It's always the bully for bitcoin when it's going up in a long time,  BTC always rallies to the top first, this is done in other to check path to the top and see whether it's another  another road for bull to travel on, if It looks smith it come back to call alts after confirming whether the bull will be depending on his earlies trip

Yes offline wallets are proven to be safe but regardless there are online wallets that I will say are compelled to be very functional and safe

But this bull is about the kings and only some few alts,  the party is yet to touch the alts..  Only the king and the queen for now

I think it has done a good high now and would swing for some moments before pushing up to a greater height again,  let's keep close observing

Thanks for dropping your view but don't you think the ideas of facebook will defeat the fact of cryptocurrency been decentralized?  Are we Safe?

Not all slow, its ridding on its range and we all know that they would always appraise ETH, but keep your mind up and don't miss the runs

Libra whether am going to invest will depend on lot of factors that will rise after the propose launch of the project. Hence I there zeal to keep silence till it hits major Exchanges

Hehehe and you are very right and most bounty platforms are robbing hunters of their tokens earned them.
Even so project owners lock tokens for extra period

Decentralization is a cause, not a buzzword.

You may have heard of Bitcoin – you may even have considered using it as a means of payment, or investing some money in it with the hope that it might rise in value, like a stock. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency – a digital asset that exists on an immutable ledger, open to all and completely transparent.

And perhaps you decided to pass on Bitcoin for now, until the technology was more mature, or easier to access, or for a dozen other valid reasons.

You may also have witnessed a barrage of attacks on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, particularly after a bubble formed in 2017 that created artificial and unsustainable value for a few (many in the media are currently describing Beyond Meat’s stock in similar ways).

For example, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon described Bitcoin as a ‘fraud’ and Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertising. Now both companies are creating their own cryptocurrencies.

Anything But Libra
In this letter we will focus on Facebook’s new project, something they have been working on in secret for over a year.

They are calling it Libra.

Ironically the Latin stub for the word ‘Libra’ means ‘freedom, or liberty’ while the zodiac sign – a pair of scales – suggests justice.
Facebook’s version of Libra represents neither of these concepts. But it’s clever marketing.

We’re writing to urge you to resist the ‘convenience’ Facebook will likely offer you in using their Libra cryptocurrency, and to consider the benefits of decentralization.

Payment Processors Join Forces With Facebook To Control, Tax, And Monitor Your Spending
MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal have joined forces with Facebook, and are said to be backing the new Libra cryptocurrency to the tune of $10 million each.

You know those companies well: they have been taxing the global economy, and a large proportion of consumer spending, to the tune of about three percent for the past 30-odd years.

Visa and MasterCard process the bulk of credit card transactions worldwide. In 2018, for instance, there were 2.4 billion MasterCard-branded debit and credit cards in existence generating revenue of $14.95 billion.

As recently as January this year, plans were uncovered by the Wall Street Journal that the behemoths in this industry were considering raising transaction fees. Meanwhile PayPal whacks the average merchant with a 2.9 percent fee plus thirty cents per transaction.

In other words, virtually everything you buy has a pricing premium in-built: a tax of three percent or so, that goes to sustaining these businesses. If your government was to raise your tax rate by three percent, you’d protest with your vote.

In this case, you finally HAVE a vote, and we urge you to use it.

Facebook Sells, Leaks, And Controls Your Data
Forget what Mark Zuckerberg says. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the data breach of 50 million users late last year, Facebook’s interest in you is not personal, and he is not sorry. His business is your data, which his company abuses and misuses repeatedly.

Your data, your life, your photos, your friends, your face, your family, your dog, your location, your sexuality, your ethnicity, your ‘secret crush’ – Facebook knows it all, and sells it to the highest bidder.

At the risk of echoing a dystopian undercurrent of fear that pervades our surveillance society, we encourage you to consider whether this is healthy – and whether adding your purchase information into that equation provides more, or less, safety for you and for our society.

Because the way you spend, when aggregated with the rest of the data that Big Tech companies already own, provides an even fuller picture of who you are, what you do, where you go, and what you might do next. Remember – Facebook literally, quite literally, already knows you better than you know yourself. It has been used to predict a depression diagnosis with 70% accuracy – before any visit to a doctor.

Facebook is not necessarily evil: but nor does it exhibit the presence of a moral compass. Its platform has been used to propagate information, much of it false, that has led to ethnic cleansing, murder, suicide, cyber-bullying, interference in national elections. Facebook’s responses to these events has been to prevaricate, to excuse itself, to refuse to acknowledge its responsibility for their existence – and when overwhelmed with evidence, to issue meek apologies.

Facebook is a private company. You agree to its terms of service when you use its platform, and you have very few rights to privacy in exchange for the ‘convenience’ it provides. Your right to free speech, if you are in the USA, is a constitutional right – it does not extend to private companies, and they are under no obligation to grant it, nor to curtail it.

The likelihood of Facebook changing its business model as it adopts a cryptocurrency seems low. Trust is earned, and Facebook is in debt.

Decentralization Is Your Friend
At the heart of cryptocurrencies and much of the blockchain technology behind them is the concept of ‘decentralization’.

Decentralization is a movement: it is a conscious effort by some people across the globe to reduce the control that certain organizations, such as banks and technology companies, exert over our lives. (We’re discussing private businesses, although governments are also often criticized too – but that’s a different argument.)

In truth, decentralization is a dream, an ideal. It is neither practical, likely, nor even desirable that we will realize a fully-decentralized existence. But a degree of control over our own data, our own identities, and who has access to our experiences is – many of us believe – a fundamental human right.

Truly decentralized blockchains, like Bitcoin’s, are controlled by no single person or entity.

Users are in control of what they spend, with whom, and on what. The miners that work to keep the network running smoothly do receive a transaction fee for doing so.

It is minuscule in comparison to that imposed by Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal.

Legacy payment processors have joined forces with Facebook to co-opt the cryptocurrency movement and keep control in the hands of the global conglomerates that have been selling your data and taking your money for years.

Libra will be a centralized cryptocurrency, despite efforts to involve stakeholders such as other payment companies – which is likely a ploy to avoid the regulatory issues that have plagued the cryptocurrency industry to date.

Facebook will be in control of your money, and it will use and share your data according to its own agenda.

In many ways, Libra is a declaration of war on decentralization. We have a clear choice: resist centrally controlled cryptocurrencies, or roll over and accept our fate as pawns in the great game of jurisdiction over our data. And our money.

The only true ally you have in the future is your freedom.

And decentralization equals freedom

Thank you

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/reject-facebook-libra-crypto/Decentralization is a cause, not a buzzword.

Earlier Posted Here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5154772.msg51482810#msg51482810

Decentralization is a cause, not a buzzword.

You may have heard of Bitcoin – you may even have considered using it as a means of payment, or investing some money in it with the hope that it might rise in value, like a stock. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency – a digital asset that exists on an immutable ledger, open to all and completely transparent.

And perhaps you decided to pass on Bitcoin for now, until the technology was more mature, or easier to access, or for a dozen other valid reasons.

You may also have witnessed a barrage of attacks on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, particularly after a bubble formed in 2017 that created artificial and unsustainable value for a few (many in the media are currently describing Beyond Meat’s stock in similar ways).

For example, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon described Bitcoin as a ‘fraud’ and Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertising. Now both companies are creating their own cryptocurrencies.

Anything But Libra
In this letter we will focus on Facebook’s new project, something they have been working on in secret for over a year.

They are calling it Libra.

Ironically the Latin stub for the word ‘Libra’ means ‘freedom, or liberty’ while the zodiac sign – a pair of scales – suggests justice.
Facebook’s version of Libra represents neither of these concepts. But it’s clever marketing.

We’re writing to urge you to resist the ‘convenience’ Facebook will likely offer you in using their Libra cryptocurrency, and to consider the benefits of decentralization.

Payment Processors Join Forces With Facebook To Control, Tax, And Monitor Your Spending
MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal have joined forces with Facebook, and are said to be backing the new Libra cryptocurrency to the tune of $10 million each.

You know those companies well: they have been taxing the global economy, and a large proportion of consumer spending, to the tune of about three percent for the past 30-odd years.

Visa and MasterCard process the bulk of credit card transactions worldwide. In 2018, for instance, there were 2.4 billion MasterCard-branded debit and credit cards in existence generating revenue of $14.95 billion.

As recently as January this year, plans were uncovered by the Wall Street Journal that the behemoths in this industry were considering raising transaction fees. Meanwhile PayPal whacks the average merchant with a 2.9 percent fee plus thirty cents per transaction.

In other words, virtually everything you buy has a pricing premium in-built: a tax of three percent or so, that goes to sustaining these businesses. If your government was to raise your tax rate by three percent, you’d protest with your vote.

In this case, you finally HAVE a vote, and we urge you to use it.

Facebook Sells, Leaks, And Controls Your Data
Forget what Mark Zuckerberg says. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the data breach of 50 million users late last year, Facebook’s interest in you is not personal, and he is not sorry. His business is your data, which his company abuses and misuses repeatedly.

Your data, your life, your photos, your friends, your face, your family, your dog, your location, your sexuality, your ethnicity, your ‘secret crush’ – Facebook knows it all, and sells it to the highest bidder.

At the risk of echoing a dystopian undercurrent of fear that pervades our surveillance society, we encourage you to consider whether this is healthy – and whether adding your purchase information into that equation provides more, or less, safety for you and for our society.

Because the way you spend, when aggregated with the rest of the data that Big Tech companies already own, provides an even fuller picture of who you are, what you do, where you go, and what you might do next. Remember – Facebook literally, quite literally, already knows you better than you know yourself. It has been used to predict a depression diagnosis with 70% accuracy – before any visit to a doctor.

Facebook is not necessarily evil: but nor does it exhibit the presence of a moral compass. Its platform has been used to propagate information, much of it false, that has led to ethnic cleansing, murder, suicide, cyber-bullying, interference in national elections. Facebook’s responses to these events has been to prevaricate, to excuse itself, to refuse to acknowledge its responsibility for their existence – and when overwhelmed with evidence, to issue meek apologies.

Facebook is a private company. You agree to its terms of service when you use its platform, and you have very few rights to privacy in exchange for the ‘convenience’ it provides. Your right to free speech, if you are in the USA, is a constitutional right – it does not extend to private companies, and they are under no obligation to grant it, nor to curtail it.

The likelihood of Facebook changing its business model as it adopts a cryptocurrency seems low. Trust is earned, and Facebook is in debt.

Decentralization Is Your Friend
At the heart of cryptocurrencies and much of the blockchain technology behind them is the concept of ‘decentralization’.

Decentralization is a movement: it is a conscious effort by some people across the globe to reduce the control that certain organizations, such as banks and technology companies, exert over our lives. (We’re discussing private businesses, although governments are also often criticized too – but that’s a different argument.)

In truth, decentralization is a dream, an ideal. It is neither practical, likely, nor even desirable that we will realize a fully-decentralized existence. But a degree of control over our own data, our own identities, and who has access to our experiences is – many of us believe – a fundamental human right.

Truly decentralized blockchains, like Bitcoin’s, are controlled by no single person or entity.

Users are in control of what they spend, with whom, and on what. The miners that work to keep the network running smoothly do receive a transaction fee for doing so.

It is minuscule in comparison to that imposed by Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal.

Legacy payment processors have joined forces with Facebook to co-opt the cryptocurrency movement and keep control in the hands of the global conglomerates that have been selling your data and taking your money for years.

Libra will be a centralized cryptocurrency, despite efforts to involve stakeholders such as other payment companies – which is likely a ploy to avoid the regulatory issues that have plagued the cryptocurrency industry to date.

Facebook will be in control of your money, and it will use and share your data according to its own agenda.

In many ways, Libra is a declaration of war on decentralization. We have a clear choice: resist centrally controlled cryptocurrencies, or roll over and accept our fate as pawns in the great game of jurisdiction over our data. And our money.

The only true ally you have in the future is your freedom.

And decentralization equals freedom

Thank you

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/reject-facebook-libra-crypto/

Let's still keep a critical Look because anything is possible in the crypto world
I won't write coin Off because I have seen a lot of dead coins rising and the opposite
This has taught E a great deal not to just belive in. Singe project

It's really so sad because the flexibility for bounty managers is that they always make it clear that they are liable to change the rules of the bounty at any point in time

Personally I would like to know him but I respect his decision to stay anonymous for his safety,  his been good to us as far as technology is concerned

It's true that bounties that do not require the helps of funds from the general public turn to fairly better than the ones with all the decorated hypes

It's a two way affair,  you hold as and they dump without rising, you dump some and they rise. My style is I sell 50% and hold 50% and buy back if there is a fall and I believe in the project

Thank you I so much appreciate this,  what about users that store their data on telegram cloud,  is that safe as well? 

You are trusting various internet companies with your passwords. With data breaches becoming more common like the following 👇

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3qpk5/t-mobile-hack-data-breach-api-customer-data

https://www.businessinsider.com/quora-says-it-had-massive-hack-that-may-have-affected100-million-users-2018-12?IR=T

is your data safe?
How to know whether your password has been stolen? And what do you do if the unfortunate has happened?

Have you been hacked?
Coming to the point straight away, have you been hacked? Lets find out:

Find out if you’ve been part of a data breach with Firefox Monitor. Sign up for alerts about future breaches ➡ https://monitor.firefox.com
   
Go to the 👆 above website and enter your email address. Don’t worry about your privacy or safety, Mozilla(a well known non-profit organization) maintains this site. If you are greeted with the message “This email appeared in zero data breaches” then your account has been safe until now, but if your data has been affected with any of the previous data breaches, it will display an option showing the breaches

If your data has been breached, there is one important thing you should know before you start freaking out. There is still a good chance for your data to be safe. To know how, you should understand how companies store your password.

How is your data stored:

Every online account has a password associated with it. When you register with your password, they are not stored as raw data in the company’s database. Instead, they are fed to a hashing (https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hacker-lexicon-password-hashing/algorithm) to create some gibberish value called hash, this process is called Hashing. The Hash generated is unique to your password and your passwords cannot be traced back from them. Therefore, hackers will be seeing a bunch of random letters, rather than your password.

You can join this URL for more exposure 👇
By Pluke — Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18296416

Every time you enter your password, a hash is generated and compared with the hash stored in the database.


Should you care:
If no actual passwords are being stored, then should you worry about your hashes being hacked? Yes. Storing hashes instead of passwords is not completely foolproof. Once hackers get their hands on the hashes, they try to find out your password using various techniques ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-common-tactics-hack-passwords/ ).

Yes, your passwords cannot be traced back, but they try to generate the same hash value by feeding random data to the hashing algorithm. Since each hash is unique to a password, when the hackers manage to generate the exact hash value, they have cracked your password.

How long it takes to crack your password depends on the strength of your password. This password guessing is done with powerful computers, so it’s easy for them to crack the common passwords. When your passwords are long and complex, it will take them centuries to crack your password. In other words, it will be impossible for them to crack a long and complex password, at least for now.

What can you do:
If you have been affected by a data breach, don’t panic. Change your password immediately. Even if your data has been safe until now, there is no guarantee that it will remain the same way. To be safe, replace your weaker password with a stronger one. To create a strong password, several websites suggest having a minimum of 8 characters containing at least one capital letter and a numeric digit. Also, you would have heard advises like use first letter of every word in a sentence (I am in love with the shape of you ==>Iailwtsoy). These are a good technique to create a complex password but it isn’t long enough.

I suggest a better idea, instead of those first letters, use the whole sentence. This usage of a sentence as a password is called passphrase. You can create a sentence of your own such as “I will become fit before next year”(with or without space). An added benefit is the extra motivation you will be getting each time you type the password every day😉. Thank me later.

Try to associate different sentence with different accounts. One for your Facebook, one for your Snapchat, one for your Insta etc. Even if your password has been cracked, the hacker won’t be able to access your other accounts.

Simply adding a recovery phone number to your Google Account can block up to 100% of automated bots, 99% of bulk phishing attacks, and 66% of targeted attacks — Google Security Blog (https://security.googleblog.com/2019/05/new-research-how-effective-is-basic.html)

Also enable Two Factor Authentication(2FA), wherever possible. Two Factor Authentication is the process of using two different methods to verify the user. To know more, click ➡ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-and-why-to-use-two-factor-authentication/

Conclusion:
Everything is becoming smart nowadays. Your phone, TV, speaker, even your toothbrush has become smart. Isn’t it time for your password to become smart enough to protect your data. Change your password right away. As long as you have an uncommon & long password, unique to each account with two factor authentication turned on, You can stay cool😎 even if data breaches occur everyday. Have a safe and secure digital life.

Source ➡ https://hackernoon.com/how-to-know-whether-your-account-has-been-safe-till-now-a864b8098ef0

Once you support a project I think you should be confident of that project doing well and opting for payment in BTC or Ether is likely to say you don't have confident in the project and most projects won't adhere to that,  For me I believe every project had its terms and conditions hence should be followed

This might be done to accumulate more Btc, the halving period of Btc is near and people,  individuals do not want to miss the bus run

Thank you for highlighting on this,  the truth is even collecting individuals data does not in anyway guarantee the success of the project in the first instance