Most Informative in Bitcoin 2018
I think 2018 will forever be etched into my memory as the year of Bitconnect. Nothing embodies the meteoric rise and fall of the crypto markets better than Carlos Matos’s iconic performance as chief shill of the now defunct ponzi scheme. Matos blew up into main stream culture, and everyone from Pewdiepie to John Oliver was talking about him. This EDM Remix of Matos will forever be on my playlist.
Despite the total craziness of 2018, Bitcoin’ers grinded away to develop great things like Lightening, and also seek the truth. This is my arbitrary list of the most informative truth seekers in Bitcoin in 2018 and the content they produced. I gained a lot of inspiration and knowledge from them and hope that others will too. Now on to 2019!
Cryptoeconomics is a monolithic collection of writing that is near impenetrable due to its lack of organization but patient readers will be rewarded once they start putting together the important pieces. Voskuil keeps growing his collection of Principles and Fallacies which provide valuable insight into the economics of Bitcoin.
I think no list is complete this year without Boyapati’s amazing work “The Bullish Case for Bitcoin”, now translated into numerous languages. A clear, beginner friendly introduction for the value proposition of Bitcoin.
Jameson Lopp put up some great articles based on solid facts and real world experiments. His experience with being swatted was also a sober reminder of how serious being involved with Bitcoin publicly can be.
Bitcoin Full Validation Sync Performance
Hasu and Su Zhu put together an excellent 3 part series to explain fiat money, Bitcoin, and property in “A Framework for Bitcoin Skeptics”. Their article that connected Bitcoin to religion is also worth reading, good insights come from broad thinkers like them.
A Framework for Bitcoin Skeptics
Nguyen is great at combining technical and philosophical insights. All of his writing is worth reading but his best work was his take down of the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism.
Proof of Stake and the Wrong Engineering Mindset
Proof-of-Stake, Private Keys Attacks and Unforgeable Costliness the Unsung Hero
Stop and Decrypt took apart the precarious foundation of Ethereum and showed how shaky their entire temple was. At the same time he illuminated some very important network properties of the blockchain that should be required reading.
The Ethereum Blockchain size has exceeded 1tb and yes it’s an issue
Bitcoin Miners Beware Invalid Blocks Need Not Apply
Krawisz produced a series of hilarious and illuminating videos in his Bitcoin Stuff series. I don’t think anybody else could produce an hour long video of himself rambling about Bitcoin, Transformers, and Space Odyssey 2001 while being hilarious and illuminating at the same time. He’s definitely not for everyone. But if you can get on his wavelength, he provides a lot of insight and entertainment.
Chris Derose was the most prolific Bitcoin troll in 2018. Participating in twitter threads that seem to go on to infinity, his trolling abilities seemed almost inhuman. While many Bitcoin Maximalists blocked his ramblings, I found his Socratic tweeting method to be highly illuminating of our conditions. His livestreams, Bitcoin Uncensored, is great to watch for the same reasons.
Honorary Mention: Craig Faketoshi Wright
His tweets and shenanigans provided an endless amounts of popcorn and hilarity in 2018. Risk. Finance. Full billionaire mode. The most informative part was his masterful forking of BCash into Bitcoin SV. Congrats on forking BCash, seriously Craig.
