added by sari · updated 8mo ago
The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022)
- Matt Huang, a prominent investor, spoke for many crypto fans when he said on Twitter: “Crypto may look like a speculative casino from the outside. But that distracts many from the deeper truth: the casino is a trojan horse with a new financial system hidden inside.”
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- the same properties of anonymity and censorship-resistance that make crypto useful to white supremacists might also make it attractive to, say, Afghan citizens fleeing the Taliban. So labeling the entire crypto movement an extremist group would be overkill. Regardless, it’s safe to say that crypto has become attractive to all kinds of people who wo... See more
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- The crypto boom has also led to an explosion of experiments outside of financial services. There are crypto social clubs, crypto video games, crypto restaurants and even crypto-powered wireless networks.
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- You can think of a blockchain like a Google spreadsheet, except that instead of being hosted on Google’s servers, blockchains are maintained by a network of computers all over the world. These computers (sometimes called miners or validators) are responsible for storing their own copies of the database, adding and verifying new entries, and securin... See more
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- Right now, many of the successful applications for crypto technology are in finance or finance-adjacent fields. For example, people are using crypto to send cross-border remittances to family members abroad and Wall Street banks using blockchains to settle foreign transactions.
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- Bitcoin used a blockchain to keep track of transactions. That was notable because, for the first time, it allowed people to send and receive money over the internet without needing to involve a central authority, such as a bank or an app like PayPal or Venmo.
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- The second major feature of blockchains is that they’re typically public and open source, meaning that unlike a Google spreadsheet, anyone can inspect a public blockchain’s code or see a record of any transaction.
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- These days, “crypto” usually refers to the entire universe of technologies that involve blockchains — the distributed ledger systems that power digital currencies like Bitcoin, but also serve as the base layer of technology for things like NFTs, web3 applications and DeFi trading protocols.
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago
- And, of course, for a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to replace the dollar, you’d need to convince billions of people to use a currency whose value fluctuates wildly, that isn’t backed by a government and that often can’t be retrieved if it’s stolen.
from The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto (Published 2022) by Kevin Roose
sari added 3y ago