Going back to the early days of Bitcoin, we look at the contributions of Nick Szabo to smart contracts and Bit Gold. Decentralizing gets another boost by Augur in the predictions marketplace with the launch of their platform. Then we see a very real world example of cryptocurrency solving a real need in Venezuela to avoid their collapsing currency and allow people to buy the goods they need to survive. Finally, we see a conventional exchange, the CBOE, talking to the SEC about getting a bitcoin ETF license, which would be a real milestone in terms of bringing cryptocurrency even closer to the masses as an investment vehicle.
Featured stories by Jimmy Aki, Colin Harper and Aaron van Wirdum
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The Genesis Files: With Bit Gold, Szabo Was Inches Away From Inventing Bitcoin[2]
Early cypherpunk Nick Szabo had been researching decentralized financial solutions in the mid-1990s and came to propose what he is perhaps best known for today: smart contracts. These (then-hypothetical) computer protocols could digitally facilitate, verify and enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract, ideally without the need of any third party.
The latest installment in Aaron van Wirdum’s Genesis Files series looks at the contributions of Szabo and recounts how he proposed solutions to some of the problems that Bitcoin would eventually solve.
Augur Launches Decentralized Prediction Marketplace[3]
Blockchain-based predictions platform Augur has opened to the general public, becoming the “world’s first” decentralized prediction-market platform. It was created by the Forecast Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation whose goal is to build “open-source, public forecasting tools.”
Prediction markets have long been dominated by the likes of Paddy Power and DraftKings, which are centrally
