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hi my name is kinjal Shaw and I'm a
partner at watching Capital my name is
olianka odannarin I am the founder of
black women blockchain Council and I'm
also a blockchain Enthusiast we were
founded back in 2013 so one of the
earliest to focus specifically on
blockchain use cases and we invest
across the entire industry the mission
of black women blockchain council is to
make sure that no one gets left behind
in particular the black women we want to
make sure that this technology is a
field that they see themselves at I
think of blockchain as a horizontal
technology that can be applied to many
different sectors what really drew me
into blockchain is how interdisciplinary
it is it pulls on threads from economics
politics social sciences and even beyond
that to philosophy I myself am an
investor at blockchain Capital I spend
most of my time better understanding the
technology researching and doing
diligence on a number of opportunities
and then working with Founders to help
build this industry together
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every week you read that bitcoin's price
is going up or down
some newfangled cryptocurrency
skyrockets in value and a piece of
digital art famously sells for 69
million dollars
but a few months later you read that
everything is crashing and people are
losing money
and then it all goes back up again
what's going on what does it even mean
for things to have value on the
blockchain
blockchain as a technology allows us to
make new forms of cryptocurrencies and
new forms of ownership
it does this by enabling decentralized
record keeping
but the technology itself doesn't assign
prices or values people do that prices
on a blockchain are determined by how
much people are willing to pay using
traditional forms of money how does this
work
well transactions are saved on a
blockchain when somebody gives their
currency to somebody else but what do
they get in return well it could be
anything really like buying a pizza
using Bitcoin
these days the most common transaction
is to trade digital assets for each
other or for traditional money on an
exchange
an exchange is a marketplace where
anybody can buy or sell something
the price at any given moment is not set
by a central Authority but by what
people are willing to pay
but if lots of people want to buy these
same assets we may see the price go up
as an example consider the London Stock
Exchange
when this Marketplace emerge in a coffee
house in the early 1700s people traded
Stocks by shouting the price
making a deal and then handing over cash
cryptocurrencies and other tokens are
bought and sold in the same way on
Modern exchanges
in both cases and in any free market
there's no higher power deciding prices
just a free-for-all based on the
economic principle of supply and demand
but why do the prices swing so much more
for digital assets
that depends on the asset and why people
value it digital assets on a blockchain
could have physical real world value
today people are experimenting with
selling concert tickets on the
blockchain
one day blockchain could be used to
record government recognized ownership
of a home with real walls and real roof
the price of a home is determined by
supply and demand in the real world
independent of how its ownership is
recorded
the blockchain is just a digital setting
in stone to record that ownership and
doesn't impact the price other digital
assets only have psychological value you
value it because you believe somebody
else will also value it like digital art
where price is based on how much the
buyer believes they'll get for reselling
a given piece even traditional
currencies don't have real world value
unless others believe in them
consider the US dollar
the paper itself has no value
dollars are only valuable if you believe
you can use them for payment and that
the person you pay believes the same
thing
with the traditional currency disbelief
depends on a country's military or
economic power if everybody believes a
currency has value
if they stop believing a currency stops
having value this is why some
traditional currencies can drop in value
causing inflation
many factors can lead to why people
believe there is value in cryptocurrency
things like media hype government
regulations and businesses accepting
digital currency can all cause people to
believe or disbelieve the price of
Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency on a
blockchain ultimately measures how much
people believe
blockchain technology is touted by many
for its potential and yet many
blockchain projects have failed because
of hacks and scams beliefs can fluctuate
wildly which is why prices go up and
down so much and so quickly if a lot
more people believe digital assets could
One Day become much more valuable if a
lot fewer people believe these assets
could become completely worthless and
with so many different types of projects
using blockchain technology it's hard to
tell which will succeed and which are
doomed to fail
foreign
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