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Many want to know what bitcoin is and how it works. But bitcoin is as complex as it is controversial, and relatively few have the technical background to understand it. In this paper, I offer an accessible on-ramp for understanding bitcoin in the form of a model. My model reveals both what bitcoin is and how it works. More specifically, it reveals that bitcoin is a fictional substance in a massively coauthored story on a network that automates and distributes jobs normally entrusted to centralized publishing institutions. My model therefore falsifies a popular view according to which each bitcoin is a chunk of code.

The humanitarian sector has gone through a major shift toward injection of cash into vulnerable communities as its core modality. On this trajectory toward direct currency injection, something new has happened: namely the empowerment of communities to create their own local currencies, a tool known as Complementary Currency systems. This study mobilizes the concepts of endogenous regional development, import substitution and local market linkages as elaborated by Albert Hirschman and Jane Jacobs, to analyze the impact of a group of Complementary Currencies instituted by Grassroots Economics Foundation and the Red Cross in Kenya. The paper discusses humanitarian Cash and Voucher Assistance programs and compares them to a Complementary Currency system using Grassroots Economics as a case study. Transaction histories recorded on a blockchain and network visualizations show the ability of these Complementary Currencies to create diverse production capacity, dense local supply chains, and data for measuring the impact of humanitarian currency transfers. Since Complementary Currency systems prioritize both cooperation and localization, the paper argues that Complementary Currencies should become one of the tools in the Cash and Voucher Assistance toolbox.

VitaDAO is a new cooperative vehicle for community-governed and decentralized drug development and intellectual property. Our core mission is the acceleration of R&D in the extension of human life and health-span. Today, the biopharma industry booms with unprecedented late-stage investment, particularly in longevity science. However, the industry severely lacks critical early-stage funding. Moreover, incentives between patients, researchers and industry are misaligned, risking monopolization of lifespan extension. At its core, biopharma value creation consists of intellectual property (IP) rights, domain-specific know-how, and research data. Today, R&D has become prohibitively expensive and siloed, largely due to the way IP business models incentivize the monopolization of innovation. This is done through the creation of patent thickets in protected portfolios. These IP mechanisms prevent open sharing of research data, inherently disincentivizing collaboration and transparency. They prevent the public and patients from having any real ownership in biopharma IP, despite their tax dollars funding most early-stage development. Outside of grants to fund basic research, early-stage funding for drug development is extremely limited. When drugs do finally make it to market, there exist strong incentives for price gouging. To align incentives and vitalize early-stage funding in longevity biopharma, VitaDAO uses a combination of novel governance frameworks in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and financial engineering tools such as algorithmic automated market makers (AMMs), all of which run on the Ethereum blockchain. As an open global cooperative that anyone can join, VitaDAO’s goal is to support and finance new therapeutics and research data in longevity science. In exchange, VitaDAO will directly hold IP and data rights in the novel early-stage therapeutics it supports and funds. We will grow a portfolio of IP and data assets, which we can make available and monetize either through novel data marketplaces or by conventional licensing and commercialisation processes in biopharma. By utilising community-guided decision-making processes, VitaDAO aims to: 1. rapidly decrease funding decision lifecycles 2. attract the worlds leading researchers by promoting open science principles 3. democratize ownership thereof The lifeblood of VitaDAO is its native curation and governance token: VITA. Individuals or organizations can obtain VITA tokens by contributing work, funds, or other resources like data and IP. Ownership of VITA allows the holder to participate in the curation and governance of VitaDAOs assets and its research.

The rapidly growing importance of blockchain technology has taken many scholars and industry professionals by surprise. Its emergence has sparked a multitude of innovative, yet largely untested use cases and business models that have the potential to substantially transform the marketing landscape. More specifically, blockchain as the base technology in combination with tokenization has the potential to fundamentally transform marketing communication by changing the ways in which companies and their customers interact. While academic research still ponders how blockchain can be best incorporated into existing research streams, the industry tests numerous ideas on a trial-and-error basis. Blockchains comprise a diverse array of complex and rapidly developing technological building blocks, which makes them hard to understand and integrate into existing marketing frameworks, models, and theories. In contrast, a specific focus on tokens facilitates understanding and classification. In this paper, we clarify the terminology surrounding the emerging token ecosystem from a marketing perspective, illustrate how tokens can potentially impact the marketing profession, and recommend approaches for their integration into academic research.