News — blockchain

September 29, 2008. It was a clear morning in New York City. However, the weather didn’t reflect the mood. By the end of the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 778 points, representing the largest point drop in history. It prompted one of the most profound global recessions in recent times. Is it a coincidence that only a few weeks later in October, Satoshi Nakamoto released the now famous whitepaper: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. When we reflect on 2008 it seems likely that the crash, triggered by the housing bubble, was the impetus for creating a trust-less financial...

As cryptomania ramped up last year, we saw a lot of hype around bitcoin - the currency. Note the use of the lowercase "b". The second usage "Bitcoin" is a reference to the ecosystem and is more focused on the Bitcoin protocol as opposed to the currency. I might say, "I paid 0.2 bitcoin for xyz" if I wanted to specify the exchange of bitcoin tokens. The distinction is small, but important. There's no certainty bitcoin will remain the defacto cryptocurrency of the future. However, it's undeniable that Bitcoin paved the way for new ways of thinking, as well as,...