This past week I gave a new presentation at the 2nd annual Soranomics event (last year I presented on a related topic: pegged coins aka “stablecoins”). It includes a number of illustrations to discuss product market fit and infrastructure market fit.
Below is a copy of the deck as well as the A/V. Note: there are citations and references in the speaker notes. Note: I am to publish a long-form version based on this content.
Send to Kindle[Note: this is a non-exhaustive post on a trending topic. For a more in-depth view, be sure to read OFAC Sanctions & Ethereum PoS – Some Technical Nuances from BitMEX Research and The Case for Social Slashing by Eric Wall]
Last week I was interviewed in a Twitter Spaces hosted by Taariq Lewis at Paloma. The other guest was Ameen Soleimani, co-founder of Reflexer Labs, which created Rai (an unpegged, stabilized asset on Ethereum).
The primary topic of the conversation started with “stablecoins” in relationship to OFAC. OFAC is a governmental organization that we have discussed in some previous posts.
What is OFAC?
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.
Why is OFAC is in the news and why have we written about it before?1
OFAC has previously sanctioned cryptocurrency-related assets and addresses before, most notably, starting with proceeds of ransomware operated by several Iranian nationals.
OFAC maintains and updates a list of SDNs, or Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. Nearly four years ago, they added several Bitcoin addresses, not just human beings.2
Over the past four years, other cryptocurrency addresses have been added to the list. The Block recently put together an easy-to-read guide chronicling these actions.
So what is the big deal this time? After all, we have written about this potential scenario several times in the past including in mid-2015, dubbing one gated flavor “permissioned-on-permissionless” — it is a weird hydra that combines the worst of both worlds (e.g. no legal recourse).
Two weeks ago, OFAC went beyond sanctioning specific addresses and sanctioned a smart contract called Tornado Cash. What is Tornado Cash?
Recall that by default, all activity on public chains (and private chains) is unshielded. While there are several zero-knowledge-based proposals in the works, on-chain privacy only exists through mixing or tumbling coins together. In contrast, centralized applications (and intermediaries) such as Venmo, users can often shield their activity from 3rd parties.
Tornado Cash is a free, open-source protocol that was implemented first on Ethereum. The implementation that was sanctioned, could in theory, be deployed to virtually every EVM-compatible chain, public or private.
Yes, code was sanctioned which is arguably beyond the scope of what OFAC was intended to monitor and police.
Administrators of centrally issued pegged coins went different directions. The operators of USDC quickly blacklisted the ~$750,000 in USDC held by addresses linked to the 45 address OFAC had sanctioned.3 In contrast, Tether LTD announced it would only do so if explicitly requested by U.S. authorities.
But Gerard’s take is bad because the sanctions go beyond hitting SDNs (humans) to instead contracts and code, creating a chilling effect downstream by creating sanctions exposure for innocent people.4
For example, within 24 hours: the public repository for Tornado Cash was removed by Microsoft (owners of Github) and several developers who had contributed to the Tornado Cash, had their github accounts shut down. Infrastructure providers such as Alchemy and Infura blocked access to Tornado Cash. The Tornado Cash Discord server also was shut down.5
While the protocol still exists on Ethereum, activity on it has dwindled and some miners have stopped including TC-related transactions.
At least one other example of the unintended consequence of sanctioning code is the direct impact on researchers at both for-profit and non-profit organizations. For instance, if Matthew, a cryptographer, conjures up some code to help users retain privacy while transacting on-chain, yet does not implement or deploy the code — and someone else does — is Matthew now a target for sanctioning? This actually isn’t a hypothetical because Matthew Green, a tenured cryptographer at Johns Hopkins just did that yesterday.6
Are the people who develop the libraries that Matthew used also a viable target? Anti-coiner responses, such as Gerard’s 1,500 word post, do not delve into these real downstream effects.
What is another reason Gerard’s take is bad?
Because Bitcoin miners, and other cryptocurrency infrastructure operators, have included transactions from sanctioned addresses into blocks for about four years. While it may be a matter of “national security,” it is not consistent. For instance, in spring 2021, Marathon Digital – a U.S. based mining operator – announced that it would provide “OFAC-compliant” bitcoin mining. A month later it reversed this policy amid angst from Bitcoiners. Thus the question that Gerard and others who danced on Tornado Cash’s grave must ask: what about consistency?7
And Tim, what are your bonafides on this matter?
Above is a (mostly) one-way interaction between a coin lobbyist from Coin Center in 2015. What was Peter complaining about then and what does it have to do with OFAC’s recent actions?
The paper in question is “Watermarked tokens and pseudonymity on public blockchains.” Rather than re-litigating it, let’s pull out two small nuggets:
(1) A compendium: Integrating, Mining and Attacking: Analyzing the Colored Coin “Game” by Ernie Teo.8
This was a strawman cited throughout the paper that describes what later evolved into miner extractable value (MEV). MEV is a friendly acronym that describes what a number of lobbyists – and their think tank supporters – used to claim never would happen: proof-of-work miners (and other participants adjacent a miner) using discretion to (re)order transactions in a block. For more on MEV, highly recommend listening to episode 455 from Epicenter.
According to the Flashbots project, about $673 million in profits has been extracted by MEV over the past two-and-a-half years.
Okay, so at least in mid-2022 no one is arguing that MEV is non-existent nor are proof-of-work miners necessarily neutral parties (see Ethermine and Marathon Digital above).9.
So what was the other nugget?
(2) The story about Symbiont using Bitcoin (which they would later reverse):
Scrolling back through the 2015 archives is a blast from the past. “Enterprise blockchain” startups such as Chain, Digital Asset, and Symbiont first attempted to tokenize real-world assets (RWA) and embed them into the Bitcoin blockchain. Yet early on in each of their approaches, they were told by regulators that this probably would not fly due to sanctions. Don’t shoot the messenger!
What does that mean in the 2015-era? Recall that at the time, (incumbent) regulated financial institutions (typically banks) were already hesitant at doing something blockchain-related because of the negative connection with Mt. Gox and Silk Road. Adding sanctions screening to the list was a doozy.
What did sanctions actually have to do with tokenizing RWAs and Bitcoin mining?
At the time, the scenario was pretty straightforward: if tokenized interest rates swaps (IRS) or tokenized syndicated loans were mined by a pool based in a sanctioned country, such as North Korea or Iran, knowingly paying a transaction fee to that pool would likely be falling afoul of some sanction. So rather than having to deal with that headache (among others, such as, what happens to stolen tokenized assets on a public chain), regulated financial institutions punted on that and headed down into the sterilized world of permissioned chains, where every counterparty was known and screened ahead of time.
Obviously that does not mean sanctions violations do not occur — in aggregate the largest money laundering and violation of anti-money laundering laws still occur through banks — but the justification at the time was that block producers for permissioned chains would not be operating out of a sanctioned country. Yet as I mentioned on the Twitter Spaces interview: this approach kills composability. Why? Because all contracts would have to be whitelisted which is one of the reasons why the bulk of “enterprise blockchain” projects pivoted or shut down. But again, a topic for another day.
Concluding remarks
This post could continue on, discussing hypothetical scenarios in which U.S. based intermediaries involved in staking – such as centralized exchanges – are required by OFAC (or other regulatory / enforcement bodies) to censor sanctioned transactions. But there are already a lot of good twitter threads on that. Especially from Gabriel Shapiro.
Instead I think the most concise argument opposed to sanctioning contracts and code is from an attorney, Nelson Rosario:
We could have ended this post by discussing the 2013 guidance from FinCEN regarding administrators and how miners were not included. And how FinCEN / OFAC have had inconsistent enforcement toward North Korean – and other “bad” state actors – when it comes to mining. For instance, hardware manufacturers such as Bitmain sell equipment (first and second hand) to parties that commercially interact with miners in sanctioned countries.10 Or U.S. based miners and pools process Bitcoin transactions that involve proceeds of malware.11
But that would detract from Rosario’s excellent point about code. Code in public repositories. Code implemented by independent 3rd parties. The sanctioned Tornado Cash contract should highlight the need for privacy-by-default, not as a bolt-on afterwards.
And who better to describe this mantra than the coiner of Fedcoin, J.P. Koning:
You do not have to like blockchains or be an industry lobbyist at all to see the core issues at hand — on privacy — are reminiscent to the legal fights over PGP nearly three decades ago. To galvanize hoi polloi, worth listening to the reflections from Phil Zimmermann, who spearheaded the fight (and defense) of code during that time.
End notes
Send to KindleI have found a blockchain-related book that did not have me completely shaking my fist in the air. For background, I have reviewed six other blockchain-focused books, most of which were pretty bad and/or filled with inaccuracies (the exception thus far was Digital Gold).
In contrast, The Cryptopians by Laura Shin was a breezy read and one that – from a technical perspective – I feel comfortable recommending to both geeky and non-geeky audiences trying to understand some of the people that created the Ethereum ecosystem (as well as a few other blockchains).
For instance, I enjoyed the steady dripping of GRE words like pastiche and bucolic which were carefully placed throughout each chapter alongside detailed (physical) descriptions of venues and individuals. I look forward to seeing it turned into a mini-series (Luka Dončić will obviously play Vitalik).
In terms of “inside baseball,” while I have bumped into and interacted with many of the people mentioned, I don’t know enough to comment on several figures discussed so the review below is largely about other portions of the book.
With that said, there were a few areas that I had quibbles with. For instance, I probably would’ve highlighted how much aggregate fraud took place during the 2017-2018 ICO boom (e.g., why Chinese governmental authorities kicked out exchanges, etc.). But that likely would have distracted the main story around how Ethereum evolved as infrastructure.
And before I’m labeled a rose-tinted glasses fanboy, worth pointing out that when I first interacted with Shin years ago, we didn’t agree on a number of things. Rather than dwell on those past differences, I think it is a credit to her reporting that she provided nuances in the story (such as the early days of Hyperledger project and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance) that pundits who are new to this space are unaware of or put no effort in understanding. Calling everything a scam is the laziest form of concern trolling and fortunately readers have a list of citations to peruse instead of relying on innuendo from flash-in-the-pan Twitter personalities.
Note: all transcription errors are my own. See my other book reviews on this topic. Spoiler Alert: there are a bunch of spoilers below!
Preface
Before we begin, worth pointing out that the book covers a roughly four year timespan (January 2014-January 2018) and was published in February 2022. The preface included a helpful backdrop of what was occurring in the financial services area during this time frame. One paragraph stuck out, stating on p.3:
Soon financial institutions as powerful as JPMorgan Chase, Nasdaq, Visa, HSBC, State Street, UBS, Santander, and many others worldwide began exploring the technology. In late 2015, “Blockchain, not bitcoin” became the mantra on Wall Street, and from January 2014 into February 2017, more than fifty financial services firms invested in the space.1
To be pedantic, the very first person I am aware of that said “Blockchain, not bitcoin” is a VC named Adam Draper, who opportunistically pivoted the messaging from his portfolio companies in late 2015:
I attempted to chronicle some of these wordsmith shenanigans in October 2015.
Is it important in the scheme of things?
Maybe not. But I think it is worth re-highlighting this fairweather etymology. For instance, contemporaneously some anti-coiners actively attempt to memoryhole the slur that is “no-coiner” to play identity politics; e.g., People who purposefully do not own snow skis are not labeled as “no-skier” or someone who doesn’t own an airplane, a “no-planer” or someone who doesn’t own a computer a “no-computerer.” One of the reasons some anti-coiners do not call themselves anti-coiners is because they likely do not understand the etymology of “no-coiner” and how it is a grammatic corpse.
But that’s a different story, although germane for 2022.
Chapter 1
Chapter 1 provides readers with a short biography about Vitalik Buterin, including his early childhood (I was unaware of his prowess with Excel!).
I made a pedantic scribble on p. 12:
Shutting down Bitcoin would require tracking down and switching off the devices of every single person running the software — and that would require the coordinated action of every government in the world. But even shutting off all existing computer on the network wouldn’t stop anyone else from spinning up the Bitcoin software.
This is accurate at a high level. Pedantically however, in mid-2022 a well-resourced attacker (such cooperating governments) has a bit simpler task: (1) shut down large mining farms which ultimately slows down block production (e.g., the difficulty overhang would likely require a hard fork); (2) shut down or compromise just three ISPs or BRN/FIBRE — a protocol that propagates blocks directly between mining pools; (3) shut down or severely curtail liquidity providers (e.g., require large CEXs such as Coinbase to delist Bitcoin).
Again, we could argue (and Bitcoiners love to argue!) about the likelihood of either occurring but in my view a better illustration of geopolitical resiliency would be proof-of-stake (P-o-S) networks such as Avalanche, Polkadot, or Cosmos which do not rely on easily-identifiable points of failure (e.g., large mining farms) and are therefore mostly immune to scenario 1 (although clearly dependence on centralized cloud providers for any of these can be a weakness).
With that said, going down this rabbit trail clearly would have been confusing to the average reader so it is understandable why this hypothetical wargamming was not included.
Pages 15-17 provided some interesting background on how Bitcoin Magazine came into being (although maybe a missed opportunity to describe how it ultimately turned into a mother-son Bitcoin maximalist operation!).
On page 16, the author identified some good foresight:
Back home in Toronto after his globe-trotting, Vitalik was coding up a client using the language Python for Ethereum, while Gavin and Jeffrey worked on the C++ and Go clients, respectively. (Vitalik wanted Ethereum to work on different software clients so that a bug in one wouldn’t take the whole blockchain down; the entities on the network could run another one while the buggy one was fixed.)
This is an important paragraph and I am glad that Shin mentioned this so early on.
Why is implementation pluralism a good thing? Because as she described, it provides resiliency in the event something catastrophic or existential occurs (such as a bug that knocked 13% of Ethereum validators offline two years ago). Most blockchains, even a few years after launch, still are dependent on a single codebase maintained by a single team. Apart from resiliency (e.g,. a different implementation surviving a bug that knocks other implementations offline), this could lead to some perverse scenarios such as with Bitcoin wherein de facto gatekeepers ossifying around the BIP process (e.g., a priori anti-bigger blocks).
Today, there are at least four different “Eth 2” client implementations that are undergoing stress tests for the upcoming “merge.” Up through the spring, Prysm has been the most popular implementation and is actively attempting to reduce its marketshare by acknowledging that a network is more resilient with more active implementations.
Chapter 2
On a personal level Chapter 2 is interesting because during the time frame it takes place (January 20, 2014 to June 3, 2014) I was also writing a short book and had a chance to interview a few of the people mentioned. I witnessed odd behavior at least once: I had a Skype call with a couple members of the original Ethereum team. During the call, one person pointed a video camera (with its bright light) right back at me and video tapped it. I don’t recall the names but according to Shin, at least one person in that group was actively recording things which kind of seems off (or maybe I’m not sentimental enough!). I also thought Charles Hoskinson (who I separately interviewed) used phrases and words intimating as if he was a middle aged mathematics guru. And only learned he wasn’t through the book.2
Shin does a good job throughout the book articulating what the inner monologue was, what key people were thinking at the time. On p. 31 she writes about Gavin Wood who was brought on as the first developer and learns that the organization isn’t fully formed. Stating, “Why are they discussing this? If Ethereum hasn’t been founded yet, then damnit, I want to be a founder!”
This is followed-up with supporting details two pages later, “Later, Gavin would feel shafted as a lower-tier founder when he says he eventually found out that Charles had gotten into the Skype group only a day before he had.”
Another interesting detail on p. 36, “From Christmas to mid-February, for their respective Ethereum clients, Gavin and Jeff wrote more than seventy thousand lines of code.3 (Eventually, Vitalik’s Python client would mostly be used for research.)
On p. 40 the author pointed out how Charles had told at least one person in the team (Mihai) that he was Satoshi.
But as Shin notes,
The real Satoshi could easily prove his/her/their identity by moving a coin in the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain. There was no need for all of Charles’s hocus-pocus. Ultimately, most of the Zug group decided Charles was not Satoshi.
Pedantically the first sentence is both true and false. The real Satoshi could prove their identity by moving coins in the first block mined on January 9th, but not by moving coins in the actual Genesis block (from January 3rd). Why not? Because the Genesis block was hardcoded into the chain, the coins cannot be spent. Shin’s statement is a good barometer for filtering out wanna-be Satoshi’s, such as Craig Wright.
I’m also glad that Shin referenced Gavin Wood’s original essay on “Web 3” which was published in April 2014. You don’t have to agree with it, but unlike many of the VCs who promote “Web 3” or the anti-coiners who permahate on it, Wood provides some specific characteristics defining it. Is that too much to ask letter campaigns today?
Chapter 2 also goes into some details about the “holons” which I always thought was kind of bananas. Stating, “The Romanian Mihai, the Bitcoin Magazine founder who had lived in anarchist squats, enjoyed drinking, and was sociable, spontaneous, and creative, wanted Ethereum to comprise a series of live-work holons.”
The book goes into some depth about the drama these live-work locations, eventually they were dropped from official sponsorship and funding.
Page 48 mentions people, such as Vitalik, possible being “on the spectrum of Autism” and I seem to recall finger pointing at various events of who is and isn’t “on the spectrum.” Hopefully these antics will retire, there’s no room for the rudeness in polite society.
Chapter 2 closes with some nice imagery:
Vitalik walked out onto the front deck, the larger of the two on the top floor. It was drizzling outside. Beneath his feet were perfectly straight, cherry-stained wooden slats, and off to the side, a black barbecue grill, four black planters with bushes, and a yellow flower pinwheel.
Shin does a good job placing these details throughout the book, helping the reader imagine the scene.
Chapter 3
This is also an interesting chapter in terms of how certain events moved by quickly. For instance, with the crowdsale, on p. 71:
Stiftung Ethereum was finally established on July 9. By Friday July 18, the Ethereum crew had Pryor Cashman’s draft opinion letter. On Monday, July 21, they received it signed. On Tuesday, July 22, at midnight Central European Summer Time, they launched the crowdsale.
On p. 73 it is kind of funny to see some Bitcoin maximalists enter the chat:
Meanwhile, many Bitcoiners claimed “alt-coins” like Ethereum were unnecessary. For instance, a March blog post titled “The coming Demise of the Altcoins (and What You Can Do to Hasten It)” sad, “When people say, ‘But Ethereum can do smart contracts!’ this is actually false… Ethereum will therefore soon be forgotten like the rest once it inevitably fails to deliver on its promise.”
Coincidentally a few months ago I highlighted that same article and how the author ended up kicked out of the little institute he co-created, later joining the Bitcoin SV circus. Without endorsing Ethereum itself, it is empirically clear that it has not been forgotten and has delivered more than most publicly funded blockchain projects. This still doesn’t sit well with vocal maximalists (and anti-coiners).
On p. 84 the author mentions cold storage devices that stored the Ethereum Foundation’s bitcoin and specifically mentioned Michael Perklin.4 The one related anecdote I have about him: I spoke at Devcon 2 which took place from September 17-19 in 2016 in Shanghai. This is about a month after Bitfinex was hacked for around 119,000 bitcoin.
Just a total coincidence but when I got on the maglev, Perklin and I ended up sitting next to one another. Recognizing him, I started peppering him with questions about Bitfinex, who he was helping provide a security audit (he was mentioned in an official blog post on it). If I recall, my argument was that in traditional financial markets, an exchange operator that had suffered a similarly huge loss would have been closed down by regulators, least of all not been allowed to socialize losses and issue a couple of IOUs. Long story short, we disagreed on some fundamental issues and went our separate ways.
Chapter 3 concludes with the formal launch of Ethereum mainnet and the hiring of Ming Chan.
Chapter 4 & 5
Chapters 4 & 5 had lots of interesting anecdotes and drama I was unaware of. Geeky readers may be asking, “what’s with the big deal gossip?” In my view, I find it impressive that anything was built and delivered with the type of work dynamics described, e.g., it’s hard to imagine operating in an environment with a senior leader having loud outbursts throughout every conversation.
Chapter 4 ends with the termination of Gavin from the foundation and Chapter 5 concludes with The DAO being drained. A number of ICOs were mentioned, such as Lisk and DigixDAO. Where are they today? Lisk still exists, maintaining an SDK for developers. Digix suspended its operations five months ago, and is reviewing its license requirements in Singapore. A companion book could probably have been written to discuss (and scrutinize!) the types of ICOs and tokens that were created between the collapse of The DAO and early 2018, more on this later.
Chapter 6 & 7
Chapter 6 was quite the page turner. Even though I was actively providing analysis at that time, it’s always interesting to read a cohesive blow-by-blow, with comments from the key developers and stake holders (the timeline at the end is great!). The fact that Phil Potter had such a dismissive view about Ethereum (calling it a “shit coin” a couple of times, including p. 182), isn’t a huge surprise considering his previous antics of “cat and mouse” bank accounts.5
For instance, I had no idea the role Andrey Ternovskiy, the creator of Chatroulette, had in increasing the drama-per-second following The DAO hack, leading up to the hard fork (he pretended to be the original DAO hacker and tried to social engineer some outcomes).
An interesting technical point from an excellent Chapter 7 (especially the sleepless nights for the Robin Hood Group), on p. 166:
The hard fork was indeed less complicated, especially compared to a similar process on Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin was “a peer-to-peer electronic cash system,” as Satoshi Nakamoto described it in the Bitcoin white paper, it had a chain of custody that could be followed all the way from the creation of a bitcoin to the one (or fraction of one) that someone owned. It made possible the digital equivalent of being able to trace a dollar bill from the time it gets minted to the time it gets used to tip a cab driver, who then uses it to buy flowers from a florist, who then pays bus fare with it. In order to unwind something like the DAO on Bitcoin, to undo the cabbie’s tip, one would also have to rescind the bus ticket and return the flowers.
Bitcoin uses the UTXO model and Ethereum uses an accounts model, in principal, the forking process could work the same way if planned ahead of time. For example, while the flow of funds (payments) between users and merchants were not reversed when Ethereum split into ETH and Ethereum Classic, but with forks like Bitcoin Cash, if a blob of UTXO had ever been used, it really cannot be precisely excised and grafted onto the new fork without having to fully unwind the butterfly effect (see the 2013 accidental hardfork of Bitcoin for the winners-and-losers).
The brief discussion of Bitcoin maximalism on p. 181 as well as the quote from Aaron van Wirdum (a vocal Bitcoin maximalist at Bitcoin Magazine) reminded me of a tweet I posted just after the hardfork:
What’s the context of this dumpster fire? Recall that beginning in summer 2015, the Bitcoin “community” was undergoing a (negatively) transformative event: the Bitcoin civil war. At the heart was whether or not to hard fork and increase the block size. Several proposals, such as Bitcoin XT had been drafted up and a vocal wing, primarily composed of Blockstream-affiliated developers and organizations were opposed to any hard fork, let alone one that increased the block size (hence the “block size debate“).
This same group of antagonists regularly claimed that hard forks were unsafe and would lead to disaster, disarray, and the collapse of the entire ecosystem. Seriously, that’s how overdramatic some of these “small blocker” developers came across. Look up reddit and listserve discussions at the time, it was crazy talk.
Suffice to say, you don’t have to have an opinion over whether or not a hard fork should or should not have taken place on Ethereum to simultaneously observe that it did not lead to the collapse of the entire ecosystem. Hence, the egg-on-face, dumpster fire gif above. A number of other major L1s have successfully coordinated hard forks, multiple forks in fact, without leading to total pandemonium.
On p. 188-190, the author discusses the origins behind what is now called Ethereum Classic (ETC) as a separately traded coin. One personal anecdote: I distinctly recall the head of trading at a large U.S.-based exchange reaching out to me during this time period (July 2016) asking if I knew of any Ethereum holders who might be interested in selling their ETC. Worth pointing out, this was before it was listed on Poloniex. So the story of the various parties working in the background to get ETC off the ground probably could be expanded if a second edition is ever written (not that it needs a second edition!).
On p. 189, the author found a maximalist:
On the day of the fork, Bitcoin Magazine, Vitalik’s old publication, wrote an article about “the launch of a spin-off project: Ethereum Classic.” While the author, Aaron van Wirdum, noted that Ethereum Classic, “seems to be a bit of a joke, intended to make a point,” he wrote, the project has been gaining some traction, with a small-but-growing user-base on Reddit and Slack […]”
Fast forward nearly six years by several metrics such as TVL and active full-time developers, Ethereum Classic never really grew beyond its core group of devotees: Bitcoin maximalists who LARPed as Ethereans.6
Just as Litecoin and Dogecoin have not faded away (despite a lack of usage or developer interest), traders will probably continue to trade ETC until PoW coins are delisted for ESG reasons.
On this note, on p. 192 the author writes:
They could see that, in the community at large, Bitcoiners in particular felt that Ethereum’s hard fork would illustrate one of Bitcoin’s core features: its immutability.
Two quibbles with this:
(1) some of the largest Bitcoin holders are not maximalists but like Bitcoin for other reasons (e.g., can be used as collateral on other chains);
(2) from a technical perspective, no public chain is “immutable” in the sense that it cannot be forked, if anything immutability describes the one-way hash function. Bitcoin’s development has fully ossified over the past five-ish years, with those interested in building actual dapps having left for greener pastures. Arguably the only thing “immutable” with Bitcoin today is who acts as the gatekeepers to the BIP process: the same self-appointed guards that prevented bigger blocks back in 2015-2016.
Chapters 8 & 9
On p. 198-199 the author mentions some pro-ETC tweets from Barry Silbert (founder of DCG):
Bought my first non-bitcoin digital currency… Ethereum Classic (ETC)
At $0.5.0, risk/return felt right. And I’m philosophically on board
Vitalik was stunned. He had met with Barry at the DCG offices in March, and at that time Barry had offered to help him and be his advisor. Now he was finding out that despite the friendly overture, Barry had never bought ether and now instead had bought ether classic.
Somewhat ironically five years ago, a group of Bitcoin maximalists actually chided Barry Silbert for his tweets (turning it into a full on Medium post). Around the same time, Reuters did a story about whether or not someone in his position would be falling afoul of SEC regulations for the type of tweets he was publishing. Putting personalities aside for the moment, it is worth pointing out that ETC has since had multiple deep reorgs and as shown in the presentation from Electric Capital above, does not really have developer mindshare.
These two chapters also provided some interesting background to both Poloniex (now co-owned by a syndicate led by Justin Sun) and Bitcoin Suisse (who had a change in management last year).
For instance, on pgs. 217-218
The WHG was trying to return people’s money, but instead they’d gotten the majority of it frozen at an exchange. When they asked Polo why it had blocked the trade, Griff and Jordi say the rep asked how Polo was to know the difference between a white hat and a black hat hacker. According to Griff, the rep then said that Polo was going to hold the money because it wasn’t the WHG’s money. Bity and the White Hat Group told Poloniex that it wasn’t theirs either. (Eventually, the WHG would realize that although Kraken was happy to let the Bity account trade, the exchange had blocked its withdrawals.)
Around the same time, someone working in the Bity office, who was then helping the WHG, recalls hearing a rumor from what they believed to be a credible source that the FBI had opened an investigation into the WHG’s activity, which scared the shit out of some group members. For the next two days, they spent a lot of time staring up at a big screen, incessantly refreshing the Poloniex account page to see if the money had been unfrozen. During this stretch of time, they slept very little — going to bed at 8 a.m. the night they realized the funds were frozen — and when people passed out, they did so on the sofas around the office. Weed and bottles of whiskey were strewn about, though the White Hat Group didn’t partake.
Another example of a prominent Bitcoin maximalist attempting to derail Ethereum, on p. 221
A few days after Alexis of Bity published a blog post on the status of the ETC refund, which explained why the WHG had first wanted to convert everything to ETH, a Bitcoin maximalist who went by the online handle WhalePanda published a blog titled “Ethereum: Chain of liars & thieves,” in which he delineated the trades that the White Hat Group tried to do on the various exchanges and concluded, “TLDR; We market dumped the illegally obtained ETC to crash/kill ETC but failed and now we want the locked funds back, sorry.”
His real name is Stefan Jespers and despite the fact that he has publicly invested in Ethereum-related tokens, his social media personality is toxic to this day.
Moving along, although I participated at the tail end of Devcon 2, I was completely unaware of all of the drama that was going on in the background.7
For instance, on p. 238
In the end, Bob didn’t even hear the final answer from Gav himself. Brian Behlendorf of Hyperledger had a call with Parity: Gav’s firm had decided not to go through with it. Bob felt Gav was acting out of spite. Bob also wondered if Gavin wanted to kill a potential competitor to Parity. Gav said Parity’s lawyer, who handled the company’s licensing strategy, had decided against it. Parity had partly gotten its VC funding by pitching an enterprise Ethereum implementation, so if the C++ codebase was permissively licensed, it might compete with Parity’s future product.
This was interesting because in retrospect, this future scenario didn’t really happen. While Parity did participate in several “enterprise” pilots and projects, this codebase was ultimately deprecated and turned into OpenEthereum (and later dropped altogether by Gnosis). Also, Pantheon (from ConsenSys) was donated to the Hyperledger project and re-emerged as “Besu.”
On pgs. 245-246 we learn about a possible motivation behind the denial of service attacks that took place during Devcon2
The DoS attacks were finally over. Though the period was stressful, Vitalik found fighting–and winning– this cyberwar fun in a way. Throughout, the attacker’s motivation was unclear. There wasn’t an obvious financial gain, although he or she could have shorted ETH. (The price did slide from about $13 to below $10 over the two months of the attacks.) In fact, he or she had spent one thousand ETH (roughly $12,000) on the attacks, plus the time to research and execute them. Many mused that perhaps the only people with such an incentive would be Bitcoin maximalists. Regardless, Ethereum became stronger and more capable of handling a high load of transactions–a beneficial maturation given what lay ahead.
When discussing the salaries of Ethereum Foundation employees and candidates, on p. 250:
But even her good qualities had downsides. For instance, even after the foundation found itself in a financially comfortable spot, she lowballed potential employees. When Google employees were applying and stated their salary requirements, she would say things like “Nobody gets paid that much” or that she and Vitalik didn’t–as if developers’ salaries should be benchmarked against her own. (Entry-level Google engineers would typically have incomes higher than Ming’s at the time, plus get valuable stock, and senior-level engineers’ compensation could be $1 million including stock.) At least one former Googler at the foundation was paid half his previous earnings; plus he was made a contractor, so he had no leave or benefits; another applicant from Google simply didn’t join the EF.
I don’t think these are good arguments for a couple of reasons:
(1) The Ethereum Foundation, like most coin foundations, is non-profit. We can argue about what the role of non-profits should or not be in society or what the salaries of their staff should or not be, but there is an implicit assumption that Foundations in general typically cannot offer the same types of compensation that many for-profit organizations can. For instance, the executive director role for both Hyperledger Project and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is around $400,000 a year. Since there is no equity or coin rewards for that role, is that high or low? Maybe it is low relative to the value that these organizations are perceived to create for the ecosystems they operate in.
(2) Having worked in the Bay area for five years (where my wife as a hardware engineer), with the current mini bear market in tech equities, arguably the salaries of Big Tech (software) employees were inflated. Plus in the case of Google, virtually all of their revenue comes from adtech which effectively monetizes personally identifiable information (PII) which is morally dubious at best. I don’t know what the “fair market value” of a senior engineer at Google should or should not be able to command after this mini bear market concludes, but the author should have used an apples-to-apples comparison: the salary of an experienced, senior engineer at other Foundations, and not with for-profit adtech companies in the Bay area.
Chapters 10 & 11
As mentioned at the beginning I don’t think the book was critical enough of ICOs in general, and specifically the way some organizers effectively fleeced retail by not disclosing much, if anything. Or how in many cases, a token was not needed.
One example of trying to force a token where one is probably unneeded on p. 256:
Many projects were, like the DAO, fund-raising by creating a token designated for use on that specific network. He said these tokens weren’t just being used to line initial coin offering (ICO) issuers’ pockets with ETH; they were actually being used in the dapps themselves. The people who offered services to the network could be pad in that token, which could then be exchanged for other money. Setting these projects apart was the fact that each was not a traditional app with a company at the center pushing out updates and making business deals; these were “decentralized software protocols” (emphasis added). Historically, such protocols had not been profitable. For instance, the people working on simple mail transfer protocol (smtp) for email did not make money. Outlook, Hotmail, and Gmail, the applications using smtp, had. However, now tokens made it possible for protocol builders to reward themselves since tokens could be created with the network, and they could keep some, like retaining equity in a start-up, and allocate some for continued work on the protocol.
A few quibbles about this passage:
(1) What the author (and the VC) is describing is: public goods, problem of free-riders, etc. Basically there is some useful internet infrastructure (smtp) that could be built but… : who builds it, who pays for the labor, who owns the IP, and so forth. The “Web 2” world now dominated by an oligopoly often referred to as Big Tech that sometimes builds out socially useful technology in exchange for monetizing personally identifiable information (e.g., rent-seeking). That is a morally bad exchange that has been normalized. We don’t have time to go into the years of abuse and exploitation (e.g., Cambridge Analytica scandal) that has occurred but this was one of the original motivations for proponents of “Web 3” in 2014. In practice, over the past eight years many VCs attempt to reinsert themselves and/or their portfolio companies (intermediaries like CEXs) in place of these tech incumbents. That’s not really mentioned in the book but probably should in a future edition.
(2) A sundry of ICO issuers did in fact attempt to line their pockets at the expense of retail. While some useful dapps and infrastructure have arisen out of the chaos of the 2016-2018 ICO mania, continually pointing to these is textbook survivorship bias. We don’t have time to go into how crowdfunding should or should not look like, but clearly there were a lot of victims who had no recourse and that’s not typically mentioned by coin promoters (such as the coin VCs of that era). The author doesn’t say it, but others have defended this time frame as “the ends justify the means” and I don’t think that is a good argument either. Nor is having to donate to unaccountable public goods (e.g., Wikipedia) the only other viable alternative.
(3) Unlike anti-coiners, I don’t think it is fair to throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to creating new methods of funding public goods. Not everything was a scam or a fraud. Even securities regulators are okay with certain forms of crowdfunding from retail. Simultaneously I’ve been consistent over the years that a “tcpipcoin,” if it had been created almost 50 years ago, would have likely led to distractions for the stakeholders of that era, much like today.
For instance, below is a passage from a paper I wrote in April 2015 (pgs 18-19)
Moving along, on p. 257 the author put together a concise (and interesting!) history of ERC-20:
Suddenly everyone was on the hunt for the next big protocol tokens. And creating new ones on Ethereum was so easy. The previous fall, Fabian Vogelstellar of the Robin Hood Group had solicited comments on an idea that Vitalik had long discussed: standardizing a smart contract for creating new tokens. Fabian made it issue number twenty on a board designated for discussing protocol improvements called Ethereum Request for Comments. After 362 comments, they settled on a standard called ERC-20 tokens, which became a class of tokens that, because they were in a standardized smart contact, could be added easily be exchanges, wallets, and so forth.
In the discussion of crowdfunding, on p. 260 the author mentioned a now mostly dead project, Augur:
Right when they launched, the presale for Augur, a decentralized prediction market in which people could make predictions and bet on the outcome, was happening. When Taylor went to put money in, she was stymied, again, by challenging technical instructions. She asked Kosala to make a one-click button for her. He did, and they added an “Augur Crowdsale” tab to the site. Late in the sale, which ended October 1, 2015, teh Augur newsletter gave a shout-out to MyEtherWallet for the button. Taylor and Kosala exchanged chats peppered with “omg omg”–thrilled to have been noticed by others in the community.
Apart from the handful of people who bought it at < $2 immediately post-launch, the insiders of Augur did okay.8 Why? Today at around $8, Augur (REP) trades at roughly the same level as it did five summers ago. While money may not be the motivating factor for all crowdsale participants, ETH grew and sustained several multiples higher over the same time period (e.g., opportunity cost of capital). Apart from betting on the outcome of U.S. presidential elections, the platform – like Open Bazaar – remains a ghost town. To its credit, unlike other ICO survivors from that era, the Augur team converted 90% its ETH holdings for real money to build and deploy a working prediction market that is updated from time to time.
On p. 269 we learn how Poloniex operated a lot like Binance did pre-2021:
By the time of that victory, the exchange was facing a new problem. Due to US sanctions, it needed to block Iranians from using Poloniex. However, it could not, because the exchange did not have a robust know-your-customer (KYC) program to verify customers’ identities. (The one instituted in 2015 was, according to an early employee, “super basic” and “really, really easy to work around.”) It was a three-tiered KYC system that granted users greater trading access in exchange for higher levels of verification, and part of the reason for it was that Jules and Mike wanted to minimize friction for users to sign up and deposit funds. These discussions dragged on from the end of 2016 into the first half of 2017, when Jules and Mike finally relented.
Even cynical readers familiar with the cyber coin world were probably shaking their heads at this passage: how can operators of a U.S.-based CEX enrich themselves for years intentionally slow-walking compliance with the BSA?
It reminded me of when news leaked around Circle’s acquisition of Poloniex several years ago:
Speaking of the SEC, to-date they have prosecuted and/or settled with around 60 token issuers since the start of 2017 (collectively Canadian provinces and individual U.S. states have pursued about as many). The book spends a bit of time on The DAO report, published in July 2017, but doesn’t really highlight retail-focused solicitations, such as Kik (e.g., Kik was mentioned on p. 271 but nothing about their very public fight with the SEC). A second edition could include some retrospection around these retail-focused raises; e.g., why did different governmental bureaus in China ban ICOs around the same time frame?9
On pgs. 282-283 Poloniex is described as a panopticon:
In 2017, Poloniex’s volume grew fifty to seventy-five times what it had been in December 2016. With more customers, more volume, and now more processes, the company became buried. About twenty people were managing almost five million accounts, and the owners had not invested in the company at all. Instead of hiring a third-party know-your-customer vendor, as many companies would, to make sure each submitted ID matched the selfie taken and that the address given wasn’t for, say, a strip mall in Nevada, Polo employees had to process IDs one by one. Support was still bare-bones: according to a manager at the time, five people handled more than one hundred thousand support tickets. In the first half of the year, Johnny managed to “poach” a few troll box moderators to be new support agents, brining the total to eight. According to Johnny, Jules made workers put their phones in cubbies upon entering the office, forbade them from listening to music, and though this might also be for security reasons, blocked their computers from the internet so they could only do one thing on those machines: work. They had to wear headphones so that they wouldn’t accidentally overhear any conversations, they were recorded via cameras inside the office, and they were instructed to communicate with each other only on chat. (Later Jules would acknowledge to employees that they were surveilling all staff chats, including direct messages.)
On p. 288 the author mentioned some of the exuberance during the “Consensus” event in 2017:
The next day, EOS, which billed itself as a faster (but more centralized) competitor to Ethereum, kicked off its nearly year long ICO. The month before, it had advertised its sale on a massive billboard in Times Square, during the consensus conference, which had twenty-seven hundred attendees. The advertisement was ironic given that the EOS ICO blocked US IP address. That week, the ETH price again traded with highs in the $330s and lows in the $200s.
I attended this event and recall visiting the “official” afterparty wherein one of Block.One (the commercial backer of EOS) pointed out that the EOS billboard was just aesthetics and wasn’t encouraging anyone to participate in the ICO. One update for a future edition of the book: in September 2019 Block.One, settled with the SEC for a small sum of $24 million. Not-so fun fact: one of the defense attorney’s who worked on that case also (successfully) defended several other 2017-era ICOs that had purposefully focused on retail investors. This is part of the history that anti-coiners, who are new to town, should probably focus their wrath on instead of trafficking conspiracy theories.
On p. 294 we hear a prominent ICO promoter mentioned in passing:
Meanwhile, on the rocky, lizard- and fern-filled island of Ibiza the Parity team and friends were at a lovely terra-cotta-tiled, exotic-plant-adorned home rented by Brock Pierce, the former Mighty Ducks actor turned crypto VC, wrapping up a weeklong retreat that, for at least some attendees, was at times an alcohol-and drug-fueled blur. The previous Sunday, in the VIP room of the club Amnesia, the group had made merry.
There are a number of similar party-the-night-away excerpts throughout the book. One wonders how anything was shipped during this time frame! Speaking of Pierce, in early February 2018, The New York Times published a critical story of Pierce (and his crew) arriving in Puerto Rico to take advantage of the lenient tax treatment of capital gains (and income) without contributing much in return. Later that same month, clearly without any motivation to clear his name, he publicly pledged to donate $1 billion. To-date, there has been no follow-up, despite folks asking what he has done beyond drumming up easy PR. This is a pattern with some of the prominent coin promoters (post ICO mania) who promise big donations, yet little materializes beyond the press release.
Another example of why a future chapter dedicated to ICO then-and-now reflection is found on p. 298,
For instance, on May 26, the day after Token Summit, there was an ICO for something called Veritaseum that hadn’t open-sourced its code, hadn’t published a white paper, and, based on its jumbled marketing, appeared to be a centralized company that could have easily accepted US dollars for payment — not a decentralized network. It did not even take the basic step of having a secure website, despite the hacks rampaging throughout crypto. It raised $11 million. Early on, VERI tokens ranked tenth among crypto assets by market cap. On July 22, the market cap based on circulating supply was $458 million. But accounting for the fact that Veritaseum had only released 2 percent of its tokens, its market cap by the total float was $22.9 billion. By that measure, the one-month-old company was almost twice as valuable as Nasdaq. Its market cap was more than that of Ethereum’s, which on that day closed $21.5 billion. And who controlled 98% of VERI? The founder.
Two things that stuck out:
(1) In November 2019, Reggie Middleton (the founder of Veritaseum) settled with the SEC for about $9.5 million (most of which was disgorgement), this could be added in a future edition.
(2) Intermediaries such as Nasdaq have an oligopoly on the services (and infrastructure) they provide. If anything, the entire “blockchain” set of experiments (including those initiatives Nasdaq has rolled out into production) should highlight the large amount of market share that systemically important financial institutions and utilities are able to capture and hold and gorge upon. Dismissing all alternatives out-of-hand, as most anti-coin commentators frequently do, raises the question: who are anti-coiners actually trying to help? Financial incumbents who get bailed out by governments? Retail who get fleeced with PFOF? If their goal is to somehow “help” the average Joe, then clearly defending the status quo isn’t very helpful either since it largely rewards incumbents who despite having a regulatory moat, in times of need also get bailed out because they are “too big to fail.”
For all of the discussions around The DAO, Slock.it, and securities regulations, there was one interesting info nugget on p. 301:
While the document was incriminating and put the crypto industry on notice, it wasn’t entirely accurate (The SEC, which declined to comment on this matter, had not interviewed Slock.it and reached out only to at least one American curator. An October 2020 FOIA request turned up no documents on any discussion around who deployed the DAO) Slock.it hadn’t set up the DAO-hub forums (though it had set up the Slack), it hadn’t deployed the DAO smart contract (unknown DAO community members had created eight of them and Taylor’s then fiancé Kevin had tossed the coin that had chosen which DAO to use), and the Robin Hood and White Hat groups, which included some Slock.it employees on their own time, helped resolve the attack. Regardless, the SEC had meant the document to be foundational, to show how the SEC was looking at the space. Lawyer surmised the agency had chosen a “21a report”–giving others notice that going forward the commission would likely follow up with enforcement actions for similar behaviors–because the DAO no longer existed and people had not lost money.
What other regulators may have reached out to Slock.it and curators? Was there a line-in-the-sand somewhere?
On p. 307 we learned about one Ethereum co-founder’s involvement in several ICOs:
At this time, during the ICO craze, Anthony had made a name for himself–not necessarily in a good way. He was slapping his name on ICOs as an advisor in exchange for tokens: Civic, Blockmason, Etherparty, Enjin Coin, Worldwide Asset eXchange, Skrumble Network, Cindicator, Polymath, AION, PayPie, Storm, Unikrn, WAX, Po.et, and Veriblock. Although Civic, Polymath, WAX, and Unikrn were somewhat well-known, the others were no-name projects. He’d also invested in two Chinese projects, Vechain and Qtum.
Not sure why the Chinese angle was worth highlighting; also not an endorsement but both Vechain and Qtum are around and still putting out “announceables.” It is worth mentioning that there are a number of high profile coin VCs who have removed or whitewashed their shilly ICO past, to somehow become… thought-leaders. In the U.S. it is more than two hands can count. Despite the collective “coinesia,” retail-focused promoters-turned-investors probably deserved to be named in a future edition.
On p. 319, more interesting information about Poloniex was described:
That fall, Poloniex’s dominance began to slip. If in June it had sometimes seen trading volume of $5 billion per week, early that fall the peaks were more like $4 billion. Still, even with the dip, the exchange was making a killing. One reason for the drop was that competitors were investing in upgrades, but Polo was doing the bare minimum. Seeing competitor Kraken boast about a slew of new features, Polo employees asked, “Why are we not doing this? Why are we just letting them take our business?” One example: Kraken launched an efficient, self-service feature for two-factor authentication allowing users themselves to disable it. Even though customer service said launching a similar feature would cut a third of all open support tickets, Jules and Mike wouldn’t let Tristan work on it. (As far as most people could tell, Tristan controlled nearly every aspect of Poloniex’s code–a grasp of its intricacies wasn’t spread out among a team of people, as would be expected of an exchange transacting in billions of dollars’ worth of crypto every week.) By this point, according to someone familiar with the matter, the exchange had almost half a million open support tickets. Johnny managed to poach more trollbox moderators to act as customer service agents, reaching twelve total by year’s end. He would feel really good the few times in the fall of 2017 that they got the number of open support tickets down to one hundred thousand. Jules and Mike did let them hire a few freelancers, who Johnny, the head of customer support, trained to help out with the backlog of KYC verification. They were good, so he suggested hiring them all immediately. He recall Jules and Mike said, essentially, No, we’re not going to hire anyone. Work with what you’ve got.
It’s interesting to hear this side of the story because throughout this time period, on social media and in chat groups, people would complain about Poloniex’s customer service. Now we know why.
Dentacoin was name dropped on p. 325. It is routinely lampooned for as you can guess, what it is named after.
Chapter 12 & 13
On pgs. 335-336 readers are presented with a thought experiment:
But most of all, things had been different during the DAO drama. Back then, Ethereum had done so many forks before, the community thought forking was without consequences. At that time, not forking was the threat. However, after the DAO, they knew that a hard fork could create yet another Ethereum. And that became the threat. Another factor was that, unlike with the DAO, there was no time pressure. The funds were frozen, and absent any decisions, they would be frozen forever. With the DAO the time for a rescue was limited, and that had prompted people to act. Additionally, with so many new tokens having been built on Ethereum, a contentious hard fork created the risk of producing all kinds of duplicate assets on another chain–Gnosis Very Classic, BAT Very Classic, Status Very Classic, and so forth.
I chuckled at the “Very Classic” names. But truth be told, both Ethereum and Ethereum Classic have had hard forks since the time frame this passage took place (late 2017). So technically speaking, those alt tokens could exist, although to my knowledge no major exchange supported the now-deprecated forks and alts.
On p. 343 we see mentions of Julian Assange and efforts like Pineapple Fund. Assange is frequently lionized by some Bitcoin promoters but he willingly only dumped secrets that damaged one specific U.S. political party and went out of his way not to publish anything that damaged Putin’s government. Ecuador’s government (which allowed Assange to live in its embassy for several years) found direct ties between Assange and the Russian government. In 2017, then-Trump advisor Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange in London and offered a pardon in exchange for Assange publicly stating “the Russians were not involved in the email leak that damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016 against Trump.”
Obviously this would have been a distraction in the book but in my mind it is hard to mention this very controversial character without providing context on why he was likely a willing Russian asset.
Epilogue
The epilogue tries to tie many of the threads into complete knots. Some worked, like the Poloniex conclusion on p. 358:
Circle’s acquistion of Poloniex closed on February 22, 2018. Fortune reported the deal was for $400 million, but according to a source familiar with the matter, the actual amount eventually paid out was between $200 million and $300 million. The sale was almost perfectly time to when not only the flood of trading volume began to wane at Polo but also the crypto bubble itself began to burst and volumes globally were lower than at their peak in mid-December. Polo had been shopping itself since the spring of 2017, such as to Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group and Blockchain.com. Circle had been hoping to close the deal in November, but Jules, Mike, and Tristan, citing the crushing amount of work (which the staff and another person who worked with them attributed to their “greedy” refusal to hire additional employees), managed to drag it out while the exchange was still bringing in obscene amounts of revenue–and yet to close before the employees’ shares vested. Some early staff calculated they’d been strong-armed out of $5 million to $10 million apiece.
Wow, that sucks. I have some close friends that had a similar story about a different NYC-based technology company during the same time frame.
Other knots didn’t quite close, like the lawsuits between ConsenSys management and its former employees discussed on p. 364-365. One recently settled and at least one of the lawsuits is ongoing and continues to garner headlines and involves a fight over IP rights for infrastructure such as Metamask.
Concluding remarks
From a technical standpoint the book was pretty good, just a few small quibbles. As mentioned at the beginning, while I heard rumors, I don’t know enough about a bunch of the inner circle to comment on a number of the personalities that were the focus of the book.10
There are several other books describing the ins and outs of how Ethereum was created that I hope to read through this summer, and time willing write-up a review. In the meantime, if you are looking for a page turner that doesn’t require a PhD in cryptography to understand, I think The Cryptopians is worth adding to your reading list.
Also, if you’re interested in hearing a credible candidate for who The DAO hacker may have been, Shin published a related thread with links a few months ago.
Endnotes
Send to KindleThis is not the first time Bitfinex has been “debanked” before. Phil Potter, the CFO of Bitfinex, recently gave an interview and explained that whenever they have lost accounts in the past, they would do a number of things to get re-banked. In his words: “We’ve had banking hiccups in the past, we’ve just always been able to route around it or deal with it, open up new accounts, or what have you… shift to a new corporate entity, lots of cat and mouse tricks that everyone in Bitcoin industry has to avail themselves of.” [↩]
[Note: The views expressed below are solely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer or any organization I advise.]
As we have discussed before, “Web3” is a nebulous term that has been used to market a slew of products and services, often via “chainwashing.”
What is “Web3?”
This past week 25 guys and one gal signed and published a 741-word letter to senior U.S. legislators calling for “Support of Responsible Fintech Policy.” And while many “Web3” promoters do deserve a good chastising, this letter has many technical shortcomings and is a disappointment to those who have been in the trenches for years… before being a “critic” was considered en vogue. Worst, it doesn’t define what “Web3” or even a “blockchain” is or is not.
But let’s start with a comment that I thought was pretty good, the intro:
“Today, we write to you urging you to take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets (sometimes called cryptocurrencies, crypto tokens, or web3) are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good. We urge you to resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters to create a regulatory safe haven for these risky, flawed, and unproven digital financial instruments and to instead take an approach that protects the public interest and ensures technology is deployed in genuine service to the needs of ordinary citizens.”
I – along with a number of other independent researchers such as Angela Walch (who they referenced) – have publicly made similar requests in the past. For instance, the original conclusion in my 2018 WSJ op-ed expanded upon the lack of transparency and surveillance sharing for why the SEC has not approved a bitcoin-denominated ETF by stating, “…the retail public wants seductive narratives and fantastical returns. The supply of fraud will therefore grow to meet that demand.”
To reuse a cliché analogy, throughout most of 2021 you could probably throw a baseball at a collection of dapps and hit one that at the very least, played fast and loose with marketing high APR yields.
This was followed with a quizzical take:
“Not all innovation is unqualifiedly good; not everything that we can build should be built. The history of technology is full of dead ends, false starts, and wrong turns. Append-only digital ledgers are not a new innovation. They have been known and used since 1980 for rather limited functions.”
The first sentence probably has a lot of supporters, including myself, as it relates to non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The somber and horrific legacies of the atomic and hydrogen bombs are certainly an example of something that should not have been built.
But the shade thrown at “append-only digital ledgers” is pretty farcical. Why do these authors get to determine what is or is not useful in the spring of 2022?
For instance, if we look at the core moving pieces of the Bitcoin blockchain, all of the main elements (“prerequisites“) had been around for years. And it was by assembling them together that we have arguably the first blockchain.1 The authors are taking a page from the lazy Maximalist playbook, one that does not withstand empirical scrutiny.
In looking at the “tech stack” of Big Tech, Google maintains a project called “Certificate Transparency” (implemented as “Trillian“).2 Certificate Transparency is not a blockchain, but it is a Merkle tree of things which are interconnected and signed and in production today.
From the Trillian team:
The ideas underpinning Certificate Transparency, Revocation Transparency and related efforts are not specific to certificates, but can in fact be used to make almost anything transparent. These technologies are strongly related to the much-hyped blockchain. The reality, of course, is that there isn’t a “the” blockchain, and that decentralisation is not always the answer. We are not making “the” blockchain, and we do not claim to support decentralisation.
As mentioned in a previous post, the problem with the a priori position that anti-coiners (and many maximalists) have is that over time they continually get backed up into a corner. Why? Because over the past decade we continue to see – empirically – how blockchains and blockchain-like elements are incorporated by a spectrum of organizations from Big Tech and Big Finance all the way down to small startups.
As Matthew Green (a cryptographer) explains in a thread on this topic, the granular fine points around “blockchain technology” is mostly bad:
Unfortunately the authors – while seemingly well intentioned – do not clearly state what parts of a blockchain they dislike, what parts of “distributed ledger technology” that they explicitly think is bad.
Furthermore, the idea of a neutrally owned, shared ledger is not a new concept. Several initiatives in the financial industry — such as a Joint Back Office (JBO) — pre-date the euphoria around blockchains but languished in concept mode.3 What is the lure for maintaining a shared ledger between (competing) organizations? Resiliency and reduction of reconciliation often come up as two of the main reasons but the list is long and deserves its own post. Suffice to say, claiming that “append-only digital ledgers” are a plaything of the ’80s is not even wrong.
Another broad sweeping set of statements that lack precision:
As software engineers and technologists with deep expertise in our fields, we dispute the claims made in recent years about the novelty and potential of blockchain technology. Blockchain technology cannot, and will not, have transaction reversal mechanisms because they are antithetical to its base design.
As Green and Byrne (among other responders) have pointed out, there is a missing nuance by the authors in that there are different types of blockchains. For instance, depending on the implementation some permissioned blockchains allow – in theory – certain participants to freeze transactions.4
Likewise on public chains, administrators of USDC, USDT, and other collateral-backed pegged coins, regularly blacklist and freeze transactions. In fact, any chain with smart contract functionality can provide some form of reversibility (or at the very least, freezing of state). We also see this empirically during and after exploits, with developer teams freezing tokens.
This is a strange miss because one of the signatories is Stephen Diehl, who as far back as July 2017 (when I spoke to him in an official meeting) was/is the CTO and director at Adjoint, which is a British private blockchain firm that has previously announced payment-related partnerships.
This statement starts out good:
Similarly, most public blockchain-based financial products are a disaster for financial privacy; the exceptions are a handful of emerging privacy-focused blockchain finance alternatives, and these are a gift to money-launderers. Financial technologies that serve the public must always have mechanisms for fraud mitigation and allow a human-in-the-loop to reverse transactions; blockchain permits neither.
Green (and suzuha) points out that the authors are trying to have their cake and eat it too:
For example, as far back as 2015, banks involved in R3 presented use-cases that required – by law – protection of PII. At the time, any company or organization wanting to engage with regulated financial institutions quickly learned how PII was an unmovable touchstone (see this related presentation). And so from those functional requirements arose different solutions ranging from hardware-based solutions (like SGX) to software-based solutions (like ZK-Snarks). The public chain world was often where these ideas either first originated or at the very least, first tested.5
Over the years I have regularly pointed out how privacy and confidentiality-features could be used for a sundry of illicit activities. But just because it could be used by those types of actors, does not mean it regularly is.
On that point, in 2016 I helped edit a paper on this very topic. It was co-authored by Danny Yang (founder of Blockseer), Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, and Jack Gavigan. Wilcox-O’Hearn and Gavigan are executives at the Electric Coin Company, a for-profit company leading the development of Zcash. Worth pointing out that one of the signatories on the letter above amplified false information about myself two months ago, claiming I was not an advisor at Blockseer. Not only is this false, but I still own the equity in DMG Blockchain (which acquired Blockseer four years ago). This calls into question the credibility of the individuals amplifying information they did not fact check. What other false information are they claiming about blockchains?
Scare quotes is not the only thing that harms this section:
By its very design, blockchain technology, specifically so-called “public blockchains”, are poorly suited for just about every purpose currently touted as a present or potential source of public benefit. From its inception, this technology has been a solution in search of a problem and has now latched onto concepts such as financial inclusion and data transparency to justify its existence, despite far better solutions already in use.
The paragraph preceding this one also mentions “public blockchains” but doesn’t use quotes around it. And neither defines or provides nuance to explain the differences between “permissioned” (or private) blockchains compared with “public” (or anarchic) blockchains.
Either way, the authors make a good argument about how pulling on the heart strings of financial inclusion is mostly bupkis and I agree, and others have pointed that this rings hollow too.6 To strengthen this, the authors should have provided a citation or at least an example of “far better solutions already in use.” For example, Raúl Carrillo (who is not one of the listed authors) has pointed to Postal Banking as a possible avenue for (re)banking not just marginalized persons. Blockchains aren’t need for that or arguably for other retail activity.7
The next part of the paragraph is painfully arbitrary:
After more than thirteen years of development, it has severe limitations and design flaws that preclude almost all applications that deal with public customer data and regulated financial transactions and are not an improvement on existing non-blockchain solutions.
First of all, the first web browser (appropriately called the “WorldWideWeb“) was launched in 1990. It wasn’t until 2004 that Google revealed Ajax-based Gmail followed by Google Maps. If the authors are trying to make the claim that anything (everything?) useful should have been invented in 13 years then they should hold other tech initiatives to the same standard.
The lack of nuance in this letter is striking because not every blockchain is based on the purposefully limited architecture of Bitcoin. Between 2009-2015, a typical on-chain user could only access Bitcoin or a Bitcoin-based fork or clone (like Litecoin). Ethereum and other chains with a virtual machine, did not launch until the summer of 2015.8 That is part of the reason why regulated financial institutions (Big Banks) and large technology companies (Big Tech) began deploying resources in this sector in 2015: first with consortia and later setting up their own internal teams of subject matter experts. What a user could do with a blockchain changed over time thus a priori declaring “almost all applications” dead is incredulous.
And again, the authors provide no examples of what “existing non-blockchain solutions” they are referring to. For example, every single major vendor that provides core banking software for banks — such as FIS, Fiserve, and Jack Henry — have integrated tools that enable the software to interact with or hook into a blockchain. Every major Big Cloud vendor provides both tools for blockchain node operators as well as dedicated “Web3” development teams to compete with Alchemy and Infura. Several CSDs and CCPs have invested in a blockchain-focused company (like Digital Asset or Axoni) and have announced blockchain-based pilots. Pretending that this digitization and tokenization trend is not occurring beyond niche NFT art collections is intellectually dishonest.
I agree with most of this statement but it needs nuance:
Finally, blockchain technologies facilitate few, if any, real-economy uses. On the other hand, the underlying crypto-assets have been the vehicle for unsound and highly volatile speculative investment schemes that are being actively promoted to retail investors who may be unable to understand their nature and risk. Other significant externalities include threats to national security through money laundering and ransomware attacks, financial stability risks from high price volatility, speculation and susceptibility to run risk, massive climate emissions from the proof-of-work technology utilized by some of the most widely traded crypto-assets, and investor risk from large scale scams and other criminal financial activity.
The nuance these authors need to include is defining what “blockchain technology” is and is not. Trillian is not a blockchain but shares several common elements. Thus throwing the baby with the bath water flies in the face of the empirical reality.9 As far as criticisms around the negative externalities created by proof-of-work-based blockchains: I 100% agree. I have written on this topic roughly every 18 months. What would strengthen their statement is to provide actual statistics and data regarding each of their points (the data exists from companies like Chainalysis or previously, Blockseer).
Their polemical statement meanders on a bit more but this statement is worth assessing:
The catastrophes and externalities related to blockchain technologies and crypto-asset investments are neither isolated nor are they growing pains of a nascent technology. They are the inevitable outcomes of a technology that is not built for purpose and will remain forever unsuitable as a foundation for large-scale economic activity.
The second sentence falls under Hitchens razor: that which is presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. In fact, we do know why Bitcoin was built, Satoshi explained it at length on mailing lists and in the white paper. And Bitcoin was just the first “blockchain,” other chains have arisen later that fulfill other requirements. Onyx from JP Morgan is now being used for trading intraday repos. Maybe Onyx is just a flash in the pan, but it serves as a narrative violation — and there are more than a dozen other examples that the authors are likely unaware of, just read Ledger Insights each week.10
Lastly, in the Financial Times, one of the authors was quoted saying:
“The computational power is equivalent to what you could do in a centralised way with a $100 computer,” said de Icaza. “We’re essentially wasting millions of dollars’ worth of equipment because we’ve decided that we don’t trust the banking system.”
This is true with respect to proof-of-work-based blockchains but not at all relevant to alternate Sybil resistant models like proof-of-stake (P-o-S). Conflating the two is not accurate. Also, de Icaza and others needlessly defend the status quo, both with comments like this as well as the letter itself. Fortunately for retail, “the banking system” is not completely static and changes over time (it is also not a single monolithic entity). Also, not a single author listed works for a financial institution yet opines on it; there are plenty of blockchain “skeptics” within the financial industry why not find one?
Which brings us to the next section.
(Un)intentionally defending the status quo
The only reason to publicly identify themselves is to give weight or credibility to the matters discussed in the letter. Even though this letter was directed at U.S. congressmen and women, more than half of the signees are neither US residents or citizens. Even though more than a handful work at public tech companies or large organizations that rely on donations, let us give them the benefit of the doubt that they were not explicitly defending the status quo.
Yet without offering specifics beyond vague “non-blockchain solutions,” the authors are implicitly defending both systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) and systemically important cloud providers. Both are bad for society and we should not defend their existence.
It is worth pointing out apart from two or three, most of these authors were not actively critical during the very public 2017-2018 ICO boom.11 What has motivated them to self-deputize and attempt to police what can and cannot be done with a blockchain in 2022 and ignore those who have been pathfinders in prior years? Perhaps there is a good reason, busy solving other worldly problems. I am certainly a fan of more introspection by disinterested parties!
I have written about it before but if the aim is to (1) influence policy makers and work with (2) regulators, there are at least two ways to achieve their goals:
The blockchain world needs critics and criticism but it also needs criticism that is technically valid. And this letter is not only imprecise but sounds like something incumbent technology firms would write to defend their turf (which probably isn’t how it originated).
Bonafides
Over the past 18 months, the most recent coin bull market brought in a slew of new commentators a few of whom have attempted to co-opt the term “critic.” Clearly no one owns this term, there is no monopoly on it. Heck, I’ve even been labeled a “crypto” or “bitcoin” critic on more than one occasion. Yet we are seeing a cottage industry of professional “skeptics” who have a priori made up their mind irrespective of the evidence presented.
In addition to writing the most widely cited paper on “permissioned” blockchains, I wrote the first long form discussion on potential systemic important cryptocurrency networks in 2018 and think it is a bit absurd that some anti-coin commentary claims that cyber coins currently threaten the entire financial system. Feel free to disagree, but the onus is on the party making the positive claim. The counterfactual occurred the past five months: more than half of the aggregate coin marketcap evaporated. As collateral-backed pegged coins unwound, they did not lead to massive treasury liquidations crushing the traditional financial market.12
This is not defending the way centralized, commercial-bank backed pegged coins arose or currently operate.13 Rather it is a statement of fact: today the cyber coin world is not “too big to fail” and hopefully it never will be. Contagion can be real and should be simulated and stress tested!14 There are plenty of good criticisms to be lobbed at the “Web3” world, none of which requires making up fanciful conspiracies or playing fast and loose with technical verbiage.
If we are going to (rightly) criticize startups, investors, and other interested parties for mis-marketing “Web3” we should provide specific reasons as well as definitions. And while we are at it, let us bring a fine comb and scrutinize other hyped tech verticals that dramatically impact the well being of individuals such as: A.I. and workplace discrimination, privacy rights over data (including identity).15
Crusades can be big tent and incorporate more than just a small echo chamber of folks who (rightly) point out that a lot of cryptocurrency buzz is likely a financial grift with little real utility. Yet it is not a coincidence that perhaps the best critics are actual practioners, engineers, and architects who saw the limitations or drawbacks in certain blockchain designs and decided to build a different way. If there is a second version of this letter, it is highly recommended that input from outsiders be solicited. Including the world’s richest man, Colin Platt!
Or maybe we’ll just have to settle for a Kimberley process for Web3 claims, for both promoters and pundits alike.
End notes
Send to KindleWe (the ‘royal we’) have previously discussed various flavors of pegged coins, “stablecoins,” as well as CBDC proposals. This short, non-comprehensive post will look into the rise and rapid fall of the Luna and UST, two cryptocurrencies native to the Terra blockchain.1
What are the separate categories that the “stablecoin” idea can be bucketed into?
Above is a helpful taxonomy created by Klages-Mundt et al. and adapted by Robert Sams.2 One of the commonalities among all of these efforts above is that they are intended to administer an elastic money supply (as opposed to fixed, deterministic, or inelastic supplies used in many cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin).
Most analysis on this topic lacks the important nuances separating custodial and non-custodial “stablecoins” as well as those that depend on exogenous collateral versus endogenous collateral.
We are not going to dive into each one of the projects above. Furthermore, the usage of a name or logo is not an endorsement of a particular company or project.
So what happened to Luna and the UST this past week?
To answer that we need to quickly explain what the Terra blockchain is and how and why there are more than one layer 1 token such as Luna, UST, KRT (Korean Won) and SDT (an SDR token). 3
Brief history
Launched just over two years ago – in April 2019 – the Terra blockchain incorporated elements of the “Seigniorage Shares” idea with a couple of twists. Whereas several other projects attempted to collateralize (back stop) a single stabilized asset through a mint/burn mechanism, Terra enabled arbitrageurs to burn Luna (the volatile, staking token) and mint one of several different pegged coins, the most prominent of which is UST. UST was marketed as being stable relative to the USD. That is to say, through an automated on-chain program, a trader could burn $1 worth of Luna (at Luna’s prevailing market price) and receive 1 unit of UST (irrespective of the prevailing market price of UST), and vice versa: a trader could exchange 1 unit of UST and receive $1 worth of Luna.4 In theory.
You might be asking yourself, what guarantees that traders will be able to redeem $1 of either at any point in time? Terraform Labs (TFL) is the main developer behind the the Terra blockchain. One of the ways TFL attempted to architect guaranteed redemption and simultaneously mitigate a “death spiral” (an existential crisis that multiple “algo stablecoins” have crashed into), was by capping the daily minting of UST.5 The exact amount has changed over time but the goal was to help throttle the unbounded risk of an oversupply of UST (or some other pegged coin).
Why is this important?
Because as mentioned above: UST (and the other pegged coins that can be minted) were explicitly uncollateralized — although there has been an implicit acknowledgement that the aggregate UST (and other minted currencies) needs to remain below the marketcap of Luna which is the key conduit for redemptions. An imbalance, or “flippening,” could (and did) result in a crisis of confidence and collapse.
The chart (above) shows the aggregate market caps of both UST and Luna over the past 12 months. At their height last month, they together represented almost $60 billion in (paper) value. Today that has dropped to just over $1 billion.6
Why did things go wrong?
Before we answer that, let us look at when “the flippening” occurred.
What is another way to visualize this?
What does this mean? Due to the “macro” bear market in cryptocurrencies (the aggregate coin market is more than 50% off its all-time high from last year), Luna’s market cap saw a rapid decline that quickly became a vicious cycle due to the Why.
While there are a bunch of mostly cliché conspiracy theories as to which traders took advantage of the knowledge and conditions to short Luna (and UST), the conditions that led to UST’s rapid ascent (relative to Luna) seen in Figure 2, are pretty pedestrian.
What was the key reason for this ascent starting in November? The popular Anchor dapp on the Terra blockchain. What is Anchor?
Launched in March 2021, Anchor is an all-in-one asset management dapp that allowed traders to deposit their Luna as collateral and borrow UST against it. Often traders would go to an exchange and convert the UST into Luna, depositing the Luna into Anchor and lever up several more times. Its ease of use led to rapid growth, with total-value-locked (TVL) growing from zero to $6 billion within six months. The loan-to-value (LTV) ratio shifted over time but was northward of 70% when UST overtook Luna this past week.
Why did TVL grow so fast on Anchor?
The main reason was the dapp subsidized both lenders and borrowers through the emission of a governance token called ANC. For over 6 months, Anchor marketed itself as being able to provide 19.5% APY on all UST deposits via a blended combination of Luna staking emission and reoccurring ANC airdrops.7 Both sophisticated and unsophisticated investors, believing that $1 UST was redeemable at par with $1 USD, deposited large quantities of $UST (which others could then borrow as well). Anecdotally we have heard of startups at incubators and seasoned fintechs in emerging markets offering retail users access to this high yield product. The yield was unsustainable and developers knew it so various interest groups (including several high profile investors) proposed ways to reduce the ANC yield each month depending on economic indicators.
But by the time the downward adjustment was implemented it was too late. This relatively high yield had turned UST into a “hodl asset,” a “store of value” — something that the uncollateralized system was not properly designed to absorb.8
Prior to the collapse of Luna and UST, the development teams behind Terra and Anchor recognized this shortcoming and this past February announced the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) and organization that would accumulate exogenous collateral to defend the $1 USD peg.
Recall that at the very top in Figure 1, Terra was categorized as using endogenous collateral, that is capital native to the protocol itself (e.g., Luna, UST). As part of the initial LFG announcement, the organization aspired to accumulate large quantities of exogenous coins starting with bitcoin and later others (such as AVAX, and even both USDC and USDT). At its height, LFG’s reserves tallied over $3.5 billion and as of this writing it has shrunk to around $80 million (sans some squirrelly BTC).
Anchor aweigh
Even without Anchor the fundamental problem is that the underlying collateral is volatile, so what is over-collateralized can become under-collateralized very quickly (whether it is endogenous or exogenous).9
Those who argue that the solution for decentralized stablecoins is to be “fully backed” are still kind of missing the point. If these protocols are all using the same 3-5 major coins as collateral, you can get the same ‘death spiral’ scenario materializing if the stablecoin supply grows large vis-à-vis the collateral marketcap. After all, even LFG’s liquidation of $1.6 billion BTC moved the largest coin cap.
So who is the buyer-of-last resort? If it is actually decentralized, it can only be the parties who can liquidate or redeem the collateral. CDP systems like Maker have the incentives for this behavior, but suffer from the coin supply side being driven by lending and no mechanism to equilibrate that supply to the demand side (the mechanism is the stability fee and savings rate, but that is set by governance, not the market)
The root problem for UST and Luna, (as Kevin Zhou, Matt Levine, and others have mentioned), was that neither had any source of value independent of the other. If the market decided to sell both, there was nothing to give you confidence that they would recover. UST was built on Luna and for the past 6 months Luna was built on essentially Anchor yield savings. Even a large “stabilization fund” – with a transparent and automated mechanism for how it would be deployed – would not prevent the Luna/UST market cap from growing to dwarf the LFG backstop, thus a sequence like this past week was always a risk.
We could spend pages describing alternate plans and paths the development teams, users, traders, and other interest groups could have taken to stymie the collapse. Instead we wanted to highlight one final chart that we found interesting.
Divergence
The chart (above) shows the intraday prices each day over the course of a week between Luna (in dark pink) and bLuna (in blue).
What is bLuna? bLuna is a liquid staking mechanism managed by Lido in a partnership with Anchor.10 Liquid staking is actually an interesting concept. Most readers are probably vaguely familiar with staking on a proof-of-stake network: users deposit their coins to an address on-chain and receive some form of remuneration (emission) for helping to secure the network (and process transactions, if they are a validator).
But the coins used in staking are effectively frozen and cannot be easily used elsewhere as collateral. Enter liquid staking. As the name suggests, liquid staking is a concept that has been implemented in two different ways: at the dapp layer (via Lido, Marinade, and a few others) or at the native L1 layer (Osmosis in the Cosmos ecosystem is about to be the first to do so).
Liquid staking is neat because it allows all of the locked up (“frozen”) capital to be used as collateral for lending. An imperfect example: Bob purchases $200,000 of Apple stock. He wants to buy a new home and instead of selling the stock he finds a bank willing to use his Apple stock as collateral for the down payment on the house. Similarly, liquid staking is not rehypothecation as no new asset is created.11
The reason a lot of brain cycles have been spent on creating liquid staking dapps (like Lido) is that the vast majority (>95%) of all staked assets on proof-of-stake networks is illiquid. If they can become liquid that would enable more capital to be used for endogenous lending — instead of having to rely on exogenous capital like wrapped assets (WETH, WBTC) or real world assets (USDC, USDT).
In theory, when an asset transforms from a staked asset into a liquid staked asset, the market prices of the two should be very similar. In some cases, such as stETH (ether deposited in Lido on Ethereum) or mSOL (sol deposited in Marinade on Solana), the liquid asset accrues the emission reward therefore becoming slightly more valuable over time (in proportion to the emission rate).
In the case above, bLuna and Luna were tightly coupled but clearly broke down between May 9th-11th due to the massive selling pressure and unstaking that took place (more than 95% of all Luna has been unstaked down considerably over the past month). This brings us to the final section.
Proposed category
Surprise! I have a couple ideas on how to evolve the “algo stabilization” world, including adding a (possible) new category to the four incumbents above: a demurrage-based settlement asset.
But first, let’s take a step back and ask the question what amount of UST could Luna have absorbed?
Even the most hardened maximalist or anti-coiner would concede that a single solitary 1 UST could probably be absorbed by Luna’s market cap.
So where is the limit? Where do the wheels fall off? When do things become unwieldy?
It was not the UST borrow side that was a priori the fundamental culprit. Amplifying the problem was goosing the UST demand side with 19.5% “risk free” returns on Anchor. For instance, if the arbitrage mechanism only allowed the creation of UST (or other pegged assets) based on a small single digit percentage of Luna’s marketcap, it is likely this collapse might not have happened in such a dramatic fashion.
Yet as mentioned above, this approach alone still would not have staved off simultaneous sell-offs of both UST and Luna and/or hyperlunaflation.
Future developers looking to enter this arena could construct an asset with a stabilized unit-of-account that maintains a diminutive aggregate relative to the staked asset being burned. E.g., depending on the use case, an aggregate the size of $100,000 could conceivably power a small on-chain economy much like in traditional markets rely on a high velocity of money to grease the economy (where money is circulates among participants like a hot potato).12
That is to say, a high velocity stabilized unit-of-account, one that is used as a medium-of-exchange and not as a store-of-value or hodl asset, probably has a lot more longevity so as long as its creation (or borrowing) is not heavily subsidized. Sprinkle in some demurrage – or negative interest rates – to further disincentivize hodling and focus on a handful of uses (n.b. “hodling” is not using).1314
Final remarks
It is pretty easy to dance on the grave of another dead / dying cryptocurrency, there have been a few dozen marathon’s worth of victory laps on social media this past week. Despite autopsies and red flags, it is likely that some folks will attempt to emulate the heavily subsidized borrowing model too.
Apart from designing a purposefully limited high velocity, stabilized unit-of-account, what can non-developers do?
Arguably, the most accurate commentator on this topic is a friend, Kevin Zhou (founder of Galois Capital), who publicly predicted what would occur months ago. But unlike the maximalists and anti-coiners who stridently label everything a scam and a fraud, Zhou actually modeled out several scenarios in detail. Give him a follow.
Future analysis could look into the on-chain contagion such as dapps that were impacted including Mirror protocol (did the yield at Anchor cannibalize the other use cases by acting as a liquidity gravity well?). As of this writing it is unclear what direction a “LunaV2” will take but worth pointing out that key stake holders in the ecosystem agreed to shut down the network twice and switched to PoA.
Endnotes
Send to KindleApril 17 7:30pm EST — 63%
April 30 11:30am EST — 66%
May 7 5:00pm EST — 78%
May 7 6:30pm EST — 81%
May 8 9:00am EST — 90%
May 9 1pm EST — 95%
May 9 3pm EST — 113%
May 9 11pm EST –125%
May 10 7:30am EST –149%
May 10 3:45pm EST– 166%
May 10 5:30pm EST — 207%
May 10 6pm EST — 211%
May 11 5:30am EST — 291%
In April, the ratio flirted with and fell below the 2/3rd mark. But due to the persistent bear market coupled by sell side pressure of both UST and Luna, by the morning of May 10th, ‘hyper hyperinflation’ was well underway with a massive expansion of Luna’s total supply. [↩]
[Note: I neither own nor have any trading position on any cryptocurrency. I was not compensated by any party to write this. The views expressed below are solely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer or any organization I advise.]
Summer has nearly arrived in the northern hemisphere and several friends have reached out to ask several unanswered questions and rumors.
Note that many of the questions below are about commercial and trade secrets where there is no obligation to make the information public.
For instance, we could openly ask how much Cargill (the largest private corporation in the US) spends to manufacture its wares but they are under no obligation to provide that to anyone beyond their managers, shareholders, and regulators.
Similarly, most of the companies (and individuals) below are under no obligation to provide answers. However since we think it is in the public interest to know who benefits from certain decision-making (such as who first knew about #NoBugFix last year), we are publishing them here with the aim of answering them over time.
This is a non-exhaustive list and arranged in no particular order:
(1) We were promised a public audit, so who hacked Bitfinex in August 2016? Was it an inside job? Compromised BitGo account? Who was moving the ‘stolen’ coins last month? Will the current NY AG lawsuit versus Bitfinex/Tether reveal these details?1
(2) Ripple’s co-founders gave (granted?) ~80 billion XRP to Ripple Inc. back in January 2013 when it was still called OpenCoin. How much XRP was/is given to early investors like a16z and/or future partners?
(3) When R3 sued and settled with Ripple in 2018, rumors circulated that R3 won the equivalent of ~$500m in XRP and were limited to selling just as Jed McCaleb is constrained by.2 How much was the settlement for and how much XRP has been sold? How much do XRP sales account for R3 and other organizations revenue? For instance, Ripple has sold at least $1.1 billion in XRP to finance its operations through mid-2019. What are the ramifications if XRP is deemed a security?
(4) Three years ago several Bitcoin Core developers were allegedly involved with an astroturfing campaign (such as Antbleed) via coordination in a “Dragon’s Den” Slack room. Was this real and if so, who are these people? Are they still active?
(5) A couple years ago, Jackson Palmer and Angela Walch separately asked who were the people that had merge access in the Bitcoin Core repo. They were rebuffed and told this is a necessary secret to maintain. Is this a secret? If so, why the lack of transparency and who made this decision? How common is this secrecy in other coin projects?
(6) As Bitfinex is an investor in Blockstream, what’s the formal relationship between the two organizations today, specifically with respect to Tether?3 Do either organizations operate OTC trading desks? If so, where and how are those licensed or legally structured?
(7) It is alleged in a lawsuit that EOS organizers recycled its year-long ICO proceeds back into its own sale thereby inflating its raise and generating hype. How much actual coin money from retail investors was sent into this generally solicited ICO?
(6) In April 2017 Bitfinex (briefly) sued Wells Fargo regarding the cutting off of correspondence banking… and a week later withdrew the suit. What were the names of the Taiwanese banks that were supposedly at the center of this (non) compliance controversy? Did these banks eventually reopen accounts on behalf of Bitfinex or Tether?
(7) Based on an interview with George Fogg, a 2015 FT article pointed out that Bitcoin (and likely other coins) has a lien problem: that due to rampant thefts and DNM activity there were probably more claims on specific bitcoins than there were bitcoins.4 What percentage of bitcoin (or other coins) are encumbered today?
(8) A rumor since 2014 is that a US-based coin exchange signed a deferred adjudication agreement with the federal government due to money laundering issues. If true, will it be revealed if/when an IPO is filed?
(9) Since SAFTs are largely considered cadavers in the US, what (if anything) will happen to its creators and early promoters? Enriched and sauntering off into the sunset? Or disbarred and disgorged?
(10) Will deposit-taking coin intermediaries ever be required to comply with federal laws as banks do in the US? Will they simply end up lobbying and moving shell entities into the state of Wyoming for an SPDI?
(11) FinCEN carved out a loophole for proof-of-work miners in 2013. Yet in practice, mining pool operators can and do select or censor transactions.5 Will they be held liable as an MTO or PSP as more value is moved through their machines and regulators catch-on?
(12) It is alleged that Craig Wright has plagiarized and used ghost writers for publishing papers. Who are they and how much were they paid?
(13) Last year, a former senior executive at a US-based coin exchange is alleged to have undue influence on listing coins based on his bags. What, if any, are the internal controls erected to prevent this type of behavior in coin exchanges? Several coin creators and issuers have joined and/or created coin exchanges in the past.6 Have any of them used their position to profit off of the asymmetric knowledge on listing their coins (or others)? If so, how to prevent this in the future?
(14) Lightning Network was frequently marketed as being ‘just around the corner’ yet it appears to have stagnated in activity over the past 18 months. Who(m) is responsible for this continued delay? Will it reach its marketed potential in the next year or too much of a Rube Goldberg machine? When will LN hubs need to become compliant with the Travel Rule?
(15) Who acquired the @Bitcoin user on Twitter last year? Did the acquisition or transfer violate the Terms of Service?
(16) Regarding the revolving door: how many former regulators now work at coin intermediaries? And vice-versa: how many former coin employees work with regulators? With the push for additional stablecoins and potential CBDCs, will there be transparent interactions between regulators (and politicians) and vendors? If a single vendor oversees a proprietary codebase, how will this not result in a Hold-Up problem?
(17) At least one Chinese exchange, pre-2017, went out of its way to support scams like MMM. How many exchanges knowingly profited from allowing MMM or BitConnect-like actors to operate? Are regulated stablecoin issues such as Paxos aware of this?
(18) bitFlyer was accused of knowingly laundering money for the Yakuza. How many other exchanges have done so as well? In a given year, what percentage of exchange revenue comes from laundering the proceeds of organized crime?
(19) A conspiracy theory (joke?) is that whenever a coin exchange operator in South Korea gets a tax bill, they hack themselves in order to reduce the tax liability. Is this true and if so, how much has been pilfered?
(20) Jackson Palmer, Gwern Branwen, and others have poked into the original source code of Bitcoin and found the seeds of a marketplace and poker lobby.7 Was the original goal to also include a coin exchange or DNM?
(21) Why is Coinlab still dragging its feet during the never ending Mt. Gox bankruptcy proceedings? 8
(22) Was that really Gerald Cotten’s body or is he just mostly dead? Did Cotten act alone as the narrative leads us to believe or did Michael “identity theft” Patryn have a roll in the missing funds? As it was during their honeymoon, is Jennifer Robertson aware of anything odd about the circumstances surrounding Cotten’s death?
(23) Late last year, one of the allegations against Virgil Griffith included somehow helping move a computer system to act as a mining rig across the border to North Korea. We have heard rumors of used, second-hand mining hardware making its way across the same border in the past. Hardware manufacturers have said it is difficult to police because even if they KYC the original buyer, they have no control of where used hardware is sold over time. How much hashrate for Bitcoin or Ethereum and other PoW coins are generated out of North Korea?
(24) Common conversations at events imply that virtually every coin exchange has been hacked yet most simply eat the losses without publicly disclosing it. How many major hacks of coin exchanges in the US have still not been disclosed?9
(25) Several podcasters have openly bragged about not paying taxes on their coin dealings. For instance, the co-creator of a coin launched in 2014 from an organization based in California, now avoids California due to not having paid the state’s capital gains tax. How many others are virtue (vice) signaling? Or are they still counting on lax enforcement?
(26) Ethereum Classic (ETC) is technically the original Ethereum chain. During the debates over the ETH-ETC hard fork in late July 2016, a small handful of investors including Barry Silbert were vocally claiming on social media to support ETC.10 Several subsequent separate investigations into Silbert’s social media activity raised questions around anti-touting provisions of securities laws. If ETH or ETC was a security in 2016 due to a coordinated hard fork that was not sufficiently decentralized, who could be held liable for actively promoting a coin to unsophisticated investors? For instance, earlier this year actor Steven Seagal was penalized for not disclosing his paid endorsement of Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G). Does touting matter if a coin is or is not a security?
(27) The scandal and fallout around Joi Ito (and MIT) knowingly accepting funds from sex offender Jeff Epstein is still on-going. Last year we learned that Epstein was not just interested in Bitcoin, but he reached out to invest and fund Bitcoin-related companies and efforts (perhaps even DCI). For instance, Elizabeth Stark (from Lightning Labs) pointed out that she turned down an investment offer. Did Epstein put money into entities such as Digital Garage, which Ito co-founded?11 What about Digital Garage’s portfolio companies?
(28) The IOTA mainnet was stopped for days then weeks, and the non-anonymous founders fought in public about past grievances including funds that were supposed to build hardware devices… that were unaccounted for. The IOTA network, like EOS and Cardano, are arguably still centralized due to the smattering of nodes operated by a handful of entities. At what point are these types of networks deemed centralized money transmission operators (MTO) with the need to register with FinCEN and other similar regulators?12
(29) Where is Binance’s headquarters? Their executives often claim to not have offices – even when they are visited by the police… yet these same Binance executives appear in photo-ops on islands and jurisdictions found on the FATF blacklist. Where are they domiciled from a legal perspective? Do they pay taxes somewhere?
(30) In 2017, OKCoin and Huobi were penalized for not disclosing to their customers that they were re-investing deposits in other financial products. It is rumored that other coin exchanges have used their customer deposits and cash reserves to manipulate various coin prices which ultimately wreck retail investors, all because they can see trader’s positions and know exactly what amount of manipulation will close positions. How common is this?
(31) What happened to all of the funds donated to the dubiously self-serving ‘DefendCrypto’ effort? Recall that Kik conducted an ICO because it was running out of fundraising options… and then later sued by the SEC. Were all of the ‘community donations’ simply handed over to their lobbying organization (Blockchain Association) to spend carte blanche?
(32) Why do some coin exchanges employ outspoken tribalists or maximalists? What does this mean for how the exchange treats trades and orders for non-tribal-approved coins?
(33) How much do coin lobbying organizations charge to get fines or sanctions reduced? At least one DC-based organization removed the name of a prominent coin exchange (despite accepting their funds) after a lawsuit from NY AG was announced. Do these types of advocacy / lobbying organizations return the funds from illicit actors? When will the coin holdings of staff at coin lobbying organizations be required to be disclosed?13
(34) Over the past five years, numerous corporates and enterprises have publicly announced partnerships with more than a dozen different coin issuers. Most of these are vanity projects that end after 3-6 months. However, prior to the public announcement, it is alleged that insiders acquire coins with the expectation of a jump in prices.14 How common is this and how to remove this temptation from future decision-makers?
(35) CryptoDeleted was silenced by embarrassed social media personalities as it screen grabbed their boisterous coin shilling. How many other times has this specific type of suspension occurred on Twitter and other platforms with respect to documenting coin shills?
(36) Without providing any proof at the time, several prominent coin promoters claimed to have – or will have – donated large quantities of money to charitable organizations. In the case of Brock Pierce, more than two years ago his plans to donate $1 billion was uncritically reported on. Binance and other coin intermediaries that are in continuous legal limbo, also frequently claim to donate to causes in developing countries or for COVID-19. How much has actually been donated? Do operators believe such donations make up for listing P&D coins that fleeced retail investors?
(37) During the height of the fraudulent ICO boom days of 2017, dozens of coin funds were purportedly spun up to capitalize off the quick pump-and-dump on retail investors that was taken place globally.15 At the time, one article listed 15 such funds, most of whom appear to have fallen to the way side, and at least one (Polychain) that was sued by multiple different LPs for lack of transparency. How many of these funds got early access discounts and quietly dumped coins as soon as the coin got listed? How many actually paid taxes on the rumored ill-gotten gains?
(38) Soldering ASIC mining chips into always-on devices has repeatedly proven to be a bad deal for the consumer due to the fixed unit of labor within each device. Yet nearly every year starting with the 21.co toaster and Bitfury light bulb, a new manufacturer jumps into the fray to release yet another one of these environmental hazards. As an aggregate, how many of these all-in-one Earth sizzling devices have been shipped to consumers?
(39) Whatever happened to Halong mining? Their Dragonmint rig was repeatedly hyped by prominent maximalists back in late 2017 and early 2018. They shipped some units but they’ve been silent for a couple of years. Just one-and-done?
(40) With the release of the latest Raspberry Pi 4 and increasingly cheap SSDs, will node operators begin to (again) support larger block sizes? Aside from politics and ideology, what are the show-stopping technical reasons for not doing so? Too much to sync for a mobile device?
Bonus! Is ransomware fully dependent on the liquidity of cryptocurrencies? If so, will regulators and law enforcement eventually close down coin exchanges in order to snuff out this evergrowing parasite?
Again, this list is non-exhaustive and fairly US-centric. It also doesn’t even scratch the surface of C-level executives and apparatchiks who repeatedly use their social media platforms to push “buy the dip” memes onto unsophisticated investors.
For the future: what are some other types of questions that would serve the public interest in knowing the answer to? Recommended reading: Eight Things Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts Probably Won’t Tell You
Acknowledgements: many thanks to AC, GW, JS, CP, VB, AW, RS, AC, and CK for their feedback and suggestions.
Endnotes:
Send to KindleA friend of mine sent me a copy of The Truth Machine which was published in February 2018. Its co-authors are Michael Casey and Paul Vigna, who also previously co-wrote The Age of Cryptocurrency a few years ago.
I had a chance to read it and like my other reviews, underlined a number of passages that could be enhanced, modified, or even removed in future editions.
Overall: I do not recommend the first edition. For comparison, here are several other reviews.
This book seemed overly political with an Occupy Wall Street tone that doesn’t mesh well with what at times is a highly technical topic.
I think a fundamental challenge for anyone trying to write book-length content on this topic is that as of 2018, there really aren’t many measurable ‘success’ stories – aside from speculation and illicit activities – so you end up having to fill a couple hundred pages based on hypotheticals that you (as an author) probably don’t have the best optics in.
Also, I am a villain in the book. Can’t wait? Scroll down to Chapter 6 and also view these specific tweets for what that means.
Note: all transcription errors are my own. See my other book reviews on this topic.
Preface
on p. x they write:
The second impact is the book you are reading. In The Age of Cryptocurrency, we focused primarily on a single application of Bitcoin’s core technology, on its potential to upend currency and payments.
Would encourage readers to peruse my previous review of their previous book. I don’t think they made the case, empirically, that Bitcoin will upend either currency or payments. Bitcoin itself will likely exist in some form or fashion, but “upending” seems like a stretch at this time.
On p. xi they write in a footnote:
We mostly avoid the construct of “blockchain” as a non-countable noun.
This is good. And they were consistent throughout the book too.
Introduction
They spent several pages discussing ways to use a blockchain for humanitarian purposes (and later have a whole chapter on it), however, it is unclear why a blockchain alone is the solution when there are likely other additional ways to help refugees.
For instance, on p. 3 they write:
Just as the blockchain-distributed ledger is used to assure bitcoin users that others aren’t “double-spending” their currency holdings – in other words, to prevent what would otherwise be rampant digital counterfeiting – the Azraq blockchain pilot ensures that people aren’t double-spending their food entitlements.
But why can’t these food entitlements be digitized and use something like SNAP cards? Sure you can technically use a blockchain to track this kind of thing, but you could also use existing on-premise or cloud solutions too, right? Can centralized or non-blockchain solutions fundamentally not provide an adequate solution?
On p. 4 they write:
Under this new pilot, all that’s needed to institute a payment with a food merchant is a scan of a refugee’s iris. In effect, the eye becomes a kind of digital wallet, obviating the need for cash, vouchers, debit cards, or smartphones, which reduces the danger of theft (You may have some privacy concerns related to that iris scan – we’ll get to that below.) For the WFP, making these transfers digital results in millions of dollars in saved fees as they cut out middlemen such as money transmitter and the bankers that formerly processed the overall payments system.
Get used to the “bankers” comments because this book is filled with a dozen of them. Intermediaries such as MSBs and banks do take cuts, however they don’t really dive into the fee structure. This is important because lots of “cryptocurrency”-focused startups have tried to use cryptocurrencies to supposedly disrupt remittances and most basically failed because there are a lot of unseen costs that aren’t taken into account for.
Another unseen cost that this book really didn’t dive into was: the fee to miners that users must pay to get included into a block. They mention it in passing but typically hand-waved it saying something like Lightning would lower those costs. That’s not really a good line of reasoning at this stage in development, but we’ll look at it again later.
On p. 6 they write:
That’s an especially appealing idea for many underdeveloped countries as it would enable their economies to function more like those of developed countries – low-income homeowners could get mortgages, for example; street vendors could get insurance. It could give billions of people their first opening into the economic opportunities that the rest of us take for granted.
That sounds amazing, who wouldn’t want that? Unfortunately this is a pretty superficial bit of speculation. For example, how do street vendors get insurance just because of the invention of a blockchain? That is never answered in the book.
On p. 7 they write:
The problem is that these fee-charging institutions, which act as gatekeepers, dictating who can and cannot engage in commercial interactions, add cost and friction to our economic activities.
Sure, this is true and there are efforts to reduce and remove this intermediation. The book also ignores that every cryptocurrency right now also charges some kind of fee to miners and/or stakers. And with nearly all coins, in order to obtain it, a user typically must buy it through a trusted third party (an exchange) who will also charge a markup fee… often simultaneously requiring you to go through some kind of KYC / AML process (or at least connect to a bank that does).
Thus if fee-charging gatekeepers are considered a problem in the traditional world, perhaps this can be modified in the next edition because these type of gatekeepers exist throughout the coin world too.
On p. 8 they list a bunch of use-cases, some of which they go into additional detail later in the book. But even then the details are pretty vague and superficial, recommend updating this in the next edition with more concrete examples.
On p. 9 they write:
Silicon Valley’s anti-establishment coders hadn’t reckoned with the challenge of trust and how society traditionally turns to centralized institutions to deal with that.
There may have been a time in which the majority of coders in the Bay area were “anti-establishment” but from the nearly 5 years of living out here, I don’t think that is necessarily the case across the board. Recommend providing a citation for that in the future.
On p. 10 they write:
R3 CEV, a New York-based technology developer, for one, raised $107 million from more than a hundred of the world’s biggest financial institutions and tech companies to develop a proprietary distributed ledger technology. Inspired by blockchains but eschewing that lable, R3’s Corda platform is built to comply with banks’ business and regulatory models while streamlining trillions of dollars in daily interbank securities transfers.
This whole paragraph should be updated (later in Chapter 6 as well):
On p. 10 they briefly mention the Hyperledger Project. Recommend tweaking it because of its own evolution over the years.
For example, here is my early contribution: what is the difference between Hyperledger and Hyperledger.
On p. 11 they write:
While it’s quite possible that many ICOs will fall afoul of securities regulations and that a bursting of this bubble will burn innocent investors, there’s something refreshingly democratic about this boom. Hordes of retail investors are entering into early stage investment rounds typically reserved for venture capitalists and other professional.
This paragraph aged horribly since the book was published in February.
All of the signs were there: we knew even last year that many, if not all, ICOs involved overpromising features and not disclosing much of anything to investors. As a result, virtually every week and month in 2018 we have learned just how much fraud and outright scams took place under the guise and pretext of the “democratization of fund raising.”
For instance, one study published this summer found that about 80% of the ICOs in 2017 were “identified scams.” Another study from EY found that about 1/3 of all ICOs in 2017 have lost “substantially all value” and most trade below their listing price.
Future versions of this book should remove this paragraph and also look into where all of that money went, especially since there wasn’t – arguably – a single cryptocurrency application with a real user base that arose from that funding method (yet).
On p. 11 they write:
Not to be outdone, Bitcoin, the grandaddy of the cryptocurrency world, has continued to reveal strengths — and this has been reflected in its price.
This is an asinine metric. How exactly does price reflect strength? They never really explain that yet repeat roughly the same type of explanation in other places in this book.
Interestingly, both bitcoin’s price and on-chain transaction volume have dramatically fallen since this book was first published. Does that mean that Bitcoin weakened somehow?
On p. 12 they write:
Such results give credence to crypto-asset analysts Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar’s description of bitcoin as “the most exciting alternative investment of the 21st century.”
Firstly, the Burniske and Tatar book was poorly written and wrong in many places: see my review
Secondly, bitcoin is a volatile investment that is arguably driven by a Keynesian beauty contest, not for the reasons that either book describes (e.g., not because of remittance activity).
On p. 12 they write:
The blockchain achieves this with a special algorithm embedded into a common piece of software run by all the computers in the network.
To be clear: neither PoW nor PoS are consensus protocols which is implied elsewhere on page 12.
On p. 12 they write:
Once new ledger entries are introduced, special cryptographic protections make it virtually impossible to go back and change them.
This is not really true. For coins like Bitcoin, it is proof-of-work that makes it resource intensive to do a block reorganization. Given enough hashrate, participants can and do fork the network. We have seen it occur many times this year alone. There is no cryptography in Bitcoin or Ethereum that prevents this reorg from happening because PoW is separate from block validation.2
On p. 13 they write:
Essentially, it should let people share more. And with the positive, multiplier effects that this kind of open sharing has on networks of economic activity, more engagement should in turn create more business opportunities.
These statement should be backed up with supporting evidence in the next edition because as it stands right now, this sounds more like a long-term goal or vision statement than something that currently exists today in the cryptocurrency world.
On p. 13 they mention “disintermediation” but throughout the book, many of the cryptocurrency-related companies they explore are new intermediaries. This is not a consistent narrative.
On p. 14 they write:
If I can trust another person’s claims – about their educational credentials, for example, or their assets, or their professional reputation – because they’ve been objectively verified by a decentralized system, then I can go into direct business with them.
This is a non sequitur. Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) — in fact, the authors make that point later on in the book in Chapter 7.
On p. 15 they write:
Blockchains are a social technology, a new blueprint for how to govern communities, whether we’re talking about frightened refugees in a desolate Jordanian output or an interbank market in which the world’s biggest financial institutions exchange trillions of dollars daily.
This is vague and lacks nuance because there is no consensus on what a blockchain is today. Many different organizations and companies define it differently (see the Corda example above).
Either way, what does it mean to call a blockchain “social technology”? Databases are also being used by refugee camp organizers and financial infrastructure providers… are databases “social technology” too?
Chapter 1
On p. 17 they write:
Its blockchain promised a new way around processes that had become at best controlled by middlemen who insisted on taking their cut of every transaction, and at worst the cause of some man-made economic disasters.
This is true and problematic and unfortunately Bitcoin itself doesn’t solve that because it also has middlemen that take a cut of every transaction in the form of a fee to miners. Future editions should add more nuance such as the “moral hazard” of bailing out SIFIs and TBTF and separate that from payment processors… which technically speaking is what most cryptocurrencies strive to be (a network to pay unidentified participants).
On p. 18 they write:
Problems arise when communities view them with absolute faith, especially when the ledger is under control of self-interested actors who can manipulate them. This is what happened in 2008 when insufficient scrutiny of Lehman Brother’s and other’s actions left society exposed and contributed to the financial crisis.
This seems to be a bit revisionist history. This seems to conflate two separate things: the type of assets that Lehman owned and stated on its books… and the integrity of the ledgers themselves. Are the authors claiming that Lehman Brother’s ledgers were being maliciously modified and manipulated? If so, what citation do they have?
Also a couple pages ago, the authors wrote that blockchains were social technology… but we know that from Deadcoins.com that they can die and anything relying on them can be impacted.
Either way, in this chapter the authors don’t really explain how something Bitcoin itself would have prevented Lehman’s collapse. See also my new article on this topic.
On p. 19 they write:
A decentralized network of computers, one that no single entity controlled, would thus supplant the banks and other centralized ledger-keepers that Nakamoto identified as “trusted third parties.”
Fun fact: the word “ledger” does not appear in the Bitcoin white paper or other initial emails or posts by Nakamoto.
Secondly, perhaps an industry wide or commonly used blockchain of some kind does eventually displace and remove the role some banks have in maintaining certain ledgers, but their statement, as it is currently worded, seems a lot like of speculation (projection?).
We know this because throughout the book it is pretty clear they do not like banks, and that is fine, but future editions need to back up these types of opinions with evidence that banks are no longer maintaining a specific ledger because of a blockchain.
On p. 20 they write:
With Bitcoin’s network of independent computers verifying everything collectively, transactions could now be instituted peer to peer, that is, from person to person. That’s a big change from our convoluted credit and debit card payment systems, for example, which routes transactions through a long sequence of intermediaries – at least two banks, one or two payment processors, a card network manager (such as Visa or Mastercard), and a variety of other institutions, depending on where the transaction take place.
If we look back too 2009, this is factually correct of Bitcoin at a high level.3 The nuance that is missing is that today in 2018, the majority of bitcoin transactions route through a third party, some kind of intermediary like a deposit-taking exchange or custodial wallet.4 There are still folks who prefer to use Bitcoin as a P2P network, but according to Chainalysis, last year more than 80% of transactions went through a third party.5
On p. 20 they write:
Whereas you might think that money is being instantly transferred when you swipe your card at a clothing store, in reality the whole process takes several days for the funds to make all those hops and finally settle in the storeowner’s account, a delay that create risks and costs. With Bitcoin, the idea is that your transaction should take only ten to sixty minutes to fully clear (not withstanding some current capacity bottlenecks that Bitcoin developers are working tor resolve). You don’t have to rely on all those separate, trusted third parties to process it on your behalf.
This is mostly incorrect and there is also a false comparison.
In the first sentence they gloss over how credit card payment systems confirm and approve transactions in a matter of seconds.6 Instead they focus on settlement finality: when the actual cash is delivered to the merchant… which can take up to 30+ days depending on the system and jurisdiction.
The second half they glowingly say how much faster bitcoin is… but all they do is describe the “seen” activity with a cryptocurrency: the “six block” confirmations everyone is advised to wait before transferring coins again. This part does not mention that there is no settlement finality in Bitcoin, at most you get probabilistic finality (because there is always chance there may be a fork / reorg).
In addition, with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin you are only transferring the coins. The cash leg on either side of the transaction still must transfer through the same intermediated system they describe above. We will discuss this further below when discussing remittances.
On p. 20 they write:
It does so in a way that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to change the historical record once it has been accepted.
For proof-of-work chains this is untrue in theory and empirically. In the next edition this should be modified to “resource intensive” or “economically expensive.”
On p. 20 they write:
The result is something remarkable: a record-keeping method that brings us to a commonly accepted version of the truth that’s more reliable than any truth we’ve ever seen. We’re calling the blockchain a Truth Machine, and its applications go far beyond just money.
It is not a “truth machine” because garbage in, garbage out.
In addition, while they do discuss some historical stone tablets, they don’t really provide a metric for how quantitatively more (or less) precise a blockchain is versus other methods of recording and witnessing information. Might be worth adding a comparison table in the next edition.
On p. 21 they write:
A lion of Wall Street, the firm was revealed to be little more than a debt-ravaged shell kept alive only by shady accounting – in other words, the bank was manipulating its ledgers. Sometimes, that manipulation involved moving debt off the books come reporting season. Other times, it involved assigning arbitrarily high values to “hard-to-value” assets – when the great selloff came, the shocking reality hit home: the assets had no value.
The crash of 2008 revealed most of what we know about Wall Street’s confidence game at that time. It entailed a vast manipulation of ledgers.
This was going well until that last sentence. Blockchains do not solve the garbage in, garbage out problem. If the CFO or accountant or book keeper or internal counsel puts numbers into blocks that do not accurately reflect or represent what the “real value” actually is, blockchains do not fix that. Bitcoin does not fix that.
Inappropriate oversight, rubber stamp valuations, inaccurate risk models… these are off-chain issues that afflicted Lehman and other banks. Note: they continue making this connection on pages 24, 28, and elsewhere but again, they do not detail how a blockchain of some kind would have explicitly prevented the collapse of Lehman other other investment banks.
See also: Systemically important cryptocurrency networks
On p. 22 they write:
The real problem was never really about liquidity, or a breakdown of the market. It was a failure of trust. When that trust was broken, the impact on society – including on our political culture – was devastating.
How about all of the above? Pinning it on just one thing seems a little dismissive of the multitude of other interconnecting problems / culprits.
On p. 22 they write:
By various measures, the U.S. economy has recovered – at the time of writing, unemployment was near record lows and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at record highs. But those gains are not evenly distributed; wage growth at the top is six times what it is for those in the middle, and even more compared to those at the bottom.
If the goal of the authors is to rectify wealth inequalities then there are probably better comparisons than using cryptocurrencies.
Why? Because – while it is hard to full quantify, it appears that on cursory examination most (if not all) cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin have Gini coefficients that trends towards 1 (perfectly unequal).
On p. 23 they write about disinformation in the US and elsewhere. And discuss how trust is a “vital social resource” and then mention hyperinflation in Venezuela. These are all worthy topics to discuss, but it is not really clear how any of these real or perceived problems are somehow solved because of a blockchain, especially when Venezuela is used as the example. The next edition should make this more clear.
On p. 29 they write:
On October 31, 2008, whil the world was drowning in the financial crisis, a little-noticed “white paper” was released by somebody using the pen name “Satoshi Nakamoto,” and describing something called “Bitcoin,” an electronic version of cash that didn’t need state backing. At the heart of Nakamoto’s electronic cash was a public ledger that could be viewed by anybody but was virtually impossible to alter.
One pedantic note: it wasn’t broadly marketed beyond a niche mailing list on purpose… a future edition might want to change ” a little-noticed” because it doesn’t seem like the goal by Nakamoto was to get Techcrunch or Slashdot to cover it (even though eventually they both did).
Also, it is not virtually impossible to alter.7 As shown by links above, proof-of-work networks can and do get forked which may include a block reorganization. There is nothing that technically prevents this from happening.
See also: Interview with Ray Dillinger
On p. 31 they write:
Szabo, Grigg, and others pioneered an approach with the potential to create a record of history that cannot be changed – a record that someone like Madoff, or Lehman’s bankers, could not have meddled with.
I still think that the authors are being a little too liberal with what a blockchain can do. What Madoff did and Lehman did were different from one another too.
Either way, a blockchain would not have prevented data – representing fraudulent claims – from being inserted into blocks. Theoretically a blockchain may have allowed auditors to detect tampering of blocks, but if the information in the blocks are “garbage” then it is kind of besides the point.
On p. 32 they write:
Consider that Bitcoin is now the most powerful computing network in the world, one whose combined “hashing” rate as of August 2017 enabled all its computers to collectively pore through 7 million trillion different number guesses per second.
[…]
Let the record show that period of time is 36,264 trillion trillion times longer than the current best-estimate age of the universe. Bitcoin’s cryptography is pretty secure.
This should be scrapped for several reasons.
The authors conflate the cryptography used by digital signatures with generating proofs-of-work.8 There are not the same thing. Digital signatures are considered “immutable” for the reasons they describe in the second part, not because of the hashes that are generated in the first.9
Another problem is that the activity in the first part — the hash generation process — is not an apples-to-apples comparison with other general computing efforts. Bitcoin mining is a narrowly specific activity and consequently ASICs have been built and deployed to generate these hashes. The single-use machines used to generate these hashes cannot even verify transactions or construct blocks. In contrast, CPUs and GPUs can process a much wider selection of general purpose applications… including serialize transactions and produce blocks.
For example: it would be like comparing a Falcon 9 rocket launch vehicle with a Toyota Prius. Sure they are nominally both “modes of transportation” but built for entirely different purposes and uses.
An additional point is that again, proof-of-work chains can and have been forked over the years. Bitcoin is not special or unique or impervious to forks either (here’s a history of the times Bitcoin has forked). And there are other ways to create forks, beyond the singular Maginot Line attack that the authors describe on this page.10
On p. 33 they write:
Whether the solution requires these extreme privacy measures or not, the broad model of a new ledger system that we laid out above – distributed, cryptographically secure, public yet private – may be just what’s needed to restore people’s confidence in society’s record-keeping systems. And to encourage people to re-engage in economic exchange and risk-taking.
This comes across as speculation and projecting. We will see later that the authors have a dim view of anything that is not a public blockchain. Why is this specific layout the best?
Either way, future versions should include a citation for how people’s confidence level increase because of the use of some kind of blockchain. At this time, I am unaware of any such survey.
On p. 34 they quote Tomicah Tilleman from the Global Blockchain Business Council, a lobbying organization:
Blockchain has the potential to push back against that erosion and it has the potential to create a new dynamic in which everyone can come to agree on a core set of facts but also ensure the privacy of facts that should not be in the public domain.
This seems like a non sequitur. How does a blockchain itself push back on anything directly? Just replace the word “blockchain” with “database” and see if it makes sense.
Furthermore, as we have empirically observed, there are fractures and special interest groups within each of these little coin ecosystems. Each has their own desired roadmap and in some cases, they cannot agree with one another about facts such as the impact larger block sizes may have on node operators.
On p. 35 they write:
If it can foster consensus in the way it has been shown to with Bitcon, it’s best understood as a Truth Machine.
This is a non sequitur. Just because Nakamoto consensus exists does not mean it that blockchains are machines of truth. They can replicate falsehoods if the blocks are filled with the incorrect information.
Chapter 2
On p. 38 they write:
Consider how Facebook’s secret algorithm choose the news to suit your ideological bent, creating echo chambers of like-minded angry or delighted readers who are ripe to consume and share dubious information that confirms their pre-existing political biases.
There are some really valid points in this first part of the chapter. As it relates to cryptocurrencies, a second edition should also include the astroturfing and censoring of alternative views that take place on cryptocurency-related subreddits which in turn prevent people from learning about alternative implementations.
We saw this front-and-center in 2015 with the block size debate in which moderators of /r/bitcoin (specifically, theymos and BashCo) banned any discussion from one camp, those that wanted to discuss ways of increasing the block size via a hardfork (e.g., Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic).
This wasn’t the first or last time that cryptocurrency-related topics on social media have resulted in the creation of echo chambers.
On p. 43 they write:
The potential power of this concept starts with the example of Bitcoin. Even though that particular blockchain may not provide the ultimate solution in this use case, it’s worth recalling that without any of the classic, centrally deployed cybersecurity tools such as firewalls, and with a tempting “bounty” of more than $160 billion in market cap value at the time we went to print, Bitcoin’s core ledger has thus far proven to be unhackable.
There is a lot to unpack here but I think a future edition should explain in more detail how Bitcoin is a type of cybersecurity tool. Do they mean that because the information is replicated to thousands of nodes around the world, it is more resilient or redundant?
Either way, saying that “Bitcoin’s core ledger” is “unhackable” is a trope that should be removed from the next edition as well.
Why? Because when speaking about BTC or BCH or any variant of Bitcoin, there is only one “ledger” per chain… the word ‘core’ is superfluous. And as described above, the word “unhackable” should be changed to “resource intensive to fork” or something along those lines. “Unhackable” is anarchronistic because what the authors are probably trying to describe is malicious network partitions… and not something from a ’90s film like The Net.
Continuing on p. 43 they write:
Based on the ledger’s own standards for integrity, Bitcoin’s nine-year experience of survival provides pretty solid proof of the resiliency of its core mechanism for providing decentralized trust between users. It suggest that one of the most important non-currency applications of Bitcoin’s blockchain could be security itself.
This last sentence makes no sense and they do not expand on it in the book. What is the security they are talking about? And how is that particularly helpful to “non-currency applications of Bitcoin’s blockchain”? Do they mean piggy-backing like colored coins try to do?
On p. 44 they write:
The public ledger contains no identifying information about the system’s users. Even more important, no one owns or controls that ledger.
Well technically speaking, miners via mining pools control the chain. They can and do upgrade / downgrade / sidegrade the software. And they can (and do) fork and reorg a chain. Is that defined as “control”? Unclear but we’ll probably see some court cases if real large loses take place due to forks.
On p. 44 they write:
As such there is no central vector of attack.
In theory, yes. In practice though, many chains are highly centralized: both in terms of block creation and in terms of development. Thus in theory it is possible to compromise and successfully “attack” a blockchain under the right circumstances. Could be worth rephrasing this in the next edition.
On p. 44 they write:
As we’ll discuss further in the book, there are varying degrees of security in different blockchain designs, including those known as “private” or “permissioned” blockchains, which rely on central authorities to approve participants. In contrast, Bitcoin is based on a decentralized model that eschews approvals and instead banks on the participants caring enough about their money in the system to protect it.
This is a bit of a strawman because there are different types of “permissioned” blockchains designed for different purposes… they’re not all alike. In general, the main commonality is that the validators are known via a legal identity. How these networks are setup or run does not necessarily need to rely on a centralized authority, that would be a single point of trust (and failure). But we’ll discuss this later below.
On p. 44 they write:
On stage at the time, Adam Ludwin, the CEO of blockchain / distributed ledger services company Chain Inc., took advantage of the results to call out Wall Street firms for failing to see how this technology offers a different paradigm. Ludwin, whose clients include household names like Visa and Nasdaq, said he could understand why people saw a continued market for cybersecurity services, since his audience was full of people paid to worry about data breaches constantly. But their answers suggested they didn’t understand that the blockchain offered a solution. Unlike other system-design software, for which cybersecurity is an add-on, this technology “incorporates security by design,” he said.
It is unclear from the comments above exactly how a blockchain solves problems in the world of cybersecurity. Maybe it does. If so, then it should be explored in more detail than what is provided in this area of the book.
As an aside, I’m not sure how credible Ludwin’s comments on this matter are because of the multiple pivots that his companies have done over the past five years.11
On p. 45 they write:
A more radical solution is to embrace open, “permissionless” blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, where there’s no central authority keeping track of who’s using the network.
This is very much a prescriptive pitch and not a descriptive analysis. Recommend changing some of the language in the next edition. Also, they should define what “open” means because there basically every mining pool doxxes themselves.
Furthermore, some exchanges that attempt to enforce their terms-of-service around KYC / AML / CTF do try to keep track of who is doing what on the network via tools from Chainalysis, Blockseer, Elliptic and others. Violating the ToS may result in account closures. Thus, ironically, the largest “permissioned” platforms are actually those on the edges of all cryptocurrencies.
See: What is Permissioned-on-Permissionless
On p. 45 they write:
It’s not about building a firewall up around a centralized pool of valuable data controlled by a trusted third party; rather the focus is on pushing control over information out to the edges of the network, to the people themselves, and on limiting the amount of identifying information that’s communicated publicly. Importantly, it’s also about making it prohibitively expensive for someone to try to steal valuable information.
This sounds all well and good, definitely noble goals. However in the cryptocurrency world, many exchanges and custodial wallets have been compromised and the victims have had very little recourse. Despite the fact that everyone is continually told not to store their private keys (coins) with an intermediary, Chainalysis found that in 2017 more than 80% of all transactions involved a third-party service.
On p. 45 they write:
Bitcoin’s core ledger has never been successfully attacked.
They should define what they mean by “attacked” because it has forked a number of times in its history. And a huge civil war took place resulting in multiple groups waging off-chain social media campaigns to promote their positions, resulting in one discrete group divorcing and another discrete group trying to prevent them from divorcing. Since there is only de facto and not de jure governance, who attacked who? Who were the victims?
On p. 45 they write:
Now, it will undoubtedly be a major challenge to get the institutions that until now have been entrusted with securing our data systems to let go and defer security to some decentralized network in which there is no identifiable authority to sue if something goes wrong. But doing so might just be the most important step they can take to improve data security. It will require them to think about security not as a function of superior encryption and other external protections, but in terms of economics, of making attacks so expensive that they’re not worth the effort.
This seems a bit repetitive with the previous couple of page, recommend slimming this down in the next edition. Also, there are several class action lawsuits underway (e.g., Ripple, Tezos) which do in fact attempt to identify specific individuals and corporations as being “authorities.” The Nano lawsuit also attempted to sue “core developers.”
On p. 46 they write:
A hacker could go after each device, try to steal the private key that’s used to initiate transactions on the decentralized network, and, if they’re lucky, get away with a few thousand dollars in bitcoin. But it’s far less lucrative and far more time-consuming than going after the rich target of a central server.
The ironic part of this is that generally speaking, the private keys controlling millions of bitcoins are being housed in trusted third parties / intermediaries right now. In some cases these are stored on a centralized server. In other cases, the cold wallet managed by hosting providers such as Xapo (which is rumored to secure $10 billion of bitcoin) does geographically split the keys apart into bunkers. Yet at some point those handling the mutli-sig do come together in order to move the coins to a hot wallet.12
On p. 47 they write:
It seems clear to us that the digital economy would benefit greatly from embracing the distributed trust architecture allowed by blockchains – whether it’s simply the data backups that a distributed system offers, or the more radical of an open system that’s protected by a high cost-to-payout ratio.
What does this mean? Are they saying to add proof-of-work to all types of distributed systems? It is only useful in the Bitcoin context in order to make it expensive to Sybil attack the network… because participants were originally unknown. Does that same problem exist in other environments that they are thinking of? More clarity should be added in the next edition.
On p. 48 they write:
The idea, one that’s also being pursued in different forms by startups such as Gem of Los Angeles and Blockchain Health of San Francisco, is that the patient has control over who sees their records.
This is one of the difficulties in writing a long-form book on this general topic right now: projects and companies frequently pivot.
For instance, a couple months after the book was published, Gem announced its “Universal Token Wallet,” a product which currently dominates its front page and social media accounts of the company. There have been no health care-related announcements from the company in over a year.
Similarly, Blockchain Health no longer exists. Its CEO left and joined Chia as a co-founder and the COO has joined the Neighborly team.
On p. 50 they write:
It was a jury-rigged solution that meant that the banking system, the centralized ledger-keeping solution with which society had solved the double-spend problem for five hundred years, would be awkwardly bolted onto the ostensibly decentralized Internet as its core trust infrastructure.
I think there are some legitimate complaints to made towards how online commerce evolved and currently exists but this seems a tad petty. As backwards as financial institutions are (rightly and wrongly) portrayed, it’s not like their decision makers sat around in the early ’90s trying to figure out how to make integrating the Web an awkward process.
On p. 50 they write:
Under this model, the banks charged merchants an interchange fee of around 3 percent to cover their anti-fraud costs, adding a hidden tax to the digital economy we all pay in the form of higher prices.
Again, like their statement above: there are some very legitimate gripes to be had regarding the existing oligopolistic payment systems, but this specific gripe is kind of petty.
Fraud exists and as a result someone has to pay for it. In the cryptocurrency world, there is no recourse because it is caveat emptor. In the world of courts and legal recourse, fees are levied to cover customer service including fraud and insurance. It may be possible to build a payment system in which there is legal recourse and simultaneously no oligopolistic rent seeking but this is not explored in the book. Also, for some reason the fee to miners is not brought up in this section, yet it is a real fee users must pay… yet they do not receive customer service as part of it.
Lastly, the Federal Reserve (and other central banks) monitor historical interchange fees. Not all users are charged the ~3% as mentioned in the book.
For instance (see below): Average Debit Card Interchange Fee by Payment Card Network
Source: Statista
On pages 52 and 53 they write uncritically about Marc Andresseen and VCs who have invested in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
a16z, the venture firm co-founded by Andresseen, arguably has a few areas that may be conflicts-of-interest with the various coin-related projects it has invested in and/or promoted the past several years (e.g., investing in coins which are listed on an exchange they also are an investor and board member of such as 0x). Those ties are not scrutinized in a chapter that attempts to create a black and white narrative: that the legacy players are centralized rent-seekers and the VCs are not. When we know empirically that some VCs, including a16z, have invested in what they believe will become monopolies of some kind.
On page 54 and 55 they write about “Code is not law,” a topic that I have likewise publicly presented on.
Specifically they state:
One risk is that regulators, confused by all these outside-the-box concepts, will overreact to some bad news – potentially triggered by large-scale investors losses if and when the ICO bubble bursts and exposes a host of scams. The fear is that a new set of draconian catchall measures would suck the life out of innovation in this space or drive it offshore or underground. To be sure, institutions like the Washington-based Coin Center and the Digital Chamber of Commerce are doing their best to keep officials aware of the importance of keeping their respective jurisdictions competitive in what is now a global race to lead the world in financial technology.
This is word for word what coin lobbyists have been pitching to policy makers around the world for years. Both Coin Center and Digital Chamber of Commerce lobby on behalf of their sponsors and donors to prevent certain oversight on the cryptocurrency market.13 An entire book could probably be written about how specific people within coin lobbying organizations have attempted to white wash and spin the narrative around illicit usage, using carefully worded talking points. And they have been effective because these authors do not question the motivations and agenda these special interest groups have.
Either way, Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies were born in the “underground” and even “offshore.” It is unclear what the authors are trying to excuse because if anything, regulators and law enforcement have arguably been very light handed in the US and most regions abroad.
If anything, once a foreign registered ICO or coin is created, often the parent company and/or foundation opens an office to recruit developers in San Francisco, New York, and other US cities. I know this because all the multiple “blockchain” events I have attended overseas the past two years in which organizers explain their strategy. The next edition of this book could explore this phenomenon.
On p. 57 they write:
By The DAO founders’ own terms, the attacker had done nothing wrong, in other words. He or she had simply exploited one of its features.
Excellent point that should be explored in further detail in the next edition. For instance, in Bitcoin there have been multiple CVEs which if exploited (at least one was) could have resulted in changes in the money supply. Is that a feature or a bug?
And the most recent one, found in pre-0.16.3, was partially downplayed and hidden to prevent others from knowing the extent of potential damage that could have been done.
On p. 59 they write:
The dependence on a trusted middleman, some cryptocurrency purists would argue, overly compromises a blockchain’s security function, rending it unreliable. For that reason, some of them say, a blockchain is inappropriate for many non-currency applications. We, however, view it as a trade-off and believe there’s still plenty of value in recording ownership rights and transfers to digitally represented real-world assets in blockchains.
I think this whole section should be reworded to describe:
On pages 59 and 60 they write:
Permissioned blockchains – those which require some authorized entity to approve the computers that validate the blockchain – by definition more prone to gatekeeping controls, and therefore to the emergence monopoly or oligopoly powers, than the persmissionless ideal that Bitcoin represents. (We say “ideal” because, as we’ll discuss in the next chapter, there are also concerns that aspects of Bitcoin’s software program have encouraged an unwelcome concentration of ownership – flaws that developers are working to overcome.)
It would be beneficial in the next edition to at least walk through two different “permissioned blockchains” so the reader can get an idea of how validators become validators in these chains. By not including them, each platform is painted in the same light.
And because they are still comparing it with Bitcoin (which was designed for a completely different type of use-case than ‘permissioned chains’ are), keep in mind that the way mining (block making) is done in 2018 is very different than when it was first proposed in the 2008 paper. Back then, mining included a machine that did two things: validated blocks and also generate proofs-of-work. Today, those two functions are completely separate and because of the relatively fierce competition at generating hashes, there are real exit and entry costs to the market.
In many cases, this means that both the mining pool operators and hash generators end up connecting their real world government-issued identities with their on-chain activity (e.g., block validation). It may be a stretch to say that there is an outright monopoly in mining today, but there is a definite trend towards oligopoly in manufacturing, block producing, and hash generation the past several years. This is not explored beyond a superficial level in the book.
On p. 60 they write:
Until law changes, banks would face insurmountable legal and regulatory opposition, for example, to using a system like Bitcoin that relies on an algorithm randomly assigning responsibility at different stages of the bookkeeping process to different, unidentifiable computers around the world.
This is another asinine comment because they don’t explicitly say which laws they would like changed. The authors make it sound like the PFMIs are holding the world back when the opposite is completely true. These principals and best practices arose over time because of the systemic impact important financial market infrastructures could have on society as a whole.
Proof-of-work chains, the ones that are continually promoted in this book, have no ability to prevent forks, by design. Anarchic chains like Bitcoin and Ethereum can only provide probabilistic finality. Yet commercial best practices and courts around the world demands definitive settlement finality. Why should commerce be captured by pseudonymous, unaccountable validators maintained in jurisdictions in which legal recourse is difficult if not impossible?
On p. 60 they continue:
But that doesn’t mean that other companies don’t have a clear interest in reviewing how these permissioned networks are set up. Would a distributed ledger system that’s controlled by a consortium of the world’s biggest banking institutions be incentivized to act in the interest of the general public it serves? One can imagine the dangers of a “too-big-to-fail blockchain” massive institutions could once again hold us hostage to bailouts because of failures in the combined accounting system.
This has been one of Michael Casey’s talking points for the past three years. I was even on a panel with him in January 2016 in which he called R3 a “cartelchain,” months before Corda even existed. His justified disdain towards traditional financial institutions — and those involved with technology being developed in the “permissioned” world — pops up throughout this book. I do think there are some valid critiques of consortia and permissioned chains and even Corda, but those aren’t presented in this edition of the book.
He does make two valid observations here as well: regulated commerce should have oversight. That is one of the reasons why many of the organizations developing “permissioned blockchains” have plans to or already have created separate legal entities to be regulated as some type of FMI.
The other point is that we should attempt to move away from recreating TBTF and SIFI scenarios. Unfortunately in some cases, “permissioned chains” are being pitched as re-enabler of that very scenario. In contrast, dFMI is a model that attempts to move away from these highly intermediated infrastructures. See also my new article on SICNs.
On p. 60 they write:
Either way, it’s incumbent upon us to ensure that the control over the blockchains of the future is sufficiently representative of broad-based interests and needs so that they don’t just become vehicles for collusion and oligpolistic power by the old guard of finance.
The ironic part of this statement is — while well-intended — because of economies of scale there is an oligopoly or even monopoly in most PoW-mined coins. It is unclear how or why that would change in the future. In addition, with the entrance of Bakkt, ErisX, Fidelity and other large traditional financial organizations (e.g., the old guard) into the cryptocurrency world, it is hard to see how “permissionless ecosystems” can prevent them from participating.
On p. 61 they write:
As we stated in The Age of Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was merely the first crack at using a distributed computing and decentralized ledger-keeping system to resolve the age-old problem of trust and achieve this open, low-cost architecture for intermediary-free global transactions.
But as the authors have stated elsewhere: proof-of-work chains are inherently costly. If they were cheap to maintain then they would be cheap to fork and reorg. You cannot simultaneously have a cheap (“efficient”) and secure PoW network… that’s a contradiction.
See:
Chapter 3
On pages 64 and 65 they provide a definition of a blockchain. I think this could be more helpful more earlier on in the book for newer audiences.
A few other citations readers may be interested in:
On p. 66 they write:
That way, no authorizing entity could block, retract, or decide what gest entered into the ledger, making it censorship resistant.
Could be worth referencing Eligius, a pool run by Luke-Jr. that would not allow Satoshi Dice transactions because its owners religious views.14
On p. 67 they write:
These computers are known as “miners,” because in seeking to win the ten-minute payout, they engage in a kind of computational treasure hunt for digital gold.
I understand the need to make simple analogies but the digital gold one isn’t quite right because gold does not have an inflexible supply whereas bitcoin does. I’ve pointed this out in other book reviews and it bears repeating because of how the narrative of e-cash to HODLing has changed over the last few years.1516
Readers may be interested of a few real life examples of perfectly inelastic supplies.
On p. 67 they write:
Proof of work is expensive, because it chews up both electricity and processing power. That means that if a miner wants to seize majority control of the consensus system by adding more computing power, they would have to spend a lot of money doing so.
This is correct. Yet six pages earlier they say it is a “low-cost” infrastructure. Needs to be a little more consistent in this book. Either PoW is resource intensive or it is not, it cannot be both.
On p. 68 they write:
Over time, bitcoin mining has evolved into an industrial undertaking, with gigantic mining “farms” now dominating the network. Might those big players collude and undermine the ledger by combining resources? Perhaps, but there are also overwhelming disincentives for doing so. Among other considerations, a successful attack would significantly undermine the value of all the bitcoins the attacking miner owns. Either way, no one has managed to attack Bitcoin’s ledger in nine years. That unbroken record continues to reinforce belief in Bitcoin’s cost-and-incentive security system.
It’s worth pointing out that there are ways to fork Bitcoin beyond the singular Maginot Line attack. As mentioned above, Bitcoin and many other coins have forked; see this history. Hundreds of coins have died due to lack of interest by miners and developers.
It could also be argued that between 2015-2017, Bitcoin underwent a social, off-chain attack by multiple different groups attempting to exert their own influence and ideology onto the ecosystem. The end result was a permanent fracture, a divorce which the principal participants still lob social media bombs at one another. There isn’t enough room to discuss it here, but the astroturfing actions by specific people and companies in order to influence others is worth looking into as well. And it worked.
On p. 71 they write:
The caveat, of course, is that if bad actors do control more than 50 percent of the computing power they can produce the longest chain and so incorporate fraudulent transactions, which other miners will unwittingly treat as legitimate. Still, as we’ve explained, achieving that level of computing power is prohibitively expensive. It’s this combination of math and money that keeps Bitcoin secure.
I probably would change some of the wording because with proof-of-work chains (and basically any cryptocurrency), there are no terms of service or end user license agreement or SLA. At most there is only de facto governance and certainly not de jure.
What does that mean? It means that we really can’t say who the “bad actors” are since there is no service agreement. Barring an administrator, who is the legitimate authority in the anarchic world of cryptocurrencies? The original pitch was: if miners want to choose to build on another tree or fork, it’s their decision to do so… they don’t need anyone’s permission to validate blocks and attempt to update the chain as they want to. The next edition should explicitly say who or what is an attacker or what a fraudulent transaction is… these are points I’ve raised in other posts and book reviews.
Also, the authors mention that computational resources involved in PoW are “prohibitively expensive” here. So again, to be consistent they likely should remove “low-cost” in other places.
On p. 71 and 72 they write:
In solving the double-spend problem, Bitcoin did something else important: it magically created the concept of a “digital asset.” Previously, anything digital was too easily replicated to be regarded as a distinct piece of property, which is why digital products such as music and movies are typically sold with licensing and access rights rather than ownership. By making it impossible to replicate something of value – in this case bitcoins – Bitcoin broke this conventional wisdom. It created digital scarcity.
No it did not. This whole passage is wrong. As we have seen with forks and clones, there really is no such thing as this DRM-for-money narrative. This should be removed in the next edition.
Scarcity effectively means rivalrous, yet anyone can copy and clone any of these anarchic chains. PoW might make it relatively expensive to do a block reorg on one specific chain, but it does not really prevent someone from doing what they want with an identically cloned chain.
For instance, here is a list of 44 Bitcoin forked tokens that arose between August 2017 and May 2018. In light of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash divorce, lobbying exchanges to recognize ticker symbols is also worth looking into in a future edition.
On p. 73 they write:
Many startups that were trying to build a business on top of Bitcoin, such as wallet providers and exchanges, were frustrated by an inability to process their customers’ transactions in a timely manner. “I’ve become a trusted third party,” complained Wences Casares, CEO of bitcoin wallet and custodial service Xapo. Casares was referring to the fact that too many of his firms’ transactions with its customers had to be processed “off-chain” on faith that Xapo would later settle the transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain.
This is one of the most honest statements in the book. The entire cryptocurrency ecosystem is now dominated by intermediaries.
Interestingly, Xapo moved its main office from Palo Alto to Switzerland days after Ripple was fined by FinCEN for violating the BSA. Was this just a coincidence?
On p. 73 they wrote:
Making blocks bigger would require more memory, which would make it even more expensive to operate a miner, critics pointed out. That could drive other prospective miners away, and leave Bitcoin mining even more concentrated among a few centralized players, raising the existential threat of collusion to undermine the ledger.
This wasn’t really the argument being made by the “small blockers.” Rather, it was disk space (not memory) that was — at the time — perceived as a limitation for retail (home) users in the long run. Yet it has been a moot point for both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash as the price per gigabyte for a hard drive continues to decline over time… and because in the past year, on-chain transactions on both chains have fallen from their peak in December 2017.
In practice, the “miners” that that authors refer to are the roughly 15 to 20 or so mining pools that in a given day, create the blocks that others build on. Nearly all of them maintain these nodes at a cloud provider. So there is already a lot of trust that takes place (e.g., AWS and Alibaba are trusted third parties). Because of economies of scale, spinning up a node (computer) in AWS is relatively inexpensive.
It really isn’t discussed much in the book, but the main argument throughout the 2nd half of 2017 was about UASF — a populist message which basically said miners (mining pools) didn’t really matter. Followers of this philosophy emphasized the need to run a node at home. For instance, if a UASF supporter based in rural Florida is attempting to run a node from his home, there could be a stark difference between the uptime and bandwidth capacity he has at home versus what AWS provides.
On p. 74 they write:
Without a tally of who’s who and who owns what, there was no way to gauge what the majority of the Bitcoin community, composed of users, businesses, investors, developers, and miners, wanted. And so, it all devolved into shouting matches on social media.
I wrote about this phenomenon in Appendix A in a paper published in November 2015. And what eventually happened was a series of off-chain Sybil attacks by several different tribes, but especially by promoters of UASF who spun up hundreds — thousands of nodes — and acted as if those mattered.
Future editions should also include a discussion on what took place at the Hong Kong roundtable, New York agreement, and other multilateral governance-related talks prior to the Bitcoin Cash fork.
On p. 74 they write:
A hard-fork-based software change thus poses a do-or-die decision for users on whether to upgrade or not. That’s bad enough for, say, word processing software, but for a currency it’s downright problematic. A bitcoin based on the old version could not be transferred to someone running software that support the new version. Two Bitcoins. Two versions of the truth.
The authors actually accidentally proved my earlier point: that public chains, specifically, proof-of-work chains, cannot prevent duplication or forks. Proof-of-work only makes it resource intensive to do double-spend on one specific chain.
This is one of the reasons why regulated financial organizations likely will continue to not issue long lifecycle instruments directly onto an anarchic chain like Bitcoin: because by design, PoW chains are forkable.
Also, future editions may want to modify this language because there are some counterarguments from folks like Vitalik Buterin that state: because hard forks are opt-in and thus lead to cleaner long-term outcomes (e.g., less technical debt).
On p. 75 they write a lot about Lightning Network, stating:
So, there are no miners’ fees to pay and no limit on how many transaction can be done at any time. The smart contracts prevent users from defrauding each other while the Bitcoin blockchain is used solely as a settlement layer, recording new balance transactions whenever a channel is opened or closed. It persists as the ultimate source of proof, a guarantee that all the “off-chain” Lightning transactions are legitimate.
What is not discussed in this edition is that:
Also, it bears mentioning that Bitcoin cannot in its current form act as a legal “settlement layer” as it cannot provide definitive settlement finality as outlined in the PFMIs (principle #8).
On p. 75 they write:
The SegWit/Lightning combination was in their minds the responsible way to make changes. They had a duty, they believed, to avoid big, disruptive codebase alterations and instead wanted to encourage innovators to develop applications that would augment the powers of the limited foundational code. It’s a classic, security-minded approach to protocol development: keep the core system at the bottom layer of the system simple, robust, and hard to change – some of the words “deliberately dumb” – and thus force innovation “up the stack” to the “application layer.” When it works you get the best of both worlds: security and innovation.
The authors should revise this because this is just repeating the talking points of specific Core developers, especially the last line.
Empirically it is possible to create a secure and “innovative” platform… and do so with multiple implementations of a specification. We see that in other cryptocurrencies and blockchain-related development efforts including Ethereum. The Bitcoin Core participants do not have a monopoly on what is or is not “security minded” and several of them are vocally opposed to supporting multiple implementations, in part, because of the politics around who controls the BIP process.
In fact, it could be argued that by insisting on the SegWit/Lightning approach, they caused a disruption because in point of fact, the amount of code that needed to be changed to increase the block size is arguably less than what was needed to build, verify, and release SegWit.
It’s not worth wading deep into these waters in this review, but the next edition of this book should be more even handed towards this schism.
On p. 76 they write:
But a group of miners with real clout was having none of it. Led by a Chinese company that both mined bitcoin and produced some of the most widely used mining equipment, this group was adamantly opposed to SegWit and Lightning. It’s not entirely clear what upset Jihan Wu, CEO of Bitmain, but after lining up with early Bitcoin investor and prominent libertarian Roger Ver, he launched a series of lobbying efforts to promote bigger blocks. One theory was that Bitmain worried that an “off-chain” Lightning solution would siphon away transaction fees that should be rightly going to miners; another was that because such payment channel transactions weren’t traceable as on-chain transactions, Chinese miners were worried that their government might shut them down. Bitmain’s reputation suffered a blow when revelations emerged that its popular Ant-miner mining rigs were being shipped to third-party miners with a “backdoor” that allowed the manufacturer-cum-miner to shut its opponents’ equipment down. Conspiracy theories abounded: Bitmain was planning to subvert SegWit. The company denied this and vowed to disable the feature. But trust was destroyed.
There is a lot of revisionism here.
But to start with, in the process of writing this review I reached out and contacted both Roger Ver and separately an advisor at Bitmain. Both told me that neither of the authors of this book had reached out to them for any comment. Why would the authors freely quote Bitcoin Core / SegWit developers to get their side of this debate but not reach out to speak with two prominent individuals from the other side to get their specific views? The next edition should either include these views and/or heavily revise this section of the book.
There are a few other problems with this passage.
Multiple different groups were actively lobbying and petitioning various influential figures (such as exchange operators) during this time period, not just Jihan and Roger. For instance, as mentioned above, the Hong Kong roundtable and New York agreement were two such examples. Conversely, SegWit and UASF was heavily promoted and lobbied by executives and affiliates at Blockstream and a handful of other organizations.
Regarding this “backdoor,” let’s rewind the clock and look at the overt / covert tempest in a teapot.
Last April Bitmain was alleged by Greg Maxwell (and the Antbleed campaign) of having maybe kinda sorta engaged in something called covert mining via Asicboost. Jimmy Song and others looked into it and said that there was no evidence covert was happening. At the time, some of the vocal self-identified “small block” supporters backing UASF, used this as evidence that Bitmain was a malicious Byzantine actor that must be purged from Bitcoinland. At the time, Greg proposed changing the PoW function in Bitcoin in order to prevent covert Asicboost from working.
In its defense, Bitmain stated that while Asicboost had been integrated into the mining equipment, it was never activated… partly because of the uncertain international IP / patent claims surrounding Asicboost. Recently, they announced a firmware upgrade that miners could activate overt Asicboost… a few days after another organization did (called “braiins”).
So why revisit this?
Two months ago Sia released code which specifically blocked mining equipment from Bitmain and Innosilicon. How and why this action is perceived as being fair or non-political is very confusing… they are definitely picking favorites (their own hardware). Certainly can’t claim to be sufficiently decentralized, right?
Yet in this section of the book, they don’t really touch on how key participants within the tribes and factions, represented at the time. Peruse both lists and look at all of the individuals at the roundtable that claim to represent “Bitcoin Core” in the governance process versus (the non-existent) reps from other implementations.
Even though the divorce is considered over, the tribes still fling mud at one another.
For example, one of the signatories of the HK roundtable, Adam Back, is still heckling Bitmain for supposedly not being involved in the BIP process. Wasn’t participation supposed to be “voluntary” and “permissionless”? Adam is also now fine with “overt” Asicboost today but wasn’t okay with it 18 months ago. What changed? Why was it supposedly bad for Bitmain to potentially use it back then but now it’s kosher because “braiins” (Slush) is doing it? That seems like favoritism.
Either way, the book passage above needs to be rewritten to include views from other camps and also to remove the still unproven conspiracy theories.
On p. 76 they write:
Meanwhile, original bitcoin went on a tear, rallying by more than 50 percent to a new high above $4,400 over a two-week period. The comparative performance of the pair suggested that small-block BTC and the SegWit reformers had won.
The next edition should change the wording because this comes across one-sided.
While an imperfect comparison, a more likely explanation is that of a Keynesian beauty contest. Most unsophisticated retail investors had heard of Bitcoin and hadn’t heard of Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin (BTC) has brand recognition while Bitcoin Cash and the dozens of other Bitcoin-named forks and clones, did not.
Based on anecdotes, most coin speculators do not seem to care about the technical specifications of the coins they buy and typically keep the coins stored on an intermediary (such as an exchange) with the view that they can sell the coins later to someone else (e.g., “a greater fool“).
On p. 77 they write:
Bitcoin had gone through a ridiculous circus, one that many outsiders naturally assumed would hurt its reputation and undermine its support. Who wants such an ungovernable currency? Yet here was the original bitcoin surging to new heights and registering a staggering 650 percent gain in less than twelve months.
The problem with cherry picking price action dates is that, as seen in the passage above, it may not age well.17
For example, during the write-up of this review, the price of bitcoin declined from where it was a year ago (from over $10,000 then down to around $4,000). What does that mean? We can all guess what happened during this most recent bubble, but to act like non-tech savvy retail buyers bought bitcoin (BTC) because of SegWit is a non sequitur. No one but the tribalists in the civil war really cared.
On p. 77 they write:
Why? Well, for one, Bitcoin had proven itself resilient. Despite its civil war, its blockchain ledger remained intact. And, while it’s hard to see how the acrimony and bitterness was an advantage, the fact that it had proven so difficult to alter the code, to introduce a change to its monetary system, was seen by many as an important test of Bitcoin’s immutability.
There are a few issues here.
What do the authors mean by the “blockchain ledger remained intact”? I don’t think it was ever a question over whether or not copies of the Bitcoin blockchain (and/or forks thereof) would somehow be deleted. Might want to reword this in the future.
Segwit2x / Bitcoin Cash proponents were not trying to introduce a change to Bitcoin’s monetary system. The supply schedule of bitcoins would have stayed the same. The main issue was: a permanent block size increase from 1 MB to at least 2 MB. That proposal, if enacted, would not have changed the money supply.
What do the authors mean by “Bitcoin’s immutability”? The digital signatures are not being reversed or changed and that is what provides transactions the characteristic of “immutability.”
It is likely that the authors believe that a “hard fork” means that Bitcoin is not immutable. That seems to conflate “immutability” of a digital signature with finality (meaning irreversibility). By design, no proof-of-work coin can guarantee finality or irreversibility.
Also, Bitcoin had more than a dozen forks prior to the block size civil war.
On p. 77 and 78 they write:
Solid censorship resistance was, after all, a defining selling point for Bitcoin, the reason why some see the digital currency becoming a world reserve asset to replace the outdated, mutable, fiat-currency systems that still run the world. In fact, it could be argued that this failure to compromise and move forward, seen by outsiders as Bitcoin’s biggest flaw, might actually be its biggest feature. Like the simple, unchanging codebase of TCP/IP, the gridlocked politics of the Bitcoin protocol were imposing secure rigidity on the system and forcing innovation up the stack.
This is not what “censorship resistance” means in the context of Bitcoin. Censorship resistance is narrow and specific to what operators of miners could do. Specifically, the game theory behind Nakamoto Consensus is that it would be costly (resource intensive) for a malicious (Byzantine) actor to try and attempt to permanently censor transactions due to the amount of hashrate (proof-of-work) a Byzantine actor would need to control (e.g., more than 50%).
In contrast, what the authors described in this book was off-chain censorship, such as lobbying by various special interest groups at events, flamewars on Twitter, removing alternative views and voices on reddit, and via several other forms.
The “world reserve asset” is a loaded phrase that should be clarified in the next edition because the passage above comes across a bit like an Occupy Wall Street speech. It needs more of an explanation beyond the colorful one sentence it was given. Furthermore, as I predicted last year, cryptocurrencies continue to rely on the unit-of-account of “fiat systems” and shows no signs of letting up in this new era of “stablecoins.”
The authors definitely need to remove the part that says “unchanging codebase of TCP/IP” because this is not true. TCP/IP is a suite of protocol standards and its constituent implementations continue to evolve over time. There is no single monolithic codebase that lies unchanged since 1974 which is basically the takeaway from the passage above.18
In fact, several governing bodies such as IFTF and IAB continue to issue RFCs in order to help improve the quality-of-service of what we call the internet. It is also worth pointing out that their analogy is flawed for other reasons discussed in: Intranets and the Internet. In addition, the next version of HTTP won’t be using TCP.
As far as whether innovation will move “up the stack” remains to be seen but this seems to be an argument that the ends justify the means. If that is the case, that appears to open up a can of worms beyond the space for this review.
On p. 78 there is a typo: “BTH” instead of “BCH”
On p. 78 they write:
That’s what BTC, the original Bitcoin, promises with its depth of talent at Core and elsewhere. BTH can’t access such rich inventiveness because the community of money-focused bitcoin miners can’t attract the same kinds of passionate developers.
Strongly recommend removing this passage because it comes across as a one-sided marketing message rather than a balanced or neutral explanation using metrics. For instance, how active are the various code repositories for Bitcoin Core, Unlimited, and others? The next edition should attempt to measure how to measure “depth.”
For example, Bitmain has invested $50 million into a new fund focused on Bitcoin Cash called “Permissionless Ventures.” 2-3 years from now, what are the outcomes of that portfolio?
On p. 78 they write about permissioned blockchains:
Under these arrangements, some authority, such as a consortium of banks, choose which entities get to participate in the validation process. It is, in many respects, a step backward from Nakamoto’s achievement, since it makes the users of that permissioned system dependent once again, on the say-so of some trusted third party.
This is a common refrain throughout the book: that the true innovation was Bitcoin.
But it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. Both worlds can and will co-exist because they were designed for different operating environments. Bitcoin cannot provide the same finality guarantees that “permissioned chains” attempt to do… because it was designed to be forkable. That’s not necessarily a flaw because Satoshi wasn’t trying to create a solution to a problem banks had. It’s okay to be different.
On p. 79 they write:
Most importantly, permissioned blockchains are more scalable than Bitcoin’s, at least for now, since their governance doesn’t depend upon the agreement of thousands of unidentified actors around the world; their members can simply agree to increase computing power whenever processing needs rise.
This doesn’t make sense at all. “Permissioned chains” in the broadest sense, do not use proof-of-work. As a result, there is no computational arms race. Not once have I been in a governance-related meeting involving banks in which they thought the solution to a governance-related issue was increasing or decreasing computational power. It is a non sequitur and should be removed in the next edition.
Also, there are plenty of governance issues involving “permissioned chains” — but those are typically tangential to the technical challenges and limitations around scaling a blockchain.
On p. 79 they write:
To us, permissionless systems pose the greatest opportunity. While there may well be great value in developing permissioned blockchains as an interim step toward a more open system, we believe permissionlessness and open access are ideals that we should strive for – notwithstanding the challenges exposed by Bitcoin’s “civil war.”
The authors repeat this statement in a couple other areas in the book and it doesn’t really make sense. Why? Because it is possible for both operating environments to co-exist. It doesn’t have to be us versus them. This is a false dichotomy.
Also, if any of these “permissioned chains” are actually put into production, it could be the case that end users could have “open access” to the platform, with the exception of participating in the validation of blocks. That’s pretty much how most coin users experience a cryptocurrency network today (e.g., via permissioned endpoints on Coinbase).19
On p. 80 they write:
The problem was that Bitcoin’s single-purpose currency design wasn’t ideally suited for these non-currency applications.
A side note maybe worth mentioning in a footnote is that Satoshi did attempt to build a marketplace early on but gave up.
On p. 81 they mention Nick Szabo with respect to smart contracts. Could be worth exploring the work of Martín Abadi which predates Szabo (the idea of distributed programs that perform authorizations predates Szabo’s “smart contracts”). Mark S Miller has also done work in this area.
On p. 82 they write about Ethereum:
“Android for decentralized apps.” It would be an open platform much like Google’s smartphone operating system, on which people could design any new application they wanted and run it, not on a single company-owned server but in a decentralized manner across Ethereum’s ownerless network of computers.
This is probably not the best analogy because there is a difference between Google Android and Android Open Source Project. One of them includes proprietary tech. Also, Google can and does add and remove applications from the Play store on a regular basis based on its terms and conditions.
Lastly, someone does in fact own each of the computers that constitute the Ethereum blockchain… mining farms are owned by someone, mining pools are owned by someone, validating nodes are owned by someone. And so forth.
On p. 82 they write about Vitalik Buterin:
Now he was building a universally accessible, decentralized global supercomputer.
The next edition should drop the “supercomputer” verbiage because the Ethereum chain is only as powerful as the least powerful mining pool node… which in practice is typically a common computer located in a cloud provider such as AWS. This isn’t something like Summit over at Oak Ridge.
On p. 82 they write:
Now, with more than six hundred decentralized applications, or Dapps, running on Ethereum, he is looking vindicated. In just the first eleven months of 2017, the system’s internal currency, ether, rose from just over $8 to more than $400. By then the entire market cap for ether stood at $39 billion, a quarter that of Bitcoin’s. The success has made the wunderkind Buterin an instant multi-millionaire and turned him into a cultlike figure for the holders of ether and related tokens who’ve become rich.
The next version of the book should explicitly spell out what are the metrics for success. If it is solely price of a coin going up, what happens when the price of the coins goes down like it has in the past year?
For instance, ether (ETH), peaked in mid-January at around $1,400 and has been hovering near $100 the past several weeks. Does that mean Vitalik is no longer vindicated? Also, what is he vindicated from?
Lastly, it would be worth exploring in the next edition what Dapps are currently being used on a regular basis. As of this writing, the most popular Dapps are gambling apps (like proof-of-weak-hands / FOMO3D) and a few “decentralized exchanges” (DEX).
On p. 82 they write:
Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin only added to the complexity when he setup ConsenSys, a Brooklyn-based think tank-like business development unit tasked with developing new use cases and applications of the technology.
ConsenSys markets itself as a “venture studio” — a bit like YCombinator which incubates projects and provides some seed financing to get it off the ground. These projects are typically referred to as “spokes” (like a hub-and-spoke model). As of this writing there are over 1,100 employees spread across several dozen spokes. There is more to it than that and it would be interesting to see it explored in the next edition.
On p. 83 they write:
For example, the Parity Wallet, which was designed by Ethereum co-founder and lead architect Gavin Wood as a way to seamlessly engage, via a browser, with Ethereum smart contracts, lost $30 million in a hack.
Actually, Parity had a couple issues in 2017 and it is likely that the book may have been sent to publication around the same time the bigger problem occurred on November 13, 2017. The second one involved a Parity-developed multisig wallet… and $150 million in ether that is now locked away and cannot be accessed (barring a hardfork). Most developers — including those at Parity — characterize this instance as a “bug” that was accidentally exploited by a developer.
On p. 84 they write:
These kinds of dynamics, with large amounts of money at stake, can foster concerns that founders’ interests are misaligned with other users. Ethereum’s answer was the not-for-profit Ethereum Foundation, which was tasked with managing the pool of ether and other assets from the pre-mine and pre-sale- a model since used by many of the ICO token sales.
It would be interesting to explore how this foundation was created and how it evolved and who manages it today. For instance, at one point in 2014 there were conversations around creating a commercial, for-profit entity led in part by Charles Hoskinson who later left and founded Cardano.
On p. 85 they write about The DAO:
After a few modest coding changes failed, they settled on a drastic fix: Ethereum’s core developers “hard-forked” the Ethereum blockchain, implementing a backward-incompatible software update that invalidated all of the attacker’s transactions from a certain date forward. It was a radical move. To many in the cryptocurrency community, it threw into question Ethereum’s all-important claim to immutability. If a group of developers can force a change in the ledger to override the actions of a user, however unsavory those actions are, how can you trust that ledger won’t be tampered with or manipulated again in the interest of one group over another? Does that not destroy the whole value proposition?
This passage should probably be revised because of the usage of the word immutable.
Also, it could be argued that Bitcoin Core and other “core” groups act as gate keepers to the BIP process (or its equivalent) could lobby on behalf of special interest groups to push specific code changes and/or favor certain outcomes on behalf of specific stakeholders.
In either case, it is the miners that ultimately install and use the code. While some developers (like Bitcoin Core) are highly influential, without miners installing and running software, the rules on the network cannot be changed.
See Sufficiently Decentralized Howeycoins.
On p. 85 they write:
Well, in many respects, the Ethereum team operated as policymakers do during real-world crises. They made hard decisions that hurt some but were ultimately taken in the interests of the greater good — determined, hopefully, through as democratic a process as possible. The organizers went to great lengths to explain and gain support for the hard fork.
The next edition should strive to be more specific here: what exactly made the decision making around the hard fork democratic. Who participated, who didn’t participate. And so forth.
Continuing on p. 85:
And, much like the Segwit2x and other Bitcoin reform pro-miners didn’t accept it. For all intents and purposes, the fix was democratic – arguably, much more so than non-participatory democratic models through which crisis policymaking is enacted by national governments. And since Ethereum is more of a community of software engineers than of cryptocurrency investors, it was less contentious than Bitcoin’s struggle over hard-fork proposals.
This makes very little sense as it is written because the authors don’t define or specify what exactly made any of the decision making democratic. Who was enfranchised? Who got to vote and make decision? Also, how do the authors know that Ethereum is “more of a community of software engineers than of cryptocurrency investors.” Is there any hard numbers to back that assertion up?
And lastly how do we measure the level of contentiousness? Is there an objective measure out there?
On p. 85 they write about Ethereum Classic:
This created much confusion and some interesting arbitrage opportunities – as well as some lessons for bitcoin traders when their own currency split two years later – but it can also be viewed as the actions of a dissenting group non-violently exercising their right to secede. More than a year later, Ethereum Classic is still around, though it trades at a small fraction of Ethereum’s value, which means The DAO attacker’s funds – whose movements on the public Ethereum blockchain have been closely watched – are of lower value than if they’d been preserved in ETH.
I don’t think we can really say for sure how much the The DAO fund (and child DAO fundss) would be worth since that is an alternative timeline.
Also, there are some vocal maximalists that have created various Ethereum-branded tribes which are okay with The DAO attacker having access to those funds. Will be interesting to see if there are any sociological studies to reference in a new edition.
On p. 86 they write:
These hacks, and the scrambles to fix them, seem nuts, right? But let’s put them in perspective. First, is this monetary chaos anything less unsettling than the financial crisis of 2008? Or the audacity of the subsequent Wall Street trading scandals?
This is a whataboutism. Also, strangely the authors are saying the bar for judgement is as low as the financial engineering and socialized loses of the GFC. Isn’t the narrative that cryptocurrencies are supposed to be held to a higher standard because the coin creators seek to architect a world that doesn’t have arbitrary decision making?
On p. 87 and 88 they write:
When the FBI auctioned the 144,000 bitcoins (worth $1.4 billion as of late November 2017) that it seized from Ross Ulbricht, the convicted mastermind of the Silk Road illicit goods marketplace, those coins fetched a significantly higher price than others in the market. The notion was that hey had now been “whitewashed” by the U.S. government. In comparison, other bitcoins with a potentially shady past should be worth less because of the risk of future seizure. That’s hardly fair: imagine if the dollar notes in your wallet were hit with a 10 percent tax because the merchant knew that five years ago, unbeknownst to you, they had been handled by a drug dealer. To avoid these distortions and create a cryptocurrency that works more like fungible cash, Wilcox’s Zcash uses sophisticated “zero-knowledge proofs” to allow miners to prove that holders of the currency aren’t’ double-spending without being able to trace the addresses.
What the authors likely mean by “whitewashed” is probably “cleansed.” In the US there have been discussions on how this could take place via the existing Uniform Commercial Code (see Section 3.3). To date, there hasn’t been a specific update to the UCC regarding this issue (yet) but it has been discussed in multiple places such as Bitcoin’s lien problem.
As far as the “fairness” claim goes, it could be worth revising the passage to include a discussion around nemo dat quod non habet and bona fide purchasers. Legal tender is explicitly exempt because of the very scenario the authors describe. But cryptocurrencies aren’t legal tender, so that exemption doesn’t exist (yet).
Lastly, only “shielded” transactions in Zcash provide the functionality described in the passage above… not all transactions on Zcash utilize and opt-in to this mode.
On p. 89 they describe EOS. Worth updating this section because to-date, they have not achieved the 50,000 transactions per second on mainnet that is stated in the book. There has also been a bit of churn in the organizations as Ian Grigg (named in the book) is no longer at the organization, nor are employees 2 through 5.
On p. 90 they write about proof-of-stake:
One criticism of the model has been that without the electricity consumption costs of proof of work, attackers in a proof-of-stake system would simply mine multiple blocks to boost their chances of inserting a fraudulent one into the ledger.
This “nothing at stake” scenario is a valid criticism of some early attempts at building a proof-of-stake mechanism but isn’t valid for some other proposals (such as, theoretically, “Slasher“).
Chapter 4
On p. 91 they write:
It was clear that investors bought into Brave’s promise of a token that could fundamentally change the broken online advertising industry.
How do we know this was clear to investors? Anecdotally it appears that at least some investors participated as speculators, with the view that the token price would increase. A future edition should probably change the wording unless there is a reference that breaks down the motivation of the investors.
What about Civil?
On p. 96 they write about StorJ
Other models include that of the decentralized computer storage platform Storj, which allows hard-drive-starved users to access other’s excess space in exchange for storj tokens.
Could be worth pointing out that Storj had two public ICOs and it is still unclear if that will result in legal or regulatory issues. Putting that aside, currently Storj has just under 3,000 users. This stat is worth looking at again in future versions, especially in light of less-than-favorable reviews.
On p. 98 they talk about BAT:
The point is that it’s all on the community – the society of BATs users – not on external investors, to bear the risk of that happening
[…]
Once the 1 billion tokens had sold out in twenty-four seconds, it was revelead that only 130 accounts got them and that the biggest twenty holdings covered more than two-thirds of the total. Those distortions left many investors angry.
There is currently a debate around whether these types of ICOs in 2017 (and earlier) were investment contracts (e.g., securities). In the US, this has led to more than a hundred subpoenas with some quiet (and not so quiet) enforcement action.
The language used in this chapter (and elsewhere in the book) suggests that the participants involved in the ICO were investing with the expectation of profit in a common enterprise managed by the Brave team. Worth revisiting in a future edition.
On p. 102 they write about ERC20 tokens:
But because of the ERC-20 solution, they didn’t need to develop their own blockchain with all the independent computing power that would require. Instead, Ethereum’s existing computing network would do the validation for them.
This piggybacking may be initially helpful to token issuers but:
On p. 102 they write:
This low-cost solution to the double-spending challenge launched a factory of ICOs as issuers found an easy way to tap a global investing community. No painful negotiations with venture capitalists over dilution and control of the board. No wining and dining of Wall Street investment banks to get them to put their clients on the order book. No wait for SEC approval. Just straight to the general public: here are more tokens; they’re cool, buy them. It was a simple, low-cost formula and it lowered the barrier to entry for some brilliant innovators to bring potentially world-changing ideas to market. Unfortunately, it was also a magnet for scammers.
Could be worth updating this section to include more details on the scams and fraud that took place throughout 2017. Many of the tokens that raised capital from outside investors during this time not only have not delivered a working product, but in most cases, the token underperformed both ether and bitcoin.
Also bears mentioning that beginning in late 2017 through the time of this writing, there was a clear divergence between public sale ICOs and private sale of tokens… the latter of which basically involves a private placement to accredited investors, including the same type of funds that the passage above eschewed.
On p. 104 they write about Gnosis:
With the other 95 percent controlled by the founders, those prices meant that the implied valuation of the entire enterprise stood at $300 million – a figure that soon rose above $1 billion as the Gnosis token promptly quadrupled in price in the secondary market. By Silicon Valley standards, it meant we had the first ICO “unicorn.”
Actually, Ethereum did an ICO back in 2014 — and as the price of ether (measured in USD) increased, it is likely that ETH could be seen as the first ICO “unicorn.” But that’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison though because ETH (or Gnosis) holders do not have say, voting rights, which equity holders of a traditional company would. Plus, “marketcap” is a poorly defined metric in the coin world (see Section 6).
On p. 104 and 105 they write:
One day, Paul received a call from a businessman who’d read one of his stories in The Wall Street Journal and wanted more information about how to get started and where to get legal advice. The man said he’d tried to reach the lawyer Marco Santori, a partner at the law firm Cooley who’d been quoted in the story, but couldn’t get through. Santori later told us that he was getting so many calls about ICOs, he simply couldn’t answer them all.
In January 2018, the SEC Chairman gave a public speech in which he singled out the “gatekeepers” (legal professionals) regarding the advice they gave clients. Could be worth revisiting who the main ICO-focused lawyers and lawfirms were during this time period and where they are now and if there were any enforcement actions undertaken.
On p. 105 they write:
“Most of these will fail,” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, the CEO of Polychain Capital, citing poorly conceived ideas and a lack of coding development. “Most of these are bad ideas from the beginning.” That said, Polychain is an investment firm that Carlson-Wee founded expressly to invest in these new projects. In fact, most of the people investing seemed to be taking a very VC-like approach to it. They understood that most of the projects would fail. They just hoped to have a few chips down on the one winner.
Carlson-Wee’s comments seem accurate insofar as the inability of many projects to execute and deliver based on the narratives each pitched investors. However, it could be worth digging into Polychain itself, which among other drama, may have “flipped” tokens due to a lack of lock-up periods.20 21
On p. 108 and 109 they compare Blue Apron and block.one (EOS). Even though it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison could be worth revisiting this in the future because of the churn and drama with both organizations.
Pages 110 and 111 aged quickly as most of the ICO rating websites and newsletters have fallen to the wayside due to payola scandals and inability to trust the motivations behind the ratings.
Similarly, the authors describe accredited investors and SAFTs. There is a typo here as the authors likely mean that an individual needs to have an income of $200,000 not $200 million. The SAFT model has fallen out of favor for several reasons that could be explored in a future version.22
On p. 112 they write about ASICs:
But developers of Vertcoin have shown that it’s also possible to create a permanent commitment to ASIC-resistance by introducing something from the real, non-digital world of social organizations: a pact. If the platform’s governing principles include a re-existing commitment from all users of the coin to accept a fork – a change to the code – that would add new, ASIC-resistant elements as soon as someone develops such a chip, the coin’s community can protect the distributed, democratic structure of a GPU-led mining network.
Putting aside the fanciful ASIC-resistance utopia that is peddled by some coin issuers, the passage above raises a couple flags.
Who gets to decide what the governing principles are? Do these principles get to change overtime? If the answer is yes to either, who are those decision makers and how are they chosen? So far, there has not really been any “democratic” way of participating in that decision making process for any cryptocurrency. How can that change in the future?
Why is a GPU-led mining network considered more democratic? In practice, most of these farms are located in basically the same type of structure and geography as ASIC-based equipment… in some cases they are swapped out over time. In light of the Sia coin fork… which clearly shows favoritism at play, a future edition of the book could include a chart or spectrum explaining how the mining of one coin more or less democratic versus another.
On p. 113 there is more discussion of ICOs and token sales as it relates to “open protocols” but in practice it has largely been reinventing the same intermediated system we have to do, but with fewer check and balances or even recourse for retail investors.
On p. 114 they speculate that:
This speaks to our broader notion that tokens, by incentivizing the preservation of public goods, might help humanity solve the Tragedy of the Commons, a centuries-in-the-making shift in economic reality.
That’s a big claim that requires evidence to back it. Let’s revisit next time.
On p. 115 they write:
Much like Wall Street bond traders, these will “make markets” to bring financial liquidity to every countervailing pair of tokens – buying some here and selling other there – so that if anyone wants to trade 100 BATs for a third of a Jackson Pollock, they can be assured of a reasonable market price.
But how does a blockchain actually do this? They mention Lykke as an startup that could help match tokens at a fair price… but to-date there is nothing listed on Lykke that really stands out as different than what you could fine at other cryptocurrency exchanges. Perhaps a future version of the book could walk the reader step-by-step through how a blockchain can enable this type of “fairness” whereas previous technology could not.
On p. 116 they discuss several projects they label as “interoperability” initiatives including Interledger, Cosmos, sidechains, and Lightning. It may be helpful for the reader to see a definition for what “interoperability” means because each of these projects — and its supporters — may be using the term in a different way. Perhaps a comparison chart showing the similarities and differences?
On p. 117 they write:
In an age where U.S. presidents peddle “alternative facts” and pundits talk openly about our “post-truth society,” using the truth machine to put a value on honesty sounds appealing.
On the face of it, that end goal seems like more than a stretch because it’s unclear how a blockchain (today) controls off-chain behavior. The example they go on to use is Augur. But Augur is a futures market and there are many of those already in existence. How would Augur or a futures market “with a blockchain” prevent politicians from lying? Walking through this process could be helpful to the reader.
On p. 118 they mention Erick Miller’s investment fund called CoinCircle… and a couple of “special value tokens” called Ocean Health Coin and Climate Coin.
Maybe worth following up in the next edition because neither has launched and each of the pitches sounds very handwavy, lacking in substance. Also, one of the ICOs CoinCircle advised – Unikrn – is part of a class action lawsuit.
Most of p. 119 and 120 come across as more political discourse, which is fine… but unclear how a blockchain in some form or fashion could directly impact the various issues raised. Perhaps the next edition could include a chart with a roadmap in how they see various projects achieving different milestones?
Chapter 5
If the reader is unfamiliar with IoT then the first 1/3 of chapter five is pretty helpful and informative.
Then there are some speedbumps.
On p. 130 they write about authenticating and verifying transactions involving self-driving cars:
The question, though, is: would this transaction be easily processed if it were based on a private blockchain? What are the chances, in a country of more than 230 million cars, that both vehicles would belong to the same closed network run by a group of permissioned validating computers? If they weren’t part of the same network, the payment couldn’t go through as the respective software would not be interoperable.
This is a red herring. Both “permissioned” and “permissionless” blockchains have similar (though not identical) scaling challenges. And interoperability is a separate issue which has been a known hurdle for years.
In fact, recently the Hyperledger Fabric team announced that it now supports the EVM. This comes a couple weeks after Hyperledger joined EEA as a member and vice-versa. Maybe none of these immediate efforts and experiments amount to many tangible outputs in the short-run but it does show that several ecosystems are attempting to be less tribal and more collaborative.
Also, the issue of payments is also separate from a blockchain-related infrastructure. Payments is a broad term and can include, for instance, a proposed central bank digital currency (e.g., “cash on ledger”)… or it can involve plugging into existing external payment systems (like Visa or ACH). It would be helpful if the next edition was more specific.
Continuing on p. 130 they write:
Other car manufacturers might not want to use a permissioned verification system for which, say GM, or Ford, is the gatekeeper. And if they instead formed a consortium of carmakers to run the system, would their collective control over this all-important data network create a barrier to entry for newer, startup carmakers? Would it effectively become a competition-killing oligopoly?
These are possible scenarios and good questions but this is kind of an unfair characterization of consortia. Let’s flip it around: why shouldn’t carmakers be allowed to build their own blockchains or collaborate with others who do? Do they need someones permission to do so? Depending on local regulations, maybe they do need permission or oversight in a specific jurisdiction. That could be worth exploring in another version.
On this topic they conclude that:
A truly decentralized, permissionless system could be a way around this “walled-garden” problem of siloed technology. A decentralized, permissionless system means any device can participate in the network yet still give everyone confidence in the integrity of the data, of the devices, and of the value being transacted. A permissionless system would create a much more fluid, expansive Internet of Things that’s not beholden to the say-so and fees of powerful gatekeepers.
That sounds well and good and a bit repetitive from earlier passages which said something similar. The passage aboves seems to be redefining what make something “permissioned” and “permissionless.” What does it mean for every device participate on a ‘decentralized, permissionless system’? Does that mean that each device is capable of building and/or creating a new block? If so, how do they choose which chain to build on?
And why is it so hard to imagine a world in which open-sourced platforms are also permissioned (e.g., validation is run by known, identifiable participants)… and these platforms are interoperable. Could be worth exploring because that scenario may be just as likely as the ones presented in this chapter.
Lastly, how does a “permissionless system” create a more fluid IoT world? These claims should be explored in more detail next time.
On p. 131 and 132 they write about IOTA, a specific project that markets itself as a purpose-built blockchain for IoT devices. But that project is beset by all kinds of drama that is beyond the scope of this review. Suffice to say that the February software build of IOTA cannot be run on most resource constrained IoT devices.
On p. 138 they mention in passing:
Exergy is a vital concept for measuring energy efficiency and containing wasteful practices; it doesn’t just measure the amount of energy generated but also the amount of useful work produced per each given amount of energy produced.
Fun fact: back in May 2014 I wrote an in-depth paper on Bitcoin mining that utilized the concept of “exergy.”
On pages 139-145 they talk about a number of vendors, use-cases, and platforms typically centered around the supply chain management world. Would be interesting to see which of these gained traction.
On p. 147 they write:
Blockchain-proven digital tokens point to what blockchain consultant and entrepreneurs Pindar Wong calls the “packetization of risk.” This radical idea introduces a negotiable structure to different phases of the chain. Intermediate goods that would otherwise be encumbered by a pre-established chain of unsettled commitments can instead be put out to bid to see if other buyers want to take on the rights and obligations associated with them.
It would be useful in this explanation to have a diagram or two to explain what Pindar proposes because it is a bit hard to follow.
On p. 147 they write:
This is why many people believe that the concept of a “circular economy” – where there is as much recycling as possible of the energy sources and materials in production – will hinge on the transparency and information flows that blockchain systems allow.
Does this mean that other “non-blockchain” systems do not allow transparency and information flows?
On p. 147 they write:
The principal challenge remains scaling. Open-to-all, permissionless blockcahins such as Bitcoin’s and Ethereum’s simply aren’t ready for the prime time of global trade. If all of the world’s supply chains were to pass their transactions through a permissionless blockchain, there would need to be a gargantuan increase in scalability, either off-chain or on-chain. Solutions may come from innovations such as the Lightning Network, discussed in chapter three, but they are far from ready at this stage.
Can we propose a moratorium on additional usages of “Lightning” in the next edition unless there is significant adoption and usage of it? Also, it is unclear why the worlds supply chains should for some reason be connected onto an anarchic chain: what is the benefit of putting this information onto a chain whose operators are unaccountable if a fork occurs?
On p. 148 they write:
Instead, companies are looking at permissioned blockchains, which we’ll discuss in more detail in chapter six. That makes sense because many big manufacturers think of their supply chains as static concepts, with defined members who have been certified to supply this or that component to a finished product. But in the rapidly changing world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, this might not be the most competitive option. Emerging technologies such as additive manufacturing, where production can be called up anywhere and delivered by anyone with access to the right software files and a sufficiently configured 3D printer, are pointing to a much more fluid, dynamic supply-chain world, where suppliers come and go more easily. In that environment, a permissionless system would seem necessary. Once scaling challenges are resolved, and with robust encryption and reliable monitoring systems for proving the quality of suppliers work, permissionless blockchain-based supply chains could end up being a big leveler of the playing field for global manufacturing.
There are way too many assumptions in this paragraph to not have somewhere written that there are many assumptions.
Is a blockchain really needed in this environment? If so, a future edition should explain how a 3D printer would be more useful connected to a blockchain than some other network. Also, this seems to be a misuse of the term “permissionless” — why does the network need to be anarchic? How would the supply chain benefit from validators who are unknown?
On p. 148 they write:
It will be difficult to marry that old-world body of law, and the human-led institutions that manage it, with the digital, dematerailized, automated, and de-nationalized nature of blockchains and smart contracts.
How are blockchains “de-nationalized”? As of this writing there are probably a couple dozen publicly announced state-sponsored blockchain platforms of some kind (including various cryptocurrency-related initiatives). This phrase should probably be removed.
On p. 150 they write about the Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium:
Hence the opportunity for blockchain technologies to function as an international governance system. Hong Kong’s role will be important: the territory’s British legal traditions and reputation for respecting property rights have made it a respected safehouse for managing intellectual property and other contractual obligations within international trade. If the blockchain is to be inserted into global trade flows, the region’s bridging function may offer the fastest and most impactful route. For Hong Kong residents who want the territory to retain its British legal traditions, that role could be a vital protection against Beijing undermining them.
From publicly available information it is unclear if the Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium has seen much traction. In contrast, the Ping An-led HKMA trade finance group has turned on its “blockchain” platform.
Chapter 6
On p. 151 they wrote about a public event held on August 5, 2015:
As far as bankers were concerned, Bitcoin had no role to play in the existing financial system. Banking institutions thrive on a system of opacity in which our inability to trust each other leaves us dependent on their intermediation of our transactions. Bankers might give lip service to reforming the inner workings of their system, but the thought of turning it over to something as uncontrollable as Bitcoin was beyond heresy. It wasn’t even conceivable.
This is a bit of a red herring. I’ve been in dozens of meetings with banks and financial institutions over the past four years and in general there is consensus that Bitcoin – the network – is not fit for purpose as financial market infrastructure to handle regulated financial instruments. Why should banks process, say payments, on a network in which the validators are neither accountable if a problem occurs nor directly reachable in case users want to change or upgrade the software? Satoshi wasn’t trying to solve interbank-related issues between known participants so this description shouldn’t be seen as a slight against Bitcoin.
Now, bitcoin, the coin, may become more widespread in its usage and/or ownership at banks. In fact, as of this writing, nearly every large commercial bank owns at least a handful of cryptocurrencies in order to pay off ransomware issues. But the passage above seems to conflate the two.
See also: Systemically important cryptocurrency networks
On p. 151 they write:
At the same time, committed Bitcoin fans weren’t much interested in Wall Street, either. Bitcoin, after all, was designed as an alternative to the existing banking system. An improvement.
This is a bit revisionist. For instance, the original whitepaper uses the term “payment” twelve times. It doesn’t discuss banking or specific product lines at banks. Banks do a lot more than just handle payments too. Satoshi attempted to create an alternative payment system… the “be your own bank” narrative is something that other Bitcoin promoters later added.
On p. 152 they discuss the August 2015 event:
In essence, Symbiont was promising “blockchain without bitcoin” – it would maintain the fast, secure, and cheap distributed network model, and a truth machine at its center that validated transactions, but it was not leaderless, permissionless, and open to all. It was a blockchain that Wall Street could control.
This has some hyperbole in it (does “Wall Street” really control it?) but there is a kernel that the authors could expand on in the next version: vendor-dependence and implementation monopoly. In the example above, the authors could have pointed out that the same market structure still exists, so what benefit does a blockchain provide that couldn’t already be used? In addition to, what do the authors mean by “cheap distributed network model” when they have (rightly) mentioned that proof-of-work is resource intensive? As of this writing, Symbiont uses BFT-SMaRt and doesn’t use PoW.
Also, the authors seem to conflate “open to all” with blockchains that they prefer. Yet nearly all of the blockchains they seem to favor (like Bitcoin) involve relatively centralized gatekeeping (BIP process) and permissioned edges via exchanges.
Again, when I wrote the paper that created this distinction in 2015, the “permissionless’ness” is solely an attribute of mining not on sending or receiving coins.
On p. 153 they write:
But these permissioned systems are less open to experiments by computer engineers, and access rights to the data and software are subject to the whim of the official gatekeeper. That inherently constrains innovation. A private blockchain, some say, is an oxymoron. The whole point of this technology is to build a system that is open, accessible, and public. Many describe them with the generic phrase “distributed ledger technology” instead of “blockchain.”
This is why it would be important for the authors to explicitly mention what “blockchain” they are referring to. In many cases their point is valid: what is the point of using a blockchain if a single entity runs the network and/or monopolizes the implementation?
Yet their argument is diminished by insisting on using loaded phrases like “open” and “public.” What does it mean to be open or public here? For instance, in order to use Bitcoin today, you need to acquire it or mine it. There can be substantial entry and exit costs to mining so most individuals typically acquire bitcoins via a trusted, permissioned gateway (an exchange). How is that open?
Lastly, the euphemism of using the term “blockchain” instead of using the term “bitcoin” dates back to late 2015 with investors like Adam Draper explicitly stating that was his agenda. See: The great pivot?
On p. 156 they write:
Though Bitcoin fans frowned upon permissioned blockchains, Wall Street continued to build them. These tweaked versions of Bitcoin shared various elements of the cryptocurrency’s powerful cryptography and network rules. However, instead of its electricity-hungry “proof-of-work” consensus model, they drew upon older, pre-Bitcoin protocols that were more efficient but which couldn’t achieve the same level of security without putting a centralized entity in charge of identifying and authorizing participants.
There is a few issues with this:
Their last sentence uses a false dichotomy because there are different security assumptions based on the targeted operating environment that result in tradeoffs. To say that Bitcoin is more or less secure versus say, an instance of Fabric is a bit meaningless because the users have different expectations that the system is built around.
On p. 157 they write about R3:
The biggest winner in this hiring spree was the research and development company R3 CEV, which focused on the financial industry. It sought to build a distributed ledger that could, on the one hand, reap the benefits of real-time securities settlement and cross-industry harmonization but, on the other, would comply with a vast array of banking regulations and meet its members’ proprietary interest in keeping their books private.
This seems like a dated pitch from a couple use cases from mid-2015 because by the time I departed in September 2017, real-time securities settlement wasn’t the primary use (for Corda) being discussed externally.
Also, the “CEV” was formally removed from the name about two years ago. See: A brief history of R3 – the Distributed Ledger Group
By the spring of 2017, R3 CEV had grown its membership to more than one hundred. Each member firm paid annual dues of $250,000 in return for access to the insights being developed inside the R3 lab. Its founders also raised $107 million in venture funding in 2017, mostly from financial institutions.
I don’t think the full details are public but the description of the funding – and what was exchanged for it – is not quite correct. The original DLG members got equity stakes as part of their initial investment. Also, as far as the Series A that was announced in May 2017, all but one of the investors was a financial institution of some kind.
On p. 157 they write:
Some of that money went to hire people like Mike Hearn, a once prominent Bitcoin developer who dramatically turned his back on the cryptocurrency community with an “I quit” blog post complaining about the bitter in fighting. R3 also hired Ian Grigg – who later left to join EOS – another prominent onetime rebel from the cryptocurrency space.
To be clear on the timing: Mike Hearn began working at R3 in October 2015 (along with James Carlyle).23 Several months later he published a widely discussed post about Bitcoin itself. Based on his public talks since January 2016, he still seems to have some passing interest in cryptocurrencies; he did a reddit AMA on /r/btc this past spring.
Also, Ian Grigg has since left EOS and launched a new startup, Chamapesa.
On p. 157 they write about me:
Before their arrival, R3 had also signed on Tim Swanson as research director. Swanson was a distributed ledger/blockchain analyst who was briefly enthused by Bitcoin but who later became disillusioned with the cryptocurrency’s ideologues. He became a vocal, anti-Bitcoin gadfly who seemed to delight in mocking its travails.
This is also revisionist history.
Not to dive too much into the weeds here – and ignoring everything pre-2014 – a quick chronology that could be added if the authors are looking to be balanced is the following:
Over the course of under four months, after doing market research covering a few dozen projects, I published Great Chain of Numbers in March 2014… which was a brief report that quickly became outdated.
Some of the feedback I received – including from Bob, an expert at a data analytics startup – was that I was too charitable towards the claims of cryptocurrency promoters at payment processors and exchanges.24 That is to say, Bob thought that based on analytics, the actual usage of a payment processor was a lot lower than what the executives from that processor told me. In retrospect, Bob was absolutely correct.
A couple months later I ended up – by accident – doing an interview on Let’s Talk Bitcoin. The original guest did not show up and while we (the co-hosts) were waiting, I ended up getting into a small debate with another co-host about the adoption and usage of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. You can listen to it here and read the corresponding long-read that provides more citations and supporting links to back up the comments I made in the podcast.
From this moment forward (June 2014) – because I fact-checked the claims and did not blindly promote cryptocurrencies – I quickly became labeled as a pariah by several of the vocal cryptotwitter personalities. Or as the authors of this book unfairly label me: “anti-Bitcoin gadfly.” To call this order of events “disillusionment” is also unfair.
Lastly, a quick fix to the passage in the book: I technically became a formal advisor to R3 at the end of 2014 (after their second roundtable in Palo Alto)… and then later in August 2015 came on full-time as director of market research (although I subsequently wore several different hats).
On p. 158 they write:
Of a similar breed was Preston Byrne, the general counsel of Eris Ltd., later called Monax which designed private blockchains for banks and a variety of other companies. When Byrne’s Twitter feed wasn’t conveying his eclectic mix of political positions – pro-Trump, anti-Brexit, pro-Second Amendment, pro-encryption, anti-software utopianism – or constant references to marmots (the Eris brand’s mascot), it poured scorn on Bitcoin’s fanatic followers. For guys like Swanson and Byrne, Bitcoin’s dysfunctional governance was a godsend.
Again, chronologically I met Preston online in early 2014. He helped edit and contributed to Great Chain of Numbers. Note: he left Eris last year and recently joined a US law firm.
This is an unfair description: “For guys like Swanson and Byrne, Bitcoin’s dysfunctional governance was a godsend.”
This is unfair for several reasons:
Thus to single us out and simultaneously not mention others who had similar views, paints us as some type of cartoonish villains in this narrative. Plus, the authors could have reached out to us for comment. Either way, the next version should attempt to fix the word choices and chronology.
I reached out to Preston Byrne and he provided a response that he asked to have included in a footnote.25
On p. 159 they write more about R3:
On the one hand, regulators were comfortable with the familiar membership of R3’s consortium: they were more accustomed to working with bankers than with T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing crypto-investors. But on the other, the idea of a consortium of the world’s biggest banks having say-so over who and what gets included within the financial system’s single and only distributed ledger conjured up fears of excessive banking power and of the politically unpopular bailouts that happened after the crisis. Might Wall Street be building a “too-big-to-fail” blockchain?
This is some strange criticism because many of the developers of Corda (and other pieces of software) wore casual and business casual attire while working in the offices.
Corda is not the “single and only distributed ledger” being used by enterprises. Nearly all of the banks that invested in R3 also invested in other competing entities and organizations including Axoni and Digital Asset. Thus the statement in the middle should be updated to reflect that R3 does not have some kind of exclusivity over banking or enterprise relationships.
Michael Casey has said multiple times in public (even prior to the existence of Corda) that R3 was a “cartel coin” or “cartel chain” — including on at least one panel I was on with him in January 2016. This is during a time in which R3 did not have or sell any type of product, it was strictly a services-focused company. Maybe the organization evolves in the future – there may even be some valid criticism of a mono-implementation or a centrally run notary – but even as of this writing there is no Corda Enterprise network up and running.26
Lastly, all of these banks are members of many different types of consortia and multilateral bodies. Simply belonging to or participating in organizations such as IOSCO does not mean something nefarious is afoot.
On p. 160 they write:
The settlement time is also a factor in a financial crisis, and it contributed to the global panic of 2008.
This is a good point and it would be great to go into further details and examples in the next edition.
On p. 160 they write:
This systemic risk problem is what drew Blythe Masters, one of the key figures behind blockchain innovation on Wall Street, into digital ledger technology; she joined Digital Asset Holdings, a blockchain service provider for the financial system’s back-office processing tasks, as CEO in 2014.
Two small quibbles:
On p. 162 they write:
It’s just that to address such breakdowns, this new wave of distributed ledger system designers have cherry-picked the features of Nakamoto’s invention that are least threatening to the players in the banking system, such as its cryptographic integrity, and left aside its more radical, and arguably more powerful, features, especially the decentralized, permissionless consensus system.
This is revisionist history. Satoshi bundled together existing ideas and libraries to create a blockchain. He or she did not invent cryptography from the ground up. For more details, readers are encouraged to read “Bitcoin is worse is better” from Gwern Branwen. IT systems at financial institutions were (and are) already using various bits of cryptography, encryption, permissioning, data lakes, and distributed storage methods.
Furthermore, because the participants in the financial system are known, there is no reason to use proof-of-work, which is used in Bitcoin because the participants (miners) are unknown.
Lastly, the authors touch on it and do have a valid point about market structure being changed (or unchanged) and should try to expand that in the next edition.
On p. 162 they write:
The DTCC, which settles and clears the vast majority of US stock and bond trades, handles 10,000 transactions per second; Bitcoin, at the time of this writing, could process just seven. And as strong as Bitcoin’s value – and incentive-based security model has proven to be, it’s not at all clear that a few hundred million dollars in bitcoin mining costs would deter rogue traders in New York or London when government bond markets offer billion dollar fraud opportunities.
Firstly, at the time of this writing, on-chain capacity for Bitcoin (even with Segwit activated) is still less than seven transaction per second.
Second, it is not clear how “rogue traders” in New York or London would be able to directly subvert the mining process of Bitcoin. Are the authors thinking about the potential security delta caused by watermarked tokens and colored coins?27
On p. 162 they write:
Either way, for the firms that R3 and Digital Asset serve – managers of the world’s retirement funds, corporate payrolls, government bond issuances, and so forth -these are not security risks they can afford. For now – at least until solutions as Lightning provide large-scale transaction abilities – Bitcoin isn’t anywhere near ready to service Wall Street’s back-office needs.
But Bitcoin is not fit for purpose for regulated financial institutions. Satoshi wasn’t trying to solve back-office problems that enterprises had, why are the authors intent on fitting a round peg in a square hole?
Also, Lightning isn’t being designed with institutions in mind either. Even if one or more of its implementations becomes widely adopted and used by Bitcoin users, it still doesn’t (currently) meet the functional and non-functional requirements that regulated institutions have. Why market it as if it does?
On p. 162 they write:
There are also legal concerns. R3’s Swanson has argued that the mere possibility of a 51 percent attack – that scenario in which a minder gains majority control of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power and fraudulently changes transactions – means that there can never be “settlement finality” in a cryptocurrency transaction. That of perpetual limbo is a scenario that Wall Street lawyers can’t live with, he said. We might retort that the bailouts and various other deals which banks reversed their losses during the crisis make a mockery of “finality,” and that Bitcoin’s track record of irreversibility is many magnitudes better than Wall Street’s. Nonetheless, Swanson’s catchy critique caught on among bankers. After all, he was preaching to the choir.
So there are a few issues with this statement.
I did not invent the concept of “settlement finality” nor did ‘Wall Street lawyers.’ The term dates back decades if not centuries and in its most recent incarnation is the product of international regulatory bodies such as BIS and IOSCO. Regulated financial institutions – starting with financial market infrastructures – are tasked with reducing risk by making sure the payment systems, for instance, are irreversible. Readers should peruse the PFMIs published in 2012.
The next issue is, they make it sound like I lobbied banks using some ‘gotcha’ loophole to scare banks from using Bitcoin. Nowhere in my presentations or speeches have I justified or handwaved away the (criminally?) negligent behavior of individuals at banks that may have benefited from bailouts. This is another unfair characterization that they have painted me as.
To that point, they need to be more specific about what banks got specific transactions reversed. Name and shame the organizations and explain how it would not be possible in a blockchain-based world. Comparing Bitcoin with ‘Wall Street’ doesn’t make much sense because Bitcoin just handles transfers of bitcoin, nothing else. ‘Wall Street’ encompasses many different product lines and processes many other types of transactions beyond payments.
All in all, painting me as a villain is weak criticism and they should remove it in their next edition.
On p. 163 they write about permissioned ledgers:
They’re not racing each other to win currency rewards, which also means they’re not constantly building a wasteful computing infrastructure a la Bitcoin.
They say that as if it is a good thing. Encourage readers to look through the energy costs of maintaining several different proof-of-work networks that handle almost no commerce.
On p. 163 they write:
That’s why we argue that individuals, businesses, and governments really need to support the various hard-core technical solutions that developers are pursuing to help permissionless ledgers like Bitcoin and Ethereum overcome their scaling, security, and political challenges.
This agenda has been pretty clear throughout the book, though it may be more transparent to the reader if it comes earlier in chapter 1 or 2.
From a historical perspective this argument doesn’t make much sense. If Karl Benz had said the same thing in the 19th century about getting engineers to build around his car and not others. Or the Wright Brothers had been ‘more successful’ at suing aerospace competitors. Why not let the market – and its participants – chose to work on platforms they find of interest?
On p. 165 they write about the MIT Digital Currency Inititative but do not disclose that they solicit financial support from organizations such as central banks, some of whom pay up to $1 million a year to collaborate on research projects. Ironically, the details of this program are not public.
On p. 167 they write:
A broad corporate consortium dedicated to a mostly open-source collaborative approach, Hyperledger is seeking to develop nothing less than a common blockchain / distributed ledger infrastructure for the global economy, one that’s targeted not only at finance and banking but also at the Internet of Things, supply chains, and manufacturing.
The next edition should update that passage. All of the projects incubated by the Hyperledger Project are open sourced, there is no “mostly.” And not all of these projects involve a blockchain, some involve identity-related efforts.28
On p. 169 and again on p. 172 the authors quote Joi Ito who compares TCP/IP with “walled gardens” such as AOL and Prodigy.
That is comparing apples-and-oranges. TCP/IP is a suite of protocols, not a business. AOL and Prodigy are businesses, not protocols. AOL used a proprietary protocol and you could use TCP/IP via a gateway. Today, there are thousands of ‘walled gardens’ called ISPs that allow packets to jump across boundaries via handshake agreements. There is no singular ‘Internet’ but instead there are thousands of intranets tied together using common standards.
Readers may be interested in: Intranets and the Internet
On p. 173 they write:
Permissionless systems like those of Bitcoin and Ethereum inherently facilitate more creativity and innovation, because it’s just understood that no authorizing company or group of companies can ever say this or that thing cannot be built.
How are they measuring this? Also, while each platform has its own terms of service, it cannot be said that you need explicit permission to build an application on top of a specific permissioned platform. The permissioning has to do with how validation is handled.
On p. 173 they write:
It’s the guarantee of open access that fosters enthusiasm and passion for “permissionlessness” networks That’s already evident in the caliber and rapid expansion in the number of developers working on public blockchain applications. Permissioned systems will have their place, if nothing else because they can be more easily programmed at this early stage of the technology’s life to handle heavier transaction loads. But the overarching objective for all of us should be to encourage the evolution of an open, interoperable permissionless network.
This is just word salad that lacks supporting evidence. For the next edition the authors should tabulate or provide a source for how many developers are working on public blockchain applications.
The passage above also continues to repeat a false dichotomy of “us versus them.” Why can’t both of these types of ‘platforms’ live in co-existence? Why does it have to be just one since neither platform can fulfill the requirements of the other?
It’s like saying only helicopters provide the freedom to navigate and that folks working on airplanes are only doing so because they are less restricted with distances. Specialization is a real.
On p. 173 they conclude with:
There’s a reason we want a world of open, public blockchains and distributed trust models that gives everybody a seat at the table. Let’s keep our eyes on that ball.
This whole chapter and this specific statement alone comes across as preachy and a bit paternalistic. If the message is ‘permissionlessness’ then we should be allowed to pursue our own goals and paths on this topic.
Also, there are real entry and exit costs to be a miner on these public chains so from an infrastructure point of view, it is not really accurate to say everybody gets a seat at the table.
Chapter 7
This is probably their strongest chapter. They do a good job story telling here. Though there were few areas that were not clear.
On p. 179 they write:
But as Bitcoin and the blockchain have shown, the peer-to-peer system of digital exchange, which avoids the cumbersome, expensive, and inherently exclusionary banking system, may offer a better way.
The authors have said 5-6 times already that proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin can be very costly and wasteful to maintain. It would be helpful to the reader for the authors to expand on what areas the banking system is expensive.
And if a bank or group of banks used a permissioned blockchain, would that reduce their expenses?
On p. 181 they write about time stamps:
The stamp, though, is incredibly powerful. And that, essentially, is the service that blockchains provide to people. This public, recognizable open ledger, which can be checked by any time by anybody, acts in much the same way as the notary stamp: it codified that certain action took place at a certain time, with certain particulars attached to it, and it does this in a way that the record of that transaction cannot be altered by private parties, whether they be individuals or governments.
In the next edition the authors should differentiate time stamps and all the functions a notary does. Time stamps may empower notaries but simply stamping something doesn’t necessarily make it notarized. We see this with electronic signatures from Hello Sign and Docusign.
Also, these blockchains have to be funded or subsidized in some manner otherwise they could join the graveyard of hundreds of dead coins.
On p. 181 they write about Factom and Stampery. It would be good to get an update on these types of companies because the founder of Stampery who they single out – Luis Ivan Cuende – has moved on to join and found Aragon.
On p. 183 they discuss data anchoring: taking a hash of data (hash of a document) and placing that into a blockchain so that it can be witnessed. This goes back to the proof-of-existence discussion earlier on. Its function has probably been overstated and is discussed in Anchor’s Aweigh.
On p. 184 they discuss Chromaway. This section should be updated because they have come out with their own private blockchain, Chromapolis funded via a SAFT.
On p. 185 they write:
The easier thing to do, then, for a reform-minded government, is to hire a startup that’s willing to go through the process of converting all of an existing registry, if one exists, into a digital format that can be recorded in a blockchain.
Why? Why does this information have to be put onto a blockchain? And why is a startup the right entity to do this?
On p. 186 they mention several companies such as Bitfury, BitLand, and Ubiquity. It would be good to update these in the next edition to see if any traction occurred.
On p. 187 they write:
They key reason for that is the “garbage-in/garbage-out” conundrum: when beginning records are unreliable, there’s a risk of creating an indisputable permanence to information that enshrines some abuse of a person’s property rights.
This GIGO conundrum doesn’t stop and isn’t limited to just the beginning of record keeping. It is an ongoing challenge, potentially in every country.
On p. 188-192 they describe several other use cases and projects but it is unclear why they can’t just use a database.
On p. 193 they write:
Part of the problem is that cryptocurrencies continue to sustain a reptutation among the general public for criminality. This was intensified by the massive “WannaCry” ransomware attacks of 2017 in which attackers broke into hospitals’ and other institutions’ databases, encrypted their vital files and then extorted payments in bitcoin to have the data decrypted. (In response to the calls to ban bitcoin that inevitably arose in the wake of this episode, we like to point that far more illegal activity and money laundering occurs in dollar notes, which are much harder to trace than bitcoin transactions. Still, when it comes to perception, that’s beside the point – none of these incidents help Bitcoin’s reputation.)
This is a whataboutism. Both actions can be unethical and criminal, there is no need to downplay one versus the other. And the reason why bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are used by ransomware authors is because they are genuinely useful in their operating environment. Data kidnapping is a good use case for anarchic networks… and cryptocurrencies, by design, continue to enable this activity. The authors can attempt to downplay the criminal element, but it hasn’t gone away and in fact, has been aided by additional liquidity to coins that provide additional privacy and confidentiality (like Monero).
On p. 193 they write about volatility:
This is a massive barrier to Bitcoin achieving its great promise as a tool to achieve financial inclusion. A Jamaican immigrant in Miami might find the near-zero fees on a bitcoin transaction more appealing than the 9 percent it costs to use a Western Union agent to send money home to his mother.
This financial inclusion narrative is something that Bitcoin promoters created after Satoshi disappeared. The goal of Bitcoin — according to the whitepaper and announcement threads – wasn’t to be a new rail for remittance corridors. Maybe it becomes used that way, but the wording in the passage above as a “great promise” is misleading.
Also, the remittance costs above should be fact-checked at the very handy Save On Send site.
On p. 194 they write about BitPesa. Until we see real numbers in Companies House filings, it means their revenue is tiny. Yet the authors make it sound like they have “succeeded”:
The approach is paying dividends as evident in the recent success of BitPesa, which was established in 2013 and was profiled in The Age of Cryptocurrency. The company, which offers cross-border payments and foreign-exchange transactions in and out of Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, reported 25 percent month-on-month growth, taking its transaction volume midway through 2017, up from $1 million in 2016.
They also cited some remittance figures from South Korea to the Philippines which were never independently verified and are old.
On p. 194 they dive into Abra a company they described as a remittance company but earlier this year they pivoted into the investment app category as a Robinhood-wannabe, with a coin index.
On p. 196 they discuss the “Somalia dilemma” in which the entire country is effectively unable to access external financial systems and somehow a blockhain would solve their KYC woes. The authors then describe young companies such as Chainalysis and Elliptic which work with law enforcement to identify suspicious transactions. Yet they do not close the loop on the narrative as to how the companies would help the average person in Somalia.
On p. 198 they discuss a startup called WeTrust and mention that one of the authors – Michael – is an advisor. But don’t disclose if he received any compensation for being an advisor. WeTrust did an ICO last year. This is important because the SEC just announced it has fined and settled with Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled for violating anti-touting regulations.
Chapter 8
Chapter 8 dives into self-sovereign identity which is genuinely an interesting topic. It is probably the shortest chapter and perhaps in the next edition can be updated to reflect any adoption that took place.
On p. 209 they write about physical identification cards:
Already, in the age of powerful big data and network analytics – now enhanced with blockchain-based distributed trust systems to assure data integrity – our digital records are more reliable indicators of the behavior that defines who we are than are the error-prone attestations that go into easily forged passports and laminated cards.
How common and how easily forged are passports? Would be interesting to see that reference and specifically how a blockchain would actually stop that from happening.
On p. 212 they write about single-sign ons:
A group of banks including BBVA, CIBC, ING, Societe Generale, and UBS has already developed such a proof of concept in conjunction with blockchain research outfit R3 CEV.
Earlier they described R3 differently. Would be good to see more consistency and also an update on this project (did it go anywhere?).
On p. 213 they describe ConsenSys as a “think tank” but it is actually a ‘venture studio’ similar to an incubator (like 500 Startups). Later on p. 233 they describe ConsenSys as an “Ethereum-based lab”.
On p. 216 they write about Andreas Antonopoulos:
What we should be doing, instead of acting as judge and executioner and making assumptions “that past behavior will give me some insight into future behavior,” Antonpolous argues, is building systems that better manage default risk within lenders’ portfolios. Bitcoin, he sustains, has the tolls to do so. There’s a lot of power in this technology to protect against risk: smart contracts, multi-signature controls that ensure that neither of the two parties can run off with the funds without the other also signing a transaction, automated escrow arrangements, and more broadly, the superior transparency and granularity of information on the public ledger.
There are at least two issues with this:
Nowhere in this section do the authors – or Antonopolous – provide specific details for how someone could build a system that manages default risk on top of Bitcoin. It would be helpful if this was added in the next edition.
And recently, Antonopoulos claims to have been simply educating people about “blockchain technology” and not promoting financial products.
If you have followed his affinity marketing over the past 4-5 years he has clearly promoted Bitcoin usage as a type of ‘self-sovereign bank‘ — and you can’t use Bitcoin without bitcoins.29 He seems to be trying to have his cake and eat it too and as a result got called out by both Nouriel and Buttcoin.
On p. 219 they write:
If an attestation of identifying information is locked into an immutable blockchain environment, it can’t be revoked, not without both parties agreeing ot the reversal of the transaction. That’s how we get to self-sovereignty. It’s why, for example, the folks at Learning Machine are developing a product to prove people’s educational bona fides on Blockcerts, an MIT Media Lab-initiated open-source code for notarizing university transcripts that hashes those documents to the bitcoin blockchain. Note the deliberate choice of the most secure, permissionless blockchain, Bitcoin’s. A permissioned blockchain would fall short of the ideal because there, too, the central authority controlling the network could always override the private keys of the individual and could revoke their educational certificates. A permissionless blockchain is the only way to give real control/ownership of the document to the graduate, so that he/she can disclose this particularly important attribute at will to anyone who demands it.
This disdain for ‘permissioned blockchains’ is a red herring and another example of the “us versus them” language that is used throughout the book. If a blockchain has a central authority that can do what the authors describe, it would be rightly described as a single point of failure and trust. And this is why it is important to ask what ‘permissioned’ chain they had in mind, because they are not all the same.
They also need to explain how they measure ‘most secure’ because Bitcoin – as described throughout this review – has several areas of centralization include mining and those who control the BIP process.
On p. 219 they quote Chris Allen. Could be worth updating this because he left Blockstream last year.
Chapter 9
This chapter seemed light on details and a bit polemical.
For instance, on p. 223 they write:
Many of our politicians seem to have no ideas this is coming. In the United States, Donald Trump pushes a “Buy America First” campaign (complete with that slogan’s echoes of past fascism), backed by threats to raise tariffs, tear up trade deals, boot undocumented immigrants out of the country, and “do good deals for America.” None of this addresses the looming juggernaut of decentralized software systems. IoT systems and 3D printing, all connected via blockchains and smart-contract-triggered, on-demand service agreements, will render each presidential attempt to strong-arm a company into retaining a few hundred jobs in this or that factory town even more meaningless.
Putting the politics aside for a moment, this book does not provide a detailed blue print for how any of the technology listed will prevent a US president from strong-arming a company to do any specific task. How does a 3D printer connected to a blockchain prevent a president from executing on their agenda?
On p. 224 they write about universal basic income:
This idea, first floated by Thomas Paine in the eighteenth century, has enjoyed a resurgence on the left as people have contemplated how robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies would hit working-class jobs such as truck driving. But it may gain wider traction as decentralizing force based on blockchain models start destroying middle-class jobs.
This speculation seems like a non sequitur. Nowhere in the chapter do they detail how a “blockchain-based model” will destroy middle class jobs. What is an example?
On p. 227 they write:
In case you’re a little snobbish about such lowbrow art, we should also point out that a similar mind-set of collaborative creation now drives the world of science and innovation. Most prominently, this occurs within the world of open-source software development; Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most important examples of that.
If readers were unfamiliar with the long history of the free open source software movement, they might believe that. But this ignores the contributions of BSD, Linux, Apache, and many other projects that are regularly used each and every day by enterprises of all shapes and sizes.
Also, during the writing of this review, an open source library was compromised — potentially impacting the Copay wallet from Bitpay — and no one noticed (at first). Eric Diehl, a security expert at Sony, has a succinct post up on the topic:
In other words, this is an example of a software supply chain attack. One element in the supply chain (here a library) has been compromised. Such an attack is not a surprise. Nevertheless, it raises a question about the security of open source components.
Many years ago, the motto was “Open source is more secure than proprietary solutions.” The primary rationale was that many eyes reviewed the code and we all know that code review is key for secure software. In the early days of open source, this motto may have been mostly true, under some specific trust models ( see https://eric-diehl.com/is-
How often do these types of compromises take place in open-source software?
On p. 232 they write:
Undaunted, an unofficial alliance of technologists, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, lawyers, and disruption-wary music executives is now exploring a blockchain-led approach to the entire enterprise of human expression.
What does that even mean?
On p. 232 they write about taking a hash of their first book and inserting it into a block on the Bitcoin blockchain. They then quote Dan Ardle from the Digital Currency Council who says:
“This hash is unique to the book, and therefore could not have been generated before the book existed. By embedding this hash in a bitcoin transaction, the existence of the book on that transaction date is logged in the most secure and irrefutable recordkeeping system humanity has ever devised.”
These plattitudes are everywhere in the book and should be toned down in the next edition especially since Ardle – at least in the quote – doesn’t explain how he measures secure or irrefutable. Especially in light of hundreds of dead coins that were not sustainable.
On p. 233 they write:
The hope now is that blockchains could fulfill the same function that photographers carry out when they put a limited number of tags and signatures on reproduced photo prints: it turns an otherwise replicable piece of content into a unique asset, in this case a digital asset.
This seems to be solutionism because blockchains are not some new form of DRM.
Continuing on this topic, they write:
Copying a digital file of text, music, or vidoe has always been trivial. Now, with blockchain-based models, Koonce says, “we are seeing systems develop that can unequivocally ensure that a particular digital ‘edition’ of a creative work is the only one that can be legitimately transferred or sold.” Recall that the blockchain, as we explained in chapter three, made the concept of a digital asset possible for the first time.
This is empirically untrue. It is still trivially possible to download and clone a blockchain, nothing currently prevents that from happening. It’s why there are more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies at the time of this writing and why there are dozens of forks of Bitcoin: blockchains did not make the concept of a digital asset possible. Digital assets existed prior to the creation of Bitcoin and attempting to build a DRM system to prevent unauthorized copies does not necessarily require a blockchain to do.
On p. 238 they write:
Yet, given the amssive, multitudinous, and hetergeneous state of the world’s content, with hundreds of millions of would-be creators spread all over the world and no way to organize themselves as a common interest, there’s likely a need for a permissionless, decentralized system in which the data can’t be restricted and manipulated by a centralized institution such as a recording studio.
Maybe, but who maintains the decentralized system? They don’t run themselves and are often quite expensive (as even the authors have mentioned multiple times). How does a decentralized system fix this issue? And don’t some artists already coordinate via different interest groups like the RIAA and MPAA?
On p. 240 they discuss Mediachain’s acquisition by Spotify:
On the other hand, this could result in a private company taking a technology that could have been used publicly, broadly for the general good, and hiding it, along with its innovative ideas for tokens and other solutions, behind a for-profit wall. Let’s hope it’s not the latter.
This chapter would have been a bit more interesting if the authors weren’t as heavy handed and opinionated about how economic activities (like M&A) should or should not occur. To improve their argument, they could include links or citations for why this type of acquisition has historically harmed the general public.
Chapter 10
On p. 243 they write:
Bitcoin, with its new model of decentralized governance for the digital economy, did not spring out of nowhere, either. Some of the elements – cryptography, for instance – are thousands of years old. Others, like the idea of electronic money, are decades old. And, as should be evident in Bitcoin’s block-size debate, Bitcoin is still very much a work in progress.
This statement is strange because it is inconsistent with what they wrote on p. 162 regarding permissioned chains: “… cherry-picked the features of Nakamoto’s invention that are least threatening to the players in the banking system, such as its cryptographic integrity…”
In this section they are saying that the ideas are old, but in the passage above in chapter 6, they make it sound like it was all from Nakamoto. The authors should edit it to be one way or the other.
Also, Bitcoin’s governance now basically consists of off-chain shouting matches on social media. Massive influence and lobbying campaigns on reddit and Twitter is effectively how the UASF / no2x movement took control of the direction of the BIP process last year.
On p. 245 they write:
That can be found in the individual freedom principles that guide the best elements of Europe’s new General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
All blockchains that involve cross-jurisdictional movement of data will likely face challenges regarding compliance with data privacy laws such as GDPR. Michele Finck published a relevant paper on this topic a year ago.
See also: Clouds and Chains
On p. 247 they write about if you need to use a blockchain:
Since a community must spend significant resources to prove transactions on a blockchain, that type of record-keeping system is most valuable when a high degree of mutual mistrust means that managing agreements comes at a prohibitively high price. (That price can be measured in various ways: in fees paid to middlemen, for instance, in the time it takes to reconcile and settle transactions, or in the fact that it’s impossible to conduct certain business processes, such as sharing information across a supply chain.) When a bank won’t issue a mortgage to a perfectly legitimate and creditworthy homeowner, except at some usurious rate, because it doesn’t trust the registry of deeds and liens, we can argue that the price of trust is too high and that a blockchain might be a good solution.
Not all blockchains utilize proof-of-work as an anti-Sybil attack mechanism, so it cannot be said that “a community must spend significant resources”.
In the next edition it would be interesting to see a cost / benefit analysis for when someone should use a blockchain as it relates the mortgage use case they describe above.
On p. 248 they talk about voting:
Every centralized system should be open for evaluation – even those of government and the political process. Already, startups such as Procivis are working on e-voting systems that would hand the business of vote-counting to a blockchain-based backend. And some adventurous governments are open to the idea. By piloting a shareholder voting program on top of Nasdaq’s Linq blockchain service, Estonia is leading the way. The idea is that the blockchain, by ensuring that no vote can be double-counted – just as no bitcoin can be double-spent – could for the first time enable reliable mobile voting via smartphones. Arguably it would both reduce discrimination against those who can’t make it to the ballot box on time and create a more transparent, accountable electoral system that can be independently audited and which engenders the public’s trust.
A month ago Alex Tapscott made a similar argument.
He managed to temporarily unite some of the warring blockchain tribes because he penned a NYT op-ed about how the future is online voting… powered by blockchains. Below is a short selection of some Twitter threads:
NBC News covered the reaction to Tapscott’s op-ed. Suffice to say, the next edition should either remove this proposal or provide more citations and references detailing why this is a good idea.
Throughout this chapter projects like BitNation and the Economic Space Agency are used as examples of projects that are “doing something” — but none of these have gotten much traction likely because it’s doing-something-theater.
On p. 252 – 255 they uncritically mention various special interest groups that are attempting to influence decision makers via lobbying. It would be good to see some balance added to this section because many of the vocal promoters at lobbying organizations do not disclose their vested interests (e.g., coin positions).
On p. 255 they talk about “Crypto Valley” in Switzerland:
One reason they’ve done so is because Swiss law makes it easier to set up the foundations needed to launch coin offerings and issue digital tokens.
MME – the Swiss law firm that arguably popularized the approach described in this section – set up more than a dozen of these foundations (Stiftung) before stopping. And its creator, Luke Mueller, now says that:
“The Swiss foundation actually is a very old, inflexible, stupid model,” he said. “The foundation is not designed for operations.”
Could be worth updating this section to reflect what happened over the past year with lawsuits as well.
On p. 255 they write:
The next question is: what will it take for U.S. policymakers to worry that America’s financial and IT hubs are losing out to these foreign competitors in this vital new field.
This is FOMO. The authors should tabulate all of the companies that have left the US – or claim to leave – and look at how many jobs they actually set up overseas because of these laws. Based on many anecdotes it appears what happens in practice is that a company will register or hold an ICO overseas in say, Singapore or Panama, but then open up a development arm in San Francisco and New York. They effectively practice regulatory arbitrage whereby they bypass securities laws in one country (e.g., the US) and then turn around and remit the proceeds to the same country (the US).
On p. 263 they conclude the chapter with:
No state or corporation can put bricks around the Bitcoin blockchain or whitewash its record. They can’t shut down the truth machine, which is exactly why it’s a valuable place to record the voices of human experience, whether it’s our love poems or our cries for help. This, at its core, is why the blockchain matters.
Their description basically anthropromorphizes a data structure. It also comes across as polemical as well as favoritism towards one specific chain, Bitcoin. Furthermore, as discussed throughout this review, there are clear special interest groups – including VC-backed Bitcoin companies — that have successfully pushes Bitcoin and other cyrptocurrencies – into roadmaps that benefit their organizations.
Conclusion
Like their previous book (AoC), The Truth Machine touches on many topics but only superficially. It makes a lot of broad sweeping claims but curious readers – even after looking at the references – are left wanting specifics: how to get from point A to point B.
There also seems to be an anti-private enterprise streak within the book wherein the authors condescendingly talk down efforts to build chains that are not anarchic. That becomes tiring because – as discussed on this blog many times – it is not a “us versus them” proposition. Both types of blockchains can and do exist because they are built around different expectations, requirements, and operating environments.
In terms of one-sided narratives: they also did not reach out to several of the people they villify, such as both myself and Preston Byrne as well as coin proponents such as Roger Ver and Jihan Wu. The next edition should rectify this by either dropping the passages cited above, or in which the authors reach out to get an on-the-record comment from.
Lastly, while some churn is expect, many of the phrases throughout the book did not age well because it relied on price bubbles and legal interpretations that went a different direction (e.g., SAFTs are no longer popular). If you are still looking for other books to read on the topic, here are several other reviews.
Endnotes
Send to KindleEris, now Monax, was the first company to look at the combination of cryptographic primitives that make up Bitcoin and attempt to use them to make business processes more efficient. In shorthand, the company invented “blockchains without coins” or “permissioned blockchains.”
Bitcoin’s dysfunctional governance wasn’t a “godsend” for our business, as we weren’t competing with Bitcoin. Rather we were trying to dramatically expand the usecases for database software that had peer to peer networking and elliptic curve cryptography at its core, in recognition of the fact that business counterparties reconcile shared data extremely inefficiently and their information security could benefit from a little more cryptography.
In exchange for our efforts, Bitcoiners of all shapes and sizes heaped scorn on the idea that any successor technology could utilize their technology’s components more efficiently. We responded with pictures of marmots to defuse some of the really quite vitriolic attacks on our company and because I like marmots; these little critters became the company’s mascot through that process.
Subsequent developments vindicated my approach. Cryptographically-secure digital cash being trialled by Circle, Gemini, and Paxos utilizes permissioning, a concept that Circle’s Jeremy Allaire said was impossible in 2015 – “they’re not possible separately” – and I predict that as those USD coins seek to add throughput capacity and functionality they will migrate off of the Ethereum chain and onto their own public, permissioned chains which are direct conceptual descendants of Eris’ work.
They will compete with Bitcoin in some respects, much as a AAA-rated bond or USD compete with Bitcoin now, but they will not compete with Bitcoin in others, as they will cater to different users who don’t use Bitcoin today and are unlikely to use it in the future.
Ultimately, whether Eris’ original vision was right is a question of how many permissioned chains there are, operating as secure open financial services APIs as Circle and Gemini are using them now. I predict there will be rather a lot of those in production sooner rather than later. [↩]
The past 6 months have seen an evolution of insanity to sanity. Just kidding!
One observation I have seen is that a few of the most vocal coin promoters have finally sat down and spoken with policy makers. Or rather, they finally started attending events in which policy makers, regulators, and decision makers at institutions speak at.
For those of us who have been attending and participating in regulatory-focused events for several years, the general messaging hasn’t changed that much: laws and regulations around financial market infrastructure and financial instruments exist for legitimately good reasons (e.g., systemic risks can be existential to society).
What has changed is that there are a few new faces from the coin world — most of which have previously pretended or perhaps did not even know that there is parallel world that can be engaged with.
It is still too early to see whether or not this governance education will be helpful in moderating their coin-focused excitement on social media but it seems to be the case that regulators and policy makers are still further ahead in their understanding of the coin world than vice versa. Maybe next year coin issuers and promoters will finally dive into the PFMIs which have been around since 2012.
Below are some of the activities I was involved and participated in.
Panels and presentations
Interviews and quotes
Op-ed
Cited
Send to Kindle[Note: the 10th anniversary of the Bitcoin whitepaper is this month. Below is a detailed interview with one of the first individuals to have interacted with Satoshi both in public and private: Ray Dillinger.
All of the written responses are directly from Ray with no contributions from others.]
Logo from 2010: Source
Q1: Tell us about yourself, what is your background?
A1: I am originally from Kansas. At about the same time I entered high school I became interested in computers as a hobbyist, although hobby computers were still mostly useless at that time. I got involved in early BBS systems when DOS hadn’t been released yet, modems were acoustically coupled and ran at 300 bits per second or slower, and software was stored mostly either on notebook paper or cassette tapes.
The early interest in computers is part of my lifelong tendency to become deeply involved in technology and ideas that are sufficiently interesting. This has led me to develop interests, obsessions, and expertise in a huge variety of things most of which the public does not discover reasons to care about until much later.
I graduated from KU with a degree in Computer Science in December of 1995 after spending far too long alternating between semesters of attending classes and semesters of working to pay for classes.
After graduation I moved to the San Francisco Bay area. I worked for several AI startups in the next seven years and hold a couple of patents in natural-language applications from that work. After that, I worked the night shift for FedEx for some years while doing occasional security consulting gigs during daytime hours. I am currently doing AI algorithm research and implementation (and some cryptographic protocol/document design) at a FinTech startup. I work on General AI projects on my own time.
I am somewhat pessimistic by nature and tend to assume until given reason to believe otherwise that anyone trying to sell me something or convince me of something is a scammer. I know that’s irrational, but knowing doesn’t make the belief stop. I have an abiding hatred of scammers and find them viscerally disgusting.
I consider making noise to be rude, avoid crowds and public appearances, and distrust anyone speaking faster than they can think. Although I write a great deal, I rarely speak and strongly dislike talking on the phone.
In spite of my peculiar interests and asocial tendencies, I somehow managed to get married to a wonderful woman who tolerates an unbelievable degree of geekdom in an unbelievable variety of subjects, ranging from mild interest to full-on mad scientist levels in scope. I am tremendously thankful to have her in my life, and to whatever degree
I might be considered social, she deserves most of the credit.
I became marginally involved with Bitcoin in its early development because cryptocurrency, and the application of block chains to cryptocurrency in particular, are interesting. I ceased to be involved in Bitcoin when the next steps would necessarily involve salesmanship, frequent talking, and social interaction, because those things are not interesting.
Q2: Perry Metzger created the now infamous Cryptography mailing list years ago. When did you join and what made you interested in cryptography?
A2: I joined so many years ago it’s hard to remember. It was pretty much as soon as I became aware of the list, but I’m sure it was more than fifteen years ago. It may have been late 2001 or early 2002.
I think I may even have been one of the first twenty or thirty posters on that list – it was still very young.
I remember being vaguely annoyed that it hadn’t been available when I was actually still in college and doing a crypto project in a grad-level networking course – I’d been a member of the even-earlier ‘cypherpunks’ list back when I was in school, but its strident political ideologues (including a guy named Hal Finney, whom you’ve probably heard of)
annoyed me, even back then.
‘cypherpunks’ was where I became aware of and started corresponding with Hal. Although, way back then, I think we were both mostly annoying to each other. And possibly to others as well. Hal had been stridently political all the way from those days (and probably before) to the day he died, and in retrospect, I think I really needed some ‘remedial human-being lessons’ and some wider education at the time. I’ve learned a lot since then – and perspective outside the narrow specialties we studied in school really does matter.
Q3: There were a lot of other non-cryptocurrency related discussions taking place simultaneously in November 2008 and many of the frequent posters didn’t comment on Bitcoin when it was first announced. What interested you in it? How involved would you say you were with providing coding suggestions prior to the genesis block that following January?
A3: I was interested in it for several reasons. First, Bitcoin was a digital cash protocol, and digital cash protocols have some significant challenges to overcome, and I’d been interested in them for a long time already. I’d even designed a couple by then. The first I designed was unsound. The second, which is the only one worth talking about, which I’ll talk more about below.
Second, Bitcoin used a central proof chain (which we now call a block chain) as means of securing the history of each note, and I had known for a long time that any successful digital cash protocol had to use proof chains in some form or it couldn’t circulate (couldn’t be spent onward by someone who’d been paid in it). And I was very, very much interested in proof chains, especially for a digital cash protocol. I had already used proof chains (very differently) for a digital cash protocol when I extended Chaum’s e-cash protocol in 1995.
(see Digression #1 below to understand the differences between my protocol and Satoshi’s, and their effect on protocol design.)
Third, Satoshi eventually convinced me that he wasn’t a scammer. I’m sort of a natural pessimist at heart, and digital cash protocols have a long history of scammers, so at first I had assumed the worst. I think a lot of others also assumed the worst, which would be why few of them responded. I made my first couple of replies without even having read it yet, to see how he responded before I wasted mental effort on something that would probably turn out to be a scam.
When I finally bothered to actually read the white paper, and spent the mental effort to understand it, I realized that (A) it wasn’t the usual incompetent bullshit we’d seen in far too many earlier digital-cash proposals, and (B) Its structure really and truly contained no Trusted Roles – meaning the opportunity to scam people was NOT built into the structure of it the way it had been with e-gold, e-cash, etc.
Fourth, and absolutely the clincher for me; it was very very INTERESTING! It was an entirely new paradigm for a digital cash protocol, and had no Trusted Roles! Nobody had EVER come up with a digital cash protocol having no Trusted Roles before!
Of course it wasn’t a “serious” proposal, I thought. It wouldn’t work for any kind of widespread adoption (I thought at the time) because of course people would conclude that spent hashes which absolutely couldn’t be redeemed for the electricity or computer power that had been used to create them were valueless. And it would never scale beyond small communities or specialized applications of course because of its completely stupid bandwidth requirements.
But it was INTERESTING!
I could never have come up with Bitcoin because of the tremendous bandwidth. Without Satoshi’s proposal, the idea of transmitting every transaction to every user would just have bounced off my mind as inconceivable. Hell, I didn’t even understand it the first couple of times through the white paper because I was looking for ANY WAY AT ALL to parse those sentences and ‘transmitting every transaction to every user wasn’t even a POSSIBLE parse for me until Satoshi explicitly told me yes, that really was what he meant.
When I finally understood, I started doing math to prove to him that it was impossible, tried to relate bandwidth to rate of adoption and got a largest possible answer that’s only about one-eighth of today’s number of nodes. I was assuming transaction volume proportional to userbase, which would be at least three times the transactions that today’s blocksize-limited block chain handles, and looking at a version of the protocol which doubled it by transmitting every transaction twice. So,GIGO, I was wrong – but for good reasons and in the correct order of magnitude anyway.
But that was a couple orders of magnitude larger than the highest answer I had expected to get! And that meant Satoshi’s idea actually seemed…. surprisingly plausible, if people really didn’t care about bandwidth.
The fact that bandwidth seemed to be available enough for the proposal to be technically plausible was sort of mind-boggling. So was the idea that so many people did not care, at all, about bandwidth costs.
(See digression #2 to understand why it was hard for me to accept that
people now consider bandwidth to be valueless.)
Anyway, problems aside, it was INTERESTING! If the proof-of-concept actually sort-of worked at least on scales like for a campus or community merchandise token or something it would extend our understanding of protocol design!
What I had done back in 1995 had been INTERESTING for a different reason. At that time nobody had ever come up with a digital cash protocol that allowed people who’d been paid digital coins to respend them if they wanted instead of taking them right back to the issuer. Of course it wouldn’t work for general adoption because of its own problems, but it had extended our understanding of protocol design back then, so back then that had been INTERESTING!
And before that, Chaum had demonstrated a digital cash protocol that worked at all, and at the time that was INTERESTING!
And in between a whole bunch of people had demonstrated ways to cooperate with bankers etc to have different kinds of access to your checking account or whatever. Some of those had had privacy features v. the other users, which were also INTERESTING!
And so on. I was very much looking at things that improved our understanding of digital cash protocols, and had no idea that Bitcoin was intended for widespread release.
Anyway, Satoshi and I talked offlist about the problems, and possible solutions, and use of proof chains for digital cash, and my old protocol, and several previous types of digital cash, and finally he sent me the proof chain code for review.
And the proof chain code was solid, but I freaked out when I saw that it used a Floating Point type rather than an Integer type for any kind of accounting. Accounting requirements vs. floating point types have a long and horrible history.
So that prompted some more discussion. He was designing specifically so that it would be possible to implement compatible clients in languages (*cough* Javascript *cough*) in which no other numeric type is available, so he wanted to squish rounding-error bugs in advance to ensure compatibility. If anybody gets different answers from doing the same calculation the chain forks, so it’s sort of important for everybody to get the same answer. Because Javascript clients were going to use double float, and he wanted them to get the same answer, he was going to make sure he got correct answers using double floats.
He was trying to avoid rounding errors as a way of future-proofing: making it completely consistent so clients with higher-precision representations wouldn’t reject the blocks of the old chain – but on the ground he wanted to be damn sure that the answers from Javascript clients, which *would* by necessity use double float, could be compatible with checking the block chain.
The worst that could happen from a rounding error, as long as everybody gets the *SAME* rounding error, is that the miner (whose output is unspecified in the block and defined as “the rest of the TxIn values input”) gets a few satoshis more or less than if the rounding error hadn’t happened, and no satoshis would be created or destroyed.
But if people on different clients get *DIFFERENT* rounding errors, because of different representation or differently implemented operations, the chain forks. And That Would Be Bad.
I would have said *screw* Javascript, I want rounding errors to be impossible, and used integers. If the Javascripters want to write a float client, they’d better accept accurate answers, even if they have to allow for answers different than their code generates. And if they make transactions containing rounding errors, let everybody in the universe reject them and not allow them into blocks. But that’s me.
It was when we started talking about floating-point types in accounting code that I learned Hal was involved in the effort. Hal was reviewing the transaction scripting language, and both the code he had, and the code I had, interacted with the accounting code. So Satoshi brought him in for the discussion on floating point, and both of us reviewed the accounting code. Hal had a lot of experience doing exact math in floating point formats – some of his crypto code in PGP even used float types for binary operations. So he wasn’t as freaked-out about long doubles for money as I was. We talked a lot about how much divisibility Bitcoins ought to have; whether to make ‘Satoshis’ an order of magnitude bigger just to have three more bits of cushion against rounding errors, or keep them near the limit of precision at 10e-8 bitcoins in order to assure that rounding errors would always fail. Failing, immediately, detectably, and hard, at the slightest error, is key to writing reliable software.
So I went over the accounting code with a fine-toothed comb looking for possible rounding errors. And I didn’t find any.
Which is more than a little bit astonishing. Numeric-methods errors are so ubiquitous nobody even notices them. Inevitably someone multiplies and divides in the wrong order, or combines floats at different magnitudes causing rounding, or divides by something too small, or makes equality comparisons on real numbers that are only equal 65535 times out of 65536, or does too many operations between sequence points so that they can be optimized differently in different builds, or uses a compiler setting that allows it to do operations in a different sequence, or checks for an overflow/rounding in a way that the compiler ignores because it can prove algebraically that it’s “dead code” because it will never be activated except in case of undefined behavior (like eg, the roundoff or overflow that someone is checking for)! Or SOMETHING. I mean, in most environments you absolutely have to FIGHT both your language semantics and your compiler to make code without rounding errors.
Clearly I hadn’t been the first pessimistic screaming hair-triggered paranoid aware of those issues to go over that accounting code; I could not find a single methods error. The ‘satoshi’ unit which is the smallest unit of accounting, is selected right above the bit precision that can be handled with NO rounding in the double float format, and every last operation as far as I could find was implemented in ways that admit no rounding of any bits that would affect a unit as large as a satoshi.
To cause rounding of satoshis in the Bitcoin code, someone would have to be adding or subtracting more than 21 million Bitcoins (I think it’s actually 26 million, in fact…). So, the Bitcoin chain is, I believe, rounding-free and will continue to check regardless of whether clients use any higher floating point precision.
For comparison Doge, which has so many coins in circulation that amounts larger than 26 million Doge are actually transacted, has rounding errors recorded in its block chain. If a new client ever uses a higher-precision float format, their old chain won’t check on that client. Which would be seen as a bug in the new client, and “corrected” there (by deliberately crippling its accuracy when checking old blocks). In fact it’s a bug in the Doge coin design which will never be fixed because they’ve already committed too much to it.
Integers. Even with code that is meticulously maintained and tested for consistency, even where methods errors have been boiled out by somebody’s maniacal obsessive dedication, Integers would have been so much cleaner and easier to check.
Digression #1:
Why I was VERY interested in proof chains and digital cash protocols.
When I extended Chaum’s protocol in 1995, I had used proof chains attached to each ‘coin’, which grew longer by one ‘link’ (nowadays we say ‘block’) every time the coin changed hands. That allowed coins to circulate offline because all the information you needed to make another transaction was in the chains attached to the individual coins. In order to make it possible to catch double spenders, the ‘links’ contained secret splits which, if two or more contradictory links were combined, would reveal the identity of the spender.
So, it could circulate offline and make transfers between users who weren’t even connected to the Internet. It didn’t have the ferocious bandwidth expense and even more ferocious proof-of-work expense of Bitcoin. Double spenders couldn’t be caught until the differently-spent copies of a coin were compared, potentially after going through several more hands which meant you had to have some kind of resolution process. And a resolution process meant you absolutely had to have a Trusted Certificate Authority with a database that could link UserIDs to RealWorld IDs in order to figure out who the RealWorld crook was.
Buyer and seller had to have valid UserIDs issued by the Trusted CA, which were known to each other even if to no one else. And although not even The Trusted CA could link UserIDs and transactions except in case of a double spend, the parties to each transaction definitely could. Either party could later show and cryptographically prove the details of the transaction including the counterparty’s UserID, so your transactions were “Private”, not “Secret”. Finally, the ‘coins’ were non-divisible meaning you had to have exact change.
It was, at best, clunky compared to Bitcoin, and not being able to identify double spends until unspecified-time-later would probably be a deal-killer for acceptance. But it also had some advantages: It didn’t create a central permanent ledger that everybody can datamine later the way Bitcoin does, so Trusted CA or not it might actually have been better privacy in practice. It was completely scalable because no transaction needed bandwidth between anybody except buyer and seller. And it had no proof-of-work expense. But it needed a God-Damned Trusted Certificate Authority built directly into the design, so that CA’s database was open to various kinds of abuse.
Digression #2:
I had no comprehension of modern attitudes toward bandwidth costs.
I mean, I knew it had gotten cheap, but it was still taking me hours, for example, to download a complete Linux distribution. I figured other people noticed big delays like that too, and wide adoption of Bitcoin would mean slowing down EVERYTHING else they (full nodes anyway) did. I just hadn’t understood that – and still have trouble with – the idea that by 2008, nobody even cared about bandwidth any more.
I got my first computer, because at that time privately owned computers were INTERESTING! So I had to, even though they were also mostly useless. (See a pattern here?)
But at that time, computers were not communications devices. At All. If you hadn’t invested in something called a “LAN”, which anyway could only work inside one building, probably cost more than the building itself, and was useless unless you’d also invested in multiple computers, you moved data back and forth between your machines and your friends’ machines using cassette tapes. Or, if and your friend were both rich enough to buy drives, or had been lucky enough dumpster diving to get drives you could repair, and had access to the very expensive media through some kind of industrial or business supply place, you might have done it using floppy disks. Which held eighty kilobytes.
I got my first modem a few years later, and modems at the time were flaky hardware only BARELY supported by single-tasking systems that had never been designed to handle any signal arriving anywhere at a time they did not choose. If your computer didn’t respond fast enough to interrupts, a modem could crash it. If you were running anything that didn’t suspend and resume its business correctly (and most things didn’t because they’d never had to before) or anything that was coded to use the same interrupt, the modem would crash it. If the software on your end ever started taking too long to execute per input character, the modem would fill up the short hardware buffer faster than your software could empty it, and crash it. If you transmitted characters faster than the software running on the remote system could handle them, you’d crash the remote system. There were no error correcting protocols because none of us had the compute power to run them fast enough to avoid a crash at the speeds the modems ran.
And that modem couldn’t transmit or receive characters even as fast as I could type. Sometimes you could crash the remote system just by accidentally typing too fast for a minute or two.
Computer security wasn’t a thing. Pretty much anybody you allowed to connect could at least crash your system and probably steal anything on your computer or delete everything on your computer if they really wanted to. The host programs weren’t *intended* to allow that, but something as simple as transmitting an unexpected EOT signal could often crash them – sometimes crashing the whole machine, sometimes leaving the caller at the all-powerful command-line prompt. Stuff like that happened all the time, just by accident! So people were understandably reluctant to let strangers connect to their systems.
There was one place in my whole state that I could call with it where I found people who’d leave a modem running on their machine despite the risk of crashes, and would allow a stranger on their system. That sysop, in an act of sheer grace that he didn’t have to extend and which nobody was paying him for, allowed me to connect to it. There were no such things as commercial providers; they could not exist until at least some system security actually worked.
There was barely even any commercial software: Every machine came with its own BIOS and Operating System, and the ONLY way to distribute a program that would run on more than a tiny fraction of systems was to distribute it as source code which people could tweak and fix and adapt in order to get it running, and commercial vendors didn’t want to distribute any source code.
So our software was all shared. It came from fellow hobbyists, and unless we were physically in the same room to exchange media (and had the ability to read and write media compatible with the other’s systems), we could not share it without using bandwidth.
Long distance calls were over a dollar a minute, modems ran at 160 or 300 bits per second, and I could have burned through my entire monthly paper route income in under three hours.
Finally, every second I was connected to that remote system, that phone line was busy and everybody else couldn’t use it. And the other users needed it for reasons FAR more important than I did. They were military veterans, some of them profoundly not okay after Viet Nam, using it as sort of a hobby-mediated support group, and I was a fifteen-year-old kid hobbyist with a paper route. Hobby in common or not, I had no illusions about the relative value of our access. So I tried to be a good guest; I took my turns as fast as possible, at times least likely to conflict as possible, using as many pre-recorded scripts (played off a cassette tape deck!) as possible to waste absolutely no time, and got off. I didn’t want to keep anybody out of something which was that important to them.
That’s the way things were when I started learning about the value of bandwidth.
No matter how much bandwidth I’ve got now, no matter how cheap it becomes, I’m still aware of it and it’s still important to me to not waste it. I’ve sweated every byte every time I’ve designed a protocol.
And that’s why – to me anyway – universal distribution of a globally writable block chain is still amazing. Just the fact that it’s now POSSIBLE seems incredible.
Q4: When Satoshi released the white paper, you had many public exchanges with her on that mailing list. For instance, you asked her about inflation and Satoshi seemed to think that there could be some price stability if the number of people using it increased at the same level as the supply of bitcoins increased. But, relative to the USD, there has never really been much price stability in its history to date. Is there a way to re-engineer Bitcoin and/or future cryptocurrencies to do so without having to rely on external price feeds or trusted third parties?
A4: Whoof… that’s a hard question. “Is not Gross Matter Interchangeable with Light?” was considered impossible until Einstein figured it out. And the people who’d been asking that question didn’t even recognize or care about Einstein’s answer because his answer wasn’t about bodies and souls and the afterlife. If the answer is ‘yes’ but the re-engineering involved changes the fundamental qualities that make you (or anybody) value cryptocurrencies, then is the answer really yes?
Satoshi tried to do it by anticipating the adoption curve. We know how that turned out.
I think it’s fundamentally impossible to plot an adoption curve before launch. I mean, I was the pessimist who assumed that there’d be a small group, formed early, that wasn’t going to be growing at all as these additional millions of coins pumped into that campus or that community economy. So I figured, some initial value and rapid inflation thereafter.
Satoshi was far less pessimistic in figuring a widespread and fairly gradual adoption, and had picked the logarithmic plot to put coins into the economy at about the rate envisioned for adoption, assuming Bitcoin would follow a logarithmic adoption curve. It wasn’t a bad guess, as it’s a decent approximation to the Bass Diffusion Model, but the
parameters of the curve were completely unknown, and the Bass curve often appears after something’s been around a long time – not just when it’s launched.
Most importantly, nobody anticipated Bitcoin’s primary use as being a vehicle of financial speculation. The Bass Diffusion Model isn’t applicable to speculative commodities, because price changes in speculative commodities are responsive to PREVIOUS price changes in the speculative commodity. That makes them nonlinear and chaotic.
And that, I think, is what it comes down to. If people will be using something as a vehicle of speculation, then its price point is chaotic and defies all attempts to stabilize it by predicting and compensating for it. So I think we need to abandon that notion.
You’ve already ruled out the idea of external price feeds and trusted third parties, because those would change the fundamental qualities that make you value cryptocurrencies.
That leaves internal price feeds: If a cryptocurrency is used as a medium of exchange in other fungible assets, and those exchanges are recorded in its own block chain, then exchanges of crypto for dollars and exchanges of crypto for, eg, gold bars are visible in the block chain and could at least in theory be used to detect economic conditions and adjust the rate of issue of cryptocoins.
But the fly in that ointment is, again, the fact that the crypto is being used as a speculative asset. People can read the block chain before the changes are made, anticipate what changes the code is about to make, and will front-run them. Or, operating as “Sybil and her Sisters”, make a thousand completely bogus transactions in order to fool the software into doing something crazy. Either way reintroducing positive feedback via market manipulation.
Most schemes aimed at stabilizing the value of a coin via any automatic means assume that the price can be changed by changing the rate of issue. But the more coins are in circulation, the less possible it becomes for changes in the rate of issue to shift the price, meaning it devolves back to the first case of nonlinear and chaotic feedback. IOW, the new coins being added represent a much smaller fraction of the available supply, and withholding them will affect almost no one except miners.
Honestly I’m very surprised Tethercoin isn’t dead yet. What they propose, economically speaking, simply will not work. They got themselves somehow declared to be the only way to get money OUT of a major wallet, which props up their transaction volume, but if the people haven’t already walked away with most of the money they’re supposedly holding but won’t say where, then I’m very surprised.
Q5: About a year ago you wrote a highly-commented upon, passionate retrospection published on LinkedIn. You called out a lot of the nonsense going on then, is there anything that has been on your mind since then that you wanted to expand upon?
A5: Um. Artificial Intelligence, Financial Markets, Human Brains and how they are organized, the nature, origins and mechanisms of consciousness and emotion, a generalization of neuroevolution algorithms intended to scale to recurrent networks of much greater complexity than now possible, scope of political corruption and the politics of divisiveness, gene migration and expression, the way cells control and regulate mutation in different kinds of tissues, directed apoptosis via a multiplicity of P53 genes as a preventive for cancer (happens naturally in elephants; easy to do with CRISPR; engineered humans would probably be radiation-resistant enough for lifetimes in space, or just plain longer-lived, or both), history of the Balkans, history of the Roman Empire, ancient religions, writing a science fiction novel ….
You know, things that are INTERESTING! I actually _can’t_ turn my brain off. It’s a problem sometimes.
I have had a few thoughts about cryptocurrencies, however, which is probably what you intended to ask about.
The first:
I have figured out how to redesign the cryptographically secured history database built by cryptocurrencies so that you don’t need any full nodes. There are other ways to organize the blocks that give the proof property you need; They don’t have to form something that’s only a chain, and you don’t have to have specialized nodes for the purpose of holding them because everybody can hold just the blocks they need to show the validity of their own txOuts.
In order to verify the validity of any txOut, you need three things: to see the block where it was created, to be sure that block is part of the same database as that proposed for the transaction, and to be sure that no block exists between those two in which that txOut was spent in another transaction.
Call it a “Block Hyperchain”, by reference to the N-dimensional hypercube it’s based on and the block chain it replaces.
I should be clear and say there are things it does and things it doesn’t do. If your goal is to check all transactions, you’ll download a scattering of blocks for each transaction that soon add up to most of the block database, so someone who wants to check every transaction will rapidly accumulate the whole database.
But most users should be happy with just the few blocks they need to demonstrate the validity of the txOuts they hold, and it’s damn nice to be able to download a client, open it up, and just use it with minimal delay because someone offered to pay you bitcoins one minute ago and you want to be able to make sure the transaction he’s offering is valid RIGHT NOW, instead of waiting to accumulate the whole chain to check anything.
Suppose we pick a base, for convenience, of 10. This helps make things easy to explain because we work with base-10 numbers, but we could have picked 16 and used hexadecimal for our explanations.
In a base-10 Block Hyperchain, every block that’s published has its own set of transactions, and the hashes of the blocks 10^N blocks ago for every integer value of N from N=0 to N <= log10 of block height.
Every block would record its own transactions, and also one list of destroyed txOuts per integer value N over the same range.
Each destroyed-txOut list would be all txOuts created in blocks whose block numbers match (modulo 10^N) the current block number, that have been destroyed in the last 10^N blocks.
Example:
If someone shows me a transaction seeking to spend a txOut, I want to check and see if it’s valid. Ie, I want to see the block where it was created, and see evidence that it hasn’t been spent since.
So I can look at that txOut’s ID and know it was created in block 124. If the current block is 7365, I get block 7365 and 7364 to make sure it hasn’t been spent in those, the same way we can do with a block chain.
Then I have a block whose last digit matches the last digit of the block where the txOut was created. So I start checking the 10-block txOut-destroyed lists. I check the list in block 7364 to make sure it wasn’t spent in blocks 7354 to 7363.
Then, jumping back by 10-block increments (relying on the second recorded hash in the header), I can check to make sure it hasn’t been spent in the previous ten blocks to each of blocks 7354, 7344, and 7334. Then I get block 7324.
Now I’m at a block whose last 2 digits match the block where the txOut was created, so I can start checking the previous hundred blocks using the second txOut-destroyed list, and jumping back by hundred-block increments using the third recorded hash. So I get blocks 7224 and 7124.
Finally, I’m at a block whose last 3 digits match the block where the txOut was created, so I can start jumping back by thousand-block increments, checking the thousand-block txOut-destroyed lists. So I get blocks 6124, 5124, 4124, 3124, 2124, 1124, and finally 124.
So finally, I have a txOut created over 7200 blocks previous to the current block, and I have downloaded a total of 15 blocks to make sure that it was created in the same Hyperchain and hasn’t been spent since.
The number of blocks downloaded is proportional to the log base 10 of the number of blocks in the chain.
The blocks I’ve downloaded are larger because of the spent-txOut lists, but the spent-txOut lists have an average length that is the same regardless of the span of blocks they cover. Lists that report transactions from a set 10x as long, only need to report individual transactions from that set 1/10 as often.
With more efficient access to the history database, it is possible to substantially raise transaction bandwidth. People who make transactions during the next 7 blocks or so would need to see that block; Later on, people who accept txOuts created during that block will need to see that block. And there’ll be about 49 blocks worth of txOuts, scattered through the earlier history, that someone eventually has to traverse this block to verify.
All this means you have drastically smaller bandwidth requirements (remember I obsess on bandwidth costs?) for the same transaction volume but larger data-at-rest requirements (for any weirdo who for whatever reason feels like they need to collect the WHOLE database in one place, and why would anybody do that?) by a factor of seven.
And I keep thinking I’m going to do it, because it’s INTERESTING! And I ought to do it, because it’s VALUABLE! But then I think about the current state of the cryptocurrency world and the quality of the people it would bring me into contact with and the ways people would try to scam with it and the number of people who’d find reasons to lie to me or about me, and then I get a sour stomach and go on to do something ELSE!
And feel vaguely guilty for not doing it, because it actually would be valuable.
It’s really hard for me to be motivated or enthusiastic about a cryptocurrency project, until the whole field is more full of people I’d be happy to interact and exchange ideas with and less full of …. um.
The words that come to mind really shouldn’t be printed. [This is fine meme] I don’t mind if people know I’m sort of upset with the conditions and business ethics out there, or even that being so upset is literally preventing me from doing something useful. But I’d rather not have it expressed in terms that are an incitement to violence.
Anyway, moving on; In order to mine, someone would have to be able to see seven of the previous blocks; a different set of seven every time. But if I thought bandwidth was going to waste, that doesn’t even START to address the costs of hashing! Deploying something that saves bandwidth without also figuring out a way to save hashing would fail to address a critical point.
So, I’ve had a bunch of thoughts about mining. Most of which aren’t as interesting or valuable as the thought about how to organize the history database. In favor of mining, it’s good that someone is able to join the network permissionlessly, help secure it, get paid, and initially get coin into circulation going from “none” to “some”.
My thoughts for securing a chain without proof-of-work are something I suppose I ought to call “Proof-of-Total-Stake.”
Congratulations! This conversation with you got me to name it! I had been calling it “proof-of-activity” but I see that name has acquired a much more specific meaning than it had when I started calling this by it, and no longer fits.
I still need to figure out what to call my revised structure for the block history database though.
Proof-of-Total-Stake means measuring the priority of a fork by the total value of TxOuts that existed BEFORE the fork that have been spent AFTER the fork. In other words, the total stake: how much of EVERYBODY’s money the blocks formed after the fork represent. That is a well-founded mechanism for security that doesn’t involve trusted parties nor burning hashes. It’s the only one I’ve come up with. In the long run, unless somebody comes up with another fundamentally new idea, or accepts the idea at least of trusted block signers, that’s what I think a proper cryptocurrency would have to wind up with.
But there’s a problem with it.
Proof-of-Total-Stake, by itself, doesn’t provide an obvious way to determine who gets to form the next block – which can be a CRUCIALLY important security concern.
And Proof-of-Stake, including Proof-of-Total-stake, doesn’t handle the initial, permissionless, distribution of coins. They can’t go from “none” to “some.” They can only go from “some” to “some more.”
So I think it could only be deployed along with some kind of mining.
Q6: We first started interacting some four years ago when I was doing some research on dead cryptocurrencies, most of which were just direct clones or copies of Bitcoin. At the time you were doing the heavy lifting categorizing how they died in a BitcoinTalk thread. Today sites like Deadcoins.com have tried to do something similar. Even though loud advocates at events like to claim blockchains ” live immutably forever” empirically there are probably just as many dead blockchains than living blockchains. What do you think the top reason for why so many blockchains lose support to the point of death and do you think those reasons will change much in the future?
A6: By far the vast majority of those people were not doing anything INTERESTING! A lot of the honest ones discovered that it was a lot of work and had other commitments in life. A lot of the dishonest ones made their money and walked away leaving the suckers behind. A lot of people discovered that maintaining a codebase needed more programming chops than they actually possessed, and quietly withdrew from the field. A fair number ran into scammers and crooks whose utterly disgusting behavior left them convinced they wanted to do something else rather than meeting any more of those guys.
But the most important point? Hardly any of those coins was ever used in any transaction for an actual thing – not even an initial experiment like Laszlo’s Pizza.
Most of them were only ever mined by people who intended absolutely nothing beyond immediately converting them into Bitcoin, and only ever held by people who daily watched their value trying to guess the right time to sell them for Bitcoin.
It’s not so much that most of them *failed* – it’s more the case that the vast majority never even remotely began to *succeed*. There was no economic activity, meaning sales of merchandise or payment for work, that they facilitated. Put bluntly, they just didn’t do anything beyond providing a temporary and completely discardable medium for speculation and scamming. And, as surely as atomic decay, they got used, for that purpose only, and discarded.
Q7: Based on the original white paper, the intent of Bitcoin was to be an e-cash payment system which could be utilized without needing to disclose a real identity to an administrator. It seems that over time several different tribes have popped up, including those who market Bitcoin as a form of “e-gold.” What do you think of the visible fracture that has occurred between the various Bitcoin tribes? Does proof-of-work really act as a type of DRM for coin supply or do all the forks we have seen turn the advertised “digital scarcity” and “digital gold” into an oxymoron?
A7: That endless fight, starting with the block size fight, with everybody yelling and nobody listening, pretty much convinced me that the “community” which had grown around Bitcoin was in deep trouble.
The differences between the various proposed technical changes to the block chain, are far less important to the futures of those forks, than the integrity of the people who support and do business using them.
But the technical merits were never discussed by most. Instead, repetitive sound bites and slogans about them containing absolutely no new information were shouted. Integrity was seldom displayed either. Instead, the fight was carried forward almost exclusively by partisans who had already decided what was the only possible solution that they would accept, and in many cases using tactics that inspire an absolute refusal to support their interests, or even participate in the communities where they are found.
If someone hires a troll army to attack a community by astroturfing fake support for something, can you respect that person? If someone drives people who disagree away with personal abuse, is that a reasonable method for coming to an agreement about a protocol? Is it a valid form of technical reasoning to launch a sabotage against a block chain based consensus mechanism? What can you say about someone who buys existing accounts of users whom others trust in order to fake trusted support for their agenda? How about when it happens after those users whom others trust have been driven away or left in disgust? Is it a respectful negotiator interested in the insights of others in solving a problem, whose negotiating skills include locking the damn doors and refusing to let someone leave the room until they get his signature on an “agreement” that they wrote without his knowledge before he even got there?
Is someone who would participate in a fight, on those terms, someone whose agenda or business interests you really want to support? Hint: You already know that people who fake support for their agenda, or tell lies about other in order to discredit them, or who deliberately deceive others about the merits of their own proposal or others’ proposals, are doing business by means of fraud. Do you want to carry on until the fraud is financial and the victim is you?
These factions had no interest whatsoever in reaching a consensus. And nothing prevented each from implementing their idea and launching, with no hard feelings from anybody and no fight. The only thing they were really fighting over was the name “Bitcoin,” which was absolutely unrelated to the technical merit of any proposal. And, to a first approximation, the other merits of having the name is a thing that none of them even mentioned during the fight.
Technically speaking, there is not much wrong with any of these forks. They address certain problems in different ways slightly favoring the interests of different groups, but not seriously to anyone’s disadvantage. None of them was entirely without technical merit.
On the other hand none of them make more than a tiny amount of difference. None helped with the bandwidth or transaction volume by anything more than a small constant factor, so the problem they were supposedly about solving was not in fact solved, nor even very much affected.
So while none of the proposed changes were objectionable in themselves, there was really no *very* compelling reason for any of them to be implemented. Each of those ideas is merely a stopgap that pushes the rock down the road another foot or two without moving it out of the way. If you want to move that rock out of the road, you will need a much more powerful idea.
Q8: You’ve mentioned that limited supplies simply incentivizes hoarding which leads to low economic activity. You have proposed a type of “proof-of-activity” replacement. Can you expand more on either of these views?
A8: Suppose you have an economy that’s growing (more value is being created) but has a constant supply of coins.
In that case your coins represent, let’s say, one-millionth or so of the money that’s in circulation.
And, as the economy continues to grow, your coins will continue to represent one-millionth or so of the money that’s in circulation. But that will be one-millionth or so of a lot more actual wealth. In fact, your money, just sitting there in your wallet, is GUARANTEED to rise in value by the same fraction that the economy is growing by. In our terms, this would be exactly the market average, as though you were holding stocks invested in ALL the businesses in your economy in proportion according to their capitalization. This is what index funds and IRAs make, mostly, but it’s making it with no risk.
Now, if you offer any investor a risk-free investment that’s guaranteed to make the same return as the market average, that investor would be mad to pass it up. No investor is confident that she’ll beat the market average in any given year. That’s why they call it “AVERAGE!” And volatility – variance in return – is an unqualified bad thing because it will always take an 11% gain to make up for a 10% loss. That money sitting right there in her wallet is the best investment she could possibly make. There might be things that would make as much or more money, but all of them involve risk out of proportion to their marginal return. Let other investors do that; they’re suckers and she’ll make the same money they do.
The problem with that is that the other investors are looking at the same question. And reaching the same conclusion. Why invest in companies doing anything productive, and expose yourself to risk, when you can make the same money just by holding your investment in your wallet?
And then who invests in the businesses that, if they were working, would actually create the value these people all intend to have some share in?
… (sound of crickets chirping) … Suckers.
Suckers who lose more often than they win, because it takes an 11% gain to recover a 10% loss. And the money the lose? Eventually trickles into the hands of the people who are hoarding it.
With no reason for investors to invest in business, the businesses eventually starve and the economy shrinks. And all those coins that represent one-millionth of the economy’s wealth start representing one-millionth of less and less actual value.
This is what happened to ancient Rome. They used metals (gold and silver and bronze) as currency, and their economy collapsed WHILE people had plenty enough money to keep it going! Everybody stashed all their coins expecting to benefit later from prospering businesses, and the businesses, for want of capital, did not prosper.
Then the death spiral started: everybody stashed their coins waiting for the economy to come back so the coins would be worth their “real” value, and the economy never came back. The coins were never worth their “real” value, until the people who remembered where the coins were buried had also been buried.
It’s a millennium-and-a-half later and we are STILL finding stashes of Roman coins! The people who could have gotten their economy moving again, if they had EVER supported a business, instead buried their money in sacks.
The government tried to get it moving again, or pretend for a while that it hadn’t collapsed, making coins with increasingly ridiculous adulterated alloys. But that didn’t change the underlying dynamic.
The Gold bugs of course have all told each other a different version of this story, where the adulterated coins were the cause of the collapse rather than the increasingly desperate attempt to recover from it. And it’s pointless to try to convince them otherwise; they believe they already know the only possible truth. But for those actually motivated to investigate, the chronology of the events is reasonably clear.
==============================
The next thing is about “Proof-of-Total-Stake”, which I guess is what I’m going to call this idea for securing the chain.
The fundamental idea behind Proof-of-Total-Stake is that the priority of any branch of a fork is the total amount of EVERYBODY’s money which that fork represents. That means, coins generated in that fork and pre-existing coins brought into the fork by transactions.
Coins generated in a fork are the coinbase transactions; Coins moved into the fork from earlier parts of the chain are TxOuts from earlier in the block chain that have been spent during the fork.
But we have to know which BRANCH of the fork they were spent into. ie, someone trying to create a fork should not be able to stick transactions from the valid branch of the chain into it, or they can match the txOut spending from earlier in the chain. This is the basic problem with most implementations of proof-of-stake, which some writers have called “nothing at stake.” Whatever resource you are using to secure the chain is meaningless when it can be used to secure *BOTH* forks of the chain.
In order to prevent the replay attack, each transaction would have to “stake” a recent block, making a commitment to supporting only forks which include that block. This adds a field to each transaction.
The new field would give the (hash) ID of a block, indicating that this particular transaction is not valid in any branch of the chain which does not include the staked block.
So, let’s say that two transactions “coffee” and “eggs” are made at the same time, after the chain forks at block 50. “Coffee” stakes block 48 and “eggs” stakes block 51A.
When “coffee” appears in block 51B, the total stake of fork B is increased by that amount; its weight counts toward that resolution of the fork.
Then “eggs” is added to block 52A, and can’t be placed in chain B because it staked a block doesn’t exist in chain B. Now “eggs” counts as stake in favor of the A branch and “coffee” counts as stake in favor of the B branch.
But then “coffee” appears in branch 53A, where it is also valid because the same block 48 is behind both branches. This cancels out its support for branch B, just by being equal – revealing that stake which can be used in favor of both chains counts for nothing.
Security happens because some finite resource (coins created before the branch point and spent in transactions that are staked after the branch point) is committed detectably and irrevocably to the support of one branch (by staking after the branch point), and cannot be used to support any other.
This is exactly what Bitcoin does with hashes: Hashes per second and number of seconds spent hashing are finite. Hashes are irrevocably used in support of one branch (because the hash preimage can never be made to match a different block). And the fact that they are used to support a particular branch is detectable.
Well, strictly speaking there’s only one “detectable” hash in each block. All we know about the others is, on average, how rare that one “detectable” one was and therefore, on average, how many they must have been.
But it’s still the same basic criteria. Some finite resource, committed detectably and irrevocably to the support of one branch, which cannot be used to support conflicting branches. And proof-of-total stake says that resource is the amount of EVERYBODY’s coins that branch represents.
With transactions supporting the basic security of the chain, and the idea behind coinbases being that they are payment for providing chain security, we want our “coinbases” to reward the people who make transactions that stake recent blocks.
PoTS is strong in the long run, or when the chain is seeing a high volume of legitimate transactions, but has its own problems.
Transactions in most cryptocurrencies are a very bursty use of something with long latent periods. Absent heavy transaction volume, you can’t really expect PoTS to definitively reject a branch in such a way that a crook couldn’t resurrect it with a very large spend. If the crook has more coins than the difference in total-stake between the two forks, the crook could resurrect the “dead” fork.
This is why the “interest” payments (actually per-transaction coinbases of a particular sort) when a transaction staking a recent block are made. To encourage a fairly constant stream of transactions that support one particular version of the chain up to a very recent block.
But the peril with that is that you want to structure it in such a way that you don’t incentivize people to overwhelm your bandwidth by transferring every coin they own from their left pocket to their right every block either. So the actual design would come down to some compromise between transaction fees, and interest payments on transactions staked in very recent blocks, where the breakevens represent the transaction volume you want.
And there are a couple of final things to address together. First, PoTS, while it has a workable rule for figuring out which branch of forks is preferred, is pretty silent about who gets to form blocks and how. Second, Interest on coins spent has the “nothing to something” problem where if you don’t have anything in the system to start with, you won’t have anything ever. These are both classic problem with PoTS coins. The final design has to include some additional kind of coin creation that doesn’t depend on previous holdings (even if it gets de-emphasized after a while) and some way to determine who forms the next block.
Q9: ICOs have been around in some form or fashion for about five years now. What’s your view on these fundraising schemes?
A9: The SEC is bouncing on them pretty hard, and as far as I can see it’s pretty much deserved. Everybody wants something they can freely trade on secondary markets, and sell on the basis of its future value, but they also want to lie about it by saying it isn’t a security.
It is a security. If a security is sold by a company to raise money, but does not represent a bond (a promise to buy it back) nor a stock (a share in future earnings) then an investor is getting nothing for her money – except maybe a receipt for having made a donation.
Another investor (a “real” investor who knows and understands a broad market, not a speculator who made a lot of money by a couple of strokes of sheer luck) will not buy it from them, at any price. Such a thing has only speculative value.
If something’s continued value depends on a company, but the company’s continued existence doesn’t depend on that thing having value, it would be an excellent thing to not buy.
And all of that, we can say without ever touching on ethics and business practices of the people who run them. But when we do touch on the people who run them, the story gets worse. Much worse. Much, much worse. In this most are following the path trod by Altcoins. And racking up a very similar ratio of efforts that fail, or which never even start to succeed.
Q10: You have alluded to tokenized securities in the LinkedIn article as well as our correspondence, what is your take on this topic? What are the advantages versus say, simply doing what Carta (formerly eShares) does?
A10: I would have to answer that admitting to some degree of ignorance about Carta. As I remember eShares, it was very much a top-down stock and option management tool, in that a private company with (non-traded) shares typically uses it to keep track of who owns what – actually issuing assets or recording changes in their status, making info about them available for the holders but mostly just to view online.
What it does not do, as I understand it, is directly enable the shareholders to trade those shares or options with each other. Nor does it handle securities involved with or created by more than one company at a time. It is a management interface, not a market.
I envision a block chain – sigh, now I have to come up with a name again. Phooey. I never care about naming anything, and then someone wants me to talk about one of my ideas and I have to come up with a name for it on the spot. Let’s go for the pun and call it the Stock Trading and Options CryptoAsset Keeper. I could come up with something even dumber, but for the sake of exposition, call it STOCK.
The idea is that STOCK would act both as a Transfer Agent (which Carta does) AND a market (which AFAIK Carta does not). A company could issue securities such as stocks and bonds directly on the STOCK block chain (“cryptoassets”) and the block chain could record trades in those issues against its native cryptocurrency. The benefit here is the clear record and history to keep track of all trades and the current disposition of all the different cryptoassets – the stocks, the bonds, and the “cash” used to trade in them, would all be on the chain.
As long as no off-chain assets like bushels of wheat or truckloads of sneakers need to be delivered, and dividends/prices/etc accruing to these instruments are paid out (or in) in the cryptocurrency, the block chain could then function directly as market, transfer agent, means of delivery, and payment channel. The task of converting the cryptocurrency to and from actual fiat, and the heavily regulated business of delivering the fiat currency, could be left to already-established cryptocurrency markets.
Trading in stocks/bonds/etc is highly regulated, and debts (NEGATIVE amounts) can crop up unexpectedly when companies go south or options traders go bust. Stuff gets into the RealWorld quickly when someone has to be found for debt payments, served process, and/or prosecuted for fraud, etc. So STOCK couldn’t be an “anonymous/permissionless” chain, at least not for regulated trades. Each person or entity authorized to actually make securities trades would have to have a vetted, verified ID as specified by KYC laws, and would have to sign each such transaction with a public/private key pair proving Identity.
From the point of view of investors, STOCK would be a very sluggish market – submit your trade, have a completely random execution window averaging ten minutes (or whatever) during which the price might change, then a whole block of transactions all fly past at once and everybody’s waiting for the next completely randomly-timed block. On the other hand, you don’t need an agent, or a broker, or a company transfer agent, or a registrar, or a clearance period, or ANY of those people who normally collect fees on every trade. You could actually have a market where the buyer and seller get the exact same price with no ‘float’ whatsoever. And you don’t have to worry about what time it is. NASDAQ closes at 5PM new york time, and then a whole bunch of “off-market,” “private,” and “over the counter” trades that nobody but the insiders can participate in or see happen. But STOCK would go on making blocks twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. Why should it ever stop?
The SEC would be all over it of course; they’d be sticking a microscope up the butts of everybody involved to make sure that there was absolutely no scamming the investors. Which is, after all, their job. And they’d require KYC compliance, and a whole lot of other regulatory compliance. But, y’know, that’s kind of how starting any _legitimate_ business in financial services works. No need to feel special or particularly victimized about that.
And the regulators would need some privileged keys that could be used to “seize” assets when a court orders them to, as part of a settlement for fraud or theft or something. And everything else. There’s a great irony that they’re interested in nobody having the opportunity to scam the investors, but they structurally require, just to be able to do their fundamental mission, builtins to the protocol that if misused would allow somebody to scam the investors.
But once satisfied and functioning within the law, I think they’d welcome STOCK as something that puts down a visible, provable, inalterable, unfakeable history of all trades.
Q11: Is there any cryptocurrency you think could become widely used outside of geeks, cypherpunks, and ideologues? If not, what would need to change and how? Has any popular coin ossified to such an extent that it can’t meaningfully evolve?
A11: Homer Husband and Harriet Housewife want convenience and familiarity. Which is mostly about form factor and compatibility. They do not want to deal with key management in any form.
To do that, you have to make a hardware wallet small enough to fit into a wallet or a purse. It doesn’t have to be literally credit card sized, but couldn’t be much bigger. It should be the size of a stack of five credit cards, at most. Or maybe it gets stuck back-to-back onto their cell phone. It has to have an end that acts like a chip card, or an edge that acts like a mag stripe, or both, so that it can interact with the grocery stores, auto shops, restaurants, etc that Homer and Harriet already do business with.
That’s very very important, because Homer and Harriet aren’t evangelists. The mechanic they’ve been going to for fifteen years has never heard of cryptocurrency and is never going to deal with the inconvenience of getting set up to accept it. He wants people to pay cash or pay with a card, and Homer and Harriet would NEVER consider arguing with him about it, don’t want to go to the effort of explaining it to him, and probably couldn’t explain it very well anyway. If they have to do any of those things, that’s a deal-breaker.
After that you have to get your cryptocurrency onto the Plus or Cirrus network, using the same interface as a foreign fiat currency. That would allow Homer and Harriet to automate the sale and exchange to whatever local people think is money, or the purchase and exchange to crypto, when they want to spend or accept stuff from that “card.” This will mean that they get hit with some extra fees when they use it, but
those fees are both unavoidable if you want to be on those networks, and relatively familiar to them.
Finally, there’s that key management thing. You could handle most of it by making the wallet do it. But sooner or later, that hardware wallet is going to fall and bounce of the curb, and go crunch under the tires of a bus. Or, you know, get dropped into the ocean accidentally, or just get lost.
Homer and Harriet are NOT willing to accept that this is not something they can recover. The only thing that they accept not being able to recover, when they lose their wallet, is familiar, folding fiat currency. And that’s why they don’t keep very much of folding fiat actually in their regular wallets.
If you do convince them that losing the wallet makes the funds unrecoverable, they will never want to have more than fifteen dollars on it, which will mean it isn’t useful. So, your hardware wallet has to interact with SOMETHING that keeps enough information about what’s on it, to enable a new wallet to recover everything that got lost.
Q12: Mining farms, mining pools, and ASICs. Many accounts are that Satoshi did not anticipate the full industrial scale these would reach. Do you agree with this? What are your views on mining pools and ASICs as we know them know today (specifically as described by Eric Budish’s paper)?
A12: My first problem with ASICs is that they can be used for exactly two things: Mining cryptocurrencies, and carrying out attacks on cryptocurrencies.
Every day of every year, people who own those enormous ASIC farms are deciding which is the most profitable use of them, on that day.
And the rewards for mining cryptocurrencies ratchet downward every couple of years.
That seems problematic. I keep watching to see what emerges each time the reward ratchets down, but I haven’t seen evidence yet that any of the big ASIC farms have turned around on any large scale.
My second problem with ASICs is that they are sucking up ridiculous amounts of energy that can never be recovered or used for anything else. I don’t so much mind this when converting the energy into heat is actually useful – replacing electric heaters in the basement of a building with a bank of Antminers that use the same amount of power is
energy-neutral and helps secure the chain.
But that’s not what happens in huge ASIC farms. All that heat is just waste. Nobody’s home is made more comfortable, no furnace’s power bill is alleviated, no greenhouses are enabled to grow food in the winter, nobody’s oven gets to bake bread with that heat, and all that energy is just plain gone.
The Bitcoin chain issues the same number of coins per day regardless of how much energy is spent; I’d like to think that spending a whole lot less of it, at least in ways where the heat produced isn’t useful, would be better.
But then we get back to the first problem; If honest miners start spending a whole lot less on the energy costs of hashing, then there’s a whole lot of ASICs not being used, and the owners of those are going to be looking around making their daily decision about what’s more profitable….
So the logic finally does work out the same. Security requires the vast majority of those ASIC boxes to be in use mining. It just seems such a colossal expenditure of power, and it might be that a different design could have achieved chain security without that global cost.
My third problem with ASICs is that they have become a way for their owners to steal money from the taxpayers in many nations. Countries that mean to do a good thing for everybody, create “development zones” with subsidized electricity, paid for by the taxpayers of that country. And then people move in with ASIC farms to suck up that electricity which the public paid for, and convert it into bitcoins in their private possession. These are business that employ very few people, drive the development of no other resources, and otherwise do pretty much nothing for the development of the local economy. IOW, the taxpayers who paid for that electricity are definitely not getting their money’s worth in economic development.
My fourth problem with ASICs is that there really is no way to monitor centralization of hashing power. People keep pretending that they’re tracking whether a 51% attack is underway, but I think most of them probably suspect, as I do, that what they’re really tracking is probably nothing more than whether or not the cabal of ASIC farm owners
remembered to configure that new warehouse full of machinery to use a different identifier.
In all fairness, this last thing results directly from anonymous, permissionless mining, which is something that was a very specific and very much desired part of Satoshi’s vision; he wanted anybody to be able to connect and participate, without any interference of a gatekeeper. But there can never be security from a Sybil attack when you don’t have any way of tracking RealWorld identities, and a “majority” can never be
relied on to be more than the front for some cabal or business interest, as long as a Sybil attack is possible.
And that was what Proof-of-work was supposed to prevent. In those early days everyone was thinking of hashing power as a side effect of computing infrastructure that was likely to be there, or be useful, for other purposes when it wasn’t hashing. And EVERYBODY has a use for warehouses full of computers, so it was easy to think that hashing power would remain at least somewhat distributed. The idea that someone would amass enormous numbers of special-purpose machines which made every other kind of computer in the world utterly useless for mining and which are themselves utterly useless for any other job (except attacking the network), was not, I think, really considered.
Satoshi definitely understood, and planned, that there would probably be server farms devoted to mining and that economies of scale and infrastructure would eventually drive individuals with ordinary desktop machines out of the mining business by being more efficient and making it unprofitable for the less efficient machines.
But I’m pretty sure he didn’t think of miners in places with artificially low subsidized rates for electricity outcompeting all other miners because of that advantage, driving the concentration of the vast majority of hashing power into just one country where it’s subject to the orders and whims of just one government and a few businessmen who
pal around with each other.
So he probably figured, yes, there’d be a few dozen large-ish server farms and a couple hundred small-ish server farms, but I’m pretty sure he envisioned them being scattered around the planet, wherever people find it worthwhile to install server farms for other reasons.
I’m fairly sure Satoshi’s notion of the eventual centralization of hashing power didn’t really encompass todays nearly-complete centralization in a single country, owned by a set of people who are subject to the whims and commands of a single government, who very clearly know each other and work together whenever it’s convenient.
And I find it worrisome.
Those enormous mining farms, and the way economics drove them together, are a structural problem with converting electricity into security.
I am not comfortable with the implication that, for any Proof-of-Work block chain including Bitcoin, economics will eventually devolve to the point where, when Beijing says ‘jump’ the mining and security of that block chain says ‘how high?’
And that is one of the greatest reasons why I look around for a different means of securing block chains.
El Fin
Send to KindleI recently created a thread that on Twitter regarding the lower-bound estimates for how much electricity the Bitcoin blockchain consumed using publicly available numbers.
The first part of this post is a slightly modified version of that thread.
The second part of this post, below part 1, includes additional information on Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Monero using the same type of methodology.
Background
The original nested thread started by explaining why a proof-of-work (PoW) maximalist view tries to have it both ways.
You cannot simultaneously say that Bitcoin is – as measured by hashrate – the “most secure public chain” and in the same breath say the miners do not consume enormous quantities of energy to achieve that. The fundamental problem with PoW maximalism is that it wants to have a free energy lunch.
All proof-of-work chains rely on resource consumption to defend their network from malicious attackers. Consequently, a less resource intensive network automatically becomes a less secure network.1 I discussed this in detail a few years ago.
Part 1: Bitcoin
Someone recently asked for me to explain the math behind some of Bitcoin’s electricity consumption, below is simple model using publicly known numbers:
Thus the hashrate pointed at the Bitcoin network today is about 50,000,000 terashashes.
Dividing one from the other, this is the equivalent of 3,846,000 S9s… yes over 3 million S9s.
While there is other hardware including some newer, slightly more energy efficient gear online, the S9 is a good approximate.
Because the vast majority of these machines are left on 24/7, the math to estimate how much energy consumption is as follows:
Note: here’s a good thread explaining this by actual miners.
In a single month, one S9 will use ~1,080 kWh.
Thus if you multiply that by 3,846,000 machines, you reach a number that is the equivalent of an entire country.
For perspective, ~50.5 billion kWh / year would place the Bitcoin network at around the 47th largest on the list of countries by electricity consumption, right between Algeria and Greece.
But, this estimate is probably a lower-bound because it doesn’t include the electricity consumed within the data centers to cool the systems, nor does it include the relatively older ASIC equipment that is still turned on because of local subsidies a farm might receive.
So what?
According to a recent Wired article:
In Iceland, the finance minister has warned that cryptocurrency mining – which uses more power than the nation’s entire residential demand – could severely damage its economy.
Recent analysis from a researcher at PwC places the Bitcoin network electricity consumption higher, at more than the level of Austria which is number 39th on that list above. Similarly, a computer science professor from Princeton estimates that Bitcoin mining accounts for almost 1% of the world’s energy consumption.2
Or to look at it in a different perspective: the Bitcoin network is consuming the same level of electricity of a developed country – Austria – a country that generates ~$415 billion per year in economic activity.
Based on a recent analysis from Chainalysis, it found that Bitcoin – which is just one of many proof-of-work coins – handled about $70 million in payments processed for the month of June. Yet its cost-per-transaction (~$50) is higher than at any point prior to November 2017.
You don’t have to be a hippy tree hugger (I’m not) to clearly see that a proof-of-work blockchains (such as Bitcoin and its derivatives) are currently consuming significantly more resources than they create. However this math is hand-waved away on a regular basis by coin lobbyists.
The figure also didn’t include the e-waste generated from millions of single-use ASIC mining machines that are useful for about ~12 months; or the labor costs, or building rents, or transportation, etc. These ASIC-based machines are typically discarded and not recycled.
In addition to e-waste, many mining farms also end up with piles of discarded cardboard boxes and styrofoam (source)
Part 2: Bitcoin Cash
With Bitcoin Cash the math and examples are almost identical to the Bitcoin example above. Why? Because they both use the same SHA256 proof-of-work hash function and as a result, right now the same exact hardware can be used to mine both (although not simultaneously).3
So what do the numbers look like?
The BCH network hashrate has been hovering around 4 – 4.5 exahashes the past month. So let’s use 4.25 exahashes.
Note: this is about one order of magnitude less hashrate than Bitcoin so you can already guesstimate its electricity usage. But let’s do it by hand anyways.
An S9 generates ~13 TH/s and 4.25 exahashes is 4.25 million terahashes.
After dividing: the equivalent of about 327,000 S9s are used.
Again, these machines are also left on 24/7 and consume about 36 kWh per machine per day. So a single S9 will use ~1,080 kWh per month.
To reuse the comparison above, what country’s total electricity consumption is Bitcoin Cash most similar to?
Around 124th, between Moldova and Cambodia.
How much economic activity does Moldova and Cambodia generate with that electricity consumption? According to several sources, Cambodia has an annual GDP of ~ $22 billion and Moldova has an annual GDP of ~$8 billion.
For comparison, according to Chainalysis, this past May, Bitcoin Cash handled a mere $3.7 million in merchant payments, down from a high of $10.5 million in March a couple months before.
Also, the Bitcoin Cash energy consumption number is likely a lower-bound as well for the reasons discussed above; doesn’t account for the e-waste or the resources consumed to create the mining equipment in the first place.
This illustrates once again that despite the hype and interest in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, there is still little real commercial “activity” beyond hoarding, speculation, and illicit darknet markets. And in practice, hoarding is indistinguishable from losing a private key so that could be removed too. Will mainstream adoption actually take place like its vocal advocates claim it will?
Discarded power supplies from Bitcoin mining equipment (source)
Part 3: Ethereum
So what about Ethereum?
Its network hashrate has been hovering very closely to 300 TH/s the past month
At the time of this writing, the Ethereum network is still largely dominated by large GPU farms. It is likely that ASICs were privately being used by a handful of small teams with the necessary engineering and manufacturing talent (and capital), but direct-to-consumer ASIC hardware for Ethereum didn’t really show up until this summer.
There are an estimated 10 million GPUs churning up hashes for the Ethereum network, to replace those with ASICs will likely take more than a year… assuming price stability occurs (and coin prices are volatile and anything but stable).
For illustrative purposes, what if the entire network were to magically switch over the most efficient hardware -the Innosilicon A10 – released next month?
Innosilicon currently advertises its top machine can generate 485 megahashes/sec and consumes ~ 850 W.
So what is that math?
The Ethereum network is ~300 TH/s which is around 300,000,000 megahashes /sec.
Quick division: that’s the equivalent of 618,557 A10 machines.
Again, each machine is advertised to consume ~850 W.
So what would 618,557 A10 machines consume in a single day?
– about 12.6 million kWh / day
And annually:
– about 4.6 billion kWh / year
That works out to be between Afghanistan or Macau. However…
Before you say “this is nearly identical to Bitcoin Cash” keep in mind that the Ethereum estimate above is the lowest of lower-bounds because it uses the most efficient mining gear that hasn’t even been released to the consumer.
In reality the total energy consumption for Ethereum is probably twice as high.
Why is Etherum electricity usage likely twice as high as the example above?
Because each of the ~10 million GPUs on the Ethereum network is significantly less efficient per hash than the A10 is. 4 Note: an example of a large Ethereum mine that uses GPUs is the Enigma facility.
For instance, an air-cooled Vega 64 can churn ~41 MH/s at around 135 W which as you see above, is much less efficient per hash than an A10.
If the Ethereum network was comprised by some of the most efficient GPUs (the Vega 64) then the numbers are much different.
Starting with: 300,000,000 MH/s divided by 41 MH/s. There is the equivalent to 7.32 million Vega GPUs generating hashes for the network which is more in line with the ~10 million GPU estimate.
If 7.32 million Vega equivalent GPUs were used:
That would place the Ethereum network at around 100th on the electricity consumption list, between Guatemala and Estonia.
In terms of economic activity: Guatemala’s GDP is around $75 billion and Estonia’s GDP is around $26 billion.
What is Ethereum’s economic activity?
Unlike Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, the stated goal of Ethereum was basically to be a ‘censorship-resistant’ world computer. Although it can transmit funds (ETH), its design goals were different than building an e-cash payments platform which is what Bitcoin was originally built for.
So while merchants can and do accept ETH (and its derivatives) for payment, perhaps a more accurate measure of its activity is how many Dapp users there are.
There are a couple sites that estimate Daily Active Users:
Based on the fact that the most popular Dapps are decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and MLM schemes, it is unlikely that the Ethereum network is generating economic activity equivalent to either Guatemala or Estonia.5
For more on the revenue Ethereum miners have earned and an estimate for how much CO2 has been produced, Dominic Williams has crunched some numbers. See also this footnote.6
According to Malachi Salacido (above), their mining systems (in the background) are at a 2 MW facility, they are building a 10 MW facility now and have broken ground on a 20 MW facility. Also have 8 MW of facilities in 2 separate locations and developing projects for another 80 MW. (source)
Part 4: Litecoin
If you have been reading my blog over the past few years, you’ll probably have seen some of my Litecoin mining guides from 2013 and 2014.
If you haven’t, the math to model Litecoin’s electricity usage is very similar to both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. From a mining perspective, the biggest difference between Litecoin and the other two is that Litecoin uses a hash function called scrypt, which was intended to make Litecoin more “ASIC-resistant”.
Spoiler alert: that “resistance” didn’t last long.
Rather than diving into the history of that philosophical battle, as of today, the Litecoin network is composed primarily of ASIC mining gear from several different vendors.
One of the most popular pieces of equipment is the L3+ from Bitmain. It’s basically the same thing as the L3 but with twice the hashrate and twice the power consumption.
So let’s do some numbers.
Over the past month, the Litecoin network hashrate has hovered around 300 TH/s, or 300 million MH/s.
Based on reviews, the L3+ consumes ~800 W and generates ~500 MH/s.
So some quick division, there are about 600,000 L3+ machines generating hashes for the Litecoin network today.
As an aggregate:
Coincidentally this is roughly the same amount as Bitcoin Cash does as well.
So it would be placed around 124th, between Moldova and Cambodia.
Again, this is likely a lower-bound as well because it assumes the L3+ is the most widely used ASIC for Litecoin but we know there are other, less efficient ones being used as well.
What about activity?
While there are a few vocal merchants and a small army of “true believers” on social media, anecdotally I don’t think I’ve spoken to someone in the past year who has used Litecoin for any good or service (besides converting from one coin to another).
We can see that — apart from the bubble at the end of last year — the daily transaction volume has remained roughly constant each day for the past 18 months. Before you flame me with a troll account, consider that LitePay collapsed before it could launch, partly because Litecoin still lacks a strong merchant-adopting ecosystem.
In other words, despite some support by merchant payment processors, its current usage is likely as marginal as Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
Genesis Mining facility with Zeus scrypt mining equipment (source)
Part 5: Monero
The math around Monero is most similar to Ethereum in that it is largely dominated by GPUs.
In fact, earlier this year, a large number of Monero developers convinced its boisterous userbase to fork the network to prevent ASICs from being used. This resulted in four Monero forks and basically all of them are dominated by high-end GPUs.
For the purposes of this article, we are looking at the fork that has the highest hashrate, XMR. Over the past month its hashrate has hovered around 475 MH/s.
Only 475 MH/s? That may sound like a very diminutive hashrate, but it is all relative to what most CPU and GPU hashrate performance is measured in Monero and not other coins.
For example, MoneroBenchmarks lists hundreds of different system configurations with the corresponding hashrate. Similarly there are other independent testing systems that provide public information on hashrates.
Let’s take that same Vega 64 used above from Ethereum. For Monero, based on tweaking it generates around 2000 hashes/sec and consumes around 160 W.
So the math is as follows:
The 332 million kWh / year figure is a lower-bound because like the Ethereum Vega 64 example above: it doesn’t include the whole mining system, all of these systems still need a CPU with its own RAM, hard drive, and so forth.
As a result, the real electricity consumption figure is much closer to Haiti than Seychelles, perhaps even higher. Note: Haiti has a ~$8.4 billion economy and the GDP of Seychelles is ~$1.5 billion.
So what about Monero’s economic activity? Many Monero advocates like to market it as a privacy-focused coin. Some of its “core” developers publicly claimed it would be the best coin to use for interacting with darknet markets. Whatever the case may be, compared to the four above, currently it is probably the least used for commercial activity as revealed by its relative flat transactional volume this past year.
A now-deleted image of a Monero mining farm in Toronto (source)
Conclusion
Above were examples of how much electricity is consumed by just five proof-of-work coins. And there are hundreds of other PoW coins actively online using disproportionate amounts of electricity relative to what they process in payments or commerce.
This article did not dive into the additional resources (e.g., air conditioning) used to cool mining equipment. Or the subsidies that are provided to various mining farms over the years. It also doesn’t take into account the electricity used by thousands of validating nodes that each of the networks use to propagate blocks each day.
It also did not include the huge amount of semiconductors (e.g. DRAM, CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, network chips, motherboards, etc.) that millions of mining machines use and quickly depreciate within two years, almost all of which becomes e-waste.7 For ASIC-based systems, the only thing that is typically reused is the PSU, but these ultimately fail as well due to constant full-throttle usage.
In summation, as of this writing in late August 2018:
Altogether, these five networks alone likely consume electricity and other resources at an equivalent scale as The Netherlands especially once you begin to account for the huge e-waste generated by the discarded single-use ASICs, the components of which each required electricity and other resources to manufacture. Perhaps even higher when costs of land, labor, on-going maintenance, transportation and other inputs are accounted for.
The Netherlands has the 18th largest economy in the world, generating $825 billion per annum.
I know many coin supporters say that is not a fair comparison but it is. The history of development and industrialization since the 18th century is a story about how humanity is increasingly more productive and efficient per unit of energy.
Proof-of-work coins are currently doing just the opposite. Instead of being more productive (e.g., creating more outputs with the same level of inputs), as coin prices increase, this incentivizes miners to use more not less resources. This is known as the Red Queen Effect.89
For years, proof-of-work advocates and lobbying organizations like Coin Center have been claiming that the energy consumption will go down and/or be replaced by renewable energy sources.
But this simply cannot happen by design: as the value of a PoW coin increases, miners will invest more capital in order to win those coins. This continues to happen empirically and it is why over time, the aggregate electricity consumption for each PoW coin has increased over time, not decreased. As a side-effect, cryptocurrency mining manufacturers are now doing IPOs.10
Reporters, if you plan to write future stories on this topic, always begin by looking at the network hashrate of the specific PoW coin you are looking at and dividing it by the most common piece of mining hardware. These numbers are public and cannot be easily dismissed. Also worth looking at the mining restrictions and bans in Quebec, Plattsburgh, Washington State, China, and elsewhere.
To front-run an example that coin promoter frequently use as a whataboutism: there are enormous wastes in the current traditional financial industry, removing those inefficiencies is a decades-long ordeal. However, as of this writing, no major bank is building dozens of data centers and filling them with single-use ASIC machines which continuously generate random numbers like proof-of-work coins do. That would be rightly labeled as a waste.
In point of fact, according to the Federal Reserve:
In the aggregate, U.S. PCS systems process approximately 600 million transactions per day, valued at over $12.6 trillion.
It shouldn’t take the energy footprint of a single country, big or small, to confirm and settle electronic payments of that same country. The fact of the matter is that with all of its headline inefficiencies (and injustices), that the US financial system has — the aggregate service providers still manage to process more than three orders of magnitude more in transactional volume per day than all of the major PoW coins currently do.11 And that is just one country.
Frequent rejoinders will be something like “but Lightning!” however at the time of this writing, no Lightning implementation has seen any measurable traction besides spraying virtual graffiti on partisan-run websites.
Can the gap between the dearth of transactional volume and the exorbitantly high cost-per-transaction ratio be narrowed? Does it all come down to uses? Right now, the world is collectively subsidizing dozens of minuscule speculation-driven economies that in aggregate consumes electricity on par with the 18th largest real economy, but produces almost nothing tangible in exchange for it.
What if all mining magically, immediately shifted over to renewable energy?
Izabella Kaminska succinctly described how this still doesn’t solve the environmental impact issues:
Renewable is displacement. Renewable used by bitcoin network is still renewable not used by more necessary everyday infrastructure. Since traditional global energy consumption is still going up, that ensures demand for fossil continues to increase.
To Kaminska’s point, in April a once-shuttered coal power plant in Australia was announced to be reopened to provide electricity to a cryptocurrency miner. And just today, a senator from Montana warned that the closure of a coal power plant “could harm the booming bitcoin mining business in the state.”
It is still possible to be interested in cryptocurrencies and simultaneously acknowledge the opportunity costs that a large subset of them, proof-of-work coins, are environmental black holes.12
If you’re interested in discussing this topic more, feel free to reach out. If you’re looking to read detailed papers on the topic, also highly recommend the first two links listed below.
Recommended reading:
End notes
Send to Kindle[Note: the content below was originally sent to clients and contacts on a private weekly note from Post Oak Labs on July 15, 2018.]
Earlier this week, the Mueller investigation indicted a dozen GRU officers as part of its investigation into the 2016 elections.
In the indictment, the DoJ alleges that these officers used bitcoin to finance some of its operations. This was not limited to simply exchanging bitcoins for services, but also mining them. It is unclear how many bitcoins were mined or which specific mining pool was involved.
If you have read my articles and papers in the past, this is an issue I and others have raised with respect to FMI: the possibility of illicit actors not only running infrastructure but profiting and having the ability to launder proceeds of crime. See “know your miner” in Chapter 3.
For example, in early 2015, after publishing Consensus as a service, several coin journalists chain’splained to me that it is not a problem if North Korea or other actors were running mining pools that regulated institutions used to process financial instruments. This was back in the heyday of maximalism — the view that everything would run on top of Bitcoin, laws be damned.
Turns out, they were probably wrong because financial institutions likely would be violating AML / OFAC / sanctions check requirements if they were sending payments to pools/miners that were sanctioned and/or located in sanctioned countries. Vendors such as Symbiont eventually shifted to non-public chain infrastructure because of this legal constraint too (though they originally started by using Bitcoin).
An ironic thing that most of the ideological bitcoin proponents miss is: that savvy state actors could be using the infrastructure nominally built by anarchists… in order to carry out the state-sponsored activities (such as what the GRU allegedly did, but also less sophisticated operations).
Why did the GRU use bitcoins? According to the indictment, to avoid direct relationships with traditional financial institutions. We can only speculate at this time for other reasons but consider that if you mine a coin, a 3rd party cannot immediately track the purchase of newly minted coins… because they haven’t been purchased. This is one reason why “virgin” coins carry a premium over others. For instance, Blocktrail provided the service (although it has since removed its announcement).
In the future, perhaps mining equipment manufacturers could be subpoenaed to learn their customer list, but keep in mind that there is a secondary market for miners as well, and some of those have ended up in both North Korea and Russia.
Anyone have a guess for how much state-sponsored activity comprises cryptocurrency networks today?
Send to KindleOver the past few years I’ve had the chance to read through and dissect several cryptocurrency and blockchain-related books.
Below are the reviews I have publicly published (in chronological order):
I’ve provided feedback on a handful of others. If you’re currently writing a book on the topic – and schedule permitting – feel free to send over a draft for my candid feedback.
Send to Kindle[Disclaimer: The views expressed below are solely my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my clients. I currently own no cryptocurrencies.]
As a follow-on to my previous book reviews, an old colleague lent me a copy of Cryptoassets by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar.
Overall they have several “meta” points that could have legs if they substantially modify the language and structure of multiple sections in the book. As a whole it’s about on par with the equally inaccurate “Blockchain Revolution” by the Tapscotts.
As I have one in my previous book reviews, I’ll go through and provide specific quotes to backup the view that the authors should have waited for more data and relevant citations as some of their arguments lack definitive supporting evidence.
In short: hold off from buying this edition.
If you’re interested in understanding the basics of cryptocurrencies but without the same level of inaccuracies, check out the new The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains by Antony Lewis. And if you’re interested in the colorful background of some of the first cryptocurrency investors and entrepreneurs, check out Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper.
Another point worth mentioning at the beginning is that there are no upfront financial disclosures by the authors. They do casually mention that they have bitcoin once or twice, but that’s about it.
I think this is problematic because it is not being transparent about potential conflicts of interest (e.g., promoting financial products you may own and hope to see financial gain from).
For instance, we learned that Chris Burniske carried around a lot of USD worth of cryptocurrencies on his phone from a NYT article last year:
But a particularly concentrated wave of attacks has hit those with the most obviously valuable online accounts: virtual currency fanatics like Mr. Burniske.
Within minutes of getting control of Mr. Burniske’s phone, his attackers had changed the password on his virtual currency wallet and drained the contents — some $150,000 at today’s values.
Some quick math for those at home. The NYT article above was published on August 21, 2017 when 1 BTC was worth about $4,050 and 1 ETH was worth about $314. So Burniske may have had around 37 BTC or 477 ETH or a combination of these two (and other coins).
That is not a trivial amount of money and arguably should have been disclosed in this book and other venues (such as op-eds and analyst reports).1 In the next edition, they should consider adding a disclosure statement.
A final comment is that several reviewers suggested I modify the review below to be (re)structured like a typical book review — comparing broad themes instead of a detailed dissection — after all who is going to read 38,000+ words?
That is a fair point. Yet because many of the points they attempt to highlight are commonly repeated by promoters of cryptocurrencies, I felt that this review could be a useful resource for readers looking for different perspective to the same topics frequently discussed in media and at events.
Note: all transcription errors are my own.
Authors’ Note
On p. xi, the authors wrote:
When embarking on our literary journey, we recognized the difficulty in documenting arguably the world’s fastest moving markets. These markets can change as much in a day – up or down – as the stock market changes in a year.
It is only mentioned in passing once or twice, but we know that market manipulation is a real on-going phenomenon. The next edition could include a subsection of cryptocurrencies and ICOs that the CFTC and SEC – among other regulators – have identified and prosecuted for manipulation. More on that later below.
Foreword
On p. xiv, Brian Kelly wrote in the Foreword
The beauty of this book is that it takes the reader on a journey from bitcoin’s inception in the ashes of the Great Financial Crisis to its role as a diversifier in a traditional investment portfolio.
A small quibble: Satoshi actually began writing the code for Bitcoin sometime in mid-2007, before the GFC took place. It may be a chronological coincidence that it came out when it did, especially since it was supposed to be a payment system, which is just one small function of a commercial bank.23
On p. xv Kelly writes:
As with any new model, there are questions about legality and sustainability, but the Silicon Valley ethos of “break things first, then ask for forgiveness” has found its way to Wall Street.
There are also two problems with this:
On p.xv Kelly writes
“Self-funded, decentralized organizations are a new species in the global economy that are changing everything we know about business.”
In point of fact, virtually all cryptocurrencies are not self-funded. Even Satoshi had some kind of budget to build Bitcoin with. And basically all ICOs are capital raises from external parties. Blockchains don’t run and manage themselves, people do.
On p. xv Kelly writes:
“These so-called fat protocols are self-funding development platforms that create and gain value as applications are built on top.”
The fat protocol thesis has not really born out in reality, more on that in a later chapter below. While lots of crytpocurrency “thought leaders” love to cite the original USV article, none of the platforms are actually self-funded yet. They all require external capital to stay afloat because insiders cash out for real money.5 And because there is a coin typically shoehorned at the protocol layer, there is very little incentive for capable developers to actually create apps on top — hence the continual deluge of new protocols each month — few actors want to build apps when they can become rich building protocols that require coins. More on this later.6
Introduction
On p. xxii the authors write:
“… and Marc Andreessen developing the first widely used web browser, which ultimately became Netscape.”
A pedantic point: Marc Andreessen was leader of a team that built Mosaic, not to take away from that accomplishment, but he didn’t single handedly invent the web browser. Maybe worth rewording in next edition.
On p. xxiii they write:
Interestingly, however, the Internet has become increasingly centralized over time, potentially endangering its original conception as a “highly survivable system.”
This is a valid point however it glosses over the fact that all blockchains use “the internet” and also — in practice — most public blockchains are actually highly centralized as well. Perhaps that changes in time, but worth looking at “arewedecentralizedyet.”
On p. xxiii they write:
Blockchain technology can now be thought of as a general purpose technology, on par with that of the steam engine, electricity, and machine learning.
This is still debatable. After all, there is no consensus on what “blockchains” are and furthermore, as we have seen in benchmark comparisons, blockchains (however defined) come in different configurations. While there are a number of platforms that like to market themselves as “general purpose,” the fact of the matter is that there are trade-offs based on the user requirements: always ask who the end-users and the use-cases a blockchain was built around are.
On p. xxiv they cite Don and Alex Tapscott. Arguably they aren’t credible people on this specific topic. For example, their book was riddled with errors and they even inappropriately made-up advisors on their failed bid to launch and fund their NextBlock Global fund.
On p. xxiv the authors write:
Financial incumbents are aware blockchain technology puts on the horizon a world without cash – no need for loose bills, brick-and-mortar banks, or, potentially, centralized monetary policies. Instead, value is handled virtually through a system that has no central authority figure and is governened in a centralized and democratic manner. Mathematics force order in the operations. Our life savings, and that of our heirs, could be entirely intangible, floating in a soup of secure 1s and 0s, the entire system accessed through computers and smartphones.
This conflates multiple things: digitization with automation.7 Retail banking has and will continue its march towards full digital banking. You don’t necessarily need a blockchain to accomplish that — we see that with Zelle’s adoption already.8
Also, central banks are well aware that they could have some program adjust interest rates, but discretion is still perceived as superior due to unforeseen incidents and crisis. 9
On p. xxv they write:
The native assets historically have been called cryptocurrencies or altcoins but we prefer the term cryptoassets, which is the term we will use throughout the book.
The term seems to have become a commonly accepted term but to be pedantic: most owners and users do not actually utilize the “cryptography” part — because they house the coins in exchanges and other intermediaries they must trust (e.g., the user doesn’t actually control the coin with a private key).10
And as we continue to see, these coins are easily forkable. You can’t fork physical assets but you can fork and clone digital / virtual ones. That’s a separate topic though maybe worth mentioning in the next edition.
On p. xxv they write:
It’s early enough in the life of blockchain technology that no books yet have focused solely on public blockchains and their native cryptoassetss from the investing perspective. We are changing that because investors need to be aware of the opportunity and armed both to take advantage and protect themselves in the fray.
Might be worth rewording because in Amazon there are about 760 books that pop up when “investing in cryptocurrencies” is queried. And many of those predate the publication of Cryptoassets. For instance, Brian Kelly, who wrote the Forward, published a fluffy coin promotion book a few years ago.
On p. xv they write:
Inevitably, innovation of such magnitude, fueled by the mania of making money, can lead to overly optimistic investors. Investors who early on saw potential in Internet stock encountered the devastating dot-com bubble. Stock in Books-A-Million saw its price soar by over 1,000 percent in one week simply by announcing it had an updated website. Subsequently, the price crashed and the company has since delisted and gone private. Other Internet-based high flyers that ended up crashing include Pets.com, Worldcom, and WebVan. Today, none of those stocks exist.
So far, so good, right?
Whether specific cryptoassets will survive or go the way of Books-A-Million remains to be seen. What’s clear, however, is that some will be big winners. Altogether, between the assets native to blockchains and the companies that stand to capitalize on this creative destruction, there needs to be a game plan that investors use to analyze and ultimately profit from this new investment theme of cryptoassets. The goal of this book is not to predict the future – it’s changing too fast for all but the lucky to be right- but rather to prepare investors for a variety of futures.
Even for 2017 when the book was publish, this statement is lagging a bit because there were already several “coin graveyard” sites around. Late last month Bloomberg ran a story: more than 1,000 coins are dead according to Coinopsy.
It is also unclear, “that some will be big winners.” Maybe modify this part in the next version.11
On p. xxvi they write:
“One of the keys to Graham’s book was always reminding the investor to focus on the inherent value of an investment without getting caught in the irrational behavior of the markets.”
There is a healthy debate as to whether cryptocurrencies and “cryptoassets” have any inherent value either.12 Arguably most coins traded on a secondary market depend on some level of ‘irrational’ behavior: many coin holders have short time horizons and want someone else to help push up the price so they can eventually cash out.13
Chapter 1
On p. 3 they write:
In 2008, Bitcoin rose like a phoenix from the ashes of near Wall Street collapse.
This a little bit of revisionist history.14
The Bitcoin whitepaper came out on October 31, 2008 and Satoshi later said that he/she had spent the previous 18 months coding it first before writing it up in a paper. The authors even discuss this later on page 7. Worth removing in next edition.
On p. 3 they write:
Meanwhile, Bitcoin provided a system of decentralized trust for value transfer, relying not on the ethics of humankind but on the cold calculation of computers and laying the foundation potentially to obviate the need for much of Wall Street.
This is not quite true. At most, Bitcoin as it was conceived and as it is today — is a relatively expensive payment network that doesn’t provide definitive settlement finality.15 Banks as a whole, do more than just handle payments — they manage many other services and products. So the comparison isn’t really apples-to-apples.
Note: banks again as a whole spend more on IT-related systems than nearly any other vertical — so there is already lots of “cold calculation” taking place within each of these financial institutions.16
Now, maybe blockchain-related ideas replace or enhance some of these institutions, but it is unlikely that Bitcoin itself as it exists today, will do any of that.
On p. 5 they write:
What people didn’t realize, including Wall Street executives, was how deep and interrelated the risks CMOs posed were. Part of the problem was that CMOs were complex financial instruments supported by outdated financial architecture that blended and analog systems.
That may have been part of a bigger problem.17
There were a dozen plus factors for how and why the GFC arose and evolved, but “outdated financial infrastructure” isn’t typically at the top of the list of culprits. Would blockchain-like systems have prevented the entire crisis? There are lots of op-eds that have made the claim, but the authors do not really provide much evidence to support the specific “blended” argument here. Perhaps worth articulating in its own section next time.
Speaking of which, also on p. 5 they write:
Whether as an individual or an entity, what’s now clear is that Satoshi was designing a technology that if existent would have likely ameliorated the toxic opacity of CMOs. Due of the distributed transparency and immutable audit log of a blockchain, each loan issued and packaged into different CMOs could have been documented on a single blockchain.
This seems to conflate two separate things: Bitcoin as Satoshi originally designed it in 2008 (for payments) and later what many early adopters have since promoted it as: blockchain as FMI.18
Bitcoin was (purposefully) not designed to do anything with regulated financial instruments, it doesn’t meet the PFMI requirements. He was trying to build e-cash that didn’t require KYC and was difficult to censor… not ways to audit CMOs. If that was the goal, architecturally Bitcoin would likely look a lot different than it did (for instance, no PoW).
And lastly on p. 5 they write:
This would have allowed any purchaser to view a coherent record of CMO ownership and the status of each mortgage within. Unfortunately, in 2008 multiple disparate systems – which were expensive and therefore poorly reconciled – held the system together by digital strings.
Interestingly, this is the general pitch for “enterprise” blockchains: that with all of the disparate siloed systems within regulated financial institutions, couldn’t reconciliation be removed if these same systems could share the same record and facts on that ledger? Hence the creation of more than a dozen enterprise-focused “DLT” platforms now being trialed and piloted by a slew of businesses.
This is briefly discussed later but the next edition could expand on it as the platforms do not need a cryptocurrency involved.19
On p. 7 they write:
By the time he released the paper, he had already coded the entire system. In his own words, “I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper.” Based on historical estimates, Satoshi likely started formalizing the Bitcoin concept sometime in late 2006 and started coding around May 2007.
Worth pointing out that Hal Finney and Ray Dillinger — and likely several others – helped audit the code and paper before any of it was publicly released.
On p. 8 they write:
Many years later people would realize that one of the most powerful use cases of blockchain technology was to inscribe immutable and transparent information that could never be wiped from the face of digital history and that was free for all to see.
There appears to be a little hyperbole here.
Immutability has become a nebulous word that basically means many different things to everyone. In practice, the only thing that is “immutable” on any blockchain is the digital signature — it is a one-way hash. All something like proof-of-work or proof-of-stake does are decide who gets to vote to append the chain.
Also, as mentioned above, there are well over 1,000 dead coins so it is actually relatively common for ‘digital history’ to effectively be wiped out.
On p. 8 they write:
A dollar invested then would be worth over $1 million by the start of 2017, underscoring the viral growth that the innovation was poised to enjoy.
Hindsight is always 20-20 and the wording above seems to be a little unclear with dates. As often as the authors say “this is not a book endorsing investments,” other passages seem do just the opposite: by saying how smart you would’ve been if you had bought at a relative low, during certain (cherry picked) dates.
Also, what viral growth? What are the daily active and monthly active user numbers they think are occurring on these chains? In later chapters, they do cite some on-chain activity but this version lacks specific DAU / MAU that would strengthen their arguments.20 Worth revisiting in the next edition.
On p. 8 they write:
Diving deeper into Satoshi’s writings around the time, it becomes more apparent that he was fixated on providing an alternative financial system, if not a replacement entirely.
This isn’t quite right. The very first thing Satoshi tried to build was a marketplace to play poker which was supposed to be integrated with the original wallet itself.
A lot of the talk about “alternative financial system” is arguably revisionist propaganda from folks like Andreas Antonopoulos who have tried to rewrite the history of Bitcoin to conform with their political ideology.
Readers should also check out MojoNation and what that team tried to accomplish.
On p. 9 they write;
While Wall Street as we knew it was experiencing an expensive death, Bitcoin’s birth cost the world nothing.
There are at least two issues that can be modified for the future:
On p. 9 they also wrote:
It was born as an open-source technology and quickly abandoned like a motherless babe in the world. Perhaps, if the global financial system had been healthier, there would have been less of a community to support Bitcoin, which ultimately allowed it to grow into the robust and cantankerous toddler that it currently is.
This prose sounds like something from Occupy Wall Street and not something found in literature to describe a computer program.
For example, there are lots of nominally open source blockchains, hundreds or maybe even thousands.21 That’s not very unique (it is kind of expected since there is a financial incentive to clone them).
And again, Satoshi worked on it for at least a couple years. It’s not like he/she dropped it off at an orphanage after immediate gestation. This flowery wording acts like a distraction and should be removed in the next edition.
Chapter 2
On p. 12 they write:
Three reputable institutions would not waste their time, nor jeopardize their reputations, on a nefarious currency with no growth potential.
There is a bit of an unnecessary attitude with this statement. The message also seems to go against the criticism earlier in the book towards banks. For instance, the first chapter was critical of the risks that banks took leading up to the GFC. You can’t have it both ways. In the next edition, should either remove this or explain what level or risk is appropriate.
Also, what is the “growth potential” here? Do the authors mean the value of a coin as measured in real money? Or actual usage of the network?
Lastly, the statement above equates the asset value growth (USD value increases) with a bank’s interest. Bank’s do not typically speculate on the price, they usually only care about volumes which make revenues. A cryptocurrency could go to $0.01 for all they care; and if people want to use it then they could consider servicing it provided the bank sees an ability to make money. For example, UK banks did not abandon the GBP even though it lost 20% of its value in 2016 following the Brexit referendum.
On p. 12 they write:
Certainly, some of the earliest adopters of Bitcoin were criminals. But the same goes for most revolutionary technologies, as new technologies are often useful tools for those looking to outwit the law.
This is a “whataboutism” and is actually wrong. Satoshi specifically says he/she has designed Bitcoin to route around intermediaries (like governments) and their ability to censor. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch to get who would be initially interested in that specific set of payment “rails” especially if there is no legal recourse.22
On p. 12 they also write:
We’ll get into the specific risks associated with cryptoassets, including BItcoin, in a later chapter, but it’s clear that the story of bitcoin as a currency has evolved beyond being solely a means of payment for illegal goods and services. Over 100 media articles have jumped at the opportunity to declare bitcoin dead, and each time they have been proven wrong.
The last sentence has nothing to do with the preceding sentence, this is a non sequitur.
Later in the book they do talk about other use cases but the one that they don’t talk about much is how — according to analytics — the majority of network traffic in 2017 was users moving cryptocurrencies from one exchange to another exchange.
For example, about a month ago, Jonathan Levin from Chainalysis did an interview and mentioned that:
So we can identify, it is quite hard to know how many people. I would say that 80% of transactions that occur on these cryptocurrency ledgers have a counterparty that is a 3rd party service. More than 80%.
Maybe mention in the second edition: the unintended ironic evolution of Bitcoin has had… where it was originally designed to route around intermediaries and instead has evolved into an expensive permissioned-on-permissionless network.23
On p. 13 they write:
It operates in a peer-to-peer manner, the same movement that has driven Uber, Airbnb, and LendingClub to be multibillion-dollar companies in their own realms. Bitcoin lets anyone be their own bank, putting control in the hands of a grassroots movement and empowering the globally unbanked.
Not quite. For starters: Uber, Airbnb, and LendingClub all act as intermediaries to every transaction, that’s how they became multibillion-dollar companies.
Next, Bitcoin doesn’t really let anyone be their own bank because banks offer a lot more products and services beyond just payments. At most, Bitcoin provides a way of moving bitcoins you control to someone else’s bitcoin address (wallet). That’s it.24
And there is not much evidence that Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency for that matter, has empowered many beyond relatively wealthy people in developed or developing countries. There have been a few feel-good stories about marginalized folks in developing countries, but those are typically (unfortunately) one-off theatrics displaying people living in squalor in order to promote a financial product (coins). It would be good to see more evidence in the next edition.
For more on this topic, recommend listening to LTB episode 133 with Richard Boase.
On p. 13 they write:
Decentralizing a currency, without a top-down authority, requires coordinated global acceptance of a shared means of payment and store of value.
Readers should check out “arewedecentralizedyet” which illustrates that nearly all cryptourrencies in practice have some type of centralized, top-down hierarchy as of July 2018.
On p. 13 they write:
Bitcoin’s blockchain is a distributed, cryptographic, and immutal database that uses proof-of-work to keep the ecosystem in sync.
Worth modifying because the network is not inherently immutable — only digital signatures have “immutability.”25 Also, proof-of-work doesn’t keep any “ecosystem” in sync. All proof-of-work does is determine who can append the chain. The “ecosystem” thing is completely unrelated.
On p. 15 they write:
There is no subjectivity as to whether a transaction is confirmed in Bitcoin’s blockchain: it’s just math.
This isn’t quite true.26 Empirically, mining pools have censored transactions for various reasons. For example, Luke-Jr (who used to run Eligius pool) thinks that SatoshiDice misuses the network; he is also not a fan of what OP_RETURN was being used for by Counterparty.
Also, humans control pools and also manage the code repositories… blockchains don’t fix and run themselves. So it’s not as simple as: “it’s just math.”
On p. 15 they write an entire paragraph on “immutability”:
The combination of globally distributed computers that can cryptographically verify transactions and the building of Bitcoin’s blockchain leads to an immutable database, meaning the computers building Bitcoin’s blockchain can only do so in an append only fashion. Append only means that information can only be added to Bitcoin’s blockchain over time and cannot be deleted – an audit trail etched in digital granite. Once information is confirmed in Bitcoin’s blockchain, it’s permanent and cannot be erased. Immutability is a rare feature in a digital world where things can easily be erased, and it will likely become an increasingly valuable attribute for Bitcoin over time.
This seems to have a few issues:
On p. 15 they introduce us to the concept of proof-of-work but don’t really explain its own origin as a means of combating spam email in the 1990s.
For instance, while several Bitcoin evangelists frequently (mistakenly) point to Hashcash as the original PoW progenitor, that claim actually legitimately goes to a 1993 paper entitled Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor. There are others as well, perhaps worth adding in the next edition.27
On p. 16 they write:
Competition for a financial rewad is also what keeps Bitcoin’s blockchain secure. If any ill-motivated actors wanted to change Bitcoin’s blockchain, they would need to compete with all the other miners distributed globally who have in total invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the machinery necessary to perform PoW.
This is only true for a Maginot Line attack (e.g., attack via hashrate).28 There are cheaper and more effective out of band attacks, like hacking BGP or DNS. Or hacking into intermediaries such as exchanges and hosted wallets. Sure the attacker doesn’t directly change the blocks, but they do set in motion a series of actions that inevitably result in thefts that end up in blocks further down the chain, when the transactions otherwise wouldn’t have taken place.
On p. 17 they write:
The hardware runs an operating system (OS); in the case of Bitcoin, the operating system is the open-source software that facilitates everything described earlier. This software is developed by a volunteer group of developers, just as Linux, the operating system that underlies much of the cloud, is maintained by a volunteer group of developers.
This isn’t quite right in at least two areas:
On p. 17 they discuss “private versus public blockchains”:
The difference between public and private blockchains is similar to that between the Internet and intranets. The internet is a public resource. Anyone can tap into it; there’s not gate keepers.
This is wrong. All ISPs gate their customers via KYC. Not just anyone can set up an account with an ISP, in fact, customers can and do get kicked off for violating Terms of Service.
“The Internet” is just an amalgamation of thousands of ISPs, each of whom have their own Terms of Service. About a year ago I published an in-depth article about why this analogy is bad and should not be use: Intranets and the Internet.
On p. 18 they write:
Public systems are ones like BItcoin, where anyone with the right hardware and software can connect to the network and access the information therein. There is no bouncer checking IDs at the door.
This is not quite right. The “permissionless” characteristic has to do with block making: who has the right to vote on creating/adding a new block… not who has the ability to download a copy of the blockchain. Theoretically there is no gatekeeper for block making in Bitcoin. Although, there are explicit KYC checks on the edges (primarily at exchanges).
In practice, the capital and knowledge requirements to actually create a new mining pool and aggregate hashpower that is sufficiently capable of generating the right hash and “winning” the scratch-off lottery is very high, such that on a given month just 20 or so block makers are actually involved.29
While there is no strict permissioning of these participants (some come and go over the years), it is arguably a de facto oligopoly based on capital expenditures and not some type of feel-good meritocracy described in this book.30
On p. 18 they write:
Private systems, on the other hand, employ a bouncer at the door. Only entities that have the proper permissions can become part of the network. These private systems came about after Bitcoin did, when enterprises and businesses realized they liked the utility of Bitcoin’s blockchain, but weren’t comfortable or legally allowed to be as open with he information propagated among public entities.
This is not nuanced enough. What precisely is permissioned on a “permissioned” blockchain is: who gets to do the validation.
While there are likely dozens of “permissioned” blockchain vendors — each of which may have different characteristics — the common one is that the validators are KYC’ed participants. That way they can be held accountable if there is a problem (like a fork).
For example, many enterprises and businesses tried to use Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies but because these blockchains were not built with their use cases in mind, unsurprisingly found that they were not a good fit.
This is not an insult: the “comfort” refrain is tiring because there have been a couple hundred proofs-of-concept on Bitcoin – and variants thereof – to look into whether those chains were fit-for-purpose… and they weren’t. This passage should be reworded in the second edition.
On p. 18 they write:
Within financial services, these private blockchains are largely solutions by incumbents in a fight to remain incumbents.
Maybe that is the motivation of some stakeholders, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a meeting in which the participants (banks) specifically said that. It would be good to have a citation added in the next edition. Otherwise, as Hitchens said: what can be presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
On p. 18 they write:
While there is merit to many of these solutions, some claim the greatest revolution has been getting large and secretive entities to work together, sharing information and best practices, which will ultimately lower the cost of services to the end consumer. We believe that over time the implementation of private blockchains will erode the position held by centralized powerhouses because of the tendency toward open networks. In other words, it’s a foot in the door for further decentralization and the use of public blockchains.
This is a “proletariat” narrative that is frequently used in many cryptocurrency books. While there is a certain truth to an angle – collaboration of regulated entities that normally compete with one another – many of the vendors and platforms that they are piloting are actually “open.”
Which brings up the euphemism that some vocal public blockchain promoters like to stake a claim in… the ill-defined “open.” For instance, coin lobbyists such as Coin Center and coin promoters such as Andreas Antonopoulos regularly advertise that they are experts and advocates of “open” chains but their language is typically filled with strawmen.
For instance, enterprise-specific platforms such as Fabric, Corda, and Quorum are all open sourced, anyone can download and run the code without the permission of the vendors that contribute code or support to the platforms.
Thus, it could be argued that these platforms are “open” too… which they are.
But it is highly unlikely that ideological advocates would ever defend or promote these platforms, because of their disdain and aversion to platforms built by financial organizations. 31
Lastly, this “foot in the door” comment comes in all shapes and sizes; sometimes coin promoters use “Trojan horse” as well. Either way it misses the point: enterprises will use technology that solves problems for them and will not use technology that doesn’t solve their problem.
In practice, most cryptocurrencies were not designed – on purpose – to solve problems that regulated institutions have… so it is not a surprise they do not use coin-based platforms as FMI. It has nothing to do with the way the coin platforms are marketed and everything to do with the problems the coins solve.
On p. 19 they write:
Throughout this book, we will focus on public blockchains and their native assets, or what we will define as cryptoassets, because we believe this is where the greatest opportunity awaits the innovative investor.
The authors use the term “innovative investor” a dozen or more times in the book. It’s not a particularly useful term.32
Either way, later in the book they don’t really discuss the opportunity cost of capital: what are the tradeoffs of an accredited investor who puts their money long term into a coin versus buys equity in a company. Though, to be fair, part of the problem is that most of the companies that actually have equity to buy, do not publish usage or valuation numbers because they are still private… so it is hard to accurately gauge that specific trade-off.33
On p. 19 they write about Bitcoin maximalism (without calling it that):
We disagree with that exclusive worldview, as there are many other interesting consensus mechanisms being developed, such as proof-of-stake, proof-of-existence, proof-of-elapsed time, and so on.
Proof-of-existence is not a consensus mechanism. PoE simply verifies the existence of a file at a specific time based on a hash from a specific blockchain. It does not provide consensus. This should be reworded in the next edition.
Furthermore, neither proof-of-stake or proof-of-elapsed-time are actual consensus mechanisms either… they are vote ordering mechanisms — a mechanism to prevent or control sybil attacks. 34 See this excellent thread from Emin Gun Sirer.
Chapter 3
On p. 22 they write:
Launched in February 2011, the Silk Road provided a rules-free decentralized marketplace for any product one could imagine, and it used bitcoin as the means of payment.
This isn’t quite true. Certain guns and explosives were considered off-limits and as a result “The Armory” was spun off.
On p. 22 they write:
Clearly, this was one way that Bitcoin developed its dark reputation, though it’s important to know that this was not endorsed by Bitcoin and its development team.
Isn’t Bitcoin — like all cryptocurrences — supposed to be decentralized? So how can there be a singular “it” to not endorse something?35
On p. 22 they write:
The drivers behind this bitcoin demand were more opaque than the Gawker spike, though many point to the bailout of Cyprus and the associated losses that citizens took on their bank account balances as the core driver.
This is mostly hearsay as several independent researchers have tried to identify the actual flows coming into and going out of Cyprus that are directly tied to cryptocurrencies and so far, have been unable to.36
On p. 23 they write about Google Search Trends:
We recommend orienting with this tool even beyond cryptoassets, as it’s a fascinating window into the global mesh of minds.
Incidentally, despite the authors preference to the term “cryptoassets” — according to Google Search Trends, that term isn’t frequently used in search’s yet.
Source: Google
On p. 24 they write:
This diversity has led to tension among players as some of these cryptoassets compete, but this is nothing like the tension that exists between Bitcoin and the second movement.
Another frequent name typically used to call “the second movement” was Bitcoin 2.0.
For example, back in 2014 and 2015 I interviewed a number of project organizers and attempted to categorize them into buckets, including things like “commodities” and “assets.” See for instance my guest presentation in 2014 at Plug and Play: (video) (slides).
This label isn’t frequently used as much anymore, but that’s a different topic entirely.
On p. 25 they write an entire section entitled: Blockchain, Not Bitcoin
The authors stated:
Articles like one from the Bank of England in the third quarter of 2014 argued, “The key innovation of digital currencies is the ‘distributed ledger,’ which allows a payment system to operate in an entirely decentralized way, without intermediaries such as banks. In emphasizing the technology and not the native asset, the Bank of England left an open question whether the native asset was needed
[…]
The term blockchain, independent of Bitcoin, began to be used more widely in North America in the fall of 2015 when two prominent financial magazines catalyzed awareness of the concept.
Let’s pull apart the problems here.
First, the “blockchain not bitcoin” mantra was actually something that VCs such as Adam Draper pushed in the fall of 2015.
For instance, in an interview with Coindesk in October 2015 he said:
“We use the word blockchain now. I say bitcoin, and they think that’s the worst thing ever. It just feels like they put up a guard. Then, I switch to blockchain and they’re very attentive and they’re very interested.”
Draper seems ambivalent to the change, though he said he was initially against using it, mostly because he believes it’s superficial. After all, companies that use the blockchain as a payments rail, the argument goes, still need to interface with its digital currency, which is the mechanism for transactions on the bitcoin blockchain.
“When we talk about blockchain, I mean bitcoin,” Draper clarifies. “Bitcoin and the blockchain are so interspersed together, the incentive structure of blockchain is bitcoin.”
Draper believes it’s mostly a “vernacular change”, noting the ecosystem has been through several such transitions before. He rifles off the list of terms that have come and gone including cryptocurrency, digital currency and altcoin.
“It’s moved from bitcoin to blockchain, which makes sense, it’s the underlying tech of all these things,” he added. “I think in a lot of ways blockchain is FinTech, so it will become FinTech.”
If you’re looking for more specific examples of companies that began using “blockchain” as a euphemism for “bitcoin” be sure to check out my post: “The Great Pivot.”
The authors also fail to identify that there were lots of early stage vendors and entrepreneurs working in the background on educating policy makers and institutions on what the vocabulary was and how the various moving pieces worked throughout 2015.
Want evidence?
Check out my own paper covering this topic and a handful of vendors in April 2015: Consensus-as-a-service. This paper has been cited dozens of times by a slew of academics, banks, regulators, and so forth. And contra Draper: you don’t necessarily need a coin or token to incentivize participants to operate a blockchain.37
On p. 26 they write:
A private blockchain is typically used to expedite and make existing processes more efficient, thereby rewarding the entities that have crafted the software and maintain the computers. In other words, the value creation is in the cost savings, and the entities that own the computers enjoy these savings. The entities don’t need to get paid in a native asset as reward for their work, as is the case with public blockchains.
First, not all private blockchains are alike or commoditized.
Two, this statement is mostly true. At least those were the initially pitches to financial institutions. Remember the frequently cited Oliver Wyman / Santander paper from 2015? It was about cost savings. Since then, the story has evolved to also include revenue generation.
For more up-to-date info on the “enterprise” blockchain world, recommend reading:
On p. 26 they write:
On the other hand, for Bitcoin to incentivize a self-selecting group of global volunteers, known as miners, to deploy capital into the mining machines that validate and secure bitcoin transactions, there needs to be a native asset that can be paid out to the miners for their work. The native asset builds out support for the service from the bottom up in a truly decentralized manner.
This may have been true in January 2009 but is not true in July 2018. There are no “volunteers” in Bitcoin mining as running farms and pools have become professionalized and scaled in industrial-sized facilities.
Also, that last sentence is also false: virtually every vertical of involvement is dominated by centralized entities (e.g., exchanges, hosted wallets, mining manufacturing, etc.).
On p. 27 they write:
Beyond questioning the need for native cryptoassets – which would naturally infuriate communities that very much value their cryptoassets – tensions also exist because public blockchain advocates believe the private blockchain movement bastardizes the ethos of blockchain technology. For example, instead of aiming to decentralize and democratize aspects of the existing financial services, Masters’s Digital Asset Holdings aims to assist existing financial services companies in adopting this new technology, thereby helping the incumbents fight back the rebels who seek to disrupt the status quo.
Ironically, virtually all major cryptocurrency exchanges now have institutional investors and/or partnerships with regulated financial institutions.38 Like it or not, but the cryptocurrency world is deep in bed with the very establishment that it likes to rail at on social media.
Also, Bitcoin again is at most a payments network and does not actually solve problems for existing financial service providers on their many other lines of business.
On p. 27 they write:
General purpose technologies are pervasive, eventually affecting all consumers and companies. They improve over time in line with the deflationary progression of technology, and most important, they are a platform upon which future innovations are built. Some of the more famous examples include steam, electricity, internal combustion engines, and information technology. We would add blockchain technology to this list. While such a claim may appear grand to some, that is the scale of the innovation before us.
If you’re not familiar with hyperbole and technology, I recommend watching and reading the PR for the Segway when it first came out. Promoters and enthusiasts repeatedly claimed it would change the way cities are built. Instead, it is used as a toy vehicle to shuffle tourists around at national parks and patrol suburban malls.
Maybe something related to “blockchains” is integrated into various types of infrastructure (such as trade finance), but the next edition should provide proof of some actual user adoption.
For example, the authors in the following paragraph say that “public blockchains beyond Bitcoin that are growing like gangbusters.”
Which ones? In the approximately 9 months since this book was published, most “traction” has been issuing ICOs on these public blockchains. Currently the top 3 Dapps at the time of this writings, run decentralized exchanges… which trade ICO tokens. Now maybe that changes, that is totally within the realm of possibility.39 But let’s take the hype down a few notches until consistent measurable user growth is observed.
On p. 28 they write:
The realm of public blockchains and their native assets is most relevant to the innovative investor, as private blockchains have not yielded an entirely new asset class that is investable to the public.
The wording and attitude should be changed for the next edition. This makes it sound as if the only real innovation that exists are network-based coins that a group of issuers continually create and that you, the reader, should buy.
By downplaying opportunities being tackled by enterprise vendors, the statement glosses over the operating environment enterprise clients reside in and how they must conduct unsexy due diligence and mundane requirements gathering because they have to follow laws and regulations otherwise their customers won’t use their specific platforms.
These same vendors could end up “tokenizing” existing financial instruments, it just takes a lot longer because there are real legal consequences if something breaks or forks.40
On p. 28 and 29 they ask “where is blockchain technology in the hype cycle.”
This section could be strengthened by revisiting and reflecting on the huge expectations that these coin projects have raised and were raising at the time the book was first being written. How were expectations eventually managed?
Specifically, on p. 29 they write:
While it’s hard to predict where blockchain technology currently falls on Gartner’s Hype Cycle (these things are always easier in retrospect), we would posit that Bitcoin is emerging from the Trough of Disillusionment. At the same time, blockchain technology stripped of native assets (private blockchain) is descending from the Peak of Inflated Expectations, which it reached in the summer of 2016 just before The DAO hack occurred (which we will discuss in detail in Chapter 5).
The first part is probably wrong if measured by actual usage and interest (as shown by the Google Search image a few sections above).41
The second part of the paragraph is probably right, though the timing was probably a little later: likely in the last quarter of 2016 when the first set of pilots turned out to require substantially larger budgets. That is to say, in order to be put platforms into production most small vendors with short runways realized they needed more capital and time to integrate solutions into legacy systems. In some cases, that was too much work and a few vendors pivoted out of enterprise and created a coin or two instead.42
Chapter 4
On p. 31 they write:
Yes, the numbers have changed a lot since. Crypto moves fast.
This isn’t a hill I want to die on, but historically “crypto” means cryptography. Calling cryptocurrencies “crypto” is basically slang, but maybe that’s the way it evolves towards.
On p. 32 they write:
Historically, crypotassets have most commonly been referred to as cryptocurrencies, which we think confuses new users and constrains the conversation on the future of these assets. We would not classify the majority of cryptoassets as currencies, but rather most are either digital commodities (cryptocommodities), provisioning raw digital resources, or digital tokens (cryptotokens), provisioning finished digital goods and services.
They have a point but a literature review could have been helpful at showing this categorization is neither new nor novel.
For instance, the title of my last book was: The Anatomy of a Money-like Informational Commodity. A bit long-winded?
Where did I come up with that odd title?
In 2014, an academic paper was published that attempted to categorize Bitcoin from an ontological perspective. Based on the thought process presented in that paper, the Dutch authors concluded that Bitcoin is a money-like informational commodity. It isn’t money and isn’t a currency (e.g., isn’t actually used).434445
On p. 32 they write:
In an increasingly digital world, it only makes sense that we have digital commodities, such as computer power, storage capacity, and network bandwidth.
This book only superficially explains each of these and doesn’t drill down into why these “digital commodities” can’t be priced in good old fashioned money or why an internet coin is needed. If this is a good use case, is it just a matter of time before Blizzard and Steam get on board? Maybe worth looking at what entertainment companies do for the next edition.
On p. 33 they write about “why crypto” as shorthand for “cryptoassets” instead of “cryptography.”
For historical purposes, Matt Blaze, the most recent owner of crypto.com, provides a good explanation that could be included or cited next edition: Exhaustive Search Has Moved.
On p. 35 they write:
Except for Karma, the problem with all these attempts at digital money was that they weren’t purely decentralized — one way or another they relied on a centralized entity, and that presented the opportunity for corruption and weak points for attack.
This seems to be conflating two separate things: anonymity with electronic cash. You can have one without the other and do.46
Also, the BIP process is arguably a weak point for attack.47
On p. 35 they write:
One of the most miraculous aspects of bitcoin is how it bootstrapped support in a decentralized manner.
The fundamental problem with this statement is that it is inaccurate.48 Large amounts of centralization continues to exist: mining, exchanges, BIP vetting, etc.
On p. 35 they write:
Together, the combination of current use cases and investors buying bitcoin based on the expectation for even greater future use cases creates market demand for bitcoin.
Is that a Freudian slip?
Speculators buy bitcoin because they think can sell bitcoins at a higher price because a new buyer will come in at a later date and acquire the coins from them.49
For example, last month Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic adviser and head of research, said:
“If people pay to hold the tokens for financial gain, then arguably they should be treated as a security and come under the same rigorous documentation requirements and regulation as other securities offered to investors for a return.”
In the United States, recall that one condition for what a security is under the Howey framework is an expectation of profit.
Whether Bitcoin is a security or not is a topic for a different post.50
On p. 36 they write:
For the first four years of Bitcoin’s life, a coinbase transaction would issue 50 bitcoin to the lucky miner.
[…]
On November 28, 2012, the first halving of the block reward from 50 bitcoin to 25 bitcoin happened, and the second halving from 25 bitcoin to 12.5 bitcoin occurred on July 9, 2016. The thrid will happen four years from that date, in July 2020. Thus far, this has made bitcoin’s supply schedule look somewhat linear, as shown in Figure 4.1.
Technically incorrect because of the inhomogeneous Poisson process and the relatively large amounts of hashrate that came online, the first “4 year epoch” was actually less than 4 years.
Whereas the genesis block was released in January 2009, the first halving should have occurred in January 2013, but instead it took place in November 2012. Similarly, the second halving should have — if rigidly followed — taken place in November 2016, but actually occurred in July 2016 because even more hashrate had effectively accelerated block creation a bit faster than expected.
On p. 36 they write:
Based on our evolutionary past, a key driver for humans to recognize something as valuable is its scarcity. Satoshi knew that he couldn’t issue bitcoin at a rate of 2.6 million per year forever, because it would end up with no scarcity value.
This is a non sequitur.51
Maybe Satoshi did or did not think this way, but irrespective of his or her view, having a finite amount of something means there is some amount of scarcity… even if it is a relatively large amount. Now this discussion obviously leads down the ideological road of maximalism which we don’t have time to go into today.52 Suffice to say that bitcoin is fundamentally not scarce due to its inability to prevent forks that could increase or decrease the money supply.
On p. 37 they write:
Long term, the thinking is that bitcoin will become so entrenched within the global economy that new bitcoin will not need to be issued to continue to gain support. At that point, miners will be compesnated for processing transaction and securing the network through fees on high transaction volumes.
This might happen but hasn’t yet.
For instance, Kerem Kaskaloglu (see p. 71) created a cartoon model to show what this should look like.
But the actual curves do not exist (yet).
Recommended reading: Analysing Costs & Benefits of Public Blockchains (with Data!) by Colin Platt.
Source: Blockchain.info
Notice how reality doesn’t stack up to the idealized version (yet)?
On p. 39 they write about BitDNS, Namecoin, and NameID:
Namecoin acts as its own DNS service, and provides users with more control and privacy.
In the next edition they should mention how Namecoin ended up having one mining pool that consistently had over 51% of the network hashrate and as a result, projects like Onename moved over to Bitcoin and then eventually its own separate network altogether (Blockstack).
On p. 41 they write:
This is an important lesson, because all cryptocurrencies differ in their supply schedules, and thus the direct price of each cryptoasset should not be compared if trying to ascertain the appreciation potential of the asset.
One way to strengthen this section is to provide a consistent model or methodology to systemically value a coin that doesn’t necessarily involve future demand from new investors. Maybe in the second edition they could provide a way to compare or at least say that no valuation model works yet, but here is a possible alternative?
On p. 42 they write:
A word to the wise for the innovative investor: with a new cryptocurrency, it’s always important to understand how it’s being distributed and to whom (we’ll discuss further in Chapter 12). If the core community feels the distribution is unfair, that may forever plague the growth of the cryptocurrency.
Two things:
On p. 42 they write:
Ripple has since pivoted away from being a transaction mechanism for the common person and instead now “enables banks to send real-time international payments across network.” This focus plays to Ripple’s strengths, as it aims to be a speedy payment system that rethinks correspondent banking but still requires some trust, for which banks are well suited.
If readers have time, I recommend looking through the marketing material of OpenCoin, Ripple Labs, and Ripple from 2013-2018 because it has changed several times.54 Currently there are a couple of different products including xRapid and xCurrent which are aimed at different types of users and as a result, the passage above should be updated.
On p. 43 they write:
Markus used Litecoin’s code to derive Dogecoin, thereby making it one more degree of separation removed from Bitcoin.
This is incorrect. Dogecoin was first based off of Luckycoin and Luckycoin was based on a fork of Litecoin. The key difference involved the erratic, random block reward sizes.
On p. 45 they write about Auroracoin.
Auroracoin is a cautionary tale for both investors and developers. What began as a seemingly powerful and compelling use case for a cryptoasset suffered from its inability to provide value to the audience it sought to impact. Incelanders were given a cryptocurrency with little education and means to use it. Unsurprisingly, the value of the asset collapsed and most considered it dead. Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies rarely die entirely, and Auroracoin may have interesting times ahead if its developer team can figure out a way forward.
A few problems:
On p. 46 they write:
Meanwhile, Zcash uses some of the most bleeding-edge cryptography in the world, but it is one of the youngest cryptoassets in the book and suitable only for the most experienced cryptoasset investors.
In the next edition it would be helpful to specifically detail what makes someone an experienced “cryptoasset” investor.
On p. 46 they write:
Adam Back is considered the inspiration for Satoshi’s proof-of-work algorithm and is president of Blockstream, one of the most important companies in the Bitcoin space.
While Hashcash was cited in the original Satoshi whitepaper, recall above, that the original idea can be directly linked to a 1993 paper entitled Pricing via Processing or Combatting Junk Mail by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor. Also, it is debatable whether or not Blockstream is an important company, but that’s a different discussion altogether.
On p. 46 they write:
Bitcoin and the permissionless blockchain movement was founded on principles of egalitarian transparency, so premines are widely frowned upon.
What are the founding principles? Where can we find them? Maybe it exists, but at least provide a footnote.55
On p. 47 they write:
While many are suspicious of such privacy, it should be noted that it has tremendous benefits for fungibility. Fungibility refers to the fact that any unit of currency is as valuable as another unit of equal denomination.
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are not fungible. Be sure to listen to this interview with Jonathan Levin from May. See also: Bitcoin’s lien problem and also nemo dat.
On p. 48 they write:
Monero’s supply schedule is a hybrid of Litecoin and Dogecoin. For monero, a new block is appended to its blockchain every 2 minutes, similar to Litecoin’s 2.5 minutes.
In the next edition I’d tighten the language a little because a new monero block is added roughly or approximately every 2 minutes, not exactly 2 minutes.
On p. 48 they write:
By the end of 2016, Monero had the fifth largest network value of any cryptocurrency and was the top performing digital currency in 2016, with a price increase over the year of 2,760 percent. This clearly demonstrates the level of interest in privacy protecting cryptocurrency. Some of that interest, no doubt, comes from less than savory sources.
That is a non sequitur.
Where are the surveys of actual Monero purchasers during this time frame and their opinions for why they bought it? 56
Source: BitInfoCharts
For instance, in looking at the two-year chart above, how much on-chain activity in 2016 was due to speculators interest in “privacy” versus coin flipping? It is impossible to tell. Even with analytics all you will be able to is link specific users with purchases. Intent and motivation would require surveys and subpoenas; worth adding if available in the next edition.
On p. 48 they write:
Another cryptocurrency targeting privacy and fungiblity is Dash.
Is Dash really fungible though? That isn’t explored in this section. Plus Dash has a CEO… how is that decentralized?
On p. 49 they write:
In fact, Duffield easily could have relaunched Dash, especially considering the network was only days old when the instamine began to be widely talked about, but he chose not to. It would have been unusual to relaunch, given that other cyrptocurrencies have done so via the forking of original code. The creators of Monero, for example, specifically chose not to continue building off Bytecoin because the premine distribution had been perceived as unfair.
How is this not problematic: for a “decentralized” cryptocurrency to be controlled and run by one person who can unilaterally stop and restart a chain?
It actually is common, that’s the confusing part. Why have regulators such as FinCEN and the SEC not provided specific guidance (or enforcement) on the fact that one or a handful of individuals actually are unlicensed / non-exempted administrators of financial networks?
On p. 49 they write:
The Bitcoin and blockchain community has always been excited by new developments in anonymity and privacy, but Zcash took that excitement to a new level, which upon issuance drove the price through the roof.
Putting aside the irrational exuberance for Zcash itself, why do the authors think so many folks are vocal about privacy and anonymity?
Could it be that a significant portion of the coins are held by thieves of exchanges and hosted wallets who want to launder them? Here are a few recent examples:
On p. 49 they write:
Through his time at DigiCash and longstanding involvement in cryptography and cryptoassets, Zooko has become one of the most respected members in the community.
Let’s put aside Zooko and Zcash. The phrase, “the community” frequently appears in this book and similar books. It is an opaque, ill-defined (and cliquish) term that is frequently used by coin promoters to shun certain people that do not promote specific policies (and coins).57 It’s a term that should be clearly defined in the next edition.
On p. 50 they write:
While it is still early days for Zcash, we are of the belief that the ethics and technology chops of Zooko and his team are top-tier, implying that good things lie in wait for this budding cryptocurrency.
The statement above seems like an endorsement. Did either of the authors own Zcash just as the book came out? And what are the specific ethics they speak of? And why do the authors call it a cryptocurrency instead of a “cryptoasset”?
Chapter 5
On p. 51 they write:
For example, the largest cryptocommodity, Ethereum, is a decentralized world computer upon which globally accessible and uncensored applications can be built.
How is it a commodity? Maybe it is and while they use a lot of words in this chapter, they never really precisely why it is in a way that makes much sense. Recommend modifying the first few pages of this chapter.
On p. 52 they write about “smart contracts” and mention Nick Szabo.
For a future edition I recommend diving deeper into the different uses and definitions of smart contracts. Also could be worth following Tony Arcieri suggestion:
I really like “authorization programs” but people really seem married to the “smart contract” terminology. Never mind Martin Abadi’s work on authorization languages (e.g. Binder) predates Nick Szabo’s “smart contracts” by half a decade…
For instance, there has been a lot of work done via the Accord Project with Clause.io and others such as IBM and R3. Also worth looking into Barclay’s and UCL’s effort with the Smart Contract Templates. A second edition that aims to be up-to-date should look at these developments and how they have evolved from what Abadi and Szabo first proposed.
On p. 53 they mentioned that Counterparty “was launched in January 2014.” Technically that is not true. The fundraising (“proof-of-burn”) took place in January and it was the following month that it “launched.”
On p. 54 they write:
The reason Bitcoin developers haven’t added extra functionality and flexibility directly into its software is that they have prioritized security over complexity. The more complex transactions become, the more vectors there are to exploit and attack these transactions, which can affect the network as a whole. With a focus on being a decentralized currency, Bitcoin developers have decided bitcoin transactions don’t need all the bells and whistles.
This is kind of true but also misses a little history.
For instance, Zerocoin was first proposed as an enhancement directly built into Bitcoin but key, influential Bitcoin developers who maintained the repository, pushed back on that for various technological and philosophical reasons. As a result, the main authors of that proposal went on to form and launch Zcash.58
On p. 56 they write:
Buterin understood that building a system from the ground up required a significant amount of work, and his announcement in January 2014 involved the collaboration of a community of more than 15 developers and dozens of community members that had already bought into the idea.
I assume the authors mean, following the Bitcoin Miami announcement in January 2014, but they don’t really say. I’m not sure how they arrive at the specific headcount numbers they did above, would be good to add a footnote in the future.
On p. 56 they write:
The ensuing development of the Bitcoin software before launch mostly involved just two people, Satoshi and Hal Finney.
This assumes that Satoshi is not Hal Finney, maybe he was. But it should also include the contributions of Ray Dillinger and others.
On p. 56 they write:
Buterin also knew that while Ethereum could run on ether, the people who designed it couldn’t, and Ethereum was still over a year away from being ready for release. So he found funding through the prestigious Thiel Fellowship.
This is inaccurate.
After reading this, I reached out to Vitalik Buterin and he said:59
That’s totally incorrect. Like the $100k made very little difference.
So that should be corrected in the next version.
On p. 57 they write:
Ethereum democratized that process beyond VCs. For perspective on the price of ether in this crowdsale, consider that at the start of April 2017, ether was worth $50 per unit, implying returns over 160x in under three years. Just over 9,000 people bought ether during the presale, placing the average initial investment at $2,000, which has since grown to over $320,000.
There are a few issues with this:
On p. 57 they write:
The extra allocation of 12 million ether for the early contributors and Ethereum Foundation has proved problematic for Ethereum over time, as some feel it represented double dipping. In our view, with 15 talented developers involved prior to the public sale, 6 million ether translated to just north of $100,000 per developer at the presale rate, which is reasonable given the market rate of such software developers.
Who are these 15 developers, why is that the number the authors have identified?
Also, how much should FOSS developers be compensated and/or the business model around that is a topic that isn’t really addressed at all in this book, yet it is a glaring omission since virtually all of the projects they talk about are set up around funding and maintaining a FOSS team(s). Maybe some findings will be available for the next version.
On p. 57 they write:
That said, the allocation of capital into founders’ pockets is an important aspect of crowdsales. Called a “founder’s reward,” the key distinction between understandable and a red flag is that founders should be focused on building and growing the network, not fattening their pockets at the expense of investors.
Because coins do not typically provide coin holders any type of voting rights, it is legally dubious how you can hold issuers and “founders” accountable.60
That is why, as mentioned above, there has been an evolution of terms and conditions such that early investors in a private placement for coins may have certain rights and that the founders have certain duties that are all legally enforceable (in theory).
Because no one is publishing these T&Cs, it is hard to comment on what are globally accepted practices… aside from allowing early investors liquidity on secondary markets where they can quickly dump coins.61
Without the ability to legally hold “founders” accountable for enriching themselves at the expense of the project(s), the an interim solution has been to get on social media and yell alot… which is really unprofessional and hit or miss. Another solution is class action lawsuits, but that’s a different topic.
Also, I put the “founders” into quotes because these seem to be administrators of a network, maybe in the next edition they will be described as such?
On p. 58 they write:
Everyone trusts the system because it runs in the open and is automated by code.
There is lots of different types of open source code that runs on systems that are automated. For instance, the entire Linux, Apache, and Mozilla worlds predate Bitcoin. That isn’t new here.62
Also, as mentioned in the previous chapter: Researchers: Last Year’s ICOs Had Five Security Vulnerabilities on Average. As a result, this has led to the loss of nearly $400 million in ICO funds.
Readers and investors shouldn’t just trust code because someone created a GitHub repo and said their blockchain is open and automated.63
On p. 59 they write:
Most cryptotokens are not supported by their own blockchain.
This is actually true and problematic because it creates centralization risks and the ability for one party to unilaterally censor transactions and/or act as administrators.
For instance, a few days ago, Bancor had a bug that was exploited and about $13.5 million in ETH were stolen… and Bancor was able to freeze the BNT. That’s because BNT is effectively a centrally administered ERC20 token on top of Ethereum.
Ignoring for the moment whether or not BNT is or is not a security, this is not the first time such issuance and centralization has occurred. See the colored coin mania from 2014-2015.
On p. 60 they write about The DAO:
Over time, investors in these projects would be rewarded through dividends or appreciation of the service provided.
They mention regulators briefly later on – about SEC views – but most of the content surrounding crowdsales was non-critical and borderline promotional.64 Might be worth adding more meat around this in the next edition.
On p. 61 they write about The DAO:
The hack had nothing to do with an exchange, as had been the case with Mt. Gox and other widely publicized Bitcoin-related hacks. Insted, the flaw existed in the software of The DAO.
Is it really possible to call it a “flaw” or “hack” and not a feature? See also: “Code is not law” as well as “Cracking MtGox.”
On p. 61 they write:
However, a hard fork would run counter to what many in the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities felt was the power of a decentralized ledger. Forcefully removing funds from an account violated the concept of immutability.
Just a few pages earlier the authors were saying that the lead developer behind Dash should have restarted the network because that was common and now they’re saying that doing a block reorg is no bueno. Which is it?
Why should the reader care what a nebulously defined “community” says, if it is is not defined?
The reason we have codes of conduct, terms of service, and EULAs is to specifically answer these types of problems when they arise.
Since public blockchains are supposed to be anarchic, the lack of formal governance is supposed to be a feature, right? That’s a whole other topic but suffice to say that these two sentences should be reworded in the next edition to incorporate the wisdom found in the Lexicon paper.
On p. 62 they write:
Many complained of moral hazard, and that this would set a precdent for the U.S. government or other powerful entities to come in someday and demand the same of Ethereum for their own interests. It was a tough decision for all involved, including Buterin, who while not directly on The DAO developer team, was an admistrator.
This is the first and only time they point out that key participants collectively making governance decisions are administrators… a point I have been highlighting throughout this review.
I don’t think it is fair to label Vitalik Buterin as a singular administrator, because if he was, he wouldn’t have had to ask exchanges to stop trading ether and/or The DAO token. Perhaps he was collectively involved in that process, but mining pool operators and exchange managers are arguably just as important if not more so. See also: Sufficiently Decentralized Howeycoins
On p. 62 they write:
While hard fork are often used to upgrade a blockchain architecture, they are typically employed in situations where the community agrees entirely on the beneficial updates to the architecture. Ethereum’s situation was different, as many in the community opposed a hard fork. Contentious hard forks are dangerous, because when new software updates are released for a blockchain in the form of a hard fork, there are then two different operating systems.
A few things:
On p. 63 they write:
The site for Ethereum Classic defines the cryptoasset as “a continuation of the original Ethereum blockchain–the classic version preserving untampered history; free from external interference and subjecitve tampering of transactions.”
This could be revised since Ethereum Classic itself has now had multiple forks.
As mentioned in a previous post last year:
Ethereum Classic: this small community has held public events to discuss how they plan to change the money supply; they video taped this coordination and their real legal names are used; only one large company (DCG) is active in its leadership; they sponsor events; they run various social media accounts
There has been lots of external interference, that’s been the lifeblood of public blockchains… because they don’t run themselves, people run and administer them.
Continuing on p. 63 they write:
While many merchants understably complain about credit card fees of 2 to 3 percent, the “platform fees” of Airbnb, Uber, and similar platform services are borderline egregious.
Maybe they are, maybe they are not.66 What is the right fee they should be? Miners take a cut, exchanges take a cut, developers take a cut via “founder’s funds.”
The next edition should give a step-by-step comparison to show why fee structures are egregious (maybe they are, it just is not clear in this book).
On p. 64 they wrote about Augur. Incidentally, Augur finally launched in early July while writing this review. I have an origin story but will keep that for later.
On p. 65 they wrote about Filecoin:
For example, a dApp may use a decentralized cloud storage system like Filecoin to store large amounts of data, and another cryptocommodity for anonymized bandwidth, in addition to using Ethereum to process certain operations.
A couple thoughts:
On p. 65 they write:
Returning to the fundamentals of investment theory will allow innovative investors to properly position their overarching portfolio to take advantage of the growth of cryptoassets responsibly.
It is still unclear what an “innovative investor” is — at least the way these authors describe it.67
Chapter 6
On p. 69 Tatar writes:
Not only did I decide to inveset in bitcoin, I decided to place the entirety of that year’s allocation for my Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) plan into bitcoin. When I announced what I had done in my article “Do Bitcoin Belong in your Retirement Portfolio?,” it created a stir online and in the financial planning community.
This was one of just a couple places where the authors actually disclose that they own specific coins, next edition they should put it up front.
On p. 70 Tatar writes:
Was I chasing a similar crash-and-burn scenario with bitcoin? Even my technologically and investment savvy son, Eric, initially criticized me about bitcoin. “They have these things called dollar bills, Dad. Stick to using those.”
Eric is probably right: that the authors of this book accepted traditional money for their book (Amazon doesn’t currently accept cryptocurrencies).
Based on their views presented in this book, the authors probably don’t spend (many) coins they may have in the portfolio, instead holding on to them with the belief that other investors will bid up the price (measured in actual money).
On p. 77 they write about the GFC prior to 2008:
Becoming a hedge fund manager became all the rage for business-minded students when it was revealed that the top 25 hedge fund managers earned a total of $22.3 billion in 2007 and $11.6 billion in 2008.
Coincidentally a similar “rage” for running cryptocurrency-related funds has occured in the past 18 months, especially for ICOs.
More than two hundred “funds” quickly popped up in order to gobble up coins during coin mania. At least 9 have closed down through April and many more were down double digits due to a bear market (and not hedging).
Chapter 7
On p. 83 they write:
Bitcoin is the most exciting alternative asset in the twenty-first century, and it has paved the way for its digital siblings to enjoy similar success.
It is their opinion that this is the case, but the authors don’t really provide a lot of data to reinforce it yet, other than the fact that there have been some bull runs due to exuberance.68 Worth rewording in the next edition.
On p. 83 they write:
Because bitcoin can claim the title of being the oldest cryptoasset…
Historically it is not. It may be the oldest coin listed on a liquid secondary market, but there were cryptocurrencies before bitcoin.
On p. 85 Berniske writes:
Similarly, I (Chris) didn’t even consider investing in bitcoin when I first heard about it in 2012. By the time I began considering bitcoin for my portfolio in late 2014, the price was in the mid $300s, having increased 460,000-fold from the initial exchange rate.
I believe this is the only time in the book that Burniske discloses any coin holdings.
On p. 85 they make some ridiculous comparison with the S&P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ 100… and Bitcoin.
The former three are indices of multiple regulated securities. The latter is just one coin that is easily influenced and manipulated by external unaccountable parties. How is that an apples to apples comparison?
On p. 87 they continue by comparing Bitcoin with Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix.
Again, these are regulated securities that reflect cash flows and the financial health of multinational companies… Bitcoin has no cash flows and isn’t (yet) setup to be a company… and isn’t regulated (no KYC/AML at the mining farm or mining pool level).
Bitcoin was originally built to be an e-cash transmission network, a decentralized MSB.69 How is comparing it with non-MSBs a useful comparison?
On p. 88 they write:
Remember that, as of January 2017, bitcoin’s network value was 1/20, 1/22, 1/3, and 1/33 that of the FANG stocks respectively. Therefore, if bitcoin is to grow to a similar size much opportunity remains.
This whole section should be probably be modified because these aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons. FANG stocks represent companies that have to build and ship multiple products in order to generate continuous revenue.
With Bitcoin, it is bitcoin that is the product, nothing else is being shipped nor is revenue being generated70
Maybe the price of a bitcoin — as measured with actual money — does reach a 1:1 or even surpass the stocks above. But a new version of this book could be strengthened with an outline on how it could do so sustainably.
Also, the whole “market cap” topic should be removed from next edition as well. About 20% of all bitcoins have been lost or destroyed and this is never reflected in those exuberant “market cap” stories. See: Nearly 4 Million Bitcoins Lost Forever, New Study Says
On p. 92 they write about volatility:
Upon launch, cryptoassest tend to be extremely volatile because they are thinly traded markets.
Actually, basically all cryptocurrencies including the ones that the authors endorse throughout the book — are still very volatile.
Below is one illustration:
Source: JP Koning
The authors do have a couple narrow, daily volatility charts in the book, but none that provide a similar wideview comparison with something that is remotely comparable (Bitcoin versus Twitter doesn’t make any sense).
On p. 101 they write:
Cryptoassets have near-zero correlation to other captial market assets.
That’s loosey goosey at best.71
For instance, as pointed out in multiple articles this year: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tend to be locked together – and that’s a big problem
On p. 102 they write:
In contrast, the past few years have been more nuanced: bitcoin’s volatily has calmed, yet it retains a low correlation with other assets.
That first part is untrue, as shown by the chart above from JP Koning. The second part is relative.72
Chapter 8
On p. 107 they write:
The Securities and Exchange Commission has thus far steered clear of applying a specific label to all cryptoassets, though in late July 2017 it did release a report detailing how some cryptoassets can be classified as securities, with the most notable example being The DAO.
That’s pretty much the extent of the authors analysis of the issue. Granted they aren’t lawyers but this is a pretty big deal, maybe in the next edition beef this up?
On p. 107 they write:
While it’s a great validation of cryptoassets that regulators are working to provide clarity on how to classify at least some of them, most of the existing laws set forth suffer from the same flaw: agencies are interpereting cryptoassets through the lens of the past.
From this wording it seems that the authors want laws changed or modified to protect their interests and the financial interests of their LPs. This isn’t the first or last time that someone with a vested interest lobbies to get carve outs, exceptions, or entire moratoriums.
Maybe that it is deserved, but it’s not well-articulated in this chapter other than to basically call regulators “old-fashioned” and out of touch with technology.73 Could be worth rethinking the wording here.
On p. 107 they write:
Just as there is diversity in equities, with analsts segmenting companies depending on their market capitalization, sector, or geography, so too is there diversity in cryptoassets. Bitcoin, litecoin, monero, dash, and zcash fulfill the three definitions of a currency: serving as a means of exchange, store of value and unit of account.
This is empirically incorrect. None of these coins functions as a unit of account, they all depend on and are priced in… actual money.74
There are lots of reasons for why this is case but that is beyond the scope of this review. 7576
On p. 110 they write about ETFs:
It should be noted that when we talk about asset classes we are not doing so in the context of the investment vehicle that may “house” the underlying asset, whether that vehicle is a mutual fund, ETF, or separately managed account.
They don’t really discuss it in the book, but just so readers are aware, there have been about 10 Bitcoin-only ETFs proposed in the US, all of which have been rejected by the SEC (or applications were voluntarily removed).
Curious to know why? See the March 10, 2017 explanation from the SEC.
Note: this hasn’t stopped sponsors from re-applying. In the process of writing this review, the CBOE filed for a Bitcoin ETF.
On p. 111 they write:
Much of the thinking in this chapter grew out of a collaboration between ARK Invest and Coinbase through late 2015 and into 2016 when the two firms first made the claims that bitcoin was ringing the bell for a new asset class.
Just to be clear: the joint paper they published in that time frame was a bit superficial as it lacked actual user data from Coinbase exchanges (both GDAX and the consumer wallet). I pointed that out back then and this book is basically an expanded form of that paper: where is specific usage data on Coinbase? The only way we have learned any real user numbers about Coinbase is from an IRS lawsuit.
For instance, a future edition should try to differentiate on-chain activity that is say, gambling winnings or miners payouts from exchange arbitrage or even coin shuffling. Their analysis should be redone once they remove the noise from the signal (e.g., not all transactional activity is the same).
This is a real challenge and not a new issue. For instance, see: Slicing data.
On p. 112 they write:
Cryptoassets adhere to a twenty-first century model of governance unique from all other asset classes and largely inspired by the open source software movement. The procurers of the asset and associated use cases are three pronged. First, a group of talented software developers decide to create the blockchain protocol or distributed application that utilizes a native asset. These developers adhere to an open contributor model, which means that over time any new developer can earn his or her way onto the development team through merit.
There is no new governance model.
In practice, changes are done via social media popularity contests. We saw that with the Bitcoin blocksize debate and Ethereum hard fork. And in some ways, strong vocal personalities (and cults of personality) is how other FOSS projects (like Python) are managed and administered.
The fluffy meritocracy feel-goodism is often not the order of the day and we see this in many projects such as Bitcoin where the commit access and BIP approval process is limited to a small insular clique.
Source: Jake Smith (section 3)
The 4 point plan above is a much more accurate break down of how most coin projects are setup.
On p. 112 they write:
However, the developers are not the only ones in charge of procuring a cryptoasset; they only provide the code. The people who own and maintain the computers that run the code–the-miners–also have a say in the development of the code because they have to download new software updates. The developers can’t force miners to update software. Instead, they must convince them that it makes sense for the health of the overall blockchain, and the economic health of the miner, to do so.
But in many projects: developers and miners are one in the same. This is why it is so confusing to not have seen additional clarity or guidance from FinCEN because of how centralized most projects are in practice.
Be sure to look at “arewedecentralizedyet.”77
On p. 113 they write:
These companies often employ some of the core developers, but even if they don’t, they can assert significant influence over the system if they are a large force behind user adoption.
Maybe that is the case for some cryptocurrencies.78 Should “core” developers be licensed like professional engineers are?
Also, isn’t their statement above evidence that most projects are fairly centralized because the division of labor results in specialization?
On p. 113 they write:
These users are constantly providing feedback to the developers, miners, and companies, in whose interest it is to listen, because if users stop using the cryptoasset, then demand will go down and so too will the price. Therefore, the procurers are constantly held accountable by the users.
Except this isn’t what happens in practice.
Relatively little activity takes place at all on most of these coin platforms and most of what does occur involves arbitrage trading and/or illicit activity.
This activity seems to have little direct connection to the price of the coin because the price of the coin is still largely determined by the whims of speculative demand.
Source: Blockchain.info
For instance, above is a two-year transactional volume chart for bitcoin. The price of bitcoin in the summer of 2016 was in the $600-$700 range whereas it is 10x that today. Yet daily transaction volume is actually lower than it was back then. Which means: the two are separate phenomenon.
Also, arguably the only direct way coin owners can — in practice — hold maintainers accountable is via antics on social media. That is why control of a specific reddit, Telegram, or Twitter account is very important and why hackers target those channels in order to influence prices.
On p. 113 they write about supply schedules:
For example, with oil, there’s the famous Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which has had considerable control over the supply levels of oil.
Inadvertently they actually described how basically all proof-of-work coins operate: via a small clique of known miners and mining pools. A cartel?
Source: Jameson Lopp
While these miners have not yet increased or decreased the supply of bitcoins, mining is a specialized task that requires certain capital and connections in order to be successful at. These participants could easily collude to change the money supply, censor transactions, etc. and there would be no immediate legal recourse.
On p. 115 they write:
Cryptoassets, like gold, are often constructed to be scarce in their supply. Many will be even more scarce than gold and other precious metals. The supply schedule of cryptoassets typically is metered mathematically and set in code at the genesis of the underlying protocol or distributed application.
How to measure scarcity here?
Despite what alchemists tried for centuries to do: aside from particle accelators, on Earth the only way of increasing the supply of gold and silver is via digging it out of the ground. For cryptocurrencies, it is relatively easy to fork and clone both code and chains. Digital scarcity for most — if not all — public chains, seems to be is a myth.
In the next edition, maybe remove the “backed by maths” trope? None of these chains run themselves, they all depend on humans to run the equipment and maintain the code.
On p. 115 they write:
As discussed earlier, Satoshi crafted the system this way because he needed initially to bootstrap support for Bitcoin which he did by issuing large amounts of the coin for the earliest contributors. As Bitcoin matured, the value of its native asset appreciated, which means less Bitcoin is over eight years old, it provides strong utility to the world beyond as an investment, which drive demand.
Satoshi likely mined around 1 million bitcoins for himself/herself. Because of how centralized and small the network originally was in 2009, he/she probably could have unilaterally stopped the network and relaunched it and effectively removed that insta-mine. 79
In addition, there was almost no risk to either be a developer or a miner… the entry/exit costs were very low… so why did he issue large amounts of coins for these contributors?80
Also, how does it provide strong demand beyond investment? How many people do the authors know regularly use Bitcoin itself for retail payments?81
Also, through Bitcoin’s evolution, arguably some of its utility was removed by going down a specific block size path. The counterargument is that payments will be done via some other networks (such as Lightning) attached to Bitcoin, but as of this writing, that hasn’t panned out.
One last comment about this passage, FOSS is historically charity work and difficult to build a sustainable operation. A couple notable exceptions are Red Hat and SUSE (which was just acquired by EQT).
On p. 115 they write:
The Ethereum team is currently rethinking that issuance strategy due to an intended change in its consensus mechanism.
In the second edition is it possible to be consistent on this one point: how is an “official” or “centralized” development team congruent with the idea of having a “decentralized ecosystem”?
Also, the administrators of Ethereum Classic modified the money supply last year and most folks were blasé. Where is the relevant FinCEN guidance?
On p. 115 they write:
Steemit’s team pursued a far more complicated monetary policy with its platform, composed of steem (STEEM), steem power (SP), and steem dollars (SMD).
[…]
They have also chosen to modify their monetary policy post-inception.
The authors of this book need to be consistent in their wording because in other places they criticize centralized financial institutions but do not criticize centralized monetary supply decision of coin makers. Also, again, why or how does a decentralized project have a singular team?
On p. 116 they write:
Crypotassets can be likened to silicon. They have come upon the scene due to the rise of technology, and their use cases will grow and change as technology evolves. Currently, bitcoin is the most straightforward, with its use case being that of a decentralized global currency. Ether is more flexible, as developers use it for computational gas within a decentralized world computer.
This isn’t a good analogy. Silicon exists as a naturally occurring element… whereas cryptocurrencies do not naturally arise — humans create them.
In addition, bitcoin is arguably not the most straightforward due to a long divorce and schism process the past three years. One distinct group of promoters calls it “digital gold” and another distinct group calls it a “payment system” — the two groups are almost violently opposed to one another’s existence.
On p. 116 they write:
Then there are the trading markets, which trade 24/7, 365 days a year. These global and eternally open markets also differentiate cryptoassets from other assets discussed herein.
The FX markets are open globally almost 24/6 for most of the year, so that’s not really a braggable claim.82 There are legal, regulatory, and practical reasons why most capital markets operate in the time windows they do… it is not because of some technological limitation. Worth rewording in the next edition.
On p. 116 they write:
In short, the use cases for cryptoassets are more dynamic than any preexisting asset class. Furthermore, since they’re brought into the world and then controlled by open-source software, the ability for cryptoassets to evolve is unbounded.
In the next edition, maybe remove the pomp and circumstance unless there is actual data to back up the platitudes. We can all easily conjure up lots of potential use cases for just about any type of technology, but unless they are built and used, the hype should be turned down a few notches.
Also, there are many other open source software projects that have actually shipped frequently used productivity tools and no one is yelling from the mountain tops about how they have unbounded potential. How are internet coins any different?
On p. 117 they write:
Cryptoassets have two drivers of their basis of value: utility and speculative.
In theory, perhaps. But in practice, most coins just have potential utility because with few exceptions, most buyers typically hold with the expectation the coin will appreciate. Maybe that change in the future.
On p. 117 the write:
For example, Bitcoin’s blockchain is used to transact bitcoin and therefore much of the value is driven by demand to use bitcoin as a means of exchange.
Perhaps, though in the next edition recommend modifying the wording to include: “… as a means of exchange or investment…” Currently, we know a large portion of activity is likely movement (arbitrage) between exchanges.8384
But even ignoring this data (from analytics companies) this scenario has been diced-up elsewhere:
On p. 117 they write:
Speculative value is driven by people trying to predict how widely used a particular cryptoasset will be in the future.
If there are systematic surveys of actual buyers and sellers perhaps add those in the second edition.85
On p. 118 they write:
With cryptoassets, much of the speculative value can be derived from the development team. People will have more faith that a cryptoasset will be widely adopted if it is crafted by a talented and focused development team. Furthermore, if the development team has a grand vision for the widespread use of the cryptoasset, then that can increase the speculative value of the asset.
This is false.
For starters, the value of a new coin is almost entirely a function of the marketing effort from the coin issuers: that’s why nearly all ICOs carve out a portion of their funding pie to market, promote, and advertise… spreading the sexy gospel of the new coin.
This is a big bucks opaque industry, with all sorts of shenanigans that take place just to get listed on secondary markets… with coin issuers paying more than $1 million to get listed.
While $1 million or even $3 million may sound like a lot to get listed, the issuers know it is worth it because the retail speculators on the other end will at least temporarily pump the coin price up often long enough for the original insiders and investors to cash out.
Now the coin issuers may talk a big game and at eloquent length about how their grand vision: that their coin will end world hunger and save the environment, but they often have no ability to execute and build the product(s) they claimed in their whitepaper.
As mentioned above, one recent study found that, “56% of crypto startups that raise money through token sales die within four months of their initial coin offerings.”
Also, how does a decentralized cryptocurrency have an official singular development team?
On p. 118 they write:
As each cryptoasset matures, it will converge on its utility value. Right now, bitcoin is the furthest along the transition from speculative price support to uility price support because it has been around the longest and people are using it regularly for its intended utility use case.
And what is its intended use case? The maximalist vision (digital gold) or the originalist payments vision?
On p. 118 they write:
For example, in 2016, $100,000 of bitcoin was transacted every minute, which creates real demand for the utility of the asset beyond its trading demand. A great illustration of bitcoin’s price support increasingly being tied to utility came from Pantera Capital, a well-respected investment firm solely focused on cryptoassets and technology. in Figure 8.2 we can see that in November 2013 bitcoin’s speculative value skyrocketed beyond its utility value, which is represented here by transactions per day using Bitcoin’s blockchain (CAGR is the compound annual growth rate).
But this didn’t happen.
Pantera has a habit of cherry picking dates and using different types of graphs (such as log versus linear) in order to talk its book.
For instance, they conjured up and pushed the “bitcoin absorbs the value of gold” narrative back in late 2014. Then a year later, they became part of the “great pivot” by rebranding everything “blockchain” instead of bitcoin.
Putting those aside, the transactional part of the graph (Figure 8.2) from Pantera was published in early 2017 and has not held up to further scrutiny by mid-2018.
Source: Pantera
Compare that with the actual transactional volume for the past two years, including the most recent bull run:
Source: Blockchain.info
Perhaps for some unknown reason the up-and-to-the-right hockey stick graph that Pantera tried to create with its dotted lines will germinate. But for now, as of this writing, their transactional / utility thesis is incorrect.
Why? Because the assumptions were the same as the authors of this book: they assume retail or institutional users will flock to using bitcoin for non-speculative reasons, but that has not occurred yet.
On p. 119 they write:
Speculative value diminishes as a cryptoasset matures because there is less speculation regarding the future markets the cryptoasset will penetrate. This means people will understand more clearly that demand for the asset will look like going forward. The younger the cryptoasset is, the more its value will be driven by speculative vlaue, as shown in Figure 8.3. While we expect cryptoassets to ossify into their primary use cases over time, especially as they become large system that supports significant amounts of value, their open-source nature leaves open the possiblity that they will be tweaked to pursue new tangential use cases, which could once again add speculative value to the asset.
Their wording in this and other passages has definitive certainty without any hedging.
This is unfounded. Recall, what can be presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. This also makes a circular argument that the next edition needs to provide evidence for (or just remove it).
Chapter 9
On p. 122 the write:
For example, currently the bond markets are undergoing significant changes, as a surprising amount of bond trading is still a “voice and paper market,” where trades are made by institutions calling one another and tangible paper is processed. This makes the bond market much more illiquid and opaque than the stock market, where most transactions are done almost entirely electronically: With the growing wave of digitalization, the bond markets are becoming increasingly liquid and transparent. The same can be said of markets for commodities, art, fine wine, and so on.
In re-reading this I can’t tell if the authors recognize that the bond market, as well as all of the other markets listed, started out in pre-electronic and even pre-industrial times.
That’s not to defend the status quo, only that if modern day trading platforms and automation existed a couple hundreds years ago, it is likely that bonds trading would have migrated much earlier than 2018… maybe even on a blockchain!
On p. 122 they write:
Cryptoassets have an inherent advantage in their liquidity and trading volume profile, because they are digital natives. As digital natives, cryptoassets have no physical form, and can be moved as quickly as the Internet can move the 1s and 0s that convey ownership.
This is conflating digitization/digitalization with blockchains. You can have one without the other and in fact, do.
For instance, with US equities, beginning in the ’60s through the ’70s, stocks were dematerialized then immobilized in CSDs and ownership is now transferred electronically.86
Perhaps there is something to be said about this market infrastructure further evolving in time with a blockchain of some kind.
For example in the US, the DTCC (a large CSD) has:
Virtually every major CSD, stock exchange, and clearing house has likewise publicly opined or participated in some blockchain-related initiatives. But that is a separate topic maybe worth looking into for the next edition.
On p. 123 they write:
Even though they are growing at an incredible clip, separation between cryptoasset markets and traditional investor capital pools still largely remains the case.
How much real money has actually entered the cryptocurrency market?
There have been several attempts to quantify it and it is still rather small, maybe up to $10 billion came in during 2017.
On p. 125 they write:
For example, in 2016, Monero experienced a sizeable increase in notoriety–largely because its privacy features began to be utilized by a well-known dark market–which sent its average trading volume skyrocketing. In December 2015, daily volume for the asset was $27,300, but by December 2016 it was $3.25M, well over a hunderfold increase. The price of the asset had appreciated more than 20-fold in the same period, so some of the increase in trading volume was due to price appreciation, but clearly a large amount was due to increased interest and trading activity in the asset.
But how do the authors know this “clearly” was the case? Did they do some random sample surveys? The next edition they need to prove their assumption, not just make them. After all, it is hard — perhaps impossible — to externally ascertain what is going on at an exchange simply by looking at self-published volumes.
Also, the exchanges that these coins trade on are still typically unregulated, with little optics into how often manipulation occurs. That is why a number of them have been subpoenaed by various governmental bodies; in the US this includes the SEC, CFTC, IRS, FBI, and even separate states acting in coordination.
On p. 129 they write:
From these trends, we can infer that this declining volatility is a result of increased market maturity. Certainly, the trend is not a straight line, and there are significant bumps in the road, depending on particular events. For example, monero had a spike in volatility in late 2016 because it experienced a significant price rise. This shows volatility is not only associated with a tanking price but also a skyrocketing price. The general trend, nonetheless, is of dampening volatility […].
This is not true either. Maybe there are cherry picked dates in which there is relatively lower volatility than normal, but this year alone prices as measured in real money, declined between 60-100% for basically all crypotocurrencies and this involved a roller coaster to achieve.
In fact, in the process of writing this review, there were multiple days in which prices increased 5-10% for most coins and then a few days later, saw the same size of loses. Erratic volatility has not disappeared.
On p. 133 they write:
Despite the many PBOC interventions, Chinese citizens used bitcoin to protect themselves against the erosion in value of their national currency.
Who in China did this?
I have spent an enormous amount of time visiting China the past several years on business trips and not once did someone say they had shifted their wealth from RMB into bitcoin because of RMB depreciation. There are many speculators and miners, but to my knowledge there has not been a formal survey of buyers and their motivations… and the result being because of RMB depreciation.
The next edition should either remove this statement or add a citation.
On p. 134 they write:
As bitcoin rose and fell, so too did these assets. This reinforces the need for the innovative investor to become knowledgeable about these assets’ specific characteristics and recognize where correlations may or may not occur.
Recommend removing “innovative investor” in this location.87
Chapter 10
On p. 137 they write:
On its path to maturity, bitcoin’s price has experienced euphoric rise and harrowing drops, as have many cryptoassets. One of the most common complaints among bitcoin and cryptoasset naysayers is that these fluctuations are driven by the Wild West nature of the markets, implying that cryptoassets are a strange new breed that can’t be trusted. While each cryptoasset and its associated markets are at varying levels of maturity, associating Wild West behavior as unique to cryptoasset markets is misleading at best.
No it isn’t. The authors do not even define or provide some kind of way to measure “maturity.” This paragraph creates a strawman.
The burden-of-proof rests on the party making the positive claim. In this case, the party claiming that a coin is becoming mature must provide objective evidence this is taking place. Should reword in the next edition.
On p. 138 they write:
Broadly, we categorize five main patterns that lead to markets destabilizing: the speculation of crowds, “This time is different,” Ponzi schemes, Misleading information from asset issuers, Cornering.
Those are valid patterns, in full agreement here. But this edition does not help in dispelling these problems and arguably even contributes to some of the speculative frenzy.
On p. 138 they write:
Sometimes they do this to capitalize on short-term information they believe will move the market, other times they do it because they expect to ride the momentum of the market, regardless of its fundamentals. In short, they try to profit within the roller-coaster ride.
What are the fundamentals of any coin described in this book? Next edition, clearly write out 5-10 if possible.
On p. 139 they write:
As America was struggling through the Great Depression, which many pinned on the stock market crash of 1929, there was strong resentment against speculators. Every crisis loves a scapegoat.
And in Bitcoinland there is no difference. Bitcoiners love to blame: bankers, the Illuminati, naysayers, concern trolls, academics, the government, Jamie Dimon, big blockers, small blockers, weak hands, statists, other coins, China, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Mike Hearn… virtually every month there is a new boogeyman to blame something on. I’ve even been blamed many times and I’m not involved at all in the market.
On p. 143 they write:
Cheap credit often fuels asset bubbles, as seen with the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis of 2008. Similarly, cryptoasset bubbles can be created using extreme margin on some exchanges, where investors are effectively gambling with money they don’t have.
Fully agree, good point.
On p. 144 they write:
The best way to avoid getting burned in this manner is to do proper due diligence and have an investment plan that is adhered to.
Fully agree, good point.
On p. 145 they write:
The key to understanding bitcoin’s value is recognizing it has utility as “Money-over-Internet-Protocol”( MoIP)–allowing it to move large amounts of value to anyone anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes–which drives demand for it beyond mere speculation.
This might be partially true but is has the same feel-good narrative that folks like Andreas Antonopoulos have been getting paid handsomly to regurgitate. Bitcoin (the network) does not move anything beyond bitcoins (the coin). Users still have to convert bitcoins into actual money at end points.
Converting a large amount — greater than $10,000 — will likely require KYC and AML and maybe even sanctions checks. This adds time and money which is one of the reason why the remittance use-case didn’t really get much traction after the hype in 2014 – 2015 and why companies such as Abra had to pivot a few times.
With that said, their metapoint is valid on the edges: despite the frictions that may exist, some participants are willing to go through this experience in order to gain more anonymity for uses they might not otherwise be able to do using traditional methods.88
Over the past three years there has also been an expansion of country- and region-based payment schemes worldwide to achieve near-real-time transfers, with Europe being one of the most significant accomplishments.89
In parallel, there are on-going experimentation and scaling of private blockchain-based ‘rails’ like Swift gpi or Alipay with GCash which have a potential to surpass volumes of the Bitcoin network.90
On p. 145 they write:
When Mt. Gox was established, bitcoin finally became accessible to the mainstream.
One nitpick:
Up until recently it was difficult for even diehard users to get onboarded onto most exchanges. And specifically in 2010 with the launch of Mt. Gox, Jed McCaleb used Paypal to help facilitate the transfer of money… until Paypal dropped Mt. Gox because of too many chargebacks. To get money into and out of Mt. Gox often was a frictionfull task, unless you lived in Japan.
On p. 149 they write:
As shown in Figure 10.4, steem’s price in bitcoin terms would fall from its mid-July peak by 94 percent three months later, and by 97 percent at the end of the year. This doesn’t mean the platform is bad. Rather, it shows the speculation and excitement about its prospects fueled a sharp rise and fall in price.
In hindsight, everything is 20-20. The same truism in their last sentence can be said just about with every coin that sees the meteoric rise that Steemit did in 2016.91
On p. 150 they write:
While zcash has since stabilized and continues to hold great promise as a cryptoasset, its rocky start was caused by mass speculation.
Two comments:
On p. 152 they write:
The idea of valuation, which we will tackle in the next chapters, is a particularly challenging one for cryptoassets. Since they are a new asset class, they cannot be valued as companies are, and while valuing them based on supply and demand characteristics like that of commodiites has some validity, it doesn’t quite suffice.
Then why spend an entire chapter (Chapter 7) comparing coins such as bitcoin, to companies and their stock?
You can’t have it both ways. Either heavily modify Chapter 7 in the next edition, or remove this comment.
Chapter 11
On p. 155 they write:
Given the emerging nature of the cryptoasset markets, it’s important to recognize that there is less regulation (some would say none) in this arena, and therefore bad behavior can persist for longer than it may in more mature markets.
And there are now full-time lobbyists and trade associations — sponsored by donors whom have benefited from this unregulated / underregulated market — that actively push back against sensible regulations being applied. But that’s a different conversation beyond this post.
On p. 155 they write:
As activity grows in bitcoin and crypotasset markets, investors must look beyond the madness of the crowd and recognize that there are bad actors who seek easy prey in these young markets.
Even for a book published in late 2017, this is pretty much lip service. Volumes of books can be written about the shenanigans within nearly every public ICO and high-profile coin project. The authors should either modify the statement above or ideally expand it to detail specific egregious examples besides just OneCoin.
For instance, a new study found that: More Than Three-Quarters of ICOs Were Scams. And these were ICOs done in 2017.
On p. 158 they write:
While a truly innovative crypotasset and its associated architecture requires a heroic coding effort from talented developers, because the software is open source, it can be downloaded and duplicated. From there, a new cryptoasset can be issued wrapped in slick marketing. If the innovative investors doesn’t do proper due diligence on the underlying code of read other trusted sources who have, then it’s possible to fall victim to a Ponzi scheme.
Enough with the “heroic” adjectives, let’s not put anyone on a pedestal, especially if the platform is not being used by anyone besides speculators and illicit actors.
Secondly, a minor grammar question: other uses of “open-source” in this book have a dash and the one above does not.
Lastly, recommend readers look into “Nakomoto Schemes” described in this article: The Problem with Calling Bitcoin a “Ponzi Scheme”
On p. 158 they write:
Millions of dollars poured into OneCoin, whose technology ran counter to the values of the cryptoasset community: its software was not open source (perhaps out of fear that developers would see the holes in its design), and it was not based on a public ledger, so no transactions could be tracked.
First, what are the “values” that the “community” has? Are these explicity written somewhere? Who decided those?
Second, those actually don’t sound too uncommon.
For instance, one recent study found: “Security researchers have found, on average, five security flaws in each cryptocurrency ICO (Initial Coin Offering) held last year. Only one ICO held in 2017 did not contain any critical flaws.”
And remember, these projects are “open source” yet most buyers and investors didn’t bother looking at the code. OneCoin is par for the course.
On p. 159 they write:
The swift action revealed the strength of a self-policing, open-source community in pursuit of the truth.
In my most popular post last year, I went through in detail explaining how self-policing is an oxymoron in the cryptocurrency world.
For example, “the community” actively listed OneCoin on secondary markets and profited from its trading. Did exchange operators return those gains to victims? In addition, “the community” has thus far, not set up any self-regulating organization (SRO) that has any ability or teeth to enforce a code-of-conduct.
In fact, it was agencies from Sweden, the UK, and other governments that acted and cracked down on OneCoin… not a collective effort from exchanges or VCs or twitter personalities.
On p. 159 they explain googling for code on GitHub:
If nothing pops up with signs of the code on GitHub, then the cryptoasset is likely not open source, which is an immediate red flag that a cryptoasset and investment should be avoided.
Sure, but it doesn’t include the fact(s) that even in 2017 we knew that many coin projects had bugs in it… because there is no incentive to independently audit this code or to publish it in an objective manner.
For example, often when someone tries to help highlight problems, they are demonized as a “concern troll” as the coin tribes brigade their Twitter and reddit threads. There are a couple of sites like ConcourseQ that now do help highlight problems, but most “crypto thought leaders” on social media spend their time rallying retail investors to buy coins instead of busting or calling out the legitimate coin scams.
On p. 161 they write about John Law:
Fortunately, today it’s quite easy to find information on just about anyone through Google searches.
Yes and no. And that still doesn’t act as a shield against fraud. The founders of Centra had shady, criminal pasts but were still able to raise more than $30 million in an ICO. Their misdeeds only became widely known after a New York Times article explored it… this was not a story that was investigated by any of the “coin media” who collectively have a vested interested not to “self-police” the market they cover.
Furthermore, prior to getting busted and sued, Centra became a dues paying member of: Hyperledger, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, and the Chamber of Digital Commerce. What are the filtering mechanisms in place at these types of organizations? How do they determine who can join and if a coin is a security?
On p. 165 they write:
As with most panics, the contagion spread from the Gold Exchange. Because of Gould’s cornering of the market, stock prices dropped 20 percent, a variety of agricultural exports fell 50 percent in value, and the national economy was disrupted for several months. Gould exited with a cool $11 million profit from the debacle, and scot-free from legal charges. It is all too common that character like Gould escape unscathed by the havoc they create, which then allows them to carry on with their machinations in other markets.
These kinds of panics and manipulation are part and parcel to retail traders on cryptocurrency exchanges. Scapegoats and the blame game consist of a myriad of boogeymen — but typically the culprits are never found.93
On p. 167 they write:
In addition to miners, in Dash there are entities called masternodes, which are also controlled by people or groups of people. Masternodes play an integral role in performing near instant and anonymous transaction with Dash.
Putting aside whether Dash is or is not anonymous… the fact that the authors state that humans play a direct role in running the infrastructure raises a bunch of questions that I have repeated in this review.
How are these participants held accountable? How is governance managed? Have these participants registered with FinCEN? Why or why not?
On p. 168 they write about the Bitcoin Rich List:
Another 116 addresses hold a total of 2.87 million bitcoin, or 19 percent of the total outstanding, which is sizeable. Unlike dash, however, these holders aren’t necessarily receiving half the newly minted bitcoin, and so their ability to push the price upward is less.
Should there be a thorough investigation of how any one party or set of parties can artificially move prices around based on control of the money supply? In our current real-world framework, there are frequent public hearings and audits done. When will minters of cryptocurrencies be publicly audited?
Chapter 12
On p. 171 they write:
Each cryptoasset is different, as are the goals, objectives, and risk profiles of each investor. Therefore, while this chapter will provide a starting point, it is by no means comprehensive. It’s also not investment advice.
Throughout the book the authors have repeatedly endorsed or not-endorsed specific coins. The second edition needs to be a lot more consistent.
On p. 172 they write:
Currently, there is no such thing as sell-side research for cryptoassets, and this will require innovative investors to scour through the details on their own or rely on recognized thought leaders in the space.
This is a sad truth: it is nearly impossible to get neutral, objective research on any coin that has been created.
Why? Because all coin holders basically have an incentive to promote and advertise the coins they own and talk down other coins they perceive as competition. Paying “researchers” has happened and will continue to do so.
Also, here’s another appearance of “innovative investor” — can that be removed altogether?
And lastly, how to know who the “recognized thought leaders” are? Based on the amount of twitter followers they have? That has been gamed. Based on how popular their Youtube account is? That has been gamed.
For example, these two article explain some of this payola world:
Another instance, a couple weeks ago a government department in China (CCID) released its second ranking table of coins: China’s Crypto Ratings Index Puts EOS in Top Slot, Drops Bitcoin
It’s unclear if this is due to lobbying efforts or maybe the researchers owned a bunch of EOS coins. At this time, the EOS block producing and arbitrator framework are both broken. Block producers paused the network a few weeks ago and the arbitrators / constitutions will probably be scrapped.
How can this rating system be trusted?
On p. 173 they write about white papers:
Any cryptoasset worth its mustard has an origination white paper. A white paper is a document that’s often used in business to outline a proposal, typically written by a thought leader or someone knowledgeable on a topic. As it relates to cryptoassets, a white paper is the stake in the ground, outlining the problem the asset addresses, where the asset stands in the competitive landscape, and what the technical details are.
During the Consensus event this past May, someone accidentally dropped a napkin on the floor and someone loudly said: watch out, that’s the latest multimillion dollar white paper.
And that’s the situation where we are in now. Readers: the passage above was not at all critical of the real mess we are in today. For instance, Tron literally plagiarized in its whitepaper, raised a ton of money in its ICO and recently bought BitTorrent.
There is no direct connection between a “good” or “bad” whitepaper and the performance of the coin. Retail investors do not typically care and haven’t done much research. Yet another reason agencies such as the SEC will be overwhelmed in the coming years due to rampant fraud and deceit. Worth looking into the next edition.
On p. 173 they write:
Some of these white papers can be highly technical, though at the very least perusing the introduction and conclusion is valuable.
This seems like an incongruent statement compared to other advice in the book about doing deep research. Recommend revising.
On p. 174 they write:
A number of cryptoasset-based projects focus on social networks, such as Steemit and Yours, the latter of which uses litecoin. While we admire these projects, we also ask: Will these networks and their associated assets gain traction with competitors like Reddit and Facebook? Similarly, a cryptoasset service called Swarm City (formerly Arcade City) aims to decentralize Uber, which is already a highly efficient service. What edge will the decentralized Swarm City have over the centralized Uber?
And that in a nutshell is why the second edition of the book arguably needs to be slimmed down by 25%+. Virtually all of the use cases in this book are simply potential use cases and have shown little or even no traction in reality. For example, if the authors were as critical to Bitcoin and Zcash as they were to Swarm City then the second edition might be perceived as more balanced.
Specifically, in their promotion of Bitcoin as a payments platform, they have not done a deep dive into other existing payment networks, such as Visa or an RTGS from a central bank.94 They should do that in the next edition otherwise these come across as one-sided arguments.
Also, Yours switched from Litecoin over to Bitcoin Cash last year (around the time the book was published) and Swarm City is still not very active at the time this review was written.
On p. 175 they write about The Lindy Effect
The same applies to cryptoassets. The longest-lived cryptoasset, bitcoin, now has an entire ecosystem of hardware, software developers, companies, and users built around it. Essentially, it has created its own economy, and while a superior cryptocurrency could slowly gain share, it would have an uphill battle given the foothold bitcoin has gained.
This is untrue in theory and practice.
While maximalists would vocally claim that there can only be one-chain-to-rule-them-all, there is no real moat that Bitcoin has to prevent users from exiting or switching to other platforms (see discussion on substitute goods).
In practice, effectively all proof-of-work cryptocurrencies depend on external capital to stay afloat, often in the form of venture capital. ((See Robert Sams on rehypothecation, deflation, inelastic money supply and altcoins)) Part of the reason is that miners need to pay their bills in traditional currency and therefore must liquidate some or all of their coins to do so. Another issue is that because many participants think or believe that coin prices as measured in real money will increase in the future, they hold. Yet the expenses of service providers (exchanges, wallets, etc.) typically need to be paid with traditional money.
As a result, this creates sell-side pressure. And unlike the traditional FX market which has “natural” buyers in the form of international merchants and multinational corporations: there still is no “natural” buyers of cryptocurrencies outside of illicit activity (e.g., darknet market participants).
To compound this situation is that there is still no real circular flow of income, no real economy for any of these cryptocurrencies.95 And with the exception of a few cases each year, miners typically do not directly invest their coin holdings into companies, so crypotcurrency-related startups are dependent on foreign currency.
On p. 175 they write:
The demise of The DAO significantly impacted Ethereum (which The DAO was built on), but through leadership and community involvement, the major issues were addressed, and as of April 2017 Ethereum stands solidly as the second largest cryptoasset in terms of network value.
In the second edition, could the authors explicitly lay out how they define “leadership” in this context as well as what the “community” is? If it is singular and centralized, how is that fitting for an entity that is supposed to be decentralized?
Also, for readers interested in The DAO, here’s a short fiery thread on that topic.
On p. 176 they discuss “utility value and speculative value”
For bitcoin, its utility is that it can safely, quickly, and efficiently transfer value to anyone, anywhere in the world.
That may have been the original vision expressed in the whitepaper but it is not what the maximalists now claim Bitcoin is. Who’s promotion around utility is something we should take into consideration?
Also, considering how easy and common it is to hack cryptocurrency intermediaries such as exchanges, I think it is debatable that Bitcoin is “safe” for unsophisticated retail users, but that’s a separate topic.
On p. 176 they write:
The merchants wants to use bitcoin because it will allow her to transfer that money within an hour as opposed to waiting a week or more. Therefore, the Brazilian merchant buys US$100,000 worth of bitcoin and sends it ot the Chinese manufacture.
They explain a little more but the difficulties with this example starts here. The authors only focus on the bitcoins themselves, they don’t explore the actual full lifecycle that international merchants and manufacturers have to go through in order to exchange bitcoins into real money that they can use to pay bills.
That is to say: the Brazilian merchant and Chinese manufacture do not hold onto coins, so it is not just a matter of how fast they can send or receive the coins. What ultimately matters to them is how quickly they can receive the real money from a bank.
So the next edition needs to include the full roundtrip costs and frictions including the on-ramps and off-ramps into the traditional financial system. This is why many Bitcoin remittance companies struggled and ultimately had to pivot out of that cross-border use case (such as Abra). For the next edition, a side-by-side cost comparison would be helpful.96
On p. 177 they write:
That means on average each of these addresses is holding US$5.5 million worth of bitcoin, and it’s fair to assume that these balances are not those of merchants waiting for their transactions to complete. Instead, these are likely balances of bitcoin that entities are holding for the long term based on what they think bitcoin’s future utility value will be. Future utility value can be thought of as speculative value, and for this speculative value investors are keeping 5.5 million bitcoin out of the supply.
This seems like euphemisms. We understand that time preferences and discounted utility come into dramatic effect here. Maybe worth rewording?
For example, a large portion of those coins could be permanently destroyed (e.g., someone deleted the private key or threw away the hard drive). Though a significant portion could also be maximalists holding onto their coins with the hope that other investors create sufficient demand to move the price — as measured in real money — upward and upward. So they can then cash out.
If daily and weekly anecdotes on twitter and reddit are any indication, that’s arguably the real utility value of most coins, not just bitcoin. And there is some analytics to back up that argument too.
On p. 177 they write:
At the start of April 2017, there were just over 16 million bitcoin outstanding. Between international merchants needing 10 million bitcoin, and 5.5 million bitcoin held by the top 1,000 investors, there are only roughly 500,000 bitcoin free for people to use.
Citation needed. If the authors have any specific information that can share with the audience about any of these numbers, that’d be very helpful. Especially regarding the merchants needing 10 million bitcoin. If anything, there may be fewer merchants actively accepting bitcoin today than there were a couple years ago.
On p. 177 they write:
If demand continues to go up for bitcoin, then with a disinflationary supply schedule, so too will its price (or velocity).
Couple of things:
On p. 177 they write:
In other words, those investors no longer feel bitcoin has any speculative value left, and instead its price is only supported by current utility value.
As mentioned above, it would be helpful in the next edition if the authors included specific definitions and characteristics in a chart for what utility versus speculative value are.
Also, I don’t endorse the post in its entirety, but about five years ago Rick Falkvinge wrote an interesting note about the transactional value from illicit activity as it relates to Bitcoin. That has some actual data in it (though very old now).
On p. 178 they write:
For bitcoin, instead of looking at the “domestically produced goods and services” it will purchase in a period, the innovative investor must look at the internationally produced goods and services it will prucahse. The global remittances market–currently dominated by companies that provide the ability for people to send money to one another internationally–is an easy graspable example of service within which bitcoin could be used.
This whole section should probably be culled because this isn’t really a viable, scalable use case that bitcoin itself can solve.
For example, between 2014-2016, tens of millions of dollars were invested in more than a dozen “rebittance” companies (Bitcoin-focused remittance) and most either failed or pivoted.
Those that still exist had to build additional services and bitcoin were a means to an end. In all cases, these companies had to build their own cryptocurrency exchange and/or partner with several cryptocurrency exchanges in order to liquidate the coins — they need to hedge and limit their exposure to volatility. Bitcoin also doesn’t solve for the last-mile problem at all… but that is a separate topic.97
On p. 179 they write:
If each bitcoin needs to be worth $952 to service 20 percent of the remittance market and $11,430 to service the demand for it as digital gold, then in total it needs to be worth $12,382. There is no limit to the number of use cases that can be added in this process, but what is extremely tricky is figuring out the percent share of the market that bitcoin will ultimately fulfill and what the velocity of bitcoin will be in each use case.
This is highly debatable. And it is exactly what Pantera stated four years ago. Sources should be cited in the next edition; and also provide a velocity estimate for the potential use cases.
On p. 180 they write:
Taking the concepts of supply and demand, velocity, and discounting, we can figure out what bitcoin’s value should be today, assuming it is to serve certain utility purposes 10 years from now. However, this is much easier said than done, as it involves figuring out the sizes of those markets in the future, the percent share that bitcoin will take, what bitcoin’s velocity will be, and what an appropriate discount rate is.
An actual asset would certainly need these blanks filled, but Bitcoin doesn’t behave like a normal asset. For instance, it goes through enormous speculative bubbles and busts. It reached just under $20,000 per coin in mid-December last year not for any utility reason but pure speculation… yet many of the “thought leaders” at the time said it was because new buyers were going to use it for its utility.
On p. 180 they write:
Already there have been reports, such as those from Spence Bogart at Needham & Company, as well as Gil Luria at Webush, that look at the fundamental value of bitcoin.
I’ve read most of their reports, they’re nearly all based on edge-case assumptions or one-off anecdotes that never saw much traction (such as remittances). In addition, arguably both of their analysis may have been colored by their coin investments at the time they published their work. That’s not to say their material is discredited but I would discount some of their cryptocurrency-related reports.98
On p. 180 they write:
The valuations these analysts produce can be useful guides for the innovative investor, but they should not be considered absolute dictations of the truth. Remember, “Garbage in, garbage out.” We suspect that as opposed to these reports remaining proprietary, as is currently the case with much of the research of equities and bonds, many of these reports will become open-source and widely accessible to all levels of investors in line with the ethos of cryptoassets.
This has not happened. If anything, the market has been flooded with junk marketing material that masquerades as “research.” Universities are now getting funded by coin issuers and asked to co-publish papers. Even if there are no explicit shenanigans going on, there is now a shadow of doubt that hangs over these organizations.
Also, the next edition needs to define what “the ethos of cryptoassets” is somewhere up front. And dispense with “innovative investor”?99
On p. 182 they write about getting to know “the community and the developers”:
In getting to know the community better, consider a few key points. How committed is the developer team, and what is their background? Have they worked on a previous cryptoasset and in that processrefined their ideas so that they now want to alunch another?
[…]
If information cannot be found on the developers, or the developers are overtly anonymous, then this is a red flag because there is no accountability if things go wrong.
Satoshi clearly wouldn’t have been able to pass this test. Nor BitDNS originally (which later became Namecoin).
It is a double-standard to want accountability here yet promote an ill-defined “decentralization” throughout this book. You really can’t have it both ways.
Remember, the reason why administrators and operators of financial market infrastructure are heavily regulated is to hold participants legally responsible and accountable for when mistakes and accidents occur.
Cryptocurrencies were designed to be anarchic and purposefully were designed to not make a single participant accountabile. Trying to merge those two worlds creates the worst of both: permissioned-on-permissionless.
On p. 183 they write:
If Ethereum gets big enough, there may eventually be those who call themselves Ethereum Maximalists!
Yes, they exist and largely self-selected themselves into the Ethereum Classic world… you can see that by their antics on social media.
On p. 183 they write about issuance models:
Next, consider if the distribution is fair. Remember that a premine (where the assets are mined before the network is made widely available, as was the case with bytecoin) or an instamine (where many of the assets are mined at the start, as was the case with dash) are both bad signs because assets and power will accrue to a few, as opposed to being widely distributed in line with the egalitarian ethos.
Let’s tone down the talk on egalitarianism in a market fueled by greed and a perpetually high Gini coefficient.
In practice as of July 2018, many ICOs are pre-mined or pre-allocated, most as ERC20 tokens that are controlled by a singular entity (usually an off-shore foundation).100
Is this a “bad sign”? It would be helpful to see what the explicit criteria around token distribution should be in the next edition.101
On p. 183 they write:
For example, Ethereum started with one planned issuance model, but is deciding to go with another a couple years into launch. Such changes in the issuance model may occur for other assets, or impact those assets that are significatnly tied to the Ethereum network.
Those decision are made by individuals. Perhaps by the next edition we will know what FinCEN and other regulatory positions on individuals creating monetary policy and running financial market infrastructure.
On p. 184 they write:
With Dogecoin we saw that it needed lots of units outstanding for it to function as a tipping service, which justifies it currently having over 100 billion units outstanding, a significantly larger amount than Bitcoin. With many people turning to bitcoin as gold 2.0, an issuance model like Dogecoin’s would be a terrible idea.
What? Why? This passage conflates many different things.
How does any of this have to do with maximalist narrative of “gold 2.0”?
On p. 186 they write:
The only way attackers can process invald transactions is if they own over half of the computer power of the network, so it’s critical that no single entity ever exceeds 50 percent ownership.
Technically this is not quite right.
The actual figure to sucessfully censor and/or reorg the chain may be as low as 33% and perhaps even 25% (dubbed “selfish mining“).102 More than 50% would mean the participants could do so repeatedly until their hashrate declines and/or a permanent fork occurs.
Aside from pressure on social media, there is nothing to prevent such “ownership” from taking place. And there is no legal recourse or accountability in the event it happens. And such “attacks” have occured on many different cryptocurrencies.103
On p. 186 they write:
In other words, miners are purley economically rational individuals–mercenaries of computer power–and their profit is largely driven by the value of the crypotasset as well as by transaction fees.
This should be reworded from the next edition because it is not true. Miners and mining pools are operated by people and they have various incentives, including to attack networks or abandon them altogether.
On p. 186 they write:
A clearly positively reinforcing cycle sets in that ensures that the larger the asset grows, the more secure it becomes–as it should be.
This is not true for proof-of-work coins.
If anything, mining and development have both trended towards centralization. For instance, it is estimated that Bitmain-manufactured hashing equipment currently generates 60-80% of the network hashrate and Bitmain-affiliated mining pools comprise about 50%+ of the current Bitcoin network. Maybe that is just momentary but singular entities on the mining side dominate many other cryptocurrencies as well. Perhaps that changes later in the year so it is worth revisiting in the next edition.
Recommended reading:
On p. 187 they write:
At the risk of being repetitive, more hash rate signifies more computers are being added to support the network, which signifies greater security.
This is a non sequitur. A new hashing machine capable of generating 10 times the amount of hashes as the previous machine could — ceteris paribus — result in other machines being turned off. In practice, you often have the Red Queen Effect take place (see Chapter 3).
Either way, depending on the costs of more efficient ASIC design, there could actually be fewer (or more) hashing machines added to a network depending on the expected price of the coin minus operating costs.
And in some cases, the network may become more centralized and therefore arguably less secure. Worth revising in next edition.
On p. 188 they write:
While hash rate often follows price, sometimes price can follow hash rate. This happens in situations where miners expect good things of the asset in the future, and therefore proactively connect machines to help secure the network. This instills confidence, and perhaps the expected good news has also traveled to the market, so the price start going up.
This passage has entered Rube Goldberg territory, where a series of specific events turn into a virtuous cycle in which prices go up and up but not down? How can we ever know what caused certain price increases or decreases with this type of asymmetric information occurring in the background? Suggest scrapping it in the next edition.
On p. 188 they write:
Ethereum’s mining network, on the other hand, is less built out because it’s a younger ecosystem that stores less value. As of March 2017, a 230 megahash per second (MH/s) mining machine could be purchased for $4,195, and it would take 70,000 of these machines to recreate Ethereum’s hash rate, totaling $294 million in value. Also, because Ethereum is supported by GPUs and not ASICs, the machines can more easily be constructed piecemeal by a hobbyist on a budget.
There are a few issues with this:
On p. 188 they write:
This range is a good baseline for the innovative investor to use for other cryptoassets to ensure they are secured with a similar level of cpaital spend as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are the two best secured assets in the blockchain ecosystem.
There is another appearance of the “innovative investor,” remove in next edition?
Also, if security is solely measured by hashrate then yes, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) might be the “best secured.” But that assumes a purely Maginot Line attack and not a BGP or wrench attack.
On p. 189 they write:
Overall, hash rate is important, but so too is decentralization. After all, if the hash rate is extremely high but 75 percent of it is controlled by a single entity, then that is not a decentralized system. It is actually a highly centralized system and therefore vulnerable to the whims of that one entity.
This probably should come at the beginning of the chapter, not in this location. Also recommend adding some citations to the Onename and BGP posts.
On p. 189 they write:
It’s apparent that Litecoin is the most centralized, while Bitcoin is the most decentralized. A way to quanitfy the decentralization is the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI), which is a metric to measure competition and market concentration.
HHI is used with known, legally identifiable parties. With cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum — the mining entities were not originally supposed to be known at all — over time they self-doxxed themselves.104
Should the Department of Justice and similar organizations coordinate and carry out HHI analysis on mining pools to prevent monopolization, oligopolization, and/or coordination? What happens if participants refuse to comply?
On p. 191 they write:
Blockchain networks should never classify as a highly concentrated marketplace, and ideally, should always fall into the competitive market place category.
Okay, but what if they don’t and no one cares? Who should enforce this?
Recommend reading a relevant paper published this past winter: Decentralization in Bitcoin and Ethereum Networks
On p. 193 they write:
At times, Bitcoin has been a moderately concentrated marketplace, just as Litecoin mining is currently a moderately concentrated marketplace. Litecoin recognizes the impact that large mining pools can have on the health of its ecosystem and the quality of its coin. To that point, Litecoin developers have instituted an awareness campaign called “Spread the Hashes” for those mining litecoin to consider spreading out their mining activies. The campaign recommends that litecoin computers mine with a variety of mining pools rather than concentraing solely in one.
The anthropomorphism needs to be removed in the second edition. “Litecoin” does not recognize anything because Litecoin is not a singular autonomous entity.
There are individual people, developers who work on a certain implementation of Litecoin that may promote something — and if they coordinate (which they do) then perhaps they could be classified as administrators.
Either way, this “Spread the Hashes” campaign didn’t seem to work:
Source: Litecoinpool.org visited on July 11, 2018
As the pie chart above illustrates, just 5 entities currently account for about 90% of the network hashrate. And the largest 3 effectively could coordinate to control the network if they wanted to.
Worth noting that similar marketing campaigns to “spread the hashes” have been done on other networks. Back in 2014 when GHash.io reached the 50% mark, reddit was filled with discussions imploring miners to switch to P2Pool.
Why don’t miners move to smaller pools? Two words: reliable revenue. Recommended reading: The Gambler’s Guide To Bitcoin Mining
On p. 194 they write:
Not all nodes are made equal. A single node could have a large number of mining computers behind it, hence capturing a large percentage of the overall network’s hash rate, while another node could have mining computer supporting it, amounting to a tiny fraction of Bitcoin’s hash rate.
Sort of. There are two different nodes: nodes that fully validate and attempt to append the blockchain by submitting a proof-of-work that meets the necessary difficulty threshold… and nodes that don’t. In practice, today we call the former “mining pools” and the latter, just nodes.
For instance, in Bitcoinland there was a vicious war of words from 2015-2017 waged by several parties who did not operate mining pools, or nodes that generated proofs-of-work.105 One subset of these parties used various means and channels to insist that miners did not ultimately matter, that it was “users” who truly controlled the network and they labeled themselves “UASF.” And some of the most vocal members of this “populism wing” insisted that the nodes run by mining pools were no more important than the nodes run by some hobbyist in an apartment.
The views were irreconcilable and the ultimate result is that one group involved in that battle, forked off and created a new chain called Bitcoin Cash (BCH), whereas many of the other parties coalesced with what is called Bitcoin (BTC). There is a lot more to the story, a messy emotional divorce that still continues today.
Technically the decision to fork or not fork is made by mining pools and the nodes they each manage, but there are more nuances and politics involved that go beyond the scope of this review.
On p. 194 they write:
William Mougayar, author of The Business Blockchain, has written extensively about how to identify and evaluate new blockchain ventures and sums up the importance of developers succinctly: “Before users can trust the protocol, they need to trust the people who created it.” As we touched upon in the prior chapter, investigate the prior qualifications of lead developers for a protocol as much as possible.
Two problems with this:
On p. 194 they write:
Developers have their own network effect: the more smart developers there are working on a project, the more useful and intriguing that project becomes to other developers. These developers are then drawn to the project, and a positively reinforcing flywheel is created. On the other hand, if developers are exiting a project, then it quickly becomes less and less interesting to other developers, ultimately leaving no one to captain the software ship.
A couple of thoughts:
On p. 195 they write:
Recall that this is how Litecoin, Dash, and Zcash were created from Bitcoin: developers forked Bitcoin’s code, modified it, and then re-released the software with different functionality. Subscribers refer to people wanting to stay actively involved with the code. In short, the more code repository points, the more developer activity has occured around the cryptoasset’s code.
That’s not necessarily true, and in fact, has been gamed by coin issuers who want to make it look like there is a lot of independent activity and traction with developers… by creating spam accounts and very small changes to simple documents (like grammar).
It can be a helpful metric but you need someone technically inclined to dive into the code that is being added/removed/modified. See: Increased Github Scrutiny Means Lazy ICO Developers Have No Place to Hide
Readers may also be interested in CoinGecko to see how this acitivity is weighted.
On p. 198 they write:
A different approach is to monitor the number of companies supporting a cryptoasset, which can be done by tracking venture capital investments. CoinDesk provides some of this information as seen in Figure 13.13. Though as we will address in Chapter 16 on ICOs, the trend in this space is moving away from venture funding and toward crowdfunding.
Actually, as mentioned a couple time earlier, there has been a noticeable divergence the past 12 months: coin sales that are done as private placements versus coin sales that have a public facing sale.
In general, most of the coins that have raised capital through private placement deals typically have less than 100 investors, many of which are the aforementioned “crypto hedge funds” and coin-focused venture funds such as Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.
The public facing sales are generally eschewed by venture funds. If venture funds are involved in a coin that does a public sale, they typically are involved in what is called a “pre-sale” where they receive preferential terms and conditions, such as discounted coins.
Upon the conclusion of the “pre-sale” the actual public sale begins with heavy marketing on social media towards retail investors. Sometimes these sales have hundreds or even thousands of individual participants. That could be called a “crowdsale” and these participants typically get worse terms than those who participated in the pre-sale.
On p. 199 they write:
Another good proxy for the increased acceptance of a cryptoasset and its growing offering by highly regulated exchanges is the amount of fiat currency used to purchase it.
Maybe consider revising because we have all been told that cryptocurrencies would not only displace “fiat currency” but also topple and replace the existing financial system… how does measuring these new internet coins with old money help achieve that?
For instance, at the time of this writing none of the US-based retail exchanges with domestic bank accounts have recently listed an ICO (with the exception of ETH and ETC). This includes: itBit, Bitflyer, Coinbase, and Gemini.106 Kraken’s retail exchange uses payment processors and banking partners outside of the US.107
On p. 199 they write:
in the one-year period from March 2016 to March 2017, ether went from being traded 12 percent of the time with fiat currency to 50 percent of the time. This is a good sign of the maturation of an asset, and shows it is gaining wider recognition and acceptance.
Why is that specific ratio or percentage deemed good? The next edition should include a table explaining this in further because it is unclear why it is good, neutral, or bad.
On p. 201 they write about wallets from Blockchain.info:
Clearly, having more users that can hold a cryptoasset is good for that asset: more users, more usage, more acceptance. While the chart shows an exponential trend, there are a few drawbacks for this metric. For one, it only shows the growth of Blockchain.info’s wallet users, but many other wallet providers exist. For example, as of March 2017, Coinbase had 14.2 million wallets, on par with Blockchain.info. Second, an individual can have more than one wallet, so some of these numbers could be due to users creating many wallets, a flaw which extends to other wallet providers and their metrics as well.
In the past I have written extensively on how these headline wallet numbers are basically gimmicks and don’t accurately measure users or user activity.
Why? Because it costs nothing to open one. And often there is no KYC or AML involved in creating one as well. As a result, bots can be used to create many each day to inflate the metric.
Coinbase has actually removed usage data in the past and they still don’t define what the difference between a user or wallet is. Nor do either company provide traditional DAU / MAU metrics. It’s not hard to do and it is unclear why they don’t. The only way we have some semblance of an idea of what Coinbase user numbers were between 2013-2015 is because of the IRS lawsuit mentioned above.
On p. 201 they write about a search trend, “BTC USD,” first described by Willy Woo:
If we assume this to be true, then Woo’s analysis indicating a doubling in bitcoin users every year and an order of magnitude growth every 3.375 years. He calls this Woo’s Law in honor of Moore’s Law […] It will be interesting to see how Woo’s Law holds up over time.
How has it done? “Woo’s Law” has thus far not held up.
For instance, below is a 5 year trend chart of the same search term promoted by Woo and others last year:
