My first introduction to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies was via the internet. I read about bitcoin and various altcoins on forums like Reddit — you can read a personal history of my online exploration here. However, it was the in-person meetups and resulting conversations that really cemented my interest in the space and made me want to pursue it as a career. One of the first meetups I ever attended was the San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup. I have been a fan of their user-friendly talks (and their happy hours at El Rio) for a long time and things came full circle for me when I was invited to one of their meetups as a speaker.

In my remarks, I talk about some of the user adoption, technological challenges, and regulatory concerns Origin is faced with when trying to build a massively scalable and open source infrastructure for truly peer-to-peer marketplaces and the future of the sharing economy. I am a better writer than speaker, so I leaned heavily on the ideas I expressed in previous articles I wrote. Notably, that I think decentralization will disrupt the sharing economy and centralized marketplaces. People often take it for granted that the first mover advantage and network effects produce an inevitable outcome that we see today, centralized and monopolistic marketplaces. However, I argue that the internet was originally developed to be decentralized and open and that if we there were baked in, open-source protocols for things like payments, identity, and instant messaging, things might have turned out quite differently. This has been something that is being talked about more and more as the original sin of the internet. I believe blockchain technology and decentralization will give us a second chance to move away from centralized monopolies and the negative externalities they present to society.

Here I am answering questions from the audience about Origin.

I also expressed renewed confidence that Ethereum can and will scale. I try my best to keep up on all the new research going on on ethresear.ch and /r/ethereum. I gave a brief overview about Casper (Proof-of-Stake), sharding, Plasma & Plasma Cash, Raiden, and TrueBit in an article I wrote after attending EDCON. Every time I meet the incredible people who are working on scaling Ethereum, my faith in the project and overall ecosystem grows.

You can watch a replay of my remarks and the meetup below:

Watch a recording of the livestream from the event

It’s a bit nerve-racking to speak in front of an audience, but I always enjoy sharing Origin’s mission and discussing blockchain technology with others. If you are interested in seeing us in person, you can find out where Origin team members will be speaking by subscribing to one of our social links below or checking our Eventbrite page for future Origin meetups.

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