PSA: Upcoming Bitcoin ETF Has No Insurance and Winklevoss Twins are Not Liable for Lost or Stolen Bitcoins -- Shareholders Have No Legal Recourse in MtGox Scenario
PSA: Upcoming Bitcoin ETF Has No Insurance and Winklevoss Twins are Not Liable for Lost or Stolen Bitcoins -- Shareholders Have No Legal Recourse in MtGox Scenario
Hi Bitcoiners! I’m back with the fifteenth monthly Bitcoin news recap. For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popularelevant/interesting stories in Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month. And a lot has happened. It's easy to forget with so much focus on the price. Take a moment and scroll through the list below. You'll find an incredibly eventful month. You can see recaps of the previous months on Bitcoinsnippets.com A recap of Bitcoin in March 2018
Note: Ryan Wilday and I just co-wrote this crypto article, and we thought you may find it interesting. Recently, the Winklevoss twins (who founded the Gemini crypto exchange) coined Bitcoin as ‘Gold 2.0.’ To support their perspective, they cited Bitcoin’s scarcity, its fungibility and its portability as meeting or exceeding that of the yellow metal. Greyscale Investments, the company that has brought crypto based trusts to the US OTC market, recently ran ads urging investors to drop gold as a relic of the past in favor of cryptocurrency, which is ‘secure’, borderless, and in their direct words, ‘actually has utility’. It seems that there are more and more comparisons between Bitcoin and gold, but is one better to hold more so than the other? Well, to be honest, each has a different ultimate purpose for which each is better suited. With gold and crypto starting to launch on their next bull run, we thought it would be fun to explore these questions. At the end of the day, we find each asset worth owning. And, for the libertarian minded, both assets provide “insurance” from inflationary fiat and the centralized banking system. Yet, each asset has their die-hard investors who view each asset as “the” asset to own, while they simultaneously look down at the other camp. For example, ‘gold bug’s’ such as Peter Schiff decry Bitcoin as ‘not viable as money’, ‘not a store of value’, and ‘fool’s gold’. And, Bitcoin fans simply consider gold a cumbersome hunk of metal with a value based on tradition rather than utility. As far as we are concerned, each camp has a point, which is why we feel that one should diversify into both asset classes for the same types of protections. You see, gold and bitcoin share values which are sought after by both groups of investors: separation from the centralized financial system, scarcity, security, portability, and fungibility. However, whereas Bitcoin may better serve investors with certain of these benefits, gold will serve investors better with others. Separation from the System In regards to separation from the centralized finance system of the world, Bitcoin and Gold are comparable. Both assets allow the holder to remain in control of their holdings, effectively becoming the bank for themselves. In that regard, holding either asset removes counterparty risk. Moreover, both allow for exchange between parties without intermediaries. And, finally, both are immune from the inflationary efforts of central banks. Scarcity All the gold ever mined is estimated at 190,000 tonnes and there is expected to be 54,000 tonnes in the ground. The current supply of Bitcoin is approaching 18 million and will never exceed 21 million. Furthermore, untold numbers of bitcoin are lost due to misplaced keys. Therefore, it is quite clear that both assets are scarce and finite, though one could certainly argue that Bitcoin is more so. Security The holders of both assets need to pay attention to security. For the gold holder, of course, security involves keeping gold away from prying hands. However, storage does become an issue the larger the holding, and involves additional costs. So, clearly, this is certainly one of the drawbacks of holding gold. Yet, theft of cryptocurrency has been one of the biggest deterrents from adoption of crypto as a common asset class. Yet, with appropriate cyber security protections, one can keep their crypto secure. Given that it is not held in a physical location, there are no additional costs of storage. Moreover, as long as one doesn’t expose how they maintain their private keys, one is unlikely to experience a physical robbery attempt. (We created a quick document on crypto security here). However, the Achilles heel of Bitcoin is that it requires the internet and electric grids to run properly. Should electricity become compromised for whatever the reason, I think it would be clear to understand how gold would become the more desirable of the two assets in this event. Portability I don’t think there is much of a question that Bitcoin wins hands down with respect to portability. Bitcoin is weightless and gold is over 19 grams per cubic centimeter. This is why so many Venezuelans reportedly ran to Bitcon to take capital out of the country. Doing so with gold is nearly impossible during such times of crisis. Fungibility Bitcoin and Gold are both fungible. However, Bitcoin is much more easily divided into smaller units down to 8 decimal places. At current price, one could theoretically exchange Bitcoin worth 1 /100 of a cent. Try doing that with gold. Since units of gold generally need to be rated for investment level purity, it is quite hard to exchange less than a 1/10th ounce of gold, or roughly $140 at today’s price. Conclusion Perhaps gold and crypto investors can find some common ground, as they each have similar benefits. The benefits that have traditionally led gold investors to hoard the yellow metal are not too different from those driving today’s Bitcoin buyers. Nonetheless, as we’ve shared, both are expected to embark on their next bull run. And, a disadvantage to owning one asset is often an advantage of owning other. Therefore, we believe both deserve a place in your portfolio for at least insurance purposes.
Well gee, this blew up. Bitcoin should not be treated as an investment, it should be recognized as a speculative negative-sum game. The Bitcoin system currently consumes an estimated 3.6 billion dollar worth of electricity on an annualized basis, just to update the ledger that contains a record of everyone's transactions. This enormous consumption of electricity is indirectly paid for by people who invest their savings in Bitcoin, as a consequence, money is continually "leaking" from the system. As a Bitcoin investor, you're paying for Chinese businesses to waste electricity by solving an abstract math problem that is designed to get continually more difficult. Besides ensuring that many people lose vast sums of money while a small minority of early adapters is enriched, Bitcoin causes tremendous ecological damage in an era when we should be focusing as a society on reducing our carbon emissions. The Bitcoin developers responsible for updating the protocol appear to have no genuine intention to introduce code changes that reduce the ecological damage caused by Bitcoin mining, so my suggestion has to be to sell your Bitcoins, which indirectly has the effect of reducing the ecological damage caused by Bitcoin mining. Theft and loss of coins are also enormous problems affecting Bitcoin, so although it is theoretically possible to store your coins in a safe manner, history has shown that a lot of people will simply lose their coins, further illustrating why Bitcoin is not a good investment option. The other cryptocurrencies share most of Bitcoin's flaws (resource waste, no protection against theft or loss, vulnerable to market manipulation, etc), but most importantly, what sets cryptocurrencies apart from proper investments is that these coins don't produce anything. If you invest in a company, that company can use the money to deliver more products. If you buy, silver, gold, bitcoin or beanie babies, you're hoping someone else will come along one day and pay more money for it. History has shown that people who invest money in the stock market will generally end up witnessing much higher returns than people who buy gold. With that said, I hope this story has entertained you and helped you recognize some of the problems our society would face if we ever witnessed widespread adaption of Bitcoin or similar digital currencies. I am sending this message from the year 2025. Things are looking bleak here, and some of you will carry blood on your hands. If you don't believe me, please move on, as I have no way of proving to you I'm really who I claim to be. I don't want to waste any of your time, so I'm merely going to explain what happened. On average, every year so far, the value of Bitcoin has increased by about a factor ten. From 0.1 dollar in 2010, to 1 dollar in 2011, to 10 dollar in 2012, to 100 dollar in 2013. From now on, there's a slight slowdown, as the value increased by a factor ten every two years, to 1,000 dollar in 2015, to 10,000 in 2017, 100,000 in 2019, and 1,000,000 in 2021. From here onwards, there's no good way of expressing its value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used, nor is any central bank issued currency for that matter. There are two main forms of wealth in today's world. Land and cryptocurrency. There are just over 19 million Bitcoin known to be used in the world today, as well as a few hundred thousand that were permanently lost, and we're still dealing with a population of just over 7 billion people today. On average, this means the average person owns just under 0.003 bitcoin. However, due to the unequal distribution of wealth in my world, the mean person owns just 0.001 bitcoin. That's right, most of you reading this today are rich. I personally live next to an annoying young man who logged into his old Reddit account two years ago and discovered that he received a tip of 0.01 Bitcoin back in 2013 for calling someone a "faggot" when he was a 16 year old boy. Upon making this discovery he bought an airline ticket, left his house without telling anyone anything and went to a Citadel. "What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king. In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering "rogue states" like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin. Governments tried to stay relevant in my society by buying Bitcoin, which just made the problem worse, by increasing the value of Bitcoin. Governments did so in secret of course, but my generation's "Snowdens" are in fact greedy government employees who transferred Bitcoin to their own private account, and escaped to anarchic places where no questions are asked as long as you can cough up some money. The four institutions with the largest still accessible Bitcoin balance are believed to be as following: -ASICminer - 50,000 Bitcoin -The IMF's "currency stabilization fund" - 70,000 Bitcoin -Government of Saudi Arabia - 110,000 Bitcoin -The North Korean government - 180,000 Bitcoin Economic growth today is about -2% per year. Why is this? If you own more than 0.01 Bitcoin, chances are you don't do anything with your money. There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like the medieval ages had no significant economic growth, as wealth was measured in gold, our society has no economic growth either, as people know their 0.01 Bitcoin will be enough to last them a lifetime. The fact that there are still new Bitcoin released is what prevents our world from collapse so far it seems, but people fear that the decline in inflation that will occur during the next block halving may further wreck our economy. What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After seeing the enormous damage done to the fabric of society, terrorist movements emerged that sought to hunt down and murder anyone known to have a large balance of Bitcoin, or believed to be responsible in any way for the development of cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use Bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations. Most people who own any significant amount of Bitcoin no longer speak to their families and lost their friends, because they had to change their identities. There have been also been a few suicides of people who could not handle the guilt after seeing what happened to the bag-holders, the type of skeptical people who continued to believe it would eventually collapse, even after hearing the rumors of governments buying Bitcoin. Many people were taken hostage, and thus, it is suspected that 25% percent of "Bitcoin rich" actually physically tortured someone to get him to spill his password. Why didn't we abandon Bitcoin, and move to another system? Well, we tried of course. We tried to step over to an inflationary cryptocurrency, but nobody with an IQ above 70 was willing to step up first and volunteer. After all, why would you voluntarily invest a lot of your money into a currency where you know your wealth will continually decline? The thing that made Bitcoin so dangerous to society was also what made it so successful. Bitcoin allows us to give into our greed. In Africa, surveys show that an estimated 70% of people believe that Bitcoin was invented by the devil himself. There's a reason for this. It's a very sensitive issue that today is generally referred to as "the tragedy". The African Union had ambitious plans to help its citizens be ready to step over to Bitcoin. Governments gave their own citizens cell phones for free, tied to their government ID, and thus government sought to integrate Bitcoin into their economy. All went well, until "the tragedy" that is. A criminal organization, believed to be located in Russia, exploited a hardware fault in the government issued cell phones. It's believed that the entire continent of Africa lost an estimated 60% of its wealth in a period of 48 hours. What followed was a period of chaos and civil war, until the Saudi Arabian and North Korean governments, two of the world's major superpowers due to their authoritarian political system's unique ability to adapt to the "Bitcoin challenge", divided most African land between themselves and were praised as heroes by the local African population for it. You might wonder, what is our plan now? It's clear that the current situation can not be sustained, without ending in a nuclear holocaust. I am part of an underground network, who seek to launch a coordinated attack against the very infrastructure of the Internet itself. We have at our disposal about 20 nuclear submarines, which we will use to cut all underwater cables between different continents. After this has been successfully achieved, we will launch a simultaneous nuclear pulse attack on every densely population area of the world. We believe that the resulting chaos will allow the world's population to rise up in revolt, and destroy as many computers out there as possible, until we reach the point where Bitcoin loses any relevance. Of course, this outcome will likely lead to billions of deaths. This is a price we are forced to pay, to avoid the eternal enslavement of humanity to a tiny elite. This is also the reason we contacted you. It doesn't have to be like this. You do not have to share our fate. I don't know how, but you must find a way to destroy this godforsaken project in its infancy. I know this is a difficult thing to ask of you. You believed you were helping the world by eliminating the central banking cartel that governs your economies. However, I have seen where it ends. More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgrUEHe7CZY&t=3s
I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing.
I am sending this message from the year 2025. Things are looking bleak here, and some of you will carry blood on your hands. If you don't believe me, please move on, as I have no way of proving to you I'm really who I claim to be. I don't want to waste any of your time, so I'm merely going to explain what happened. On average, every year so far, the value of Bitcoin has increased by about a factor ten. From 0.1 dollar in 2010, to 1 dollar in 2011, to 10 dollar in 2012, to 100 dollar in 2013. From now on, there's a slight slowdown, as the value increased by a factor ten every two years, to 1,000 dollar in 2015, to 10,000 in 2017, 100,000 in 2019, and 1,000,000 in 2021. From here onwards, there's no good way of expressing its value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used, nor is any central bank issued currency for that matter. There are two main forms of wealth in today's world. Land and cryptocurrency. There are just over 19 million Bitcoin known to be used in the world today, as well as a few hundred thousand that were permanently lost, and we're still dealing with a population of just over 7 billion people today. On average, this means the average person owns just under 0.003 bitcoin. However, due to the unequal distribution of wealth in my world, the mean person owns just 0.001 bitcoin. That's right, most of you reading this today are rich. I personally live next to an annoying young man who logged into his old Reddit account two years ago and discovered that he received a tip of 0.01 Bitcoin back in 2013 for calling someone a "faggot" when he was a 16 year old boy. Upon making this discovery he bought an airline ticket, left his house without telling anyone anything and went to a Citadel. "What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king. In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering "rogue states" like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin. Governments tried to stay relevant in my society by buying Bitcoin, which just made the problem worse, by increasing the value of Bitcoin. Governments did so in secret of course, but my generation's "Snowdens" are in fact greedy government employees who transferred Bitcoin to their own private account, and escaped to anarchic places where no questions are asked as long as you can cough up some money. The four institutions with the largest still accessible Bitcoin balance are believed to be as following: -ASICminer - 50,000 Bitcoin -The IMF's "currency stabilization fund" - 70,000 Bitcoin -Government of Saudi Arabia - 110,000 Bitcoin -The North Korean government - 180,000 Bitcoin Economic growth today is about -2% per year. Why is this? If you own more than 0.01 Bitcoin, chances are you don't do anything with your money. There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like the medieval ages had no significant economic growth, as wealth was measured in gold, our society has no economic growth either, as people know their 0.01 Bitcoin will be enough to last them a lifetime. The fact that there are still new Bitcoin released is what prevents our world from collapse so far it seems, but people fear that the decline in inflation that will occur during the next block halving may further wreck our economy. What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After seeing the enormous damage done to the fabric of society, terrorist movements emerged that sought to hunt down and murder anyone known to have a large balance of Bitcoin, or believed to be responsible in any way for the development of cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use Bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations. Most people who own any significant amount of Bitcoin no longer speak to their families and lost their friends, because they had to change their identities. There have been also been a few suicides of people who could not handle the guilt after seeing what happened to the bag-holders, the type of skeptical people who continued to believe it would eventually collapse, even after hearing the rumors of governments buying Bitcoin. Many people were taken hostage, and thus, it is suspected that 25% percent of "Bitcoin rich" actually physically tortured someone to get him to spill his password. Why didn't we abandon Bitcoin, and move to another system? Well, we tried of course. We tried to step over to an inflationary cryptocurrency, but nobody with an IQ above 70 was willing to step up first and volunteer. After all, why would you voluntarily invest a lot of your money into a currency where you know your wealth will continually decline? The thing that made Bitcoin so dangerous to society was also what made it so successful. Bitcoin allows us to give into our greed. In Africa, surveys show that an estimated 70% of people believe that Bitcoin was invented by the devil himself. There's a reason for this. It's a very sensitive issue that today is generally referred to as "the tragedy". The African Union had ambitious plans to help its citizens be ready to step over to Bitcoin. Governments gave their own citizens cell phones for free, tied to their government ID, and thus government sought to integrate Bitcoin into their economy. All went well, until "the tragedy" that is. A criminal organization, believed to be located in Russia, exploited a hardware fault in the government issued cell phones. It's believed that the entire continent of Africa lost an estimated 60% of its wealth in a period of 48 hours. What followed was a period of chaos and civil war, until the Saudi Arabian and North Korean governments, two of the world's major superpowers due to their authoritarian political system's unique ability to adapt to the "Bitcoin challenge", divided most African land between themselves and were praised as heroes by the local African population for it. You might wonder, what is our plan now? It's clear that the current situation can not be sustained, without ending in a nuclear holocaust. I am part of an underground network, who seek to launch a coordinated attack against the very infrastructure of the Internet itself. We have at our disposal about 20 nuclear submarines, which we will use to cut all underwater cables between different continents. After this has been successfully achieved, we will launch a simultaneous nuclear pulse attack on every densely population area of the world. We believe that the resulting chaos will allow the world's population to rise up in revolt, and destroy as many computers out there as possible, until we reach the point where Bitcoin loses any relevance. Of course, this outcome will likely lead to billions of deaths. This is a price we are forced to pay, to avoid the eternal enslavement of humanity to a tiny elite. This is also the reason we contacted you. It doesn't have to be like this. You do not have to share our fate. I don't know how, but you must find a way to destroy this godforsaken project in its infancy. I know this is a difficult thing to ask of you. You believed you were helping the world by eliminating the central banking cartel that governs your economies. However, I have seen where it ends.
I will start my post with the i'm a hodler preface before i get fanatics attacking me left right and center.. But i foresee some problems, and would appreciate a logical explanation how these circumstances will play out. Scenario 1 21 million bitcoins, with a presumption that 4 million are missing. Over time i see this number increasing but never decreasing, how will that affect bitcoin as a store of value? I'm aware of shipwrecks carrying tonnes of gold being lost, this could be a good example of the outcome. However there is almost always still more gold to be discovered.. (we have been using it as a store for centuries yet theres still gold out there to be mined.) Currently we estimate 2140 for this to have ran out of resources for bitcoin. Scenario 2 Bitcoin is supposed to equalise the playing fields of currency supposedly giving power back to the people.. yet with already 17.3 million already mined with a max limit of 21 million.. the majority of this asset has already fallen into a select few (the 1% dilemma we already face with current currency). We have already heard of the billion dollar Winklevoss twins, and there are few more. (even Craig Wright possibly, #Faketoshi)? So how does this fix the current system? To me the initial blocks mined scream of a very eloborate get rich quick scheme, with such huge rewards for early adopters.. was this satoshis intention, or a necessary compromise or maybe a miscalculation on his part? I'ts been 10 years since introduction.. yet we have mined 80% of the total reserve.. thats far too quick. I understand improvements of technology will improve bitcoin such as the current proposed lightning network (ill leave that proposal out of it as like the internet theres room for improvement).. however both scenarios above I don't believe can be rectified by a software solution.. so am interested in peoples thoughts on how they play out in the long run. Thanks!
Hi Bitcoiners! I’m back with the 21st monthly Bitcoin news recap. For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popularelevant/interesting stories in Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month. You can see recaps of the previous months on Bitcoinsnippets.com A recap of Bitcoin in September 2018
Hola Compadres! It is me u/poop_dragon here with another guide. Today I would like to run through a list of ETH exchanges. This is just Part 1 of this list, and it covers established exchanges. Soon I will post Part 2 and 3 which will go into some other types of exchanges (derivative markets, coin converters, decentralized, and foreign exchanges) Side note, I have given rating to these exchanges based on some comparisons, news, and information which I have found online. Recently, EVERY exchange has been slow/unresponsive in their customer service due to the huge influx of new users. My intention is to help educate new users about the exchanges available. I am not trying to discredit, advertise, pump up, or damage reputations. If you feel something is inaccurate, please respectfully bring it up in the comments. I will be editing as we go. Last thing of note, I have only included the lowest level trading tier to calculate trading fees, which assumes the highest rates. Most exchanges offer lower fees for bigger orders, but I have gone with the assumption that everyone here is not dropping whale amounts of cash.
00 – Concepts and Definitions
What is an Exchange? An exchange is a digital market place where you can buy or sell one kind of currency for another, whether that be digital or real (fiat) assets.
What is Fiat? Fiat currencies are national currencies which can be represented in hard cash amounts. For example, US Dollars, Euros, British Pounds, Japanese Yen, etc.
What are a Deposit/Withdrawal Fees? This is the price for putting currency in or taking your currency out of an exchange and your associated wallet. In the case of fiat this could be depositing or withdrawing money via bank transfer or credit card. For digital currency, the exchange may charge a fee to send your ETH, in my opinion this should be free, but they have to cover gas fees.
What is a Maker Fee? When you place an order which is not immediately matched by an existing order, that order is placed on the order book. If another customer places an order that matches yours, you are considered the maker. Maker fees are generally lower than taker fees on most exchanges.
What is a Taker Fee? When you place an order at the market price that gets filled immediately, you are considered a taker. In cases of very large orders it is possible to only pay a taker fee for a portion of your order that gets partially filled. The remainder of the order is placed on the order book and, when matched, is considered a maker order. Fees for takers are usually between .1 to .35% on most exchanges.
What are Verification Tiers? Most exchanges will not allow trading without verifying your identity in some way. This can be accomplished through your email, phone number, copies of your passport/driver’s license, bank statements, recent utility bills, etc. Exchanges then allow for higher trading limits depending on how much verifying information you provide.
What is 2FA? This is short for Two-Factor Authentication. In most cases this uses your site password (what you know) and your cellphone (what you have). When logging in you will need to confirm your log in attempt with a code sent to your cell phone. It adds an additional step to prevent someone hacking your account. In my opinion any trustworthy exchange should offer this and you should research the pros and cons of Google AuthenticatoAuthy App/SMS before using it.
What is a DDoS Attack? It stands for Distributed Denial of Service. Usually it is when a series of bots or a botnet which tries to flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system. It can cause websites to become slow or unresponsive.
01 –Digital Exchanges
Poloniex
Overview: The highest volume of ETH currently goes through Poloniex, undisputed leader in crypto currency trading. Its popularity comes from the fact that the exchange offers the widest selection of small and alt coin trading. Add to that minimal registration requirements and it is a recipe for lots and lots of users.
Withdrawal/Deposit Fees:No Fiat Deposit/Withdrawals. Minimum Deposit of 1 ETH in Exchange Wallet. Withdrawal fee of .005 ETH when sending to other wallets
Trading Fees:
Exchange Type
Maker
Taker
All Currencies
.15%
.25%
Security: Perhaps a red flag here would be the DDoS Attacks this May. This affected Kraken as well, and a lawsuit is being filed on behalf of users who had their positions liquidated. I don’t believe there was foul play, but I won’t speculate either. Less recently, they were hacked and 97 Bitcoin were stolen in 2014. However, they returned all funds to the users, which I believes says something about their integrity.
Feature
Details
2FA
Google Authenticator Available
Wallet Security
‘Majority’ of Funds in cold storage
Personal Information
Encrypted and Stored Off-Site
Verification:
Tier Level
Name
Email
DOB
Phone
Address
Official ID
Bank Info
KYC
Limits
Level 1
X
X
$2,000 USD Daily Withdrawal Limit
Level 2
X
X
X
X
X
X
$7,000 USD Daily Withdrawal Limit
Level 3
X
X
X
X
X
X
$25,000 USD Daily Withdrawal Limit
Level 4
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
>$25,000 USD Daily Withdrawal Limit
What is a KYC? It stands for Know Your Customer Documentation. This varies between exchanges. However, like most things, if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it.
Customer Service: The biggest difference between Poloniex and other exchanges iswas their use of their Trollbox chat feature. However, due to the chat being used more for ignorant comments rather than help it ~is a waste of time~~ has been discontinued. A quick search for customer service reviews from Poloniex shows poor results – extremely long wait times (counted in months not days), withdrawal issues, frozen accounts without notice, and a range of other complaints. Most other exchanges have similar complaints about slow response times, so I think this is a temporary issue. In a press release it was stated their user count rose 600% since January. However, the chronic lack of communication and transparency seems to have some in the community up in arms and should be addressed.
Bottom Line: Being the biggest fish in the ocean means you constantly have a target on your back. With issues from the DDoS attacks to laggy trading service to poor customer support, it may seem that Poloniex is not worth your trust. But if you are looking to trade obscure altcoins, and do it without many verification hurdles, there really is no other marketplace. Personally I think they are trying their best and I believe they are improving when u/Mike-Poloniex says stuff like this
Bittrex
Overview: Based in Las Vegas, Bittrex also offers lots of altcoin pairs with no fiat support, similar to poloniex. This allows for faster verification of activating accounts and moving funds. In the past, there were criticisms of the verification process for more some altcoins: some pairs had very low liquidity while other coins were just straight up scams. Especially Deaf Coin, a LiteCoin clone that was exclusively offered through Bittrex was delisted along with 35 other scam coins in February 2015 (compared to Poloniex at 17 removed in 2014). Since then a more thorough vetting process has been applied and it now labels ‘Verified Markets’
Withdrawal/Deposit Fees:No Fiat Deposit/Withdrawals. Deposits are free and Withdrawals vary by coin to cover the gas fee
Trading Fees:
Exchange Type
Maker
Taker
All Currencies
.25%
.25%
Security: Positively the team has a solid background in system security – the CEO and top developers cut their teeth at places like Blackberry, Microsoft, and Amazon working in security services. I found no reports of hacks.
Feature
Details
2FA
Google Authenticator Available
Wallet Security
Multi-stage wallet Majority’ of Funds in cold storage
Personal Information
IP Whitelisting restricts trading from new addresses
Verification:
Tier Level
Name
Email
DOB
Phone
Address
Official ID
Bank Info
KYC
Limits
Basic
X
X
X
3 BTC or less daily
Enhanced
X
X
X
X
X
X
100 BTC or less daily
Customer Service: The Support Center pledges to answer tickets within 24 hours of submission, but between the hours of 9 to 6. Searching for reviews seems to confirm this, and very few complaints can be found. I find their FAQ, Announcements, and Online resources a little hard to navigate, but it answers almost everything.
Bottom Line: The complaints about scam coins might seem to damage Bittrex’s reputation, but my take is that no one was forcing people to trade risky assets in the first place. Perhaps it’s a bit negligent to allow trading them, but it’s the responsibility of the trader not the exchange to manage their money. Customer support and security also seems a step above the competition.
02– Fiat Exchanges - USA
Coinbase (GDAX)
Overview: Coinbase is the largest and debatably the most established name in crypto and GDAX is an exchange based on its services. While Coinbase allows users to buy ETH direct at market price through a wallet, GDAX allows limit and stop orders for the more advanced trader. Recently there have been complaints about the site going down and placed orders not going through. I think with the size and reputation to uphold, they will work quickly to fix this problem as they would like to keep their customers from going elsewhere.
Customer Service: Negative reports are abound with Coinbase, going well into last year. Like look what BTC has to say Anyways I feel that they have their work cut out for them if they want to remain a premier service and continue to expand.
Bottom Line:– Coinbase is an established and reliable exchange. It’s worth making the distinction though between Coindesk to GDAX. Transferring between the two seems like an unnecessary step that charges high fees for users not clever enough to see the difference. Fees are very high when buying at market from Coinbase, yet low on GDAX in comparison to other exchanges. Additionally, they seem to have outgrown themselves and some customers seem dissatisfied and quick to recommend their competitors. However, their service extends to a variety of countries/currencies and their mobile app puts them in front the competition. In this way, it is a superior service and is on the forefront of making crypto mainstream.
Kraken
Overview: Supposedly CEO Jesse Powell was inspired by the 2011 bankruptcy of the Japanese exchange Mt. Gox. As he worked as a bankruptcy trustee of what was then the largest crypto exchange, he developed his vision for a secure, well-run exchange site. Kraken then aggressively expanded by acquiring existing companies like Coinsetter (NYC), CaVirtex (Canada), Clevercoin (Netherlands), Cryptowatch (Swiss), and Glidera (Chicago). This has helped the San Francisco based firm to lead the market in ETH to Euro and CAD trading.
Withdrawal/Deposit Fees:.005 ETH Withdrawal Fee. And they really want US customer to sign up for Synapse Pay, which can reduce your fees.
Country
Linked Bank Account
Wire Transfer
EUR
Free
SEPA €5-10 (€0.09 Withdrawal)
US
Free
SWIFT $10 ($60 Withdrawal)
UK
Free
SWIFT £10 (£60 Withdrawal)
CAN
Free
SWIFT Free ($10 Withdrawal)
Trading Fees:
Exchange Type
Maker
Taker
ETH/FIAT
.16%
.26%
ETH/BTC
.16%
.26%
Verification:
Tier Level
Name
Email
DOB
Phone
Address
Official ID
Bank Info
KYC
Limits
Level 0
X
No Trading Allowed
Level 1
X
X
X
X
No Fiat, Unlimited Crypto
Level 2
X
X
X
X
Fiat $2,000Day/$10,000Mo
Level 3
X
X
X
X
X
X
Fiat $25,000Day/$200,000Mo
Level 4
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Fiat $100,000Day/$500,000Mo
Security: Kraken was also affected by a DDoS attack in May 2017. Afterwards those who had positions liquidated were not compensated and were merely pointed towards the legal page of the website.
Feature
Details
2FA
Google Authenticator, Master Key Available
Wallet Security
Majority Assets in Cold Storage
Personal Information
PGP Encrypted Emails, Global Settings Lock
Digital Currency Insurance
Maintain Full Reserves
Bug Bounty
Multiple bounties
Customer Service: The Kraken subreddit is a bit of a ghost town, but a couple of the staff including the CEO pop in from time to time in other subreddits. Even a year ago though, there are reports that the average response time is 2 to 3 weeks. For how quickly they have grown, it seems their customer support has not kept pace.
Bottom Line: Kraken’s website is well-organized and their policies for verification, security, and support are very clear. Their fees are reasonable for depositing, withdrawing, and trading. The recent hack and complaints about service have made some doubters recently, but the exchange has maintained its status. Its added quite a few altcoins too which increases its usefulness.
Gemini
Overview: This is a newer exchange started in 2015 by the Winklevoss Twins (Yes, those twins, the ones from that Facebook movie). It is registered in New York State and is FDIC Insured.
Trading Fees: There is a lot of complicated stuff written about rebates and other stuff, but basically it is this.
Exchange Type
Maker
Taker
ETH/ALL
.10-.25%
.25%
Verification:
Tier Level
Name
Email
DOB
Phone
Address
Official ID
Bank Info
KYC
Limits
Individual
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
None - Except for ACH
Security: According to their website, security seems to be taken seriously.
Feature
Details
2FA
Google Authenticator, Authy Available
Hot Wallet Security
Hot Wallet Hosted by Amazon Web Services
Cold Wallet
Stored in 2 tiers of cold and 'cryo' multi-sig storage
Personal Information
Encrypted in Transit and Stored Offline
Digital Currency Insurance
Fidelity bond by 'top-tier insurance company'
Fiat Insurance
Up to $250,000 by FDIC
Customer Service: The one thing that stands out about Gemini is their customer service. Seriously reddit search this and you will see 5 recommendations for every complaint. Even with the huge influx recently, users have been praising their response time and professionalism.
Bottom Line: Before the rush of new users, I saw people criticize the liquidity of Gemini, saying that it was too small of a market compared to the larger exchanges. Now their smaller size seems to be paying off because it has helped them offer better customer service. I personally dislike their user interface (their charts are very limited), that the website is geared towards BTC, and that fiat deposit clearance times are longer (3-5 compared to 1-3 days). However, they deserve credit for running an above average exchange with a clean track record thus far.
03– Fiat Exchanges - Hong Kong
Bitfinex
Overview: Based in Hong Kong, Bitfinex is a OG in the crypto game. In 2014, it was the largest exchange in terms of USD/BTC, but in August of 2016, Bitfinex was the victim of the second largest hack in crypto history. Reeling from losing almost 120,000 BTC (worth about $70 million), they came up with a solution to issue BFX tokens, worth dollar-for-dollar the amount lost. These tokens would then be bought back by Bitfinex from those who lost their assets. They successfully bought back 100% in April 2017, essentially paying back all outstanding IOU’s. Expensive Lesson. Bitfinex also recently had to suspend USD withdrawals due to a conflict with remitting money with Wells Fargo Bank. This has caused currencies to inflate on their exchange and force users to take out Tether USD (which Bitfinex has a considerable stake in) to transfer to another exchange and then sell. However, Tether also is in a quagmire of legal/financial trouble and cannot be counted on as reliable. This has caused lots of users to abandon the exchange in search of safer waters.
New IP Addresses locked for 24 hours, require verification and detection
System Security
Hosted and Backed-up on Linux, protection from DDoS
Personal Information
Email encryption with OpenPGP
Wallet Security
Only .5% of funds are stored in hot wallets
Customer Service: I actually think that Bitfinex has one of the cleaner websites out there. The security features have toggles that allow you to customize your account security. Also their Support Center, Knowledge Base, and Blog Posts seem a little more complete than some of the other exchanges. Searches show some complaints of unprofessional behavior when completing support tickets, but the mod over at bitfinex seems pleasant. Anyone with personal experience please feel free to contribute here.
Bottom Line: It would be almost impossible to recommend this exchange due to recent developments. Until this withdrawal issue is fixed at least, probably don't count on this exchange. That said the reliability of Bitfinex is tougher to judge because it has been around longer. In crypto terms, it is a dinosaur. Whether that tarnishes or glorifies their record is up to you to decide. I believe the handling of BFX started as a clusterfuck and ended up showing some resilience. Their deposit fees are a little high in my opinion, but they do offer a mobile app to justify the price.
EDIT : Thank you to u/Ginger_Bearded_Man for the suggestion. Bittrex has been added.
I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing.
Update, 27 oktober 2019: Well gee, this blew up. Bitcoin should not be treated as an investment, it should be recognized as a speculative negative-sum game. The Bitcoin system currently consumes an estimated 3.6 billion dollar worth of electricity on an annualized basis, just to update the ledger that contains a record of everyone's transactions. This enormous consumption of electricity is indirectly paid for by people who invest their savings in Bitcoin, as a consequence, money is continually "leaking" from the system. As a Bitcoin investor, you're paying for Chinese businesses to waste electricity by solving an abstract math problem that is designed to get continually more difficult. Besides ensuring that many people lose vast sums of money while a small minority of early adapters is enriched, Bitcoin causes tremendous ecological damage in an era when we should be focusing as a society on reducing our carbon emissions. The Bitcoin developers responsible for updating the protocol appear to have no genuine intention to introduce code changes that reduce the ecological damage caused by Bitcoin mining, so my suggestion has to be to sell your Bitcoins, which indirectly has the effect of reducing the ecological damage caused by Bitcoin mining. Theft and loss of coins are also enormous problems affecting Bitcoin, so although it is theoretically possible to store your coins in a safe manner, history has shown that a lot of people will simply lose their coins, further illustrating why Bitcoin is not a good investment option. The other cryptocurrencies share most of Bitcoin's flaws (resource waste, no protection against theft or loss, vulnerable to market manipulation, etc), but most importantly, what sets cryptocurrencies apart from proper investments is that these coins don't produce anything. If you invest in a company, that company can use the money to deliver more products. If you buy, silver, gold, bitcoin or beanie babies, you're hoping someone else will come along one day and pay more money for it. History has shown that people who invest money in the stock market will generally end up witnessing much higher returns than people who buy gold. With that said, I hope this story has entertained you and helped you recognize some of the problems our society would face if we ever witnessed widespread adaption of Bitcoin or similar digital currencies. I am sending this message from the year 2025. Things are looking bleak here, and some of you will carry blood on your hands. If you don't believe me, please move on, as I have no way of proving to you I'm really who I claim to be. I don't want to waste any of your time, so I'm merely going to explain what happened. On average, every year so far, the value of Bitcoin has increased by about a factor ten. From 0.1 dollar in 2010, to 1 dollar in 2011, to 10 dollar in 2012, to 100 dollar in 2013. From now on, there's a slight slowdown, as the value increased by a factor ten every two years, to 1,000 dollar in 2015, to 10,000 in 2017, 100,000 in 2019, and 1,000,000 in 2021. From here onwards, there's no good way of expressing its value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used, nor is any central bank issued currency for that matter. There are two main forms of wealth in today's world. Land and cryptocurrency. There are just over 19 million Bitcoin known to be used in the world today, as well as a few hundred thousand that were permanently lost, and we're still dealing with a population of just over 7 billion people today. On average, this means the average person owns just under 0.003 bitcoin. However, due to the unequal distribution of wealth in my world, the mean person owns just 0.001 bitcoin. That's right, most of you reading this today are rich. I personally live next to an annoying young man who logged into his old Reddit account two years ago and discovered that he received a tip of 0.01 Bitcoin back in 2013 for calling someone a "faggot" when he was a 16 year old boy. Upon making this discovery he bought an airline ticket, left his house without telling anyone anything and went to a Citadel. "What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king. In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering "rogue states" like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin. Governments tried to stay relevant in my society by buying Bitcoin, which just made the problem worse, by increasing the value of Bitcoin. Governments did so in secret of course, but my generation's "Snowdens" are in fact greedy government employees who transferred Bitcoin to their own private account, and escaped to anarchic places where no questions are asked as long as you can cough up some money. The four institutions with the largest still accessible Bitcoin balance are believed to be as following: -ASICminer - 50,000 Bitcoin -The IMF's "currency stabilization fund" - 70,000 Bitcoin -Government of Saudi Arabia - 110,000 Bitcoin -The North Korean government - 180,000 Bitcoin Economic growth today is about -2% per year. Why is this? If you own more than 0.01 Bitcoin, chances are you don't do anything with your money. There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like the medieval ages had no significant economic growth, as wealth was measured in gold, our society has no economic growth either, as people know their 0.01 Bitcoin will be enough to last them a lifetime. The fact that there are still new Bitcoin released is what prevents our world from collapse so far it seems, but people fear that the decline in inflation that will occur during the next block halving may further wreck our economy. What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After seeing the enormous damage done to the fabric of society, terrorist movements emerged that sought to hunt down and murder anyone known to have a large balance of Bitcoin, or believed to be responsible in any way for the development of cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use Bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations. Most people who own any significant amount of Bitcoin no longer speak to their families and lost their friends, because they had to change their identities. There have been also been a few suicides of people who could not handle the guilt after seeing what happened to the bag-holders, the type of skeptical people who continued to believe it would eventually collapse, even after hearing the rumors of governments buying Bitcoin. Many people were taken hostage, and thus, it is suspected that 25% percent of "Bitcoin rich" actually physically tortured someone to get him to spill his password. Why didn't we abandon Bitcoin, and move to another system? Well, we tried of course. We tried to step over to an inflationary cryptocurrency, but nobody with an IQ above 70 was willing to step up first and volunteer. After all, why would you voluntarily invest a lot of your money into a currency where you know your wealth will continually decline? The thing that made Bitcoin so dangerous to society was also what made it so successful. Bitcoin allows us to give into our greed. In Africa, surveys show that an estimated 70% of people believe that Bitcoin was invented by the devil himself. There's a reason for this. It's a very sensitive issue that today is generally referred to as "the tragedy". The African Union had ambitious plans to help its citizens be ready to step over to Bitcoin. Governments gave their own citizens cell phones for free, tied to their government ID, and thus government sought to integrate Bitcoin into their economy. All went well, until "the tragedy" that is. A criminal organization, believed to be located in Russia, exploited a hardware fault in the government issued cell phones. It's believed that the entire continent of Africa lost an estimated 60% of its wealth in a period of 48 hours. What followed was a period of chaos and civil war, until the Saudi Arabian and North Korean governments, two of the world's major superpowers due to their authoritarian political system's unique ability to adapt to the "Bitcoin challenge", divided most African land between themselves and were praised as heroes by the local African population for it. You might wonder, what is our plan now? It's clear that the current situation can not be sustained, without ending in a nuclear holocaust. I am part of an underground network, who seek to launch a coordinated attack against the very infrastructure of the Internet itself. We have at our disposal about 20 nuclear submarines, which we will use to cut all underwater cables between different continents. After this has been successfully achieved, we will launch a simultaneous nuclear pulse attack on every densely population area of the world. We believe that the resulting chaos will allow the world's population to rise up in revolt, and destroy as many computers out there as possible, until we reach the point where Bitcoin loses any relevance. Of course, this outcome will likely lead to billions of deaths. This is a price we are forced to pay, to avoid the eternal enslavement of humanity to a tiny elite. This is also the reason we contacted you. It doesn't have to be like this. You do not have to share our fate. I don't know how, but you must find a way to destroy this godforsaken project in its infancy. I know this is a difficult thing to ask of you. You believed you were helping the world by eliminating the central banking cartel that governs your economies. However, I have seen where it ends.
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.
The Winklevoss Twins Have $1 Billion, Yet They Are Trying To Destroy Charlie Shrem Over A $60,000 Discrepancy
http://genesisblocknews.com/the-winklevoss-twins-have-1-billion-yet-they-are-trying-to-destroy-charlie-shrem-over-a-60000-discrepancy/ Charlie Shrem was one of the first Bitcoin millionaires, after turning a Bitcoin dealing business into a full-on cryptocurrency exchange called BitInstant. His high-volume transactions painted a target on his back, and the Department of Justice locked him up in prison from 2014-2016. Charlie Shrem lost everything, and was a mere dishwasher after he got out of prison. He managed to get himself back on his feet though, but now the Winklevoss Twins are trying to shoot him down over a $60,000 discrepancy during a Bitcoin deal from 7 years ago. The Winklevoss Twins are some of the only Bitcoin billionaires in the whole world, and Charlie Shrem played a critical role in turning them into billionaires by getting them interested in Bitcoin, and then selling them $750,000 of Bitcoin way back in 2011 when Bitcoin’s price was around $10. On one of the payments for $250,000, Charlie Shrem supposedly only sent the Winklevoss Twins $189,000, a $61,000 discrepancy. Due to the volatile nature of Bitcoin’s price, this discrepancy can possibly be explained by daily price movements, especially since it took a month for Charlie Shrem to obtain the Bitcoins. The Winklevoss Twins assert that Charlie Shrem owes them 5,000 Bitcoins worth $28 million as of 16 November 2018. However, the fact is only $61,000 of fiat currency is in question, something Charlie Shrem could easily afford even if the claim is not valid due to price fluctuations at the time of sale. This is only 11 Bitcoins, versus 5,000 Bitcoins. It is absurd that the Winklevoss Twins are trying to destroy Charlie Shrem now that his life is back together, after he got locked up due to unfair Bitcoin regulations. The Winklevoss Twins do not need $28 million from Charlie Shrem, they already have $1 billion, and an extra $28 million from Charlie Shrem has no use to them. They are holding a grudge and trying to prove a point over a contentious Bitcoin deal 7 years ago. If the Bitcoin deal really was a crime, they would have sued him back then. GenesisBlockNews hopes this case ends up in the trash bin where it belongs. After all Charlie Shrem did for Bitcoin he deserves a second chance, and should not be shot down by a couple of billionaires. This is a microcosm of what is going on in the entire crypto space. The rich are stomping on the little guys, and taking away all of our crypto rights.
02-02 18:02 - 'What Happened to the 2013 Time Traveler's Post? A lot of u/Luka_Magnotta's predictions were coming to fruition...' (self.Bitcoin) by /u/globalchain removed from /r/Bitcoin within 0-5min
I am sending this message from the year 2025. Things are looking bleak here, and some of you will carry blood on your hands. If you don't believe me, please move on, as I have no way of proving to you I'm really who I claim to be. I don't want to waste any of your time, so I'm merely going to explain what happened. On average, every year so far, the value of Bitcoin has increased by about a factor ten. From 0.1 dollar in 2010, to 1 dollar in 2011, to 10 dollar in 2012, to 100 dollar in 2013. From now on, there's a slight slowdown, as the value increased by a factor ten every two years, to 1,000 dollar in 2015, to 10,000 in 2017, 100,000 in 2019, and 1,000,000 in 2021. From here onwards, there's no good way of expressing its value in dollars, as the dollar is no longer used, nor is any central bank issued currency for that matter. There are two main forms of wealth in today's world. Land and cryptocurrency. There are just over 19 million Bitcoin known to be used in the world today, as well as a few hundred thousand that were permanently lost, and we're still dealing with a population of just over 7 billion people today. On average, this means the average person owns just under 0.003 bitcoin. However, due to the unequal distribution of wealth in my world, the mean person owns just 0.001 bitcoin. That's right, most of you reading this today are rich. I personally live next to an annoying young man who logged into his old Reddit account two years ago and discovered that he received a tip of 0.01 Bitcoin back in 2013 for calling someone a "faggot" when he was a 16 year old boy. Upon making this discovery he bought an airline ticket, left his house without telling anyone anything and went to a Citadel. "What is a Citadel?" you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the "Bitcoin rich" to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, "earlies" (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the "transition" live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king. In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering "rogue states" like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin. Governments tried to stay relevant in my society by buying Bitcoin, which just made the problem worse, by increasing the value of Bitcoin. Governments did so in secret of course, but my generation's "Snowdens" are in fact greedy government employees who transferred Bitcoin to their own private account, and escaped to anarchic places where no questions are asked as long as you can cough up some money. The four institutions with the largest still accessible Bitcoin balance are believed to be as following: -ASICminer - 50,000 Bitcoin -The IMF's "currency stabilization fund" - 70,000 Bitcoin -Government of Saudi Arabia - 110,000 Bitcoin -The North Korean government - 180,000 Bitcoin Economic growth today is about -2% per year. Why is this? If you own more than 0.01 Bitcoin, chances are you don't do anything with your money. There is no inflation, and thus no incentive to invest your money. Just like the medieval ages had no significant economic growth, as wealth was measured in gold, our society has no economic growth either, as people know their 0.01 Bitcoin will be enough to last them a lifetime. The fact that there are still new Bitcoin released is what prevents our world from collapse so far it seems, but people fear that the decline in inflation that will occur during the next block halving may further wreck our economy. What happened to the Winklevoss twins? The Winklevoss twins were among the first to die. After seeing the enormous damage done to the fabric of society, terrorist movements emerged that sought to hunt down and murder anyone known to have a large balance of Bitcoin, or believed to be responsible in any way for the development of cryptocurrency. Ironically, these terrorist movements use Bitcoin to anonymously fund their operations. Most people who own any significant amount of Bitcoin no longer speak to their families and lost their friends, because they had to change their identities. There have been also been a few suicides of people who could not handle the guilt after seeing what happened to the bag-holders, the type of skeptical people who continued to believe it would eventually collapse, even after hearing the rumors of governments buying Bitcoin. Many people were taken hostage, and thus, it is suspected that 25% percent of "Bitcoin rich" actually physically tortured someone to get him to spill his password. Why didn't we abandon Bitcoin, and move to another system? Well, we tried of course. We tried to step over to an inflationary cryptocurrency, but nobody with an IQ above 70 was willing to step up first and volunteer. After all, why would you voluntarily invest a lot of your money into a currency where you know your wealth will continually decline? The thing that made Bitcoin so dangerous to society was also what made it so successful. Bitcoin allows us to give into our greed. In Africa, surveys show that an estimated 70% of people believe that Bitcoin was invented by the devil himself. There's a reason for this. It's a very sensitive issue that today is generally referred to as "the tragedy". The African Union had ambitious plans to help its citizens be ready to step over to Bitcoin. Governments gave their own citizens cell phones for free, tied to their government ID, and thus government sought to integrate Bitcoin into their economy. All went well, until "the tragedy" that is. A criminal organization, believed to be located in Russia, exploited a hardware fault in the government issued cell phones. It's believed that the entire continent of Africa lost an estimated 60% of its wealth in a period of 48 hours. What followed was a period of chaos and civil war, until the Saudi Arabian and North Korean governments, two of the world's major superpowers due to their authoritarian political system's unique ability to adapt to the "Bitcoin challenge", divided most African land between themselves and were praised as heroes by the local African population for it. You might wonder, what is our plan now? It's clear that the current situation can not be sustained, without ending in a nuclear holocaust. I am part of an underground network, who seek to launch a coordinated attack against the very infrastructure of the Internet itself. We have at our disposal about 20 nuclear submarines, which we will use to cut all underwater cables between different continents. After this has been successfully achieved, we will launch a simultaneous nuclear pulse attack on every densely population area of the world. We believe that the resulting chaos will allow the world's population to rise up in revolt, and destroy as many computers out there as possible, until we reach the point where Bitcoin loses any relevance. Of course, this outcome will likely lead to billions of deaths. This is a price we are forced to pay, to avoid the eternal enslavement of humanity to a tiny elite. This is also the reason we contacted you. It doesn't have to be like this. You do not have to share our fate. I don't know how, but you must find a way to destroy this godforsaken project in its infancy. I know this is a difficult thing to ask of you. You believed you were helping the world by eliminating the central banking cartel that governs your economies. However, I have seen where it ends.
Blockchain is a Lie — Just Another World Run by the Rich ???
Blockchain is a Lie — Just Another World Run by the Rich
https://preview.redd.it/iutln8o0g1j21.jpg?width=706&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=09f1810ab6f679d61ec558dc1ef9089860cf8e52 Image: Bitcoin billionaires, The Winklevoss Twins Follow the Money More than just an alternative business model, blockchain represents ideology — a system in which the individual is no longer at the mercy of dominant institutions that control the flow of power, money, and data. If blockchain deteriorates into another world run by those who control the majority of the assets, it’s intent has been neglected and it has no reason to exist. Within chains managed by Proof-of-Work and Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithms, this is the reality. Users tout decentralization, rights of the individual, abandoning banks and more, but then fall into a system promoting the very same values they are rebelling against. PoW and DPoS are plutocracies in disguise. The former is at the mercy of firms that can afford the most hashing power, and the latter suppressed by those with the most currency. Whoever can afford to mine the most controls the flow in PoW systems — there’s no room for the individual with a starter setup having a say. Either invest a years salary or get lost. In the DPoS system, the irony is even more baffling: the people with the most currency ultimately get to write history. Is this still the blockchain world we want? Trading one system controlled by a ruling minority for another shouldn’t be in the discourse. Steadying Blockchains Ideological Path Blockchains growth will remain stunted unless the focus is shifted away from Proof-of-Work and Delegated Proof-of-Stake based consensus algorithms. The November BCH hashing wars that produced two new chains via hard fork, BCHABC and BSV, left many speculating over governing issues within the PoW world. Differences in principles have made this side of the blockchain vulnerable — anyone with a large enough following is able to hold everyone else hostage. Chain sustainability isn’t guaranteed due to the ease in which conflicting parties can force a hard fork. Those that preach DPoS put our future into the hands of 21 supernodes — corruption practically hard coded into the EOS genesis block. Everyone yearns for profit and power, making the have-nots pawns in the game controlled by those at the top. https://preview.redd.it/rlr14523g1j21.png?width=990&format=png&auto=webp&s=7cf8205df04d39d94046c61b3fa942bf20689de7 A Blunt Account of Blockchain Management Blockchain governance is defined as follows: “The ways in which collective action can be achieved by public communities and key stakeholders — particularly those regarding the revision of past agreements. “ In view of the lack of a decentralized and de-identified digital platform supporting the “one person, one vote system”, the governance of the chain is often seen as a plutocracy — currency and computing power are king. According to an article written by Vitalik Buterin, blockchain governance systems must be innately anti-plutocratic. Not only is on-chain coin-based governance inconsistent with user interests, it is also antithetical to the ethos of public blockchains. The blockchain is for the public, to serve the public interest. It isn’t for cryptocurrency whales to get more rich. Cryptocurrency holdings (like wealth in global society) is highly concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people. The blockchain isn’t supposed to be owned by anyone… nevermind by a small group of super rich individuals. — Buterin The interests of those who hold the wealth and those who actually use the blockchain are inherently different. In theory, blockchain could provide an equal playing field where the world isn’t controlled by large institutions only acting for profit and belittling the rights of individuals. When power becomes concentrated by those holding the most currency or with the most hashing power, users who continue to praise these systems are working against their own interests. The culture of blockchain implies egalitarian management. Anything else must be abandoned. https://preview.redd.it/33cmf726g1j21.png?width=1170&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b013f14df05c987dedb4907b1f29fc338b1ecfc Either we want it, or we don’t The current state of blockchain is a farce. Either we want a new system where power is decentralized, or we don’t. Pushing the ethics of the centralized systems that have shaped our world for the worse within the blockchain space only perpetuates the virus that is elitism — sucking world of its resources and milking the chain for every satoshi it’s got. The increased amount of ICOs in 2017 gave hope. Surely the competition would have promoted further developments — someone would have realised the bad traits trickling into blockchain- but only disappointment followed. What should have been the start of a blockchain renaissance, turned into a money grabbing free-for-all, with scams, poorly designed products, and reckless teams becoming the norm. But we do want it, we really do. We want the system as it was intended to be: quick, decentralized, egalitarian. A platform on which to build the next era of society. This stepping stone comes in the form of Bitconch. Backed by Turing and Nobel laureates, offering 120,000TPS, anti-plutocratic governance, and an ecosystem based on egalitarian values, Bitconch has the speed, security, and morals needed warm the Crypto Winter. Bitconch Solves the Issue of Governance The Proof-of-Reputation (PoR) consensus algorithm developed by Bitconch creates a quantified reputation value (Bit-R) based on three dimensions: social behavior, currency holding time, and community contribution. Users with reputations within the top 5% then have an opportunity to take part in the consensus. This system more accurately mirrors the natural world — individuals who are more trustworthy, contribute to their communities, and build relationships with those around them are incentivised to continue doing so. Money and the size of resources are no longer a consideration, which dissolves the power that the elite have over governing the chain and eliminates the possibility of bribery. Instead, there is room for devoted lower and middle class users to take part in the consensus, making the chain maintained by the people and for the people. The conflicting interests of currency holders and chain users, therefore, does not arise. Reputation makes for a conscientious ecosystem and reduced conflicts of interest supports ecosystem sustainability. https://preview.redd.it/2thjk0s7g1j21.png?width=2033&format=png&auto=webp&s=ea6d44f837959dd5bf57529ccc78d5a62699b731 Bitconch Solves the Speed Bottleneck If the speed of the platform is not scaled to the needs of the users, usage will ultimately fall flat. A blockchain is meant to be used, and chains with slow speeds are simply not practical. BLAZE (Bitconch Ledger Access Zero-delay Extension) allows for the simultaneous verification of multiple blocks through factoring the operation into five unique yet concurrent phases — fetching data, decoding, hashing, stating the change, and finally writing data. When BLAZE is coupled with PoR, the Bitconch platform offers 120,000TPS — making it a platform able to support extensive amounts of traffic. https://preview.redd.it/1zgopb09g1j21.png?width=1064&format=png&auto=webp&s=311788e98e73dc56737f2c5be2a5dc89d30a749b However, the current focus of the blockchain world should not be on pushing TPS speeds as high as possible. Developers and users alike have lost their way, once again falling victim to the very plutocracy that catalyzed the emergence of blockchain. The ideology producing these platforms urges for the rights of the individual over the concentration of power in a few. It doesn’t matter if the flow of money is controlled by a few institutions in the current global economy or by a few mining firms in the blockchain world — once power is taken from the individual, we must dissolve the system.
The Winklevoss twins famously lost out to Mark Zuckerberg in a battle for the fortune generated by Facebook but they did walk away with millions of dollars. Where they put that money is a story of ... Bitcoin may have been a bubble—during last year’s crypto-currency crash, Bitcoin lost nearly a third of its value in just one week—but the technology behind it isn’t a fad or a scheme. Winklevoss twins lose bid to make bitcoin mainstream This was the latest setback for the well-known Winklevoss brothers, who had a similar application denied four years ago. The Winklevoss twins just lost millions in the Bitcoin crash Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, famous for suing Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook, have invested millions in the virtual currency. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who turned money from a settlement with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg into a Bitcoin fortune, said they suspected Mr. Shrem had actually been spending ...
Winklevoss Twins: Bitcoin Will Hit $100k in 2019 - Here's Why
The Winklevoss Twins Have Lost Nearly $1 Billion in the Bitcoin Meltdown Think you’ve taken a bath in the Bitcoin’s recent plunge in value? Be glad you’re no... Skip navigation “You MUST Invest In Bitcoin Before 2020 For 5 KEY REASONS” BTC Bull Run Soon [Mike Novogratz] - Duration: 14:03. Bitcoin Money Maker 1,211 views Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Winklevoss Twins Claim Facebook ... 7:29. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss Talk Bitcoin - Duration: 10:40. TechCrunch 22,118 views. 10:40. The Winklevoss twins lost Facebook. They became billionaires ... The Winklevoss twins may have lost A LOT of money on Bitcoin. With Bitcoin crashing, some cryptocurrency HODLers are hurting. That might include the Winklevoss twins. Tyler and Cameron bought ...
