Crypto Winter: News to Keep You Hodling on

The night is dark and full of… opportunities?

With Winter in full swing, we’re taking a step back this week to talk about the technology behind Bitcoin, in somewhat broader terms.

Brace yourselves: what follows are in-depth stories on the philosophies, philanthropies, and profit motives of blockchain beyond beta — add your voice to the conversation in the comments.

Let’s warm up with some socio-political philosophy, shall we?

Most blockchain projects are aimed at raising funds and generating profits with meaningless products, but some of them are designed to help those in need, through joint efforts of the community, solve acute social problems and conduct non-commercial activities. Anton Mozgovoy looks to 2018 for real-world applications of blockchain beyond the cryptocurrency space, and finds proof of concepts in every sector from education and ecology, to enabling the protection of human rights and freedom of information: Blockchain for social good: Reviewing top use cases in 2018 [8 min read].

The Importance of Community in Crypto [20 min read]. The BitcoinTalk forum was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 and is legendary in the community. This is also where the now infamous “HODL” meme originated, reminisces Alex Libertas in this industry-canvassing Horatian Ode to the ‘It Takes a Village’ mindset we need to move on new blockchain-based projects.

The network effect is when a product gets more valuable when more people use it, like Craigslist. Blockchain tech shifts the network effect away from any one company, and onto the decentralized web, allowing any company to be built on top of the same data, says blake west in this take on Why Consumers Will Love the Decentralized Web [18 min read].

Skilling me softly

Whether or not you’re one of the 15% recently laid off by Buzzfeed, it’s always a good idea to future-proof your career by learning a marketable skill. According to a report from Upwork, blockchain happens to be the fastest growing skill on its platform, surpassing skills like TensorFlow and machine learning in the top 20 list. This means there are a lot of jobs for blockchain developers. Keen to cash in on that career trend? Time to enrol on one of these 5 Free Courses to Learn Blockchain Programming in 2019 [6 min read] by javinpaul; or take a few tutorials in these 10 Tools for Blockchain Development [6 min read], as curated by DashMagazine.

Got the development skills, still waiting for your big idea? Shankar Nathan’s been there: ask yourself what are the fundamental problems that you are most passionate about solving. Read this to hear the rest of his hard-won wisdom on how to penetrate into the Blockchain space as a developer without having a concrete project [5 min read].

Be the change you want to see on the blockchain

Having worked with a wide spectrum of multinational companies, Leo Jiang sees too many so-called “Blockchain projects” to be more driven by the FOMO (fear of missing out) factor, instead of by compelling use cases which are structurally evaluated. Separate the over-buzzed from the truly mind-blowing with his 11-question process for Breaking Blockchain — A Framework to Evaluate Blockchain Use Cases [9 min read].

Oh, and BTW: 40% of Deloitte’s Global Blockchain Survey respondents reported that their organization will invest $5 million or more in blockchain initiatives in 2019. Ready to put your money where your mouth is? Don’t miss blockchain investment and acceleration expert Elvina Kamalova’s Blockchain Investment Strategy: 5 Market Shifts to Monitor [6 min read].

Missed your chance to chat to David Choi from Hacker Noon at the Blockchain Economic Forum in in Davos, Switzerland? Don’t let that happen again. Here’s a list of all the Blockchain and Crypto Conferences you need to know about to stay FOMO-free in 2019. Thanks Anton Dyshkant!

Last, but certainly not least: Episode 24 of the Hacker Noon podcast is an interview about how to market blockchain products with Erica Blair, founder of Blockchain Branding. Tune in to find out why she sees cryptocurrencies more generally as a broad political philosophy about what it is you find important in the world.

Read more Crypto Winter stories.

***

Thank you to all of you who have supported our equity crowdfund campaign so far.

Until next time,

Natasha Nel, Hacker Noon Tech Editor

P.S. It’s not too late for the rest of you to get in on that action: hodl your very own Hacker Noon shares today.