There are currently at least 13,000 different cryptocurrency tokens in existence. Can all of these new forms of digital money survive? 17th-century London might provide an unexpected answer.
Why can’t you create your own money? Fuck about and find out. While historical punishments for counterfeiters and coiners included being fed to wild beasts or hung, drawn and quartered, the modern protection of monetary privilege is more subtle but not less determined.
The meteoric rise in the price of Bitcoin has inspired enterprising criminals from Russia to Malaysia, to steal electricity to mine crypto.
Unit bias within crypto conflates the price of tokens with their value. A low nominal price is considered cheap and attractive simply because you are able to buy more units of them. This leads to poor decision making.
If there was ever a product that promised the Holy Grail of a free lunch, then crypto’s new breed of No Loss Lottery certainly sounds like it fits the bill. Can products like PoolTogether live up to their name or is this a very familiar approach served up in a fancy new wrapper?
Hodling is a meme describing the commitment needed to hold Bitcoin, but the unique characteristics of this new internet money present hodlers with a unique dilemma.
What the US crusades against terror and drugs tell us about the war on crypto and how it might end.
Everyone knows of Frankenstein, the story of an experiment to cobble together a super-human from remnant parts of corpses, that goes horribly wrong. Governments are trying something similar right now with money – called CBDCs – and the results could be just as ugly and out of control as Frankenstein’s monster.
Is Dogecoin the ultimate illustration of the crassness of crypto, or is there a more meaningful side to the Shibu meme-coin?
If money works for you, why would you question it? Contactless payment in store; frictionless payment online; loans, credit cards, savings. For most Westerners there is little reason to question how those things happen, the only challenge is how much money you have, not how it works. But that isn’t the experience for everyone.
