Lifeboat Foundation

The Disruption Experience this Friday in Singapore is a blockchain event with a difference. With apologies to the Buick commercial, this is not your grandfather’s conference…

I know a few things about blockchain conferences. I produced and hosted the first Bitcoin Event in New York. My organization develops cryptocurrency standards and practices. We help banks and governments create policy and services. And as public speaker for a standards organization, I have delivered keynote presentations at conferences and Expos in Dubai, Gujarat India, Montreal and Tampa, New York and Boston.

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“It’s the first time that humans have ever had the ability to send money around the world globally without anyone being able to stop it,” he said. “You can argue that it’s the first time in our history that we have real censorship resistance.”

Gladstein feels we’re at a crossroads as a society—we’ll either go down a centralized path where our interactions are surveilled and censored, or we’ll go down a decentralized one that preserves our essential freedoms and rights.

Technology’s role is somewhat paradoxical in this crossroads; some forms can serve as a tool of control for governments or companies, while other forms put more power in the hands of citizens.

Continue reading “How Cryptocurrencies Can Influence the Future of Freedom” »

Some of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency tycoons are about to find out how much they’re really worth.

The virtual currency markets have been through booms and busts before — and recovered to boom again. But this bust could have a more lasting impact on the technology’s adoption because of the sheer number of ordinary people who invested in digital tokens over the last year, and who are likely to associate cryptocurrencies with financial ruin for a very long time.

The number of people who bought virtual currencies more than doubled last winter. For people who got in late, the bust has been disastrous.

Bitmain is going public in China. The IPO might make it one of the most valuable startups, cryptocurrency or not, to ever debut on the public markets.

Let us frame the question, by reviewing what miners really do…

Miners play a critical role in the Bitcoin network. Their activity (searching for a nonce) results in assembling an immutable string of blocks that corroborate and log the universal transaction record. They are the distributed bookkeepers that replace old-school banks in recording and vouching for everyone’s purchase or savings.

From the perspective of a miner, there is no obvious connection between their activity and the worldwide network of bitcoin transactions and record keeping. They are simply playing an online game and competing against thousands of other miners in an effort to solve a complex and ongoing math problem. As they arrive at answers to small pieces of the problem, they are rewarded with bitcoin, which can be easily translated into any currency.

What is the Problem?

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Today, economist and Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, wrote in the New York Times, that Bitcoin is taking us back 300 years in monetary evolution. As a result, he predicts all sorts of bad things.

A significant basis for Mr. Krugman’s argument is that the US dollar has value because men with guns say it does.

Is Bitcoin erasing 300 years of monetary evolution?

Running with the metaphor that fundamental change to an economic mechanism represents ‘evolution’, I think a more accurate statement is that Bitcoin is not erasing the lessons of history. Rather, it is the current step in the evolution of money. Of course, with living species, evolution is a gradual process based on natural selection and adaptation. With Bitcoin, change is coming up in the rear view mirror at lightning speed.

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Cryptocurrency fraud and other kinds of cyber-fraud, too.

President Donald Trump has assigned an official task force to investigate the pervasive fraud within the cryptocurrency industry.

On Thursday, the president signed an executive order for a new task force within the Department of Justice with a mandate “to investigate and prosecute crimes of fraud committed against the U.S. Government or the American people, recover the proceeds of such crimes, and ensure just and effective punishment of those who perpetrate crimes of fraud.”

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Blue Frontiers is decentralizing governance by launching a seasteading industry that will provide humanity with new opportunities for organizing more innovative societies and dynamic governments.

The funds raised from the crowdsale will be used to implement Blue Frontiers mission. Proceeds from the token sale are expected to be divided among the following activities:

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