The Control - Issue #22
Since May 1st, 43 projects have raised over $1.2B worth of capital in ICOs. The recent ICO explosion proves tremendous global demand to invest from ETH and BTC holders.
The majority of this funding has gone into pre-product projects though and I believe the end result will be pain felt from investors. There are common problems that arise from large funding pre-product: inflated expectations, lack of focus and lack of resourcefulness. Every entrepreneur thinks they can be the exception and it's possible that they will. But of all the bubbles that people talk about in crypto land, the bubble most likely to pop is the pre-product funding bubble.
Another problem I see with some of what is going on currently is the token model is often being used for fundraising purposes without much thought going into long-term cryptoeconomics. I believe it will prove wise to stay narrowly focused on what blockchains are really about: user empowerment enabled by cryptoeconomics. One of the single best things you could do on that front is watch this recent talk by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin: "The Cryptoeconomic Way"
Required viewing this week
Scaling Ethereum to Billions of Users — medium.com
The scalability of blockchains is one of the most underappreciated problems that exists today and while there are a number of on-chain and off-chain solutions in the works, it would great to see more funding and R&D going into solutions such as Lightning Network, Raiden and Truebit rather than half-baked "next gen blockchain" solutions.
Russian Politician Calls For Removal of Taxation on Bitcoin and Ethereum — www.trustnodes.com
Jurisdictions around the world are starting to recognize the benefits of favorable regulation towards crypto tokens. Japan's decision to treat crypto as legal tender and eliminate the consumption tax it initially placed on it is one recent example of this. I expect more jurisdictional competition to come in the crypto world in the coming months.
A beginner’s guide to 0x — medium.com
Over $70B of digital assets were traded in June and I believe decentralized exchanges will ultimately supplant the centralized exchanges that currently dominate the market. 0x is an interesting project working on decentralized exchange and this is a good beginner's guide on it.
Segwit2x: What you need to know about the 2x Hard Fork — medium.com
Bitcoin scaling via segregated witnesss appears to finally be a real possibility after years of debate, with over 85% of miners signaling that they are in favor of the protocol changes proposed in the “New York Agreement.” This post does a good job explaining what they changes are and what the timeline is for the changes to be implemented.