You’ve probably been hearing a lot about the buzz around Bitcoin and crypto lately. 🐝🤑 But what exactly is cryptocurrency and why is it such a big deal today?

I’m grateful to have been able to chat with Cryptocurrency Village at DEFCON ☠, one of the world's largest and most notable hacker conventions 🌎 (starting 8/5-8/8!), to talk about their village at the intersection of crypto and cybersecurity.

Read on to get an insider preview of what’s to come at the Crypto Village, your primer on blockchain and the crypto landscape, and how you can get involved:

1. 💸 What exactly is cryptocurrency?

2. 🤔 The biggest problem faced by crypto today

3. 🔐 Cryptocurrency Village and ways to get involved

🎙 Δx podcast

Here’s your special coverage of the Cryptocurrency Village @ DEF CON 🤫

In this episode, I connect with two organizers of the Cryptocurrency Village for a preview of what’s to come at DEF CON and the crypto landscape. 📈

We discuss security and privacy, the biggest problems faced by crypto today, and future potential for innovation. 🎧👇

The Cryptocurrency Village at DEF CON 29 will explore blockchain technologies, regulatory landscape, and the general cryptocurrency ecosystem - the intersection of cryptocurrency and cybersecurity.

Give it a listen above or here to catch the full conversation

💎 Δx takeaways

Bitcoin has been stated by Wozniak (Apple co-founder) as “the most amazing mathematical miracle” 😮

It’s a combination of complex math ➕, game theory 🎮, economics 🌐, and much more - and for these reasons can be quite difficult to grasp.

Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of cryptocurrency:

“A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange wherein individual coin ownership records are stored in a ledger existing in a form of a computerized database using strong cryptography to secure transaction records, to control the creation of additional coins, and to verify the transfer of coin ownership.”

That was a lot for a sentence. 😅

The simple definition: crypto is just a digital asset, which can either be stable/not stable.

“Wealth as a security” - Justin, Delta X Podcast

There is a lot of potential for disruption with crypto (not just limited to fiat/finances). Just thinking about the implications - from NFTs to medical data to IoT - is eye-opening 👀

In the conversation, Justin and Michael also discuss what they believe are the biggest problems for crypto today: 1) ease of use 🤳 and 2) privacy 🔒.

1. Ease of use: crypto is competing with the fiat world, ex paypal, and it hasn’t reached that same scale of usability yet 💵

2. Privacy: since blockchain is a permanent public ledger, you need to make it hard for people to make mistakes and leak info => build with privacy from ground up 🔑

To find out more about the future applications of this technology and potential for disruption, catch the rest of the conversation in the podcast above. 🔉

And finally, for how YOU can get involved: drop by to the Cryptocurrency village (virtual/in person options) and join/create crypto groups, conferences, and communities.

Some additional resources for learning crypto: Bitcoin.org, Ethereum Project, Nakamoto Institute

📰 Δx change

Here’s some incredible change (seriously, I’m still mindblown 🤯) which has been going on in the last 2 weeks:

• 🌌 Detecting light from behind a black hole: Astronomers have detected light behind a black hole deep in space for the first time. The discovery confirms Albert Einstein’s theory on general relativity. The gravitational pull from black holes essentially bends light rays around themselves, giving scientists their first glimpse of what lies behind.

  Delta X @deltaxpod

  Light is detected from behind a black hole for the first time. This is just incredible to wrap your mind around - we're observing Einstein's general theory of relativity in action 😮👇 theguardian.com/science/2021/j…Astronomers detect light behind black hole for first timeTelescope picks up unexpected ‘luminous echoes’ – smaller, later and of different colour to bright flarestheguardian.com

  July 29th 2021

  2 Retweets5 Likes

• ✉ Jeff Bezos writes open letter to pay $2bn to NASA: “Blue Origin will bridge the HLS budgetary funding shortfall by waiving all payments in the current and next two government fiscal years up to $2B to get the program back on track right now. This offer is not a deferral, but is an outright and permanent waiver of those payments.” It’s about getting into the space game.

• 💎 Google may have created a time crystal in quantum computer: Scientists at Google may have created a new phase of matter which defy Newton’s laws of physics. “Nearly every far-future tech humans can imagine, from teleportation to warp drives and from artificial food synthesizers to perpetual motion reactors capable of powering the world without burning fuels or harnessing energy, will require quantum computing systems.”

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed this edition of the Delta X newsletter with Cryptocurrency village! ✨

<3,

Ellen X

Thanks for reading!

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