The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze

Ripple, a San Francisco–based cryptocurrency company aiming to be “an open source person to person payment network.”

“Retirement meant that you were spending the money you had saved up, independence meant that all you were spending was just the interest on your money,” Vitalik wrote. “It was as if your contribution to society were complete, and you had fulfilled your debt to this world and could now peacefully live off the proceeds of your work until the end of t

a self-sustaining digital commodity, similar to gold.

whether to structure Ethereum as a traditional for-profit start-up or a decentralized network.

the inflation rate is precisely controlled in code, and it is impossible for anyone to force a different inflation rate into existence.”

these bits have value because people are willing to pay for them. The “supply” part of the demand and supply equation is also important: Bitcoins maintain their value due to

Mastercoin

idealistic: no hierarchy, no special founders group, no pre-mine, just release the client, make it an open community project, be noble like Satoshi, and not guarantee anyone “equity” in the form of coins.

Switzerland’s Zug,