Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder of Polychain Capital, advises venture investors on why evaluating technical crypto white papers requires deep specialized domain knowledge rather than traditional business analysis.
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“I don't think people should evaluate white papers unless they consider themselves subject matter experts. This is very different from understanding a business, and if you don't understand, like, consensus mechanisms, the underlying cryptography used here, and kind of what's often called crypto economics, and it's kind of applied game theory in the area of token or, like, cryptographic token incentives, I don't think that you should be reading and trying to vet white papers. So my general advice would be to ignore the white papers and don't try to make Right from wrong there.”
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