Zero to one innovations, a terminology popularised by Peter Thiel, mark a Big Bang moment of inception that brings a new idea to life for the first time. Future innovations building on that are then simply iterations on top of a pre-existing idea. In reality, they are often less of a spark, and more of a process before their true potential is realised.
Zero to One History
Most historical zero to ones are obvious in hindsight, though that doesn’t mean the ramifications of those ideas were understood at the time, nor what they would lead to.
From primitive tooling to the ability to create…
Options for video enthusiasts have come a long way since we used to head to the local video store to pick up a movie on VHS or DVD.
Against conventional opinion at the time, the convenience of online video streaming has gone on to completely disrupt and eclipse its predecessor. It has progressed to account for over 75% of all internet traffic in 2017 and is projected to exceed 82% by 2022, amongst the estimated 4.8 billion internet users (over 60% of the global population), according to the Cisco VNI Global IP Traffic Forecast.[1]
By humanjets on The Capital
Who Predicted Apps In 1983?
In the summer of 1983, an excited young man gave a speech at a conference in Aspen, in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, predicting the evolution of a new digital distribution system, as opposed to the physical distribution of software at that time. He compared it to a record store for software, but instead of visiting a store to buy a physical copy, the software would be downloaded over phone lines. …
The global financial system is broken, and the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The COVID-19 outbreak is just proving to be the catalyst this time around.
How Did We Get Here?
The classical gold standard era began in 1819 England, spreading to France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the United States and beyond, with each country pegging their national currency to a fixed weight of gold. Contrary to conventional opinion, this was a time of relative great prosperity. Indeed, in the 40 year period in the run up to the First World War, the United States saw industrial production growth at over 4 times that of the first 40 years of floating fiat currency era that started in 1971.
There were several interruptions in this classical gold standard era, mainly due to conflict…
By humanjets on The Capital
The stock-to-flow (SF) ratio has historically applied to commodity markets. It is a measure of the quantity of that commodity currently held (the stock), divided by the amount of it produced each year (the flow), as a means to effectively measure the scarcity of something. The commodity with the highest SF ratio is gold. In contrast to industrial assets that use up existing inventories quickly, gold inventories remain large compared to the relatively small increase in new supply each year.
The aptitudinal work of Plan₿ (@100trillionUSD) provides fascinating insight into why the SF ratio is also relevant to bitcoin. …
What Is The Lightning Network?
The Lightning Network is a decentralised protocol for instant (low-latency), high-volume micropayments down to 0.00000001 BTC (1 sat), without needing trusted intermediaries, dramatically reducing transaction fees and counterparty risk. It achieves this via smart contracts through a network of multi-signature transactions and scripts, so that any participant on the Lightning Network can pay any other participant.
It is a second layer payment protocol that can operate on top of a blockchain base layer (similar to how the internet is built in layers) and one of the first implementations of a multi-party smart contract (programmable money) using Bitcoin’s built-in scripting. [1]
History
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By humanjets on The Capital
The Beginning
Before we assess the current state of the cryptocurrency exchange market, it is useful to first understand how we got here. Further to the release of the Bitcoin white paper in October 2008 and subsequent Genesis Block in January 2009, apart from mining, the only way to acquire bitcoin back then was by trading on forums or IRC, requiring a great deal of trust that the other party would honour the transaction.
As a result, it was only just over a year later when the first cryptocurrency exchange went live in March 2010. The now defunct and little known platform…
The singularity, or the technological singularity, is the idea that there will be an abrupt explosion of technological growth, brought about by the invention of highly advanced artificial intelligence (AI), leading to unfathomable changes to our civilisation. It’s the idea that once we move past a certain critical point, AI will no longer need us for further improvement, surpassing our own intelligence. When or if we cross that line, there is no going back.
Background
The concept was first attributed to the American-Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann in the 1950s. Fellow mathematician and nuclear physicist, Stanislaw Ulam recalled a discussion with…
By humanjets on The Capital
John McAfee is a computer programmer, businessman, presidential candidate, cryptocurrency advocate, and viral phenomenon, who says he is on the run from the IRS. What follows is a transcript of our conversation from 2019.
Hi John, how are you? How’s the Bahamas, and most importantly, are you feeling better? I know you’ve had a few injuries recently.
Yeah, I’ll go through the whole thing. So I am in Georgetown in the Bahamas on the island of Great Exuma, which really if you look at my Twitter account has to be the most beautiful water ever produced in terms of, you…
The origins of the beautiful game I know as football, but that has become known as soccer in many part of the world, began in 1863 England after the two codes of Rugby Football and Association Football branched off and the first English Football Association was born. [1] It took until 1888 for the first national Football League season to commence, comprising of 12 teams from the English North-West and Midlands. [2] Interestingly, all of these teams remain in professional football today, with 3 of them currently competing in the top-tier Premier League.
Long before names like Manchester United, Barcelona…
humanjets
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