Optimal Token Sales
The problem of finding an optimal structure for a token sale is quite difficult. For starters, the objectives between teams and investors are potentially different. Furthermore, these are not homogenous groups. Teams vary widely along at least two dimensions: intent [...] Read more
Monetary Policy for Crypto Tokens
In an information sessions for Congress, Peter Van Valkenburgh used my favorite analogy comparing crypto tokens to tickets at a fair ground. And William Mougayar has a new post about tokens where he specifically refers to them as “privately issued [...] Read more
Mobile OS Duopoly: Apple and Google Extending their Power
I have for some time pointed out the negative impact on innovation of the appstore duopoly. Things are getting worse though. With the latest releases of iOS and Android the ability of third party developers to create great experiences are [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Entropy (Cont’d)
Last week in Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced Shannon entropy as a measure of uncertainty that is based solely on the structure of the probability distribution. As a quick reminder, the formula is H = - K ∑ pi log pi [...] Read more
The Biggest Danger of the Trump Presidency: Abandoning Science and Rationality
I recently read “Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson and just last night finished “The Dark Forest” which is the second book in the “Three Body Problem” trilogy by Cixin Liu. What these books have in common is that they look at [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Entropy
Today in Uncertainty Wednesday I want to start on the idea that just the shape of the probability distribution alone contains some measure of uncertainty. Let’s think about the simplest case again with just two states A and B and [...] Read more
Basic Income: The Potential of Cryptocurrency
In my book World After Capital, I have a chapter on Universal Basic Income, which I see as essential to getting from the Industrial Age into the Knowledge Age. Basic income gives people economic freedom, which is essential if we [...] Read more
Some Lessons I Learned from the Dotcom Bubble for the Coming Crypto Bubble
I spent a bunch of time at Consensus and Token Summit this week. If it wasn’t clear before, we are headed into a crypto currency bubble. Now a bubble isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. In fact almost [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Probability Distribution
So far in Uncertainty Wednesday we have limited ourselves to looking at examples with only two states of the world and two possible signal values. When I introduced this I explained that these combine to form four elementary events and [...] Read more
