Cryptocurrency

It’s difficult to objectively quantify Bitcoin’s adoption rate since there are too many factors to consider. Should it be the number of people holding Bitcoin? Bitcoin’s market cap? The number of brokerages with support for Bitcoin futures? The number of businesses accepting it as form of payment? A very different story can be told depending on the angle from which you look at it. Bitcoin’s market cap As a potential store of value, Bitcoin’s market cap needs to be sufficiently high for institutions and central banks to take it seriously. Governments must add some regulation around it so it has legitimacy, and a large enough portion of the general population must agree that it has inherent value. To agree that it has value, Bitcoin is very dependent on network effects such as those described by Metcalfe’s Law. ...

One of the major selling points of cryptocurrencies is that everything is decentralized and trust no longer lies in single a third party. However, the trust didn’t simply dissipate, it got distributed to participants of the network. In my opinion, the incentive structure built into cryptoeconomics is one of its most overlooked benefits. The fundamental idea can be summarized as follows: no one wants to lose money, and everyone wants to maximize the profit they receive for the work that they do. ...

This post was originally written as a follow up email to this tweet where one of the hosts of The Investor’s Podcast ran a poll regarding people’s thoughts on Bitcoin. — — — — — — — — — — To provide a fair comparison between Ethereum and Bitcoin I will start by defining the basics, and expand on how each of them can be used without drilling down too deep into the technical details ...