It's Just Technology
A token is a scarce digital asset whose ownership is tracked on a public blockchain.
Tokenization refers to the accelerating trend of representing digital and real-world assets as tokens on public blockchains, such as Ethereum.
What is 0x?
0x is a community-owned protocol that provides p2p exchange infrastructure and aggregated liquidity that enables the crypto economy to swap tokens at the best prices.
I believe there are five powerful use cases for blockchain. These five use cases are unique, unique in that the value we get from using a blockchain clearly outweighs the drawbacks. So let’s dive into these five great use cases and find out why they’re so well matched for blockchain:
#1 – Non-fiat money, or a store of value coin. What does that mean? It means money that has been issued by people or groups, but not a country. Now, this of course was the very first use case for blockchain technology. I’m talking about Bitcoin. Why non-fiat up money? Because blockchain solves two critical elements when it comes to making money useful. Blockchain makes counterfeiting impossible. It allows money or a store value coin to be safely transferred to anyone on earth with access to the internet.
#2 – A storage place for your personal identity. Now, this is a fantastic use case for blockchain. There is no safer way to store, and to give limited access to, all the personal identifying details of who you are. Your passwords, your driver’s license, all of your personal contact information, the information websites demand you hand over every time you want to sign up for an online service. If you could store your personal identifying details in a blockchain, all that precious information that identity thieves would love to get, we would all be better off. No one could touch it unless you gave them permission. Your digital identity would be safely locked in the blockchain, not on hundreds of unsecured web servers. And you would grant companies access to that information on your terms.
#3 – Supply chain. The ability of a blockchain to maintain an unbroken and easily accessible record of every event in a global supply chain is powerful. This, by the way, is the reason that supply chains are one of the first commercial applications of blockchain technology.
#4 – The tokenization of real-world assets. Now I’m talking about creating a digital twin of any real-world item. Why is this valuable? Because it allows you to transform nearly everything you own into provably, authentic digital certificates. Digital certificates that can’t be duplicated or forged. Blockchain is the way we begin to separate ownership from physical possession for lots of things. Tokenization will have a major impact on the way we shop, use, and trade things in the future. Now this particular use case is near and dear to me and that’s because six years ago, I used a blockchain to tokenize the US dollar. My partners and I created a way to send US dollars through the blockchain and it turned out to be a fantastic use case that harnessed the special properties of blockchain technology. And that tokenized dollar we created, what we named Tether, today trades over 4 trillion dollars annually.
#5 – Consumer entertainment, and it should start with video games. The global video game industry makes $150 billion per year and most of that revenue comes from selling virtual items, avatars, and skins to decorate your characters. Selling virtual assets is a great business model for video game companies, but it’s not so great for players. People spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars to collect their favorite virtual items, yet they never own them. Game companies rarely allow players to trade or resell all this digital property, property the players paid for! Now, if these virtual items were created on a blockchain, it would make it possible for hundreds of millions of video game players to directly own and trade them. I also believe it would unleash a massive increase in the willingness of players to buy more virtual items.
Why? Because by allowing the digital items to be resold, it makes players much more comfortable buying them in the first place. Just like the fact that you can resell your car puts you more at ease buying it because you can extract some value from the car when it’s time to trade up to a new one. And remember we’re talking about 150 billion dollar industry, just waiting to be transformed by the blockchain.
Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner and is a prominent example of open collaboration.
In this video, Rusty Russell uses his 20 years of experience writing community-produced software to discuss his open source programming experience with Linux and Bitcoin and what can be done by a group of volunteers releasing world-class software for all to use freely.
Open-source software is a widely used in the blockchain community and contributes to the currency of network “trust.”
Establishing a high level of trust is only possible when the software that powers the network is free and open source. Even a correctly distributed proprietary blockchain is essentially a collection of independent agents running the same third party’s code. Open source also facilitates innovation as different perspectives contribute to the ecosystem and keep it growing.
It’s worth mentioning that while the open nature of blockchains has been a source of innovation and variation, it has also been seen as a form of governance. By virtue of the code itself, where users are expected to run whichever specific version of the code contains a function or approach they think the whole network should embrace, the code represents a type of governance.
In October 2017, Matthew Roszak discussed how we’re transitioning from an old model where money is used to equal power; changing to “money becoming technology” via the rise of cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets on the blockchain; and ultimately becoming “technology equals power.”
In brief, a token is a scarce, digital asset. Bitcoin was the first.
Roszak states that Bitcoin is one of the greatest inventions of our time. More specifically, it’s one of the greatest technological, financial, political, industrial and humanitarian inventions of our time.
Blockchain is like the rails for Bitcoins (tokens), which represents the cars that run on the rails.
Roszak discusses how things can be tokenized, not just money, resulting in new opportunities for businesses and entrepreneurs.
Blockchain and tokenization is one of the greatest generational opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors.
He notes how technology generally outpaces regulation and that the early phase of technology adoption includes some risk and uncertainty.
Matthew Roszak is co-founder and chairman of Bloq, a leading blockchain enterprise software company. Mr. Roszak is also founding partner of Tally Capital, a private investment firm focused on digital assets and blockchain-enabled technology with a portfolio of over 20 investments, including Block.One, Civic, Factom, Rivetz and Qtum.
Mr. Roszak is a blockchain investor, entrepreneur and advocate. He has spent over 20 years in private equity and venture capital with Advent International, Keystone Capital Partners, Platinum Venture Partners and SilkRoad Equity, and has invested over $1 billion of capital (from start-up to IPO) in a broad range of industries. Mr. Roszak is a director and beneficial owner of Eboost, Enter Financial, MissionMode, Neu Entity, Onramp, SolidSpace and TrueLook.
Mr. Roszak serves as chairman of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world’s largest trade association representing the blockchain industry. In addition, Mr. Roszak serves on the board of BitGive, a no This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.
LedgerX describes itself as “a cryptocurrency asset management platform.”
They are a “CFTC-registered Swap Execution Facility (SEF) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) specializing in the custody and trading of cryptocurrency derivatives.”
LedgerX trades Bitcoin swaps and options for institutional markets, which are derivatives of the actual value of Bitcoin. In the future, they will be offering derivatives of other digital currencies.
This is a way Bitcoin users can execute more advanced ways to both place long bets and short the cryptocurrency.
The above popular video touches upon the basics of Bitcoin as a currency and how it works, including its support by Bitcoin miners.
CNBC calls this a “documentary,” but it’s merely sensationalist entertainment. Although it’s not a sincere look at the world of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, it does touch upon different perspectives, presumably to offer a hint of gravitas to a circus sideshow presentation.
When one contemplates the decline of journalistic standards, this serves as an apt example, replete with a clown, whom they feature as their expert character, versus a few serious characters whom are used primarily for sound bites. The main circus act is the female “finance journalist” who permits herself to be patently objectified. No #MeToo message here.
Charlie Lee is a computer scientist, best known as the creator of Litecoin. He serves as the managing director of the Litecoin Foundation and he also works for Coinbase.
The above video is Lee’s keynote presentation at the 2018 Litecoin Summit on September 14, 2018.
Lee preceded his presentation with a brief talk about the controversy surrounding the sale of his Litecoin holdings in December 2017 at the top of the crypto market.
As part of his primary talk, Lee discussed the energy use in Proof of Work mining as that which makes Litecoin and Bitcoin secure.
Lee compares Litecoin to Bitcoin as an analog to silver to gold, where Litecoin is silver and Bitcoin is gold.
He notes that we live in a fiat currency world and that’s not going to change for a while.
He describes the end game of Litecoin and Bitcoin as sound money that is also being used by merchants.
Lee presents a variety of graphs that show Litecoin has gone up exponentially, but the creation of blocks is unchanged at every 2.5 minutes and notes that the Litecoin blockchain has been working almost flawlessly.
He noted that Litecoin is adopted and supported by almost all exchanges and is already accepted by lots of merchants.
Lee also discussed future development, which includes the importance of sound money, as well as scaling and the desire to increase fungibility and privacy of Litecoin.
He described Litecoin as decentralized money and “people’s money,” referring to it as money that can’t be devalued or taken away.