Gianluca and Jared are joined by crypto expert Thomas Tumiel in a discussion about the details of Facebook’s new Libra cryptocurrency. They give a brief primer on the fundamentals of blockchains and cryptography, examine how Libra is implemented (compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum), discuss Facebook’s strategy for rollout, consider possible failure modes, and contrast the dystopian and utopian outcomes of a truly global cryptocurrency.
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Shownotes:
Mined For Change: https://minedforchange.org/
AI and Crypto Soc: https://www.facebook.com/UCTCryptoSoc/
Libra announcement: https://libra.org/en-US/
Early rumours about Libra: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332894/facebook-blockchain-group-employee-reshuffle-restructure-david-marcus-kevin-weil and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-21/facebook-is-said-to-develop-stablecoin-for-whatsapp-transfers
Facebook crypto job postings: https://www.coindesk.com/facebook-is-hiring-5-new-staff-members-for-its-blockchain-team
Intro to Blockchain (from 3blue1brown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4
“How does the blockchain work” by D’Aliessi on Medium:
https://medium.com/blockchain-review/how-does-the-blockchain-work-for-dummies-explained-simply-9f94d386e093
Hash functions: https://medium.com/@isuruj/introduction-to-hashing-5b4daf343889 and
https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-hashing/
Merkle Trees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree
Transaction times across different blockchains: https://medium.com/@johnhinkle_80891/the-fastest-cryptocurrency-transaction-speeds-for-2018-498c1baf87ef
Libra technical whitepaper: https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/the-libra-blockchain.pdf
Smart contracts (e.g. on Ethereum): https://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/
“On the blockchain, nobody knows you’re a fridge” —Richard Gendal Brown: https://gendal.me/about/
Gas prices: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gas-ethereum.asp
Cloud computing on the blockchain vs. with cloud service providers (AWS, Google, etc.): https://medium.com/@eternacapital/blockchain-based-decentralised-cloud-computing-277f307611e1
Facebook (instagram + whatsapp) daily active users: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
Superforecasting by Phillip Tetlock: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23995360-superforecasting
Prediction markets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Civilisational Inadequacy: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zsG9yKcriht2doRhM/inadequacy-and-modesty
Efficient markets: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/efficientmarkethypothesis.asp
Shorting the market: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortselling.asp
WeChat and its ubiquity in China: https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16721230/wechat-china-app-mini-programs-messaging-electronic-id-system
“Critical Vulnerability” pull request: https://cryptonews.com/news/cryptoverse-reached-level-9000-in-trolling-facebook-and-libr-4071.htm
031 | Kat Woods — Effective Altruism, Infohazards, and Brain Hacks
030 | Predictive Processing 3: Neurobiology, Prediction, and Computational Psychiatry
029 | Predictive Processing 2: Where The Action Is
028 | Predictive Processing 1: The World You Thought You Knew
027 | 7 Practices to Survive the 2020 Apocalypse
026 | Drink and be Rational
025 | Self-Supervised Machine Learning: Introduction, Intuitions, and Use-Cases
024 | Replacing Guilt
023 | Are Brains Just Neural Nets?
022 | 6 Books You Need to Read in 2020… and 1 You Probably Shouldn’t
021 | The Top 19 Ideas from 2019
020 | Mental Models 3: Fantastic Biases and Where To Find Them
019 | Mental Models 2: How To Think Like A Bayesian, Avoid Black Swans, & Know The Value of Your Decisions
018 | Mental Models 1: How To Have Better Ideas and Improve Your Thinking
017 | Bronwyn Williams: Universal Basic Income & Individual Sovereignty
016 | Free Will, Compassion, and Reinforcement Learning
015 | You have no Choice in the Matter
014 | The Art of Looking - Part 1 of ??
013 | How To Learn Anything!
012 | How Deep Learning Does Magic
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