Musings on Technology
A personal collection of notes, reflections, and essays on technology, finance, and building — written over the years as I made sense of the ideas shaping our industry.
Crypto's First Real Bear Market: What History Tells Us
When prices fall, narratives collapse. But bear markets are not just destruction — they’re selection. If crypto is building real infrastructure, the downturn will reveal what’s durable and what was just leverage and storytelling.
The Coincheck Hack: $530 Million and the Case for Decentralized Custody
Coincheck’s $530M loss isn’t a one-off. It’s a predictable outcome of a market where users park billions on centralized honeypots. If crypto is serious about becoming infrastructure, custody must evolve from an afterthought into a first-class design principle.
The $800 Billion Question: Is Crypto Overvalued?
At the start of 2018, crypto is brushing up against a trillion-dollar market cap. The numbers feel unreal — but the right question isn't whether prices are high. It's whether the infrastructure being built can justify global scale.
My Blockchain Thesis After Eight Months
After eight months studying and writing about blockchain, my view has crystallized: crypto prices are noise; infrastructure is signal. Here is the thesis I’m carrying into 2018 — and the questions I still don’t have answers to.
Bitcoin Futures Launch: Wall Street Enters the Arena
With CBOE and CME preparing to launch Bitcoin futures, the boundary between crypto markets and traditional finance is dissolving. Futures will change market structure, invite institutions, and introduce a new phase of price discovery — for better and worse.
CryptoKitties and the Unexpected Use Case for Blockchain
A game about collecting cartoon cats has congested the Ethereum network. It sounds ridiculous — and it is — but CryptoKitties reveals something important: consumer demand is a forcing function for infrastructure.
Bitcoin at $7,000: Bubble or Paradigm Shift?
Bitcoin has crossed $7,000 and shows no signs of slowing down. The bubble comparisons are inevitable — tulips, dot-com, South Sea. But what if the better analogy is not a bubble at all, but the early adoption curve of a transformative technology?
Stablecoins: The Bridge Between Crypto and the Real Economy
Crypto's volatility makes it unsuitable for everyday commerce. Stablecoins — cryptocurrencies pegged to fiat currencies — solve this problem and may become the most important innovation in the blockchain space.
The Institutional Investor's Dilemma: Ignore Crypto or Engage?
CME Group is preparing to launch Bitcoin futures. Fidelity is exploring crypto custody. The institutional world can no longer pretend crypto does not exist — but engaging with it requires navigating unfamiliar risks and uncomfortable questions.
Ethereum's Roadmap: From Frontier to Metropolis
Ethereum's Byzantium hard fork is approaching, bringing significant upgrades to the network. But the real story is the ambitious multi-year roadmap that aims to transform Ethereum from an experimental platform into global financial infrastructure.