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Tab Sweep – 14/15 February 2018

by on February 15, 2018

The special Valentine’s Day dispatch, in honour of coupled up cryptoasset traders enjoying a meal, while spending their eyes glued on their portfolios on their phones. (yes, its late, but I started yesterday, there are just too many tabs to summarise!) NYT: Are Bitcoins More Real Than Boyfriends?

My professional opinion as a blockchain researcher: I don’t see the point (yet) – Janne spent 15 months researching the Blockchain, and related “distributed trust technologies”, and finds that from a public Blockchain standpoint, he doesn’t find much use; he believes there should be more happening in the private Blockchain space, but it will hardly be revolutionary.

As it stands, public blockchain is very much a kludgy solution looking for non-existent problem, namely lack of trusted intermediaries in finance and accounting.

Unfortunately for this central value proposition of blockchain, there is no lack of trusted enough intermediaries in the financial/accounting sector.

I believe that in the long run, crypto-enabled distributed trust technologies could possibly have significant role in enabling micropayments and microinvestments, effectively by reducing transaction costs related to distribution and bookkeeping. There may also be some very interesting applications in governance and organisation of human work, and these initiatives ought to be followed more closely. Furthermore, private, permissioned blockchains are already quite useful for e.g. automating transactions.

Highly recommended read.

In the FT, Hanna Kuchler wonders, Bitcoin: why is it so male-dominated? (paywall). Five years ago her 17-year old brother told her to invest in Bitcoin; she did not. Uphold says 75% are men, Coin Dance says 97% are. This is the benefit (bonus?) of KYC checks. She puts this down to information flow, i.e. in the geekiest parts of finance & tech. I wonder however what the stats like are in places like Japan, where I hear more women are into crypto-assets?

Developer introduces shared ownership model. Fractional ownership. 12 people split a property, get a bit of a timeshare, pay huge maintenance fees, and “the record of ownership and benefit entitlement will be done using blockchain technology.” Why won’t a database suffice? They may allow Bitcoin for payments?

Blockchain is probably one of the most transparent and wide-reaching systems. When an investor wishes to exit the investment plan, they can target worldwide buyers via our blockchain platform. Of course, besides the smart contract, investors will also need to sign the conventional contract to legally change the ownership title"

Regulators and investors ‘are just waking up’ to cryptocurrency, and Davos blockchain co-chair has some advice. Davos and cryptocurrencies. “Don’t invest in an ICO that doesn’t have a product.” – aren’t most ICOs product-free? You raise funds to build a product. This is more Kickstarter crowdfunding rather than a “seed investment”.

And now just for the links:

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Welcome to grokft, a site that is focused on FinTech. Today that also means the blockchain as well as cryptocurrencies. Written with an aim to have a better understanding of what is going on, by a technologist, who wants to have a public diary to remember these times. Commentary may be peppered with a hint of snark.

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