Spending my days, as has become habit, thinking about such esoteric notions as tokens and token designs, blockchains and blockchain communities, digit...

There was once a time when ‘crypto’ was synonymous with ‘cryptocurrency’. Today, the term is far more expansive, spanning NFTs, zk-stuff, identity sys...

It’s easy to dismiss the ‘Network State’ notion as some technocratic, libertarian fantasy, divorced from the practical realities of human life. Howeve...

The most popular mental model for blockchains today is that of a shared computing platform. As computing platforms, they are touted for their ‘credibl...

Cryptoeconomics is the term used to refer to this emerging discipline at the nexus of computer science, cryptography and economics. Ultimately, it’s a...

One of the least understood phenomena in crypto, I’ve become convinced, is the underlying networks that constitute them: “cryptonetworks”. In an earli...

When you abstract away the details, Bitcoin is an incredibly simple construct. It’s a piece of software that defines the existence of some 21 million ...

The existing Internet economy revolves around the logic of turning attention into capital via advertising. While it might seem benign enough on the su...

Every industry is prone to self-serving hyperbole and delusions of grandeur. Given the obvious incentives, this ought to be expected. However, when it...

Crypto is often derided as a casino of the most degenerate sort. And it’s true. At some level, that’s precisely what it is. However, it’s a mistake to...

Of all the meme complexes to circulate the Internet in recent years, Effective Altruism has been among the most virulent. This is rather curious, give...

One of the juiciest stories in recent Silicon Valley history is currently unfolding. In case you haven’t heard: over the weekend, Sam Altman, co-found...

Are memecoins merely emblematic of the degeneracy that’s come to define the cryptosphere, or do they instead represent a powerful, Internet-native fus...

The Internet is the new America — the centre of the world’s cultural and economic activity — and it’s currently undergoing something of a revolution. ...

“Crypto” is notoriously hard to grok. While this is partly a function of the conceptual complexity that’s inherent to the subject — transcending, as i...

One of the persistent criticisms of crypto is that it represents the ‘hyperfinancialisation’ of things; an obvious and unflattering symptom of our ‘hy...

To anyone paying attention, it appears we’re at an interesting moment in the history of the Web. On the back of \~60 years of Moore’s Law, the Web is ...

Yesterday, Sartoshi -- the pseudonymous founder of mfers -- vanished into the ether. To most of the world this means nothing, of course. But for a sma...

‘Monetary localism’ -- as expressed by Ethan Buchman -- is the idea that monetary value ought to be expressed at the local, community level, rather t...

It’s not that I’m unaware that NFTs aren’t universally attractive, at the minute. Or that their application as “PFPs” is just as likely to signal path...