The Control - Issue #30
Since Satoshi released Bitcoin in 2009, cryptocurrencies have appealed to two broad categories of people: people interested in computer science and people interested in investing/speculating.
There are a number products launching this year that appeal to a broader category of people that don't care about code or investing, and one of the most promising of those is Earn.com. Earn reduces the barrier to entry into cryptocurrencies; rather than buying cryptocurrency in exchange for dollars, you can now earn it in exchange for your time by completing small tasks, replying to emails, etc. You can now signup for Earn here to start earning BTC for your time.
Required reading this week
Decentralization in Bitcoin and Ethereum — hackingdistributed.com
Emin Gun Sirer and his team at Cornell are some of the deepest technical thinkers in the space, and this is a useful look at the decentralization of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
a16z Podcast: Mental Models for Understanding Crypto Tokens — a16z.com
I sat down with Chris Dixon of a16z to discuss the latest trends in the industry.
The DAI stablecoin has been perfectly stable during this market crash. Congrats MakerDAO!!
Despite a steep decline in the broader crypto markets, the recently released Dai stablecoin has held up quite well as a decentralized stablecoin.
Ledger raises another $75 million to become the leader in cryptocurrency hardware wallets — techcrunch.com
Ledger just raised an impressive $75M Series B round led by Draper Esprit. If you're not using the Ledger Nano to store your own private keys, I strongly suggest that you check it out.
Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble — www.nytimes.com
Most of the mainstream coverage of the space has been bad, but this NYT piece by Steven Johnson is an outlier.
This newsletter is curated by 1confirmation, an early stage crypto fund that supports founders fueling the decentralization of the web and society