Trends & Signals
Blockchain
Explore the latest insights, thought leadership, and research from FCAT®
I Guess We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Art, NFTs, Gaming & the Blockchain Experience
February 1, 2022
I’d never heard of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – digital proof of ownership enabled by the blockchain – until 2021. Like many, I came to them through mass media, through the likes of Kevin Roose of the New York Times auctioning off his column as an...
Tales from the Crypto Challenge
January 26, 2022
Crypto currency is drawing more attention than ever before. Amid this high interest, FCAT recently hosted its fourth annual Cryptoasset Portfolio Challenge in late 2021. The event provides an opportunity to create and manage a mock $1 million...
A Q&A on Bitcoin mining in North America with Whit Gibbs
January 6, 2022
The following is excerpted from an interview with Whit Gibbs, the Founder & CEO of Compass Mining. Compass recently authored the North American Mining Index. In this interview, Gibbs provides unique insights into the topical issues facing the US...
A Q&A on Self-Custody Wallets with Jameson Lopp
November 10, 2021
The following is excerpted from an interview with Jameson Lopp, a bitcoin engineer and the CTO of a crypto start-up, Casa. In this interview, Jameson discusses some of the trends seen in custodial and non-custodial wallets and talks about ways to...
Video Games and the Rise of NFTs as a Digital Asset Class
October 26, 2021
Blockchain-based video games promise to accelerate the adoption of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and greatly expand the digital asset ecosystem. By making in-game items NFTs that are embedded in the blockchain, players can take ownership of the digital...
Introducing DAT: The Most Convenient Way to Monitor Your Crypto
August 11, 2021
A new version of DAT, the Digital Asset Tracker, has been released, giving users the ability to connect to more exchanges than ever.In the digital assets landscape, a few elements remain constant: new coins, new ERC20 tokens, and new smart contracts...
How ZK-Rollups Work
July 8, 2021
Scalability has always been an issue for public ledgers, this is old news. It’s a problem that engineers have been trying to solve for a number of years now.
Introducing Sherlock: A New Tool to Analyze Digital Assets
April 30, 2021
Digital assets continue to display tremendous growth, as investment banks, private equity groups, financial advisors and commercial banks grow more comfortable considering crypto as a potential investment opportunity and eventually a more widely...
Implementing Digital Signatures in Rust
April 14, 2021
I’m attempting to learn the Rust programming language, and for me, the only way to learn something is by trying to solve a problem.
Mental Models of Money and Lightning
February 18, 2021
Lightning is not a silver bullet, but it will significantly aid in the utility of Bitcoin and the expansion of its monetary regime. Money invention is something that necessitates first principles.