Curated playlist
Cryptocurrencies
- Proof of personhoodResearchers proposed making people show up in person, all at once, to prove they are human.
- CryptocurrencyIn February 2014, Mt. Gox, then the largest bitcoin exchange, declared bankruptcy.
- BitcoinBitcoin began as a white paper from an author nobody has ever identified. Satoshi Nakamoto posted it in 2008.
- CryptoNoteCryptoNote, a privacy protocol for digital money, has an author nobody has ever identified.
- PeercoinPeercoin was the first cryptocurrency to secure itself with coins held, not electricity burned.
- LitecoinLitecoin was pitched as silver to Bitcoin's gold. It targets a new block every 2.5 minutes, against Bitcoin's 10.
- StablecoinIn May 2022, the stablecoin TerraUSD fell to 10 cents. Almost $45 billion in market value vanished in one week.
- Nano (cryptocurrency)The cryptocurrency Nano gives every account its own blockchain. Each block records just one transaction.
- Proof of stakeEthereum switched to proof of stake in September 2022. Its energy use was estimated to have dropped by over 99%.
- Initial coin offeringIn September 2017, seven Chinese regulators banned initial coin offerings, sales of digital tokens to raise money.
- Legality of cryptocurrency by country or territoryRussia reversed course on cryptocurrency in February 2022. Its central bank had just proposed a total ban.
- Avalanche (blockchain platform)The Avalanche blockchain began with a whitepaper signed Team Rocket. It appeared in May 2018 under that pseudonym.
- Mining poolFor some slow-hardware miners, waiting for one crypto payout could take centuries. Pools fixed that by sharing rewards.
- NamecoinA 2015 study counted 120,000 names registered on Namecoin, a cryptocurrency, but only 28 were in use.
- Proof of workProof of work began in 1993 as a way to fight junk email. Bitcoin came sixteen years later.
- Cryptocurrency exchangeFTX, valued at $18 billion, filed for bankruptcy on the 11th of November 2022.
- Meme coinMeme coins began in late 2013 as a joke. Dogecoin, named after a Shiba Inu image, mocked the crypto boom.
- AlgorandAlgorand's ALGO coin was once named an unregistered security in SEC lawsuits. In 2026 it became a digital commodity.
- DogecoinDogecoin was launched in 2013 as a joke about crypto speculation. By May 2021 its value peaked above $85 billion.
- GPU miningIn June 2017, Sapphire Technology made graphics cards that could not display images.
- IOTA (technology)In February 2020, IOTA's own foundation switched off the machine that runs the whole network.
- MoneroIn 2020, the IRS offered a $625,000 bounty for tools to trace Monero.
- Security token offeringSecurity token offerings were built as a legal alternative after coin offerings lost billions to fraud.