What Happens to Bitcoin After All 21 Million Are Mined?
What Happens to Bitcoin After All 21 Million Are Mined?
Bitcoin price today, BTC marketcap, chart, and info ...
Bitcoin Recovery Phrase: Best Way to ... - Free Bitcoin Life
SHA1 collision bounty has been claimed : Bitcoin
Secrets of Bitcoin Mining. From the basics of Bitcoin ...
Reddcoin (RDD) 02/20 Progress Report - Core Wallet v3.1 Evolution & PoSV v2 - Commits & More Commits to v3.1! (Bitcoin Core 0.10, MacOS Catalina, QT Enhanced Speed and Security and more!)
Reddcoin (RDD) Core Dev Team Informal Progress Report, Feb 2020 - As any blockchain or software expert will confirm, the hardest part of making successful progress in blockchain and crypto is invisible to most users. As developers, the Reddcoin Core team relies on internal experts like John Nash, contributors offering their own code improvements to our repos (which we would love to see more of!) and especially upstream commits from experts working on open source projects like Bitcoin itself. We'd like tothank each and everyone who's hard work has contributed to this progress. As part of Reddcoin's evolution, and in order to include required security fixes, speed improvements that are long overdue, the team has up to this point incorporated the following code commits since our last v3.0.1 public release. In attempting to solve the relatively minor font display issue with MacOS Catalina, we uncovered a complicated interweaving of updates between Reddcoin Core, QT software, MacOS SDK, Bitcoin Core and related libraries and dependencies that mandated we take a holistic approach to both solve the Catalina display problem, but in doing so, prepare a more streamlined overall build and test system, allowing the team to roll out more frequent and more secure updates in the future. And also to include some badly needed fixes in the current version of Core, which we have tentatively labeled Reddcoin Core Wallet v3.1. Note: As indicated below, v3.1 is NOT YET AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD BY PUBLIC. We wil advise when it is. The new v3.1 version should be ready for internal QA and build testing by the end of this week, with luck, and will be turned over to the public shortly thereafter once testing has proven no unexpected issues have been introduced. We know the delay has been a bit extended for our ReddHead MacOS Catalina stakers, and we hope to have them all aboard soon. We have moved with all possible speed while attempting to incorproate all the required work, testing, and ensuring security and safety for our ReddHeads. Which leads us to: PoSV v2 activation and the supermajority on Mainnet at the time of this writing has reached 5625/9000 blocks or 62.5%. We have progressed quite well and without any reported user issues since release, but we need all of the community to participate! This activation, much like the funding mechanisms currently being debated by BCH and others, and employed by DASH, will mean not only a catalyst for Reddcoin but ensure it's future by providing funding for the dev team. As a personal plea from the team, please help us support the PoSV v2 activation by staking your RDD, no matter how large or small your amount of stake. Every block and every RDD counts, and if you don't know how, we'll teach you! Live chat is fun as well as providing tech support you can trust from devs and community ReddHead members. Join us today in staking and online and collect some RDD "rain" from users and devs alike! If you're holding Reddcoin and not staking, or you haven't upgraded your v2.x wallet to v3.0.1 (current release), we need you to help achieve consensus and activate PoSV v2! For details, see the pinned message here or our website or medium channel. Upgrade is simple and takes moments; if you're nervous or unsure, we're here to help live in Telegram or Discord, as well as other chat programs. See our website for links. Look for more updates shortly as our long-anticipated Reddcoin Payment Gateway and Merchant Services API come online with point-of-sale support, as we announce the cross-crypto-project Aussie firefighter fundraiser program, as well as a comprehensive update to our development roadmap and more. Work has restarted on ReddID and multiple initiatives are underway to begin educating and sharing information about ReddID, what it is, and how to use it, as we approach a releasable ReddID product. We enthusiastically encourage anyone interested in working to bring these efforts to life, whether writers, UX/UI experts, big data analysts, graphic artists, coders, front-end, back-end, AI, DevOps, the Reddcoin Core dev team is growing, and there's more opportunity and work than ever! Bring your talents to a community and dev team that truly appreciates it, and share the Reddcoin Love! And now, lots of commits. As v3.1 is not yet quite ready for public release, these commits have not been pushed publicly, but in the interests of sharing progress transparently, and including our ReddHead community in the process, see below for mind-numbing technical detail of work accomplished. e5c143404 - - 2014-08-07 - Ross Nicoll - Changed LevelDB cursors to use scoped pointers to ensure destruction when going out of scope. *99a7dba2e - - 2014-08-15 - Cory Fields - tests: fix test-runner for osx. Closes ##4708 *8c667f1be - - 2014-08-15 - Cory Fields - build: add funcs.mk to the list of meta-depends *bcc1b2b2f - - 2014-08-15 - Cory Fields - depends: fix shasum on osx < 10.9 *54dac77d1 - - 2014-08-18 - Cory Fields - build: add option for reducing exports (v2) *6fb9611c0 - - 2014-08-16 - randy-waterhouse - build : fix CPPFLAGS for libbitcoin_cli *9958cc923 - - 2014-08-16 - randy-waterhouse - build: Add --with-utils (bitcoin-cli and bitcoin-tx, default=yes). Help string consistency tweaks. Target sanity check fix. *342aa98ea - - 2014-08-07 - Cory Fields - build: fix automake warnings about the use of INCLUDES *46db8ad51 - - 2020-02-18 - John Nash - build: add build.h to the correct target *a24de1e4c - - 2014-11-26 - Pavel Janík - Use complete path to include bitcoin-config.h. *fd8f506e5 - - 2014-08-04 - Wladimir J. van der Laan - qt: Demote ReportInvalidCertificate message to qDebug *f12aaf3b1 - - 2020-02-17 - John Nash - build: QT5 compiled with fPIC require fPIC to be enabled, fPIE is not enough *7a991b37e - - 2014-08-12 - Wladimir J. van der Laan - build: check for sys/prctl.h in the proper way *2cfa63a48 - - 2014-08-11 - Wladimir J. van der Laan - build: Add mention of --disable-wallet to bdb48 error messages *9aa580f04 - - 2014-07-23 - Cory Fields - depends: add shared dependency builder *8853d4645 - - 2014-08-08 - Philip Kaufmann - [Qt] move SubstituteFonts() above ToolTipToRichTextFilter *0c98e21db - - 2014-08-02 - Ross Nicoll - URLs containing a / after the address no longer cause parsing errors. *7baa77731 - - 2014-08-07 - ntrgn - Fixes ignored qt 4.8 codecs path on windows when configuring with --with-qt-libdir *2a3df4617 - - 2014-08-06 - Cory Fields - qt: fix unicode character display on osx when building with 10.7 sdk *71a36303d - - 2014-08-04 - Cory Fields - build: fix race in 'make deploy' for windows *077295498 - - 2014-08-04 - Cory Fields - build: Fix 'make deploy' when binaries haven't been built yet *ffdcc4d7d - - 2014-08-04 - Cory Fields - build: hook up qt translations for static osx packaging *25a7e9c90 - - 2014-08-04 - Cory Fields - build: add --with-qt-translationdir to configure for use with static qt *11cfcef37 - - 2014-08-04 - Cory Fields - build: teach macdeploy the -translations-dir argument, for use with static qt *4c4ae35b1 - - 2014-07-23 - Cory Fields - build: Find the proper xcb/pcre dependencies *942e77dd2 - - 2014-08-06 - Cory Fields - build: silence mingw fpic warning spew *e73e2b834 - - 2014-06-27 - Huang Le - Use async name resolving to improve net thread responsiveness *c88e76e8e - - 2014-07-23 - Cory Fields - build: don't let libtool insert rpath into binaries *18e14e11c - - 2014-08-05 - ntrgn - build: Fix windows configure when using --with-qt-libdir *bb92d65c4 - - 2014-07-31 - Cory Fields - test: don't let the port number exceed the legal range *62b95290a - - 2014-06-18 - Cory Fields - test: redirect comparison tool output to stdout *cefe447e9 - - 2014-07-22 - Cory Fields - gitian: remove unneeded option after last commit *9347402ca - - 2014-07-21 - Cory Fields - build: fix broken boost chrono check on some platforms *c9ed039cf - - 2014-06-03 - Cory Fields - build: fix whitespace in pkg-config variable *3bcc5ad37 - - 2014-06-03 - Cory Fields - build: allow linux and osx to build against static qt5 *01a44ba90 - - 2014-07-17 - Cory Fields - build: silence false errors during make clean *d1fbf7ba2 - - 2014-07-08 - Cory Fields - build: fix win32 static linking after libtool merge *005ae2fa4 - - 2014-07-08 - Cory Fields - build: re-add AM_LDFLAGS where it's overridden *37043076d - - 2014-07-02 - Wladimir J. van der Laan - Fix the Qt5 build after d95ba75 *f3b4bbf40 - - 2014-07-01 - Wladimir J. van der Laan - qt: Change serious messages from qDebug to qWarning *f4706f753 - - 2014-07-01 - Wladimir J. van der Laan - qt: Log messages with type>QtDebugMsg as non-debug *98e85fa1f - - 2014-06-06 - Pieter Wuille - libsecp256k1 integration *5f1f2e226 - - 2020-02-17 - John Nash - Merge branch 'switch_verification_code' into Build *1f30416c9 - - 2014-02-07 - Pieter Wuille - Also switch the (unused) verification code to low-s instead of even-s. *1c093d55e - - 2014-06-06 - Cory Fields - secp256k1: Add build-side changes for libsecp256k1 *7f3114484 - - 2014-06-06 - Cory Fields - secp256k1: add libtool as a dependency *2531f9299 - - 2020-02-17 - John Nash - Move network-time related functions to timedata.cpp/h *d003e4c57 - - 2020-02-16 - John Nash - build: fix build weirdness after 54372482. *7035f5034 - - 2020-02-16 - John Nash - Add ::OUTPUT_SIZE *2a864c4d8 - - 2014-06-09 - Cory Fields - crypto: create a separate lib for crypto functions *03a4e4c70 - - 2014-06-09 - Cory Fields - crypto: explicitly check for byte read/write functions *a78462a2a - - 2014-06-09 - Cory Fields - build: move bitcoin-config.h to its own directory *a885721c4 - - 2014-05-31 - Pieter Wuille - Extend and move all crypto tests to crypto_tests.cpp *5f308f528 - - 2014-05-03 - Pieter Wuille - Move {Read,Write}{LE,BE}{32,64} to common.h and use builtins if possible *0161cc426 - - 2014-05-01 - Pieter Wuille - Add built-in RIPEMD-160 implementation *deefc27c0 - - 2014-04-28 - Pieter Wuille - Move crypto implementations to src/crypto/ *d6a12182b - - 2014-04-28 - Pieter Wuille - Add built-in SHA-1 implementation. *c3c4f9f2e - - 2014-04-27 - Pieter Wuille - Switch miner.cpp to use sha2 instead of OpenSSL. *b6ed6def9 - - 2014-04-28 - Pieter Wuille - Remove getwork() RPC call *0a09c1c60 - - 2014-04-26 - Pieter Wuille - Switch script.cpp and hash.cpp to use sha2.cpp instead of OpenSSL. *8ed091692 - - 2014-04-20 - Pieter Wuille - Add a built-in SHA256/SHA512 implementation. *0c4c99b3f - - 2014-06-21 - Philip Kaufmann - small cleanup in src/compat .h and .cpp *ab1369745 - - 2014-06-13 - Cory Fields - sanity: hook up sanity checks *f598c67e0 - - 2014-06-13 - Cory Fields - sanity: add libc/stdlib sanity checks *b241b3e13 - - 2014-06-13 - Cory Fields - sanity: autoconf check for sys/select.h *cad980a4f - - 2019-07-03 - John Nash - build: Add a top-level forwarding target for src/ objects *f4533ee1c - - 2019-07-03 - John Nash - build: qt: split locale resources. Fixes non-deterministic distcheck *4a0e46e76 - - 2019-06-29 - John Nash - build: fix version dependency *2f61699d9 - - 2019-06-29 - John Nash - build: quit abusing AMCPPFLAGS *99b60ba49 - - 2019-06-29 - John Nash - build: avoid the use of top and abs_ dir paths *c8f673d5d - - 2019-06-29 - John Nash - build: Tidy up file generation output *5318bce57 - - 2019-06-29 - John Nash - build: nuke Makefile.include from orbit *672a25349 - - 2019-06-29 - John Nash - build: add stub makefiles for easier subdir builds *562b7c5a6 - - 2020-02-08 - John Nash - build: delete old Makefile.am's *066120079 - - 2020-02-08 - John Nash - build: Switch to non-recursive make Whew! No wonder it's taken the dev team a while! :) TL;DR: Trying to fix MacOS Catalina font display led to requiring all kinds of work to migrate and evolve the Reddcoin Core software with Apple, Bitcoin and QT components. Lots of work done, v3.1 public release soon. Also other exciting things and ReddID back under active dev effort.
Establishing a smart contract commercial scenario: Chainlink, Zk-Snarks and sharding technology work together to make the ultimate killer
This text was translated from Chinese, open following link in Chrome and translate to see all images: https://bihu.com/article/1242138347 EDIT: found an English text with pictures: https://medium.com/@rogerfeng/making-smart-contracts-work-for-business-how-chainlink-zk-snarks-sharding-finally-delivered-8f268af75ca2 Author: Feng Jie translation: Liu Sha “The highest state of technology is to integrate into the various scenes of everyday life, to fade away from high-tech outerwear and become a part of everyday life.” – Mark Weiser People in the future will not even think that smart contracts are "innovative." By that time, smart contracts would permeate every aspect of life, and people couldn't even imagine what the era of non-digital currency would look like. Later historians may divide human business history into two eras, the pre-smart contract era and the post-smart contract era. After all, digital money has brought unprecedented changes to the nature and patterns of business practices in the real world. An anonymous member of the Chainlink community once said: "Smart contracts can change the DNA of the business." Of course, like all the technological revolutions of the past, smart contracts also need to reach a "tipping point" to truly achieve large-scale applications. So we need to ask ourselves two questions:
What exactly is this so-called tipping point?
As of August 2019, have we reached this tipping point?
To reach the tipping point means unlocking the ultimate nirvana of business. Tipping point We can think about this issue from the perspective of mainstream companies. Imagine what a perfect smart contract platform should look like. What characteristics should this platform have? Or what features must be possessed? To reach the tipping point, you must establish a public chain with the following four characteristics:
Privacy protection
In addition to the cryptocurrency, the transaction can also be settled in mainstream legal currency and comply with the regulatory requirements of financial markets such as ISO 20022.
Achieve scalability without sacrificing decentralization or security, that is, solving the "impossible triangle problem."
Connect the external data under the chain, that is, solve the "prophecy problem."
Now that we have Chainlink, zk-snarks and sharding technology, we have reached this tipping point. Next, let's explore how this ultimate nirvana is actually made. Our discussion will be mainly from the perspective of Ethereum, which is still the top smart contract platform for community size and mainstream applications. So what about the private chain? Before delving into it, I want to take the time to solve an unavoidable problem. The mainstream view has always believed that the private chain is a more suitable solution for the enterprise. Therefore, we first dialectically analyze the two advantages and two major drawbacks of the private chain. Disadvantages
Centralization leads to relatively lower security
It's not surprising that IBM and Maersk's blockchain freight alliances have a hard time finding customers who are willing to join. How can other freight companies be willing to let their biggest competitors (Maersk) verify their trading data? Only madmen dare to do this.
The staking of the horses occupy the hills:
This problem is even more serious than centralization. John Wolpert, co-founder of the IBM blockchain, wrote an excellent article called Breaking the Barriers to Realize Security: Why Companies Should Embrace the Ethereum Public Chain, which he covered in detail in the article. If every company builds its own private chain, it will lead to chaos in the mountains. Today's B2B ecosystem is very complex. Imagine the innumerable private chains of the world intertwined to form a huge "spider web." This is not only cost-effective, but also not scalable. The starting point of the blockchain is to break down barriers instead of building more barriers. "One day, one of your big buyers called you to ask if you want to join their private chain. You promised. The next day you received a call from the wholesaler to ask you the same question. Then came the supplier, freight. Business, insurance company or even bank, and each company may have several private chains! Finally you have to invest a lot of time and cost to operate dozens of blockchains every day . If there are partners to let you join them at this time The private chain, you might say "Forget it, or fax me the order!" ”—Paul Brody (Ernst & Young) “Every time you connect two private chains through a system integrator, you have to pay a lot of money .” Advantage
Scalability: With the Ethereum public chain implementing fragmentation technology, this advantage is rapidly shrinking.
Privacy protection: At this stage, the classification of public chain / private chain is actually not very accurate. The Aztec , Zether, and Nightfall protocols (both based on the zk-snarks protocol) effectively provide a "private chain model" for the Ethereum public chain, allowing it to switch between the public and private chains. Therefore, a more accurate classification should be the alliance chain and the public chain.
By 2020, the label of the public chain/private chain will gradually disappear. The public and private chains will no longer be two opposing concepts. Instead, the concept of publicly traded/private transactions and confidential contracts/open contracts is changed, and the scope of these transactions and contracts varies according to specific needs, either bilaterally or multilaterally or even publicly. All in all, the private chain has two major drawbacks compared to the public chain. Not only that, but the two major advantages of the private chain are also rapidly disappearing. “Technology will evolve over time, so there will be a variety of solutions to solve existing problems. Ultimately, the public-chain platform will have the same performance, scalability and data privacy as the private chain, while at the same time ensuring security and Decentralized." Feature 1: Privacy protection (predictive machine and public chain privacy) Enigma founder Guy Zyskind once joked in his MIT graduation thesis that smart contracts can only become commercially valuable if they become "confidential contracts." He later proposed that zk-snarks and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) are the most promising solutions. He said nothing wrong. What is zk-snarks ? Zk-snarks is a zero-knowledge proof mechanism (ZPK). So what is the zero-knowledge proof mechanism? In short: a zero-knowledge proof mechanism allows you to prove that you own certain information without revealing the content of the information. Vitalik Buterin explained this concept in detail from a technical point of view in an article published in 2017. Hackernoon also wrote an excellent article explaining the concept in an easy-to-understand way with the example of a five-year-old child and Halloween candy. What is the trusted execution environment? The trusted execution environment lets the code run on closed hardware, and 1 ) The guarantee result cannot be tampered with 2 ) Protecting absolute privacy, even hardware running code can't get confidential information. The most well-known trusted execution environment is Intel SGX. Chainlink has established a partnership with Intel SGX after acquiring Tom Crier. Ernst & Young released the Nightfall agreement on Github on May 31, 2019. A well-known accounting firm with a history of 100 years will choose to add privacy features to the public chain instead of developing a private chain. This is a problem. Since then, the community has been actively developing on this basis, not only to improve the code, but also to develop a plug-and-play Truffle Box for those who are not good at writing code. Blockchain communities and businesses generally rarely collaborate, so these collaborations fully demonstrate the popularity of Nightfall. Prior to this, two zk-snark-based Ethereum public chain privacy protocols were introduced, namely AZTEC (Consensys) and Zether (Stanford, JPMorgan Chase). An obvious trend is slowly taking shape. In the field of oracles, Chainlink uses both zero-knowledge proof and a trusted execution environment to complement each other. Trusted execution environments guarantee data privacy, even for nodes that cannot access data (this feature is critical for bank accounts and API keys). Chainlink is still trying to implement a trusted execution environment, and nodes can access data temporarily, so authentication services are also needed. Although the credible execution environment is almost 100% foolproof, in theory, a strong shield has a spear that can penetrate it. Therefore, the team is currently trying to run zk-snarks in a trusted execution environment (Thomas Hodges mentioned this in the 2019 Trufflecon Q&A session). The combination of the two can form a very robust and complete system. The attacker must find a way to strip all the layers of an onion at the same time to make any effective attack (and it is already difficult to peel off a layer of skin). “Chainlink combines a trusted execution environment with zero-knowledge proof to build what we call a defense-in-depth system, which means they provide all the tools needed for smart contract developers, including trusted execution environments, multiple nodes, and Data sources, fine margins, reputation systems, asymmetric encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, WASM, and OTP+RNG, these features allow smart contract developers to adjust the confidentiality and cost of contracts based on specific budget and security needs. Machine, Chainlink and its four major application scenarios》 In the future, zk-snarks may be upgraded to zk-starks (a fully transparent zero-knowledge proof mechanism) that protects the system from quantum computer attacks. And the best thing about zk-starks is that it's more scalable than zk-snarks. In other words, it can better protect privacy, and the cost of gas will not increase. If you want to learn more about zk-starks, you can read a popular science article written by Adam Luciano. Feature 2: Scalability (scalability of predictive machines and public chains) To understand this problem, we can make an analogy like this: A public chain is like a large enterprise, and every employee (ie, a node) must attend each meeting (ie, confirm each transaction). Imagine how inefficient this company is! Only customers who have a lot of money (ie gas fees) can get their requests to the forefront. And this is not the most serious problem. The most serious problem is that the more employees (ie nodes) who join the company, the harder it is for the company to function properly! In the end, the company not only failed to expand linearly, but also became smaller and smaller. Although this guarantees decentralization and security to the greatest extent, the price is completely abandoning scalability. There are various temporary fire fighting solutions, but no one solution can completely solve this "impossible triangle problem." For example, EOS uses the DPOS mechanism (share authorization certification mechanism), where only 21 super nodes (many of which are well-known nodes) are responsible for verifying all transactions. Sidechains (such as Bitcoin's Lightning Network and Ethereum's lightning network) guarantee scalability and decentralization at the expense of security. So how to use the fragmentation technology to solve this problem? Let's make another analogy: In reality, there is only one company that is not too much to ask everyone to attend all meetings, that is, small start-ups (that is, private chains that limit the number of nodes). In most cases, large companies divide employees into thousands of teams (ie, shards), and each team's principal (ie, the certifier) is responsible for reporting to the senior management (ie, the main chain). If people from different teams need to collaborate (and sometimes also), then they can collaborate by cross-shard receipts. If a new employee joins the company, the team can be re-segmented (ie re-sharding). This allows for linear expansion. In fact, the process of developing a start-up to a large enterprise is surprisingly similar to the process of Ethereum 1.0 developing into Ethereum 2.0. “The Ethereum 1.0 period is that several people who are alone are trying to build a world computer; and Ethereum 2.0 will really develop into a world computer.” Vitalik Buterin said in the first piece of the workshop. Since Ethereum was not originally built on the principle of fragmentation, it takes seven steps to achieve the goal (this is a bit like the word morphing solitaire game). The first step is planned for January 3, 2020. At the same time, developers can use many other blockchain platforms designed based on the fragmentation principle. Some platforms, including Zilliqa and Quarkchain, are already compatible with Chainlink. If you want to see more in-depth technical analysis of shards, check out an article by Ramy Zhang. In the field of oracles, Chainlink has the following two characteristics: 1 ) Use Schnorr threshold signatures to quickly reach consensus in a cost-effective manner. The next version of the chain only needs 16,000 gas. 2 ) We have previously discussed the need to use trusted execution environment hardware to ensure that nodes cannot access sensitive data. Since you have hardware in your hand, you can use it to do some actual computing work, so that you can properly reduce the amount of computation on the smart contract platform. "With the SGX system (Town Crier) and zero-knowledge proof technology, the oracle can be truly reliable and confidential, so the boundaries between the oracle and the smart contract are beginning to flow... Our long-term strategy... is to let The predictor becomes the key chain of computing resources used by most smart contracts. We believe that the way to achieve this goal is to perform chain operations in the oracle to meet various computing needs, and then send the results to the smart contract."Chainlink White Paper, Section 6.3 (26 pages) Of course, this “long-term strategy” has certain risks, unless Chainlink can implement a trusted execution environment and its service provider ecosystem can achieve a qualitative leap. However, the Chainlink team's vision is absolutely forward-looking: under-chain computing is a key factor in ensuring that blockchains are not dragged down by large amounts of IoT data. The Internet of Things has dramatically increased the current state of big data. At present, most of the data is still generated on the software side, and it is not real-time data, and most of the data in the future will be real-time data generated on the sensor side. One of the big drawbacks of real-time data is that it increases storage pressure. For example, Coughlin Associates expects an unmanned car to generate 1G of data per second. This means that the same car will produce 3.6T data per hour! The only viable solution is to do real-time analysis of the data, rather than storing the data first. In the Global Cloud Index: 2016-2021 Forecast and Methodology White Paper, Cisco predicts that more than 90% of data in 2021 will be analyzed in real time without storage. That is to say, the essence of data is that it can only exist in just one instant. The nature of the blockchain is not to be modified, so the two are as incompatible as water and oil. The solution is to analyze the raw data under the chain, extract the meaningful results and send them to the blockchain. The combination of fragmentation technology and trusted execution environment forms a new computing architecture, similar to the cloud computing-fog computing-edge computing architecture. It should be noted here that it is good to improve computing power, but this is not the main purpose of the blockchain. The fundamental purpose of the blockchain is not to reduce the original cost of computing and data storage. After all, technology giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Tencent, Alibaba, and Dropbox have built world-class cloud services. The centralized server wins high computational efficiency (but the blockchain will greatly improve the computational efficiency through fragmentation technology, and will catch up with it one day). The value of the blockchain is to reduce the cost of building trust. Nick Szabo calls it "social scalability" (this is a relative concept to the "operational" scalability we have been talking about). Vitalik Buterin also made it clear that the meaning of smart contracts is to accept small arithmetic delay penalties in exchange for a substantial reduction in "social costs." Alex Coventry of the Chainlink team once raised the question: "We have missed many opportunities for cooperation and reciprocity because we can't confirm whether the other party will fulfill the promise?" Is there any potential for data storage projects like Siacoin and IPFS? What about decentralized computing projects like SONM and Golem? Siacoin 's core value proposition is not that its computing efficiency is higher than traditional cloud services. The cost of computing is required to split, repeat, and reassemble data. And companies are more capable of buying the latest and greatest hardware than individuals. Siacoin's core value proposition is to process data in an Airbnb-like mode, so management fees will be lower than traditional models. It also generates additional social value, such as flood control, privacy and security, and anti-censorship. The same is true of Golem and SONM. Even with the most efficient protocol, it is inevitable that a small amount of delay will be imposed and fined to coordinate the hardware of different geographical locations. Therefore, under the condition that all other conditions are equal, the centralized hardware still has the advantage of faster computing speed. However, the core value proposition of the above project is to use the Airbnb-like model to reduce management costs. We must strictly distinguish between "social scalability" and "operational scalability", and the two cannot be confused. I will explain these two concepts in detail when I discuss "Magic Bus and Lightweight Library" later. Feature 3: Compatible with legal currency Most mainstream companies do not regard cryptocurrencies as "real currencies." In addition, even if someone wants to use cryptocurrency for trading, it is very difficult to actually operate because of its high price volatility. I discussed the “price volatility problem” in detail in Chapters 8 and 9 of the previous article. These problems do not completely erase the existence value of cryptocurrencies, because cryptocurrencies also have many advantages that legal currency does not have. I am just emphasizing what we need to know more about the comfort zone of mainstream companies. Chainlink acts as a universal API connector that triggers open banking payments. Chainlink is fully compliant with ISO 20022 and has established a long-term partnership with SWIFT (it is worth mentioning that SWIFT has not been updated for a long time and hopes to be updated after the SIBOS 2019 conference). PSD2 will take effect on September 14, 2019. All banks in the EU will all comply with this new regulation by then. In other words, the bank must put all account data in the "front end" and can be called through the API. The approved third party (ie, the Chainlink node) can trigger the payment directly without the payment service provider. Although the United States and Japan have not adopted similar laws, many banks still spontaneously promote the development of open banks. Banks open APIs to third-party developers to create new revenue streams and customer experiences that ultimately increase profitability. In addition, this will allow banks to better respond to competitors in the mobile payment and financial technology sectors in an APP-centric economic model. As this open banking revolution continues, Chainlink will connect smart contracts with the world's major currencies (US dollar, euro, yen, etc.). Only one external adapter is required to connect to the authenticated API. From a programming perspective, it is relatively simple to allow everyone in the community to contribute code to the code base (and thus achieve scalability). Chainlink has released adapters for PayPal and Mister Tango (European version of PayPal). Feature 4: Data connection with the chain Chainlink has been working on solving the "prophecy problem" and successfully succeeded on the main online line on May 30, 2019. Chainlink has made many achievements in just a few months. Provable (formerly Oraclize) was successfully used on the Chainlink node and finally settled the debate about whether the predictor should be centralized or decentralized. Synthetic Ether lost 37 million Ethercoins in a hack because it did not connect to Chainlink. Fortunately, the money was finally recovered and did not cause any loss. This lesson illustrates the importance of decentralized oracles. In addition, both Oracle and Google have partnered with Chainlink to monetize their API data and create a virtuous circle to capture the market opportunities that Facebook missed. There are new nodes coming online every week, and the network activity has been very high. The Chainlink team maintains a list of certified nodes in the documentation and Twitter releases. Twitter user CryptoSponge also set up a new development for the Tableau push update Chainlink team: Regarding the importance of the current stage in the history of blockchain development, Brad Huston summed it up very brilliantly: "The biggest problem with cryptocurrencies is to build bridges between cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies and big data. Chainlink is very beautifully narrowing the distance between the three. Now it can even be said: 'The bridge has been built.'" Magic bus and lightweight library Let's summarize what we discussed earlier. The real purpose of the blockchain is to reduce the cost of building trust and achieve "social scalability." Therefore, according to this logic, the main application scenarios of platforms such as Ethereum 2.0 and Zilliqa should be in the B2B field. I quote a sentence I wrote in a previous article: “My conclusion is: If the smart contract is successful, it will also succeed in the B2B field first.” The private chain itself is self-contradictory and destined to fail. It has led to the phenomenon of occupying the hills, thus increasing the social cost, which is in opposition to B2B itself, and ultimately it is self-restraint. ” Before the emergence of fragmentation technology, even simple games (ie, etheric cats) could not be smoothly run on the public chain, let alone dealing with complex B2B contracts and even changing commercial DNA. With the sharding technology, everything is ready. Despite this, we can't use Ethereum 2.0 as an all-powerful platform. Just now we said that although it is a good thing to speed up the calculation, this is not the real purpose of Ethereum 2.0. And before we also said that due to the irreversible modification of the blockchain, it is not good to deal with a large number of fleeting real-time data of the Internet of Things. In other words, we must be soberly aware that Ethereum 2.0 will not replace traditional web 2.0. Instead, we should make better use of the real advantages of Ethereum 2.0: “There is a new concept now, that is to think of the Ethereum main network as a global bus... We use the Ethereum 2.0 main network to treat various business resources as a working group on Slack: it can be easily built and integrated. And restructuring. The SAP inventory management system in your company, the dealer's JD Edwards ERP system, and the financial technology partner's tall blockchain system can seamlessly interface, eliminating the need to develop an infrastructure specifically for each partner." - John Wolper describes his ideal "magic bus" Ethereum 2.0 should be an integration center, not a data center or computing center. It should be a library built specifically to store B2B contract terms (to be honest, even with fragmentation technology, the amount of data is large enough). We should not expect Ethereum 2.0 to be an all-powerful platform, but rather develop it into a "lightweight library." If we reorder the pyramid model just now, the architecture of the magic bus is obvious: Of course, the positional relationship in the above model is not static. With the development of 5G technology, edge computing and IoT sensors, they may bypass the cloud to directly interact (or even bypass the fog end). If the collaboration between Iotex and Chainlink is successful, then the edge can interact directly with the trusted execution environment. Time will tell if Airbnb's shared data storage and computing model can make management costs lower than the current mainstream Web 2.0 model. Time will also prove whether the market really needs anti-censorship, anti-tampering, security protection and privacy protection. Do users really care about these social values and are willing to pay for them? Do they think these are just the icing on the cake or the most fundamental value? in conclusion Whether it is the battle between web2.0 and web3.0 or the battle between cryptocurrency and legal currency, one thing is beyond doubt: We have reached the tipping point, and the era of smart contracts with commercial value has arrived. In fact, the only problem at the moment is the time issue, and the main roadblocks have been basically cleared.
When will Ethereum 2.0 finish these 7 stages and be officially released?
When will Chainlink use a trusted execution environment on a large scale? If the cooperation between Intel SGX and Town Crier fails, what alternative plans are there? Will Chainlink communicate with other blockchain teams that plan to use a trusted execution environment (such as Dawn Song's Oasis Labs)?
At present, the main technical problems in the ecosystem have been solved, and now it is only necessary to recruit a group of enthusiastic developers to do the work of “connecting the line”. Digital currency has changed commercial DNA, and the future is full of possibilities. The only thing that hinders us now is our own imagination. The future is infinitely imaginative, and the future will be the world of developers. Dapps is already overwhelming. There is no doubt that we have found the ultimate nirvana. This text was translated from Chinese, open following in Chrome and translate to see all images: https://bihu.com/article/1242138347
I was going through old emails today and came across this one I sent out to family on January 4, 2018. It was a reflection on the 2017 crypto bull market and where I saw it heading, as well as some general advice on crypto, investment, and being safe about how you handle yourself in cryptoland. I feel that we are on the cusp of a new bull market right now, so I thought that I would put this out for at least a few people to see *before* the next bull run, not after. While the details have changed, I don't see a thing in this email that I fundamentally wouldn't say again, although I'd also probably insist that people get a Yubikey and use that for all 2FA where it is supported. Happy reading, and sorry for some of the formatting weirdness -- I cleaned it up pretty well from the original email formatting, but I love lists and indents and Reddit has limitations... :-/ Also, don't laught at my token picks from January 2018! It was a long time ago and (luckliy) I took my own advice about moving a bunch into USD shortly after I sent this. I didn't hit the top, and I came back in too early in the summer of 2018, but I got lucky in many respects. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan-4, 2018 Hey all! I woke up this morning to ETH at a solid $1000 and decided to put some thoughts together on what I think crypto has done and what I think it will do. *******, if you could share this to your kids I’d appreciate it -- I don’t have e-mail addresses, and it’s a bit unwieldy for FB Messenger… Hopefully they’ll at least find it thought-provoking. If not, they can use it as further evidence that I’m a nutjob. 😉 Some history before I head into the future. I first mined some BTC in 2011 or 2012 (Can’t remember exactly, but it was around the Christmas holidays when I started because I had time off from work to get it set up and running.) I kept it up through the start of summer in 2012, but stopped because it made my PC run hot and as it was no longer winter, ********** didn’t appreciate the sound of the fans blowing that hot air into the room any more. I’ve always said that the first BTC I mined was at $1, but looking back at it now, that’s not true – It was around $2. Here’s a link to BTC price history. In the summer of 2013 I got a new PC and moved my programs and files over before scrapping the old one. I hadn’t touched my BTC mining folder for a year then, and I didn’t even think about salvaging those wallet files. They are now gone forever, including the 9-10BTC that were in them. While I can intellectually justify the loss, it was sloppy and underlines a key thing about cryptocurrency that I believe will limit its widespread adoption by the general public until it is addressed and solved: In cryptoland, you are your own bank, and if you lose your password or account number, there is no person or organization that can help you reset it so that you can get access back. Your money is gone forever. On April 12, 2014 I bought my first BTC through Coinbase. BTC had spiked to $1000 and been in the news, at least in Japan. This made me remember my old wallet and freak out for a couple of months trying to find it and reclaim the coins. I then FOMO’d (Fear Of Missing Out”) and bought $100 worth of BTC. I was actually very lucky in my timing and bought at around $430. Even so, except for a brief 50% swing up almost immediately afterwards that made me check prices 5 times a day, BTC fell below my purchase price by the end of September and I didn’t get back to even until the end of 2015. In May 2015 I bought my first ETH at around $1. I sent some guy on bitcointalk ~$100 worth of BTC and he sent me 100 ETH – all on trust because the amounts were small and this was a small group of people. BTC was down in the $250 range at that point, so I had lost 30-40% of my initial investment. This was of the $100 invested, so not that much in real terms, but huge in percentages. It also meant that I had to buy another $100 of BTC on Coinbase to send to this guy. A few months after I purchased my ETH, BTC had doubled and ETH had gone down to $0.50, halving the value of my ETH holdings. I was even on the first BTC purchase finally, but was now down 50% on the ETH I had bought. The good news was that this made me start to look at things more seriously. Where I had skimmed white papers and gotten a superficial understanding of the technology before FOMO’ing, I started to act as an investor, not a speculator. Let me define how I see those two different types of activity:
Investors buy because the price is less than the value they see in the investment. Speculators buy because they think that someone will pay more in the future than they are paying now.
Investors trade on information (The white paper was really well-written, had a clear technical advantage over other alternatives, and addresses a need that I can understand and value.) Speculators trade on sentiment. (Buy the rumor! Sell the news!)
Investors usually look at the investment and themselves and can describe why they purchase in those terms (ABC-Coin provides (service) that isn’t addressed yet and matches (requirements) for an investment.) Speculators usually describe why they bought something in terms of how other people think (I think that other people think that the price will rise, so I want to get ahead of that.)
Investors don’t necessarily check the price every day. The can, and very often I do, but it isn’t required because fundamentals don’t often change on a dime. Speculators need to be glued to a price feed, because sentiment very often changes on a dime.
Investors like ideas, people, business plans, and market opportunities. Good ones are like Spock. Speculators like trends. They are tribal.
Investors have a longer time horizon than speculators. In cryptoland, the notion of a “longer” time horizon is still laughably small (months) compared to traditional markets, but it certainly isn’t weeks or days or hours, which is whre speculators often live.
So what has been my experience as an investor? After sitting out the rest of 2015 because I needed to understand the market better, I bought into ETH quite heavily, with my initial big purchases being in March-April of 2016. Those purchases were in the $11-$14 range. ETH, of course, dropped immediately to under $10, then came back and bounced around my purchase range for a while until December of 2016, when I purchased a lot more at around $8. I also purchased my first ICO in August of 2016, HEAT. I bought 25ETH worth. Those tokens are now worth about half of their ICO price, so about 12.5ETH or $12500 instead of the $25000 they would be worth if I had just kept ETH. There are some other things with HEAT that mean I’ve done quite a bit better than those numbers would suggest, but the fact is that the single best thing I could have done is to hold ETH and not spend the effort/time/cost of working with HEAT. That holds true for about every top-25 token on the market when compared to ETH. It certainly holds true for the many, many tokens I tried to trade in Q1-Q2 of 2017. In almost every single case I would have done better and slept better had I just held ETH instead of trying to be smarter than Mr. Market. But, I made money on all of them except one because the crypto market went up more in USD terms than any individual coin went down in ETH or BTC terms. This underlines something that I read somewhere and that I take to heart: A rising market makes everyone seem like a genius. A monkey throwing darts at a list of the top 100 cryptocurrencies last year would have doubled his money. Here’s a chart from September that shows 2017 year-to-date returns for the top 10 cryptocurrencies, and all of them went up a *lot* more between then and December. A monkey throwing darts at this list there would have quintupled his money. When evaluating performance, then, you have to beat the monkey, and preferably you should try to beat a Wall Street monkey. I couldn’t, so I stopped trying around July 2017. My benchmark was the BLX, a DAA (Digital Asset Array – think fund like a Fidelity fund) created by ICONOMI. I wasn’t even close to beating the BLX returns, so I did several things.
I went from holding about 25 different tokens to holding 10 now. More on that in a bit.
I used those funds to buy ETH and BLX. ETH has done crazy-good since then and BLX has beaten BTC handily, although it hasn’t done as well as ETH.
I used some of those funds to set up an arbitrage operation.
The arbitrage operation is why I kept the 11 tokens that I have now. All but a couple are used in an ETH/token pair for arbitrage, and each one of them except for one special case is part of BLX. Why did I do that? I did that because ICONOMI did a better job of picking long-term holds than I did, and in arbitrage the only speculative thing you must do is pick the pairs to trade. My pairs are (No particular order):
ETH/XMR
ETH/ICN
ETH/DNT
ETH/QTUM
ETH/ZRX
ETH/CFI
ETH/OMG
I also hold PLU, PLBT, and ART. These two are multi-year holds for me. I have not purchased BTC once since my initial $200, except for a few cases where BTC was the only way to go to/from an altcoin that didn’t trade against ETH yet. Right now I hold about the same 0.3BTC that I held after my first $100 purchase, so I don’t really count it. Looking forward to this year, I am positioning myself as follows:
ETH will still be my core holding. It is the “deepest in the stack” crypto investment that I have. “Deep in the stack” is a programming term that gets at the idea that most software is built on other software. If you just think about your notebook, you have your OS, and programs run on that. But even inside the OS there is a stack. The bottom of your stack is the kernel, and on top of that are the drivers, protocols, and other layers that allow the programs to talk to the OS, the hard drive, the screen, the mouse, your printer, etc. You can change your mouse or printer easily. Changing things deeper in the stack becomes harder and harder. ETH is deep in the crypto stack, so is very hard to dislodge – Around 60 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap run on top of Ethereum, so getting rid of Ethereum is something that would take a long time to do.
DNT, QTUM, ZRX, and OMG are all, to varying degrees, “deep in the stack” tokens that, once established, will be very hard to dislodge.
That said, I am peeling away some of my holdings into USD right now, because big changes are afoot and they are going to cause market disruptions. I’m going to come right out and admit that this is speculative, but I’m also going to back it up with some non-speculative facts.
The SEC has been sending out hundreds of subpoenas to cryptocurrency organizations over the past 3-4 months. These subpoenas are simply asking for information and nobody has been charged with any crimes or misdoings, but it is clear that the SEC is getting together information so that they can begin to regulate cryptoland. When that happens, other countries will follow, and that means:
Some tokens will be deemed outright scams and people will be prosecuted.
Some tokens will be deemed securities and will be regulated.
Some tokens will not be deemed scams or securities and will continue as they have.
Looking at this, it is clear to me that the tokens that escape prosecution and regulation should do better, but the short-term impact will be brutal and ugly. It would not surprise me at all to see a 50% drop in overall market cap within Q1-Q2, with Q1 being more likely.
Cryptoland has always been a bit nuts, but it is more nuts now than I have ever seen it. Back in 2011-2014 it was a freaks-n-geeks show where people were all about the technology and I would sit around for a 3-day weekend installing a *nix VM on my Windows machine so that I could compile the most recent source and run a CUDA SHA-256 routine rather than thrash my CPU. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you wouldn’t have even thought about being involved.
Now, people see Bitcoin advertisements in their Facebook feed and think “I gotta get on the BTC train!” before going to Coinbase and buying some with a credit card. They don’t know anything about crypto, and they are getting eaten alive – It is no coincidence that BTC peaked after the Thanksgiving holidays when people sat around the table and Janice got Uncle Mike and Cousin Bob all excited as she talked about going to Cancun for Christmas because of her crypto winnings. Huge amounts of fiat got transferred from newbies to BTC whales during this period, and once the whales were done, BTC had dropped from $20,000 to $12,000. It’s now back at $15,000, but for people who bought at a higher level, this sucks. As a result many have moved from BTC to ETH, with the single biggest money flow in crypto in December being the BTC à ETH flow. As a result, it’s no coincidence that ETH is at all-time highs now. The thing is, though, that even most people that moved from BTC to ETH really have no idea what they are doing. They are acting on buzzwords and emotion. They are speculators and are going to get crushed.
The stock market is quite high right now, but people are starting to worry that it is too high and that we are going to enter into a period of inflation again. This has caused gold to go up a lot the last quarter and is likely also responsible a bit for the rise in cryptos. If this view is correct, then cryptos stay stronger than if that pressure wasn’t there. If wrong, then cryptos will swing down as money exits cryptoland for more traditional markets.
I am spending most of my time and money on the arbitrage effort. The nice thing about arbitrage is that it works as the markets go up, and it works as the markets go down. When markets are too volatile, however, arbitrage can get very messy and dangerous, with each trade generating a loss instead of a profit, so I am working right now to tune the algorithms to take into account rate-of-change and add in some circuit breaker triggers. Once this is done I will expand those operations.
I am getting much more serious about systems security.
I have a Nano Ledger and recommend that anyone with >$1000 of crypto have one. The Trezor is also supposed to be good, but I haven’t used it.
I will set up a dedicated *nix notebook that is used for nothing except my crypto work. All it takes is one keylogger to get on your PC/Mac and your crypto is gone. What is on your Nano Ledger will be OK, but they will sweep out your exchange account or Coinbase account faster than you can type. A standard Linux installation with Chrome and nothing else is as about as secure as you can get in the civilian world.
If you don’t use LastPass or a similar password manager yet, you need to do that. Your password to LastPass should be at least 16 characters long and should not have a recognizable English word in it. If you think that “Iluvu4evah” is a secure password, you’re wrong.
Hackers know that “4”=”for” and “u”=”you”. Writing a script to substitute those in is trivial if they want to write the script, but it’s much easier for them to download one of the many, many programs out there that already do this.
If your password contains any string of numbers from anything that can be associated with you at any time in your life, it is insecure. Take those numbers out of the character count because they are an insignificant barrier to cracking your account.
The good news is that you probably won’t be targeted, but if you ever mention online that you are doing anything significant in crypto, that chance increased enormously.
*Never* talk with *anyone* about how much you have in crypto. You’ll notice that I haven’t here. There is no reason to tell even a family member how much you have unless you are sharing a tax form. Sure, you may trust them, but all it takes if for someone to overhead someone else mention at a party that a relative got into crypto a long time ago and made a bunch of money. That person can also then be subjected to the $10 hack and force you to send all your crypto to them.
Your password to LastPass (Or equivalent.) should look something like this -> 6k0jQMoziX&D#4W8
Yes, it’s a headache. Imagine your headache, though, were you to open your account one day and find all of your money gone.
Looking at my notes, I have two other things that I wanted to work into this email that I didn’t get to, so here they are:
Just like with free apps and other software, if you are getting something of value and you didn’t pay anything for it, you need to ask why this is. With apps, the phrase is “If you didn’t pay for the product, you are the product”, and this works for things such as pump groups, tips, and even technical analysis. Here’s how I see it.
People don’t give tips on stocks or crypto that they don’t already own that stock or token. Why would they, since if they convince anyone to buy it, the price only goes up as a result, making it more expensive for them to buy in? Sure, you will have friends and family that may do this, but people in a crypto club, your local cryptocurrency meetup, or online are generally not your friends. They are there to make money, and if they can get you to help them make money, they will do it. Pump groups are the worst of these, and no matter how enticing it may look, stay as far away as possible from these scams. I even go so far as to report them when I see them advertise on FB or Twitter, because they are violating the terms of use.
Technical analysis (TA) is something that has been argued about for longer than I’ve been alive, but I think that it falls into the same boat. In short, TA argues that there are patterns in trading that can be read and acted upon to signal when one must buy or sell. It has been used forever in the stock and foreign exchange markets, and people use it in crypto as well. Let’s break down these assumptions a bit.
i. First, if crypto were like the stock or forex markets we’d all be happy with 5-7% gains per year rather than easily seeing that in a day. For TA to work the same way in crypto as it does in stocks and foreign exchange, the signals would have to be *much* stronger and faster-reacting than they work in the traditional market, but people use them in exactly the same way. ii. Another area where crypto is very different than the stock and forex markets centers around market efficiency theory. This theory says that markets are efficient and that the price reflects all the available information at any given time. This is why gold in New York is similar in price to gold in London or Shanghai, and why arbitrage margins are easily <0.1% in those markets compared to cryptoland where I can easily get 10x that. Crypto simply has too much speculation and not enough professional traders in it yet to operate as an efficient market. That fundamentally changes the way that the market behaves and should make any TA patterns from traditional markets irrelevant in crypto. iii. There are services, both free and paid that claim to put out signals based on TA for when one should buy and sell. If you think for even a second that they are not front-running (Placing orders ahead of yours to profit.) you and the other people using the service, you’re naïve. iv. Likewise, if you don’t think that there are people that have but together computerized systems to get ahead of people doing manual TA, you’re naïve. The guys that I have programming my arbitrage bots have offered to build me a TA bot and set up a service to sell signals once our position is taken. I said no, but I am sure that they will do it themselves or sell that to someone else. Basically they look at TA as a tip machine where when a certain pattern is seen, people act on that “tip”. They use software to see that “tip” faster and take a position on it so that when slower participants come in they either have to sell lower or buy higher than the TA bot did. Remember, if you are getting a tip for free, you’re the product. In TA I see a system when people are all acting on free preset “tips” and getting played by the more sophisticated market participants. Again, you have to beat that Wall Street monkey.
If you still don’t agree that TA is bogus, think about it this way: If TA was real, Wall Street would have figured it out decades ago and we would have TA funds that would be beating the market. We don’t.
If you still don’t agree that TA is bogus and that its real and well, proven, then you must think that all smart traders use them. Now follow that logic forward and think about what would happen if every smart trader pushing big money followed TA. The signals would only last for a split second and would then be overwhelmed by people acting on them, making them impossible to leverage. This is essentially what the efficient market theory postulates for all information, including TA.
OK, the one last item. Read this weekly newsletter – You can sign up at the bottom. It is free, so they’re selling something, right? 😉 From what I can tell, though, Evan is a straight-up guy who posts links and almost zero editorial comments. Happy 2018.
**Last updated: May 30, 2018: Updated wallet info with release of Trinity. This 4 part series from the IOTA foundation covers most of the technical FUD centered at IOTA. https://blog.iota.org/official-iota-foundation-response-to-the-digital-currency-initiative-at-the-mit-media-lab-part-1-72434583a2 Also the official IOTA faq on iota.org answers nearly all of these questions if you want to hear the answers directly. Purpose of Writing Since posting FUD is so ridiculously low-effort in comparison to setting the record straight, I felt it necessary to put a log of copy-pastas together to balance the scales so its just as easy to answer the FUD as it was to generate it. So next time you hear someone say "IOTA is centralized", you no longer have to take an hour out of your day and spin your wheels with someone who likely had an agenda to begin with. You just copy-paste away and move on. It's also worth mentioning IOTA devs are too damn busy working on the protocol and doing their job to answer FUD. So I felt a semblance of responsibility. Here they are. These answers are too my understanding so if you see something that doesn't look right let me know! They are divided into the following categories so if you are interested in a specific aspect of IOTA you can scroll to that section. 1) WALLET 2) COMMUNITY 3) INVESTING 4) TECHNICAL
WALLET
IOTA was hacked and users funds were stolen!
First, IOTA was not hacked. The term “hacked” is thrown around way too brazingly nowadays and often used to describe events that weren’t hacks to begin with. Its a symptom of this space growing way too fast creating situations of the blind leading the blind and causing hysteria. What happened: Many IOTA users trusted a certain 3rd party website to create their seed for their wallets. This website silently sent copies of all the seeds generated to an email address and waited till it felt it had enough funds, then it took everyones money simultaneously. That was the ”hack”. https://blog.iota.org/the-secret-to-security-is-secrecy-d32b5b7f25ef The lesson: The absolute #1 marketed feature of crypto is that you are your own bank. Of everything that is common knowledge about crypto, this is at the top. But being your own bank means you are responsible for the security of your own funds. There is no safety net or centralized system in place that is going to bail you out. For those that don’t know (and you really should if you’ve invested in anything crypto), your seed is your username-pw-security question-backup email all rolled into one. Would you trust a no-name 3rd party website to produce your username+pw for your bank account? Because thats essentially what users did. The fix: Make your seed offline with the generators in the sidebar or use dice. This is outlined in the “how to generate wallet and seed” directly following. The trinity and carriota wallets will have seed generators within them upon their release.
How to generate wallet and seed
1) Download official trinity wallet here 2) follow the instructions on the app. 3) Do not run any apps in conjunction with the trinity app. Make sure all other apps are completely closed out on your device.
Are you sure a computer can’t just guess my seed?
An IOTA seed is 81 characters long. There are more IOTA seed combinations than atoms in the universe. All the computers in the world combined would take millions billions of years just to find your randomly generated one that’s located somewhere between the 0th and the 2781st combination. The chance for someone to randomly generate the exact same seed as yours is 1 / (2781). If you can’t fathom the number 27 ^ 81, this video should help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8YIdmwcubc
Download Bolero and run! Bolero is an all-in-one full node install package with the latest IOTA IRI and Nelson all under a one-click install! https://github.com/SemkoDev/bolero.fun/releases "If you want to help the network then spam the network. If you really want to help the network then create a full node and let others spam you!"
No questions or concerns get upvoted, only downvoted!
That’s just the nature of this business. Everyone in these communities has money at stake and are extremely incentivized to keep only positive news at the top of the front page. There is nothing you're going to do about that on this subreddit or any crypto subreddit. It's just a reddit fact of life we have to deal with. Everyone has a downvote and everyone has an upvote. But what can be done is just simply answer the questions even if they are downvoted to hell. Yea most people wont' see the answers or discussion but that one person will. every little bit counts. I will say that there are most certainly answers to nearly every FUD topic out there. Every single one. A lot of the posts I'm seeing as of late especially since the price spike are rehashed from months ago. They are often not answered not because there isn't an answeexplanation, but because regulars who have the answers simply don't see them (for the reason listed above). I can see how it's easy for this to be interpreted (especially by new users) as there not being an answer or "the FUDsters are on to something" but thats just not the case.
IOTA Devs do not respond appropriately to criticism
When critiquers provide feedback that is ACTUALLY useful to the devs, then sure they'll be glad to hear it. So far not once has an outside dev brought up something that the IOTA devs found useful. Every single time it ends up being something that was already taken into consideration with the design and if the critiquer did an ounce of research they would know that. Thus you often find the IOTA devs dismissing their opinion as FUD and responding with hostility because all their critique is really doing is sending the message to their supporters that they are not supposed to like IOTA anymore. Nick Johnson was a perfect example of this. The Ethereum community was co-existing [peacefully]with IOTA’s community (as they do with nearly all alt coins) until Nick wrote his infamous article. Then almost overnight Ethereum decided it didn’t like IOTA anymore and we’ve been dealing with that shit since. As of today, add LTC to that list with Charlie’s (even admitting) ignorant judgement of IOTA. 12/17/2017: Add John McAfee (bitcoin cash) and Peter Todd (bitcoin) to the list of public figures who have posted ignorantly on IOTA.
A lot of crypto communities certainly like to hate on IOTA...
IOTA is disrupting the disrupters. It invented a completely new distributed ledger infrastructure (the tangle) that replaces the blockchain and solves all of its fundamental problems (namely fees and scaling). To give you an idea of this significance, 99% of the cryptocurrencies that exist are built on a block chain. These projects have billions of dollars invested into them meaning everyone in their communities are incentivized to see IOTA fail and spread as much FUD about it as possible. This includes well known organizations, public figures, and brands. Everyone commenting in these subreddits and crypto communities have their own personal money at stake and skin in the game. Misinformation campaigns, paid reddit posters, upvote/downvote bots, and corrupt moderators are all very real in this space.
All IOTAs that will ever exist were sold at the ICO in 2015. There was no % reserved for development. Devs had to buy in with their personal money. Community donated back 5% of all IOTA so the IOTA foundation could be setup.
No inflation schedule? No additional coins? How is this sustainable?
Interestingly enough, IOTA is actually the only crypto that does not run into any problems with a currency cap and deflationaryism. Because there are zero fees, you will always be able to pay for something for exactly what it's worth using IOTA, no matter how small the value. If by chance in the future a single iota grows so large in value that it no longer allows someone to pay for something in fractions of a penny, the foundation would just add decimal points allowing for a tenth or a hundreth or a thousandth of an iota to be transacted with. To give you some perspective, if a single IOTA equals 1 penny, IOTA would have a 27 trillion dollar market cap (100x that of Bitcoin's today)
IOTA is not for P2P, only for M2M
With the release of the trinity wallet, it's now dead simple for anyone to use IOTA funds for P2P. Try it out.
Companies technically don’t have to use the IOTA token
Yes they do Worth clarifying that 0 iota data transactions are perfectly fine and are welcomed since they still provide pow for 2 other transactions and help secure the network. In the early stages, these types of transactions will probably be what give us the tps/pow needed to remove the coordinator and allow the network defend 34% attacks organically. But... if someone does not want to sell or exchange their data for free (0 IOTA transaction), then Dominic is saying that the IOTA token must be used for that or any exchange in value on the network. This is inherently healthy for the ecosystem since it provides a neutral and non-profit middle ground that all parties/companies can trust. If one company made their own token it wouldn’t be trusted since companies are incentivized by profits and nothing is stopping them from manipulating their token to make them more money. Thus, the IOTA foundation will not partner with anyone who refuses to take this option off the table.
All these companies are going to influence IOTA development!!
These companies have no influence on the development of IOTA. They either choose to use it or they don’t.
Internet of things is cheap and will stay cheap
Internet of things is one application of IOTA and considered by many to be the 4th industrial revolution. Go do some googling. IOTA having zero fees enables M2M for the first time in history. Also, if a crypto can do M2M it sure as shit can do M2P and P2P. M2M is hard mode.
Investing in a project in its early stages was something typically reserved for wealthy individuals/organizations before ICO’s became a thing. With early investing comes much less hand holding and more responsibility on the user to know what they are doing. If you have a hard time accepting this responsibility, don’t invest and wait for the technology to get easier for you. How many people actually knew how to use and mine bitcoin in 2009 before it had all its gui infrastructure? IOTA is a tangle, the first of its kind. NOT a copy paste blockchain. As a result wallets and applications for IOTA are the first of their kind and translating the tangle into a nice clean user-friendly blockchain experience for the masses is even more taxing.
Why is the price of my coin falling?!
This may be the most asked question on any crypto subreddit but it's also the easiest to explain. The price typically falls when bad things happen to a coin or media fabricates bad news about a coin and a portion of investors take it seriously. The price increases when good things happen to a coin, such as a new exchange listing or a partnership announced etc.. The one piece that is often forgotten but trumps all these effects is something called "market forces". Market forces is what happens to your coin when another coin gets a big news hit or a group of other coins get big news hits together. For example, when IOTA data marketplace released, IOTA hit a x5 bull run in a single week. But did you notice all the other alt coins in the red? There are a LOT of traders that are looking at the space as a whole and looking to get in on ANY bull action and will sell their other coins to do so. This effect can also be compounded over a long period of time such as what we witnessed when the bitcoin fork FOMO was going on and alt coins were squeezed continuously to feed it for weeks/months. These examples really just scratch the surface of market forces but the big takeaway is that your coin or any coin will most certainly fall (or rise) in price at the result of what other coins are doing, with the most well known example being bitcoin’s correlation to every coin on the market. If you don't want to play the market-force game or don't have time for it, then you can never go wrong buying and holding. It's also important to note that there are layers of investors. There's a top layer of light-stepping investors that are a mixture of day traders and gamblers trying to jump in and jump out to make quick money then look for the next buying (or shorting) opportunity at another coin. There's a middle layer of buyers and holders who did their research, believe in the tech and placing their bets it will win out in the long run. And the bottom layer are the founders and devs that are in it till the bitter end and there to see the vision realized. When a coin goes on a bull run, always expect that any day the top layer is going to pack up and leave to the next coin. But the long game is all about that middle layer. That is the layer that will be giving the bear markets their price-drop resistance. That is why the meme "HODL" is so effective because it very elegantly simplifies this whole concept for the common joe and makes them a part of that middle layer regardless if they understand whats going on or not.
TECHNICAL
How is IOTA free and how does it scale
IOTA is an altruistic system. Proof of work is done in IOTA just like bitcoin. Only a user’s device/phone must do pow for 2 other transactions before issuing one of its own. Therefore no miners and no fees. And the network becomes faster the more transactions are posted. Because of this, spamming the network is encouraged since they provide pow for 2 other transactions and speed up the network.
IOTA is centralized
IOTA is more decentralized than any blockchain crypto that relies on 5 pools of miners, all largely based in China. Furthermore, the coordinator is not a server in the dev’s basement that secretly processes all the transactions. It’s several nodes all around the globe that add milestone transactions to show the direction of the IF’s tangle within the DAG so people don’t accidentally follow a fork from a malicious actor. Anyone with the know-how can fork the tangle right now with a double-spend. But no one would follow their fork because the coordinator reveals which tangle is the legit IF one. If the coordinator wasn’t there (assuming low honest-transaction volume), there would be no way to discern which path to follow especially after the tangle diverges into forks of forks. Once throughout of honest transactions is significant enough, the “honest tangle” will replace the coordinated one and people will know which one to follow simply because it’s the biggest one in the room. Referencing the coordinator is also optional. Also, if you research and understand how IOTA intends to work without the coordinator, it’s easier to accept it for now as training wheels. I suggest reading pg 15 and on of the white paper analyzing in great depth how the network will defend different attack scenarios without a coordinator. For the past several months, IOTA foundation has been using St Petersburg college’s super computer to stress test IOTA and learn when they can turn the coordinator off. There will likely be a blog about the results soon. This is another great read covering double spends on IOTA without a coordinator: www.tangleblog.com/2017/07/10/is-double-spending-possible-with-iota/ This too: http://www.reddit.com/Iota/comments/7eix4a/any_iota_guru_that_can_explain_what_this_guy_is/dq5ijrm Also this correspondence with Vitalik and Come_from_Beyond https://twitter.com/DavidSonstebo/status/932510087301779456 At the end of the day, outstanding claims require outstanding evidence and folks approaching IOTA with a “I’ll believe it when I see it” attitude is completely understandable. It’s all about your risk tolerance.
Can IOTA defend double spend attacks?
99% of these “but did they think about double spend attacks?” type questions could just be answered if people went and did their own research. Yes of course they thought about that. That’s like crypto101… www.tangleblog.com/2017/07/10/is-double-spending-possible-with-iota/
Masked authenticated messages exist right now so data can be transferred privately. Very important for businesses.
Coin privacy
Centralized coin mixer is out that foundation runs. Logs are kept so they can collect data and improve it Folks can copy the coin mixer code and run it themselves. Goal is for mixer to be decentralized and ran by any node.
How do nodes scale? How on earth can all that data be stored?
Full nodes store, update and verify from the last snapshot, which happens roughly every month. Its on the roadmap to make snapshotting automatic and up to each full node’s discretion.With automatic snapshots, each full node will act as a partial perma-node and choose when to snapshot its tangle data. If someone wants to keep their tangle data for several months or even years, they could just choose not to snapshot. Or if they are limited on hard drive space, they could snapshot every week. Perma-nodes would store the entire history of the tangle from the genesis. These are optional and would likely only be created by companies who wish to sell historical access of the tangle as a service or companies who heavily use the tangle for their own data and want to have quick, convenient access to their data’s history. Swarm nodes are also in development which will ease the burden on full nodes. https://blog.iota.org/iota-development-roadmap-74741f37ed01
You can check it out on the forums here. Here's a copypasta: Surae's End of November (2017!) Update Hello, everyone! Sarang posted his update a few days ago to give the community time to review his work before the end of the month. I was hoping to finish multisig off before the end of this month... so I held off on writing this update until then... but it looks like I'm somewhere between 2 days and a week behind on that estimate. MRL Announcements Meetings. We are holding weekly meetings on Mondays at 17:00 UTC. Logs are to be posted on my github soon(tm). Usually we alternate between "office hours" and "research meetings." At office hours, we want members of the community to come in and be able to ask questions, so we are considering opening up a relay to the freenode channel during office hours times, unless things get out of hand. POW-Difficulty Replacement Contest. Some time in December, I am going to formalize an FFS "idea" to open up a multiple-round contest for possible replacements for our proof of work game. The first round would have a 3- or 6-month deadline. Personally, I would love it if this FFS could have an unbounded reward amount. If the community is extremely generous, we could easily whip up a large enough reward to spur lots and lots of interest across the world. The Bitcoin POW game uses SHA256 to find nonces that produce hashes with sufficiently small digests according to the Bitcoin difficulty metric. Our current POW game uses CryptoNight to find nonces that produce hashes with sufficiently small digests according to the CryptoNote difficulty metric. The winner need not be proof of work. My current thoughts are roughly this: All submissions will be public. Submissions that minimize incentives for centralized mining (or maximize disincentives) will be preferred over submissions that do not. Submissions that are elegant will be preferred over submissions that are not. Submissions that have provable claims about desirable properties will be preferred over submissions that do not (e.g. for either the Bitcoin or the Monero POW games, the necessary and sufficient network conditions for these games to produce blocks in a Poisson process have not been identified, to my understanding). Submissions that have a smaller environmental impact will be preferred over submissions that have a larger impact. And so on. I would like as many ideas as possible about a judging rubric for the first round. Especially if a large amount of money will be put up as a prize. The details of the next round would be announced along with the winners of the first round. The reward funds should be released when a set of judges agree on a winner. MRL and Monero Core should each have representation on the panel of judges, and there ought to be at least one independent judge not directly associated with the Monero Project, like Peter Todd, Tim Ruffing, or someone along those lines. But, again, this is just an idea. If the community doesn't like it, we can drop it. Here is a rundown for November Multisig. Almost done. I know, I know, it's been forever. We, as a community, have recently come to see how important it is to carefully and formally ensure the correctness of our schemes before proceeding. Multisig is a delicate thing because a naively implemented multisig can reveal information about the participants. I'm finishing vetting key creation today, finishing signatures tomorrow and the next day. Then I'm passing the result off to moneromooo and luigi to ensure that my description of their code is accurate up to their understanding. Then onto Sarang for final reviews before submission, hopefully by the end of the month. I have my life until Sunday evening blocked off to finish this. A copy of the document will be made available to the community ASAP (an older version is on my github), after more checking and writing is completed. This whitepaper on multisig will be broken into two papers: one will be intended for peer review describing multi-ring signatures, and one will be a Monero Standard. More about that later... RTRS RingCT column-linkability and amortization. You may say "what? I thought we were putting RTRS RingCT on the back burner?" Well, I'm still think ing about amortization of signatures. I'm thinking it will be possible (although perhaps not feasible) for miners to include amortized signatures upon finding new blocks. This would allow users to cite an amortized signature for fast verification, but has some possible drawbacks. But more exciting, I'm also chatting with Tim Ruffing, one of the authors on the RTRS RingCT papers: he thinks he has a solution to our "linkability by columns" problem with MLSAG and RingCT. Currently we try to avoid using more than one ring signature per recipient. This avoids linking distinct outputs based on bundling of these ring signatures. Ruffing believes RTRS RingCT can be tweaked to prove several commitments in a vector of commitments; this would allow a single RTRS RingCT to be computed and checked for each output being spent. Once all the details are checked, I'll write up a document and make a copy of it available to the community. If it works, of course. Consequences of bulletproofs. In my last end-of-month update I hinted at issues with an exponential space-time trade-off in RTRS RingCT. Due to the speed and space savings with bulletproofs, it may now be feasible to implement RTRS RingCT. With improved verification time savings with bulletproofs we can relax our requirements for verification times for signatures. This will allow the slightly longer verification times of RTRS RingCT to be counter-acted. Solving the problem "what ring sizes can we really get away with?" involves some modeling and solving some linear programming problems (linear programming, or linear optimization, is an anachronistically named area of applied mathematics involved with optimizing logistic problems... see here for more information). Hence, we will be inserting bulletproofs into Monero with low friction, and then we will look into the logistics of moving to RTRS RingCT. Monero Standards. Right now, we don't have a comprehensive list of how Monero works, all the various primitives and how they all fit together. Sarang and I have begun working on some Monero Standards that are similar to the original Cryptonote Standards (see here for more information). For each standard, from our hash function on upward, we will describe the standard, provide a justification for Monero's choices in those standards (complete with references), as well as a list of possible replacement standards. For example, our Monero RingCT Standard should describe the RingCT scheme described by shen, which is essentially a ring signature with linear combinations of signing keys + amount commitments. Under the "possible replacements" section, we would describe both the RTRS RingCT scheme and the doubly efficient zk-snark technology as two separate options. These standards may take awhile to complete, and will be living documents as we change the protocol over the years. In the meantime, it will make it dramatically easier for future researchers to step into MRL and pick up where previous researchers have left off. Hierarchical view keys. Exploiting the algebra we currently use for computing one-time keys, the sub-address scheme plays with view keys in a certain way, allowing a user to have one single view key for many wallets. Similarly, we may split a view key into several shares, where each subset of shares can be used to grant partial view access to the wallet. A receiver can request that a sender use a particular basepoint in their transaction key where different subsets of shares of the view key grant access to transactions with different basepoints in their transaction keys. None of these are protocol-level observations, they are wallet-level observations. Moreover, these require only that a receiver optionally specify a basepoint. In other words: hierarchical view keys are a latent feature of our one-time address scheme that has not seen specific development yet. It's a rather low priority compared to the other projects under development; it grants users fine-grained control over their legal compliance, but Monero Standards will have great long-term impact on development and research at Monero. Criticisms. Monero has suffered some recent criticisms about our hash function. I want to briefly address them. First, I believe part of the criticism came from a confusion between Keccak3, SHA-3, and Keccak: we have never claimed to use SHA-3 as our hash function, we have only used the Keccak3 hash function, which is a legacy choice inherited from the original CryptoNote reference code. Many developers confuse the two, but Keccak3 was the hash function on which SHA-3 is based. In particular, the Keccak sponge construction can be used to fashion lots and lots of primitives, all of which could fairly be called "Keccak:" both Keccak3 and SHA-3 are Keccak constructions. This may be a subtle nomenclature issue, but it's important because a good portion of our criticisms say "Hey, they aren't using SHA-3!" Second, I believe part of the criticism also comes from our choice of library, which in my opinion isn't a big deal as long as the library does what it says on the tin. In this case, our hash function is a valid implementation of Keccak3 according to the Keccak3 documentation. The most important criticism, from my point of view, is our choice of pre-SHA-3 Keccak3 as our hash function. Keccak3 underwent lots of analysis during the SHA contest, and Keccak3 is a well-vetted hash funtion. However, it has not been chosen as an international standard. There is a sentiment in the cryptocurrency community to distrust standards, which is probably a healthy sentiment. In this case, however, it means that our choice of hash function is not likely to be supported in common, well-vetted libraries in the future. Moreover, since SHA-3 is an international standard, it shall be undergoing heavy stress testing over the coming decades, a benefit Keccak3 shall not enjoy. Last month, after some discussions, we made changes to our choice of PRNG in Monero to match the PRNG for Bitcoin. There has since been some discussions instantiated by anonimal about this choice of PRNG. We at MRL are doing our best to assist the core team in weighing the relative costs and benefits of switching to a library like crypto++, and so we believe these criticisms fall into the same category. We intend to address these issues and make formal recommendations in the aforementioned Monero Standards. Sorry for using the word aforementioned. Things that didn't move much include a) educational outreach, b) SPECTRE, c) anti-ASIC roadmap, d) refund transactions. Most of which was on hold to complete multisig. As far as educational outreach, I contacted a few members of a few math/cs depts at universities around me, but I haven't gotten anything hopeful yet. I wanted to go local (with respect to me) to make it easier to organize, but that's looking less likely. No matter how enthusiastic of a department we find, garnering participation from faculty members, beginning an application process for new students, squirelling up funding, working out logistics of getting teachers or lecturers/speakers from point A to point B, where to stash students, etc would be a challenge to finish before, say, July. And some schools start their fall semesters in mid-August. So I'm thinking that Summer 2019 is reasonable as the first Monero Summer School... and would be a real fun way to finish off a two-year post-doc! December plan. I am going to finish multisig, and then finish the zk-lit review with Jeffrey Quesnelle, since these are both slam dunks. Any other time in December I have will be devoted to a) looking into the logistics of using the bulletproofs + RTRS RingCT set-up, b) reading the new zk-stark paper and assessing its importance for Monero, c) beginning work on Monero Standards, which includes addressing our hash function criticisms, our PRNG, etc. Thank you again! This is an incredible opportunity, and this community is filled with some smart cookies. Every day is a challenge, and I couldn't ask for a more fun thing to be doing with my life right now. I'm hoping that my work ends up making Monero better for you.
In case you missed it: Major Crypto and Blockchain News from the week ending 12/14/2018
Developments in Financial Services
A cryptocurrency exchange-traded product (ETP) that trades on Switzerland’s Six Exchange saw record trading volumes on Thursday and Friday last week, suggesting that institutional investors may be buying the dip in cryptocurrencies. Four major cryptocurrencies underlie the HODL ETP, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). While HODL ETP’s one-month average daily trading is 20,000 shares, on Thursday, December 6th, and Friday, December 7th, 53,233 shares and 62.986 shares were traded, respectively.
A report published last week by global anti-money laundering policymaker, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), indicates that cryptocurrency exchanges in the United Kingdom pose a, “low risk,” for money laundering and terrorist financing activities. The report, however, does highlight that such activities on UK cryptocurrency exchanges are an, “emerging risk,” although there is not yet enough evidence to suggest that these activities are occurring through cryptocurrency exchanges. In its report, the FATF urged UK regulators to, “Continue to develop an understanding of emerging risks (such as virtual currencies) and intelligence gaps, and take appropriate action.”
Andreas Utermann, CEO and CIO of Allianz Global Investors, called on global financial regulators to ban cryptocurrencies while speaking at a panel discussion in London. According to a report by Reuters, Utermann said, “You should outlaw it,” while participating in a panel alongside Andrew Bailey, the head of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority. Bailey responded by saying that Utermann’s comments were, “quite strong,” before adding that cryptocurrencies have, “no intrinsic value.”
Basis, a major US-based stablecoin project, is shutting down its operations and returning most of its funds to investors, according to a report by crypto news outlet The Block. The report by The Block cited, “multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation,” in claiming that the algorithmic stablecoin project, which generated UDS$133mm of funding through private investments in April, will return funds to investors. According to the Co-Founder and CEO of competing stablecoin project Nevin Freeman, Basis’ shutdown is due to regulatory concerns around one of its token types. Freeman explained, highlighting that algorithmic stablecoins implement a “secondary token”, known as a “bond token”, to help maintain the primary token’s peg. In many cases, regulators like the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) consider these secondary tokens to be securities.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, announced that it has added Circle’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), to its combined Stablecoin Market. Circle, a company backed by Goldman Sachs, first released its stablecoin in September of this year. Binance’s combined Stablecoin Market features other notable stablecoins, like Tether (USDT), that trade against cryptocurrencies as interchangeable base pairs.
Coinone, a South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange, has officially launched Cross, a cross-border payments application that leverages Ripple’s xCurrent product to increase efficiencies. The application, released by Coinone’s payments subsidiary, Coinone Transfer, targets unbanked or underbanked South Koreans by enabling the transfer of funds to Thailand or the Philippines at a low cost.
Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange heralded by the Winklevoss twins, released an official company blog post this weekend announcing that the firm will support Bitcoin Cash (BCH) custody and trading. The exchange will support only the Bitcoin Cash ABC network at this time, adding that they, “are continuing to evaluate Bitcoin SV over the coming weeks or months, and we may or may not choose to support withdrawals and/or trading of Bitcoin SV in the future.” Additionally, the company detailed that its listing of BCH is pending regulatory approval by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
Gemini, the cryptocurrency trading platform founded by the Winklevoss twins, announced the launch of a mobile crypto trading application in an official blog post today. Accompanying the launch of the crypto trading app is a new investment vehicle, dubbed, “The Cryptoverse,” that is comprised of a basket of cryptocurrencies weighted by market capitalization. While speaking to Bloomberg today, Cameron Winklevoss said that, “A lot of our decisions have perhaps given off a perception that we’re more institutional-based. The reality of the situation is that we have a diverse customer base. And the retail story is just beginning.” The Winklevoss twins went on to detail of a goal to expand reach to Asian markets by 2019’s end.
Good Money, a US neo-banking platform, has closed its Series A investment round that generated USD$30mm led by cryptocurrency-focused merchant bank Galaxy Digital and the founder of EOS (EOS) Block.one. Good Money aims to provide a variety of banking service and certain financial instruments to US account holders while exploring innovative changes to traditional banking practices. “Modern banking is a primary driver of so many issues we as a society face – from economic inequality, institutional racism, environmental destruction to political corruption,” said Good Money founder Gunnar Lovelace. Specifically, Good Money eliminates ATM fees while offering each bank user equity in the company.
Kraken, a notable cryptocurrency exchange, is seeking to raise funding with a USD$4bn valuation for the company and a USD$100,000 investment minimum, according to CoinDesk. In an email to investors, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell wrote, “There is presently a limited time opportunity available to a very small select number of clients to purchase shares.” The email goes on to detail that the exchange will close its offer on December 16th.
OKEx, the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, will begin listing Bitcoin Cash ABC under the original Bitcoin Cash ticker (BCH), as per an official announcement Tuesday. Additionally, OKEx will change the Bitcoin Cash SV ticker from BCHSV to BSV. The announcement by OKEx comes after other notable cryptocurrency exchanges have made the same switch, including Coinbase and Gemini.
PayPal, an online payments portal, has launched its own internal private blockchain platform that will allow staff to trade and exchange tokens while generating ideas and participating in programs to foster innovation, as per a report by news outlet Cheddar. The private blockchain network, which was built by 25 PayPal employees in just 6 months, will allow employees to earn more for enrolling in learning and development programs. The PayPal tokens are not tradeable, or worth anything for that matter, outside PayPal’s blockchain.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a big four consulting firm, is partnering with Bitfury Group, a large blockchain software and mining firm, to develop a blockchain accelerator specific to Russian businesses. As per an official press release by PwC, the partnership will leverage Exonum, Bitfury’s open source framework to build blockchain applications, for educational courses and seminars. The partnership aims to meet the, “current needs,” of PwC’s enterprise clients in Russia.
Revolut, a digital banking alternative with an in-application cryptocurrency exchange, announced that it has been awarded a European banking license. Seeking to become the, “Amazon of banking,” the license will allow Revolut to offer traditional banking services alongside its current cryptocurrency offerings to European customers. Nikolay Storonsky, Founder and CEO of Revolut, said in regards to the newly acquired license that, “With the banking license now secured, commission-free stock trading progressing well, and five new international markets at final stages of launch, we are living up to our reputation as the ‘Amazon of Banking’. Our vision is simple: one ap with tens of millions of users, where you can manage every aspect of your financial life with the best value and technology.”
Shinhan Bank, the second-largest commercial bank in South Korea, is launching a new project to implement blockchain technology in its internal processes with a goal of eliminating human error. According to a report by news outlet The Korea Times, Shinhan also recently completed a training program for its staff to increase their knowledge of blockchain technology across various applications. After Shinhan implemented blockchain technology for interest rate swap transactions on November 30th, South Korea’s second-largest bank is now aiming to apply the technology in its record-keeping process to enhance overall efficiencies.
SolarisBank, Germany’s second-largest and Europe’s ninth-largest stock exchange, is partnering with Stuttgart Exchange Group, a German fintech company, to jointly develop a cryptocurrency exchange. As per a report by Cointelegraph Germany, the joint cryptocurrency exchange venture, “is scheduled to launch in the first half of 2019.” This news comes after SolarisBank announced plans to launch a zero-fee cryptocurrency trading application this past May.
The Canadian city of Calgary is becoming the first city in Canada to launch a digital version of its local currency, according to a report by the Global News. Dubbed as the Calgary Digital Dollar, the digital currency will be exclusive to Calgary and operate alongside the country’s Canadian Dollar. Calgary-based businesses will now be required by law to accept at least 10% of a payment in digital currency, although they are allowed to accept up to 100%.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is launching a pilot of its Global Payment Initiative (GPI) to combat growing blockchain and fintech solutions, according to an official announcement last week. Currently, the SWIFT Network is used by global financial institutions to conduct global financial payments and cross-border transfers of fiat currency. Although the project is still in its early stages, the GPI pilot hopes to, “build the foundation of a new integrated and interactive service that will significantly improve efficiencies in the payments process and which will ultimately be made available to all 10,000 banks across the SWIFT network.”
The United Arab Emirates’(UAE) central bank is partnering with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) to develop a cryptocurrency to facilitate cross border transactions between the two countries, according to a report by news outlet GulfNews. In a meeting pertaining to global banking standards and regulation in the Arab region, Mubarak Rashed Al Mansouri, the governor of the UAE’s central bank, said, “This is probably the first time ever that witnesses the cooperation of monetary authorities from different countries on this topic and we hope that this achievement will foster similar collaboration in our region.” The prospective digital currency will be used by both central banks and financial institutions in the countries.
TokenSoft, a security token offering (STO) startup, has acquired a 20% stake in regulated broker-dealer Marpine Securities LLC in order to launch its own regulated broker-dealer. After acquiring the 20% stake, TokenSoft will launch its new regulated broker-dealer entity, called TokenSoft Global Markets, that will be registered through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). The new regulated broker-dealer entity will allow TokenSoft to advise token issuers through every step of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) process. Additionally, TokenSoft will now be able to legally operate in services related to insurance and management.
Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors and a notable cryptocurrency pundit, believes that the current fair value of Bitcoin (BTC) is between USD$13,800 and USD$14,800, according to a note published on Thursday. Lee arrived at this valuation by taking into account the number of active wallet addresses, usage per account, and other supply and demand metrics. Additionally, Lee forecasted that the fair value of BTC will reach USD$150,000/coin once BTC wallets account for 7% of Visa’s 4.5bn account holders.
UAE Exchange, an exchange based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is partnering with Ripple to launch a blockchain-based cross-border remittances platform by 1Q2019, as per a Reuters report on Thursday. The report details further that Finablr, a payments and foreign exchange company that owns UAE Exchange, observes a high level of remittance inflows from expatriate workers in the Middle East region. “We expect to go live with Rippel by Q1, 2019 with two other Asian banks,” said Finablr CEO Promoth Manghat, adding, “This is for remittances to start with, from across the globe into Asia.”
Regulatory Environment
De Nederlandsche Bank, the Netherlands’ central bank, will soon require domestic cryptocurrency providers to obtain a license from the regulator to operate, as per a report by Dutch news outlet DeTelegraaf. The Netherlands' central bank is taking these measures in the hope that it will, “prevent such cryptocurrencies from being used to launder money obtained through crime or to fund terrorism.” In order to receive a license, cryptocurrency firms must maintain Know-Your-Customer procedures and report any suspicious activity to the Dutch central bank.
Eddie Hughes, a conservative member of the United Kingdom’s Parliament, suggested that Bitcoin (BTC) should be accepted as legal tender for tax and utility payments, according to news outlet Express.co.uk. The article discusses that Hughes, who is a self-described, “crypto enthusiast with amateur knowledge,” recently met with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which accepts cryptocurrency donations. This news comes after the US state of Ohio announced that it would begin accepting BTC as legal tender for tax payments.
Following a case in Canadian courts that resulted in a ruling ordering mistakenly sent crypto funds to be returned to their owner, a blog post from the University of Oxford Faculty of Law is noting that there could be repercussions with the case potentially setting a precedent for lost or stolen cryptocurrency claims. The Canadian court case’s ruling will require defendant Brian Wall to return USD$370,482 worth of Ethereum (ETH) tokens to the plaintiff, Copytrack. The blog post from the University of Oxford Faculty of Law reads, ‘This precedent may have major repercussions for the enforcement of claims regarding lost or stolen cryptocurrencies,” adding that the ruling allows the plaintiff to recover tokens, “in whatsoever hands those Ether Tokens may currently be held.”
Japan’s government is considering plans to ease cryptocurrency taxes in an effort to revitalize the domestic cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. This week, Japanese Congressman Takeshi Fujimaki proposed four significant changes to taxation requirements pertaining to digital assets, which include: a reduction on the cryptocurrency gains tax from 55% to 20%; elimination of taxes on crypto-to-crypto payments; elimination of taxes on miniscule cryptocurrency payments; and an adjustment that would allow cryptocurrency investors to carry forward losses across quarters and years, effectively until cryptocurrencies are ‘cashed’ out.
Jay Clayton, Chairman for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC), said during a speech that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), “can be effective,” for fundraising, but that, “securities laws must be followed.” Clayton went on in his speech to comment on the US SEC’s work regarding distributed ledger technology (DLT), digital assets, and ICOs, saying that it is an, “area where the Commission and staff have spent a significant amount of time,” and, “that this trend will continue in 2019.”
Jay Clayton, the Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), expressed his optimism for distributed ledger technology’s potential impact on traditional financial markets in a testimony before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs yesterday. According to a transcript published on the SEC’s website, Clayton said, “I am optimistic that developments in distributed ledger technology can help facilitate capital formation, providing promising investment opportunities for both institutional and Main Street Investors.” Additionally, Clayton highlighted that the SEC is, “Focusing a significant amount of attention and resources on digital assets and initial coin offerings (ICOs).”
Maxim Akimov, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, announced that no significant changes will be made to the draft of a bill concerning cryptocurrency regulation in the country, as per news outlet Finmarket. The bill was already approved by Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, in May 2018, although the bill has generated substantial discussion since. Since approval of the bill, all cryptocurrency and token-related terminology have been removed and replaced with the term “digital rights”. At the beginning of December, Pavel Krasheninnikov, Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, said that the bill needed to be, “significantly,” changed.
Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, highlighted that Security Token Offerings (STOs) in China are illegal while speaking at a summit in Beijing. As per a report by news outlet the South China Morning Post, Gongsheng told the summit that, “illegal financing activities through STOs and ICOs were still rampant in the mainland despite a nationwide clean-up of the cryptocurrency market last year.” In citing reasoning for the continued ban on STOs, Gongsheng explained that, “Virtual money has become an accomplice to all kinds of illegal and criminal activities.”
Pantera Capital, a blockchain and cryptocurrency-focused investment firm and hedge fund, is warning investors that as much as a quarter of their ICO project could potentially be violating US securities laws, according to a Bloomberg report. In a newsletter to clients, Pantera Capital warned, “While we believe the vast majority of the projects in our portfolio should not be affected, approximately 25% of our fund’s capital is invested in other projects with liquid tokens that sold to US investors without using Regulation D or Regulation S”
Russia has no intention of implementing Venezuela’s state-backed digital currency, the Petro, into commercial operations, according to a report by news outlet RIA Novosti. While speaking to reporters this week, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak said, “Representatives from our tax service and central bank... got acquainted with the cryptocurrency Venezuela is introducing,” adding, “But no more than that. As for payments, they’re not happening yet.”
South Korea’s representative body, the National Assembly, held its first official meeting with seven of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges on Monday. The purpose of the meeting was to debate cryptocurrency regulation between stakeholders of South Korea’s cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrency exchanges Bithumb, CobitCoin, Coinone, Upbit, Gopax, Coinplug, and Hanbitco were among the attendees of the debate, which reportedly focused on Anti-Money Laundering (AML) customer protections and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures.
The United Kingdom’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental financial security body, is calling on the country’s government to increase monitoring of cryptocurrency markets. According to an official report last week, the UK must overhaul its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and combat terrorist financing (CFT) efforts in order to prevent illicit activities with cryptocurrencies. “Virtual currency exchange providers are not yet covered by AML/CFT requirements,” the report details, adding, “this is an emerging risk and there is not yet evidence to suggest that broad scale ML/TF is occurring in the UK through this relatively small sector.”
The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is interested in learning more about the Ethereum (ETH) network, its technology, and the markets build around it. On Tuesday, the CFTC published a Request for Input (RFI) that requests the public’s feedback on different questions concerning Ethereum. The RFI explains that its goal is to inform the CFTC about Ethereum and similar emerging technology, saying, “The input from this request will advance the CFTC’s mission of ensuring the integrity of the derivatives market as well as monitoring and reducing the systematic risk by enhancing legal certainty in the markets. The RFI seeks to understand the similarities and distinctions between certain virtual currencies, including here ether and bitcoin, as well as ether-specific opportunities, challenges, and risks.”
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) is ordering that cryptocurrency asset manager CoinAlpha Advisors LLC pay a USD$50,000 fine, alleging that the firm conducted an unregistered securities sale. After forming in October 2017, CoinAlpha raised more than USD$600,000 from investors to invest in digital assets. In an official release, the US SEC said that CoinAlpha did not file a Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities, meaning that the firm breached securities laws by soliciting securities investors. Additionally, the firm allegedly did not adhere to proper know-your-customer procedures to verify that investors were accredited.
Venezuela is reportedly beginning to convert its citizens’ monthly pension payments into Petros, Venezuela’s controversial state and oil-backed cryptocurrency, according to a report by local economics blog the Caracas Chronicles. The conversion of Venezuelan pensioners’ payments into Petros came after the country already sent pensioners their monthly payment in the form of a check for Venezuelan Bolivars -- normally, upon receiving their check, pensioners would deposit their funds into a bank account where they could then withdraw fiat from local branches. The Venezuelan government, however, converted pensioners’ fiat payments into the Petro upon their deposit into a bank. In the first few weeks of the Petro’s existence, its value has risen from 9,000 to more than 15,000.
Warren Davidson, an Ohio Congressman and notable advocate of blockchain and digital assets, is floating blockchain technology as a solution to fund US President Donald Trump’s prospective US-Mexico border wall. While interviewing with NPR, Congressman Davidson suggested, “the American people, or whomever should choose to donate,” could pay for the border wall, adding, “you could do it with sort of like a crowdfunding site or you could do a blockchain and you could have WallCoins.”
General News
“The long-term value of Bitcoin (BTC) is more likely to be USD$100 than USD$100,000,” says Kenneth Rogoff, a former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the current Harvard University Professor of Economics and Public Policy. While writing an article for major UK news outlet The Guardian, Rogoff highlighted that, because BTC’s use is limited to transactions, it makes the digital asset more vulnerable to a bubble-like collapse. Rogoff also cited that BTC’s energy-intensive verification processes is, “vastly less efficient,” than systems that leverage, “a trusted central authority like a central bank.”
A new report by PeckShield, a blockchain security company that monitors various cryptocurrency ecosystems, details that decentralized applications (DApps) on the EOS (EOS) blockchain have lost as much as USD$1mm in hacks since July 2018. The report details further that DApps on the EOS network have sustained 27 breaches since July, which are responsible for the up to 400,000 EOS that have been compromised from hacks. Guo Yonggang, a blockchain security expert cited in a report on the matter by crypto media firm Blockchain Truth, believes that the hacks can be attributed to security problems with the DApps themselves, rather than with the EOS network.
A new study published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance on Wednesday finds that the number of unique ID-verified cryptocurrency users nearly doubled in in the first 3 quarters of 2018. The study details that total ID-verified users increased to 35mm in the first three quarters of 2018 from 18mm at the end of 2017, representing an increase of 94%. As per an analysis of the study by Bloomberg, the growth of crypto’s userbase despite the market decline, “could signal that an eventual recovery could be coming.”
Amid the continued cryptocurrency sell-off, only two cryptocurrency mining machines remain profitable, according to real-time data from ASICMinerValue.com. ASICMInerValue.com, which calculates the profitability of Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners, indicates that only indicates that only the Ebank Ebit E11++ and ASICminer 8 Nano 44Th mining models are profitable for mining cryptocurrencies based on the SHA-256 hash function -- notable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) use this has function.
Bitmain, a large Chinese cryptocurrency mining firm, announced that it is closing its development center in Israel, citing current cryptocurrency market conditions. In closing Bitmaintech Israel, the crypto mining giant was forced to fire all 23 employees. Among the employees let go is Gadi Glikberg, head of Bitmain’s Israeli branch and Vice President of International Sales, who said on the recent market turmoil, “The crypto market has undergone a shake-up in the past few months, which has forced Bitmain to examine its various activities around the globe and to refocus its business in accordance with the current situation.”
Busan, a major South Korean city, will be the beneficiary of the South Korean government’s plan to spend 4bn Korean won (USD$3.5mm) to establish a blockchain-enabled virtual power plant (VPP). As per a report by South Korean news outlet Yonhap News Agency, the project will be angled as a national competition in 2019, hosted by South Korea’s largest electric utility, Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). The VPP will integrate the idle capacities of multiple energy resources through a cloud-based distributed ledger in order to optimize power generation and decrease costs.
Church’s Chicken, a large international fast food franchise, is partnering with Dash Venezuela to accept cryptocurrencies in its Venezuelan locations. According to an official press release, 13 Church’s Chicken establishments will begin accepting Dash (DASH) as payment following, “extensive and rigorous days of training,” staff to understand cryptocurrencies. With the addition of Church’s Chicken, more than 2,200 establishments in Venezuela accept DASH as payment.
Crypto.com, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency payments platform, announced the appointment of former PayPal executive Tyson Hackwood to serve as the firm’s Vice President and Head of Global Merchant Acquisition in an official press release today. Crypto.com aims to increase cryptocurrency adoption by both merchants and consumers through their point-of-sale (PoS) transaction terminals. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek believes that Hackwood will be integral in furthering this goal, saying, “As we develop the Crypto.com Chain to fulfill the current industry need to pay and be paid in crypto, Tyson will play an important role in expanding the number and quality of merchants that are part of our network.”
Hyperledger, a notable blockchain consortium, is continuing its robust expansion after announcing the addition of 16 new members at the Hyperledger Global Forum in Basel, Switzerland. Among the notables to join the consortium are, Alibaba Cloud, Citigroup’s Citi Ventures arm, and Deutsche Telekom. The latest addition of 16 members brings the total membership of Hyperledger to more than 260 different companies. In a public statement, Hyperledger Executive Director Brian Behlendorf said that, “The growing Hyperledger community reflects the increasing importance of open source efforts to build enterprise blockchain technologies across industries and markets. The latest members showcase the widening interest in and impact of DLT and Hyperledger."
Jeremy Henrickson, the former Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, has departed the US-based cryptocurrency exchange after serving since July 2016. “Jeremy’s contributions to Coinbase over the past two years were invaluable,” said a Coinbase spokesperson, adding that, “he helped to build our scrappy startup team into a high-functioning product and engineering organization -- overseeing a 5x+ growth of the team.” Henrickson’s departure comes after long-term Coinbase executives Adam White and Hunter Merghart left the US-based cryptocurrency exchange in recent months.
LinkedIn’s, “2018 U.S. Emerging Jobs,” report released on Thursday ranks the role of blockchain developer as the fastest growing job in the United States. The report by LinkedIn indicates that blockchain developer jobs have increased 33-fold in the past 12 months alone. San Francisco, New York City, and Atlanta are among the cities with the highest demand for blockchain developer jobs.
Orbs, a unique hybrid blockchain platform, raised more than USD$15mm in cryptocurrencies to fund its development of a public blockchain, according to a company blog post. South Korean application provider Kakao lead the fundraising efforts with a representative telling CoinDesk that the company, “always seeks to invest and support innovative startups, and Orbs is a good example.” In total, Orbs raised 139,000 Ether (ETH) and 892 Bitcoin (BTC), amounting to roughly USD$15.4mm. Orbs aims to build a public blockchain with this funding that is, “universal,” and, “scalable,” for decentralized applications (DApps) with the, “liquidity of a base layer.”
Samsung has reportedly filed patent applications for three different blockchain-related trademark requests that all pertain directly to smartphones, according to news outlet Galaxy Club. Specifically, the patents named “Blockchain KeyStore”, “Blockchain Key Box”, and “Blockchain Core” all pertain to cryptocurrency custody capabilities on smartphones. This news comes amid the release of HTC’s Exodus 1 and Sirin Labs’ FINNEY, both of which are being marketed as blockchain smartphones with cryptocurrency custody capabilities.
Q: 1) Hello, what's a better strategy for bitcoin holders if it hard forks at 75%? Is it worth holding of the coins in the minority chain? Or better selling them? Will the value of coins in the majority chain be weakened or reinforced? Thank you A: 1) BIP109 does not hard fork at 75%, it hard forks 28 days after 75% has been reached-- so when the hard fork happens, there should be almost zero hash power on the minority chain. So there will not be a minority chain. If I am wrong and blocks are created on the minority chain, people plan to get enough hash power to replace those blocks with empty blocks, so it is impossible to make any transactions on the minority chain. Q: 2) if Bitcoin split into two chains, will it cause panic in the market, then the overall market capitalization fell? A: 2) Bitcoin split into two chains accidentally in March of 2013, and there was panic selling -- the price dropped from $48 to $37 within a few hours. But the mining pools very quickly agreed on which branch of the chain they would support, the problem was resolved within a day, and a week later the price was over $60. That shows the strength of consensus and incentives-- the mining pools did what was best for Bitcoin because that is what is best for themselves in the long term. Q: 3) Now it requres 60-70G space for a full node wallet, also it takes severals days for synchronization. Technically, Is it possible in the future that a full node wallet only cost a little space and can be quickly synchronized? (Do not use light wallets and other third party wallets) A: 3) You can run a pruned node that does not store the full block chain today (I’m running six right now on inexpensive servers around the world to test some new code). It is technically possible to get fast synchronization without giving up any trust, but it would require miners do more work (they would have to compute and store and validate an “unspent transaction output committment hash” in the block chain). There are also schemes that would give you fast synchronization at a lightweight-wallet level of trust, but worked towards no trust if you were connected to the network for long enough. Some developers say that you are not really using Bitcoin unless you run a full node, but that is wrong. Bitcoin was designed so that you can make the choice of speed and convenience versus trust. You give up very, very little trust if you run a lightweight wallet that supports multisignature transactions, and I think that is what most people should be running. Q: 4) What do you think about Ethereum? Can Bitcoin achieve all the same functions claimed by Ethernet? Thank you A: 4) I think most of the interesting things you can do with Ethereum you can also do with multi-signature Bitcoin transactions. I haven’t seen a really great use of Ethereum yet, and I think there will be a big problem with Ethereum smart contracts that are designed to steal people’s money, because very few people will have the skill necessary to tell if a complicated smart contract is correct. I’m watching the rootstock.io project, which brings Ethereum contracts to Bitcoin. Q: 5) Is it possible that Nakamoto may still participate in the development of Bitcoin by a pseudonym? What is the last time he contact you? Will he be back? A: 5) Yes, it is possible. I tell reporters who ask me about Satoshi: The idea of Bitcoin is important; who invented it is an interesting mystery, but I think it should remain a mystery until whoever invented it decides to step forward. We should respect Satoshi's privacy. Q: 6) Now some government can prevent people from accessing foreign information using technical method(like the Great Firewall), people need to get across the wall first if they want to know information abroad. So technically speaking, is it possible that the government could block and damage the usage of bitcoin? If it is, is there any method to get across the wall? A: 6) If a government controls network access into and out of their country (like the Great Firewall), they could easily block connections to and from today’s Bitcoin peer-to-peer network. Connections are not encrypted in any way, and most connect to port 8333, which would be easy to block. However, blocking connections inside the country would be much harder. And it only takes one encrypted or satellite or microwave or laser connection that bypasses the firewall to get around the blockage and get blocks and transactions flowing across the border again. I think governments that decide they don’t like Bitcoin are more likely to pass laws that make it a crime to use a currency other than the official government currency to pay for things. Q: 7) You insist on hard fork at 75%, while Chinse Mining Pools insist at 90%. So it may be easier to get support from China If Classic changes to 90%. Have you ever considered to communicate with Chinese mine pool( such as convening a meeting) to reduce differences? A: 7) Yes, I was in Beijing a few weeks ago to better understand what some of the Chinese mining pools are thinking. It was a productive meeting, and I look forward to communicating more with them soon. Q: 8) How will halving and block size increasing impact the bitcoin price in your opnion? Thanks. A: 8) The price, today, is a reflection of confidence. If people think Bitcoin will be valuable in the future, they are willing to buy it and hold it. Everybody knows the halving will happen, so, theoretically, that should not affect today’s price. I believe that increasing the block size limit would be very good for the price, because Bitcoin is more valuable the more people who are able to use it. Q: 9) Technically, bitcoin should also have drawbacks. Some disadvantages may be improved in the future , while some may be difficult to improve. What are those shortcomings for bitcoin to hard to improve in your opinon? Are you an optimist thinking that all technical shortcomings are temporary, and they will all likely to be improved in the future? A: 9) Every successful technology is full of shortcomings. It is always easier to look backwards and see your mistakes. Smart engineers are very good at working around those shortcomings, and wise engineering managers know when to work around a shortcoming to remain compatible with the existing technology and when it makes sense to break compatibility because eliminating a shortcoming would have large benefits. Q: 10) If there is a kind of altcoin in the future goes beyond Bitcoin, it must has the advantage Bitcoin can not have, right? Conversely, if Bitcoin itself evolves fast, improves and adds new features, it will be difficult to be surpassed and eliminated, right? What does Bitcoin scalability and evolution capability look like? A: 10) People are funny -- I can imagine an altcoin that has no technology advantages over Bitcoin, but some people prefer it for some reason. I live in a town where a lot of people care a lot about the environment, and I could imagine them deciding to use a “GreenCoin” where all miners must be inspected regularly and must use only solar power. I think many engineers tend to over-estimate the importance of new features, and under-estimate the importance of reliability, convenience and reputation. Satoshi designed Bitcoin to be very scalable, and to be able to evolve. I think the best way for any technology to scale and evolve is competition -- make the technology open, and let companies or teams compete to build the most reliable, convienent and secure products. That looks like (and is!) a very messy, chaotic process, but it produces better results, faster, than a single person or team deciding on on approach to solving every problem. Q: 11) If R3 succeeds, will it challenge bitcoin in transnational remittances? A: 11) Maybe -- if banks involved in R3 could make it very convenient to get money into and out of their blockchain. They might not be able to do that because of regulations, though. But I don’t know much about the international remittance market and what regulations the banks will have to deal with. Q: 12) Can blockchain only be secured by mining? Some private blockchain do not have mining property, are they really blockchain? A: 12) Security is not “yes it is secure” or “no it is not secure.” Proof of work (mining) is the most secure way we know of to secure a blockchain, but there are less secure methods that can work if less security is OK. And less security is OK for some private blockchains because if somebody cheats, they can be taken to court and money can be recovered. Q: 13) Will public chain, private chain and R3 chain coexist for a long time? Or only one chain survive finally? What is the relationship among Bitcoin block chain, private chains and R3 chain , complementary or competitive? Will Bitcoin block chain eventually win? A: 13) My guess is all of the “blockchain for everything” excitement will die down in a year or two and a lot of people will be disappointed. Then a few years later there will be blockchains for everything, running quietly inside stock markets and currency exchanges and lots of other places. Some of them will use the Bitcoin blockchain, some of them won’t, and nobody besides blockchain engineers will care much. Throughout it all, I think it is most likely Bitcoin continues to grow, hopefully with less drama as it gets bigger and more mature. Q: 14) Some people think that it is difficult for the outside world to understand the technical details if lightning network is controlled by blockstream or another company, resulting in technological centralization, what’s your opinion? A: 14) I don’t worry about that, the lightning protocol is being designed in the open as an open standard. It is complicated, but not so complicated only one person or company can understand it. Q: 15) What is the procedure Bitcoin Core modify the rules? Take the 2M hard fork proposal as an example, I saw there are concerns that if one of the five core developers who have write access reject the proposal will be rejected. So If happens, does that mean the launch hard ford in July will be abandoned? What is percentage of agreement in Core developers to write code for such a major bifurcation matter like 2M hard fork? Are there any specific standards? Or the lead developer has the final decision? A: 15) That is a good question for the current active Core developers. When I was the lead developer, I would make a final decision if a decision needed to be made.
19. JR13
Q: What do you think about the future of increasing bitcoin block size limit? A: It will happen sooner or later -- almost everybody agrees it must happen. I am still working to make it happen sooner, because the longer it takes, the worse for Bitcoin.
20. vatten
Q: What decision making process you think should be used for future bitcoin development? A: For example, WuJiHan's proposition of service providers and mining pools collecting individual mineuser opinion. Or, a non-profit making standard making committee like IEEE, consists of people with enough expertise in bitcoin and economy, finance? I think we should look at how development of other very successful technologies works (like email or the http protocol). I am not an expert, but open standards and open processes for participating in creating standards that are either adopted by the market or not (like the IETF process) seem to work the best.
21. kcb
Q: From my experience on Reddit, people now start to understand that evil is not Blockstream/Core's intention. They simply have a very different vision on how Bitcoin network should be running and on how future development should be heading. They do whatever they can to protect their vision, even dirty tricks, because they feel they are bringing justice. Similarly, in Chinese community, we do see the same situation. Many Chinese Bitcoiners that showed strong enthusiasm in the past differ with each other. This even happens among my own real-life friends. My question is: How can we separate these two groups of people who have widely divergent visions? Bitcoin cannot proceed when carrying two totally different visions. A: I don’t know! It is always best if everybody is free to work on their own vision, but for some reason some people seem to think that the block size limit will prevent big companies from taking over Bitcoin. I think all they will accomplish is making the technology much more complicated. And big companies are much better able to deal with and control highly complicated technologies.
22. XRP
Q: Please share your comments on ripple, Mr. Guru. A: I haven’t paid very much attention to Ripple- the last time I looked at it was probably two years ago. Back then I thought they would have trouble with governments wanting to regulate their gateway nodes as money transmitters, but I haven’t even taken the time to see if I was right about that.
23.Lory
Q: Hi Gavin, I think you had a disagreement with the Nakamoto roadmap in Bitcoin design. Can you explain why? Thank you. A: I assume you mean the part where Satoshi says he doesn’t think a second implementation will ever be a good idea. I just think Satoshi was wrong about that-- if you look at very successful protocols, they all have multiple compatible implementations. We understand a lot more about what it takes to be completely compatible and have much better tools to ensure compatibility. And the fact that there now are multiple compatible implementations working on the network (btcd being probably the best example) shows both that it is possible and that the other implementations are not a menace to the network.
24. HuoDongFaBu
Q: 1) For the dispute between Core and Classic, can we refer to the theory of “Common-pool resources” (Commons) in the Western cultural tradition to understand and grasp the public and neutral property of bitcoin so at to strive for a solution which can balance interests of all parties? A: 1) Maybe. The blockchain could be considered a Commons today-- a common, limited resource. But if control of the block size limit was given to miners, then I don’t think it fits the definition any more, because miners would have the freedom to restrict its use however they saw fit, on a block-by-block basis. That is just a simple, pure market, with transaction creators on one side and miners on the other. Q: 2) For the application requring "bitcoin multi-signature script", can you recommend any programming language, libraries or tools? A: 2) BitPay has some good tools: https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore I haven’t worked on any multisignature applications since writing the low-level protocol code-- there are probably other great libraries and tools that I just don’t know about.
25. zhuoji
Q: Hello Gavin, are you now still developing Classic? Will Classic proceed? Would you give up Classic and return to Core? A: Yes, yes, and there is no “return to” -- I plan on contributing to lots of projects.
26. jieke
Q: 1) If there are one million entrepreneurs who require fund and asset securitization via block chain technology, is it possible? A: 1) If there are ten million investors willing to fund those entrepreneurs, sure it is possible. The technology won’t be a problem, one million is not a large number for today’s computers. Q: 2) Why can we trust Bitcoin and what are the advantages of bitcoin in online payment and settlement? Its commission fee now is not as cheap as before, besides, the time for one confirm is not fast enough. Your opinions on pros and cons of Mining and PoW? A: 2) For people in places with good-enough banking systems like the United States or China, purchasing things inside their own country, bitcoin does not have much of an advantage over existing payment systems. But if you are buying something from somebody in another country, or you live in a place where there are no good payment systems, Bitcoin works very well. Proof of work and mining is the most fair, decentralized way to distribute new coins. They are also the best way of securing the network that we know of so far. Perhaps in 30 years when essentially all of the new coins have been mined and computer scientists have thoroughly studied other ways of securing the network it might make sense for Bitcoin to start to switch to something other than mining and proof-of-work to secure the network. Q: 3) How likely the possibility of replacing the existing legal currency with virtual currency? A: 3) Very unlikely in a large country. I can imagine a small country that uses a larger country’s currency deciding to switch to a crypto currency, though.
27. IMJENNIM
Q: 1) You have always insist on larger block. Some people share the same view, they just want to increase the block size, regardless of network bandwidth restrictions in China and other developing countries. How do you see this criticism? A: 1) Most people are using Bitcoin over very limited bandwidth connections-- most people use lightweight wallets. If you run a business that needs a fast connection to the Internet, then it is not expensive to rent a server in a data center that has very good bandwidth. Even inexpensive servers have plenty of bandwidth and CPU power to keep up with much higher transaction volume. If you insist on running a full node from your home, average connection speed in China today is 3.7 megabits per second, which is almost 1,000 transactions per second. Latency through the Great Firewall is a bigger issue right now, but there are several software solutions to that problem that people (including myself) are working on right now. Q: 2) In addition, I'm curious what is your opinion on the current Bitcoin Core team? There is no doubt? If so, why not act as a Core developer contributing code in Bitcoin Core to solve these problems? A: 2) I like most of the people on the current Bitcoin Core team, they are great. But there are a couple of people on that team I don’t want to work with, so I have decided to limit the amount of time I spend with that project.
28.ShaSiKaEr
Q: 1) Hello Gavin, I would like to ask you how long since your last contribution in Bitcoin Core or others related? Expect the big influence as one of the earliest contributors, do not you think you ought to talk about the code, mostly for the coutribution of development of Bitcoin? A from pangcong: 1)The last commit in bitcoin core made by Gavin is on September 30, 2015, after that Gavin was busy with bitcoin XT and bicoin classic. His actual development in bitcoin has never stopped, these records are very clear on github, if you want to ask questions which are obvious, please investigate first. A from Gavin: 1) Also: I submitted some patches to Bitcoin Core a few days ago. Q: 2) Also, you were a neutral software engineer before, seriously committed to improving the bitcoin. But now you're playing political means to enhance your impact on the future of Bitcoin, how do you respond with it? A from KuHaiBian: 2) Now the biggest problem in Bitcoin is not block size limit, but that there is only one development team, it is as dangerous as the situation that there is only one mining pool mining bitcoin. This is the biggest problem Gavin is trying to solve. A from Gavin: 2) I just give my honest opinion, and try to do what I can to make Bitcoin more successful.
29.Xseraph2
Q: There is no systematic process for Bitcoin upgrades. Is there any regulation/restriction on the power of Core devs? How do we balance the conflict between the centrilized power of the devs with interest of the community consensus? Do you think Bitcoin need to learn from R3 chains or distributed ledger systems? I.e. setting up regulations to constrain the power of the devs, so that only devs with “restricted access” can contribute, not everyone. A: Competition is the best solution. If the Core team does not make their customers happy, then they will be replaced. It might take a year or more for another team to get the reputation for high-quality code that the Core team has acquired over the years.
30. ZhongBenCong
Q: In 2016, you propose to increase block size limit to 8M, then doubled every two years. Is it still the most promising expansion plan in your opinion now? If it is, do you think it possible that the block size reach 8GB in 2036, particularly given the network speed and bandwith in developing countries. A: I think it would be best to eliminate the block size limit entirely, and let the miners decide if they should accept or reject blocks. The miners want Bitcoin to succeed, and will not choose a size so large the network cannot handle it. I don’t know if people would agree to eliminate the limit, though. A dynamic limit that grows, but prevents an extremely large ‘attack block’ would also be a good solution. The growing-8MB idea came from the idea that it should be possible for somebody on a home Internet connection to continue to validate every single transaction. However, more research showed that the bottleneck is not the connection from the Internet to our homes (even in China there is plenty of bandwidth there) but connections across international borders. In particular, the Great Firewall can sometimes greatly restrict bandwidth to and from China.
31. FengFengZhongXuYaoNi
Q: Gavin, hello! What is the reason do you think the community rejected Bitcoin XT? A: It was a mistake to try to make more changes than just simply increasing the block size limit.
32. ShaSiBiEr
Q: Now the problem of block size limit is not so serious as before when Bitoin was attacked, and the Segwit has been deployed, so what is the controversy? Why have to argue to the bitter end, must we argue until bitcoin die? Gavin, we all know your contribution to Bitcoin. But in 2015, when you said in bitcoin software development, we need a "dictator" to resolve the dispute. I think you want to be this dictator. http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-June/008810.html A: Must we argue until bitcoin die: I think is is in the nature of people to argue, so I think we will be arguing about lots of things until either we die or Bitcoin dies. I think in a few years we will look back and wonder why there was so much arguing, but I also think some good things have come from all of the argument.
33. HuoDongFaBu
Q: 1) What do you think about Ethereum? Can smart contract run based on Bitcoin? A: 1) (This question is repeated. Please see Q18-4) Q: 2) What are the problems Miners may have to face after halving in July? Thanks! A: 2) There is a small risk that the halving will make a good fraction of the miners stop mining, because they will get about half of the bitcoins they got before the halving. And that might mean blocks take longer to create, which means less space for transactions, which might mean people get frustrated and leave Bitcoin. Which could drop the price even more, causing more miners to stop mining, more frustration, and so on. Miners tell me they have already planned ahead for the halving and this will not happen, which is why I think it is a small risk and I don’t think the halving will be a big problem for most miners. Q: 3) Where can we get the whole code and code review of bitcoin? A: 3) Bitcoin Core is at: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin Bitcoin Classic: https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/bitcoinclassic btcd: https://github.com/btcsuite/btcd bitcore: https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore
Bitcoin price today is $13,073.32 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $23,603,626,066 USD. Bitcoin is up 0.48% in the last 24 hours. The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #1, with a market cap of $242,210,721,011 USD. It has a circulating supply of 18,527,100 BTC coins and a max. supply of 21,000,000 BTC coins. You can find the top exchanges to trade Bitcoin listed on our In case anyone's curious or confused, this does not have to do with any Bitcoin flaw. It is to do with SHA1, a hashing algorithm, which for the first time has a collision been found. That means SHA1 is dead officially. Bitcoin only acts as a reward for finding the collision. Bitcoin uses SHA-256, not SHA-1 to my knowledge which is much safer. Bitcoin, SHA-256, and the NSA. Bitcoin looks to be a great new digital currency that the whole world may someday use. However there are some odd things about bitcoin that deserve more exposure. First, Bitcoin was officially released by an unknown person who used a Japanese pseduonym, 5 days before Obama was elected. This person does not exist. Secondly, bitcoin mining is designed to solve ... When bitcoin first launched, the reward was 50 bitcoin. In 2012, it halved to 25 bitcoin. In 2016, it halved again to 12.5 bitcoin. On May 11 2020, the reward halved again to 6.25 bitcoin. In 2012 ... ASIC Mining Rigs have 3+ year life cycles and can only be used to mine Sha-256 Protocols (almost entirely Bitcoin). Bitcoin Mining Facilities have 5+ year life cycles and are typically ...
USB Bitcoin Miner - The Power of 1000's Computers - YouTube
1. May 2010 In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz agreed to pay 10,000 bitcoins for two pizzas. It was the most expensive pizza in history. 2. Jul 2010 Mt. Gox,was responsible for more than 70% of bitcoin ... Do Not Buy These Crypto Coins EVER 👉 Bitcoin Prediction // Price Halving 2020 // End 2021 // End Based On Facts 👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJVipti3ms... Sign in to like videos, comment, and subscribe. Sign in. Watch Queue Queue. Watch Queue Queue. Remove all; Disconnect; The next video is starting stop Bitcoin is a type of digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently Store your ... SUBSCRIBE FOR MORE HOW MUCH - http://shorturl.at/arBHL GekkoScience NewPac USB Miner - https://bit.ly/2RIQgdX GekkoScience 8 Port USB Hub - https://bit.ly/2x...
