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Finance
- Lithium market outlook for 2026Explains why growing battery demand can coexist with a well-supplied lithium market in 2026. (opens in a new tab)
- Nickel market outlook for 2026Explains how Indonesian supply growth pressured nickel prices despite rising battery demand. (opens in a new tab)
- Copper market outlook for 2026Explains copper risk through concentrate scarcity, processing concentration, trade policy, and demand. (opens in a new tab)
- Comparing Bitcoin with goldCompares Bitcoin and gold by scarcity, portability, divisibility, and verifiability, and asks how much of each asset's demand is mimetic.
- Decentralized finance: Open access and remaining risksMakes an October 2022 case for open protocol access in DeFi, separated from the custody, market, and regulatory risks and control points that remain.
- How easy money creates demand for scarce status goodsConnects easy money, Veblen goods, and status signals to the 2021 cryptocurrency boom, and asks when scarcity and price themselves drive demand.
- How derivatives and spot markets set pricesExplains when hedging, liquidity, and leverage let derivatives positions feed back into spot prices, from the 1987 market crash to crypto derivatives.
Technology
- PolicyStrata: Test policy drift across LLM data-agent layersDescribes PolicyStrata tests for policy drift across agents, queries, databases, and release controls. (opens in a new tab)
- Audit Windows kernel driver accessShows how to find Windows kernel drivers installed by anti-cheat, security, and other software, and decide whether each function justifies the risk.
- What the CrowdStrike outage revealed about kernel riskExplains how a faulty CrowdStrike update crashed an estimated 8.5 million Windows devices in July 2024, and sketches a multi-tier kernel isolation design.
- How generative AI disrupted search in 2023Examines how ChatGPT and Bing's answer interface changed search competition and user behavior in early 2023, with notes on what aged quickly.
- Web3: Ownership, tokens, and practical riskExamines Web3 ownership claims, token funding, interoperability, and risk, and separates holding portable assets from owning a company or network.
- Web 2.0: User-generated content and advertising dataExplains how user-generated content, network effects, and advertising data helped a few platforms gain strong positions in search, social media, and commerce.
- Web 1.0: The read-mostly webExplains how the read-mostly web of roughly 1990–2004 established open publishing protocols, in the first essay of a three-part web history series.
Crypto
- A universal CLI for perpetual decentralized exchangesDescribes a CLI designed to standardize trading and risk controls across perpetual decentralized exchanges.
- Building Crypto-Repos from open-source dataExplains how Crypto-Repos, a now-offline directory, turned Aptos, Sui, and Base repository data into searchable metrics, and where that data falls short.
- Blockchain account access still depends on financial railsShows why onboarding, offboarding, and censorship risk still tie blockchain accounts to banks, card networks, exchanges, and payment providers.
- How BIP-39 phrases produce wallet keysExplains how BIP-39 mnemonic phrases, checksums, and optional passphrases derive the seed, private keys, public keys, and addresses of HD wallets.
- Can cryptocurrency serve people without reliable banking?Tests whether cryptocurrency can serve people without reliable banking, weighing self-custody against on-ramp dependence, liquidity risk, and user safety.
- Cryptocurrency adoption across African marketsTracks cryptocurrency adoption, remittances, currency pressures, and regulation across African markets through country-level notes rather than one thesis.
- Self-custody, part 2: Recovery and inheritanceCompares custody models, physical backups, recovery methods, and inheritance planning, and the costs each adds, in part 2 of a self-custody series.
- Self-custody, part 1: Wallet control and securityExplains how addresses, private keys, and recovery phrases give users direct wallet control, and the security duties that come with it, in part 1 of a series.
- How automated market maker liquidity pools workExplains how automated market maker pools price trades with the constant product formula, what liquidity providers earn, and the risks they take on.
- Blockchain foundations: Accounts, consensus, and settlementExplains how blockchains order transactions and agree on state, covering consensus, accounts, smart contracts, privacy, and censorship resistance.
- How Nansen turned blockchain data into market intelligenceExplains how Nansen used wallet labels and blockchain data for market intelligence in 2021. (opens in a new tab)
- How NFT tickets can change event marketsExamines how NFT tickets could change event access, resale, and artist relationships. (opens in a new tab)
- How noncustodial wallets transfer control and riskExplains how noncustodial wallets hand key control, security, and recovery to users, and the limits of that control, such as token issuer freezes.
- How permissionless systems work and where access failsExplains how permissionless blockchains let developers deploy DeFi, NFT, and DAO applications, and where fees, law, and counterparty risk limit access.
- Decentralized finance essentialsExplains the protocols, stablecoins, governance, and risks that defined DeFi in late 2021, and why DeFi changes trust rather than removing it.
- How NounsDAO funded a community through daily auctionsExplains how NounsDAO used daily NFT auctions to fund its treasury and proposals, with its on-chain design and governance tradeoffs as of August 2021.
- How Boson Protocol designed tokenized commerceExplains Boson Protocol's 2021 design for tokenizing physical commerce with commitment tokens and NFTs, a historical snapshot of a since-redesigned protocol.