Stories by Bailey Reutzel
How crypto is helping set gamers free
Mario, Link, Solid Snake, and Vault Boy are just a few examples of gaming characters that have endured throughout gaming history. But while these characters have featured in dozens of different titles, each individual character is trapped inside its own game. Buy a new game? Your character has to start all over again. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could take your favorite video game characters from one game to the next? So that each time you started, you had all the power-ups, skins and weapons yo...
Controlling your identity data with Vinny Lingham of Civic
Vinny Lingham wants you to be able to mask some of your identity from the various players on the internet that benefit from using, and sometimes abusing, your information. Lingham, who founded Civic in 2015 believes blockchain can help identify someone without a username, password, third-party authenticator, or physical hardware token. To do this, his startup Civic launched the crypto token CVC, which he believes will allow users to have a self-sovereign identity with more control, and he dives...
Creating a new financial system starting with beer, cigarettes and crypto tokens
Vinny Lingham has big ambitions. Through his startup Civic, which released its CVC crypto token in the summer of 2017, Lingham is building a self-sovereign identity platform. And while the technology is currently being used mainly in so-called automated retail (aka vending machines) for the purchase of two restricted goods–alcohol and cigarettes–he believes this type of tokenization could eventually lead to a more open financial system. Check out the video below as he explains more about Civic's...
Collectible cats: How Alan Carr helped bring tokenization to the masses
Alan Carr has never cared much for cats. But in a strange quirk of fate, he’s found himself the proud owner of 926 CryptoKitties. For the past two years, he’s obsessed over the digital collectibles, culminating in him landing a job as a product designer at Axiom Zen, the company behind CryptoKitties in March 2018. “This is my Ikigai,” Carr told Decrypt, referencing a Japanese concept which roughly means one’s passion in life. “This is the intersection of something I’m interested in, something I...
Luc Falempin: How trying to buy stocks led to building a securities token machine
All Luc Falempin wanted to do was buy a few shares of Google. It was 2011, he was still in school, and his plan was to start investing in the stock market with a thousand euros. But when a broker told him that buying would set him back 150 euros in fees—plus "I don't know how much" to sell the shares—he scrapped that plan, Falempin told Decrypt. After some googling, Falempin decided instead to put the money into bitcoin. He came away from the experience with two bits of newfound knowledge: Tha...
Why Treum is so interested in getting high
Supply chains are notoriously complex. And so is selling cannabis products in the US. While the weed industry racked up more than $50 billion in sales last year, putting weed in the hands of consumers is a challenge. Each state is its own ecosystem and closed-loop system when it comes to regulations. That means when it comes to buying tools, products or plants across borders, if any of those things have to cross state lines, things get a bit tricky. It gets worse. Local governing bodies with reg...
How crypto helps sell CBD
Selling weed is a tricky business. While many states have allowed the growth and sale of marijuana, and the production of Cannabidiol (CBD), what has emerged since legalization is a whole lotta red tape. Different states have different laws, different municipalities have different regulations, and different regulators have different rules on how things should be packaged, bought and sold. Confused? You should be. That's we sat down with Treum co-founder, Tyler Mulvihill, who explains how blockc...
Listen: A new kind of crypto sale - The Asset Token Onboarding
On the streets of New York City, where people are lining up for the latest Supreme drop, Geoff Shearer, director of global marketing and community at 55, discusses how the startup uses crypto tokens to make collectible streetwear more accessible to everyday enthusiasts. Streetwear drops are for those willing to wait in the rain for hours, sometimes days, in the hopes of bagging a slice of their favorite brand. For everyone else, it's the Wild West of extortionate resales and dodgy replicas. We s...
Crypto for your closet: How 55 uses tokenization to make streetwear more accessible
When it comes to streetwear, exclusivity is king. Limited runs of everything from t-shirts to sneakers to bricks have helped streetwear become a $309 billion industry, according to Gartner. While that's good for brands' bottom lines, it leave fans in the cold, literally. 'Drops' from retailers can create queues thousands long, with some even leading to violence. Not just that, the value of those limited edition items on the open-market can often be ten times that of the retail price. But blockc...
How Ujo helps fans own a slice of their favorite musicians
Who’s your favorite musician? Are their posters hanging on your wall? Do you wear T-shirts emblazoned with their logo? Travel to see them in concert at festivals? Know everything about their history and musical progression? Do the artists know what a diehard fan you are? Probably not, but Ujo, an Ethereum-based project for adding music to the blockchain, thinks they should—and that you should get rewarded for your enthusiasm. That’s just part of Ujo’s plan to tokenize and disrupt the music i...
How LTBCoin kickstarted the token revolution (and why you've never heard of it)
LTBCoin is a crypto token that doesn’t get much mention these days. But it was one of the first built on top of Bitcoin. Launched in 2014, it was built using a system called Counterparty, that allowed tokens to sit atop Bitcoin. LTBCoin then provided members with network-wide rewards and discounts, to be used for tipping and other transactions between users inside and outside the community marketplace. It wasn't a million miles away from the modern-day Lightning Network. While it didn't perform...
Talking tokens with Adam B. Levine
Adam B. Levine has been covering the crypto industry since 2011. In that time he founded LTBCoin, one of the first tokens to be built atop the Bitcoin blockchain. More recently, he's become the host of the Let's Talk Bitcoin podcast, a show that covers the crypto industry in-depth, with nearly 500 episodes to date. While he might not be the most notorious of figures in crypto, he's watched the evolution of the industry first hand, having interviewed some of the industry's most influential figure...
Where to watch the Senate hearing on Libra, and what to look for
Tomorrow starts what David Marcus, head of Calibra, the crypto wallet subsidiary of Facebook, believes will be the “broadest, most extensive and most careful pre-launch oversight by regulators and central banks in fintech’s history.” It might also start an epic grilling by a cantankerous U.S. Congress that seems united by only one thing these days: Its total contempt for Facebook. At 10 am ET, Marcus will testify before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, as part of a he...
