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The Pop Culture Highlights and Lowlights of 2020
17.12.2020
In a year full of all kinds of bad real-world news, pop culture still managed to poke its head up periodically to remind us that not everything sucks. Of course, this being 2020, that same realm also managed to leave a few steaming piles for us to step in, too. Here are our picks for the year’s...
Our Favorite Comic Moments of 2020
16.12.2020
While 2020 posed more than its fair share of significant challenges for virtually everyone working within the entertainment industry, comics in particular stood as an example of creative teams adapting on the fly—and doing their damndest to keep telling compelling stories at a time when people...
The Best Pop Culture We Caught Up On in 2020
10.12.2020
It has been a year of weirdness, especially when it comes to wrangling the kinds of media we’ve been watching. Though there’s been new things to read, watch, listen to, and play, 2020 has seen many of us revisit familiar favorites as well as things we missed when they first came out. Here’s...
The Best Animated Series of 2020
9.12.2020
While live-action productions were dealt a significant blow this year by the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, the animation industry was in a prime position to step up to the plate and tell some of 2020's most riveting stories. Here are the ones that transported the io9 staff to far-off worlds...
10 Predictions for 2021: China, Bitcoin, Taxes, Stablecoins and More
9.12.2020
2020 was an awful year for the world but a breakthrough one for crypto writ large. Here are 10 trends to watch for next year
2020 Year in Review
4.12.2020
Looking back on an entire year of one’s professional life is difficult, but when you consider everything that 2020 threw at us, where the hell do you even start? Forget just surviving the professional aspect of 2020, we all deserve a medal, both literally and figuratively, for surviving...
The Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, or Horror Movies io9 Rewatched in 2020
3.12.2020
Twenty-twenty hasn’t been good for much, but it has been given us bountiful free time— time you hopefully used to finally make good on that statement “Oh, I’d love to watch that but I don’t have time.” Well, in 2020 you did. As a result, many of us revisited and once again fell in love with...
Guillermo’s 2019 in Review
7.2.2020
Of all the tech-focused year-in-review posts I read, Guillermo Rauch's is my favorite. There is a lot in there, jumping from topics like modern architectures, high-fiving specific apps, and philosophical movements.
I'll pick one quote about the rise of "deploy previews":
A salient feature is...
Why China Is Banning Crypto But Is Bullish on Blockchain
8.1.2020
"The bandit needs to be wiped out before the regular army gets in," says Flex Yang, co-founder and CEO of Babel Finance, speaking of China's uncertain crypto regulations
Store of Value Remains Crypto’s Best Use Case
7.1.2020
Store of value was the most viable and desirable use case across crypto in 2019 and offers a basis to increase adoption in the second decade of crypto, says Ryan Zurrer of Dialectic
Gemini’s Head of Risk on How Crypto Beats Traditional Finance
7.1.2020
The arc of crypto bends toward regulation, so we might as well be prepared, says Gemini's risk chief and the president of the Virtual Commodities Association, Yusuf Hussain
How Libra Failed, and How It Could Succeed in 2020
4.1.2020
Libra was the seminal crypto event of 2019, says management consultant Richie Hecker. But, in its current form, it is doomed to fail
Professor Ben Noys: What Crypto Sees in Accelerationism
4.1.2020
Benjamin Noys found a link between fringe, online philosophies and digital-native currencies. Here he explains "accelerationism."
While We Wait for Laws, We Need Better Interpretations of Existing Regulation
4.1.2020
Congress isn't likely to pass crypto-favorable legislation in 2020. In the meantime, we have to hope for action from the SEC
Even If Blockchain Can’t Secure Land Rights, It Got Us Talking About Them
3.1.2020
Anand Aanchal of the World Bank thinks blockchain spurred an interest in securing land rights but often falls short of expectations
When DeFi Meets Neo Banking, This Thing Gets Interesting
3.1.2020
When you combine DeFi with wider trends in fintech, you get an existential threat to banks
Stanford Prof Darrell Duffie on Our Big Stablecoin Future
3.1.2020
A distinguished Stanford professor breaks down the year in stablecoins: Libra, Tether and Central Bank Digital Currencies, like China's
Pantera Partner Paul Veradittakit’s Crypto Predictions for 2020
3.1.2020
And a look-back at how his 2019 predictions fared
Inside the Osaka Conference Where Crypto Got Serious About FATF’s ‘Travel Rule’
31.12.2019
Held in June, the V20 Summit was a chance for the industry to respond to a highly controversial set of recommendations handed down by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
What Is a Cryptocurrency? We Need Clearer Definitions
31.12.2019
In the wake of Libra and CBDCs, we need better definitions for what is and isn't a cryptocurrency