My Week in Crypto
I started investing in Crypto last year. My investment is peanuts, funny money to many. Yet, we won’t be hurting if this investment goes sideways. Here are a few of my learnings from last week in the world of crypto.
After this week’s bloodbad in Crypto, my investment is down 35%. Ouch! I was getting used to a lot of volatility with swings of +/- 20%. This week was different: this felt like a correction, a reset. Often a down week means a buying opportunity. I decided however not to investment more money in crypto. The true applications are yet to be invented.
I finished reading Ben Mezrich’s book, Bitcoin Billionaires. True to his style, this was a great book. I learned about some of earlier Bitcoin stories, about Charlie Shrem, Roger Ver, and the Winkelvi twins - the first Bitcoin Billionaires.
The crazy part to me how the Winkelvoss brothers distributed their private key in pieces, across deposit box across many banks through the country. Until we make that a bit easier, crypto currencies and applications will remain tricky for many people. I still have to learn about the Crypto world picks and shovels: hardware wallets.
Fred Wilson’s testimony to the Superintendent Lawsky was also interesting: the Five Phases of Bitcoin.
“First, development of the open source community … a geeky, nerdy, crypto-libertarian thing, 2009 to 2010. Second–a vice phase. Silk Road, drug trafficking. Gun running. 2010 to 2011. Third phase, speculation, trading- we are getting to the end of that now–2013, 2014. Next phase is the transac- tional phase–real merchants accepting bitcoin. And the final phase is the phase of programmable money. when money can move via a programmable infrastructure.
Over LunchClub conversations, I learned a bit more about supply chain blockchain applications from Copperwire. A great application is to demonstrate the chain of provenance. This can important to combat counterfeit parts, or organic and socially acceptable origins. For example, how do you now where you coffee beans are sourced from, or whether Uyghurs were exploited in the making of your T-shirt.
Talking to a founder of Weavechain, I got a glimpse into what Web3 can really be. He walked me through their inverstor’s pitch. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand yet. Nevertheless, I could understand one of their killer apps: a truth ledger providing a faster, more direct financial reconcillation mechanism for banks.
Web1 is Read Only Web2 is Read/Write Web3 is Read/Write/Own
A new source to learn more about crypto is CordaCon.