Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Future of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrencies

In July 2016, the pro-fork activists were tired of the debate and decided to hard fork the Ethereum blockchain, creating a new version of the currency that returned stolen money to investors. This new version, confusingly, kept the original name Ethereum. The anti-fork group continued to recognize the original, unaltered blockchain as the official ... See more

Mt. Gox suddenly halted all withdrawals of money from the exchange, preventing traders from liquidating any bitcoins in their Mt. Gox wallets and getting fiat currencies out.

Bitcoin is a digital currency, so it’s intangible, and it’s (in theory) middleman-free because it doesn’t rely on a bank or other institution to keep track of people’s money balances. Instead, Bitcoin relies on a network of computers around the world to keep a shared log, or ledger, of every past payment. This “shared public ledger,” as it’s known,... See more

Merchants who accept Bitcoin are actually advised to wait for six more blocks to be mined after the transaction goes through to minimize the risk of fraud.

In short, tangible money is insecure, inconvenient, easy to fake, and impractical for digital payments. Middleman-mediated money, or M3, solves these problems, but introduces problems of fees, lack of accessibility, and a different form of insecurity. Right now, we have to pick our poison.

Chinese pools control over 80% of the Bitcoin network’s hash rate and thus mine 80% of the world’s bitcoins,

But the Bitcoin world has been trending more and more toward centralization in recent years. A few major players are gobbling up parts of Bitcoin’s essential infrastructure, and it’s getting harder for an individual (especially one who’s not rich) to have a say on the future of the currency.