist thus creating a positive feedback loop. The rationale for not flushing the market with neither token liquidity nor content is both to leverage the potential diffusion effects that “New Early Adopters” can have on the technology when their need for feeling special is satisfied (Catalini & Tucker) but also to keep content scarce. Songs or content should only be available in a limited amount (at least some of them or for some time) to create value and further boost NEAs egos. As opposed to the classic streaming service everything that is purchased with “SPOTITUBEcoin” has a unique value and is not fungible. Artists or labels will also be able to issue equities in their next album or virtual concert (3LAU) and any other engagement activities between content providers and consumers will be encouraged to create a positive feedback loop. The coin should initially be issued and offered to current premium subscribers as they are more likely to be NEAs (course material). Non-redeemable large stakes should also be awarded (or sold at a discount) to current platform legacy content providers (music labels) to encourage their involvement in the new marketplace and slowly redefine their roles (course material). They will be the principal initial “stakers” (Ethereum.org). In time they will focus on creating and monetizing virtual events. Other users will either have to buy the coins or earn them through ad watching on the traditional streaming platform as with the “basic attention token”. (brave.com) so they only slowly gain access to the new marketplace. As in Brave, users will also be able to gift tokens to artists to support them. Finally, everyone will be able to redeem their “SPOTITUBEcoin” but large publishers like those publishing multiple artist or live VR concerts will have to keep part of their holdings “staked” to be able participate at such scale. Also published on BlockAdvisors .

On the Decentralization of Spotify and Similar Platforms

We will in the following paragraphs use Bitcoin, Algorand and Ethereum as examples to argue that if blockchain technology is to fulfill its purpose as a trusted shared public ledger and its promises as “General Purpose Technology” it has to have the right “incentives mechanisms” (Vitalik Buterin) in place to leverage its access to human ingenuity in order to achieve scale while fighting off many possible emerging points of centralization arising from potential economies of scales. Blockchains can nowadays have many forms from private and permissioned to public and permissionless or anywhere in between. While a public centralized blockchain, assuming a completely trusted and trustworthy central authority that does not seek to profit from its position or the “cost of trust”, could, in theory, serve as a shared public ledger and reduce the costs of verifying the attributes of a transaction or information leakage (Catalini & Gans) it would most likely fail in having the networks effect of a truly decentralized one. In fact, it is very likely that even if a centrally designed public blockchain was to achieve scale most of the technology´s intended purpose and benefits to the public would fade over time or disappear instantly. One of the main benefits of blockchain is its ability to create assets that cannot be owned (Catalini & Gans). Centralizing ownership of the ledger and its network effects would surely result in the central authority charging the public for the cost of trust and exert market power which could come in the form of fees, censorship, or other inefficiencies. Those inefficiencies would in turn reduce participation undermining the technology´s very purpose. Centralization also creates “single point of attacks” undermining security and therefore trust, once again undermining the core principles of the technology. The debate about centralization comes as many blockchains including Bitcoin have failed to scale without centralization. Scaling a blockchain by extending the parameters makes it harder to participate (Vitalik Buterin) thereby increasing centralization and reducing safety. We agree with Professor Silvio Micali that a lot of the scaling and centralization problems of Bitcoin are inherent to the incentive scheme embedded in its protocol. In Bitcoin, miners are incentivized and rewarded to secure the network by transaction fees and newly minted coin for their POW work. The number of resources needed to mine under Bitcoin POW has resulted in barely profitable and unfamous centralized mining operations while the requirement of running a full node is affecting participation in the network. While miners are remunerated, “Full Nodes” which have to run a full copy of the blockchain are not and neither are “Lightnodes” even though they must keep a full copy of the UTXO set (affect memory vs disk space), the network´s most expensive resource. (Andreas Antonopoulos). In fact, one could argue that nodes are encouraged to hoard the coins as their only remuneration will come from the appreciation of bitcoin. According to Wikipedia, 0.5% of Bitcoin wallets owned 87% of all Bitcoin in March 2018. This concentration of mining and ownership could be the inadvertent result of a combination of Bitcoin deflationary fixed monetary supply and incentive mechanism, but the fact is that it has resulted in very few innovations apart from Segwit and Lightning Networks which in the latter case only offer an off-chain centralized solution scalability problem. While Algorand´s “Pure POS” consensus “algorithm” uses randomness and cryptography as a source of trust to create a scalable blockchain solution that not only allows high transaction throughput but also a cheap participation (Silvio Micali), it remains to be seen whether “Pure POS” gather enough active participants to secure its network without suffering from the “tragedy of commons” or “nothing at stake” as no incentives are in place for good behaviors and no punishment for bad ones.  Being rewarded for merely holding and using ALGOs could well be enough of an incentive. To solve its scalability issue Ethereum is switching from POW to “Bonded POS” consensus mechanism while putting in place new technologies such as “Sharding” which split the database and “ZK Rollups” which allows for a large part of the computation and data to be done and kept off-chain. Zero Knowledge Cryptography (also used in Zkledger) has tremendous scalability potential as it cryptographically proves the validity of a computation or message without the need to reveal the information. When combined, those measures should; by pushing 90% of the data and 99% of the computation off chain, enable 100,000s of transactions per second (Vitalik Buterin). By actively fighting and identifying emerging sources of centralization like “MEV” (Miners/Stakers Front-Running etc..) so they only exist for a limited time Ethereum is showing that with the right incentives in place human ingenuity can overcome Blockchain’s current challenges and fulfill its initial purpose: Individualism is funded and promoted by the public as a way to develop innovative and transformative applications of general-purpose that remain in public hands. Also published on: https://www.blocks-advisors.com/blog/achieving-decentralized-scale-eth-vs-btc-vs-algo

How to Achieve Decentralized Scale: ETH vs BTC vs ALGO

Facebook, Google, Amazon. Everybody seems to be out to get your data. No wonder, monetising data is a that propelled centralised data controllers to the market cap stratosphere. But what do you get for giving away your data? A “free” service, if you are lucky, and a breakdown of democracy if you are fresh out of luck. Consequently, a number of people are pushing the idea that users should control their data using self-sovereign identity (SSI) management systems (like ) and interoperable data pods (such as ). As it turns out, though, this approach has a number of fundamental issues as well. massive business sovrin inrupt In this article, I’ll explain some of those issues through the lens of an economist and based on the experience we made at — A company we started to help universities monetise sensitive student data while giving students a notion of ownership of their data. Registree So, who owns your data? The Facebook / Cambridge Analytica will hopefully be remembered as a turning point in the fight for privacy. Yes, privacy, by the political scientist Alan Westin as: scandal defined […] the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when,how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others. is a human right, but that means little in a world where information itself is (almost) impossible to trace as it is passed along to others. At the core of the quest for privacy in our data-driven world is a quest for the control over our data. The current model of data storage has, what at its centre, centralised data controllers collecting vast amounts of personal- and user data. These central controllers, from Facebook, Alphabet, and Amazon in the private sector to the NSA on the government side, reap massive private benefits from controlling access and use of our data. Jaron Lanier calls siren servers But other models of data storage are emerging, where data is stored in centralized systems without a central point that can control access and use. What seems like a technicality — what kind of technology we use to store our data — has far-reaching implications for the question who owns the data. de Economists like to define ownership through the concept of . The idea, first put forward by Sanford Grossman and economics Nobel laureate Oliver Hart in their 1986 is simple: whenever it is costly to list all possible contingencies in a contract, for example the sale of an asset, it is optimal to let one party purchase the right to determine what should happen in all instances that are not specified in the contract. The control over these , i.e. non-contracted (and in many instances non-contractible) rights determines ownership. residual control rights article residual Take the case of land. As the owner of a property, you can write a contract with a tenant to use your land for specific purposes (e.g. to build a house, harvest crops, or build a ), but the more specific you want to be (e.g. how large the house, which kinds of crop, how many half pipes) in the contract, the longer, more cumbersome, and generally expensive the contract becomes. At some point it simply makes no sense to add yet another clause to the contract and you’ll just say “if this issue arises, give me a call and I decide what happens”. The very fact that you get the right to decide what happens “in all other cases” is what makes you the owner of the property. skate park The case of data is much more difficult, though, and our traditional notions of ownership reach their limits. A central data controller like facebook is the owner of your personal data because they store the information about all your likes, your comments, what advertisements you clicked on and when you checked the facebook page of your ex. And not only do they store the data, they decide how it is used to finance their operations. You know, “Senator, we run ads”. The obvious alternative is to save data not in central data stores, but in decentralized data pods, such as World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners Lee’s new venture . Without a doubt, there is a lot of potential in this approach, but it also makes a few things much harder. inrupt The conundrum: Self-Sovereign Data Storage and Data Monetization Let’s start with the simple problem: If everybody stores their data in data pods, we replace the thousands of centralised data controller with billions of individual data pods. But this in itself does not make it easier for the users to create value from their data. Individual data are much less valuable in isolation than when they are combined. Some novel protocols exist, such as secure multiparty computation ( ), where data analytics can be performed over data pods without loss of privacy. But these methods are limited and usually break down for larger user numbers due to the complexity of communication required by the protocol (although has been on this front). MPC progress made And then it’s back to square one: users need to centralise their data to allow for more value-generating analytics to be performed (for example, computing the median of a distribution is still a tough problem for MPC). But data is what economists call non-rivalrous. This means that my consumption of information does not preclude others from consuming the same information. Think about the light from a lighthouse as an example of a non-rivalrous good. One ship using the light of a lighthouse as a guide does not preclude other ships from using the same light as a guide. In fact, the light from a lighthouse is a public good since it is also non-excludable, i.e. it is practically impossible to exclude some ships from the light while providing it to others. Information generally, and data as a physical store of information specifically, are non-rivalrous, but the right to privacy, requires them to be excludable. So you should be able to determine for yourself what information is communicated about you to others. This, precisely, is where the self-sovereign model of data storage gets into trouble. And we have seen this when we were building Registree, a platform that allows universities to monetise the student data they have (e.g. transcripts) by selling data access to employers. This would help employers to identify the ideal graduate and help students to find the ideal job. In a country like South Africa, where is at a mind-boggling 60%, the search frictions in the labour market are huge and matching employers and graduates creates massive value for both sides. youth unemployment But now imagine what the students would do with their sensitive data? Exactly. They will give it away first chance they get. This is what’s called the : people claim they care about their privacy online until you offer them a shiny trinket of questionable value. So, like Learning Machine and other startups in this space, we have considered using a self-sovereign model of data storage where we convince the university to issue credentials into a pod (NB: some self-sovereign data storage applications prefer the term SSI wallet, but I prefer pods because the term is more general) fully controlled by the student. digital privacy paradox Since data is non-rivalrous, giving away your data is not the same as giving a friend the keys to your car. Once your friend returns the keys, you can check the car to see that it has no scratches or dents, and you can make sure that while you have the keys nobody can use your car to drive around and possibly get into an accident. Using your car is both rivalrous and excludable: either you your friend can drive it at the same time. And you can revoke your friend’s future access to the car once he returns it with a long scratch on the passenger door. or This ability to revoke the right to use the car is part of what makes you the owner of the car. But once you share data, it is, for all intents and purposes, gone. Yes, many countries, including South Africa, have privacy regulations, but enforcing them is close to impossible precisely because data can be copied freely and without a trace. For us as a company, the self-sovereign model of data storage was essentially a non-starter because a) we would not be able to give students actual ownership of their data as we set out to do; and b) as it turns out, the transcript data is not actually owned by the students, but by the universities who act as custodians of the data and are not allowed or not willing to simply share it with third parties. Shouldn’t users be allowed to share their data freely? The question of revoking data access has caused us many sleepless nights as a company, but eventually we found a compromise that is workable. Instead of issuing transcripts to students’ data pods, we help universities to identify use cases for their data and design processes to implement those without the need for sharing data. We basically follow the open source business model: Instead of trying to collect data ourselves (writing proprietary closed source code), effectively becoming a centralised data controller, we specialise in giving advise to- and building services for data custodians. Think about it this way: What self-sovereign data pods create is the ability for data creators to sell their data once — to whatever central data controller sits one step downstream in the data value chain. And no matter how you spin it, the non-rivalrous nature of data will always get you back to exactly this point: For data to be most valuable, it needs to be combined with other data, but once that happens, the central controller of this combined data set becomes the new data owner. In some models of self-sovereign data storage a data creator is paid whenever a third party needs to verify the veracity of the data. But this still only covers a tiny subset of the total value chain and does not prevent third parties to use the data in non-contractible ways once they have verified its veracity. This is clearly not an optimal way of writing contracts about data usage and it’s not the only problem of the self-sovereign data storage model. Let me add another layer of complexity and throw in a third important concept economists care about: externalities. An externality is a cost that affects a third party who did not choose to incur this cost. The generation of data is often afflicted with an externality, for example when I record a video chat with a friend and then sell it to a company that trains a novel speech-recognition algorithm, I am not only selling my own data (i.e. what I say in the chat), but also what my friend says. By selling the data of our call, I directly create an externality for him. Unfortunately, these externalities are everywhere. In the case of Registree, we figured that if we allow students to sell their verified transcript information to a possible employer, the employer will build up a database of marks and at some point judge applicants based on where in the distribution of marks they are. What happens when there is grade inflation, or -deflation? Wouldn’t we disadvantage one group of students without their knowledge or consent? Allowing users to share data at will — even the data they generate themselves — is a slippery slope. Economists have started formalising this problem and study implications for market prices. MIT’s and his co-authors, for example, show in a recent that: Daron Acemoglu paper We demonstrate that the data externalities depress the price of data because once a user’s information is leaked by others, she has less reason to protect her data and privacy. These depressed prices lead to excessive data sharing. UPenn’s and her co-author from NYU study externalities exerted by customers’ decisions to repay a loan (or not) on other customers that “look” similar from a bank’s perspective. The authors ask a poignant question, highly relevant in a world where banks “behavioural”: Annie Liang Erik Madsen become If Alice knows that the bank evaluates her not only based on her own repayment history, but also on the repayment histories of other individuals in her category, how does that change her incentives to exercise financial prudence? The answer depends on several factors and highlights the subtle consequences of externalities in data generation. What we can learn from the economics literature — from the classic texts of Grossman and Hart on ownership, over the digital privacy paradox of Athey and Catalini, to the new work on externalities in data generation by Acemoglu et al. and Liang and Madsen — is that the self-sovereign model of data storage has its very own set of problems that we first need to understand before we deploy sensitive data into pods or SSI wallets. The issues we encountered when trying to use SSI in a setting with sensitive data does not mean there is no room for SSI solutions. At Registree, we use as SSI wallet to give students some form of control over their data. But we use it specifically to implement access control to students’ personal data rather than a means of storing data. By delegating access control to a SSI wallet, Registree can guarantee its users that we do not have the ability to override their decision so that residual control rights are with the users, not with us. This, we believe is a first glimpse at a new business model, and SSI used right helps us to get there. uPort

SSI's Problem with Data Ownership

11/10/2019 The Book of Five Rings I just finished and was looking for my next book (I’m a quarter of the way through , but that’s something I pick up when I’m between books). a few weeks ago and in the episode Joe quotes , a legendary swordsman, which ultimately led me to . Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning The Wealth of Nations Kevin Smith was on Joe Rogan’s podcast Miyamoto Musashi The Book of Five Rings If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything. Here’s another quote from the book that relates to about the historical context of decision making. my statement in last week’s newsletter Do not just read, memorize or imitate, but so that you realize the principle from within your own heart study hard to absorb these things into your body. Robinhood Infinite Leverage Even with infinite leverage, these traders lost money. It goes to show you that money doesn’t automatically beget more money. This is a nice segue into something that annoys the hell out of me. The U.S. has these arcane accreditation rules that disqualify average people from investing in start ups. The argument is that the accreditation rules are in place to protect people from losing all their money. The problem with this logic is we don’t stop people from crowdfunding projects they’re interested in or trading with infinite leverage. Explain to me how buying private equity is more risky than trading with infinite leverage. Andreessen Horowitz Crypto Start Up School I’m sure a large portion of my readers are interested in this. It looks like the lectures will be available online after the course is finished, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of content is in the course. Miso Robotics Crowdfunding It’s interesting that a robotics company is going the crowdfunding route rather than traditional financing. I reserved a spot just in case, but I likely won’t invest because it makes me wary. Also, I already bought shares of Robinhood and that is enough private equity for one week. Did someone say Robinhood? Christian Catalini On Unchained One of the Libra co-creators was on this week. With all the headlines surrounding Libra, it was refreshing to get some less sensationalized information on the project. Unchained Aramco’s March Toward IPO Continues It  feels like this IPO has been in the headlines for months now. It’ll be interesting to see how the market reacts when the IPO finally happens, particularly given the current market sentiment toward oil. One thing I hadn’t considered was the political ramifications of a particular country owning a large amount of the Aramco shares outlined in . this Bloomberg article It looks like individual investors will be capped at 0.5% of the initial IPO. More info broke on this before I posted this newsletter. The IPO prospectus was also released right before this newsletter, which outlines the risks Aramco can see with the business. ” Facebook’s New “Logo This is an obvious attempt at avoiding anti-trust scrutiny. Given it is so obvious to everyone, one can’t help but wonder, why bother? This week’s newsletter not your cup of tea? Check out some of the more popular weeks below! GitHub Acquires Semmle, Vitalik’s Time Machine, and Condolences to the Facebook Engineer Get Paid Today, A $100k EOS Hack, and Tokenizing a Basketball Player The $1 Billion Bitcoin Whale, A $243,000 Deepfake, Pre-Mature Optimization, and The Yandhi Leak This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this post constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by myself to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the author’s employers. Don’t forget to follow me on twitter , add me on linkedin , add me on facebook , subscribe to my blog , or follow me on medium for more content like this. I post a review of topics I find interesting every week. I’m always looking for new topics to cover, so if you have anything you find interesting and would like to discuss please reach out!

The Book of Five Rings, Miso Robotics, and Men in Tights

Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies. The rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum helped this distributed ledger technology amass huge popularity all around the world. While the so-called “crypto winter” has raised plenty of questions about the future of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology proved itself extremely useful in other fields, such as logistics, healthcare, government, trade finance and cross-border payments. Increased capacity, enhanced security, immutability, faster settlement and decentralization are just some of the key features of this innovative technology. Companies and governments are already levering it to reduce operational costs, improve transparency and simplify complex business processes. Earlier this year, consulting giant KPMG released its “2019 Technology Industry Innovation” report, which examined over 740 world leaders from the tech industry. According to the , 41% of top managers said it was “very likely/likely” that blockchain will be adopted in their organizations within the next three years. Furthermore, nearly half of responders believed “very likely/likely” this technology will impact their business approach in that same timeframe. survey A prior study by PwC outlined similar , showing that 84 percent of executives confirmed their companies were “actively involved” with this technology. results When it comes to figures, blockchain solutions seems to be on the right track. A recent analysis by the forecasts a robust growth pace in spending for the 2018–2022 period, with an estimated 5-year compound annual growth rate of 76.0%. In 2019, spending on blockchain technology is forecasted at $2.9 billion, which translates into a 88.7% increase from the previous year. International Data Corporation As institutional adoption gains momentum, understanding blockchain and the opportunities that lie ahead of this technology could benefit your professional development. Ready to get started? Here are the best blockchain courses for 2019: #1 | Blockchain and Bitcoin Fundamentals Starting from scratch? Look no further. Blockchain and Bitcoin Fundamentals is the most popular blockchain-related course on Udemy for a good reason: it offers a comprehensive introduction to this technology and cryptocurrencies in just 2.5 hours. This course addresses basic definitions and concepts around blockchain, bitcoin, smart contracts, tokens, and all potential business applications. It will also show you how to get started with Bitcoin and other digital currencies. There are 37 lectures in total, averaging from 3 to 8 minutes each. Additionally, the author has included two downloadable PDFs on blockchain vocabulary and Bitcoin Hard Forks. The official price of this course is $94.99. #2 | Blockchain A-Z™: Learn How To Build Your First Blockchain If you’re one of those who is crazy about bestsellers, then this online course is for you. Nearly 30,000 students from all over the world have taken Blockchain A-Z™. This distance course was developed by AI entrepreneur Hadelin de Ponteves and data scientist Kirill Eremenko with one goal in mind: teaching you how to build your own blockchain, create a cryptocurrency and a smart contract. While there are no strict requirements to take this course, it is highly advisable to have a basic Python knowledge before jumping into it. It is available on Udemy. Blockchain A-Z™ costs $199.99, but there is a 95% discount in place right now. #3 | MIT Blockchain Technologies Is your organization planning to adopt blockchain technology? The MIT Blockchain Technologies course is meant for professionals seeking a deeper understanding of the impact and applications of the distributed ledger technology in an economic environment. This course is a go-to for entrepreneurs or executives wanting to integrate blockchain into their business plans, or figuring out how blockchain better fits the organization’s goals. This program will turn you into a blockchain specialist in six weeks. The course is based on the work of the leading MIT faculty and cryptoeconomics expert, Professor Christian Catalini. From a foundational overview of blockchain technology, its multiple use cases and limitations, the syllabus has it all covered. As you could expect from a world leading university, the price tag for this course is way above the average: $3,500. According to the MIT, this program requires you to study from 5 to 8 hours per week. The good news is that this is a fully self-paced learning course, which means you don’t need to follow a strict schedule. #4 | Oxford Blockchain Strategy Programme If you’re looking for something a bit more intense within a serious academic environment, then you might consider the Oxford Blockchain Strategy Programme — a six-week online course developed by Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford in collaboration with online education provider GetSmarter. Surprisingly, this program is a bit cheaper than the one offered by the MIT: £2,350. In this particular case, the organizers recommend studying 12–15 hours a week to complete it. Long story short, this course guides you through the multiple applications of blockchain technology, helping you identify opportunities to incorporate it to both short and long business strategies. This distance course is divided in six modules: Understanding blockchain Blockchain and business Transfer of value and storage of value Decentralised apps and smart contracts Transformative business models Blockchain frontiers: identify future trends in the industry #5 | IBM Blockchain Foundation for Developers As its name suggests, this online course with certificate of completion is mainly designed for developers wanting to create blockchain applications. However, the first part of this course offers a basic foundation on this DLT technology with no programming skills required. The other three parts are focused on concepts, components, and strategies to build blockchain networks. This blockchain developer course is available on Coursera — a leading online learning platform. The program was created by IBM, one of the strongest players in the Blockchain as a Service industry. In fact, this tech giants holds the second the second place in terms of the highest number of blockchain patents worldwide as of 2019. In order to earn the Coursera course certificate and IBM digital badge, you would have to pass a series of end-of-section quizzes and a final exam. The entire program is just 9 hours long and costs only $50. #6 | UC Berkeley Blockchain Fundamentals Last but not least, the UC Berkeley Blockchain Fundamentals Professional Certificate program. Unlike other courses offered by top universities, this one is available for just $198 on EdX — an well-known open online course provider. This learning path is accessible by anyone, without technical skills needed to get started. This program is designed to clarify essential concepts surrounding blockchain technology, the main ideas behind it and its benefits for a vast number of industries. According to the course organizers, you can complete it in under one and a half months if you dedicate between 3 and 5 hours per week. Overall, this program is a perfect choice for professionals to get up to speed on blockchain. Define blockchain solutions Understand the mechanics behind Bitcoin Discover real-life cryptocurrency applications, smart contracts and Dapps Gain in-depth knowledge on corporate-level blockchain implementations Explore cryptocurrency and blockchain regulatory environments About Crypterium Crypterium is one of the most promising fintech companies, according to KPMG and H2Ventures. We are building a mobile app that meets the banking needs of the digital assets era. The team is led by former General Manager of Visa Central & Eastern Europe , and C-level executives from global financial institutions, like Renaissance Insurance, London Derivatives Exchange, American Express etc. Steven Parker ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ Website Telegram Facebook Twitter Reddit YouTube LinkedIn <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a>

6 Online Courses To Become A Blockchain Expert In 2019

The reports of bitcoin environmental damage are garbage

explored the context in which many businesses exist today. The deployment age¹ of information technology and the Internet has brought with it giant organisations, operating at unprecedented scale. Chapter 0 Source: (Bloomberg, A16Z) Such organisations continue to look for areas of innovation and growth. For instance, between 2011 and 2016, Apple acquired 70 companies, Facebook more than 50, and Google nearly 200.² However, “unbounded growth requires accelerating cycles of innovation to avoid collapse. Growth is infinite in a finite time. At some time in the future the system collapses”.³ Technology and finance have had, and continue to have, the greatest impact in reshaping . business has led to: Technology Cheaper tools for everyone — the price of starting a company has fallen from an estimated $5,000,000 in 2000 to just $5,000 today.⁴ Incidentally, scaling a company is becoming more expensive due to the reliance of building on platforms. For many, Google, Facebook, and Amazon control distribution. The Internet — everyone is now connected, with over 3.5 billion people having access to the Internet in 2017.⁵ Software eating the world — the rise of intangible assets and increased malleability of business. (consumerisation, the growing importance of demand over supply, and a world of abundance). Technology has shifted business and the economy from a supply-driven world to a demand-driven world Finance has served as an important catalyst for funding new innovations and deploying capital at scale in new enterprises (i.e. the joint stock company, or junk bonds). However, evidence suggests that finance is now less in service of the real economy (‘Main Street’) but in service of itself — this is ‘financialisation’. According to Rana Foroohar, “Only 15 percent of the money flowing from financial institutions actually makes its way into business investment. The rest gets moved around a closed financial loop, via the buying and selling of existing assets, like real estate, stocks and bonds”.⁶ Finance tripled its share of the US and UK economies between 1950 and the 2000s. On average, across advanced economies, private sector debt increased from 50 percent of national income in 1950 to 170 percent in 2006.⁷ These shifts change the ontology, the underlying assumptions and nature of business. “The emerging heuristic routines and approaches are gradually internalised by engineers and managers, investors and bankers, sales and advertising people, entrepreneurs and consumers. In time, a shared logic is established; a new ‘common sense’ is accepted for investment decisions as well as for consumer choice. The old ideas are unlearned and the new ones become ‘normal’ ”.⁸ It’s Complex “We are deterministic creatures living in a probabilistic universe”, Amos Tversky.⁹ The world is not linear but rather consists of a vast number of complex adaptive systems, all interacting with one another. However, people’s natural instinct is to think linearly. Historically, this has had less of an impact, as systems acted on a much smaller scale and operated at a slower pace. This is no longer the case, “we are experiencing a technological non-linearity. The realm of possibility for mankind is expanding rapidly due to the extraordinary power of digital technologies”.²² As noted earlier, technology changed everything: The internet and the smartphone: In 2016, approximately 1.5 billion smartphones were sold.² “For the first time in human history a near majority of the world’s adults are now connected.” Human networks scale at a rate which is super linear. They have positive feedback loops, which accelerate the pace of change. The Internet was the game changer, creating a global network. The pace of change grew exponentially faster, as ideas and information could be shared, spread and combined in new ways. Sites like Product Hunt created a community of early adopters, accelerating the process of innovation diffusion and the adoption of new products. “Human beings innovate by combining and recombining ideas, and the larger and denser the network, the more innovation occurs”, Matt Ridley.¹⁰ 2. Software is eating the world, and the rise of intangible assets: Software is malleable. As it eats the world, everything becomes more dynamic. The world is indeed dynamic and not static. To illustrate, texts and books were previously fixed, but now Wikipedia is constantly updated. The lifeblood of organisations; data, money, and people continuously flow. One estimate found that Microsoft’s physical assets accounted for just 1% of its market value. The expertise of Microsoft’s engineers and the code they use were far more important.¹¹ 3. Demand-driven, not supply-driven world: Everyone is now a segment of one. All information is specifically tailored to one’s newsfeeds, Spotify playlists, Netflix recommendations, et cetera. Scale versus personalisation is no longer a trade-off. As a result many brands and services have become a commodity, interchangeable to the consumer, profit has shifted to those that own the customer relationship (demand), not the supply. A world of abundance. Source: Chris Anderson²³ The Dawn of Giant Networks As Chapter 0 explored, industries are increasingly becoming winner takes all, where a handful of companies dominate. The question is why? A number of interrelated characteristics to consider include: Structure Economics of digital Super-linear scaling Adaptability over efficiency “The extraordinarily efficient pyramidal structures with clearly defined roles and tasks that handled growth and innovation in the mass production paradigm of the 1950s are seen as bureaucratic dinosaurs next to the dynamic global networks digitally interconnected with multi-skilled personnel and high levels of autonomy of the flexible production paradigm of the current Information Technology revolution”.⁸ . Though the tech giants have led to the centralisation of the Internet, under the hood, they are inherently decentralised in nature. They have departed from the traditional ‘command and control’ structure. Structure G. Pisano puts it this way: “Just as firms compete in product markets, they also compete to create technological, operational, and organisational capabilities that provide them advantage in those product markets”.¹⁵ Amazon’s autonomous “two pizza” teams operate without the need for every decision to be approved, yet with the capabilities and freedom to develop new product lines, new features. Amazon estimates 35% of its sales are from cross-selling activities. Corporations don’t need ‘cross-silo’ teams. In contrast, they need to redesign their organisation and breakdown the previously artificial distinctions put in place, often dictated by complex legacy software. These tech giants have developed dynamic capabilities and proprietary datasets that allow them to build empires that transcend traditional industry lines. Google’s shift to Alphabet is the most prominent example of developing capabilities that can be pointed at new problems. G. Pisano further notes, “A capabilities-based perspective asks practitioners to consider: what capabilities should the firm nurture to gain a competitive advantage? Because most capabilities are cumulative and develop over time through a series of coordinated investments, they involve commitments to “paths”, rather than discrete projects. A key strategic problem for firms is to identify and commit to paths for capability creation that lead to competitive advantage”.¹⁵ This notion of “paths” is at the heart of strategy and competitive advantage. Moreover, competitive advantage depends on a tangled web of interdependent choices and capabilities. The trade-offs and capabilities required are extremely different in the digital world. “No cookbook or expert system can reliably churn out winning strategies. By definition, strategy is about creating something unique, making a set of choices that nobody else has made. Trade-offs are the strategic equivalent of a fork in the road. If people take one path, they cannot simultaneously take the other. Similarly, adjustments arise in products, and meeting the needs of customers requires companies to make choices about the product. There are then compromises in the activities to deliver the product. Another trade-off is the consistency of brand and image because compromises are choices that make strategies sustainable because they are not easy to match or to neutralise. Hence, trade-offs make strategy more difficult to imitate. Good strategies depend on the connection among many things, on making interdependent choices. Where possible, each choice should enhance the value of others”.¹⁶ The structure of these firms has not just changed how they operate internally, but the relationship with other organisations. The shift to cloud and modular operating models is redefining the nature of the firm, giving rise to the “API economy” and “evolutionary architectures”. Firms do not exist in isolation but become increasingly connected in helping customers achieve an outcome. “In the twenty-first century, the supply chain is no longer the central aggregator of business value. Now networks connect business and individuals, enabling them to exchange value among themselves. Linear business models focus on creating value internally and selling that value downstream to customers. As the world becomes more connected, what a company owns matters less than the resource it can connect to. Platforms don’t own the means of production — instead, they create the means of connection”. — Alex Moazed¹¹ Economics of Digital. The economics of digital and platform business models naturally create winner takes all outcomes. “Platforms have a number of important properties. They allow easy participation, exhibit network effects that increase in value as participation increases, and typically capture and generate huge amounts of data that enhances the value of the platform to all. We are now at a point of technological advancement where the increasing sophistication of key technologies, enabled by software modularity, massive data processing capacity and network connectivity, has led to the emergence of a new generation of platforms of increasing complexity. These next-generation platforms are well-positioned for disruptive change”.¹³ “As a result of the rise of the platform, almost all traditional business management practices… are in a state of upheaval. We are in a disequilibrium time that affects every company and business leader”.² Information goods, those made of bits rather than atoms, are free and perfect. It’s essentially free to make an additional copy, and a copy is as good as the original. The economic power of information good increases once a network is available because networks add a critical third attribute: being instant. Additionally, networks allow distribution of a free, perfect copy of information goods from one place to another, virtually immediately. This shift is now taking place in the physical world, with Uber and Airbnb demonstrating that platform companies can translate to coordinate tangible assets in a network. Christian Catalini further remarks, “Physical scale and unique intellectual property no longer confer unbeatable advantages; increasingly, the economic leaders are enterprises that act as ‘keystones’, proactively organising, influencing, and coordinating widespread networks of communities, users, and organisations”.¹⁴ Super Linear Scaling. The characteristics of digital inherently support super linear scaling. In addition, the world of atoms and physical products depreciate with use. Nevertheless, software and data-driven products appreciate with use by individuals. Also, platform companies have created business models with positive feedback loops to support these characteristics. This is evident in Netflix and Amazon’s famous “virtuous cycles”: Adaptability over efficiency. Traditionally, businesses have scaled sub-linearly. Most evident in the S-Curve shaped growth of companies, businesses scale quickly (blitzscale) and then taper off as they mature. In their inception companies are dominated by a spectrum of innovative ideas as they seek to establish themselves in the marketplace. However, as they grow administration and bureaucracy typically take over. As an illustration, Geoffrey West argues, “Economies of scale and sub-linear scaling, reflecting the challenge of efficiently administering a large and complex organisation, dominate innovation and ideas encapsulated in super-linear scaling, ultimately leading to stagnation and mortality”.³ Change, adaptation, and invention become increasingly difficult under a top-down administrative rule, especially as the pace of change continues to accelerate. This is not simply a structural problem, but a human one. Much of the activity that takes place in large organisations today is ‘arse covering’ masquerading as rigour. As the stakes get higher in the decisions made the ratio of activity that goes into justifying a decision versus creating value shifts dramatically. This is why “you never get fired for buying IBM”, or as Freek Vermeulen points out; many so called ‘best practices’ still exist. Management practices such as Lean and Six Sigma in the short-term lead to better results, boost efficiency, productivity and quality, but in the long-term, they deprive a company of learning opportunities, or the ability to question conventional wisdom. The language within the organisation also begins to change, focusing on efficiency rather than creation. As companies focus on efficiency, they become optimised for the world as it is today, making them less resilient. Source: MIT: The Truth about Business Model Innovation (Clayton M. Christensen, Thomas Bartman, and Derek van Bever) As companies mature, the four elements of a business model become more interconnected and rigid, therefore making it harder to adapt. This is a natural lifecycle of business models. Therefore, when evaluating new general-purpose technologies, such as machine learning, it is important to understand how best to deploy them based on where the business is in terms its natural life-cycle. In existing business, managers should not only assess how the technology can be used as a sustaining innovation or efficiency play, but whether it creates a significantly different customer value proposition and profit equation. If so, organisations will need to develop an entirely new business, you cannot move back down the cycle. Machine Learning can be a sustaining innovation and lead to efficiency gains for the likes of Google (seen in their translate and map products). But deployed in a new market with a combination of other technologies, Machine Learning becomes disruptive (driverless cars) — Waymo. Coping with change. Somethings never change. This increasing pace of change has required businesses to become more purpose driven. Clayton Christensen uses a framework called, ‘the job to be done’¹⁸. This is the ‘value proposition’ element of the business model. The value proposition is often consistent. Jeff Bezos, when asked what’s not going to change, says, “people are always going to want more selection, lower prices and faster delivery”. People can then understand how digital technologies change, enhance or create new value propositions. This after all is the definition of digital disruption; “changes in the competitive environment, resulting from the use of digital technologies by new market entrants or established competitors in ways that undermine the viability of your product/service portfolio or go-to-market approach”.¹⁷ Clayton Christensen adds, “Entrepreneurs start with a passion to solve a problem, but as they scale, the conversation changes. No longer are they using passive data to observe the world, but active data to evaluate their products and performance. Then, as they scale and establish themselves as an incumbent, the conversation turns to efficiency, costs, etc. Firms lose what made them great; they lose that connection to the value they are creating.”¹⁸ Value creation comes from giving consumers something they value relative to the available alternatives, which could be competing companies but also possible substitutes, and in a world of abundance there are increasingly many substitutes. Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle: The “how” in large organisations has always been defined as the processes, culture and unspoken truths that exist. However, people often try to change the “what” by deploying the same “how”. Changing this common error is difficult. All businesses need a defined “why”. The “what” and “how” are malleable. The “why” is a company’s North Star and remains constant. Companies must:¹⁸ Understand the job the customer wants to get done Understand how the customer chooses a business What they can do that others can’t How everyone knows what product does the job best (develop a purpose led brand which acts as a ‘shortcut for the brain’) Changing Context In systems thinking, understanding the context in which we exist is important. Regardless, it’s clear that the context and narratives being told are beginning to change. We are starting to see a push back against centralisation and ‘the establishment’ as people get left behind. Could tech giants experience the level of regulation and compliance of financial institutions? BBVA estimates that 15 percent of staff are dedicated to compliance and regulatory activity.²³ Another clear societal change is the rise of impact investing, where investors care about sustainability, diversity, and the environment. The US Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment estimates that more than a fifth ($8.7trn) of the funds under professional management in America are screened on SRI criteria, up from a ninth in 2012.¹⁹ This completely changes the notion of creating shareholder value. Businesses are a socio-economic structure, we have moved away from ‘shareholder value’ being about maximising short-term profits at the expense of everything else. Larry Fink recently declared, “to prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society”²⁴. However, this shift is still in its infancy. A second and obvious trend is the rise of crypto assets. Much like machine learning, Blockchain is a general-purpose technology akin to the steam engine, electricity, relational databases and the Internet. These social and technological shifts are giving way to a new paradigm that will co-exist with today’s platform companies (see Chapter 2). Conclusion It’s important to understand the changes that are reshaping the world we live in, but equally important is creating organisations that can both thrive and survive in a world of constant transformation. “Let’s face it face, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behaviour on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organises and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting, that’s what makes it beautiful, and that’s what makes it work”. — Donella Meadows²⁰ Support me: _Thinking out loud. www.mrogers.london @_mrogers.london_www.buymeacoffee.com Buy Michael Rogers a Coffee ETH: 0xDdeE1262Bb4b1B8f2e5c75d5c27A6D1A235AA2e3 BTC: 3KwbmRmZowc93iPetp59QQn3Hgry4cvxMR

Chapter 1 — A Whole New World

Friends and family often ask me where to begin learning about Bitcoin and blockchains. With the recent rise in prices, these requests are amplifying in lockstep. I imagine many of you have had a similar experience. I’m always happy to respond because it’s important for people to become educated before investing, but these responses take time and time is scarce. I started compiling a list so that I could respond efficiently. This list is not meant to be comprehensive, it’s curated. That means I’m leaving out a ton of important content. I’m doing so because newcomers often report feeling initially overwhelmed by the volume of information in this space. I’ve tried to lay it out in a step-by-step format to make it more approachable. It’s a recipe for a base-level foundation of knowledge, from which you can continue to build. Here’s what I would have done to get started if I were to do it over again… >>If you have less than one hour… (26 minutes) Video description of blockchains (16 minutes) Written description of blockchains (14 minutes) Why ledgers matter >>Next three hours Start with the “Beginner’s Guides” on CoinDesk. There are 43 different topics, but they’re short, <5 minutes each. If you’ve completed the two items above then you can get through these quickly. Read all of them, particularly those from “What is Blockchain Technology?” to the bottom. (2 hours) http://www.coindesk.com/information/ Watch on Netflix to get some historical context.(1 hour) Banking on Bitcoin >>Next ten hours: Podcasts , by Patrick O’Shaughnessy, is a three segment podcast that contains a wealth of information. It is the highest density podcast on this topic that I have have found and features some of the most knowledgeable people in the space. It is a masterpiece. Listen to all of them. If you have time, listen to them twice. (3 hours) Hashpower Listen to this Tim Ferriss podcast. Nick Szabo and Naval Ravikant are two of my favorite thinkers: (1.5 hours) http://tim.blog/2017/06/04/nick-szabo/ Subscribe to , a podcast by Laura Shin, and listen to some past episodes. I listened to all of them, and learned something from every single episode. It’s almost impossible to choose a “best of” list, but here are a few that were particularly memorable: (5.5 hours) Unchained (Coin Center) Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh (Cornell) Emin Gun Sirer (Blockchain Capital) Brock Pierce (Polychain capital, formerly 1st employee at Coinbase) Olaf Carlson-Wee (BitPesa) Elizabeth Rossiello (Placeholder Ventures) Chris Burniske >>Next ten hours It’s time to read Satoshi Nakamoto’s seminal . (1 hour) whitepaper Introduction to forks. The or are examples. (1 hour) Ethereum Classic fork Bitcoin Cash fork If you wish to purchase bitcoin or ether, open an account at an exchange like or . A couple notes: i) , invest only what you can afford to lose entirely. ii) Setup two-factor authentication immediately. , apps like Google Authenticator or Authy are safer. By the way, you should really set up 2FA on your Google account too. iii) If you have a meaningful proportion of your wealth invested, you will want to look into a , but that is beyond the scope of this guide. (1 hour) Coinbase Gemini This is not investment advice Do not use text message as the authentication method hardware wallet There are thousands of other blockchain tokens beyond bitcoin. Dive into tokens with Brave New Coin’s . Then, go to (a token research firm), pick out a couple recent token sales and read the S+C analysis. (2 hours) gentle introduction Smith + Crown Read through Linda Xie’s beginner guides to several prominent projects (3 hours): _I put together a list of beginner’s guides that I’ve written on cryptoassets._medium.com Beginner’s guide series on cryptoassets As of this writing, Coinbase trades three cryptoassets: bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC). If you wish to expand beyond these three you can open an account on an exchange like or to trade many others, but they don’t accept fiat currency like USD, so you have to buy BTC or ETH at an exchange like Coinbase first, and then transfer it to your other account. You’re probably also going to want to download at this point to keep track of everything. (Disclaimer: (i) , (ii) I am these exchanges, just using them as examples, here is and here are . (iii) ) (1 hour) Poloniex Bittrex Blockfolio This is not investment advice not endorsing a longer list by volume descriptions of a few of them Never invest more than you are willing to lose in totality When evaluating a token for the first time, here is a framework to organize your thoughts: Spend some time investigating various data sources: , , , , , , . (1 hour) OnChainFx CoinMarketCap CryptoCompare Brave New Coin TokenData.io CoinGecko Bitcoin Block Explorer >Hours 24–50 For a deeper dive, enroll in this MOOC taught by Andreas Antonopoulos and Antonis Polemitis (12 hours): https://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/free-introductory-mooc/ There are several other free courses such as (broken down into 60 sessions on ), one from Stanford at , and . one from Princeton at coursera YouTube coursera several at udemy The regulatory environment is complex and evolving. is the master on this topic, read as much of their work as possible. If you have tax questions, is a place to start that inquiry. Coin Center here Work through , especially Nick Szabo’s articles. Dan Romero also has a nice list that is not too technical. Nick Tomaino’s reading list here Read these two books: by Burniske and Tatar. The book works through cryptoassets from an investor’s perspective and provides some historical perspective. Cryptoassets by Antonopoulos The Internet of Money I’m also looking forward to by Casey and Vigna The Truth Machine >Bonus section: Academic research I’d be remiss to conclude without a few cites to academic work in economics on this topic: Catalini, Christian, and Joshua S. Gans. “Some simple economics of the blockchain.” No. w22952. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016. Wang, Sha, and Jean-Philippe Vergne. “Buzz Factor or Innovation Potential: What Explains Cryptocurrencies’ Returns?” PloS one 12, 2017. Yermack, David. “Corporate governance and blockchains.” Review of Finance 21.1 (2017): 7–31. For a more comprehensive list of resources, check out . You’ve only just begun. Jameson Lopp’s page Staying up to date After completing everything above, you will know more than the vast majority of the general public, but your information will quickly become stale if you don’t stay current. Here’s a subset of what I follow: Crypto twitter is very active. Here are a few accounts to start following. Keeping this list short was the most difficult part of the entire post because it omits many important people, I’m doing so for brevity. I tried to choose people with different viewpoints. To see a more comprehensive list, go through . Once you start tracking these accounts you’ll see who else is active and can branch out from there: Twitter. my follows _The latest Tweets from Naval (@naval). Present. San Francisco, CA_twitter.com Naval (@naval) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4). Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer. (RT/Fav…_twitter.com Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin). See https://t.co/iBNSW4KCSO. Earth_twitter.com Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Laura Shin (@laurashin). @Forbes senior editor: Bitcoin, Ethereum, crypto, ICOs, blockchain…_twitter.com Laura Shin (@laurashin) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Spencer Bogart (@CremeDeLaCrypto). Crypto and things. Off of Wall Street, into Venture Capital…_twitter.com Spencer Bogart (@CremeDeLaCrypto) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor). Prof @Cornell, co-director @ https://t.co/hzEhWhTa3j, system…_twitter.com Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem). i don't sleep, i wait. building @dcgco. teaching @MIT @UniofOxford…_twitter.com Meltem Demirors (@Melt_Dem) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Chris Burniske (@cburniske). partner @placeholdervc, medium @cburniske, formerly led @ARKInvest…_twitter.com Chris Burniske (@cburniske) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees). Toward peace, markets, and Bitcoin. CEO of ShapeShift. Blog at…_twitter.com Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from elizabeth stark (@starkness). big fan of the internet. like building things. cofounder…_twitter.com elizabeth stark (@starkness) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Jimmy Song (@jimmysong). Bitcoin Developer and Entrepreneur/PGP Fingerprint: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291…_twitter.com Jimmy Song (@jimmysong) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Nick Tomaino (@NTmoney). low extraversion, high conviction. founder @1confirmation. San…_twitter.com Nick Tomaino (@NTmoney) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Sizhao Yang (@zaoyang). Co-creator of @farmville Angel investor in @WishShopping ICOs…_twitter.com Sizhao Yang (@zaoyang) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul). CIO of BlockTower Capital. https://t.co/K7E7qzx4sD_twitter.com Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani). Perpetually fooled by randomness. Managing Partner @multicoincap…_twitter.com Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Preston J. Byrne (@prestonjbyrne). Marmot superfan. English solicitor. Fellow @ASI. Blockchain…_twitter.com Preston J. Byrne (@prestonjbyrne) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from CoinDesk (@coindesk). The latest news, prices, charts, guides and analysis from the world leader…_twitter.com CoinDesk (@coindesk) | Twitter _The latest Tweets from Coin Center (@coincenter). Protecting open blockchain networks and innovators' rights to use…_twitter.com Coin Center (@coincenter) | Twitter Home of longer format articles. These are a few people that influence my thinking. Again, this list is absurdly short, but it’s a start: Medium. _Read writing from Balaji S. Srinivasan on Medium. CEO of Earn.com and Board Partner at a16z.com. Every day, Balaji S…_medium.com Balaji S. Srinivasan — Medium _Read writing from Linda Xie on Medium. Co-founder @ScalarCapital. Previously Product Manager @Coinbase. Advisor…_medium.com Linda Xie — Medium _As the cryptoasset markets develop we'll see many booms and busts as enthusiasm waxes and wanes. Waxing and waning is…_medium.com Chris Burniske - Medium _Read writing from Jimmy Song on Medium. Bitcoin Developer and Entrepreneur/PGP Fingerprint: C1D7 97BE 7D10 5291 228C…_medium.com Jimmy Song - Medium _Read writing from Preethi Kasireddy on Medium. Blockchain Engineer. I have a passion for understanding things at a…_medium.com Preethi Kasireddy - Medium _Read writing from martin green on Medium. tech investor. blockchain curious, meebo (google), cnet (cbs). husband. dad…_medium.com martin green - Medium _Read writing from Lou Kerner on Medium. Partner at CryptoOracle.io. Believer that Crypto (blockchain, cryptocurrency…_medium.com Lou Kerner - Medium _In a prior post I proposed funding protocol development through inflation as a powerful tool to evolve blockchains…_medium.com Fred Ehrsam - Medium _Can Bitcoin Markets Add and Subtract? I find it fitting that the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2017…_medium.com Jill Carlson — Medium _Read writing from TwoBitIdiot on Medium. Entrepreneur & Angel. Founder, Messari & EiR, ConsenSys. Founding team of…_medium.com TwoBitIdiot - Medium _Read writing from Jake Brukhman on Medium. Co-Founder @ CoinFund. Blockchain research, advisory & cryptoasset…_medium.com Jake Brukhman - Medium Listen to them regularly. Here are a few: Podcasts. _Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Blockchain And Fintech_www.forbes.com Unchained _Welcome to Invest Like the Best. In each episode, I speak with the most interesting people I can find, whose stories…_investorfieldguide.com Podcast _Guest: Kevin Owocki from Gitcoin and Mark Beylin from Bounties Network. Both are ConsenSys formations How can projects…_thebitcoinpodcast.com The Bitcoin Podcast Network Join the CoinFund slack channel and subscribe to a few of the subchannels that look interesting to you. It’s a repository of dialogue on numerous cryptoassets. Slack. https://coinfund.slack.com/ Many token projects maintain their own slack channels. The best way to find them is to simply google “[project name] slack” like . this Delivered straight to your inbox. Here are my favorites: Newsletters. , , , , Token Economy Week in Ethereum Multicoin Capital CoinDesk DAR So many subreddits that I won’t even try to list them all. Just start here: or . Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/ here I’ll update this post with new content occasionally. Enjoy your trip down the rabbit hole! _A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Blockchain has been…_hackernoon.com Blockchain - Hacker Noon

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