Ryan Selkis | Token-Curated Registries: Building the Information Database for a New Financial System

Aug 6, 2018

Ryan Selkis, Co-founder and CEO of Messari, discusses the building of token-curated registries for the crypto space. Topics include the importance of information in the digital age, Messari's open data library, and the vision for a decentralized Bloomberg of crypto. The concept of token-curated registries and their potential in pricing credentials and facilitating informed decision-making is explored. The impact of disbanding the SEC and the value of an information resource are also discussed. Additionally, the value and usage of tokens in token-curated registries, the process of raising capital, and releasing a token for growth are covered.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Cryptocurrency Investing: Background and Potential

02:05 • 26min

Building an Information Database for the Financial System

27:50 • 6min

Token-Curated Registries: Pricing Credentials and Facilitating Informed Decision-Making

33:46 • 4min

The Impact of Disbanding the SEC and the Value of an Information Resource

37:33 • 2min

Token-Curated Registries and Incentives for Token Holders

39:11 • 13min

The Process of Raising Capital and Releasing a Token for Growth

52:36 • 2min

In Episode 55 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Ryan Selkis about how his company, Messari, is bringing a new level of data gathering and analysis to the crypto space by building what are known as token-curated registries.

Information has become, quite literally, the currency of the digital age. Yet, even before the advent of cryptocurrencies, investors have always understood information to be a valuable asset. “The most valuable commodity I know of is information,” said the iconic Wall Street villain Gordon Gekko. However, information is a commodity, only in so far as it derives its value from the computational efforts of those who seek to process it. In a world of informational abundance, the quality of our computations, not their quantity, determine the scale of our harvest.

Ryan Selkis believes that harvesting, processing, and storing data about the crypto economy can be done better. His team at Messari is building an open data library, as well as a set of curation tools that will help researchers, investors, and regulators make sense of the industry.

Ryan has stated outright that the “Bloomberg of crypto will be a network, not a centralized company.” This is where his work on token-curated registries factors in.

“Token-curated registries are decentrally-curated lists with intrinsic economic incentives for token holders to curate the list's contents judiciously,” wrote Mike Goldin, in a 2017 article titled “Token-Curated Registries 1.0.” You could say that if Wikipedia and Bitcoin had a baby, the child would be a TCR. Such databases could theoretically replace all commercially curated, owned, and operated, libraries on earth, by offering a new set of economic incentives that harness the networks and expertise of the planet’s seven-and-a-half billion people.

In this week’s episode of Hidden Forces, Ryan Selkis joins Demetri Kofinas for a conversation about information, cryptocurrency, and how Messari is working to build the database for a new financial system.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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