Enthusiast
While modern cryptography endows enormous powers to holders of private/public keypairs, the problem of assigning real-life identities to these keypairs is an enduring challenge. It is trivial to prove that a message was written by the controller of a given public key; but knowing that that private key was really held by Luke, or by [ ]
I ve been collecting arguments against Bitcoin over the years. I felt that I could answer them, almost all of them; it was a constant frustration to be unable to respond when I heard TV pundits lambast Bitcoin with an argument that I thought was particularly weak. If only I could contain all my thoughts in [ ]
On this rock I will build my church. That s how I feel about my new laptop. It s small. It s underpowered. It s totally impractical in every sense of the word. It has virtually no ports. It is so slight, I ll surely smash it in twain within a fortnight. Worst of all, it s wildly expensive. But I love it. [ ]
Bitcoin achieves consensus on payments, but currency is not the sole end to which that consensus can be employed. The settlement and clearance of financial instruments can equally well be achieved via blockchain technology. The same way a Bitcoin transaction is beyond reproach, a broad array of financial assets (stocks, bonds, derivatives) could possess the same [ ]
Lately I got out of San Francisco and traveled to Turkey. I d been there many times. But even revisiting it after so long (6 years), I was struck by the differentness of the place. All the sights and sounds are different. The bread smells different; it has some variant of sesame we don t have in [ ]
Facebook is one of the worst big stocks out there to own. After increasing by 4.5% today to ~$95 a share it has a market cap of $266 billion dollars. Owning FB stock is equivalent to saying I think Facebook is worth more than the yearly GDP of Pakistan . This is insane. This is a [ ]
I m still on vacation in Turkey and I often find myself negotiating for the best price. Negotiation is essential here on a daily basis, particularly for tourists. The key is access to information. One must ascertain the real market value for an item solely by wrangling over prices with merchants. Finding the right price is [ ]
I just arrived in Turkey for vacation and one thing struck me almost immediately: the sheer amount of hustle in the streets. Every square inch seems packed with glitz and manpower constantly selling. I couldn t believe the density of commerce; virtually no nook or cranny is left unused. One is barraged by offers, deals, and [ ]
Savvy tech investor and amateur boxing aspirant, Peter Smith, is diversifying his Litecoin assets into Greek bonds. Known as a contrarians contrarian, Peter claimed that despite his losses on Litecoin, he s hoping to make it all back on Greek bonds. Lending to the Greek people, Peter claimed they would totally be good for the money [ ]
A lot of employees these days are paid in the form of stock options or shares directly. A friend of mine recently took a job where he will be paid a substantial sum in shares one year from now. The dollar value of those shares today is quite a lot of money. But he s worried about [ ]