In the early days of bitcoin, the industry made a grave mistake; they bundled all the projects together and dubbed them "cryptocurrencies". The term cryptocurrency has hindered the space more than any event, hack or uninformed opinion out of Wall Street. It assumes that everything in crypto is attempting to become a global currency; this couldn't be further from the truth.
This week we thought we would take some time to reflect on the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) surrounding bitcoin and its network. These stories and FUD only really seem to rear their head every few years or so when bitcoin is in the spotlight and regulators are anxious.
Today we will explore layer 2 scaling solutions. With the high cost of Ethereum gas fees at the moment, we decided it was an appropriate topic to delve into. But Why Do We Need Layer 2's In The First Place? All blockchains have their limitations. They make tradeoffs to provide a specific service to their end-users. Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, has dubbed it the blockchain trilemma
“Bitcoin has no fundamental value” has long been the war cry for many traditional financial participants. This week we thought we could shed some light on this short-sighted mantra.
Money has always been technology. It allows society to store time, effort and sacrifice today and redeem it for time, effort, and sacrifice in the future. Similar to how a title deed gives the holder a claim on a property, money is a claim on human time. When we exchange our time for money we hope that it can hold value for long enough to enable us to trade it for something we want.
Our banking and financial networks of today are simply communication networks for settling financial transactions, they guarantee that transactions will be processed, executed, and settled. Banks are responsible for interfacing with these networks on behalf of their clients — sending the right messages and responding appropriately to messages received. The internet brought us, as users of banks, that much closer to their messaging network, allowing for online banking and fast mobile payments all whilst hundreds of bank branches closed across the globe.