Tag Archives: Blockchain
Would Triple Entry Accounting Have Saved Thomas Cook?
A Thomas Cook airplane. Now grounded. By Von Milborn / Wikipedia The world’s leading tourism corporation filed for liquidation after years of accounting malpractice. A new accounting technology might have prevented that. On June 9th 1841, Baptist priest Thomas Cook set out to walk from Market Harborough to Leicester (15 miles) to attend a Temperance…
Bitcoin & AI: Trap for Sex Traffickers
Source: Cristian Newman, Unsplash Rebecca Portnoff from Berkley University created an algorithm that can track sex traffickers with the help of Bitcoin. Many prostitutes do not offer their services voluntarily. They are often abducted, sold and forced into prostitution. This range of services is shifting more and more to the Internet in order to offer the prostitutes…
The Need & the Folly of Bitcoin as Payment Method
Only Cash Makes Happy. Or Does It? Photo: Jonathan Saavedra (Unsplash) Will Bitcoin prevail as a means of payment and in which areas? Let’s first look at what Bitcoin sets out to replace: Credit cards. The process of paying by credit card for online purchases is more complicated than customers usually think. The procedure is the…
Charlie Shrem: a Bitcoin Story From Riches-to-Rags
Charles Shrem IV. [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons The Winklevoss Twins are subject to ridicule more than once. 15 years ago, they were outsmarted by Mark Zuckerberg who allegedly stole their idea of a social network. Just last week they announced that Charlie Shrem embezzled US$32 Million by taking their Dollars and not giving…
TEZOS: ANATOMY OF A STARTUP CATASTROPHE
There are only a few months between the most successful ICO of 2017 and a turmoil of fights, lies and a flood of lawsuits at Tezos. In the meantime the company grew richer every day. Tezos generated $232 million in fall 2017 through a sensational Initial Coin Offering (ICO). It was the largest of its kind…
Blockchain: Banking the unbanked
Having a bank account is one important step out of poverty. But 39% of all adults have no access to banking. Blockchain could change that. Although not today. Photo by Geoff Greenwood on Unsplash “The unexpected tragedy of our current financial system is that those who have the least money have to pay the most to ship…
ICO anyone? The Psychology of the Crowd
Crowd psychology is a subject of study for the past 120 years. Crowds itself culminated in the mass movements of the 20th Century. As weird as it sounds: marketing a crowdfunding campaign and making propaganda for a totalitarian state follow similar rules. Here we look at what crowd psychology can tell us about making a…
BlockchainTech: Can Triple Entry Accounting Save the World?
Luca Pacioli, father of modern accounting. Source: Wikipedia Before you finish this article, you will have fallen in love with double entry accounting, mourn its failing and rejoice with us in saving the world up to $4 Trillion[1] in losses due to fraud. The Notting Hill Carnival is one of London’s most colourful annual events with…
Why We Need Bitcoin: A Brief History of Privacy
By Marcell Nimfuehr on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE “Privacy is actually an anomaly,” Vinton Cerf, leading developer of the original Internet Arpanet Bitcoin is not just a means of payment. We have Dollar and Euro for that. Bitcoin is not just a means of money transfer. We have PayPal. Bitcoin is not just a store of value. Better use…
Silk Road: A Cautionary Tale about Online Anonymity
Are bitcoin and the Darkweb as anonymous as people think? Screenshot of Silk Road online shop. One of the biggest allures, and criticisms, of cryptocurrencies is their anonymity. Bitcoin transfers are publicly available, but only linked to an account number and not a person. But bitcoin isn’t actually that anonymous after all. Experts call it “pseudonymous,” comparable…