Prem Munday Agentic commerce, where artificial intelligence (AI) systems act on behalf of users to find products, negotiate purchases, and execute payments, is developing rapidly. This creates shared responsibility: developers must build legally sound systems, while regulators and infrastructure operators must consider how existing frameworks apply and where new approaches may be needed. The Bank … Continue reading Agentic commerce and the battleground for new payments infrastructure
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John Lewis The recent near halving of Bitcoin’s price has reignited debate about its true value. As a store of value, net present value asset pricing models suggest it should be worth zero because it pays no dividend. Yet its price remains far above zero, and its total value is still large despite recent turbulence. … Continue reading The quantity theory of crypto: what is Bitcoin worth as a medium of exchange?
Aly Soliman The insurance industry, sometimes perceived as slow to innovate, might witness a major transformation. Blockchain technology, known for its secure and transparent digital ledger, has the potential to revolutionise traditional insurance operations. This shift could potentially streamline processes, introduce new insurance models and products, and help manage emerging risks better. But what does … Continue reading Integrating blockchain into the insurance industry: is it a revolution brewing?
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A lot has already been written about different aspects of why most distributed blockchain-based consensus systems are just… bad. And yet we are still able to find new such reasons. At least I think this is a new one. I have not seen it mentioned anywhere so far.
Distributed blockchain-based consensus systems, as they are currently implemented, are an energy-waste ratchet.
I am specifically talking about systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and any other system that:
An important area of concern among many cryptocurrency proponents revolves around the idea that the current banking and government finance systems are inherently unstable or inflationary. Ultimately all finance is about debits and credits, assets and liabilities. How would total adoption of crypto by a country change these?