Community Economics & A Kitty-Turtle Hybrid

My good friend Arnold has been involved in launching a new crypto-kitty that’s actually a cat/turtle hybrid.

Meet Honu.

Why is this interesting? Because it’s an auction with all the proceeds going to support Operation Jairo and Unite BVI.

I’m mostly just a sideline observer of crypto. I’m interested in the technology dating all the way back to my degree paper on cryptography and error-correcting codes, but that’s an intellectual interest.

In reality, I worry about the talk in the crypto industry about free markets and how tokenizing things will solve them. There are plenty of things that have intangible value in the world and turning them into assets and creating markets around them will, by definition, mis-understand and mis-represent their intangible value.

But, with an optimistic lens, the piece of the whole thing that interests me the most is community economics and social impact.

The blockchain as a technology to enable and make legible new forms of funding and governance feels like a natural fit for non-profits and social-good projects.

Of course, my friend Arnold has been thinking and publishing about this for a while:

http://arnoldwaldstein.com/2018/05/tokenizing-causes-for-social-good/

Anyway. Congrats Arnold on pushing for this to exist in the world. Roxy loves turtles and I left a bid for Honu.

Asking for a real application of blockchain? Here it is, from tokens to turtles.