Thoughts on Stellar’s Randos Per Week in the context of increased crypto awareness

In their “Stellar 2018 Roadmap” (see Thoughts on “Stellar 2018 Roadmap”) Stellar jokingly (at least I hope so) shared the critical indicator for a decentralized protocol” (original emphasis), namely randos per week (r.p.w or rpw; number of random people talking about crypto) and promised equally moonish growth. Although meant as a joke there is some truth in those numbers. The number of average — „non-crypto“ — people talking about it has — at least in my perception — increased in the last couple of weeks and months. More importantly, such popularity metrics are important for the diffusion of cryptoassets; the more people know about it, the greater the likelihood of acceptance. Nevertheless, the recently increased popularity of crypto is not without its caveats. Prevalence of common misconceptions hindering diffusion: Firstly, a lot of the attention is still on getting rich, Crypto being a bubble and people confusing all alts with Bitcoin. As long as these misconceptions prevail, crypto won’t reach mass market adoption. Creation of overhyped interest leading to bursting bubble: On the one side Blockchain and Co. are overhyped to be the next big thing and if possible right now. On the other side, adoption is either low or not perceived because it is happening under the hood. For instance, Stellar’s partnership with Tempo

Thoughts on Stellar's Randos Per Week in the context of increased crypto awareness

In their “Stellar 2018 Roadmap” (see Thoughts on “Stellar 2018 Roadmap”) Stellar jokingly (at least I hope so) shared the critical indicator for a decentralized protocol” (original emphasis), namely randos per week (r.p.w or rpw; number of random people talking about crypto) and promised equally moonish growth. Although meant as a joke there is some truth in those numbers. The number of average — „non-crypto“ — people talking about it has — at least in my perception — increased in the last couple of weeks and months. More importantly, such popularity metrics are important for the diffusion of cryptoassets; the more people know about it, the greater the likelihood of acceptance. Nevertheless, the recently increased popularity of crypto is not without its caveats. Prevalence of common misconceptions hindering diffusion: Firstly, a lot of the attention is still on getting rich, Crypto being a bubble and people confusing all alts with Bitcoin. As long as these misconceptions prevail, crypto won’t reach mass market adoption. Creation of overhyped interest leading to bursting bubble: On the one side Blockchain and Co. are overhyped to be the next big thing and if possible right now. On the other side, adoption is either low or not perceived because it is happening under the hood. For instance, Stellar’s partnership with Tempo

Weekly crypto roundup: Stellar’s January roundup and Facebook Messenger and cryptocurrencies

Asset news: Stellar This week (February 5) Stellar published their 2018 January Roundup (check out here what Stellar is). The roundup contained: reference to Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency reference to 2018 Stellar Technical Roadmap recap on Financial Institutions & Partners overview of upcoming events Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency and Stellar’s 2018 Technical Roadmap I have covered Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency here and Stellar’s Technical Roadmap here. Recap on Financial Institutions & Partners Termio, an „advertising blockchain” will run their ICO on Stellar. Scheduled for April. LaLa World will implement Stellar for international remittance Tontine Trust is creating a social security and pension system based on Stellar MOIN and TowerChain were announced as two Stellar Anchors (an Anchor within the Stellar-network is somebody who holds and issues assets). OpenGarden announced to run their tokens on Stellar (no ICO). OpenGarden has been around since 2011 and is backed by a couple of investors (total funding around $13). OpenGarden has created FireChat, a chat app that works without an Internet connection. Furthermore — and this is their primary goal — they are working on establishing a network of decentralized ISP (Internet service providers) allowing anybody to share their Wi-Fi to other OpenGarden users.

Thoughts on “Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency”

In January Christian from Stellar published “Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency“ (check out here what Stellar is). The report came out in January, at a time where the general market was going downward after doing quite the opposite in the months before or. The team shared the following updates: Transactions per second high but still below industry standard Stellar showed that they are aware of a need for marketing 2017 marked two years of Stellar being battle-tested In 2017 smart-contract functionality was added Bifrost was released Stellar merged several Go repositories into monorepo and there were 128 merged pull requests in 2017 XLM support added to Ledger Nano S See below for details. Relatively high transactions per second, low transaction fees, and marketing-consciousness They reported on their transactions per second (TPS) and transaction fees (tf). TPS, although relatively high, are still below current industry standard (e.g. Visa with around 2k). Also, according to them, they have the lowest average transaction fees compared to selected other cryptos. Crypto Platform Performance and Stellar specs (Source: Stellar) As I believe that the whole industry will convergence towards the same fees over time (the same applies to other technical specifications as well) I believe

Thoughts on "Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency"

In January Christian from Stellar published “Stellar and the State of Cryptocurrency“ (check out here what Stellar is). The report came out in January, at a time where the general market was going downward after doing quite the opposite in the months before or. The team shared the following updates: Transactions per second high but still below industry standard Stellar showed that they are aware of a need for marketing 2017 marked two years of Stellar being battle-tested In 2017 smart-contract functionality was added Bifrost was released Stellar merged several Go repositories into monorepo and there were 128 merged pull requests in 2017 XLM support added to Ledger Nano S See below for details. Relatively high transactions per second, low transaction fees, and marketing-consciousness They reported on their transactions per second (TPS) and transaction fees (tf). TPS, although relatively high, are still below current industry standard (e.g. Visa with around 2k). Also, according to them, they have the lowest average transaction fees compared to selected other cryptos. Crypto Platform Performance and Stellar specs (Source: Stellar) As I believe that the whole industry will convergence towards the same fees over time (the same applies to other technical specifications as well) I believe

Thoughts on Stellar’s “2018 Stellar Roadmap”

 In January Christian from Stellar published “2018 Stellar Roadmap“ (check out here what Stellar is). In the roadmap they focused on two things: their growth in randos per week (r.p.w or rpw) their strategic goals for 2018 Growth in randos per week Jokingly (at least I hope so) Christian shared a 12kk increase in “the critical indicator for a decentralized protocol” (original emphasis), namely randos per week (r.p.w or rpw; number of random people talking about crypto) and promised equally moonish growth. Stellar’s Randos per week (Source: Stellar) I have shared my thoughts on Stellar’s randos per week in “Thoughts on Stellar’s Randos Per Week in the context of increased crypto awareness”. The main points are: Although rpw was meant as a joke, crypto has become more talked about More attention around crypto is important because crypto diffusion — a two-step process (see Two mental steps towards cryptoasset diffusion) takes time. The more people know about it, the faster it will diffuse. Nevertheless, crypto attention has its downsides: a) misconceptions are prevalent, b) several (not only financial) bubbles will burst, c) “overpresence” of pro-crypto people doesn’t represent overall adoption and leads to dangerous conclusions Besides that, they shared their goals for 2018, namely SDEX (Stellar

Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptoassets: discussing bubbles vs. discussing socio-technical systems

Disclaimer: I own several cryptoassets. My views might be biased. TL;DR Because Bitcoin and Blockchain are inseparably linked arguing that Bitcoin is a bubble that will burst but its underlying technology – Blockchain – will prevail is difficult without context (i. e. which Blockchain and – see second – what constitutes a Bitcoin bubble) Basing Bitcoin’s value on USA’s money supply and global gold supply a value for Bitcoin can be estimated that refutes any bubble-related claims Altcoins are better defined as cryptoassets. Cryptoassets can be divided into cryptocurrencies and cryptotokens. Cryptotokens enable a semi-publicization of centralized customer data and through that shift data governance to the data’s rightful creators Cryptotokens can be used to incentivize early adopters and kickstart networks Cryptotokens could create more financially conscious people and lead to positive social impacts by allowing more people to invest in companies Blockchain and Co. can be seen as an all-encompassing socio-technical system that could lead to unexpected second-order consequences in industry and society as it was the case with touchscreens, the Internet, and smartphones (I should make a TL;DR for the TL;DR) In the last couple of days, there has been quite some medial attention regarding Bitcoin. Some part of that activity centered around Bitcoin

NAGA, savedroid, and useful ICOs

byte heroes, HydroMiner, Wysker, and cointed (see here for the first three ) were one of the first DACH-based Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Now, with the recent ICOs (or announcements) of The NAGA Group and savedroid, we have a few more. Whereas there is no official definition of an ICO, most would agree that it is a way to raise money. However, it is important that a company should only ICO if there is clear demand for the token. Lack thereof will add unnecessary complexity to the business (with little to no upside benefit), threaten the token’s value and consequently lead to angry users and possible legal issues. Unnecessary complexity due to technical issues, lack of historical data, incompatibility and macroeconomic considerations Cryptotokens are still very early in several regards. Besides technical issues (e. g. scalability) lack of historical data (e. g. risk concerns, best practices, existences of bubbles) they are incompatible with users’ “past experiences” and there are macroeconomic considerations. Cryptotokens’ incompatible with past experiences Compatibility is defined as “the degree to which an innovation is perceived as consistent with the existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters“ [3]. Studies have shown that cultures who considered hot

byte heroes, HydroMiner, and Wysker — first ICOs in Austria and Germany

 In the last couple of days four ICOs have been announced in the DACH-area: HEROCoin by byte heroes (Austria’s first ICO) H2O by HydroMiner wys by Wysker (Germany’s first ICO) CTD by Cointed Here I will cover HEROCoin, H2O, and wys. As Cointed was accused of fraud, it deserves a more detailed look and I will do so separately. ICOs in general, are a fascinating topic and I am equally excited that we have them now in Austria and Germany as well. In this post, I am going to focus on the white papers and only briefly touch upon the startups itself. Due to lacking regulations, there are no binding guidelines regarding what such a white paper should contain or a company-specific coin should be. However, what struck me was How little information about the current state the white papers provide: finances, competition, and market overview, for instance, are sparsely elaborated How little information about the future they present: wysker is the only company to provide measurable metrics for assessing progress (and these metrics are not the most useful ones) The lack of an economic model for the coins: I believe that the issued coin should be tied to the