In any market, there is, at first, a dominant leader. AT&T controlled telephones and long distance for decades. Ford was the first name in cars when the assembly line appeared. Kleenex was so common it lost its right to be a brand name. The same is true of bitcoin. When […]

Imagine this for a moment. Your bank calls you along with everyone who has an account into the branch because bank officials want to discuss the rules of making deposits and withdrawals from the bank, or the interest rates, or any other institutional change. It is an enormous, heated discussion, […]

Any form of currency has the smallest unit, like the humble penny in U.S. currency. Some currencies have a more complex method of divvying themselves up than others, but, at root, there is that smallest unit, that little enabler of transactions that winds up in “leave a penny, take a […]

FOMO and FUD are two sides of the same coin. FOMO is short for “Fear Of Missing Out,” while FUD means “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” The difference is where you stand. FOMO is from the outside, while FUD is from within. You experience FOMO when an altcoin goes up in […]

Everything in our lives that performs work is measured in units of work over time. Cars travel in miles per hour. Your fitness tracker measures your heart’s beats per minute. The same is true of altcoins and their “hash power.” Hash power, despite sounding like a diner special, is really […]

Imagine, for a moment, that you have a business buying and selling gold bars. Anybody can just walk in off the street and grab a troy ounce if they feel like it. Obviously, you want to keep the product in stock, but you are keenly aware there is a good […]

There have been con-men and crooks in investing since the beginning. One of the most common scams, as you see in movies like the cult classic ‘Boiler Room,’ is the “pump and dump.” Unscrupulous players run around hyping up an investment, selling it and its sudden rise to anybody who […]

When cryptocurrencies first started, they were all about proof of work. Proof of work is not a very complicated concept. It is something that is hard to do but easy to see once you’ve done it, like chipping a sculpture out of marble or cutting down the trees in a […]

An ICO is held when the network behind a new coin has “pre-mined” a certain number of coins and floats those coins much like you’d float stock in a new company in an initial public offering, or IPO. Even before that happens, however, you might see a token presale. A […]

You likely remember high school math and being told to “show our work.” It was not just that you had to get the right answer. You had to show the teacher that you understood the process. Who knew that, years later, you would be asked the same question about mining […]