8 years after I wrote Bitcoin: The Financial Singularity is Here it is time for a little Mea Culpa retrospective. Plus, many have emailed to ask about my views on NFTs. So, here we go. See The Problem with NFTs by Folding Ideas and learn for yourselves. Because if I can’t do better myself I might as well use someone who already has done a great job on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and NFTs. Enjoy!
Ether
Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum is a Decentralized Consensus Platform
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Digital crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin are the singularity of money, and after spending some time educating myself, I have turned from a skeptic into a fan. If you are unfamiliar with the topic, I suggest starting with my interview with Andreas Antonopoulos. In that conversation, we lay down the basics and discuss why “Bitcoin is not currency; it’s the internet of money!”
If you are already intellectually comfortable with Bitcoin, then it is time to talk about Bitcoin 2.0, and the best candidate so far is Ethereum. Ethereum is the brainchild of Vitalik Buterin, who wrote most of the original code and had such a compelling vision that he managed to attract a large team of coders, cryptography experts, investors, and supporters—all to make it a reality. And so, I was thrilled to interview Buterin for my podcast.
During our 70 min conversation with Vitalik, we cover a variety of topics such as what Ethereum is and how it is different from Bitcoin; Vitalik’s motivation and biggest dream; why and how Ethereum was designed to be Turing complete; the differences between Ethereum and Ether; the idea of creating a decentralized app ecosystem; egalitarianism and the Gini index; the size and security of the Ethereum database; the exchange rate and sale of Ether coins…
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Jan Miranda and Tamara Haasen, without whom this interview would not have happened!
As always, you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down to watch the video interview in full. To show your support, you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.
Who is Vitalik Buterin?
Vitalik Buterin is the Founder of Ethereum and the Chief Technical mentor at Decentral. He is also a programmer, head writer, and co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. He is involved in the development of KryptoKit, Darkwallet, and Egora. Buterin is a 2014 Thiel Fellowship recipient known worldwide as a visionary in the cryptocurrency space. Vitalik travels the world lecturing about decentralized trust networks and Ethereum.
What is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a platform that allows any developer to write and distribute next-generation decentralized applications.
Borrowing the concept of distributed consensus and cryptographic proof that makes crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin so effective in trustless payments, Ethereum extends these technologies to trustless agreements. This allows developers to quickly build innovative products on a censorship and collusion-resistant foundation. Bitcoin is used to fund gambling, such as bitcoin casinos and poker platforms, as mentioned here at bitcoinogg.com.
See this 10 min video of Stephan Tual – Ethereum CCO, for a short explanation of the platform and its main applications: