Like gold, cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin is mined. Gold becomes harder and harder to find as it is mined. In the same way, as the supply of a cryptocurrency increases, computers have to solve harder and harder problems to be awarded cryptocurrency. Staking is a is a new approach that replaces mining and reduce costs. How does it work? Adam Read More ›
When you pay Uber for a ride, or anybody else, you use a bank or a third party like PayPal. What if you could pay the Uber driver directly? Decentralized finance uses blockchain to establish trust and security without government regulations. Is decentralized finance the way of the future? Adam Goad, Dr. Austin Egbert, and Dr. Robert J. Marks discuss Read More ›
What’s the big deal with non-fungible tokens (NFTs)? Is it worth it to invest in NFTs? How does copyright work with NFTs? Adam Goad, Dr. Austin Egbert, and Dr. Robert J. Marks discuss non-fungible tokens, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. Additional Resources Adam Goad at IEEE Xplore Dr. Austin Egbert at IEEE Xplore ”Just As Cryptocurrencies Went Mainstream — a Huge Collapse!” Read More ›
In this week’s podcast, “Web3: The next generation of the internet” (August 4, 2022), Walter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks interviews graduate student Adam Goad and Dr. Austin Egbert, both in computer engineering at Baylor University, on the coming decentralization of the internet. With developments like the ones they discuss looming, Big Tech may be seeing a waistline trim. This is the Part I of the first of the three discussions. https://mindmatters.ai/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/Mind-Matters-198-Adam-Goad-Austin-Egbert.mp3 A partial transcript and Additional Resources follow. Dr. Marks began by discussing all the services he gets from Google, confessing that he has not needed to go to a library in over two decades. But… Robert J. Marks: Now, is Google just being nice in giving me Read More ›
Futurist George Gilder forecasts that decentralization of the web is going to be the future of the internet. Data will become more personalized and stored on your local computer instead of in the cloud and companies like Google will have to figure out some way to adjust. Adam Goad and Dr. Austin Egbert discuss blockchain, Web3, decentralization, and the metaverse Read More ›
At Expensivity, Bernard Fickser, who has explained how to sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) now offers “The Truth About Cryptocurrencies: A Clearheaded Guide to the Crypto World.” (January 15, 2022) For your convenience, we are serializing his work, which can be read in whole here. Here’s Part 2: 1 Quick Entry into Crypto Investing This first section is for those who want to begin investing in crypto right away. But it is also for those who simply want to understand cryptocurrencies without investing in them. Later sections will present the underlying theory and history of crypto, as well as reasons to take crypto seriously but also to be cautious. Yet it helps to see how cryptocurrencies actually behave in practice, and Read More ›
At COSM 2021,William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher who studies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), offered some thoughts on whether NFTs (non-fungible tokens) can help artists and other creators make a living selling their work on the internet. Are NFTs just “rat poison squared,” as Warren Buffett calls cryptocurrencies? Well, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for a reported $2.9 million. It’s complex but navigable. According to Dembski, it might be a way forward. But there are pitfalls. The non-tech part is easy to understand. Just as internet-based subscription services like Substack offer a way for talented writers to make a good living free from censorious mediocrities, so NFTs might help artists market their work in Read More ›
Introduction: At Expensivity, Bernard Fickser explains that a non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique token in cryptography that represents, say, real estate or art rather than money. Because the tokens have unique identities (non-fungible), they can be bought or sold while reducing the risk of fraud. So how do they work?: The series is called How Non-Fungible Tokens Work: NFTs Explained, Debunked, and Legitimized (July 30, 2021). In Part 4, he looks at the question of what benefits NFTs, in their current state, really confer on you (or don’t): 4 What Just Happened? The creation and purchase of an NFT as described in the last section raises a lot of interesting — and troubling — questions. It’s easy enough to Read More ›
In an article featuring recent science research into the cryptocurrency market, Ross Pomeroy offers some researchers’ perspective on why Ethereum tends to be more stable than Bitcoin: Ethereum might be a better long-term investment than Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency Ethereum ranks second to Bitcoin in terms of popularity, yet two studies have shown that tends to be more stable and a better “safe-haven” investment during difficult economic times. As a team of researchers from Singapore wrote in the journal PLoS ONE, “Although both Bitcoin and Ethereum are digital tokens that serve as decentralised currency based on blockchain technology, there are crucial differences between them. While Bitcoin has positioned itself as an alternative monetary system in the financial market, Ethereum has mostly Read More ›
It is actually a constantly shifting network of agreements to trust others. Maria Bustillos, editor of Ethereum’s culturemag, Popula, asks us to think about just what money is before we make up our minds about Bitcoin.
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Bitcoin solves a lot of tough problems in very ingenious ways. Unfortunately, however, those benefits don’t tend to translate well for end users, who are not nearly as ingenious as the people developing the system.
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