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When government regulators scared Facebook out of its Libra/Diem cryptocurrency project a while back, I didn't think too much about it. The original project was ambitious. Libra was designed to be a stablecoin and was backed by deposits of real cash to be contributed to the Libra Association, a supporting plutocracy with a membership fee of $10 million. Founding members got an option to become validator node operators, a vote on the Libra Council, and could earn interest on their investment. Continue Reading →

A little more than 246 years ago, our forefathers used the best technology available to inspire colonial proto-Americans to revolt against King George. At that time, the "best" technology available was the printing press and the "best" social network required the use of "word of mouth" in Public Houses. Grog was the lubricant that facilitated this communication and the rest, as they say, is history. Continue Reading →

In World of Warcraft, a soulbound item, once picked up, cannot be transferred or sold to another player. It is this idea of “immutable, permanent binding” that inspired Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, to ask a question: What if NFTs could be soulbound? Continue Reading →

I was at a dinner party earlier this week. When our host asked what I did for a living, I answered, "I run a consulting practice focused on Web3 strategy and solutions," to which she responded, "Web3 is B.S. You don't even know what Web3 is." Continue Reading →

OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace, informed people on its email list that an employee of Customer.io (OpenSea's bulk email vendor) gave the OpenSea email list to an outside party. OpenSea sent a note advising everyone on the list to beware of phishing schemes that are likely to ensue. Even if you didn't get a note, beware of phishing schemes. Continue Reading →

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has given the CEOs of Apple and Google until July 8 to respond to his open letter asking Mr. Cook and Mr. Pichai to remove TikTok from their respective app stores. Continue Reading →

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a former Washington state high school football coach had a right to pray on the field immediately after games. We're going to talk about this, Elon Musk's pending purchase of Twitter, and what "Freedom of Speech" means under the new SCOTUS tonight, June 28 at 6:30 p.m. ET here in NYC at the Newhouse Advanced Media Lab Series event: What is Freedom of Speech? Continue Reading →

At a dinner party the other night, a very accomplished business person told a story about how he and his wife were certain that their devices were listening to their conversations. “I was talking to my wife about a pair of designer shoes that she wanted to purchase, and not 10 minutes later while she was doing some online research for work, she saw an ad for that exact pair of shoes. She hadn’t searched for the shoes; the ad just appeared. Clearly, our computers or our phones are listening.” Some people nodded in agreement, and others began to chime in. Continue Reading →

Amazon Alexa may someday be able to speak to you in any voice that it has ever listened to for more than a minute. Any voice. Any person. Alive or dead. Any voice. Continue Reading →

Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and other tech giants have formed the Metaverse Standards Forum to foster development of industry standards for the (as yet undefined) metaverse. Most of the big players are founding members, with some notable exceptions such as Apple, Roblox, Niantic, The Sandbox, and Decentraland. Continue Reading →