N.B. This document was originally published in 2023 as https://inquisitivists.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Blockchain_For_Everyone.pdf. The world being what it is these days I no longer wished to host files online in a pay-per-request fashion. If for some reason you are seeking the citation from Money Has No Value by Samuel Chambers, this is the original article.
This article attempts to cover some of the many, many (many many many) things I’ve long wanted to say about Blockchain. I’ve had, for several years, a lot to say on the subject and I’ve found it pretty difficult because that subject is complicated and language is, you know, hard. And also…it’s kinda not that complicated? A lot of what seems complicated about blockchain is just basic truths about the world obfuscated by a little bit of computer science. And even the computer science isn’t that complicated. As CS topics come up, I’ll talk a little bit about them without, I hope, getting too technical. You can go look them up in other sources if you want, but you don’t need to understand how they work in order to understand blockchain.
While I was working on this article, the Bloomberg finance columnist Matt Levine published a 40,000 word essay on Blockchain. It says 93.4% of what I wanted to say on the subject, as well as a lot more that I didn’t say, and as an added bonus Matt Levine writes with pretty much the same voice that I do except he’s smarter, clearer, and knows more stuff about finance. So you could skip this article, read his, and miss very little.
