Tag Archives: bitcoins
Nothing cryptic about another ‘crypto’ disaster
Earlier this month, a cryptocurrency token called Luna crashed in price – an event that also brought down the value of bitcoin, became the biggest crash in cryptocurrency history thus far, earned the person or persons who (probably) orchestrated this … Continue reading
Posted in Tech
Tagged bitcoins, blockchain, decentralised finance, Do Kwon, George Soros, Luna, shorting, stablecoins, Terra
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‘Mantra sciences’ is just poor fantasy
I don’t know how the author of a piece in the Times of India managed to keep a straight face when introducing a school based on Vedic rituals that would “show the way” to curing diseases like cancer. Even the … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged bitcoins, cancer, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrencies, epic fantasy, fantasy fiction, Hogwarts, infinite predictability, magic system, not even wrong, Ponzi scheme, Rajasthan, Research Institute of Mantra Sciences, Vedas, Vedic studies
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The federation of our digital identities
Facebook, Twitter, email, WordPress, Instagram, online banking, the list goes on… Offline, you’re one person maintaining (presumably) one identity. On the web, you have many of them. All of them might point at you, but they’re still distinct packets of data floating … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anonymity, bitcoins, blockchain, Crypto-Book, cryptocurrency, cryptography, digital identity, Facebook, federated identity, namecoins, OAuth, online privacy, OpenID
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Rethinking cryptocurrency
I’m still unsure about bitcoins’ uncertain future as far as mainstream adoption is concerned, but such issues have been hogging media limelight so much so that people are missing out on why bitcoins are actually awesome. They’re not awesome because … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bitcoins, cryptocurrencies, learning curve, public verification, third-party verification, transaction costs
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Bitcoins and the landscape of internet commerce
In a previous post, I’d laid out the technical details of what goes into mining and transacting with bitcoins (BTC). My original idea was to talk about why they are an important invention, but also felt that the technology mattered enough … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bitcoins, crypto-currency, deflation, democracy, fiat currencies, internet commerce, taxation
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Trying to understand bitcoins
In a 2008 paper, a Japanese programmer, Satoshi Nakamoto, introduced an alternate form of currency that he called bitcoins. His justifications were the problems plaguing contemporary digital commerce. In Nakamoto’s words: “Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged application-specific integrated circuits, bitcoins, crypto-currencies, cryptography, field-programmable gate arrays, internet commerce, SHA-256
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