Competition in the Digital Age
Vitalik Buterin posted a set of slides from a recent talk he apparently gave on "Transaction Cost Economics." I didn't see the talk but inferred some interesting take-a-ways from the slides that were worth noting. When a transaction is recorded on a blockchain, someone needs to 'process' it. That is done in a decentralised fashion …
Continue reading "Buterin on blockchain transaction fee economics"
Blockchain is one of several technologies du jour. It combines clever methods from peer-to-peer decentralized computing to provide an online tracing function for virtual transactions, and, once someone sets it up, it requires minimal intervention from a central auditor. While Bitcoin is the most well-known application of this innovative computer science, verification of authenticity and …
News coverage of automation and machine learning tends to focus on extraordinary events, such as computers winning at Jeopardy and Go, and robotic arms flipping burgers in short-order restaurants. Additional headlines foster a sense of nightmares, conjuring pictures of autonomous cars killing pedestrians and newly automated establishments laying off their workforce. The combination of headlines …
I'm at the Brookings Institution today for an event which will, in part, be the launch of my report for The Hamilton Project on "Enhancing Competition with Data and Identity Portability." You can download the report here and here is the tl;dr summary. The Hamilton Project have also released a review of the state of competition in …
A company called curio.io offered to take certain posts on Digitopoly and have a professional narrator read them. I have heard that many people like audio versions of written stuff and so was happy to let them at it. Their first post is below.
It is very easy to posit a sense of exploitation when it comes to data. Try this for size: "Networks are relying on data by individuals but they aren't being paid and this is making those networks profitable." Substitute "plantations" for "networks," "labour" for "data," and "individuals" for "slaves" and you get the picture. Of …
Continue reading "It is far from clear that requiring payments for data makes sense"
Eric Budish has a new paper out on "The Economic Limits of the Blockchain." He demonstrates a potentially fundamental contradiction at the heart of 'proof of work' schemes to support cryptocurrencies -- the most famous of which is, of course, Bitcoin. It is an incredibly clear issue so I figured I would recount it here. …
