Cryptocurrency pioneer Mark Jeffrey & “Vaporised” author Robert Tercek on the ICO collapse, Facebook’s and Sweden’s cryptocurrency, plus more!

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains power the new economy.
Cryptocurrency pioneer Mark Jeffrey & “Vaporised” author Robert Tercek on the ICO collapse, Facebook’s and Sweden’s cryptocurrency, plus more!
ICOs are risky investments – CRYPTONOMICS looks at how their pitches play on our wishes for a better world, to get us to part with our cash.
We heard about the Great Keppel Island ICO, and here’s the original press release I received on the 4th of September, 2018:
GREAT BARRIER REEF ISLAND CRYPTO TOKENISED
The Crypto Challenge Forum promises:
Then we took a look at the white paper’s for two ICO’s we discussed back in Episode 4:
PowerLedger’s POWR token white paper: Power-Ledger-Whitepaper-v3
The Guardian Circle GUARDIUM token white paper: guardium_whitepaper_en-1.0.3
And if you want to have a peek at the Mark Pesce Token, go here…
What gives a coin its value? Gold is rare (as is Bitcoin), but most coins are plentiful. So we need to ask another question – is a coin useful?
The utility of a coin can be determined by observing how it’s been designed to be used – and comparing that against how people actually use it.
Bitcoin was originally meant to facilitate peer-to-peer cash transactions on the Internet, but because of its long settlement times (in the tens of minutes) and high fees, it’s rarely appropriate. Instead, Bitcoin’s utility comes from its store of value.
But there are other coins:
Litecoin and Namecoin are both similar to Bitcoin – ‘cloned’ from the Bitcoin source code. But each of them are just different enough to attract their own traders.
In 2015, Ethereum came along – more about that in episode 5 – and the number of ‘initial coin offerings’ exploded, generating well over twenty billion dollars (USD) in sales:
PowerLedger provides a blockchain-based accounting mechanism allowing individuals generating energy at home – via renewables such as solar and wind – to sell that energy to their neighbors, with real-time payments.
Dr. Jemma Green joined us to discuss the utility of the POWR token – created to act as a ‘bond’ against settlement of electricity bills – but with much broader applications.
Dr. Green described a system of POWR tokens and another token – SPARKS – used together to facilitate payments:
The POWR token sale raised $34,000,000 in investment for PowerLedger.
According to Mark Jeffrey, the real value of any coin can be surmised by its usefulness – and he suggests we head over to Block’tivity to see the real-time chart of the most useful coins.
Here’s a snapshot from 25 August 2018:
Mark Jeffrey also took us through the tokenomics of Guardian Circle, his ‘decentralised 9-1-1’ application that aims to bring emergency services to billions in the developing world. It uses a ‘Guardium‘ token to incentivise first responders. (Disclaimer: I am both an adviser to Guardian Circle and am a Guardium token holder in recognition of my services as an adviser. This is not investment advice.)