After reading about Bitcoin in the article Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We’ve Ever Seen, I was driven to research on how to keep Bitcoin safe without significantly relying on any other single party.

Fortunately, through the years, many have shared what they have learned to secure their crypto assets. I can no longer identify my sources, but I can share a summary of other people’s thoughts on the matter.

By the end of the article, you should have a good idea on how to store your personal cryptocurrencies. …

The question I almost always get from people after they find out we are launching an ICO is: “Are you on ERC20?”

Looking at what others do is a useful tool to lessen the cognitive load we have to do when making decisions, but such decision-making ought to be tempered by diving a little deeper into the reasons behind it.

Our decision to go with Stellar can be described in two broader categories: an alignment in goals, and because of technical reasons.

Goal Alignment

BloomX’s goal is to provide a platform (an app store, if you will) for money services businesses (MSBs). On this platform will exist a suite of applications that serve these MSBs and help them run their business. …

Being a two and a half person engineering team, we did not take the move to Kubernetes lightly. We did not want yet another system to manage, especially with such a small team as ours.

Our hands were tied behind our back, however: some of the software we need to run are difficult or impossible to run on Heroku, the platform we have used since our inception. There’s the consolation of having a cheaper infrastructure bill too.

We understood that the move would make our work a little more complicated. It was not until a few weeks after did we realize what those issues would be — management of cluster config by a team of developers. …

Languages are powerful. Arrival illustrates this idea. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, Dr. Louise Banks learns something about reality that she had not known before.

While this movie is an exaggeration, by no means is this phenomenon not real. There are languages that use absolute geographic directions (north, south, east, west) giving the speakers a sense of where north, south, east, and west are at all times. Russian has a specific word for “light blue” and “dark blue”, allowing them to discern these colors quicker than others that do not.

If something is important, I think it would only help to give that something a name. It’s good then that cryptoeconomics has recently (~3 years) been named. …

A month ago I had written a blog post in which I introduced this idea called The Cryptocurrency Singularity. The article became more popular than I expected and I got the chance to get input from many smart people.

This article introduces the same topic but with a little more detail about how we will reach this singularity. It is written in a way that the readers would not need to refer to the original article. I decided to write another version with my thoughts more clearly organized, with updated data, and to address the different objections readers have raised.

The AI Singularity describes a point in the future when we finally create a machine that is smarter than we are. When there’s a machine that is smarter than we are, it is able to create a machine that is smarter than itself. …

Several people have been asking me for advice on how they should invest in cryptocurrencies. I’m not a financial advisor, so all I can share is what I do.

1. Invest what I can afford to lose. It should not be an amount that if lost, will change the trajectory of my life.
2. Think long term. Especially since I think cryptocurrencies are here to stay, I’m thinking at least 5 years when I put money in. Plus, this has the effect of not getting stressed by day trading, which I imagine I would be horrible at.
3. Invest like a venture capitalist. Pick 10, and distribute my money based on their market cap. For example, if bitcoin is 50% of all of the cryptocurrency market cap, and I decide to invest 100k, 50k will go to bitcoin. …

Below, I address interesting and/or common responses to my previous post The Cryptocurrency Singularity.

I didn’t consistently dive into discussions with these individuals and I may have misinterpreted their responses. Therefore, my representation of their concerns may be inaccurate. As readers, please take this into account.

You’re using Gresham’s Law incorrectly

• HackerNews

Being aware of this as I wrote the article, I mentioned that I was loosening the definition. Since they are different currencies and do not have the same face value, I felt I needed to loosen the definition because the effect seems to apply to different currencies anyway.

In the end, my thesis is not affected by whether it not Gresham’s Law is at work. People will move their wealth to a form that degrades less slowly, as long as it is not difficult to move out of it. If you’re aware of another law that fits this description better, please let me know — it would minimize reader distractions. …

October 15, 2017: With the input from many readers, I decided to rewrite a version of this blog post. It’s written in a way that you do not need to refer to this article. Read it instead.

The ancient coins are excellent in point of standard; they are assuredly the best of all moneys; they alone are well struck and give a pure ring; everywhere they obtain currency, both in Greece and in strange lands; yet we make no use of them and prefer those bad copper pieces quite recently issued and so wretchedly struck. ~ Frogs by Aristophanes

Around 400 BC, Sparta captured silver mines controlled by Athens and released the slaves. This caused a shortage of silver that forced Athens to issue new bronze coins with a thin plating of silver. …