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• Posts Authored: 47
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  8,848 views

  Categories: General

  The State of the Art in Cryptocurrency Privacy

  December 10th, 2018 by john

  An abridged overview of production systems. At a recent offsite with the Aragon One team, I presented a lightning talk about state-of-the-art systems for privately buying, selling, and using cryptocurrency. A PDF of the slides is published here. The slides are pretty self-explanatory, so I’m sharing as-is. If there are any questions or feedback about the content, I’m happy to discuss in the comment section. Read More
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  16,689 views

  Categories: General

  The podcasts that got me into bitcoin

  June 26th, 2017 by john

  Before there was Let's Talk Bitcoin, there was Agorist Radio.... A long time ago, I was browsing around the anarchist parts of the internet and stumbled upon a website called AgoristRadio.com. The site was home to several podcasts with titles such as "Cypherpunkd", "The Agorist Social Club", "Coinbase", and "Reality Exploit Roundtable". Each podcast was hosted by Hiro White, the admin of the Agorist Radio website, with a slew of diffe... Read More
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  8,239 views

  Categories: General

  Ten Ways Governments Threaten Bitcoin

  March 13th, 2017 by john

  Governments are strange beasts. Not quite market, not quite commons, governments occupy a unique space in the economy where societies permit (or tacitly tolerate) territorially-bound corporations that have fiat monopolies on important social functions and institutions. Governments use these exceptional permissions to create and enforce laws and regulations that inhibit the free flow of goods, services, and ideas within their jurisdictions, simultaneously creating and limiting opportunities for e... Read More
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  8,602 views

  Categories: General

  How to Decentralize Uber

  March 6th, 2017 by john

  It has been an oft-cited example that Ethereum can be used to create a “decentralized Uber,” and there have been several (as-yet unsuccessful) attempts to do just that. But what does creating a decentralized Uber actually entail? In this post, I propose that a) Ethereum is overkill for the task at hand, and b) decentralized Uber is not as sexy as it sounds, and may or may not actually make sense in the real world. What Uber Is Today Uber ... Read More
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  1 Comment
  7,590 views

  Categories: General

  The Key Decision-Makers in Bitcoin

  February 27th, 2017 by john

  Over the past year, there have been intense debates about the future of the Bitcoin network. These discussions have mostly revolved around the topic of scaling Bitcoin, and several proposals have been put forward to address the question of how the Bitcoin network will scale to be used by the billions of people and machines we have on this planet. These scaling proposals are not all mutually exclusive, but nearly all of them involve a fundamental change to the Bitcoin protocol that would require ... Read More
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  1 Comment
  8,253 views

  Categories: General

  Many Blockchains, One Cryptocurrency

  July 25th, 2016 by john

  Since the introduction of Namecoin, the first serious attempt to build a public blockchain network separate from Bitcoin, there has been an explosion of so-called “altcoins” – bitcoin competitors – which have sought to unseat bitcoin from its throne atop the cryptocurrency charts. So far, none have come close to matching the market demand for bitcoin, with bitcoin commanding about 82% of the market share in the $12.9 billion cryptocurrency market at the tim... Read More
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  9,366 views

  Categories: General

  Teaching Bitcoin at the Enchanted Forest Gathering

  July 17th, 2016 by john

  On Sunday July 24, from 1:30 – 3:00pm, I will be giving a workshop called “Banking With Bitcoin” at the Enchanted Forest Gathering in Northern California. During this workshop, I will teach attendees about the basics of Bitcoin, then go on to explain the many ways that Bitcoin can be used to do tasks normally associated with banking. This talk is based on the content published in my book “Bitcoin: Be Your Own Bank” and will feature some new content th... Read More
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  28,101 views

  Categories: General

  What’s at stake in the Bitcoin block size debate

  January 11th, 2016 by john

  What Bitcoin Is and How It Works First described by Satoshi Nakamoto in a whitepaper released in late 2008, Bitcoin is a “P2P electronic cash system” that enables two people on the Internet to transact with each other without having to go through a traditional payment processor such as a bank or credit card network. Bitcoin was invented by combining several previously existing technologies - including digital signatures, peer-to-peer networking, and cryptographic pr... Read More
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  45,153 views

  Categories: Guest Blog

  Blockstack Summit 2015 Review, Part 2

  September 28th, 2015 by john

  This is part 2 of my review of Blockstack Summit 2015, a conference I helped organize for developers of decentralized applications. You can read part 1 of my review here. As the lunch hour at Blockstack Summit drew to a close, I began to prepare for the workshop agenda planning session. This session, inspired by the unconferences I had attended in the past and further helped along by Christopher Allen, would last about an hour and see the group vote on proposals for topics to be discusse... Read More
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  3 Comments
  47,319 views

  Categories: Guest Blog, Conferences

  Blockstack Summit 2015 Review, Part 1

  September 22nd, 2015 by john

  I awoke on September 12, 2015 to the sound of Slack notifications going off just a few feet away from me. It was the morning of Blockstack Summit, and I was due to arrive at NYU for a sound check in less than two hours. I reached over and grabbed my phone to see who was pinging me and saw a message from Guy Lepage, UI/UX designer at blockchain authentication company and Blockstack sponsor Onename and one of the several people who helped me organize the Summit. “I'm at the office, ne... Read More