Arguably the greatest graphic ever drawn, this map, depicts the advance into (1812) and retreat from (1813) Russia by Napoleon’s Grande Armée
For those who love crypto & graphs that tell a compelling story
#1 Open Source: From Community to Commercialization
by Peter Levine and Jennifer Li of Andreessen Horowitz
In an interview on CNN in 2000, Mark Andreessen said “The complexity curve of software on major Internet properties like Yahoo and everybody else is growing exponentially. Software is eating the world.” Yet it wasn’t until 2011, when Andreessen penned a Wall Street Journal article “Why Software Is Eating The World” that the adage moved in to the popular lexicon of tech. So it’s meaningful when the Andreessen adds an addendum to the adage.
#2 Bitcoin is Not Backed by Nothing
by Parker Lewis of Unchained Capital
The post has two very intriguing thoughts. The first is that “Because there is $73 trillion of debt and only $1.6 trillion dollars in the U.S. banking system, more dollars will have to be added to the system to support the debt. The scarcity of dollars relative to the demand for dollars is what gives the dollar its value. Nothing more, nothing less.”
The second thought, and the core of the piece, is that “Ultimately, bitcoin is backed by something, and it’s the only thing that backs any money: the credibility of its monetary properties”, which include it’s scarcity, divisibility, and transferability. Bitcoin also more decentralized and thus more resistant to censorship or corruption than other forms of money. And Parker believes that these monetary properties are evaluated by the market relative to the properties inherent in other monetary systems.
#3 Protocols As Minimally Extractive Coordinators
by Chris Burniske of Placeholder
Chris argues that protocols are not businesses (as Flipside Crypto posited), rather they “..”are systems of logic that coordinate exchange between suppliers (businesses) and consumers of a service. As coordinators of exchange, protocols should be minimally extractive, whereas businesses are incentivized to be maximally extractive “. The chart provides a great summary.
#4 The American Brain
By Tim Urban of Wait But Why
Most of you have read Tim. He’s arguably the greatest (tech) blogger of our day. He just finished an epic 7 part series titled “The Story of Us: Full Series”. The 6th part was titled “The American Brain”
Tim speaks of a bell curve of thought he refers to as “the thought pile” around any particular topic. He notes that the mainstream ideas are what’s taught in schools and what will limit the stances held by politicians. To make real, meaningful change, you have to change mainstream views, or as Tim puts it, you have to move the thought pile.
Thought leaders can do change do so in two ways. First, they can say something that everyone is thinking but not saying (e.g. when Obama said he “..smoking pot is fun.”). The harder thought leadership, is to actually move the thought pile (per the graph above). But if the speaker is good enough — and if they have truth or wisdom on their side — they may be able to change people’s minds and pull the Thought Pile over toward their viewpoint. Changing minds is the harder kind of leadership. It requires even more courage than the “say what everyone’s thinking” kind, and if it succeeds, it’s even more impactful.
While the word bitcoin was never uttered in the article, this provided a very helpful framework to think about the work many of us are doing to change world views on bitcoin.
#5 Aggregators
By Ash Egan of Accomplice
I found this simple graphic helpful in visualizing DeFi. Ash highlights the the shift in DeFi to aggregators which he defines as ”… the user facing products that are built atop decentralized infrastructure. Aggregators emphasize UX/UI improvements over the liquidity layer, whereas the liquidity layer is singularly focused on improving the core underlying functionality (lending, exchange, etc).
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