The Krypto Economy: Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble

You probably followed the bitcoin tsunami in January. The price of bitcoin dropped by more than 50% followed by regulatory interventions of governments and banks and a hysterical discussion around bitcoin, crypto currencies and the blockchain technology. Is it a scam? Will governments and banks absorb it? What will be the role of blockchain? The future is hard to predict. But one thing is clear: the bitcoin crisis embodies a historical point in the krypto economy, since it will speed up the process to show how feasible a decentralized token economy will be. Andrea Bauer gives us a peephole into the emerging „krypto economy“.

Episode 11 of the re:publica 18 - Alle Sessions podcast, hosted by Andrea Bauer, titled "The Krypto Economy: Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble" was published on May 4, 2018 and runs 28 minutes.

May 4, 2018 ·28m · re:publica 18 - Alle Sessions

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Summary

Andrea Bauer The hype around Bitcoin is warranted - as warrant as the blockchain technology becomes a fundamental new part of our digital infrastructure. Think about the ’90s internet bubble and the intensive amount on new solutions we got out of that. Now imagine the effect when you shrink it down to the size of a crisis caused by one application called Bitcoin. Like the original internet itself, blockchain is an idea with radical possibilities that at the same time has attracted some of the most frivolous appetites of capitalism. The blockchain may seem like the very worst of speculative capitalism right now, and yes, it is demonically challenging to understand. But the beautiful thing about open protocols is that they can be steered in surprising new directions by the people who discover and champion them in their infancy. Right now, the only real hope for a revival of the open-protocol ethos lies in the blockchain. Whether it eventually lives up to its egalitarian promise will in large part depend on the people who embrace the platform, who take up the baton from those early online pioneers. In this talk, Andrea Bauer will present the lessons learned out of the bitcoin crisis by looking at the rising token economy, the future of money, and the challenges of its regulation. By analyzing the current dynamics, Andrea Bauer gives us a peephole into the emerging „krypto economy“.