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the-irish-mayhem · 5 years ago

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Happy Fosterson Week Day 2: Outside POV! This fic stemmed from my love of fake academia, but also my absolute desire to never write an academic paper ever again. So I found a bit of a middle ground. Fair warning: Both Jane and Thor have passed away in this. But never fear, their life together was long and happy.

A generation later, a budding social scientist tries to figure out Jane and Thor.

Read on AO3.

Legacy.

Post Thread Created: 1/23/01 Originally Posted: 1/23/01 Post Edited: 10/30/04

Edit 10/30/04: WOW, I did not anticipate that this post series would blow up the way it did! Thank you to all who shared this and supported me in this journey, and if you’re wondering, yes, my book is now out! You can get your copy of The Dynasty That Never Was: A Biography at your local retailer, the Bionic Press cloudstore, or at your local library.

Just a little bit of context: this was very early in my thesis writing process, back when Jane and Thor were only planned to encompass a single chapter of my book (ha!) and I was planning on writing a straight cultural analysis rather than the cultural analysis-slash-biography it became.

Okay, now on with the original post!

Good morning, fellow New Asgard Anthropologists. For any newcomers, my name is (future Dr.) Melanie LaComb, and the purpose of this blog has been to share my research on a little more of a ground level, record my process of writing my thesis, and talk/write through some problems and put them up for community collaboration. It’s also nice to be able to shed the academic discourse for just a few minutes and write informally. So much freedom! So many exclamations and I statements! Anyway, I’m writing this new post to talk my way through a bit of a new thorn in my research. The late Thor Odinson and Jane Foster.

A lot of academics have kind of scoffed at this problem of mine—they were two extremely famous individuals! Integral to so many galactically significant events! Of course there is absolute mega loads of information on them! There must be dozens of biographies and at least two definitive autobiographies for beings of such impressive historical stature!

This may shock you, but NO there actually isn’t. Or, I suppose in some ways there is but not in the ways that would be most useful for me. For Odinson, who grew up on Old Asgard, the destruction of the planet meant the destruction of many records kept from his years before the Greatest War Against Thanos. His years afterwards are better trackable, but hardly centralized and hardly the more personalized records I am (now trying to get at. Foster, known on Midgard as Dr. Jane Foster and colloquially throughout the galaxy as “Jane the Thinker” or “Jane the Brilliant,” is surprisingly easier to get a handle on. Her fame wasn’t contingent upon her marital status, and she was well-known in scientific circles even before the first battle of the War in the year 2012.

So the root of my problem is this: fitting this pair into my New Asgard diaspora research. Because they are….. how do I say this…. not fitting? With my methodology? (I went to the school of redundancy school, but F*ck I’ve been writing and writing and writing for like 8 hours today already and I’m not changing it so THERE.)

So most of my research deals with the formation of a New Asgardian identity, and it relies heavily upon the shared cultural experiences of the Dark Elf Invasion of Old Asgard and the death of Queen Frigga (an aside, but one of my classmates, Korla Majer, wrote a really stellar article on why the Dark Elf invasion should be included as one of the major battles of the Greatest War, and how the dismissal of the event by most historians actively hurts our understanding of galactic politics at the time and I absolutely 10/10 would recommend you go read it after you finish this blog post) as well as the battle for and destruction of New Asgard. For beings so long lived as us, Asgardians have proven that we can make our memories as short as we need to, and those two events seemed to create the largest basis for the new cultural identity forged on Earth. (For some obvious reasons, namely being the events that led to the planet being destroyed and necessitating the move to Midgard, but ANYWAY.)

But I can’t really deny Jane and Thor’s place in the New Asgardian identity because their effect on the masses is well-documented. There are libraries full of memes, old paper magazines with paparazzi photos paired with barely-real stories that say a lot more about the readership than they do the subjects, even some old FanFiction that I was able to dig up that is in some ways more helpful than all the academia from that time period combined XD

In my roundabout way, the problem I’m trying to sort through is this: HOW do I tackle the Jane/Thor chapter?

Because in my original outlining of my thesis, I had planned on their chapter being a quick summation of how they met just before the Greatest War’s beginning, courted through the course of it, and married at its conclusion. Then, I’d give some context on their influence on galactic politics (because despite what some people erroneously think, they actually were not the monarchs of New Asgard. They remained advisors only after Thor abdicated the throne and named Brunnhilde [of house Dragonfang, an extremely old and well-respected Old Asgardian family] his successor. There was the five year gap of the Blip where Thor was officially King, but it was hardly a politically significant time as for much of this period Thor was gone from New Asgard), how some political maneuvers affected the general New Asgardian populace, and then move back to the cultural study portion of things. But the more sources I gather about them, the more I think this chapter might need to be extended, or made into some… sub point of my main thesis.

Because while I said earlier that information on them is hard to find (because it is!!! You try making document requests to 17 different universities on 15 different planets!!!! Alfheim literally delivered what I asked for in a light spectrum file format!!!!!!!! Like WHAT!!!!!! AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS????? HOW DO I CONVERT THIS INTO A PDF OR EVEN JUST MAKE IT COMPATIBLE WITH HOLOREADERS) it’s not always the quantity that’s the issue, it’s the content. I found myself longing to know more about who these people were and why they did the things they did. I’ve always found that I've done my best research when I follow my gut feelings, and research things that I’m passionate about. New Asgardian diaspora culture? I’m living it, baby! I’m very interested because my generation is the first generation to have never set foot on Asgard, and that’s something worth exploring!

And now here I am weirdly fascinated by an almost-king whose magical powers are pretty legendary who was banished and fell in love with a woman (who was 100% human at the time, by the way) whose scientific theories were so advanced that her own people thought she was a bit of a kook until all of her theories started getting proven right. From a non-academic perspective, that sounds like a freaking romance novel or epic movie or something. (Which, by the way, it was! There were at least 6 separate pieces of media [film, novel, television show] that were based on their story that I can find on record.) So on a personal level, here I am wondering why two people in the past got married in spite of wildly different life circumstances/why one of them abdicated a throne that was his birthright, and on an academic level A) trying to figure out how to fit this weird fascination into my thesis B) how did these two political and cultural figures shape the cultural landscape C) was their effect on the cultural landscape more or less significant than the two events which have been taking the most of my focus for the last year? D) how productive is it to even ask the question of more or less significance?

*screaming*

A few people have asked me if I should just switch my track to talk about how they affected Brunnhilde’s rule over New Asgard (which, in case you missed previous posts, Brunnhilde is a huge part of my current thesis as she essentially presided over what I’m terming “The New Asgardian Cultural Renaissance” and was absolutely critical to how things were shaped.) I’m hesitant to do this because this has actually already been done. I’ll stick JSTOR links in the endnotes, but Dr. Hamel Radley literally wrote this. “A King For the Ages: Brunnhilde’s First Three Decades.” Also, Dr. Leslie Storn’s “A King’s Court: Brunnhilde’s Advisory Council.” AND Dr. Jorseph Naulty’s “King Brunnhilde’s Surprising Advisory Council: Steady Hands, Scientists, Military Minds, and Galactic Politicking.” Look, there’s a LOT on Brunnhilde’s rule, and a LOT written on her advisory council. She was the ruling monarch, so it’s pretty par for the course.

But for how politically and culturally significant they seemed to be, there’s not really much specifically on Jane and Thor. Their cultural influences are given lip-service, and that’s it. (Again, Jane has been scientifically significant in a way no one has achieved since Albert Einstein, so in that way she’s more famous than her husband, but scientific notoriety isn’t the same as recognizing the fullness of her cultural contributions.)

I brought this stuff up to my advisor, and she said to keep pulling this thread because I’m on to something here, I just need to figure out what.

So my next research goal is to reach out to their descendents. They have a few children and grandchildren living, and hopefully at least one of them is willing to speak to me about them as people so I can get that portion of things nailed down before I go insane.

My almost-insanity probably bled into this post a little bit because it’s redundant as heck and you can bet your bum I am not spell-checking or proofreading. I need a break from that garbage. The life of a doctoral student continues.

Here’s to pulling the thread. Hopefully something useful unravels.

-(Future Dr.) Melanie LaComb

Reply posted by: Winsome34, 1/23/01 08:23

Melanie--this is a super interesting track, and your advisor was absolutely right when they said to follow it. I think it would be really interesting to read a sort of half-biography, half-cultural analysis piece. Would be really unique, and I’m sure any doctoral committee would find it an engaging topic.

Not sure if you’ve tried the Avengers Museum and Historical Library yet, but that might be a good place to go for some more primary sources, since Thor was a founding member and Jane was closely tied to them throughout their life. They have a really solid amazing librarians there who know the stacks backwards and forwards. I relied heavily on them when I was researching my last paper about racism against superheroes of color in the early 21st century.

Reply posted by: KorlaMajer, 1/23/01 10:22

Thanks for the shoutout boo ;) Your thesis is gonna be amazing!

ALSO: I have a light spectrum file converter from my dad. He does a ton of business with Alfheim and they are NOTORIOUS for sending incompatible LSFs.

Reply posted by: Chloe Durbin, 2/2/01 20:40

Hey! My mom is actually really tight with Thor and Jane’s oldest daughter Valkyrie. I think they knew each other from school or something back in the day, but she’s really awesome and basically my aunt, so if you need an intro or a number to call, I’ve got you! Just shoot me an email [email protected]. She’s really approachable if you don’t mind walking up to a lady who is literally 6’8” and looks like she literally HAS killed a man with her bare hands. But super nice though!

Universal Reply posted by: Blogmaster, 5/3/01 06:27

Thank you everyone for the tips! It’s going to help so much! The Avengers Library has actually been majorly helpful (I never even thought to look there, honestly!) and Valkyrie has agreed to sit down to an interview (of sorts) so everything is seriously looking up. And THE LSF CONVERTER WORKED LIKE A CHARM.

#fostersonweek #fostersonweek2019 #fosterson week #2019 day 2 #fic

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hotelconcierge · 8 years ago

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The Subprime Directive

no one likes us / i don’t know why

Trying to extract useful information from the 24-hour thinkpiece cycle is like trying to learn English by listening to low fidelity death metal: the signal to noise ratio is very, very low. (Admittedly, kind of a silly comparison—one imbues the audience with depraved bloodlust for unspeakable atrocities, the other is a genre of music.) The cacophony of 40,000 anhedonics exhausting every topical combination of syllables would be enough to institutionalize the Dalai Lama; words are infectious; once you find yourself forming political opinions about internet memes, your life is game over, A + B + Select + Start. I mean damn, I love pattern matching as much as the next former toy-sorter, but sometimes it’s okay to accept that a cigar is a cigar and a butterfly in New Mexico was having a bad day.

If you do want to stay “informed,” instead of doing something worthwhile like working at a soup kitchen or practicing the yo-yo, my advice is that you train yourself to zoom out. No one post-puberty will make a significant error of deductive reasoning. Nothing horrifies a teenager like hypocrisy: the first thing we learn out of Eden is how to circle A —> B around into Z —> A. Logic is easy, ask any expert on Aether. Nor will anyone worth rap battling commit a decisive factual error. Our flat earth has enough case studies to support even the most whacked ideology, ask any schizophrenic. Further, we humans of latitude have practiced the art of the squeal since our first lung expansion. We may be terrible at diagnosis, but we are the GOAT at identifying symptoms. So when you roll up your sleeves to shadowbox with a Bad Argument, you are going to face an internally consistent worldview backed by genuine hurt and fitting examples. This is why change is so difficult, and why other people are so infuriating: the problem is not bias, it is incompleteness. The only way out is to spot what is not included, the lie of omission, which requires perspective. Any given data point is both true and meaningless, a straight line across points makes you Nostradamus. Most arguments are nonsense, but when everyone chooses the same type of nonsense, that tells you something very interesting indeed.

With this methodology in mind, it is my contention that three of the most prevalent post-election news trends are designed with a single goal in mind: to prevent you from looking too closely at this picture—

—while humanity gets crunched into Google AdWords and fed to Cthulhu. The end of all things will be search engine optimized, at least we can take comfort in that.

Trend the first - Fake news: “Solving the Problem of Fake News” (New Yorker), “Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook” (New York Magazine), “Fake News Expert On How False Stories Spread And Why People Believe Them” (NPR), “Students Have 'Dismaying' Inability To Tell Fake News From Real, Study Finds” (NPR), “How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study” (New York Times), “How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News” (New York Times), “The plague of fake news is getting worse -- here's how to protect yourself” (CNN).

Trend the second - Post-truth: “This Article Won��t Change Your Mind” (The Atlantic), “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” (New Yorker), “Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters” (Washington Post), “Why People Continue to Believe Objectively False Things,” (NYTimes), “Why We Believe Obvious Untruths” (NYTimes), “It’s Time to Give Up on Facts” (Slate).

Pause—why do these articles, I suppose it’s too meta to call them “fake news”, exist? I mean, human intransigence has been around since at least the 1980s. And yes, Breitbart sells souls wholesale, but for every article penned in blood by Mephistopheles there are 666 million (Snopes confirms) incorrect tweets, tumblr posts, reddit comments, and Facebook memes. Where do people really get their news? The Urban News Network has no wish to enter such murky waters, nor do they want you to ponder their 2016 election blindsiding and whether, perhaps, maybe, their self-righteous sensationalism even contributed to this abhorrent outcome. No, quite the opposite:

Private browsing and Adblock if you must click the links, these sites will give your computer herpes.

Denunciations of “fake news” both aggrandize the media and flatter their readers—who, after all, are being informed by the Pulitzer-winning journalism that America needs. This crowd is even more pleased by articles on our innate resistance to facts, social science skin flicks brought back pay-per-view. Fake news is a concrete, solvable problem, but “Post-truth”—and note that anyone who uses this phrase is not just drinking the Kool Aid but is doing a keg stand with it—“Post-truth” is cozily fatalistic. “Some people, they just can’t handle facts. What can you do?” Needless to say, every human intransigence piece references the Trump administration in either the first or last paragraph, except the Atlantic piece, which compensates via a cartoon illustration of a Trump supporter being unable to handle facts.

It’s comforting to know that everyone else is dumb, else Facebook would be out of business. But imagining that 3/4ths of the U.S. is occupied by orcs is actually a little scary. It’s too many people to hate, and they have guns, and besides, it’s no fun to be disliked. “Why would they be angry at us?”

Trend the Third - The Oxy and the Pity: “The Original Underclass” (The Atlantic), “2 of a Farmer’s 3 Children Overdosed. What of the Third — and the Land?” (NYTimes), “‘Deaths of Despair’ Are Surging Among the White Working Class” (Bloomberg), “Study: Communities Most Affected By Opioid Epidemic Also Voted For Trump” (NPR), “Orphaned by America’s Opioid Epidemic” (Washington Post), “Disabled, or just desperate?” (Washington Post), “Why The White Working Class Votes Against Itself” (Washington Post).

Not everyone absorbs information through the cultish repetition of buzzwords. So, to accommodate visual learners, the Washington Post has been kind enough to provide photos.

He returned in torn jeans and, with nothing better to do, went outside. He limped to the truck and fiddled with jumper cables. He set a fire inside an iron bin and burned some trash. He inspected a sheet of aluminum he had found, wondering how much he could sell it for. He walked into the woods and walked out. He looked at the road. A car hadn’t passed in a long while. It was 1 in the afternoon. The day already felt over. (Washington Post)

Madie Clark looks in on her granddaughter Zoie Pulliam, 10, and a visiting relative at their home in South Charleston. Clark moved into the bedroom where her daughter Amanda Pulliam and son-in-law Austin Pulliam died of heroin overdoses. (Washington Post)

This is poverty porn. Orphaned kids and burning trash and mothers trailing secondhand smoke and framed pictures of Jesus. Sunburns and Frito-Lays and rotting teeth and AM country radio in waiting rooms. Dead grass, chronic pain, highway-Walmart-highway tessellated on a map. The loss of manufacturing jobs. A people devoid of purpose, seeing no option but to kill the pain or else themselves.

If you think the above paragraph is accurate, then I bet you think rap music videos are an accurate depiction of urban black life. It’s a stereotype, a stereotype constructed for your convenience. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your half-forgotten high school reading list. I don’t dispute that Dogville is accurate for some portion of the white working class. But it’s far from the whole picture.

Per fivethirtyeight: Clinton did well in medium-income, high-education counties; Trump did well in high-income, medium-education counties, pictured above. No one in a town of 95k median income is so overwhelmed by “economic anxiety” that they spaz out into intravenous heroin. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain is predicated on education, or lack thereof—class, not income. And to the neutral pH water crowd, that’s terrifying.

Different monikers have been proposed for the Urban News Network audience: blue tribe, White People, upper middle class, Aspirational 14%. For simplicity, I’m going to use “liberals,” but please do not interpret the following blast of vitriol as “conservative,” “leftist,” “anarcho-marxist,” or otherwise politically motivated. You will not find a policy proposal here. This is a critique of people.

The alt-right contends that a liberal belief in “multiculturalism,” uttered as a slur, is undermining the foundations of civilization. They’re delusional. Liberals don’t believe in multiculturalism at all. In its purest form, liberal ideology only recognizes two types of people: liberals, and the tragically misguided—who, if not for their brainwashing, would listen to hold music and take Zoloft like any sensible person. Oh sure, you can consume your culture. Dress how you will, eat your ethnic food and celebrate your ethnic holidays (how exotic!), place your religion on the mantlepiece, complain about white people on any number of white-people-owned forums and newspapers. Be as cultural as you want, as long as you choose cash or credit and don’t contradict the superculture. Zizek voice:

“The tragedy of our predicament, when we are within ideology, is that when we think we escape it, into our dreams—at that point, we are within ideology.”

Liberals do not want to look at cultural values, they do not even want to acknowledge that cultural values exist, because that would mean they have a set of cultural values, and ain’t nobody gonna FaceTime that abyss. So how do liberals explain the people who read magazines about car radios? If the FOX demographic contains human beings with thought-out opinions, then they are terrifying. But if they are would-be Tesla owners who have been cruelly deprived of Cotillion lessons, who have been tricked by Steve Bannon into liking Harley-Davidson and hydromorphone, who, as the saying goes, are “voting against their own interests”—then nothing needs to change.

As of late, this blog’s essays have been obsessed with a particular theme: how, in a capitalist society, defining yourself against something perversely encourages that something to exist. Your freakout alerts enemies, exes, and passing contrarians that they should rush to the other side; your panic deepens; soon enough you’ll pay the opposition to set up their bowling pins just so you can see them get knocked down again. But if/when your rage congeals into boredom and it’s time to silence a group once and for all, a different tack is required: pity.

The media coverage of the opioid epidemic aims to turn rural America into an Oppressed Group. It is the final bombardment of a culture war campaign that has been going on for decades, spearheaded by 600 episodes of This American Life crying “Look, even these savages have some nobility!” The Hallmark cards for Trump voters are not an attempt to heal a divided nation, they are Liberals Going Their Own Way. We want other groups to be post-truth, deprived of free will in an incoherent and unjust society, because this allows us to completely ignore them. For their own good.

Sam Altman of Y Combinator asked Trump supporters to explain to their vote. A few highlights:

“He is not politically correct.” Note: This sentiment came up a lot, probably in at least a third of the conversations I had.

“He is anti-immigration.” Note: This sentiment came up a lot. The most surprising takeaway for me how little it seemed to be driven by economic concerns, and how much it was driven by fears about “losing our culture”, “safety”, “community”, and a general Us-vs.-Them mentality.

“He is anti-abortion.” A number of people I spoke to said they didn’t care about anything else he did and would always vote for whichever candidate was more anti-abortion.

I humbly submit that NONE OF THESE ISSUES were discussed in the run-up to the 2016 election. “Political correctness” prompted an eye-roll and a mention of a rogues gallery weakman (e.g. Milo Yiannopoulos). Immigration was always discussed in terms of economic anxiety or xenophobia/racism, never in terms of “loss of culture.” As to abortion...“What is this, 2004? Who cares?”

I have no idea if Altman’s sample was representative, methodology not printed, standard disclaimers apply. But I am concerned. As Hollywood liberalism disappears deeper and deeper into its own fractalizing asshole, those outside its cultural sphere—in America, France, England, and elsewhere—will feel progressively less heard and respected, which will prompt liberalism to bury its head all the more. “How come the white working class uses government programs while railing against handouts?” Because you are the government. They’ll take what they can, but they’ll be damned if they beg for it. “Why are all these hicks voting for authoritarianism?” Exercise some basic cognitive empathy, please. They’re not voting for authoritarianism. They’re voting for fuck you.

All I’m asking for is honor in dueling: when someone raises a specific complaint, address that complaint, not what you think that complaint should be. I’m not saying that you have to be nice to Trump supporters. I’m not saying their opinions aren’t—arguably—myopic, evil, stupid. But it's far better to say that someone has stupid opinions than to say that someone is so stupid that they are incapable of having a meaningful opinion. Liberal insistence on the latter has turned political discourse into a vacuum where everyone can scream yet no one feels heard. You should see what it’s done to their kids.

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click2watch · 6 years ago

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SF Summit Shows BitTorrent Is Boosting Tron’s Appeal

“I was very interested in making fun of it.”

That’s how crypto YouTuber Ben Armstrong, known around the web as “BitBoy,” described how he felt about Tron prior to its acquisition last summer of file-sharing platform BitTorrent.

Now, outside Day 2 of Tron’s niTROn Summit in San Francisco last Friday, BitBoy felt differently: Tron was worth paying attention to.

Sure, the company’s over-the-top marketing exploits (not to mention accusations from crypto luminaries such as Vitalik Buterin of plagiarizing others’ work) were an easy source of derision, BitBoy said. But the BitTorrent move had changed the calculus. It was a sentiment CoinDesk encountered more than once among attendees of the event.

When we spoke with Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun after his opening remarks, project promotion was still front of mind. But with BitTorrent in his company’s toolbox, things are at a new level.

Moving on from memes and hype, Tron has made a bet that by acquiring this long-standing company at the center of an early protocol it can leapfrog the crypto adoption problem. Introducing cryptocurrency to a huge user base – something legacy internet companies have so far been reluctant to do – is Sun’s new vision.

Sun told CoinDesk:

“BitTorrent is different, because we already have 100 million active users. I think that is the huge challenge for other companies.”

All about users

BitTorrent’s permanence has been impressive, but it remains buggy.

In short, BitTorrent allows lots of users to quickly download files by breaking them into pieces. If everyone downloads different pieces at the same time, they can all get the file close to equally fast. It’s able to do this by requiring users to also share back the parts that they’ve already downloaded from the system. That’s the crux of its peer-to-peer efficiency.

In that way, users are basically bartering bandwidth with each other. Barter systems work OK, but Tron’s BitTorrent thesis is that adding a unit of value, the BitTorrent Token (BTT), will make the system work even better.

That was the general message in the presentation by Justin Knoll, an employee at BitTorrent at the time of the acquisition who is now leading Project Atlas, the name for Tron’s bid to roll out BTT to the masses.

BitTorrent’s Jusin Knoll speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

BitTorrent, in Knoll’s view, works somewhat magically. “You can have unlimited data with no central cost,” he said. It’s not perfect, though. A lot of long-tail content, the stuff that people only demand occasionally, can be hard to find.

The less popular stuff might not have a “seed” out there. That is, someone who has a copy of a file available for the network to break into pieces and download.

“We can do better than this. We can make it so there’s actual rational incentives for people to promote to seeders,” Knoll said. That rational incentive is getting paid by some users for first dibs on downloading.

Because BitTorrent the company makes the most popular user interface for BitTorrent, it has an advantage to introducing the option to use tokens to a large portion of the protocol’s user base, Knoll explained.

In fact, despite the fact that BTT is optional, Knoll predicted that downloads should be faster even for users of BitTorrent who don’t choose to use the token. That’s because there will be more seeds available either way.

On Thursday, Binance released more details about the planned sale of the BTT token. It will sell 6 percent of the BTT supply starting January 28, with a $7.2 million hard cap, according to a Binance spokesperson.

Additionally, holders of TRX will receive airdrops of 10.1 percent of BTT tokens over the next six years. Sun said that Tron holders should expect the first airdrop in mid-February.

Still, many critics of Sun’s plan have noted that Mojo Nation previously introduced a distributed file-sharing protocol that used digital cash, and it failed. Sun has a simple answer for why it can work this time around.

With so many more people, Sun said, it’s much more likely that a critical mass of users will try it. That’s why Tron’s BTT experiment is worth paying attention to: the job of introducing the complexity of money on the internet falls to an established player, rather than a crypto startup.

Affirmation by association

BitTorrent also allows Tron to associate with a known and established brand. This fits, because Sun cements his credibility through connections.

The conference effectively ended with an onstage Q&A featuring Justin Sun and NBA legend and now venture capitalist Kobe Bryant. The main purpose of that appearance seemed to simply be associating Tron (and Sun himself) with a name that basically everyone knows.

For his part, Bryant didn’t say anything that reflected any depth of knowledge about Tron, crypto or the blockchain, but it was the most well-attended part of the whole event, and that seemed to have been the point of including it.

Kobe Bryant speaks with Justin Sun at niTROn Summit 2019.

Similarly, each time Sun spoke, he included an anecdote from the man he called his “mentor,” Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the only company in the world that might currently compete with Amazon.

To further this strategy, Tron seems to be establishing its credibility by winning over less-sexy but more substantive partners.

We spoke with eBay and PayPal alum, Sanja Kon, who now serves as vice-president for global partnerships with blockchain payments company UTRUST. “We are token agnostic and we want to integrate the tokens our buyers want,” she said.

While Kon is based in London, she traveled to San Francisco because she says UTRUST is seeing demand from holders of its UTK token to integrate Tron.

(As we parted ways with Kon, another entrepreneur approached her and asked if her company’s platform could support very large payments, the kind of payments that can pay for yachts. Crypto’s still crypto.)

Galia Benartzi, a co-founder of Bancor, spoke at the conference and took a similar position toward Tron as Kon. She said she was there because Bancor is strongly considering making Tron one of the next blockchains it integrates.

Bancor provides automated conversions between tokens, but right now it only works with tokens on Ethereum and EOS. Once Bancor has integrated a new blockchain, it’s easy to add new tokens hosted by that blockchain, but adding a new protocol is not easy.

“We’ll support every blockchain that’s interesting,” Benartzi said. Still, it’s a question of how interesting any one is that determines how quickly Bancor will move to do the coding work to add a new one.

Each new blockchain adds additional complexity, because, Benartzi said, “We have to build the cross-blockchain compatibility.” So each new addition is a significant vote of confidence in that technology.

Tron would also be attractive for Bancor because it’s actively encouraging new tokens on the platform. BTT will obviously be one, but many others are also getting launched on Tron’s network.

Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi on a panel at niTROn Summit 2019.

Another use case that Sun emphasized in our interview was gaming, so it came as no surprise that one of the companies highlighted at the event was the non-fungible-token gaming company Everdragons.

Patrick Rieger, CEO of the German company, explained to CoinDesk that it was founded as an ethereum-based effort. “Our launch on ethereum fell right into [last June’s] FCoin disaster,” he told us. (At roughly the same time, Tron’s trx token was leaving ethereum as well.)

Everdragons users panicked that their NFTs might never be useable again if ethereum didn’t get faster and cheaper. That’s when the company started looking around for a way to bridge to other blockchains.

“We did not really leave ethereum. We expanded to Tron,” Rieger said.

Estimating future demand

Some people are hoping for Tron to do well. Others are praying.

As we waited to get in on the second day of the event, we saw an attendee approach the creator of TronWallet, Dio Ianakiara. The attendee said, “I have just one question.”

It caught CoinDesk’s attention. Would the attendee have a substantive question about an entrepreneur providing key technical infrastructure? In short, no. The rank-and-file TRX holder asked, “How high do you think Tron can go?”

Before Ianakiara answered another attendee turned on the questioner and answered sarcastically, “Don’t you know? To the moon, man!” The hype (or the desperation) isn’t a selling point for every potential partner.

For example, Uphold’s Robin O’Connell, chief revenue officer at the crypto-to-fiat company, told CoinDesk his firm hasn’t committed to support payments on trx, which, as of this writing, is the 8th-ranked coin on CoinMarketCap.

“We’d never list Tron because it’s a Top 10 traded currency,” O’Connell said in an interview. “It’s more that if there’s enough potential demand for Tron payments or ecosystems that are supporting Tron, that’s where we would see the opportunity.”

Patrick Rieger of Everdragons speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

“We’re still assessing,” he added, “but our sense from the conference is there’s a good bit of demand.”

And obviously if BitTorrent becomes a significant use case, that would become a key source of demand for a company like Uphold. Particularly as BitTorrent seeders seek ways to exit to their local fiat currency.

BTT is a TRC-10 token. “[The Tron blockchain] is the medium that allows us to connect BitTorrent users that have BTT,” Knoll said from the stage.

Jonathan Chou, CEO of the decentralized sharing-economy startup Bee Token, was on hand at the event, mostly as an observer. He confirmed Sun’s thesis that BitTorrent’s user numbers are the difference maker.

“It’s all about the market penetration of awareness,” Chou told CoinDesk. With so many users, he added:

“That’s going to be the biggest dapp on blockchain, period.”

Photos by Brady Dale for CoinDesk

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click2watch · 6 years ago

Text

SF Summit Shows BitTorrent Is Boosting Tron’s Appeal

“I was very interested in making fun of it.”

That’s how crypto YouTuber Ben Armstrong, known around the web as “BitBoy,” described how he felt about Tron prior to its acquisition last summer of file-sharing platform BitTorrent.

Now, outside Day 2 of Tron’s niTROn Summit in San Francisco last Friday, BitBoy felt differently: Tron was worth paying attention to.

When we spoke with Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun after his opening remarks, project promotion was still front of mind. But with BitTorrent in his company’s toolbox, things are at a new level.

Sun told CoinDesk:

“BitTorrent is different, because we already have 100 million active users. I think that is the huge challenge for other companies.”

All about users

BitTorrent’s permanence has been impressive, but it remains buggy.

BitTorrent’s Jusin Knoll speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

The less popular stuff might not have a “seed” out there. That is, someone who has a copy of a file available for the network to break into pieces and download.

Additionally, holders of TRX will receive airdrops of 10.1 percent of BTT tokens over the next six years. Sun said that Tron holders should expect the first airdrop in mid-February.

Affirmation by association

BitTorrent also allows Tron to associate with a known and established brand. This fits, because Sun cements his credibility through connections.

Kobe Bryant speaks with Justin Sun at niTROn Summit 2019.

Similarly, each time Sun spoke, he included an anecdote from the man he called his “mentor,” Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the only company in the world that might currently compete with Amazon.

To further this strategy, Tron seems to be establishing its credibility by winning over less-sexy but more substantive partners.

While Kon is based in London, she traveled to San Francisco because she says UTRUST is seeing demand from holders of its UTK token to integrate Tron.

Tron would also be attractive for Bancor because it’s actively encouraging new tokens on the platform. BTT will obviously be one, but many others are also getting launched on Tron’s network.

Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi on a panel at niTROn Summit 2019.

Another use case that Sun emphasized in our interview was gaming, so it came as no surprise that one of the companies highlighted at the event was the non-fungible-token gaming company Everdragons.

“We did not really leave ethereum. We expanded to Tron,” Rieger said.

Estimating future demand

Some people are hoping for Tron to do well. Others are praying.

As we waited to get in on the second day of the event, we saw an attendee approach the creator of TronWallet, Dio Ianakiara. The attendee said, “I have just one question.”

Patrick Rieger of Everdragons speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

“We’re still assessing,” he added, “but our sense from the conference is there’s a good bit of demand.”

BTT is a TRC-10 token. “[The Tron blockchain] is the medium that allows us to connect BitTorrent users that have BTT,” Knoll said from the stage.

“It’s all about the market penetration of awareness,” Chou told CoinDesk. With so many users, he added:

“That’s going to be the biggest dapp on blockchain, period.”

Photos by Brady Dale for CoinDesk

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click2watch · 6 years ago

Text

SF Summit Shows BitTorrent Is Boosting Tron’s Appeal

“I was very interested in making fun of it.”

That’s how crypto YouTuber Ben Armstrong, known around the web as “BitBoy,” described how he felt about Tron prior to its acquisition last summer of file-sharing platform BitTorrent.

Now, outside Day 2 of Tron’s niTROn Summit in San Francisco last Friday, BitBoy felt differently: Tron was worth paying attention to.

When we spoke with Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun after his opening remarks, project promotion was still front of mind. But with BitTorrent in his company’s toolbox, things are at a new level.

Sun told CoinDesk:

“BitTorrent is different, because we already have 100 million active users. I think that is the huge challenge for other companies.”

All about users

BitTorrent’s permanence has been impressive, but it remains buggy.

BitTorrent’s Jusin Knoll speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

The less popular stuff might not have a “seed” out there. That is, someone who has a copy of a file available for the network to break into pieces and download.

Additionally, holders of TRX will receive airdrops of 10.1 percent of BTT tokens over the next six years. Sun said that Tron holders should expect the first airdrop in mid-February.

Affirmation by association

BitTorrent also allows Tron to associate with a known and established brand. This fits, because Sun cements his credibility through connections.

Kobe Bryant speaks with Justin Sun at niTROn Summit 2019.

Similarly, each time Sun spoke, he included an anecdote from the man he called his “mentor,” Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the only company in the world that might currently compete with Amazon.

To further this strategy, Tron seems to be establishing its credibility by winning over less-sexy but more substantive partners.

While Kon is based in London, she traveled to San Francisco because she says UTRUST is seeing demand from holders of its UTK token to integrate Tron.

Tron would also be attractive for Bancor because it’s actively encouraging new tokens on the platform. BTT will obviously be one, but many others are also getting launched on Tron’s network.

Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi on a panel at niTROn Summit 2019.

Another use case that Sun emphasized in our interview was gaming, so it came as no surprise that one of the companies highlighted at the event was the non-fungible-token gaming company Everdragons.

“We did not really leave ethereum. We expanded to Tron,” Rieger said.

Estimating future demand

Some people are hoping for Tron to do well. Others are praying.

As we waited to get in on the second day of the event, we saw an attendee approach the creator of TronWallet, Dio Ianakiara. The attendee said, “I have just one question.”

Patrick Rieger of Everdragons speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

“We’re still assessing,” he added, “but our sense from the conference is there’s a good bit of demand.”

BTT is a TRC-10 token. “[The Tron blockchain] is the medium that allows us to connect BitTorrent users that have BTT,” Knoll said from the stage.

“It’s all about the market penetration of awareness,” Chou told CoinDesk. With so many users, he added:

“That’s going to be the biggest dapp on blockchain, period.”

Photos by Brady Dale for CoinDesk

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click2watch · 6 years ago

Text

SF Summit Shows BitTorrent Is Boosting Tron’s Appeal

“I was very interested in making fun of it.”

That’s how crypto YouTuber Ben Armstrong, known around the web as “BitBoy,” described how he felt about Tron prior to its acquisition last summer of file-sharing platform BitTorrent.

Now, outside Day 2 of Tron’s niTROn Summit in San Francisco last Friday, BitBoy felt differently: Tron was worth paying attention to.

When we spoke with Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun after his opening remarks, project promotion was still front of mind. But with BitTorrent in his company’s toolbox, things are at a new level.

Sun told CoinDesk:

“BitTorrent is different, because we already have 100 million active users. I think that is the huge challenge for other companies.”

All about users

BitTorrent’s permanence has been impressive, but it remains buggy.

BitTorrent’s Jusin Knoll speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

The less popular stuff might not have a “seed” out there. That is, someone who has a copy of a file available for the network to break into pieces and download.

Additionally, holders of TRX will receive airdrops of 10.1 percent of BTT tokens over the next six years. Sun said that Tron holders should expect the first airdrop in mid-February.

Affirmation by association

BitTorrent also allows Tron to associate with a known and established brand. This fits, because Sun cements his credibility through connections.

Kobe Bryant speaks with Justin Sun at niTROn Summit 2019.

Similarly, each time Sun spoke, he included an anecdote from the man he called his “mentor,” Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the only company in the world that might currently compete with Amazon.

To further this strategy, Tron seems to be establishing its credibility by winning over less-sexy but more substantive partners.

While Kon is based in London, she traveled to San Francisco because she says UTRUST is seeing demand from holders of its UTK token to integrate Tron.

Tron would also be attractive for Bancor because it’s actively encouraging new tokens on the platform. BTT will obviously be one, but many others are also getting launched on Tron’s network.

Bancor co-founder Galia Benartzi on a panel at niTROn Summit 2019.

Another use case that Sun emphasized in our interview was gaming, so it came as no surprise that one of the companies highlighted at the event was the non-fungible-token gaming company Everdragons.

“We did not really leave ethereum. We expanded to Tron,” Rieger said.

Estimating future demand

Some people are hoping for Tron to do well. Others are praying.

As we waited to get in on the second day of the event, we saw an attendee approach the creator of TronWallet, Dio Ianakiara. The attendee said, “I have just one question.”

Patrick Rieger of Everdragons speaks at niTROn Summit 2019.

“We’re still assessing,” he added, “but our sense from the conference is there’s a good bit of demand.”

BTT is a TRC-10 token. “[The Tron blockchain] is the medium that allows us to connect BitTorrent users that have BTT,” Knoll said from the stage.

“It’s all about the market penetration of awareness,” Chou told CoinDesk. With so many users, he added:

“That’s going to be the biggest dapp on blockchain, period.”

Photos by Brady Dale for CoinDesk

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Do you live in a country like USA or Canada where using automated trading systems is a problem? If you do then now we ...

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Demo & Pro Version Try It Now

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The post SF Summit Shows BitTorrent Is Boosting Tron’s Appeal appeared first on Click 2 Watch.

More Details Here → https://click2.watch/sf-summit-shows-bittorrent-is-boosting-trons-appeal

#Click2Watch

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