Carter Woetzel - Building Confidence in Blockchain: Investing in Cryptocurrency and a Decentralized Future

You let out an impatient sigh as you hit the Parking Ramp elevator button. You had a long day of meetings at work, and your spouse just texted you that they need you to pick up a gallon of milk. You unlock your car, turn the ignition, and are off to the races. Weaving through traffic and what feels like an innumerable amount of traffic lights, you drive over a bridge that takes you to your local grocery store. You park the car, lock it, and walk through an automatic sliding door. Quickly selecting a gallon of milk, you hand your credit card over to the cashier and are soon on your way. You are ten minutes late for dinner, but you trust your spouse does in fact still love you despite your many apparent flaws.

In a simple mundane journey of a perfectly normal day, you take many leaps of faith. You trust that the elevator wont crash, that you will arrive on the corresponding floor of the button you hit, that the car door will unlock, and that the vehicle will start. You trust others not to run a red light and smash into you when the light turns green (a rather unnerving contract with society). You trust the bridge you crossed to be properly maintained so it doesnt collapse. You locked your car in the grocery store parking lot because you dont quite trust that every single person has your propertys best interest in mind. You trust those automatic sliding doors to activate upon your arrival. You trusted the milk on the shelf to not be spoiled, and the cashier to not steal your credit card information. Finally, you trusted that your spouse would still love you despite arriving late to dinner!

Trust is all pervasive: inescapable in our daily transactions and movements. Trust is the most valuable resource of the twenty-first century. It is the digital oil that all infrastructure, interactions, and communication are built on top of. Every Amazon purchase, credit card swipe, and meal consumed hinges upon trusting either a source or an action will result in a desired outcome. We surround ourselves with routines, ideas, and people we trust. It is an integral part of the human experience for better or for worse.

As you read this book, you will develop an understanding of what I call the Trust Problem. It is intertwined with many businesses and third parties that exist to facilitate and ease the worries of our daily transactions. News alertthe current way of dealing with the Trust Problem is less than ideal! Trust is an issue that is pervasive in every transaction between humans. Blockchain is the answer to the Trust Problem, turning the tables on societys antiquated method of transacting. Instead of trusting people, what if we can trust the guarantee of mathematics and the neutrality of automation through programming for our transactions and contracts?

Before we begin this journey together, I want you to understand what brought me to the table. Three years ago, my cousin Garrett Woetzel (a finance savant) linked me to a variety of articles on this thing called blockchain. As an undergrad getting a degree in finance and computer science, the appeal of this packaged deal of digital currency, decentralized ledger technology, cryptography, economics, and all the investment hype drew me in. I was like an eager bee ready to taste the mysterious nectar known as blockchain.

As I joined a variety of projects in the space and began to invest, a lot of commotion occurred. Prices skyrocketed nearly 700 percent for a variety of cryptocurrenciesand subsequently plummeted. Communities I had engaged with had people who turned into millionaires, and shortly thereafter were utterly broke. Parents who enthusiastically jumped in because their kids recommended it walked away defeated. As I consumed all the literature I could get my hands on in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, I found that none of the books struck a balance between the pessimism of investing fundamentals with the enthusiasm for what could be unlocked in the near future with blockchain and cryptocurrency.

That is what set me on this journey. This is what drove me to read hundreds of research papers written by some of the most brilliant researchers in the world. Over the course of three years, I built for myself a rock-solid understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency with the goal of making this emerging technology understandable for everyone. That is what this work is: a comprehensive dive into this emerging technology in a simple fashion by equipping you to understand, explain, and invest in blockchain technology.

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Blockchain technology is no different relative to the mystery surrounding it. Leveraged as a marketing term or headline buzzword, blockchain and cryptocurrency have soured for a huge percentage of the population.

Maybe you have heard of cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin), or maybe you havent. Perhaps you invested and got burned during the 2018 bubble. Or maybe you are a traditional investor that wants to learn what all the fuss is about. Regardless, you will walk away from this book understanding that in the near future, blockchain will be whirring away in the background of our livesjust like the internet. And, whats more, you have a chance to invest in the infancy of this emerging technology that solves the Trust Problem that is so prevalent in our world today.

This book will give you clarity in a space that repeatedly misses the mark on educating readers to a point of confidence. By the time you are done reading this book, you will be able to confidently answer the following:

Why is blockchain valuable?

How does blockchain work?

How should I invest in cryptocurrency and a decentralized future?

What is the past and future of blockchain technology?

But what exactly is blockchain? And why should you care?

Blockchain is shorthand for a suite of distributed ledger technologies that can be programmed to record and track anything of value, from financial transaction to medical records or even land titles.

Lucas Mostazo

The first chapter, Blockchain &Ventre Terre, is devoted to answering the question, What is blockchain and how does it work? For now, you just need enough to know that blockchain is a digital decentralized ledger that is maintained by thousands of different computers. Picture a decentralized version of PayPal, but with a lot more capabilities and many valuable properties that centralized services cannot offer.

This ledger leverages cryptography and mathematics to guarantee the validity of transactions and to remove power from any single third party (such as a bank or Facebook). Users who use the blockchain ledger can transact in a peer-to-peer fashion with 100 percent confidence the digital transaction or contract will complete successfully, without any human interference.