20th April 2024 > > Use cases.

tl;dr

Two more compelling use-cases for cryptos.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

That’s the halving done. All the “wen lambo” people are left scratching their heads.

Occasional Series – NPR

NPR is a radio news channel in the US, funded directly from taxpayers’ money.

Recently appointed Chief Executive Katherine Maher stated:

“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done”.

It doesn’t take long to figure out which truths Maher encourages her journalists to jettison at the very first possible opportunity.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Crypto use-case

QE, followed by full-scale debt monetisation probably in the form of multiples of that one TRILLION-dollar coin that we looked at, are the only medium-term options open to the US, propelling the value of all hard assets so much higher relative to fiat.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Crypto use-case

This is one of the big ones I have been waiting for, though not quite on the scale as a hedge against debt monetisation.

Accounting firm EY is rolling out an “enterprise contract management service” that will allow for business contracts to be agreed using public blockchains, in this case Layer 2 Polygon that sits atop Ethereum, reinforcing Ethereum’s dominance for business applications enabled by Layer 2 solutions.

The first concern is around privacy – commercial contracts by their very nature must remain confidential, not least because you don’t want your competitors to know your input or output pricing. No worries there, z-k proofs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof) come to the rescue once more. The use of this protocol expands ever further into the cryptographic world. I thoroughly recommend that Wikipedia article which explains the underlying concept in a very accessible manner.

One of the nuances of z-k proofs is that not only do you prove that you know something without revealing what it is, but also that no-one else apart from the person you are proving it to can rely upon that proof. I happily admit that this core component of z-k proofs does start to make my head spin.

…

With privacy concerns dealt with (the world’s tyrants are now starting to cry) what are the benefits?

There are plenty. Ease and speed of execution. Immutability. Definitive legal clarity. Standardisation. Predictable and reliable financial outcomes in the scenario for which contracts are adhered to, and in the scenario for which contracts are not adhered to. Guaranteed employee rights (I know that has tickled someone’s fancy). I could go on.

The alternative view is that cryptos are merely a Ponzi scheme and remain worthless.