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The upcoming Bitcoin halving explained

by hotshed71

Have you been informed about Bitcoin halving?

This is an event that takes place once every 4 years and we will explain to you its purpose and how it impacts Bitcoin. This article will provide you with all the information you need to know to understand halving and how to take advantage of it.

Exploring Bitcoin Halving – What is it?

The process of halving involves a cut in the reward given to miners for each block in half.

So, if a miner was previously receiving 6 BTC per block, after halving, they will receive 3 BTC instead.

It has been determined that a halving takes place every 210,000 blocks, which occurs approximately every four years.

Production of Bitcoins will end when the total amount of issued digital coins reaches 21 million. Currently, more than 19 million Bitcoins have already been mined, accounting for 91% of the total. During the halving, the amount of coin production is decreased by half.

When Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, they were presented with the difficulty of how to disseminate and produce coins. As a result of the idea behind Bitcoin, centralized alternatives were not considered an option. The solution to this dilemma was the mining process.

Payments using Visa or Mastercard are sent through their respective company's servers; however, this is not a feasible option for Bitcoin.

As a substitute, miners are employed to take on the role of carrying out and confirming transactions. They use their machines to compile transactions into blocks, which they then add to the blockchain, guaranteeing the decentralization, security, and trustworthiness of the Bitcoin network.

As a reward for their efforts, miners are given compensation for each block they add to the blockchain. This is how new coins are generated, which the miners may then put into circulation and use.

What is the purpose of halving?

To stop inflation, the concept of halving was devised by Satoshi Nakamoto in his White Paper about blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.

This idea is implemented in the Bitcoin source code, and the halving process is the center of this system. It helps to manage the rate of inflation as well as the production of new coins.

The emergence of halving can be attributed to the promotion of Bitcoin's progress. Central powers do not control its worth; only the demand of investors can affect the worth of the digital currency. Its value will be based on how useful it is in the moment.

The basis of the fresh crypto economic system was decentralization. To safeguard it, halving is essential. It is essential that the cryptocurrency is not held in the hands of initial purchasers and is shared throughout the digital sphere.

Experts believe that Bitcoin should be a rare asset. Its increased distinctiveness will lead to an increase in demand, which in turn will cause the price to rise (supply goes down, demand rises).

What is the timeline for the upcoming halving?

It is important to note that halving events take place every 4 years.

On the 28th of November, 2012, the first halving of Bitcoin occurred, reducing the number of coins received per transaction from 50 to 25. The cost of a single BTC at this time was $12.31.

The second halving event was recorded on the 9th of July, 2016, with the value of 1 Bitcoin increasing to $650.63.

The third halving happened on the 11th of May, 2020, with the cost of a single Bitcoin escalating to $8,700. Crypto experts are predicting 32 more halvings.

The following halving is predicted to take place in 2024, and the last one is scheduled for the year 2140.

What are the ways to make money from the Bitcoin halving event?

Analyzing Bitcoin's growth trend, it's easy to observe that after halving events, the asset's price climbs to a top point before then falling to a lower level, and the cycle continues.

The data demonstrate that every halving witnessed an upsurge in the worth of BTC. With only a year to go until the next one, many crypto-entrepreneurs are already in the process of preparing for it.

Although past occurrences might be able to assist us in predicting possible scenarios, it is not wise to entirely depend on them.

Since the previous halving, there have been several events that have influenced Bitcoin: increased media coverage, the ICO hype, the crypto apocalypse, the collapse of various crypto businesses, and the entrance of institutional investors.

It is important to be mindful of your investments during the halving period. Crypto traders who take risks can potentially benefit due to the high volatility of the crypto market.

To be successful, one needs to carefully analyze the situation, have faith in themselves, have a reserve of funds in case of a loss, and remain up-to-date on the rules of the market.

Summary

The conclusion of this paper can be summed up as follows.

Halving is a crucial part of Bitcoin's design. With it, the supply of the maximum of 21 million Bitcoins put forth by Satoshi Nakamoto will not be exhausted too quickly, giving the crypto world more time to develop and allowing for an increase in both the interest and transactions of Bitcoin.

As a result, it is apparent that Bitcoin was engineered to be of value, and with each halving, that value will be reduced.

The inflation of Bitcoin is managed by decreasing its production via halvings.

What is Proof of Stake in Cryptocurrency? A Short Explanation

by hotshed71

Although there are multiple forms of digital currency, most of them work on a proof-of-work system. This means that once you have created a certain amount of cryptocurrency, you will receive a certain amount of new coins every time someone else mines more coins.

In other words, your mining ability directly depends on the number of other people who hold the same cryptocurrency as you do.

This is not generally how Proof-of-Stake works. Instead, many cryptocurrencies — including Cardano and Ethereum — use a different model called Proof-of-Stake.

With this system, each user’s computer has to be able to “prove” that they own specific amounts of cryptocurrency before they can receive new coins. When you stake your coins, you are giving those tokens to someone else – usually an official website or app that you trust with your private information.

Once the coin staking process is over, the coins remain yours forever.

What is Proof of Stake?

In a proof-of-stake system, each user’s computer has to be able to “prove” that they own specific amounts of the cryptocurrency in question before they can receive new coins.

When you stake your coins, you are giving those tokens to someone else – usually an official website or app that you trust with your private information. Once the coin staking process is over, the coins remain yours forever.

Staking is the act of giving away some of your coins in exchange for a reward. There are many ways to stake coins, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. A method that is often used for Cardano, Polkadot, and Ethereum is to have the user hold and then transfer the relevant amount of coins from a digital wallet to a receiving address.

In this method, there is no way for the person who received the coins to prove that they did not receive them from someone. Some cryptocurrencies also allow for a more passive approach with frequent reminders that you hold certain coins and how many you have.

How Does Staking Work in a Proof-of-Stake System?

In a proof-of-stake system, users are rewarded with new coins for holding a cryptocurrency. This means that when you mine or stake a cryptocurrency, you are lending your computer power to the network.

The computer uses that power to verify transactions on the network and add them to a blockchain. This process results in new coins that are distributed to the network members. The coins that you “stake” are the same coins you own.

This means that when you stake your coins, you are lending your computer power to the network. The computer uses that power to verify transactions on the network and add them to a blockchain. This process results in new coins that are distributed to the network members.

Pros and Cons of Using a Proof-of-Stake System

The main advantage of this system is that you are unlikely to lose money — at least, not very often. If someone were to build a business based on staking coins, it would need to be done very successfully first, and it would take a lot of effort. Staking is also very safe and easy.

Once you stake a coin, there is no selling it and there is no going back on the transaction. You can also set a time limit on the amount that you can stake each time. This protects you from getting scammed.

Another advantage of this system is that you can often earn more coins in one sitting. This means that you don’t have to go through the process of mining several times to get your coins — all you have to do is sit and wait for them to be distributed to you.

You should realize that even if a cryptocurrency offers 4% staking rewards, if you but $1000 dollars of it and the value reduces to $500. You are losing money but you are gaining crypto, so the opposite may happen, it may rise and then you gain 4% as well as your initial investment.

Think of it like a bank – without the printing of money.

Crypto Exchanges

Coinbase pays you on several proof of stake cryptos

Algorand 5.75%
Cosmos 5%
Ethereum2 4.25%
Tezos 4.63%
Solano 2.40%
Cardano 2.00%

 

And also USD Coin and Tether

SIGNUP TO COINBASE HERE

Final Words: Should You Stake Your Coins?

Staking is a passive way to get involved in the cryptocurrency world. It doesn’t involve doing hard work or even much maintenance. All you have to do is hold coins, keep them safe, and let them work for you.

You can also choose to invest in coins with a proven track record and growing community. However, staking coins does not give you any advantages over buying or selling coins on an exchange.

You are not using your computer power to verify transactions, you are just holding and waiting for the network to do the work for you.

Question and answers

Is Bitcoin proof of stake?

Bitcoin is not a true proof of stake, many exchanges will pay you interest for effectively keeping your Bitcoin with them in a wallet but its not proof of stake.

 

The FTX debacle explained

by hotshed71

FTX what an absolute disaster, now I could delve into the politics of the company/owner. How he donated heavily to one party in the US – which appears to have been mostly ignored, I wonder why.

How they donated to Ukraine, had many celebrities investing and promoting them and were sponsoring various things to the cost of millions.

Yet if you followed this story on main stream media you would have thought it was bad luck, not a big deal or just a normal story – really.

Well thanks to YouTube lets see people explain the scenario and no we will not be using US ‘news' sources or the BBC as examples

Sources

The opinions are strictly from the original content producers

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKcd850QEQ&t=10s

The WEF loves Ethereum : should you be worried

by hotshed71

Now this will start to court controversy and when you mention the WEF, the old conspiracy theorist tag will be mentioned and the tinfoil hat tag will be pointed at anyone talking about them.

The fact that the WEF seem to be so ‘enthusiastic' about Ethereum since its went to a proof of stake could be deemed as suspicious. Now, this was touted as being to aid in the battle against climate change, hmm if you are in the know you will realize that this seems slightly unlikely.

Lets look at some reasons why the climate change argument is incorrect

Mining requires low cost electricity – so that rules out many western countries where prices have been artificially inflated for a long time
It actually generates far lower amounts of emissions than traditional financial business and even gold- see image below

Now we could go on, another article probably but this makes the change a bit more strange

 

Unlike Bitcoin’s proof of work system, which provides for robust decentralization and individual security, ETH is now set up so a select few “stakeholders” can determine the outcome of the entire system.

The dominant stakeholders can simply get together and manipulate the protocol as they see fit, can you see who these “stakeholders” might support or represent, see this tweet

ETH Infrastructure

Ethereum has long had dealings with the World Economic Forum and already relies on companies like JP Morgan and Amazon Web Services to secure its critical infrastructure.

Now if like me you look at those 2 names above and think – doesn't sound like a free speech, for the people and independent platform. BINGO.

AWS already has a history of ‘pulling the plug' on sites that rely on its infrastructure, take the Parler example which was effectively killed off when it was growing at the behest of Twitter. In a functioning society this would be illegal but in a corporate captured society its accepted and normal.

So what would prevent a government, global organization or corporation from ‘interfering' – not a lot to be honest.

The Bitcoin battle

Then we have the history of Bitcoin – its been loathed by the reserve banks, governments, investors and of course the climate change crowd. Its been called a scam, not real money and various other derogatory terms.

Now all of a sudden Ethereum which ticks a lot of the boxes above is the greatest thing since sliced bread and we have global organizations fawning over it – really.

For me I'm on the side of Bitcoin

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7SGbfwJrk

What is an NFT?

by hotshed71

In this article we introduce  the wonderful world of NFTs

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership.

The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain and can be transferred by the owner, allowing NFTs to be sold and traded. NFTs can be created by anybody, and require few or no coding skills to create.

NFTs typically contain references to digital files such as photos, videos, and audio. Because NFTs are uniquely identifiable assets, they differ from cryptocurrencies, which are fungible.

Proponents of NFTs claim that NFTs provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership, but the legal rights conveyed by an NFT can be uncertain.

The ownership of an NFT as defined by the blockchain has no inherent legal meaning and does not necessarily grant copyright, intellectual property rights, or other legal rights over its associated digital file.

An NFT does not restrict the sharing or copying of its associated digital file and does not prevent the creation of NFTs that reference identical files.

NFT Growth

The NFT market grew dramatically from 2020 to 2021: the trading of NFTs in 2021 increased to more than $17 billion, up by 21,000% over 2020's total of $82 million.

NFTs have been used as speculative investments and they have drawn increasing criticism for the energy cost and carbon footprint associated with validating blockchain transactions as well as their frequent use in art scams.

The NFT market has also been compared to an economic bubble or a Ponzi scheme.

In 2022, the NFT market suffered a major collapse, with prices sharply falling; a May 2022 estimate was that the number of sales was down over 90% compared to its 2021 peak

An NFT is a unit of data, stored on a type of digital ledger called a blockchain, which can be sold and traded. The NFT can be associated with a particular digital or physical asset such as images, art, music, and sports highlights and may confer licensing rights to use the asset for a specified purpose.

An NFT (and, if applicable, the associated license to use, copy, or display the underlying asset) can be traded and sold on digital markets.

The extralegal nature of NFT trading usually results in an informal exchange of ownership over the asset that has no legal basis for enforcement, and so often confers little more than use as a status symbol.

NFTs function like cryptographic tokens, but unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, NFTs are not mutually interchangeable, and so are not fungible.

NFTs are created when blockchains concatenate records containing cryptographic hashes sets of characters that identify a set of data—onto previous records, creating a chain of identifiable data blocks.

NFTs have been used to exchange digital tokens that link to a digital file asset. Ownership of an NFT is often associated with a license to use such a linked digital asset but generally does not confer the copyright to the buyer. Some agreements only grant a license for personal, non-commercial use, while other licenses also allow commercial use of the underlying digital asset

NFT Uses

Examples of these assets are digital art, games, music. movies and even random items such as a tweet.

Specific token standards support various blockchain use cases. Ethereum was the first blockchain to support NFTs with its ERC-721 standard and this is still widely used. Many other blockchains have added or plan to add support for NFTs

How to Start Farming for Chia Coin in AWS

by hotshed71

Is it profitable – debatable but here is the guide

his is a detailed how-to guide that will clearly outline every step involved with creating your farming setup.

AWS offerings used: EC2 instance, S3 bucket, IAM

Steps:

  1. Setup AWS account

  2. Launch EC2 instance

    • Choose Amazon Linux Image and then select i3.xlarge
    • Specify root volume as 30 GB (You can do this on Step 4:Add Storage)
    • Make sure when you get to Step 6:Configure Security Group, you select My IP under the Source tab for SSH protocol.
    • Request to generate a .pem key pair and store it in Downloads of local computer
    • Click Launch Instance

  3. Navigate to your instance in AWS console and once it's ready, select your instance and hit Connect. Copy the SSH example command under the SSH Client tab. Go to Downloads directory via terminal and paste that command in.

Note: If you get Unprotected Key File Warning, then open terminal at Downloads directory and run:
chmod 400 nameOfFile.pem (This should be where your .pem key-pair file is located)

  1. Now you are logged into EC2 instance.

  2. Run sudo fdisk /dev/nvme0n1

  3. This will launch the fdisk utility program. Type p to see existing partition table. Now, type n to create a new partition. Choose primary. Then, click enter thru the next steps till it says Last sector. For Last sector, type +880G to give this partition 880 GB space.

  4. Continue to click enter through the rest of the steps till it's done.

  5. Now hit p. This should show a list of partitions.

Device         Boot Start        End    Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1       2048 1845495807 1845493760  880G 83 Linux

  1. Now type w to save changes and q to exit the fdisk program.

  2. Format the partition to the xfs filesystem.

sudo mkfs -t xfs /dev/nvme0n1p1
  1. Now create a mount point for the partition.
sudo mkdir -p /tmp1
  1. Now mount the partition.
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /tmp1
  1. Type df -hT and check that you see the /dev/nvme0n1p1 partition mounted on /tmp1

Output should have:

Filesystem      Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1 xfs       880G  930M  879G   1% /tmp1
  1. Now modify the permissions of the mount point to ec2-user:
sudo chown -R ec2-user.ec2-user /tmp1

  1. Now go to your AWS Console and create an S3 Bucket. (Note down the name you give to the bucket)

  2. Install goofys on EC2 host.

wget https://github.com/kahing/goofys/releases/latest/download/goofys 

chmod u+x goofys

mkdir /home/ec2-user/chia
  1. Now go back to AWS Console. And go to IAM. Click on Policies and create new policy. Paste in this JSON:

Note: Change nameOfS3Bucket to the name of your S3 Bucket.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "s3:ListBucket",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::nameOfS3Bucket"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:GetObject",
                "s3:DeleteObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::nameOfS3Bucket/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

  1. Click thru the default options and finally create the policy. Now go to Users. And hit Add User.

  2. Click on attach existing policies directly. Filter for Customer managed policies and select the one you just created. Now click thru the options to create a new user.

  3. Upon successful completion, you will see the created user's Access key ID and Secret Access Key. Note these down in a notepad.

  4. Go back to your terminal that's still logged into your EC2 instance.

  5. Switch to root and create AWS credentials file.

sudo su - root

mkdir ~/.aws

vi ~/.aws/credentials

Click I key on your keyboard to start writing in this text file. Paste ALL this in:

[default]
aws_access_key_id = AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
aws_secret_access_key = AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Note: Replace the capitalized stuff with your actual credentials from step 20.

When finished editing the file, exit and save by doing:
Hit Escape key on keyboard once. Type :wq and hit Enter on keyboard.

At this point switch from root user to regular by typing:

sudo su - ec2-user
  1. Now we create a mount point.
sudo mkdir -p /home/ec2-user/chia
  1. Run:
sudo ./goofys --uid 1000 --gid 1000 -o allow_other nameOfS3Bucket /home/ec2-user/chia

Make sure to replace nameOfS3Bucket with the name of your S3 Bucket.

  1. Type df -h and make sure your output has this:
Filesystem      Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p1   880G   52G  829G   6% /tmp1
nameOfS3Bucket   1.0P    0   1.0P   0% /home/ec2-user/chia
  1. Install Chia code
sudo yum update -y

sudo yum install python3 git -y 

git clone https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain.git -b latest --recurse-submodules
  1. Set up Chia
cd chia-blockchain

chmod +x ./install.sh

sh install.sh

. ./activate`
  1. Install and execute the initialization command for the first time:
chia init
  1. If this is your first time, run this to generate a new wallet address:
chia keys generate

Note: If you already have a wallet, you can type chia keys add and paste in your generated mnemonic.

Make sure you note the output of this command safely.

  1. Start the Chia process.
chia start farmer
  1. Start farming
nohup chia plots create -k 32 -b 6000 -r 2 -n 2 -t /tmp1 -2 /tmp1 -d /home/ec2-user/chia>>plots1.log 2>&1 &

You are now on your way to farming!

  1. Run this to see stats about your farm:
chia farm summary

Note: The first time you run it, you may see some Exception. The second time, this will go away. Run chia wallet show and type S. Then run chia farm summary and the Exception should be gone.

Basically, you are not farming yet. The system will say Farming status: Syncing, because it is syncing with the Chia blockchain. It needs to become a serviceable node on the blockchain before it can start plotting. After a while, the status will change to Farming.

Expected Output:

Farming status: Syncing
Total chia farmed: 0.0
User transaction fees: 0.0
Block rewards: 0.0
Last height farmed: 0
Plot count: 0
Total size of plots: 0.000 GiB
Estimated network space: 0.000 TiB
Expected time to win: Now
Note: log into your key using 'chia wallet show' to see rewards for each key
  1. That's it! You are done setting up! You can close your terminal, if you'd like.

How to Quickly Check in on your Farm:

If you would like to see the status of your farming setup, you can go to Downloads via the terminal. And paste in the SSH command you got in Step 3. Once logged into the server, type:

cd chia-blockchain

. ./activate

chia farm summary

To see the status of your Chia wallet, run:

chia wallet show

To exit the AWS EC2 instance from your terminal, simply type:

exit

Now you're back home. Enjoy! Be sure to check Billing in the AWS Console to learn about your usage costs. You've successfully just set up a Chia farming station. Awesome!

References:

Home

 

Published at https://github.com/RohanSreerama5/ChiaCoinFarmingSetupAWS

Assorted cryptocurrency quotes part 3

by hotshed71

Some bitcoin users see the hard fork as in some ways violating their most fundamental values. I personally think these fundamental values, pushed to such extremes, are silly.
Vitalik Buterin

Though I don’t personally believe that Bitcoin is true money, it should be perfectly legal, and there should be no restrictions on it; there should be no taxes on it.
Ron Paul

Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight.
Joseph Stiglitz

It’s probably easier and cheaper to counterfeit hundred-dollar bills than it is to counterfeit Bitcoin.
Naval Ravikant

How high can bitcoin go? The real question is how low can the dollar go?
Patrick M. Byrne

There are dodgy characters in Bitcoin. But there are dodgy characters in cash, too.
Patrick M. Byrne

We want enough people adopting Bitcoin for a robust infrastructure. It’s an act of patriotism. It gives the country a robust parallel system.
Patrick M. Byrne

Our basic thesis for bitcoin is that it is better than gold.
Tyler Winklevoss

If Bitcoin is a better gold or seen as a type of gold-like asset, then it could be in the trillions on a market cap.
Tyler Winklevoss

Calling bitcoin volatile it’s a non-statement. Unregulated assets with unclear regulatory landscapes are always going to be volatile. That’s what unregulated assets do.
Tyler Winklevoss

Gox was a pattern of poor operations, poor customer service, poor PR. You can’t just take bitcoin and hide.
Tyler Winklevoss

Bitcoin and digital currency is just this thing that was always going to happen.
Tyler Winklevoss

We eat, sleep, breathe bitcoin.
Tyler Winklevoss

To shut down Bitcoin is to shut down the Internet.
Tyler Winklevoss

One of the things that has plagued bitcoin is not bitcoin itself but the companies built on top of it.
Tyler Winklevoss

With Bitcoin, no one has a monopoly of information.
Tyler Winklevoss

We dealt with a lot of skepticism early on, when we first spoke about bitcoin.
Tyler Winklevoss

Somehow I wound up with the nickname ‘Bitcoin Jesus,’ so people expect me to know about everything everywhere.
Roger Ver

You have to be really, really careful how you use bitcoin in order to use it privately.
Roger Ver

Monero at a protocol level is very, very private and has that big advantage over bitcoin.
Roger Ver

I don’t think it’s any sort of stretch of the imagination to say that, very, very realistically, each single bitcoin, if bitcoin becomes popular, will have to be worth at least tens of thousands of dollars.
Roger Ver

Anybody who has enough information about what’s going on in the bitcoin world, you would not buy your bitcoins on Mt. Gox.
Roger Ver

I don’t think it matters at all if the Bitcoin Foundation were to close.
Roger Ver

Once people see Bitcoin and how it works, they realise this isn’t just a flash in the pan.
Roger Ver

Bitcoin will experience many bubbles along its way to improving the lives of everyone on the planet. I’m not concerned with the short-term price fluctuations.
Roger Ver

Bitcoin is here to stay.
Roger Ver

I’m motivated by the positive ways in which Bitcoin use being widespread will make the world a better place.
Roger Ver

Silicon Valley is a great place for Bitcoin, since everyone understands computers, and there are lots of libertarians running around.
Roger Ver

I don’t think Bitcoin cares what the Chinese or American politicians do.
Roger Ver

I think that the future of currency is digital, and Bitcoin has a good shot at being the currency of the future.
Adam Draper

Energy and bitcoin work really well together because you can pay out in micro-transaction units. As the energy gets used, they pay out, and it’s by the kilowatt rather than by the month.
Adam Draper

What bitcoin does better than the current financial system is it’s a better stored value globally. There are a lot of countries that really don’t trust their banks or their currency, and bitcoin is an alternative.
Adam Draper

I believe that Bitcoin is going to change the way that everything works. I want entrepreneurs to tell me how its going to change. Build the equivalent of an Iron Man suit with Bitcoin.
Adam Draper

In the future, when people look back at the early days of Bitcoin, they’ll say, ‘It was so obvious that the ability to move money anywhere, instantly, at near-zero cost would be a huge success.
Adam Draper

When we announced that we were going to support Bitcoin companies, we became a great lightning rod for activity and fun.
Adam Draper

People wanted Bitcoin to live so much, they basically willed it back into existence. That showed me how passionate this community was about it.
Adam Draper

We see bitcoin as potentially the greatest social network of all.
Tyler Winklevoss

Bitcoins are like gold bars with wings. That is why I, and so many others, view bitcoin and its network as gold 2.0.
Tyler Winklevoss

Bitcoin actually has the balance and incentives center, and that is why it is starting to take off
Julian Assange

I trust bitcoin more than I trust my bank.
Adam Draper

Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.
Nassim Taleb

Blockchain is the tech. Bitcoin is merely the first mainstream manifestation of its potential.
Marc Kenigsberg

Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’s most important developments.
Leon Luow, Nobel Peace prize nominee

If the world’s using bitcoin, governments won’t be able to fund wars through inflation like they do today.
Roger Ver

Through bitcoin, the Argentines are developing an economy which doesn’t require the bankers.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin as an asset class is brilliant, as a means of payment, fantastic.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin will do to banks what email did to the postal industry
Rick Falkvinge, Founder of the Swedish pirate party

Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money.
Paul Buchheit, Creator of Gmail

You can’t stop things like Bitcoin. It will be everywhere and the world will have to readjust. World governments will have to readjust
John McAfee

Bitcoin is a technological tour de force
Bill Gates

“At its core, bitcoin is a smart currency, designed by very forward-thinking engineers. It eliminates the need for banks, gets rid of credit card fees, currency exchange fees, money transfer fees, and reduces the need for lawyers in transitions … all good things”
Peter Diamandis

We will never hear about people’s Bitcoin accounts being frozen or seized by a government agency.
Roger Ver

Setting regulatory certainty is very important for bitcoin. I’m opposed to the regulations, but the bitcoin businesses need to know the rules of the game in order to move ahead.
Roger Ver

“I think the fact that within the bitcoin universe an algorithm replaces the functions of [the government] … is actually pretty cool. I am a big fan of Bitcoin”
Al Gore

I think examples of free market transactions between peaceful people using Bitcoin and the Internet, I think it’s a wonderful thing. It’s going to make the world a better place.
Roger Ver

It’s hard to predict the future, but some people think that Bitcoin could do to finance what the Internet did to communications.
Alex Biryukov

The hardest obstacles for Bitcoin companies are banking and regulation.
Charlie Shrem

I understand the political ramifications of [bitcoin] and I think that government should stay out of them and they should be perfectly legal.
Ron Paul

It’s gold for nerds.
Stephan Colbert

Bitcoin was created to serve a highly political intent, a free and uncensored network where all can participate with equal access.
Amir Taaki

Bitcoin, and the ideas behind it, will be a disrupter to the traditional notions of currency. In the end, currency will be better for it.
Edmund C. Moy

Bitcoin is the currency of resistance. If Satoshi had released Bitcoin 10 yrs. earlier, 9/11 would never have happened
Max Keiser

Cryptocurrency is such a powerful concept that it can almost overturn governments
Charles Lee

Bitcoin will do to banks what email did to the postal industry
Rick Falkvinge, Founder of the Swedish pirate party

I am very intrigued by Bitcoin. It has all the signs. Paradigm shift, hackers love it, yet it’s derided as a toy. Just like microcomputers.
Paul Graham, Creator of Yahoo Store

Bitcoin is evil.
Paul Krugman, economist

I think Bitcoin really feels empowering in a sense.
Vitalik Buterin

China may censor YouTube. China may censor Twitter. They won’t be able to censor Bitcoin. There’s no central authority. There’s no one you can go to and say, ‘We’re going to turn Bitcoin off.’
Naval Ravikant

We must continue to educate the masses and encourage savings in Bitcoin to truly drain the kleptocratic swamp ruling our financial system.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin is a remarkable cryptographic achievement and the ability to create something that is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

Bitcoin is the most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet.
Roger Ver

The Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate bitcoin in any way
Janet Yellen

Stay away from it. It’s a mirage, basically
Warren Buffet

The main event isn’t bitcoin. It’s using the blockchain to disrupt other industries and Wall Street.
Patrick M. Byrne

Economists and journalists often get caught up in this question: Why does Bitcoin have value? And the answer is very easy. Because it is useful and scarce.
Erik Voorhees

[Bitcoin] is a very exciting development, it might lead to a world currency. I think over the next decade it will grow to become one of the most important ways to pay for things and transfer assets.
Kim Dotcom

It’s money 2.0, a huge huge huge deal.
Chamath Palihapitiya

If the U.S. government tries to restrict or clamp down, that just means there will be many more bitcoin businesses in Hong Kong and Singapore, and all those Americans will miss out on all the opportunities.
Roger Ver

Like the Internet, Bitcoin will change the way people interact and do business around the world.
Erik Voorhees

If you like gold, there are many reasons you should like Bitcoin.
Cameron Winklevoss

If money was being invented now, it wouldn’t be designed to look like cash or credit cards. It would look more like Bitcoin.
Adam Draper

Bitcoin is amazingly transformative because it’s the first time in the entire history of the world in which anybody can now send or receive any amount of money, with anyone else, anywhere on the planet, without having to ask permission from any bank or government.
Roger Ver

Think of Bitcoin as a bank account in the cloud, and it’s completely decentralized: not the Swiss government, not the American government. It’s all the participants in the network enforcing.
Naval Ravikant

I think anybody who is interested in keeping their money safe from the criminal banking system would want gold, silver, and Bitcoin.
Max Keiser

The history of Bitcoin trading is a bubble, a correction, consolidation, and another increase. It’s happened four times, and it will happen again.
Barry Silbert

Assorted Cryptocurrency quotes part 2

by hotshed71

Before Bitcoin, I was just waiting around for the Singularity.
Roger Ver

Pretty uniformly, people want the benefits of bitcoin and the blockchain near-instant transfers, globally available on any Internet-connected device, highly secure, and nearly-free value transfers.
Jeremy Allaire

In the future, I expect to see bitcoin mining in places where electricity is free or cheap. You could put solar array in the Arizona desert attached to bitcoin miners, and instead of trying to ship that electricity all over world, you could ship Bitcoin all over the world.
Gavin Andresen

Bitcoin is just one example of something that uses a blockchain.
Melanie Swan

You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is. I haven’t been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can.
Alan Greenspan

Bitcoin is great as a form of digital money, but its scripting language is too weak for any kind of serious advanced applications to be built on top.
Vitalik Buterin

A token like ethereum has gone up 10 times faster than bitcoin, and it’s fueling an ICO bubble no different then the dot-com IPOs of the late ’90s.
Tone Vays

The rudest possible gift is a gift card. It means you think the person is stupid and has no interests. The only good gift card is Bitcoin. You practically have to be a hacker to know about it.
John Waters

Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped. No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.
Jamie Dimon

We can code wills, escrows, trusts, notaries, revokable charge backs, proof of contracts, intellectual property enforcement. What Wall Street does can be done in code by Bitcoin.
Naval Ravikant

Bitcoin is complex: the entire private and public key issue, the transfers, the mining of bitcoins… but if you tell it as fiction, people would understand and remember.
Ravi Subramanian

Bitcoin is here to stay. There would be a hacker uproar to anyone who attempted to take credit for the patent of cryptocurrency. And I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of hacker fury.
Adam Draper

MaxCoin is competing for the crypto buck, if you will. So is Bitcoin, so is Dogecoin. Alt-coins are proving to be formidable because there’s a solid community behind it, there’s a use for it, and it’s got a great market capitalisation. I think that’s going to be a winner.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don’t think over time that’s a good way to go. I’m a huge believe in digital currency… but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I’m not involved in Bitcoin.
Bill Gates

When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives was astonishing.
Fred Ehrsam

We set up a small bitcoin and ethereum mining operation… that miraculously now is actually making a lot of money.
Abigail Johnson

Price is the least interesting thing about bitcoin.
Roger Ver

I describe Bitcoin as ‘the Skype of money.’
Adam Draper

As more wealth and political power is amassed as bitcoins rise in value Congress and various lobbying groups will be influenced to an ever greater extent by the interests of Bitcoin owners who in turn will lobby to keep the Internet and Bitcoin alive and growing.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin’s success will guarantee Bitcoin’s success.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin is probably the most portable money in the history of the world. I can download any amount onto a thumb drive and walk across any border without any problems. Or, I could commit to memory a line of code that I can then input into the network and save or spend Bitcoins.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin is probably the most fungible currency ever created.
Max Keiser

Some of the bitcoin community come from that kind of anarchistic, libertarian view. But, one reason why I think Ripple has been very successful is because we work with the system.
Brad Garlinghouse

Some in the bitcoin community have always taken an anti-government, anti-fiat, anti-bank approach to their philosophy. Ripple takes the orthogonal side of each of those.
Brad Garlinghouse

Because the supply of Bitcoin is limited, the price of Bitcoin is going to have to increase and increase very substantially over time. My advice is that if you’re interested in Bitcoin and excited by Bitcoin, then buy some Bitcoin and hold onto them, and you’re likely to do very well over time.
Roger Ver

At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state.
Roger Ver

Bitcoin’s revolution: an impossible-to-counterfeit digital store of value that can be used as money, that has no sovereign, or central bank involved, that can be sent anywhere instantly at virtually no cost, is irresistible. Anyone who uses it is converted.
Max Keiser

Activists can improve their alternative media success by embracing alternative currencies like Bitcoin.
Max Keiser

The bitcoin protocol is about mining bitcoin, not pricing bitcoin. There is nothing in the protocol about establishing a market price for bitcoin; you need a market for that, but what if all the exchange markets are shut down?
Max Keiser

Success of bitcoin and the exchanges that deal in it could be interpreted by some to mean the demise of central banks, Wall Street, and the Washington insiders who trade on inside information and market manipulation.
Max Keiser

As money, Bitcoin achieves two objectives; it’s both a unit of transaction as well as being a store of value. The U.S. dollar, for example, is a unit of transaction, but it is not a store of value.
Max Keiser

Digital currency is now a misnomer for Bitcoin. It can be used as currency, but it can be used for many things.
Erik Voorhees

Bitcoin is very ideologically fulfilling, it’s my form of political activism, but it’s also a huge business opportunity.
Erik Voorhees

In the longterm for Bitcoin, Gox needed to go away.
Erik Voorhees

Bitcoin will hit thousands of dollars per coin, because it’s worth at least that much, or it’s worth zero.
Erik Voorhees

The number of industries, communities, habits, traditions, and even interpersonal interactions that Bitcoin has the potential to revolutionize is massive.
Erik Voorhees

The value of Bitcoin is astronomical, but the price goes all over the place as a million buyers and sellers try to figure out what that value is and how likely it is to manifest.
Erik Voorhees

I’m interested in businesses that take digital bits and turn them into interfaces for physical atoms. I’m also interested in drones, Bitcoin, and 3D printing.
Balaji Srinivasan

Every time you load a webpage is a HTTP request. That’s a lot of HTTP requests. If you are earning bitcoin on every HTTP request, that could be a lot of earned bitcoins.
Balaji Srinivasan

We think of bitcoin as mobile. It’s not one company; it’s broad.
Balaji Srinivasan

Once Wall Street starts putting money into Bitcoin we’re talking about hundreds of millions, billions of dollars moving in it’s going to have a pretty dramatic effect on the price.
Barry Silbert

We are very excited about the use of blockchain, whether it’s Bitcoin or not, but we are as enthusiastic as ever about Bitcoin as a global currency and, really more importantly, Bitcoin as a global financial rail.
Barry Silbert

Bitcoin is inherently international, and one of its great promises is it enables cross-border payments in a more efficient way.
Fred Ehrsam

There is nothing that Bitcoin can do which Ethereum can’t. While Ethereum is less battle-tested, it is moving faster, has better leadership, and has more developer mindshare.
Fred Ehrsam

Bitcoin woke us all up to a new way to pay, and culturally, I think a much larger percentage of us have become accustomed to the idea that money no longer comes with the friction it once had.
John Battelle

Bitcoin, in the short or even long term, may turn out be a good investment in the same way that anything that is rare can be considered valuable. Like baseball cards. Or a Picasso.
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Whatever happens to bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies are gaining ground and more respect. Ethereum, for instance, has far more transparency.
Richard Quest

It’s really hard to argue that bitcoin doesn’t have many legitimate benefits to companies that are legal businesses when you have Dell and Expedia and all these companies now accepting it.
Brian Armstrong

This Bitcoin currency is a voluntary decentralized currency, anonymous. It can’t be shut down by anyone; there are no central servers.
Jeff Berwick

Just as it got easier to use email, it will be easier to use Bitcoin as people invest in it and become more familiar with it.
Gavin Andresen

Despite popular belief, Bitcoin is a bad medium of exchange for people that value financial privacy because of the transparent ledger that reveals an address, timestamp, and amount for every transaction on the network.
Nick Tomaino

Bitcoin is really a fascinating example of how human beings create value, and is not always rational… it is not a rational currency in that case.
Alan Greenspan

I think long-term, Bitcoin is a currency of the Internet. So, even if humans don’t use it, routers will use it. Web browsers will use it. Web servers will use it.
Naval Ravikant

If you’re investing in a company in the Bitcoin economy, you have to compare the valuation of the company to the valuation of the entire economy.
Naval Ravikant

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are already trustless any machine can accept it from any other, securely. They are (nearly) free. They are global no central bank required, and any machine can speak the language.
Naval Ravikant

At the end of the day, what’s going to make bitcoin successful is more people making more interesting things, just like the beginning of the Internet.
Fred Ehrsam

Bitcoin is valuable as a currency because of the economic efficiencies the bitcoin network is already creating as transactions flow over it. As with the Internet, more applications will flourish which will make the bitcoin network, and thus bitcoin as a currency, valuable.
Fred Ehrsam

Maybe bitcoin is a kind of a bubble. I don’t like it. I’m not comfortable with it. I’m kind of an old dog to be absorbing that kind of a new trick.
Lloyd Blankfein

I’m not wed to bitcoin’s blockchain. I’m blockchain-agnostic.
Patrick M. Byrne

For the first time in 6,000 years of human history, we can have peer-to-peer exchange where trust is not a problem anymore. And it’s through the technology that underlies bitcoin. It’s called the block chain.
Patrick M. Byrne

The narrative behind bitcoin has been dominated by bad behavior. The reality is bitcoin is filled with tons of talented developers building infrastructure.
Tyler Winklevoss

Bitcoin never sleeps. We need to move quickly and grow quickly and do everything sooner rather than later.
Roger Ver

If bitcoin is more expensive or slower than traditional financial systems, people aren’t going to use it.
Roger Ver

Assorted Cryptocurrency quotes part 1

by hotshed71

Activists need to educate themselves about the power of crypto currencies like Bitcoin, invented in 2009, and use crypto to leverage the success of their independent media gains to tip the balance of power away from the troika in ways that could never happen by backing a political candidate.
Max Keiser

Bitcoin is like anything else: it’s worth what people are willing to pay for it.
Stanley Druckenmiller

When you take a look at how the IRS treats foreign currency, bitcoin doesn’t have the same taxation regime. Foreign currency gains and losses generally are taxed as ordinary income.
Perianne Boring

The only thing I can do with my bitcoin is give it to somebody else.
Peter Schiff

Gold actually has properties you can use gold for all sorts of things. People value gold for the metal. Nobody values bitcoin for the bitcoin; they value it because they believe that they can exchange it for something else.
Peter Schiff

The world is a global economy. I thought, ‘It’s a bummer we don’t have a unifying currency.’ Then I saw Bitcoin had already had a crash and had the resistance to recover. The community was strong enough to push it through again. That’s really exciting.
Adam Draper

I saw Bitcoin as an actual market opportunity: as a trillion-dollar marketplace with long-term potential.
Adam Draper

Bitcoin has so much potential, and that’s why the believers are trying to facilitate its use as a currency, so people use to buy things and spread it around more.
Adam Draper

Most people hoard their money just keep it in the bank. Bitcoin will really take off when people start spending it, creating a velocity of money.
Adam Draper

The next phase of the journey is to move from speculation to actual use cases people getting into Bitcoin because they want to use it.
Adam Draper

For Bitcoin, if it becomes a thing, it will become an enormous thing. It will be world-changing. But if it’s nothing, it’s nothing. There is no in between.
Adam Draper

I want to help create the world’s first global currency built on the Internet and built on open platforms and standards such as Bitcoin, and I want to build a financial services institution on top of that. That’s what I’m doing with Circle.
Jeremy Allaire

We really think of Bitcoin as a global, interoperable payment network instead of a store of value.
Jeremy Allaire

I think there’s a need for services that will make it easier for Chinese consumers to spend globally. The Bitcoin network could be an attractive solution.
Jeremy Allaire

The emergence of open Internet protocols for value exchange, today led by the global adoption of Bitcoin’s blockchain, paves the way for value to move as freely as information and data move on the Internet today.
Jeremy Allaire

By design, Bitcoin is a scarce resource with a predictable supply of new issuance. And it is this scarcity and predictable supply that make it so attractive as an underlying asset to bind to economic activity and trade.
Jeremy Allaire

Bitcoin can be programmed, metered, and exchanged by connected devices, enabling more efficient usage of our planet’s resources and services.
Jeremy Allaire

I believe that Bitcoin holds value as a form of ‘good money’ that is superior to any previously discovered or developed form of money.
Jeremy Allaire

With great ideas come great changes. Bitcoin’s that.
Cameron Winklevoss

I’ve been through a lot of moments when other people thought Bitcoin was going to implode, and in those instances, I generally have seen through inaccurate coverage of it.
Olaf Carlson-Wee

Bitcoin is a way to have programmable scarcity. The blockchain is the data structure that records the transfer of scarce objects.
Balaji Srinivasan

Within the coming years, disrupting the Bitcoin network will become increasingly more difficult as Bitcoin wallet software and the protocol become more mature and resilient.
Brian Armstrong

You can hold your Bitcoin in Ripple. We want to be agnostic to any currency, whether that be a virtual currency, political currencies, or peer-to-peer currencies.
Chris Larsen

Bitcoin is my baby; it’s my whole world and my whole life. It’s what I was put on this earth to do.
Charlie Shrem

You look at Bitcoin, and it is an entirely new currency, completely decentralized, anonymous; transactions occur incredibly fast for free, all designed by the free market.
Jeff Berwick

I’m investing. I’m taking a lot of bitcoin, selling it as the price goes up, and putting it into real estate. Because then if bitcoin goes to zero which, it’s an experiment, it could I won’t be on the street.
Charlie Shrem

A lot of people have, like, 95 percent of their wealth in bitcoin. Great for them, but I got to be smart.
Charlie Shrem

A lot of people say that I took the first shot for Bitcoin. The first person to walk through the door always gets shot, and then everyone else can come through.
Charlie Shrem

Before I went to prison, there were not really many blockchain products. It was only bitcoin.
Charlie Shrem

My salary is converted to bitcoin, and taxes are taken out. You have to do all the tax computations in dollars because the IRS does not deal in bitcoins.
Gavin Andresen

BitCoin is actually an exploit against network complexity. Not financial networks, or computer networks, or social networks. Networks themselves.
Dan Kaminsky

Bitcoin’s got its issues. But it is not competing with perfection.
Dan Kaminsky

The Internet’s proven to be a pretty big deal for global society, and Bitcoin could basically be thought of as the Internet, applied to money.
Dan Kaminsky

I just spent the last 8 months working on the second edition of ‘Mastering Bitcoin,’ and I couldn’t even scratch the surface of all the innovation that is happening in BTC.
Andreas Antonopoulos

Bitcoin will make a dent in society when more normal transactions occur that would have occurred with dollars or credit card.
Garry Tan

Bitcoin has the potential to destroy credit cards and banks as we know it. Maybe that is a good thing or a bad thing, but I like the idea that if someone needs to remit payments, they can do it without being gouged.
Garry Tan

Often I am asked, ‘Why are you investing in bitcoin and VR? Those markets dont exist.’ You mean they do not exist yet.
Brayton Williams

Make no mistake Ethereum would never have existed without Bitcoin as a forerunner. That said, I think Ethereum is ahead of Bitcoin in many ways and represents the bleeding edge of digital currency.
Fred Ehrsam

Bitcoin is absolutely the Wild West of finance, and thank goodness. It represents a whole legion of adventurers and entrepreneurs, of risk takers, inventors, and problem solvers. It is the frontier. Huge amounts of wealth will be created and destroyed as this new landscape is mapped out.
Erik Voorhees

That’s the last thing on Earth you should think about… There’s just a whole lot of things that aren’t going to work for you. Figure out what they are and avoid them like the plague. And one of them is bitcoin… It is total insanity.
Charlie Munger

While it’s not obvious to people now, in the long-run, the permissionless innovation that Bitcoin enables will ultimately improve the lives of billions of people.
Nick Tomaino

After PayPal, I never thought I would get interested in payments again. But bitcoin is fulfilling PayPal’s original vision to create ‘the new world currency.’
David O. Sacks

I love this stuff bitcoin, ethereum, blockchain technology and what the future holds.
Abigail Johnson

In 2008, Bitcoin was mysteriously introduced to the world in an obscure, technical paper written under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. By late 2013, the financial press was filled with reportage on Bitcoin and its dramatic price increase.
Steve Hanke

Bitcoin and the block chain enables a whole new way to incentivize and transact, so change the world with this new tool. Create and build! Surprise us with an idea we have never seen before.
Adam Draper

Our view is that consumer finance what people think of as retail finance that arena is ripe for disruption. Bitcoin is absolutely a core platform and asset format that we are dependent on to build this business.
Jeremy Allaire

Everyone, it’s okay to say the word ‘bitcoin’ and acknowledge that it is the actual platform that is driving this innovation that we’re all building on. It’s also okay to say ‘the bitcoin blockchain,’ or ‘the blockchain,’ if you’re afraid that people will think you’re weird.
Jeremy Allaire

Bitcoin is open-source, global, and requires no permission from anybody, so thousands of entrepreneurs are gravitating in and building their vision.
Erik Voorhees

If you’re someone in the business of verifying transactions on a proprietary network, the invention of Bitcoin cannot be safely ignored. It will change or disrupt the providers of most proprietary payment networks in the coming years.
Brian Armstrong

Just as the web democratized publishing and development, Bitcoin can democratize building new financial services. Contracts can be entered into, verified, and enforced completely electronically, using any third-party that you care to trust, or by the code itself.
Naval Ravikant

While the traditional banks and credit card companies lock down access to their payments infrastructure to a handful of trusted parties, Bitcoin is open to all.
Naval Ravikant

I believe Bitcoin is a very convenient way to shop and to transfer money to any account around the world. Governments should work around a framework for the currency instead of putting restrictions on it.
Ravi Subramanian

My view is that the bitcoin is in its very early days, and it is an artificial currency. But whether it is creating new money, whether it is sustainable, whether it would survive I have many questions about it.
Uday Kotak

Private funding was one of the first methods used when MIT funded Bitcoin core developers Gavin Andresen, Wladimir van der Laan, and Cory Fields in 2015.
Fred Ehrsam

I think the whole narrative of blockchain without bitcoin will amount to very little.
Fred Ehrsam

Just as the Internet brought the cost of disseminating information down by an order of magnitude, bitcoin brings the cost of transferring ownership down by an order of magnitude.
Fred Ehrsam

Bitcoin’s value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
Fred Ehrsam

When the actual Bitcoin network launched in 2009, no one knew about it, and many of those who did thought it would surely fail. Just to make sure the thing worked, the scripting language in Bitcoin was intentionally extremely restrictive.
Fred Ehrsam

The scripting language in Bitcoin is important because it is what makes Bitcoin ‘programmable money’. Within each Bitcoin transaction is the ability to write a little program.
Fred Ehrsam

Bitcoin has a core technological innovation: The ability to publicly verify ownership, instantly transfer that ownership, and do so without the need for a trusted third party.
Fred Ehrsam

The Internet will continue to be valuable so long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring data. Bitcoin’s value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
Fred Ehrsam

I regard the bitcoin craze as totally asinine to create some manufactured currency.
Charlie Munger

Who would want one’s children growing up buying things like bitcoin? I hope to God my family doesn’t buy it. It’s noxious poison.
Charlie Munger

What Bitcoin started is metamorphosing into something bigger: a ‘crypto-tech’-driven economy with its own value creation, not unlike the Web’s own economy. Welcome to the cryptoconomy.
William Mougayar

The ability to easily buy and sell Bitcoin has been a really key factor in accelerating Bitcoin adoption.
Fred Ehrsam

Bitcoin represents the first major breakthrough in economics and finance since double-entry bookkeeping was invented in 1494, and activists need to embrace its power.
Max Keiser

The ledger, the distributed database it’s called a Blockchain is held in the cloud by all the parties involved. It can’t be broken by any of them. It’s cryptographically too strong. You would have to compromise the entire network to take over Bitcoin.
Naval Ravikant

Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy.
Timothy C. Draper

It’s completely reasonable, even if some Bitcoin currency purists wouldn’t like it, to have credit and debit card payments denominated in Bitcoin rather than dollars, and net settled on Bitcoin instead of on Fedwire.
Nick Szabo

Ethereum has taken what was a four-function calculator of a programming language in Bitcoin and turned it into a full-fledged computer.
Fred Ehrsam

Cryptocurrency for Entrepreneurs

by hotshed71

Cryptocurrency for Entrepreneurs

Every digital currency on the market can be classified as one of five types. The distinctions between them are important because they tell you what exactly you’re investing in and who can invest in them.

Coins vs Tokens: This is the biggest distinction between cryptocurrencies. Each digital currency must be one or the other, and here’s the difference—coins have their own blockchain and tokens don’t.

A blockchain is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network that records transactions on a digital ledger.

Most of the big-name currencies are coins.

On the other hand, tokens must be created from a blockchain already in existence like Ethereum. Their protocol exists on top of that blockchain.

Coins function as currency; tokens represent access to “stock” or a product. The value of a token is a little complicated, too.

Tokens are usually released in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), which give the investor access to tokenized services or products, or represent a stake in a cryptocurrency company.

Tokens also fall under different SEC regulations depending on whether they represent a utility or a security.

 

Utility Tokens vs Security Tokens: It’s almost essential that an entrepreneur understand the difference between these two types of cryptocurrency.

The SEC has much stricter regulations for security tokens than it does for utility.

This is because the former, as the name says, act as digital securities.

If you can buy or trade a token on a cryptocurrency exchange without being an accredited investor, then it’s a utility token.

In the most basic terms, a utility token gives an investor access to a product or service. It can represent a discounted rate or early/exclusive access.

If you’re looking at Smart Contracts or DApps, you’re looking at utility tokens.

Security tokens are different. They’re securities that exist on a blockchain and represent part-ownership in a real-world, tradeable asset that is external to that blockchain.

Because they’re regulated by the SEC like securities, you must be an accredited investor to trade them. The SEC decides which tokens are security tokens by determining whether or not an investor will make money based on a third party’s labor.

 

Stablecoins: Distinctions between the different types of cryptocurrency can be a little obscure. Some companies will try to pass off their security tokens as utility tokens.

And then there’s the debate over whether or not tokens can represent currency (like coins) rather than just access to a service.

To make things even more confusing, stablecoins are often technically “stabletokens.” Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that is “pegged” to traditional assets like government-backed currency or gold.

The advantage with this is that during a “bear” market, investors can move their money from volatile cryptocurrencies to stablecoins (which are theoretically more stable) instead of converting back and forth to USD, which will involve transaction fees.

Then, during a “bull” market, the investor can convert the stablecoins back into more volatile cryptocurrency without much of a cost.

Despite being called coins, however, most stablecoins are actually tokens because they don’t have their own blockchains.

Why should you care whether something is a coin, a token, a security or a utility?

As a potential investor, you need to know the value of the cryptocurrency you’re considering and how current and future SEC regulations will affect it.

And the distinction between coins and tokens marks the two forks in cryptocurrency’s evolution: cryptocurrency as a payment method and as a tokenized security.

The question is: can cryptocurrency replace the US dollar or the stock market—or both?

 

How Cryptocurrency Can Help Entrepreneurs

 

Blockchain technology is a once-in-a-lifetime invention. Cryptocurrency has revolutionized the way we buy and sell, raise capital, and invest our savings.

Here are some ways it can help you:

Raising Capital:

Using Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), startup companies worldwide can raise money quickly (and inexpensively) from a huge pool of global investors rather than trying to locate locals who might be interested.

And the valuation of your company is reflected in the market practically at once, unlike the long, laborious process it once took.

You can issue shares as tokens and they become tradable almost instantly, giving your company the liquidity it needs to start. This new cryptocurrency approach allows the best technical talents to build their companies at a great rate of speed.

 

Transacting Value:

Cryptocurrency lets a company transact value between peers easily, cheaply, and more efficiently than with traditional payment networks.

Accepting cryptocurrency is becoming increasingly more efficient. It saves on fees and allows a company to have faster settlements.

Pretty soon, a startup company won’t have to go through the long, laborious process of setting up a bank account in order to receive and distribute funds.

Investing for the Future: According to AMZcoin, cryptocurrency “may be the investment opportunity of a lifetime.” Never before have retail investors had the kind of access to high-growth, early-stage companies that they have today.

Traditionally, this access has been monopolized by private investigators and venture capital funds. Cryptocurrency allows nearly anyone in the world to invest in the some of the world’s most exciting technology, giving them the ability to own shares in high-growth companies.

 

Developing on the Blockchain:

“Blockchain technology ,” says AMZcoin, “is a cost-efficient way of building decentralized applications that can scale to a global population.”

Blockchain technology is already revolutionizing how startup companies create value. Ethereum’s platform lets companies build “unstoppable blockchain applications” without cost and with a great deal of speed.

One example of a company using Ethereum is OmiseGo. This is a company that uses blockchain to provide banking services for the 2 billion people in the world without access to a traditional bank.

 

Joining the Blockchain Community.

This community offers access to some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors, who are actively advising, investing, and building on that blockchain.

Platforms like Facebook, Telegram, WeChat, WhatsApp, and Slack are popular places for groups of these entrepreneurs to stay in contact with one another.

Communities of blockchain investors can coordinate large investments, something that would take months in traditional venture capital, within only minutes using these groups.

Cryptocurrencies provide entrepreneurs with a platform to raise capital efficiently, quickly, and cheaply. Investors can transact value at high speed through the blockchain with limited setup costs. They can also invest in high-growth technology companies at an early stage.

Cryptocurrency will keep providing a means for entrepreneurs to create value in the world.

How Cryptocurrency Works and some of the risks

by hotshed71

How Cryptocurrency Works

The most popular cryptocurrency is the Bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies modeled after this one are often called “altcoins” and are often less secure than the Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was created in 2009 (at present, nobody knows exactly who created it). Investopedia says it offers “lower transaction fees than traditional online payment mechanisms and, unlike government-issued currencies, it is operated by a decentralized agency.”

There aren’t any physical Bitcoins you can see or touch. Instead, there is a totally public ledger that everybody on Earth has access to. Bitcoins aren’t issued or backed by any government or bank, and individual Bitcoins aren’t valuable as a commodity.

All Bitcoin transactions are verified by a huge amount of computing power, though. The system consists of a collection of computers, referred to as “nodes” or “miners,” that all run the Bitcoin code and store the blockchain record of all transactions.

Since every computer running this blockchain has the same lists of blocks and transactions, and everyone can see the new blocks being filled, it’s almost impossible to cheat the system.

As of January, 2021, Bitcoin has around 12,000 different nodes (and that number is growing), so such an attack is highly unlikely.

Even if it did occur, the Bitcoin miners (the actual people involved in the Bitcoin network with their computers) would notice the change and simply “fork” to a new blockchain and make the whole attack a waste of time.

Bitcoin mining is the process by which the bitcoins are released into circulation. Investopedia explains that this mining “requires the solving of computationally difficult puzzles to discover a new block, which is added to the blockchain.”

When a new block is added, miners are rewarded with a few Bitcoins. This reward is halved after every 210,000 blocks, so the 50 Bitcoin reward in 2009 is now down to 6.25 Bitcoins.

You can use a variety of different hardware to mine Bitcoins. Some will get you better results, of course, and these are called “mining rigs.”

For example, certain computer chips (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASIC) and more advanced processing units (like Graphic Processing Units or GPU) will yield higher rewards than other systems.

One Bitcoin can be divided into eight decimal places. The smallest unit is called a Satoshi (0.00000001 of a Bitcoin) because the mysterious entity who created the Bitcoin used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. If participating miners agree, the Bitcoin may be divided even further in the future.

Bitcoin can be used as a means of payment for products or services. Physical stores can accept Bitcoin in lieu of fiat money—transactions would be handled with a special terminal or with QR codes and touch screen apps.

An online business can easily accept Bitcoins along with its other online payment options like credit cards or PayPal. There are also job-site websites that will hook up prospective employees with employers who pay in Bitcoin, like Cryptogrind, Coinality, or Bitwage.

Many Bitcoin supporters feel that digital currency will become the norm in the future. In 2014, the IRS proclaimed that all virtual currencies, including Bitcoins, would be taxed as property instead of currency.

This means that gains or losses from Bitcoins held as capital will be realized as capital gains or losses, while those held as inventory will incur ordinary gains or losses.

To purchase cryptocurrency like Bitcoins, you will need an online “wallet,” an app that can hold your investments. Usually, you create an account with an exchange, and then you can transfer fiat money into cryptocurrencies.

One popular trading exchange is Coinbase, which allows you to create a wallet and buy and sell cryptocurrencies.

 

 

What You Need to Know: The Risks

 

While cryptocurrency opens the doors to countless investment and financial instruments, because of the lack of guaranteed value, as well as its digital nature, there are risks involved that you should know about before you get started.

Barry Sibert, CEO of Digital Currency Group (which builds and invests in Bitcoins and blockchain companies) says “It is pretty much the highest-risk, highest-return investment that you can possibly make.”

Here are some of the risks you can incur:

Regulatory Risks: Bitcoins are a digital rival to government currency and, thus, may be used for illegal activities, black market transactions, money laundering, or tax evasion.

Governments, therefore, might seek to regulate, restrict, or ban the use of such currency (some already have). Other governments are coming up with various rules concerning cryptocurrency.

Security Risks: Most people who own and use Bitcoins have obtained their currency through any of many popular online markets, called Bitcoin exchanges. These are entirely digital, so as with any other virtual system, are at risk from hackers, malware, and even operational glitches.

Hackers may target these exchanges and gain access to thousands of accounts and digital “wallets” where Bitcoins are stored.

Users can only prevent these risks by storing their currency on a computer not connected to the internet or by choosing to use a “paper wallet” where they print out the Bitcoin private keys and addresses without keeping them in a computer at all.

Insurance Risk: Currently, cryptocurrency exchanges and accounts are not insured by any federal or government program.

In 2019, one dealer and trading platform (SFOX) did announce they’d provide Bitcoin investors with FDIC insurance, but only for those transactions involving cash.

Fraud Risk: Bitcoin does use private-key encryption to verify owners and register transactions, but scammers might try to sell fake Bitcoins. There have also been documented cases of price manipulation, which is another common form of fraud.

Market Risk: As with any other investment, Bitcoin prices can fluctuate. In fact, Bitcoin value has seen wild swings since 2009.

There is also plenty of competition for Bitcoin, and a technical breakthrough in the form of a better virtual coin is always a threat.

If you’re looking to invest in cryptocurrency in an ICO (Initial Coin Offering), you should ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who owns the company? Is it a recognizable name or an identifiable owner?
  • Are there other major investors already in?
  • Will you own a stake in the company or just currency or tokens? The former means you’re an actual owner in the company, while the latter just gives you cryptocurrency to buy or sell.
  • Is the currency already developed or is the company trying to raise money to develop it? The further along the product is, the less risky it will be.

 

 

 

 

Grow Your Business with Cryptocurrency

by hotshed71

Here are some ways that cryptocurrency can grow your business:

Create your own cryptocurrency as a brand booster:

One way to draw attention to your business’ use of cryptocurrency is to make your own digital branded version.

Your best approach is to build up your community first, including your customers and social media followers. Share your plans with them about creating your branded cryptocurrency, including how this will benefit them.

You don’t even have to be a technology expert to do this, though you probably will want to hire a cryptocurrency developer to make sure your digital currency works properly.

Buy and trade cryptocurrency:

Just like the traditional stock markets, you can buy and trade cryptocurrencies to potentially fund your business growth.

There are even new platforms that can make this opportunity more accessible, especially to the novice investor.

Coinbase is one example of such a platform. And then there are other investor and asset manager platforms and forums to guide your investment strategies.

Another opportunity is to become a Bitcoin broker, helping others buy and trade cryptocurrencies and making extra money by assisting their transactions.

 

Use cryptocurrency apps to offer additional payment acceptance methods:

More and more online retailers are adding cryptocurrencies as a payment option. That even includes Microsoft and Overstock.

You can expand your customer base and reach people who may not have a bank account or may not want to use a credit card online.

Remember: the more payment options you can provide, the better your chances of attracting and retaining new customers.

 

BitPay is one example of a payment service provider that allows you to accept cryptocurrency as a payment option.

Encourage its use through social media: If you want to see an example of using cryptocurrency to accept payments through a social media platform, look at the messenger app, Kik.

They operate in a way that’s similar to what Facebook does with traditional currency. But Kik can work across countries instead of trying to deal with all those different currencies.

This is becoming a popular way for millennials to use digital currency—and other demographics are starting to catch on.

Kik also realizes that there are other ways to encourage your users to earn cryptocurrency, ways that will keep them engaged with your platform. You can have them watch ads, host a fantastic group chat, build a great bot, or even create a fun sticker.

There are a lot of different ways that a consumer could come in and earn value and then spend it. And how that makes money for you is that you create a new cryptocurrency, but only a certain amount of it.

Then set aside some for your own use. So, if you can get more and more people trading in that cryptocurrency, its value will grow.

 

Add a side business related to Bitcoin:

There are many new applications relating to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. A lot of them don’t take a lot of your time, making them good side businesses.

For example, you might think about Bitcoin Teller Machines (BTM), which work like an ATM, only with Bitcoins.

Examples include Skyhook and BitAccess. Another option is a Bitcoin vending machine business, which lets people get items from your machines using Bitcoins instead of cash or credit cards.

 

Bitcoin mining:

Here’s another way to grow your business, although it may require a good bit of capital output to start with.

Adding Bitcoin mining to your service roster is a lucrative way to expand your business.

Miners, those participating in this process, are usually rewarded for the use of their computers by receiving newly minted coins or transaction fees paid by other members of the network—or both.

Although mining has become more competitive, there are still considerable opportunities for a business.

Bitcoin franchises:

Cryptocurrency franchises that can expand your business include NewsBTC, Coingala, and Coin Telegraph.

Fund another business:

Many high-risk industries are not being served by traditional banking systems. You can become an “angel investor” and help another business get its start with your cryptocurrency investment platform.

Your business can then reap a sizeable reward. Just be careful where you invest your currency.

Offer a digital wallet—and the security to protect it:

With Bitcoin transactions on the rise, there’s an increasing need for a secure wallet to store those coins. By developing or partnering with a tech company that can offer security for those digital wallets, you can reap even more profitable rewards.

Improve applications with blockchain:

You can even move beyond a focus on cryptocurrencies and seek out applications, including those within the financial environment.

Leveraging this technology can deliver profitable outcomes and help grow your business both directly and indirectly.

Examples: improved payroll or payment processing or more secure contracts and data storage.

I hope this special report has provided you with the information you need to venture into the exciting world of cryptocurrency.

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