Questioning the Obsession with Blockchains and On-Chain Governance with Nic Carter

The Peter McCormack Show - A podcast by Peter McCormack

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Interview location: Skype
Interview date: Wed, 10th October 2018
Company: Castle Island Ventures
Role: Partner

Union Square Ventures posted a blog post this week titled The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase, shining a light on the imbalance between infrastructure work in crypto and DApp usage. There is an abundance of blockchain scaling projects, alternative currencies and governance protocols but a distinct lack of users. Why is this? Are people solving problems which do not exist? Is this a speculative land grab? And how will this all play out?

In this interview, I talk to Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, who has publicly declared their investment thesis focuses on equity deals for companies building on public blockchains, specifically Bitcoin.

I put to Nic a number of areas I am struggling with on token projects and we discuss:
- Token models
- The obsession with blockchains
- What is the point of on-chain governance
- Whether the web 3.0 stack is a thing
- Mining centralisation
- Bitcoin privacy
- Realised cap as an economic model for Bitcoin

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Helpful Links:

Connect with Nic:
- On Twitter @nic__carter
- On Medium
- On LinkedIn
- Coin Metrics

Connect with Castle Island Ventures:
- Website: http://www.castleisland.vc
- On LinkedIn
- On Crunchbase
- On Medium

Articles by Nic:
- Blockchain Is a Semantic Wasteland
- The Dark Underbelly of Cryptocurrency Markets
- Bitcoin as a productive asset
- Power laws and Network Effects: Why BitcoinCash is not a free lunch

Presentation by Nic:
- Baltic Honeybadger 2018 (1hr 18mins): Bitcoin as an Economic System

Other relevant articles:
- USV: The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase
- Jimmy Song: Alternatives to Blockchain
- Andreas M. Antonopoulos: “Blockchain, Not Bitcoin” line of thinking wrong?
- Kyla Samani: The Web3 Stack

Other topics discused:
- Bitcoin’s monetary policy
- Bitcoin seigniorage
- Cargo Cult
- Mining Bitcoin from Methane

Other relevant WBD podcasts:
- WBD037: Jimmy Song on the Game Theory of Bitcoin Attacks and why Proof of Work Needs to be Expensive
- WBD032: Tuur Demeester on the Looming Debt Crisis and Central Banks for Bitcoin
- WBD028: Bitcoin Maximalism with Pierre Rochard
- WBD018: Bitcoin Scaling and Lightning Network with Jameson Lopp
- WBD003: Bitcoin Philosophy and Tech with Jameson Lopp

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