The Ocean of Trust

“They’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is it. This is the big breakthrough,’” said Marc Andreessen, the co-creator of the first commercial Web browser, Netscape, and a big investor in technology ventures. “This is the distributed trust network that the Internet always needed and never had.” (*1)

This collection of posts will try to capture our thesis on decentralisation. We will dive into the beauty and necessity of a decentralised future. A future built on almost entirely new protocol stacks that put power back into the hands of the individual and present the possibility of up-ending entire companies, industries and governments. While crypto currency has had its share of hype and identity crises, this is a necessary part of the lifecycle. Today we are as optimistic and patient as ever and in the coming weeks we will lay out our thoughts along the following narrative. As ever, we welcome anyone who wishes to join and enhance the conversation:

• Nothing New Under The Sun
• Bitcoin: Solving The Double Spend Problem
• Blockchain: Immutable, Decentralised Control, Digital Asset Storage
• The Hunt For The Killer Application(s)
• New Decentralised Platforms
• The Rise Of The Token Sale
• Refactoring The Internet Without A Forklift
• Emerging Investment Themes In Decentralisation
• Rhizomic Structure Of Non-Hierarchic Decentralised Systems
• Regulating Intangible Entities
• Open(Ocean) Questions

This thesis will begin in medias res — echoing Deleuze & Guattari’s theory of the Rhizome, that even in our age of logic and reason there is no beginning or ending, merely a multiplicity of nodes and connections that paint an ‘image of thought’. We are kicking off with the first post on “The Rise of the Token Sale” from Max Mersch.

(*1) Alex Tapscott & Don Tapscott (2016): Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World.