Did you get my response about defcon btw?

There were a couple questions in there for you. Reproduced below if you missed it, questions in bold.

Best,

Jeremy

Sorry for the delay -- I just finished my finals at MIT this week. Long email below, answering your question and an update on my activities.

I would like to go, yes. I am currently scheduling that week out as there is loft forbidden research, defcon, and a bitcoin conference I am submitting a paper to all that week. I talked with Vincenzo about going and he thought it was a good idea. Question: are these sorts of things I should send to you for reimbursement?

For a bit of an update on what I've been up to:

Thesis:

I've finished my M.Eng Thesis at MIT. I don't fully agree with the ideas I presented, but it was more of a formalization of a set of ideas. The core idea of my thesis is that decentralized utilization incentives are a good midpoint between Keynes and Hayek, and then I show a construction of them. The big application level take-aways from my thesis relate to spectrum allocation and solar energy. There's a lot of stuff you can skip, maybe just read chapters 1 & 3 (they're short) if you're interested.

Current Projects:

Earlier this spring, I gave a talk on starting a competition process to improve Bitcoin development. I have funds for it that I have accessible from MIT Bitcoin Project (I made a $40k allocation) but I'm unsure of how I should structure it -- if I should start a new nonprofit or just run reimbursement and fees through MIT. I think it probably makes sense to run it through MIT. I plan to have this ready around September.

I'm also working on a paper right now which is a systematization of knowledge on off-blockchain technology in Sitcom. Off chain systems offer one or more of the following (excerpted from forthcoming paper):

1. Separated Guarantees, the mechanism has guarantees are ensured mostly by a system or mechanism separated from the blockchain.

2. Hidden State, the mechanism has state that does not need to be present the blockchain.

3. Efficiency Optimized, the mechanism reduces the utilization of the blockchain compared to naive implementation of the problem the mechanism attempts to solve.

For the next month or so I'm trying to decompress a bit from MIT and clear my mind a bit and wrap up various projects so that I'm ready to delve into new ideas. A couple things I've been toying with lately:

• Hard tech play, I have a new design for probabilistic payment schemes that could be interesting to implement. Will at least be a good paper.

• Starting a new stock exchange -- what can a ground up redesign of a stock exchange do/offer clients? Is it possible to tap the SF/Bay area distaste for NASDAQ. Could potentially rope in some friends with a lot of exchange dev experience to this.

• On either of the above, hiring first and asking questions later -- building a team and experience is important at this phase of the game so maybe start working on one of these prepared to pivot

• Cuba infrastructure -- huge first-to-market advantage if I can build something in this untouched market and potential to have a lot of positive impact. Lot's of tourist money coming in.

Meetings:

Are there any events or things you'd like me to plan coming up?

Other:

I'm thinking about relocating to San Francisco shortly FYI, but also considering a bit of a travel circuit to learn more about other countries systems (I'm interested in what Korea does because they have very tight tech integration w/ samsung, Japan, Dubai, etc) -- is there anywhere you recommend particularly?