Category: think
How a Bitcoin is not a Dollar
There is no intrinsic value to a BitCoin because it is an anonymous IOU written by no one.
I want you to give me half of your doughnut.
I can offer to give you a signed IOU that says “Josh will give the holder of this IOU 1/2 doughnut”. The more you trust that I will actually honor the IOU, the more it is worth to you. You might even be able to trade that IOU to someone else for something that they have and you want… assuming they also think there is some chance that I will honor it.
Instead of writing the IOU, now imagine that I write a program that generates random sequences of letters on my computer. I let that program run for a very, very long time until it happens to generate something like “IOU 1/2 doughnut”. I print this out and I offer to trade it to you for 1/2 your doughnut.
YOU: So if I take this note, someday I can give it back to you and you'll give me something yummy? ME : Nope. This is not an IOU from me. It was randomly generated by a computer. YOU: So who owes me the 1/2 a doughnut? ME : No one! But it took the computer a really long time to generate this note at random! YOU: If there is no one who will pay me back, then why would I ever accept this note? ME : You can try to trade it to someone else for something they have and you want!
A dollar is an IOU from the government, a BitCoin is an IOU from no one…
A different kind of Initial Coin Offering
I have 2,500 in shinny new $1 coins that I need to get rid of. I want to give them to you… if you can come up with some way to creatively use them.
You have until midnight December 31st to tell me your idea. The winner will be announced on New Year’s Day. If you win, you will have 30 days to come pick up the cash in NYC.
Some facts about the coins:
- 100 rolls of $25 each
- Weigh almost 50 pounds
- Stacked like flapjacks would make a tower more than 16 feet tall
- Laid edge-to-edge would stretch father than a city block
I am looking for a project that:
- uses the coins as coins rather than money
- can be completed quickly and decisively
- is a concrete plan of action rather than an abstract concept
- will make people say “That is amazing”.
I’ve intentionally avoided adding rules to encourage wild and unexpected creativity. I’m looking forward to see what you come up with!
Tweet your entry to @ico_irl
Website is at https://ico-irl.com.
Pass this on to anyone you know who might have been waiting for an opportunity like this to do something amazing!
-josh
Marketizing Zipcar
There are normally lots of Zipcars near me, but looking at Thanksgiving day things look pretty bleak…
If I want a Zipcar on Thanksgiving, my only option is to wait and hope someone cancels their existing reservation (which for other reasons will all likely happen 3 hours and 1 minute before the reservation start times).
Maybe a little marketization could fix this problem and make everyone better off….
The Most Ironic Chinese Counterfeit Fail Ever
What do you do when you see a Chinese seller pop-up on Amazon selling a product for less than it costs just to make it? You order one and wait to see what comes!
Can you figure out how anyone could sell and ship a non-copyable product for less than the manufactured cost? Oh, the sublime irony of what actually showed up!…
Divorced by Apple in California
We have all gotten used to bugs causing lost data or inconvenient crashes, but here is a confirmed case of a software bug directly leading to the user’s divorce.
When to Lie
Question #1
Your grandma has Alzheimer’s disease. This morning she woke up and could not find her husband. He died 5 years ago. If you tell her, she will be sad and upset… at least until she wakes up again tomorrow. Should you lie?
trumpWap – Make the web great again
Remember when almost every image on the internet was trump?
With trumpWAP, we can make the web great again. This is huge.
Plug in the trumpWap and on day-1 you’ll get between 20% and 90% more trump (depending on your browsing habits). It’s that simple.
Continue reading for more examples of trumped up websites & apps, a perfunctory video demonstration, and info on getting your own trumpWAP!
Marketizing Citibike… comes true!
Remember Marketizing Citibike from 3 years back? Well, starting today it is real!
Points rather than dollars, but still a huge bold step!
Looking at the $1 million dollar coin as a an investment bundle
The Royal Canadian Mint makes a $1 million dollar coin. It weighs 100kg and is 99.999% pure gold. Is there any way this massive novelty coin could possibly end up being a viable investment? Maybe!…
Why did Google declare war on HTTP?
Google is waging a war to force websites to only serve content over secure
https connections by demoting the search ranking of websites that continue to use normal http connections. “…we’re also working to make the Internet safer more broadly. A big part of that is making sure that websites people access from Google are secure.”
At first take, this seams like a magnanimous move by the internet’s benevolent dictator. Security is a good thing, so by forcing lazy websites to finally go secure we are all better off… right?
Unfortunately, things are not so simple and Google’s motivations are likely not so benevolent…