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Way back in 2014, long before most people had heard of blockchain, much less what we now call Web3–the movement of centralized internet structures to platforms like blockchain–Muneeb Ali launched his first company, OneName, an early effort to use bitcoin’s underlying technology to create domain names.
Since getting his PhD from Princeton after writing a thesis on using blockchain to design a new internet, he’s raised over $200 million and one of his latest projects, the stacks cryptocurrency, which enables sophisticated smart contracts first popularized by ethereum, but on the bitcoin blockchain has exploded in value.
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Over the past week, it’s increased by 98% to $1.05, with a market cap of $1.4 billion, as interest around creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on bitcoin is entering the crypto consciousness. Another OG bitcoin Layer 2 solution (the term for a blockchain that sits on top of another blockchain enabling new features or faster transactions), called RSK, has increased 80% over the same period and bitcoin itself has jumped 32% this week to $26,420, with a market cap of $555 billion.
Earlier this week I had a chance to sit down with Ali to talk about how being born in Pakistan informed his thinking on the role that Central Banks play in creating financial stability and hyper-inflation, and why he decided to build his technology on the first cryptocurrency.
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