April 27th, 2020

Will Argentina Be the Next Venezuela?

Trading of the Argentine Peso (ARS) on LocalBitcoins, a frequent bellwether for global Bitcoin adoption, hit an all time high this April. This record coincided with the implementation of new capital controls which began accelerating last fall.

March 24th, 2020

Latin American Bitcoin Trading Follows the Heartbeat of Venezuela

Some seventy percent of all of Venezuela’s electrical power originates from a single dam on the Caroní river in Bolívar State, Venezuela. And on Thursday, March 7th, 2019, a fire near power lines of that dam caused the largest electrical blackout in the nation’s history.

November 29th, 2019

Paxful is the Most Important Bitcoin Company You Aren’t Paying Attention to

If cryptocurrency is the Wild West of money, then Paxful is Deadwood, South Dakota. Settled, errr, founded in 2015, Paxful has slowly but surely grown into a pillar of Bitcoin trading ecosystem. In total, Paxful now employs over 200 people in four offices around the world and oversees the trading of approximately $25 million dollars worth of Bitcoin every week. And while most cryptocurrency exchanges out San Francisco way are far from their highs reached during the bubble of 2017, Paxful has seen a consistent uptrend for its entire existence.

October 1st, 2019

Introducing UsefulTulips.org

Your trusted source for data and analysis on the burgeoning realm of utility use of cryptocurrency in the developing world. Hello! My name is Matt Ahlborg and I am a data scientist and analyst. In February of this year, I wrote an in-depth article which aggregated trading data from LocalBitcoins.com and paired it with other data sets relating to global socioeconomic and geopolitical circumstances.

July 23rd, 2019

The Story of Cryptocurrency is Being Written in the Developing World. Few in the West are Reading It.

Introducing Matt Ahlborg's dlab:Emurgo Fellowship Project Hello! My name is Matt Ahlborg and I am a data scientist, analyst, and long time observer of Bitcoin. I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska and now reside in New York City.

February 8th, 2019

Nuanced Analysis of LocalBitcoins Data Suggests Bitcoin is Working as Satoshi Intended

In the decade since the Satoshi white paper was published, we can now say that the word Bitcoin has entered global conciousness. However, many people, including some very intelligent and well-respected people in their own right, still have trouble understanding the the idea of Bitcoin and in many cases even question its value and purported utility in the world.