Ki Chong Tran

What Is a Bitcoin ETF, and Why Does Everyone from Blackrock to Grayscale Want One?

Want to earn a free on-chain certificate showcasing your Bitcoin knowledge? Take our free course, Getting Started with Bitcoin. Many of the crypto-curious still view buying Bitcoin from a crypto exchange as an intimidating and opaque process. The technical aspects of holding Bitcoin—such as crypto wallets, Bitcoin addresses and private keys—are confusing to newcomers, and scare some investors away. All of this has intensified the appeal of a Bitcoin ETF, or exchange-traded fund. In the U.S., maj...

What Is Tokenization?

Traditional asset management is a laborious process. It often requires the involvement of numerous middlemen, including various state bodies and regulators. Assets such as stocks, bonds, property, or even land can often be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to manage, putting them beyond the reach of the vast majority of the world’s population. What’s more, traditional asset management typically involves complex legal agreements and lots of paperwork, which makes it all very difficult...

Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is a set of financial services built using smart contracts.

What Is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

Decentralized finance has been touted as a possible solution to lowering the barrier of entry for those who struggled to access bank accounts. And more recently, it's being utilized by cryptocurrency owners for another purpose: to make more money. But isn’t all of crypto decentralized finance, anyway? Sort of. The DeFi movement refers to a specific genre of financial product that champions decentralization above all else, and uses lucrative incentive mechanisms to encourage investors to play alo...

ERC-721 Ethereum NFT Token Standard image by Decrypt

What Is ERC-721?

In 2017, ERC-20 was the Ethereum token standard that launched a thousand ICOs. Today, ERC-721 has launched a thousand non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Originally the lesser-known cousin of the ERC-20, ERC-721 has grown to become a pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem, underpinning billions of dollars worth of NFTs. Blockchains are a revolutionary technology upon which entirely new models of value and ownership are being developed. Before the ERC-721 token standard, most tokens on blockchains functioned...

What Is the Bitcoin Halving?

The inventor of Bitcoin believed scarcity could create value where there was none before. The Halving also known as the Halvening is occured in May 2020. To understand it, we must understand the theory behind Bitcoin’s supply. We explore it more below. A bit about Bitcoin Bitcoin was revolutionary in that it could, for the first time, make a digital product scarce. This limited supply is one of the reasons the price of Bitcoin went from being worth nothing 10 years ago to $69,000 at its peak in...

What is ERC-721? The Ethereum NFT Token Standard

In 2017, ERC-20 was the Ethereum token standard that launched a thousand ICOs. Today, ERC-721 has launched a thousand non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Originally the lesser-known cousin of the ERC-20, ERC-721 has grown to become a pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem, underpinning billions of dollars worth of NFTs. Blockchains are a revolutionary technology upon which entirely new models of value and ownership are being developed. Before the ERC-721 token standard, most tokens on blockchains functioned...

What is Wrapped Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is the world’s first, largest, and most-recognized crypto asset. Since Bitcoin’s creation over a decade ago, the technology behind the revolutionary “peer-to-peer electronic cash system” has largely remained the same. But Bitcoin isn't the be-all and end-all of cryptocurrency. On smart contract blockchains such as Ethereum, developers have created a thriving decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. In order to use Bitcoin within Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem, it's necessary to create an ERC-...

What is the Bitcoin Halving? How Bitcoin's Supply is Limited.

Every four years, the amount of Bitcoin doled out to cryptocurrency miners halves in a process imaginatively known as Bitcoin halving (or halvening). Here’s why—and how—it works. Bitcoin’s supply limit To understand the Bitcoin halving, we must first understand the theory behind its supply. The inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, believed that scarcity could create value where there was none before. After all, there’s only one Mona Lisa, only so many Picassos, a limited supply of gold on Eart...

What Is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?

In the early days of the web, to access a website you needed to type in the IP address, a string of numbers that were difficult to remember and almost impossible to guess. Then came human-readable names to make it easier for actual people to surf the world wide web. That shift turned 104.26.3.128 into Decrypt.co! Cryptocurrency is still very much in the IP address phase: Users need long, difficult-to-remember addresses in order to access the pages they want. That's where the Ethereum Name Servic...

What Is Ethereum Classic?

Ethereum Classic is a smart contract platform and cryptocurrency. Ethereum Classic (ETC) shouldn’t be confused with Ethereum (ETH), even though they were the same until an argument led to divorce. Below we explore what led to the split. What is Ethereum Classic? Ethereum Classic is very similar to Ethereum because it shares a common origin. It's a blockchain that allows other applications to be built atop it. These decentralized applications, or dapps, use code known as smart contracts so that p...

What Is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

Bitcoin—a payment system in which anyone on earth can send money to anyone else—was just the start of the crypto revolution. The people building DeFi applications seek to take accessibility one step further. Decentralized finance has been touted as a possible solution to lowering the barrier of entry for those who struggled to access bank accounts. And more recently, it's being utilized by cryptocurrency owners for another purpose: to make more money. Let’s take a look. What is DeFi? Taken colle...

Uniswap: Beginner's Guide To the Leading DEX (2021)

The burgeoning decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem aims to use decentralized, non-custodial financial products to replace centralized middlemen in financial applications such as loans, insurance and derivatives. Uniswap is an example of one of the core products in the DeFi ecosystem, the decentralized crypto exchange, or DEX. DEXs aim to solve many of the problems of their centralized counterparts, including the risk of hacking, mismanagement, and arbitrary fees. However, decentralized exchan...

What is Cosmos Network (ATOM), the Internet of Blockchains?

At the moment, a blockchain tends to act as its own universe with almost no way to communicate with the world outside of its network–without third-party help anyway. As a result, bickering, tribalism, and maximalism among the supporters of the various different blockchains has become the norm. But can there be one blockchain to unite them all? Take a trip as we explore Cosmos, the "Internet of blockchains". What is Cosmos Network? Cosmos' aim is simple: to enable any blockchain to communicate, s...

How To Use DAI Stablecoin: Beginner's Guide (2021)

There are plenty of stable digital currencies available, but only one can claim to be widely used, decentralized, and trustless. In this article, we find out why DAI stands out from the rest of the stablecoin pack. Crypto with steady value isn’t new or rare. Tether has been around for years and is by far the largest stablecoin available. We also have stablecoins such as USDC, PAX, Gemini Coin, and Facebook's upcoming Diem (formerly Libra) all competing to be the stable cryptocurrency of choice,...

What Is The Kyber Network?

In the crypto world, most communities and projects have their own token. Many times these tokens are required to use their own protocol. If you don’t already hold that token, you must go to an exchange and exchange your token for the required token–a cumbersome step. This is where Kyber Network comes in. The project wants to enable any token holder to easily convert one token to another with a minimum of fuss. In this article, we explore how Kyber got started and its mission to provide seamles...

What is DigiByte?

According to DigiByte, blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are not secure or scalable enough. DigiByte claims to have a proven and tested solution that is faster and safer than the competition. What is DigiByte? DigiByte is a complete blockchain network based on three different layers. The top layer is for smart contracts, decentralized applications, and customizable tokens. The middle layer is the public ledger where the DigiByte native coin can move throughout the network and serve as its...

What is Synthetix?

The trading of stocks, currencies, commodities, and other assets are still dominated by the likes of Wall Street, London, Hong Kong, and other traditional financial centers. Synthetix wants to bring that toolkit over into the decentralized, global, permission-less, and 24/7 world of crypto. Read on to discover how a crucial pivot in tokenomics turned Synthetix into one of the hottest DeFi products available. What is Synthetix? Synthetix allows users to bet on crypto assets, stocks, currencies,...

What is dYdX?

On the surface, dYdX looks like just another lending protocol on Ethereum, but dig a little deeper and you will find a protocol trying to take Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to the next level. Below we explore who invented it, how it works and what makes it so special. Problem Margin trading, options, and derivatives are common tools for traditional traders and investors, but in crypto, these features were limited to centralized exchanges such as Kraken, Huobi, and Binance. For the first time, th...

What is bZx?

Crypto tokens have long been criticized as only useful for speculation and gambling, but new decentralized finance (DeFi) applications are changing that narrative. One such company trying to change that narrative is bZx. This article explores how bZx is working alongside other popular DeFi protocols such as Compound and MakerDAO in not only lending, but also integrating tokens into their core functionality. But first, let's explore how traders borrow money. Problem For crypto traders, access to...

What is Compound?

In a traditional savings account, you put money into the bank and earn interest on that money. The problem is that regular bank customers are not able to use their deposited, interest-earning money in any other way once it’s in the bank. What if you could spend the money your savings earned while still saving? That's an idea DeFi, or decentralized finance is hoping to solve. One of the companies working on offering this service in the DeFi world is Compound. Below we explore how this Ethereum b...

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Stories by Ki Chong Tran

What Is a Bitcoin ETF, and Why Does Everyone from Blackrock to Grayscale Want One?

What Is Tokenization?

What Is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

What Is ERC-721?

What Is the Bitcoin Halving?

What is ERC-721? The Ethereum NFT Token Standard

What is Wrapped Bitcoin?

What is the Bitcoin Halving? How Bitcoin's Supply is Limited.

What Is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS)?

What Is Ethereum Classic?

What Is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?

Uniswap: Beginner's Guide To the Leading DEX (2021)

What is Cosmos Network (ATOM), the Internet of Blockchains?

How To Use DAI Stablecoin: Beginner's Guide (2021)

What Is The Kyber Network?

What is DigiByte?

What is Synthetix?

What is dYdX?

What is bZx?

What is Compound?