US Startup Activity 2017: Miami, Austin, and LA stand out. kauffman.org/kauffman-index… Interestingly, San Francisco dropped 10 spots on the ranking compared to last year. The factors behind decreased appeal for entrepreneurs are known (high cost of living, bureaucracy), but why the sudden decline?

"The introduction of e-money could potentially have an effect on the demand of monetary aggregates" —BIS, 1996

“Virtual currencies could have a substitution effect on central bank money” —ECB, 2012

"Crypto assets may one day reduce demand for central bank money." —IMF, 2018 Sources: bis.org/publ/bisp01.pdf, ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/…, imf.org/external/pubs/… (HT @danheld)

A few notes from the Financial Stability Board's "Crypto Assets Report to the G20". PDF: fsb.org/wp-content/upl… Press release: fsb.org/2018/07/fsb-re… In the section on Bitcoin exchanges: "Where crypto-assets are used solely for payment purposes (and are not securities), crypto-asset platforms trading such assets could be viewed more as part of the payments infrastructure or as some type of spot market exchanges."

When MtGox had alleged fiat withdrawal issues, its btc/usd pair also traded at a premium - as btc was only way out. Imo these kind of pricing anomalies can indicate solvency problems. (WEX = rebranded BTC-E)

https://twitter.com/coindesk/status/1017130537079721984

Another way to look at this: 'WEXDollars' are trading at a discount because they are less liquid than regular dollars.

Diversify broadly, they said... Bitcoin dominance back at the levels of one year ago, while small cap altcoin index loses ground.

1/ In this thread I make a philosophical argument for Bitcoin being a socially scalable contribution to conflict prevention in society, contrasting it with the current system of monetary interventionism. 2/ All interpersonal conflict has 4 necessary and jointly sufficient causes:

Plurality - multiple actors

Free access - what actors want is accessible to them

Scarcity - desired good is in finite supply

Diversity - actors have different values, opinions, preferences

The beanie baby "bull market" started in 1995 and reached its peak in 1999. It seems to share several characteristics with today's altcoin market: promise of value appreciation, uniqueness, novelty, supply scarcity, limited access. nypost.com/2015/02/22/how… I believe credit is due to @derose for being the first to compare altcoins with beanie babies and flippo's.

If the Bitcoin price rises to over $1M, that would give ~100k bitcoiners "Ultra High Net Worth Individual" status (+$50M). With worldwide UHNWIs projected at only ~200k by 2022, this means the Bitcoin 1% could by then make up 30-50% of the world's financial elites. #Disruption Sources. blocklink.info/distributions.… , and Credit Suisse's 2017 Wealth Outlook: publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/f…

1/ At age 18 I enrolled in an elementary school teacher training program. After my first internship in front of a class, the pedagogue implored me to give up on becoming a teacher, arguing my instruction methods were "horrific" and my public speaking skills were "terrible". 2/ I had bad social anxiety at the time. I'm pretty sure it took me 4 years before I attempted public speaking again - an occasion where I didn't have money to pay for a conference. I submitted a paper and in return for presenting it, they gave me a free ticket.

1/ In the 1860s, the advantages of petroleum had to be demonstrated and explained to skeptical buyers. Here's how A.W. Crawford created the first European export market for U.S. petroleum: 2/ Export volumes ballooned quickly: from 40 barrels to 25 million barrels in only two years time.

1/ The DotCom bubble shows that the market isn't very good at valuing early stage technology. I'll use Google vs. Yahoo to illustrate. 2/ In 1999, Google already had more search engine market share than Yahoo, yet the market valued it at a measly 0.15% that of Yahoo. ($125M vs. $80B).

1/ I suspect most ICOs with a “blockchain token for payments" are conceptually broken. I’ll use the example of Amazon to explain. 2/ First of all, Amazon already has tokens! One is called Amazon Coin and you can buy 10 for $0.98.