Apparently this was not a police raid on Tron.


https://www.coindesk.com/tron-ceo-responds-to-viral-video-showing-police-protecting-affiliate-offices

"The price of Tron dropped precipitously Monday on inaccurate rumors of a “police raid” at the company’s office in Beijing. The real story, however, was far more interesting.

According to an official company post, the police arrived to protect the office from “people [who] were deceived by the so-called ‘Wave Field Super Community,'” a group that used the “Chinese-language version of TRON’s name to defraud investors.” The victims called Tron itself a scam and cited the alleged suicide earlier this month of one investor in Wave Field Super Community.

“The victims had been promised high rates of return on their investments in the name of TRON, BitTorrent and uTorrent,” the company wrote.

The bilked investors also stormed the wrong place. According to Tron, they approached the office of Raybo Technologies, a Tron affiliate that seems to have filed a number of U.S. trademarks for various Tron-related phrases.

“TRON officials expressed their sympathy and understanding for those who had been deceived, however, the company strongly condemns acts of violence that may be perpetrated as a result of events that are not in its direct control,” the company wrote."

I'm convinced that at least part of the impetus behind Libra is Facebook wanting to expand its acquisition of user data into the financial sphere. 'Surveillance Capitalism' has been the primary aim of Facebook for many years, and the primary driver towards profit. The behavioural prediction models they have are already very advanced, and adding in a big source of financial data will improve and expand their models considerably. They will use this as they always have to a) sell to advertisers and other third parties, and b) to influence our behaviour towards what is 'desirable'.


They are masters of obfuscation, misdirection and euphemism. This relentless positioning of themselves as beneficent overlords will not end well.

Opinion is divided, but I think it can be quite revealing. I would say it is worth a look, and can be fun even if you disagree with the final assessment. There are many tests available for free, a good one is here.

Obviously it's a big approximation as it is splitting the whole variety of human personalities into 16 types, but it is used quite a lot in business (everyone in my office had to do it) and is I think very broadly correct.
I always come out as INTJ, by the way. I would assume that INTJ is disproportionately over-represented in this forum, certainly more than 1/16 = 6.25%.

I've had similar from 2018 onwards. I had some good ones back in 2017, but that time of ICO fever seems to be over now. If you want quick profit, it might be worth looking at if there are any bounties for the Binance IEOs, these are the ones that look like having quick price increases when they hit exchanges. Other than that it's probably just look for those that have good long-term potential, and then just hold your coins.

BTC dominance is certainly very high, but I don't think it's a bad sign. BTC often leads any market recovery, with alts taking over once BTC has stabilised or started a mini correction. Whether alts will take over again this time is not yet clear. I do think though that part of the alt surge in late 2017 was because of the huge success of ERC20 ICOs that year, which led to rapidly increasing ETH price, and this ETH surge could have been a major driver for the general alt surge, which I suppose might suggest that things will be different this time around and we might not see such a pronounced alt rise.

It's a consequence of the success of crypto. When it was a tiny niche area, no country was bothered about it, and so there was no legislation. But now that the market cap is measured in $billions, governments are sitting up and taking notice, and starting to either implement legislation or else make threatening noises about it. This is all part of the road to mass adoption. Many new coins ask for KYC to cover themselves and make best efforts to ensure they are legally compliant.

As for Facebook though, they have a history of just moving ahead of governments into unlegislated space and then establishing their activities there as the new normal. In the past they haven't cared about laws. It will be interesting to see whether governments react now that FB is moving into finance via crypto.

I don't think this is because it's not going to happen though, it's just because there is a lot of work going into it to make sure it is implemented correctly. Obviously it's a complex transition and they want to get it right. I suppose they could have done it quicker if they'd gone for DPoS like some other coins have, but I'm glad they didn't go down that 'fake PoS' route.

I agree that quantum computing doesn't offer an advantage in every situation. I think there is often a perception that quantum computers are just faster than conventional computers, but that's not really the case. Where they excel is in dealing with extremely complex problems. The advantage of a quantum computer is that the complexity scales differently.

A conventional computer can solve a problem 'x' in 'y' seconds, taking 'z' number of steps.
If you build a faster conventional computer, it can maybe solve problem 'x' in 'y/2' seconds, so twice as fast - but it will still take 'z' number of computational steps to do so.
The advantage of a quantum computer is that it can drastically reduce 'z', the number of steps required. This is why they are 'faster'.

It's quite fascinating when you get into it. If you are interested, have a look at Grover's algorithm.

Fusion is an entirely different process to traditional nuclear power - in fact it's the exact opposite. It doesn't use radioactive decay at all.

Nuclear power as we know it today is produced by fission. Essentially fission is where heavy atoms (uranium) are bombarded by neutrons, which causes them to split and release energy. The neutrons that come out of this fission then hit other heavy atoms and can cause a chain reaction. It can be a runaway process, and controlling it is kind of analogous to a brake pedal - someone at the plant always has their foot on this metaphorical pedal in order to keep the reactions under control. There are obviously a lot of dangerous by-products, partly the leftover split atoms, but also (more dangerous) heavy atoms that absorb neutrons but don't split, and can become some nasty forms of plutonium.

Fusion is the opposite. This is where light atoms (hydrogen isotopes) are fused together to form helium, neutrons and vast amounts of energy - a lot more than fission. Two further benefits are that a) there is no dangerous waste as both the source materials and the waste products (helium plus neutrons) are non-radioactive, and b) there is no danger of an uncontrollable chain reaction because fusion relies on the continuous input of power, if the power stops then the reaction cools and stops.



Not sure about this one. In theory if fusion becomes straightforward and it's an open marketplace, then companies will compete to drive the price down. If it's all state-controlled or a monopoly though, who knows...

Exactly - their style is to move quickly into unlegislated space and then define their activities there as the new normal, before governments and regulatory authorities have even noticed what is happening.


This is it - the core of Facebook's business model is and always has been user data. As per Facebook's standard approach, they euphemistically call this 'data exhaust', as if it's a wasteful and entirely inadvertent by-product and messy pollutant that good kind morally-upright Facebook will sell for profit clean up for us. They are very good at linguistic sleight-of-hand. Nowadays though people are starting to call this practice out for what it is: surveillance capitalism.

A lot of your alts are very low cap and highly risky IMHO. I would advise to have a decent percentage of your money in good established alts such as ETH and XRP. Having everything in low cap coins is I think not advisable - but then everyone has their own risk thresholds.

Facebook's standard approach when faced with a competitor is either a) buy it and make it a part of the Facebook empire, or b) steal the tech and grind the competitor into the dirt.

They can't buy control of bitcoin... (surely even FB wouldn't try to 51% it)

Open source is great so long as the people using it are great. This could turn into a big battle of centralised vs decentralised. Oh, I forgot - Libra will be decentralised and administered by Facebook the "independent" Libra Association. Hahahahahaha.

Our best hope against Libra is governments waking up and understanding that FB wants to rule the world, and then finally having the guts to legislate against what this company is doing. Would that hurt bitcoin and the rest of crypto? Difficult to say.

I'd agree that if the only reason you hold a coin is to earn money through staking, then that is generally not enough reason to hold it. You really also need to believe in the long-term success of the project - if you don't, then the chances are that your staking income will slowly dry up as the coin stagnates or fails.

Of course if you believe in the coin and you earn through staking, then that is a very good reason to hold. And we can go a step further as well, with coins that offer master nodes, which can offer genuinely large rewards - although unfortunately master nodes are out of reach of both my personal experience and my wallet.

ICOs are a big risk. You need to do a lot of research to decide if a project is legitimate and has a chance of success - and even then it is just an educated guess. This is one reason why IEOs have been so popular, because a lot of that checking is effectively outsourced to the exchange.
So with that in mind, IEOs are a good bet at the moment - although the huge levels of hype can obviously have a big impact on price and can inflate it beyond what is merited.

Thanks, yes, I often use similar. My point in starting the thread was really just trying to highlight what these companies are doing and how pervasive this culture of selling and buying user data has become, as well as how difficult they make it to opt out of everything (and I'm pretty sure the letter of the law is that users should have to take action to 'opt in' rather than 'opt in' being the default). I posted just to highlight this, and in case anyone was not quite aware of the extent to which these data markets are now embedded. I appreciate the advice though on specific methods to combat this as an individual user, so thanks again.

I really can't see Waves replacing ETH.
Waves is a bit unusual price-wise, it does tend to have sudden epic rises (a bit like XRP), so we can't rule out this coin suddenly rocketing back up to the top 20, but at the same time it would really be a stretch to see it replacing ETH.

Yes, there are various things that we can do as individuals to guard against a lot of it. What I really meant by posting was just to highlight exactly what is happening, in case anyone is not aware of quite how pervasive this stuff is. I don't think these companies mind if a small number of people - and it's probably a fraction of one per cent - try to stop them; they are still making money from the 99+ per cent that remains. They would scarcely notice that anyone was trying to block their activities, when the vast majority are either unaware or aren't (yet) bothered.

Whilst it is important for us as individuals to understand what is happening, and to take steps to defend ourselves, it is more important that as many people are aware of this as possible. That's the only way to stop this relentless data mining and behavioural profiling. It needs a big enough objection from the population that these companies have to stop. We've seen the first stirrings of it with the Facebook scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, and with the Toronto Waterfront fightback against Google. GDPR is a first step, but we need much much more.

Hi everyone. I've been complaining a lot on here recently about surveillance capitalism, and about Facebook's foray into crypto. I thought it might be worth a quick post for those of you who are outside the EU, and so maybe aren't aware of just how much data all of these websites gather on us, and how much they share it (sell it).

In the EU we are afforded the limited (but welcome) protection of General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR - https://eugdpr.org The aim in theory is to give consumers some measure of control of the data that is held about them, and how that data is used. In practice a lot of companies are sidestepping the 'active consent' element with pre-ticked opt out boxes, or forcing users to either a) one-click to accept data gathering or b) enter a labyrinth of permissions and un-tick every single one, and then visit the website of each named affiliate and repeat the process there, ad infinitum. But at least it is more visible now.

Anyway, if you are outside the EU you may not get even this level of transparency, so I've pasted an example below in case it is of any use. Apologies if everyone is already aware of all this!
I picked a random UK newspaper website "The Sun"...

1) When you enter the site you can either one-click to accept everything, or else edit permissions. There is often no one-tick option to reject everything.


2) Choosing to edit permissions takes you to a page with menu options for other sub-pages, in this case 'strictly necessary' cookies, measurement, content, ads, information storage, personalisation. There is also a wall of text that gives a vague overview to put you at ease... data is "mostly" used to make the site work, information does not "usually" identify you, etc.


3) Choosing to 'view vendor consent' brings up the page below. This is the list of companies with which the website shares your data. Note the scrollbar, this first page only lists up to 'Ab'... there are many many more.

 

I'm not really bothered what John McAfee says. I'm sure he has a more informed perspective than me, but I know that whenever he says anything it can result in a short-term price movement just by virtue of him having said it. If he says something is good, I tend not to buy in at that point as the price will already be rising with little cause.

Facebook have zero interest in upholding any values, whether those of crypto or not. They are about as unethical as you can get. The only thing that drives them is the prospect of profit and commercial advantage, and they achieve this largely through mining all of our personal data.

I suspect millions (billions?) of people who use FB would use the coin, and I would expect it to be a success. Personally though I despise FB and everything they do, and I would go out of my way not to use their coin.