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.
2021 in Review: The Year Crypto Went Mainstream
Bitcoin hit $69,000. Tesla and MicroStrategy put it on their balance sheets. El Salvador made it legal tender. NFTs entered the cultural mainstream. Coinbase went public. And then the market corrected. A review of the most consequential year in crypto history.
Web3: The Word Everyone Uses and Nobody Agrees On
Web3 has become the dominant framing for crypto's vision of the future internet — user-owned, token-incentivised, and decentralised. The vision is compelling. The definition is vague. And the gap between the marketing and the reality is where the hard work lives.
Bitcoin Hits $69,000 — Then the Music Stops
Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $69,000 on November 10th. Within weeks, it began a decline that would erase months of gains. The top was not marked by a single event but by the accumulation of excess that always precedes a reversal.
The First Bitcoin ETF Launches in the US
The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF began trading on the NYSE — the first Bitcoin-linked ETF approved by the SEC. It is futures-based, not spot, and that distinction matters. But the symbolic significance of a Bitcoin ETF on a US exchange is hard to overstate.
DAO Treasuries and the Future of Organisational Capital
DAOs are sitting on billions in treasury assets — Uniswap, Compound, Aave, and others control more capital than most venture funds. The question of how to deploy that capital responsibly is becoming the defining governance challenge of DeFi.
The Merge Is Coming — What It Means for Ethereum
Ethereum's transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake — the Merge — is approaching its final stages of testing. It will be the most consequential upgrade in blockchain history: ending mining, reducing energy consumption by 99%, and fundamentally changing ETH's economic model.
The Poly Network Hack: $700 Million and a White Hat
A hacker exploited Poly Network's cross-chain bridge for $611 million — the largest DeFi exploit in history. Then they returned it all. The episode reveals everything about the state of cross-chain security: the vulnerabilities are enormous, the stakes are real, and the infrastructure is not ready.
The Infrastructure Bill and Crypto's First Political Fight
A provision in the US infrastructure bill would expand the definition of 'broker' to include miners, validators, and DeFi developers — requiring them to report user transactions to the IRS. The crypto industry's response was its first coordinated political mobilisation. It will not be the last.
EIP-1559: Ethereum Becomes Deflationary
EIP-1559 changes how Ethereum handles transaction fees — burning the base fee instead of paying it to miners. The result is a mechanism that reduces ETH supply with every transaction. Ethereum is becoming a deflationary asset, and the implications for its value are profound.
El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin as Legal Tender
El Salvador has become the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. President Bukele's Bitcoin Law is historic, controversial, and deeply uncertain in its implications. It is either a visionary leap or a reckless experiment — and possibly both.