Starknet Developer Advocate @ StarkWare
If you are following crypto news on Twitter, you might learn about the new and trendy NFT collection, how another VC fund raised millions of dollars for investing in crypto startups, the latest demise of a poorly designed web3 protocol or articles on how to survive a bear market. You might get the impression that web3 is all about investing, memes and rug pulls.
Continue reading “5 Ways Web3 Could Transform the Global South”
There’s an ongoing discussion about the role of Bitcoin that divides people into two camps: those who consider Bitcoin to be a currency and those who consider it to be an asset. The outcome of the discussion has an impact on its price, its correlation to the stock market (where other assets are traded) and government regulations. It is my view that although Bitcoin exhibits all the characteristics of a currency, it is mostly used like an asset (a risky one). But this role might change over time as Bitcoin will likely transition from being treated like an asset to being used like a currency. How do I know that? Because I witnessed the same transition of the US dollar in Venezuela.
Continue reading “Is Bitcoin a currency or an asset?”
When I was starting my journey to understand this technology I found the literature on the subject dry and the information available online often misleading. I decided to write a simple story to explain Bitcoin’s fundamentals in technology and economics without getting into the weeds. The story itself is free of any technical jargon and I hope it’s accessible to everyone, even if the reader doesn’t have a background in technology. I did add some side notes as the story progressed to connect the dots between the analogy and real life, just in case the reader feels inclined to get deeper into a particular subject.
Continue reading “Bitcoin explained without complicated terms”
Mis familiares y amigos que saben de mi interés por Bitcoin y viendo la rápida apreciación de la moneda, me han empezado a preguntar ¿Cómo funciona Bitcoin? Como buen ingeniero empiezo a explicarles cómo funcionan los algoritmos de hashing, la relación entre la llave pública y privada, la criptografía de curva elíptica, proof-of-work, la “gossip network”, los wallets, etc. Desafortunadamente la mayoría de ellos no trabajan en tecnología y las explicaciones técnicas no son efectivas. En lugar de ayudarlos a entender los termino confundiendo aún más.
Continue reading “[Spanish] ¿Cómo le explicarías el funcionamiento de Bitcoin a un niño?”
In a previous article I analyzed how the FED’s monetary policy compared to Bitcoin’s. An important takeaway from the article is that, since the beginning of the pandemic, the FED has printed more than 3 trillion dollars, increasing the m0 money supply by 90%. At the same time, and according to the Congressional Budget Office (source), the US economy (GDP) is expected to contract by 5.6% by the end of 2020. In a scenario where the amount of money entering the economy increases drastically but the economy contracts, why aren’t we seeing an increase in the inflation rate?
Continue reading “Where did the inflation go?”
In the book “The Bitcoin Standard” written by Saifedean Ammous in 2018, the author claims that Bitcoin is a better store of value than the US dollar because it’s a “harder” currency. The corollary of this claim is that, if you want to save money for the future, you better use a hard currency that’s most likely to preserve (or even increase) its purchasing power over time. According to the author a simple way to analyze the “hardness” of a currency is to calculate its “stock to flow ratio”.
Continue reading “Bitcoin’s vs FED’s Monetary Policy”
Hace un par de meses tomé la decisión de renunciar mi trabajo para dedicarme a estudiar las tecnologías que hoy en día se conocen como “blockchain”. No fue una decisión fácil debido a que pasar varios meses sin ingreso económico y viviendo en una ciudad extremadamente cara como Toronto, mis ahorros se verían seriamente afectados. Pero no pude evitarlo, vi demasiadas señales a mi alrededor que apuntaban a que estamos al borde de una transformación social que va a estar apalancada por un nuevo sistema económico basado en riqueza y no en deuda. Bitcoin, creo yo, será el catalizador de esa transformación.
Continue reading “[Spanish] Bitcoin salvó a mis padres”