Decential Media

I first met Derrick Washington in 2014. I was living in Boston during a tumultuous moment in American history. In Ferguson, Michael Brown had just been murdered. The ubiquity of smartphones was waking the public to the fact that his death was no isolated event. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Rekia Boyd. This was the beginning of Black Lives Matter, and the so-called “woke” movement – a groundswell so consequential that the word itself is now demonized by millions who, apparently, prefer to stay asleep.

Minted begins inside the living room of Mike Winkelmann, better known as the artist Beeple. Surrounded by friends and family, he’s watching as an NFT of his now iconic piece "Everydays: the First 5000 Days" is auctioned by Christie’s for an astounding $69.3 million. It was the moment that shook the earth. Frontpage headlines introduced NFTs to the world, conveying shock, wonder and skepticism that this might be the future of art. But it was also art’s past.

“The first time I ever found Bitcoin, I think it was worth two hundredths of a penny,” he told me. “I tried to borrow my school's supercomputer to mine it, which would have quadrupled the hashrate of the network at the time. But they said no, because it was a gift from IBM and could not be used for financial gain." After graduating in 2014, he worked in festival technology and production, managing cashless payment systems.

A loud gong startled me in the water and broke my relaxed state. I must’ve been there for a couple of hours by the look of my pruned palms. The Sauna Master serenaded us to the big sauna room for Aufguss, a guided sauna ceremony. We sat cross-legged around the dry sauna like at a campfire. Going down a step dropped the temp by a degree. Crap, I was on the top level.

Cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are two paradigm-shifting technologies that have evolved independently but are starting to converge. Blockchain enables AI to be more transparent, while AI helps improve the user experience for transacting on-chain. According to Jonathan King, principal investor for Coinbase Ventures, the infrastructure layer that allows the two technologies to mesh was built over the last 12-18 months. Now we’re moving into the application layer.

Every day, humans and robots produce and consume endless amounts of digital data across websites, mobile applications and beyond. The Internet has helped proliferate that data to all corners of the globe, and with it, the need for data storage. It’s an expansion that shows no signs of slowing down, and according to Global Market Insights, the global decentralized storage market was valued at $623 million in 2024, but is now estimated to reach $4.5 billion by 2034.

If last year’s ETHDenver signaled crypto is back, this year’s event says crypto is here to stay. After the grind of the Biden administration, licking wounds post-FTX and a crypto winter that rivalled Buffalo in February, things have finally thawed. It’s been a big year for crypto – super PACs raising record amounts in D.C., the approval of the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, Bitcoin hitting an all-time high, and the change of administration with Gensler out on the curb.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more immersive the need to discern fact from fiction and the real from the fabricated will become ever more pressing. Verification and proof of authenticity will especially be needed in the financial technology (fintech) industry, where privacy and protecting user data are paramount.

Take one look at X (formerly Twitter) today and you’re bound to see headlines and information pertaining to the latest dubious actions of those in power and their questionable moves within the crypto space.

When constructing social networks, a principle known as Dunbar’s number states that humans within a group reach a limit of 150 people at which they can comfortably maintain stable relationships. Exceed that number, and the potential for meaningful relationships decreases. In a web3 context, that means decentralized but collective organizations, known as DAOs, have a hard cap on the number of people who can effectively support an online network spread across the world.