Confessions of an ICO Insider

Dear Hackers,

“Blockchain today is like 1993 internet — we’re still at the early stage of building protocols and middleware — albeit with 1999 bubble hype,” writes Simple Token Founder & CEO Jason Goldberg. “The current cycle is more compressed than the 1993–2000 dot-com cycle because blockchain technology is based on immediately recognizable economic value, whereas Internet companies were valued based on potential future profits and stock prices. The dot-com bubble was fueled by investor enthusiasm to get into those zero-to-one projects, much as the crytpo bubble is today.

Just like the long term potential and societal impact of the Internet was mostly speculative twenty years ago, the long term impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies is elusive today — which further drives the mystery and excitement for it. 20 years ago we had no conceptualization of a Facebook or a WeChat or Amazon Web Services. Twenty years ago there was no Google, no Salesforce, no Twitter, no Snapchat. Today is ground zero for Blockchain.”

Read more in Insider Reflections on The ICO Bubble.

The Rest of This Week’s Top 20 Tech Stories:

💻 🤔

Artificial Intelligence

Capsule Networks Are Shaking up AI — Here’s How to Use Them by Computer vision addict at IBM Watson Nick Bourdakos

I built a LinearRegression that can play Pong with me. by Builder of Smart Things Diego Aguado

The real danger of Artificial Intelligence it’s not what you think by Sata Science Manager João Duarte

⛓️⛓️

Blockchain

Building a bridge between blockchain and consumers with cats by Benny Giang

Forever on the Chain by Founder and Managing Partner at Life on Mars Júlio Santos

Understanding the Blockchain by Funding Societies’ Pramodh Rai

⚒️ ☁️

Hacking

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Main Menu Is Vulnerable to Hacking by Filip Sufitchi

This “location hack” helps you engage with your users by Botletter Founder Nicolas Le Roux

Yes, this kid really just deleted $300 MILLION by messing around with Ethereum’s smart contracts by Law & Blockchain Founder Thijs Maas

📰 📰

Journalism

Facebook, news publishers, and the ‘demand’ for video by TheNextWeb Director of social media for Matt Navarra

Relevant: An Introduction by Programmer, musician, and founder of 4real Digital Inc. & Relevant Slava Balasanov

Why I’m Joining Civil by Former Google News Labs & Civil Co-founder Daniel Sieberg

📈 💸

More Crypto Columns

Bitcoin’s Big Move is Nothing Compared to Where Ethereum is Taking Us by Chemist, Father, & Obstreperous Libertarian Tom Luongo

Interactive Charts for Cryptocurrencies by Alexander Westin

Why crypto communities shouldn’t leave Slack by MetaCert Founder Paul Walsh

⚒️ 🌐

Software Development

Announcing CodeSandbox 2.0 by Sandbox Creator Ives van Hoorne

Cognitive Biases in Programming by Facebook Engineer Yash Ranadive

Let the code speak! by The Code Gang. “Everything we write tells a story!”

The Myth of the Interchangeable Developer by Software Engineer Scott Shipp. “Every language is surrounded by its own idioms, build and dependency management tools, frameworks, libraries, online communities, IDE’s, and more — things which in daily practice have a much higher impact on developer productivity than we think.”

Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted.

Kind Regards,

David Smooke, @AMI