Ask Doctor Bitcoin: What's a Turing-Complete Blockchain (and why should I care)? [Free, #12]
We're in the "sideways chop" right now. Either runaway market growth or runaway innovation sit poised to pounce, which makes it a great time to go back to the basics.
Well, hello there!
This is yet another week where markets have more or less continued their choppy sideways movement, but that hasn’t stopped innovation and adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The NFT world is still roaring forward, new legislation is being introduced to normalize cryptocurrency adoption, and one of the largest payment platforms in the world just became a P2P Bitcoin broker.
With NFTs poised to become the foot forward of blockchain to the world, it felt like a good time to go back to basics and talk about some of the underlying technology that NFTs are built on. This week: Turing-Complete Blockchains. In our Deep Dive, we’ll explain the origins of the term and the definition in context with blockchain.
But if this is your first time reading the free version of the newsletter (and it is for about 3000 new subscribers this week!), don’t be afraid to try out a two week free trial of the paid newsletter.
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Blockchain Bulletin
PayPal users may soon be able to send bitcoin off-site. PayPal’s head of blockchain and crypto spoke at a recent conference and said that PayPal may soon be adding the ability for users to transfer cryptocurrency in and out of the site, reported Decrypt.
Apple seeks person with cryptocurrency background for ‘Alternative Payments’ job. CoinDesk reported that an Apple job posting revealed that the company is looking for someone with cryptocurrency experience for the Apple Wallet team to develop “alternative payments.”
Coinbase fights crypto misinformation with ‘Fact Check’ blog. Crypto wallet and exchange service Coinbase set up a “Fact Check” section of its blog to proactively debunk myths spread on traditional and social media about crypto and its own company.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
Sheetz becomes the first convenience store chain to accept crypto payments. Major Mid-Atlantic restaurant and convenience store chain Sheetz announced a partnership with Flexa to accept crypto payments in stores for items and at fuel pumps.
Propy plans first-ever auction of apartment as collectible NFT. Because digital artwork wasn’t enough for the NFT-craze, now a one-bedroom apartment is up for grabs as a non-fungible token.
Texas Passes a Bitcoin Bill. Texas Legislator Tam Parker successfully lead a bipartisan effort in Texas to get regulatory clarity codified into law this week. The bill is expected to be signed by the Governor later this week.
Blockchain Deep Dive: What is a Turing-Complete Blockchain?
We’ve covered the basics of blockchain itself. Let’s go deeper.
As we previously discussed, is a database protocol technology for removing the requirement for trust between counter-parties.
The next segment of this term is Turing-Complete. That’s a term from computability theory and the dictionary definition here is a system of data manipulation rules that is said to be Turing complete if it can be used to simulate the Turing machine on a system.
For a completely absurd but entirely entertaining abstraction of what this means, watch this video of someone proving that PowerPoint is a Turing-Complete computing platform!
It’s named after the WWII era Data Scientist Alan Turing.
Bitcoin is the digital version of an analog ledger, whereas Ethereum is the digital equivalent of a spreadsheet.
This is the foundation for all major forms of advanced blockchain functionality.
Technical Analysis: The hardest thing to do is sometimes nothing at all.
From VirtualBaconDAO’s Dennis Liu
Bitcoin is in the “Sideways Chop” zone.
The Bears are out, but don’t buy the narrative just yet.
Here's a pro tip: sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing at all.
I have, however, just bought a small bag of Dogecoin on this recent breakout, though.
This trade is very short term as the general altcoin market is still looking very shaky right now.
Right now, Bitcoin dominance is potentially going back up, meaning money is flowing from risky altcoins back into Bitcoin. That's why my position in this Dogecoin trade is very small.
If anything you saw in this week’s newsletter piqued your interest, you should check out the paid version for more detail!