Bitcoin’s third halving event has been at the heart of recent debates and discussions, generating polarising views on the effect it will have on the cryptocurrency and the ecosystem. To understand why this is such a widely anticipated event, let us first talk about Bitcoin mining and block rewards.
When bitcoin miners successfully add a “block” of transactions to the blockchain, they receive block rewards on top of transaction fees. Since Bitcoin is decentralized, block rewards are not issued by any organisation or central authority. Instead, it is hard-coded in the Bitcoin protocol to create and issue new bitcoins as…
China is coming ahead in the digital currency race, and they are finding themselves in a good position to push blockchain technology to more than a billion citizens.
There is no denying that China has gained a firm grip and heavy influence on the future of the blockchain industry and the prospects of cryptocurrencies. Within the span of a week, a series of announcements from Chinese regulators shook the entire industry, jolting Bitcoin prices and prices of the coins of Chinese-developed blockchains.
These announcements came in stark contrast to a series of gloomy news in the US. The US SEC…
“Trust is at the core of any system of money. For it to work, people must feel confident that a currency will be held in the right esteem by others.”
For any currency — traditional or digital — to be viable and widely used by a community or society, the users must trust an authority to honor the value and the transactions in the currency.
To understand what Bitcoin is and why it is important, we have to first understand how intermediaries play a crucial role in providing trust for the money system as we know it.
Suppose I want…
“Trust is at the core of any system of money. For it to work, people must feel confident that a currency will be held in the right esteem by others.”
For any currency — traditional or digital — to be viable and widely used by a community or society, the users must trust an authority to honour the value and the transactions in the currency.
To understand what Bitcoin is and why it is important, we have to first understand how intermediaries play a crucial role in providing trust for the money system as we know it.
Suppose I want…
The 9-to-5 workday, birthed from nineteenth century socialism, is starting to look irrelevant. The economy has progressed since the First Industrial Revolution and work itself has evolved significantly.
The evolution of the internet and software companies gave rise to a global gig economy, one that goes far beyond just Uber drivers and Fiverr designers. A decentralised global workforce, known as the Human Cloud, is growing rapidly — The Economist estimates that it is worth $50 billion a year.
The Human Cloud is alleviating poverty in the poorest places on earth. …
In this deep crypto winter filled with uncertainty and pessimism, Binance looks like it is warming the industry up.
For the uninitiated, token sales or Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a means of crowdfunding for blockchain projects, allowing developers to raise funding for the research and development of new blockchain products. According to the ICO tracker by Coindesk, token sales facilitated a cumulative funding of $22.5 billion since 2015.
Most tokens have a fixed supply, so any increase in demand would result in a rise in prices. …
Nothing can quite prepare you to be a manager.
Marcus Wermuth, an engineer from Buffer, believes that becoming a manager is not a promotion; it is a career change. I was a content creator and marketer: I produce social media content, write articles, and plan ad campaigns. Shortly after taking up management responsibilities, I realised I was spending all my time aligning expectations, building processes, and optimising my team’s output.
My experience as a manager over the past 18+ months is a baptism by fire. My leaders and managers had suddenly expected more from me and there was little tolerance…
Blockchain technology became the talk of the town since the meteoric rise in Bitcoin prices and the initial coin offering craze in 2017 took place. The technology which lies beneath the speculative buzz around cryptocurrencies has the potential to revolutionize business processes and supply chains. Data, for example, can be more responsibly and transparently accounted for when stored on a blockchain, a distributed system where corruption or manipulation is almost impossible.
According to an analysis by McKinsey & Company, blockchain technology is estimated to be three to five years away from full-scale feasibility and viability. However, the inherent risks of…
Our world is growing increasingly digital. David Wolman, author of ‘The End of Money’ and contributing editor at Wired, believes that the most impactful contribution from the invention of the smartphone is the applications that transform the device into a seamless wallet, remittance, and payments tool, granting financial inclusion and unprecedented convenience to billions of unbanked people around the world.
While paper money has helped the world exchange value for goods and services for approximately the past millennium, it’s time the money system updated itself to satisfy today’s needs. The case against cash is clear.
Cash is the preferred mode…
Due to its immense pace and agility, the startup environment can be a tough space for creatives to navigate. They rarely have the luxury of time to craft, pitch, and receive buy-in for campaign briefs from key stakeholders. When the product pivots during the development cycle, they spend significant time managing communication, leaving little time for effective planning and brainstorming.
As creative teams struggle to keep up with requests from various departments, mistakes and miscommunication often occur. For inexperienced leaders, false impressions of a subpar team may arise. They may erroneously feel that their team is unable to perform under…