Technical breakthroughs happen slowly and then suddenly. People were actively working on mobile computing a decade before the iPhone. We underestimate how long it takes for a breakthrough technology to fully develop and get adoption, but we also underestimate the scale of disruption. I believe that decentralized computing will mark…

This year we saw a major spike in funding using crypto tokens with over $3 Billion raised in 2017 alone [1]. I think that token sales can potentially disrupt the traditional venture capital model, but they have a long way to go. We’re in the “honeymoon phase” of token sales…

Social Security Numbers and personal data of 143 million people have recently been breached in a hack of Equifax. That’s almost half of the US population. The consumer outrage and media stories after the hack are not fully grasping the root problem. Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian maintain centralized databases of…

On the internet, we trust the “good guys.” The companies who store our data, who host our domains, who serve our content. Companies like Google, Cloudflare, and GoDaddy have the power to shut down websites or block specific users, but they don’t flex that muscle. Until they do. Cloudflare recently…

Entrepreneurs, tech investors, and policy makers spend considerable time thinking about the future of computing. In this post, I’ll present my prediction for what the next major wave of computing will be. To predict the future, we must first understand the past. Early computers were bulky and filled entire rooms…

I’ve been working in the blockchain industry since late 2013, and a lot of friends have recently started asking about how should they evaluate new protocol tokens. Here is a 5-star system that I use: Code speaks louder than words When I come across a new protocol token, I skim…

Eight years ago, I moved to the US and witnessed the election of Barack Obama — the first African-American President. Emotions were running high that day. I remember the tears rolling down the face of an old black man when Obama was starting his victory speech in Chicago. It felt…

It’s not just the toasters. They have friends. A large group of cameras, DVD players, thermostats, and, yes, toasters are attacking us. They’re breaking the Internet. It’s not science fiction. The toasters don’t particularly hate us. At least, we hope they don’t. They’ve been hacked and organized into an army…

The Ethereum hard fork was quickly declared a success, but consensus has many complicated layers and I don’t think we’re done with the fork yet. The hard fork attempt provided a fascinating look into fork dynamics. Decision to fork: After the DAO hack of $50M, Ethereum developers had a tough decision to make…