Units of Trust vs. Units of Work We have concepts of money, currency, store of value, credit, IOU, commodity, etc. Each is an abstraction of how we measure value together, and the tools we use to express that value. In hindsight, fiat mostly functions as a unit of trust. It is centrally issued and its issuance and…

Last week was my final week at Bitrefill. Throughout the past year, I did my very best to help grow their brand, product, partners, team, and revenue. Bitrefill, and I as well, had our best year so far: We added literally thousands of new brands of gift cards and refills…

This was originally posted at Bitcoin Magazine on May 21, 2019. To Bitcoin or Not to Bitcoin During the “scaling debate” before the SegWit2X user-activated soft fork (UASF), Bitcoin businesses were getting their first bitter taste of Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. They wanted change to be easier. They wanted their influence to be effective. They wanted to…

When a person receives rare information, he may utilize it, curate it, arbitrage it, or discard it. Those wishing to arbitrage ignorance about Bitcoin are assuming the role of The Greatest Fool. The Greatest Fool is racing against the propagation of best-information & understanding in hopes of selling counterfeit opportunities…

The Gates of Bitcoin don’t actually exist. They are an imaginary construction that exists only in the minds of those that are a slave to those that imagined it. As a permissionless, censorship-resistant system anyone is welcome to come and go as they please, no matter which role they choose…

It is no secret that Vitalik Buterin likes complexity. While I am surely not qualified to get into the crypto-nitty-gritty, I have a certain knack for distilling concepts into digestible morsels. In this post, I will attempt to break down his most recent offering: Base Layers And Functionality Escape Velocity …

Surprisingly, 10 years after Bitcoin’s creation, most people still don’t know the correct answer to this question: I assure you, there is a single correct answer. Understanding of Bitcoin behaves like a moving target while we are still in the early adoption phase. It takes years to understand Bitcoin, and…

The #LNTRUSTCHAIN was a social phenomenon where Bitcoin’s most active and lovable personalities demonstrated the power of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network by passing small amounts of Bitcoin to each other in a “trust chain.” You can click here to purchase your #LNTRUSTCHAIN shirt by paying with Bitcoin, Lightning, and other methods. The #LNtrustchain sparked many into learning how to use the software and captured the attention of some Bitcoin’s biggest names.

Below is an email exchange I had with someone apparently tasked with aggregating text about Twitter fights about Bitcoin stuff. Enjoy! INTERNET TEXT-AGGREGATING PERSON: “I’m a writer for a tech website … specifically for its cryptocurrency and blockchain section ... Hope you’re well and all that. I’m talking to a few Bitcoin community…