My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

I've been an entrepreneur and venture capitalist in the cryptocurrency industry for a long time, working with numerous projects.

Cryptoeconomics is so fascinating to study because it's a combination of technology, economics, and psychology.

Digital Asset has a revolutionary technology platform that eliminates the counterparty risk and lack of transparency that has hindered mainstream adoption of cryptographic technology.

In 1973, the only cryptographic technology we could get our hands on was classified.

The blockchain concept was pioneered within the context of crypto-currency Bitcoin, but engineers have imagined many other ways for distributed ledger technology to streamline the world. Stock exchanges and big banks, for example, are looking at blockchain-type systems as trading settlement platforms.

Blockchain is moving beyond cryptocurrency, and it's worth paying attention - especially since successful prototypes show that blockchain, also known as distributed ledger technology, will be transformative.

When asked to explain this space, I often ask people to forget pretty much everything you've heard about blockchains, crypto-currencies, and bitcoin, and instead dumb it down a lot and think about something no more complex or intimidating than good old-fashioned database technology.

When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way - computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives - was astonishing.

Whatever happens to bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies are gaining ground and more respect. Ethereum, for instance, has far more transparency.

Activists need to educate themselves about the power of crypto currencies like Bitcoin, invented in 2009, and use crypto to leverage the success of their independent media gains to tip the balance of power away from the troika in ways that could never happen by backing a political candidate.

We are seeing more managed money and, to an extent, institutional money entering the space. Anecdotally speaking, I know of many people who are working at hedge funds or other investment managers who are trading cryptocurrency personally, the question is, when do people start doing it with their firms and funds?

Crypto today is a libertarian paradise. If you send your money to the wrong place, it's gone. If you send it to a merchant and don't receive the goods, you have no recourse. This is cash. Treat it as such.

I am very excited about the prospect of using cryptocurrency, not just as a money equivalent, but using it as a way to earn something as a result of doing some type of work.

Cryptography is the essential building block of independence for organisations on the Internet, just like armies are the essential building blocks of states, because otherwise one state just takes over another.

Any time a country transitioned to a fiat currency, they collapsed. That's just world history; you don't have to know about cryptocurrency to know that.

MaxCoin is competing for the crypto buck, if you will. So is Bitcoin, so is Dogecoin. Alt-coins are proving to be formidable because there's a solid community behind it, there's a use for it, and it's got a great market capitalisation. I think that's going to be a winner.

A block chain is a series of blocks. Each block is a series of computations done by computers all over the world using serious cryptography in a way that's very hard to undo.

Cryptocurrency currencies take the concept of money, and they take it native into computers, where everything is settled with computers and doesn't require external institutions or trusted third parties to validate things.

What's happening in crypto - and certainly what's happening at Ripple - we have an opportunity to fundamentally change the way global commerce is managed from a payments point of view.

For merchants, it is an amazing opportunity. Compared to Paypal, crypto has no credit card fees, no charge backs, no 'Oops, we decided to hold your cash for 3-12 months while we investigate something we can't disclose.'

Equally, the surrealists consider words as witnesses of life acting in a direct way in human affairs. To use words properly it was necessary to treat them with respect, for they were the intermediaries between oneself and the rest of creation. To abuse them was immediately to set oneself adrift from true being. Words need to be coaxed to reveal a little of their true nature, so as to close the breach that exists between the writer and the universe. The world is not something alien against which man is in conflict. Rather man and cosmos exist in reciprocal motion. We are not cast adrift in an alien or meaningless environment. The universe is intimate with us and, as Breton insisted, it is a cryptogram to be deciphered.

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems give me work give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology.