Augur, a peer-to-peer prediction market platform, is all set to launch its main network on July 9th at 11:01 PST. Augur raised $5.5 million in 2015 by offering its token REP in a crowdsale. Augur was one of the earliest ICO’s on the Ethereum blockchain and has been under development since. Decentralized Prediction Markets The platform allows […]

By Laura Desmond Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer has moved onto a new project — a Twitter bot that mixes dialogue from the infamous erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey with blockchain whitepaper jargon. Fifty Shades of Grey reached global recognition after a 2011 publication, selling 125 million copies in four years and topping bestseller lists around the […]

By Laura Desmond Having launched in November 2017, Arbitao, a London-based startup, has introduced its platform for arbitrage trading — the term comes from professional trading and refers to buying and selling the same asset and making profits on differing prices. The platform is already available for experienced users, as well as for novice traders […]

By Laura Desmond Much like the words “blockchain”, “AI” and “cloud”, “smart contract” is one of those phrases that get a lot of hype. After all, what can be better than being able to trust what will happen instead of using the judicial system? The promises of smart contracts include: Enforcing contracts automatically, trustlessly and […]

By Laura Desmond Last summer I wrote Traditional Asset Tokenization, in which I hypothesized that a broad array of assets will move to blockchain records of ownership (represented by tokens), thereby changing the way society holds and transfers investments. A lot has transpired since last summer. In short, it’s happening — the infrastructure to support security tokens is […]

By Laura Desmond Loom Network is building our Layer 2 on top of Ethereum, instead of other blockchain platforms — and here’s why. Each month, another company publishes a whitepaper, claiming to have solved the scalability problems faced by Ethereum. These new blockchains claim to be better, faster, and smarter than Ethereum — they say they can handle thousands, even millions of […]

By Laura Desmond The Holy Grail for the financial industry is enabling access to capital for the more than five million small businesses that operate in the United States. Venture capital and banks only give money to a small fraction of companies, and it’s no secret that the recipients of that capital are not exactly diverse. Much […]

By Laura Desmond The use case for cryptocurrency and decentralized payment networks was reinforced this week as Visa payments throughout Europe were disrupted, leaving thousands of people unable to pay for goods and services. The BBC reports that people were left stranded — unable to pay for fuel — and in other cases forced to leave restaurants […]

By Laura Desmond Everyone’s talking about blockchain. In 2012, I watched some of my long-time friends leave very successful businesses to go all in on Bitcoin. Here were people with killer business acumen, who I had worked with for years, and they were leaving everything behind for this new technology. For example, two of my friends created […]

By Laura Desmond The hype around blockchain is massive. To hear the blockchain hype train tell it, blockchain will now: Solve income inequality Make all data secure forever Make everything much more efficient and trustless Save dying babies   What the heck is a blockchain, anyway? And can it really do all these things? Can […]