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.
Bitcoin at $29,000 — This Cycle Is Different
Bitcoin ends 2020 at $29,000 — up 300% from the March lows and approaching its all-time high. This rally is structurally different from 2017: driven by institutions, corporate treasuries, and macro hedging rather than retail speculation. The implications are profound.
The Beacon Chain Launches — Ethereum 2.0 Begins
Ethereum's Beacon Chain has launched, marking the beginning of the multi-year transition to Proof of Stake. Over 500,000 ETH has been staked. The most ambitious upgrade in blockchain history is now live — and the real work is just starting.
MicroStrategy and the Corporate Treasury Thesis
MicroStrategy has converted $425 million of its corporate treasury to Bitcoin. CEO Michael Saylor's thesis is simple: cash is a melting ice cube, and Bitcoin is the best available alternative. If other companies follow, the implications for Bitcoin's supply dynamics are profound.
PayPal Enters Crypto and Everything Changes
PayPal announced that its 346 million users will be able to buy, hold, and spend Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This is not another institutional endorsement. It is a distribution event — the moment crypto becomes accessible to hundreds of millions of people who have never used an exchange.
DeFi Exploits Are Accelerating — And That's Predictable
Flash loan attacks, oracle manipulation, and reentrancy exploits are draining millions from DeFi protocols. The pattern is predictable: more capital attracts more attackers, and the security infrastructure has not kept pace with the capital deployment.
SushiSwap, the Vampire Attack, and Open Source Politics
SushiSwap forked Uniswap's code and tried to steal its liquidity. The 'vampire attack' raises uncomfortable questions about the economics of open source software, the value of community versus code, and what it means to compete in DeFi.
NFTs Are More Than JPEGs — But the Market Doesn't Know It Yet
Non-fungible tokens are gaining traction in digital art and collectibles. The current use cases are niche. But the underlying primitive — verifiable digital ownership — has implications far beyond art. The market is pricing the meme, not the infrastructure.
The OCC Opens the Door for Banks and Crypto
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has ruled that national banks can provide custody services for crypto assets. This is not a minor regulatory update — it is the beginning of crypto's integration into the traditional banking system.
Ethereum Gas Fees Are Breaking DeFi
Gas fees on Ethereum have spiked to levels that make DeFi unusable for anyone who is not moving large amounts of capital. A simple token swap costs $50. A complex farming transaction costs $200. The scalability problem is no longer theoretical — it is an emergency.
The YAM Collapse and the Cost of Moving Fast
YAM Finance launched, attracted $600 million in deposits, discovered a critical bug, and collapsed — all within 48 hours. The episode is a microcosm of DeFi Summer's promise and peril: extraordinary speed, extraordinary risk, and the consequences of shipping unaudited code.