Cryptocurrency investors have been pushed to move beyond Bitcoin (BTC). With hundreds of altcoins to choose from and several seeing some massive gains thanks to the 2017 bull run, investors have had their pick of the litter when it comes to making speculative investments on what they believe would be the next big thing.
However, things havent gone particularly well for a lot of these guys. Earlier today, a tweet from a cryptocurrency investor with Twitter handle (@jratcliff) showed the performances of some of Bitcoins competitors in the industry since the bullish run of 2017.Source link hereNow we know why Bitcoin's dominance over other cryptocurrencies are overwhelming.It seems to me that institutions, companies and other organizations worldwide are paying their attention more on Bitcoin than Ethereum, Ripple or any other cryptocurrency out there. I mean that they're laser-focused, because it's the mother of all cryptocurrencies. It's also the main gateway to be converted straight to fiat when withdrawing from your hardware wallet, mobile, exchanges or so. It's just my own point of view though. What do you honestly think about this guys? Cheers! Back in 2017, I thought that Bitcoin was getting less important and the vast variety of altcoin projects and use cases seemed inspiring and dominant over a very limited Bitcoin. And while people profited a lot from investing in Bitcoin, many ICOs also brought people crazy profits. The profit by the end of 2017 was great, especially if we take into account that there weren't many people who knew about Bitcoin in its very early days, whereas there were many more people enjoying the profits from coins like Ethereum and IOTA since the market got popular already. It's the losses after that time that were overwhelming and way higher than with Bitcoin. So right now, after all those losses, I think it's true that Bitcoin gets most of the attention, and it seems fair that it does. |
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I think it's good that the punishment is not harsh. As I've mentioned in the thread about that teenager, young hackers are talented people with a lot of potential that can be directed to do good things like fighting terrorism and improving security. If such a person gets a harsh punishment, the life of this person is ruined (just like the life of Ross Ulbricht unfortunately is). So best-case scenario this person does not do anything good for society and stays useless, whereas the worst-case scenario is that this person uses the time to develop the perfect revenge. I am glad to see that some other members also expressed such views. |
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I understand you are new here. But always post a link to the article that you want to discuss here! That will help people to understand and get a background knowledge about the discussion. I am not sure what exact article you are trying to point out here but I think the below article is a good fit, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/op-ed%3A-u.s.-cryptocurrency-regulation-faces-uncertainty-in-2020-2019-12-18US indeed is trying to introduce harsher measures in crypto field and we have seen some significant changes in 2019. IRS has also designed a new tax form for individuals to declare the crypto holding of their citizens! But it is always better to have something than nothing! Majority of the nations don't have any regulations around cryptos and many other have banned it! At least it's not banned in US and people are still able to function! Is something better than nothing, though? I recently read that one of the effects of the capital gains tax which has to be paid for cryptos in the US is that basically any transaction involving cryptos should be declared to tax authorities! That's totally crazy and very unfair, since Bitcoin is not a property and many countries don't even have a capital gains tax to begin with. In my country, on the other hand, we have no regulations, and it's great, because nobody has to pay taxes, no KYC is required and unless you steal electricity for mining you're very unlikely to be prosecuted by the authorities. |
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I believe more with this site https://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com, this is not like a countdown, but this is arguably the time when a bomb will explode and the price of bitcoin predicted by many people will rise sharply, but I didn't know it was just nonsense or not, it looks like we still halving in the same month which is precisely in May 2020, even though there are several different times Correct, no exact day but at least it will fall in the month of May year 2020. Yeah, that's the proximity I was thinking about. Is it truly possible to make a countdown to such an event? I think that the range of mistakes is not within seconds but within days or even weeks. Come to think of it, though, the countdown can be adjusted in real-time in accordance with the difficulty rate, right? I think that it still won't give such good proximity, but it will limit the range to a number of days left, I suppose. May be you need little adjustment?
The halving will happen at a certain block (630000), we know that. The actual date/time.. is harder to calculate. The date/time is estimated based on current block and the average block time. Let's see.. Current block is 609,325 Blocks to go 20675 Average time 10 min This gives ~143.5 days to go. Now... if the block time is estimated in different way, the result can differ. Since the difficulty adjustments were mostly upwards, shorter average block times are a good move. I think that maybe OP took into account shorter period for these adjustments and according to the graphs in the last month the adjustments were staying under the value from Nov 25. Is this a new trend? I doubt it. And maybe here's where OP could adjust his algorithm. Or maybe he's right and he knows something I don't expect. Yes, the 10 minutes is an average time, so it's not precise... I hope the op will clarify what the algorithm takes into account and what it might neglect. |
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4D toto is very popular game in my country, many people play it every single day although they do not know that the game is not provably fair as most of them only look for the fun and the chance to win something big from small bet.
Let me check your site first, if it is similar to the one which is so popular in my country then probably I can bring them to use your site. Do you have affiliate program?
Wow, I've never even heard of it... If people are betting on 4-digit numbers (something I've learned from the intro video), why is it a sport? Anyway, since it's a lottery and I am not particularly interested in those, I don't think I'll stick around. But I was planning to try out the game, though, since there should be a welcome bonus there. I'm hesitating now since the website is asking for a phone number... Is there a way to avoid it? Why is the phone number required anyway? It's not typical around here... Do you ask KYC as well? |
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Op, if you're the official representative, make a nice Announcement thread with screenshots and explanation. Moreover, the secure connection is a must if you want people to register there, come on! And why is the price in rubles on a forum dedicated to cryptocurrencies? Do you even accept any cryptos? Furthermore, is it a gambling website? Can people bet on something with these birds? What kind of game is it? You can see people raising concerns about it being a scam website, so you should explain why it's not like that or get out of here.
If it's not gambling, it should not be in this thread. And I think you should improve the design to make it look more professional. Good luck!
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Hi. The page "Terms of service" actually has a name without an "s" both on the main page and when you push on it. I also think it would be easier if this page included the website's logo so that one can easily go back after reading the terms. Oh, and I could not register on the website, supposedly because I did not have the signup token... I typed my email, username, and password, but the 'create account' button simply wasn't working. The sign-in option does not seem to have a problem with the button if something is typed into the username and password space, though.
I think you should work on this issue.
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It's ironic that such a supposedly super-duper programmer claims being hacked. And claiming that he's been hacked by a company that did not even exist back then is weird. Why would he go so hard specifically on Blockstream? Does he have any evidence that it was them (even if the hack took place)? I think this guy is just afraid that this Tulip Trust thing will not end in his favor and put an end on his reputation if there's any of it left. Not turning in the diplomas he's bragging about is also not something that speaks in his favor. And yet I have a friend who is absolutely sure that Craig is Satoshi...
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Bitcoin futures markets are booming, posting record numbers yesterday across the board. Bakkt also managed to break its previous all-time high in trading volume.
Wednesday was a good day for Bitcoin. Futures trading volume saw an increase as did Bitcoins own price. It is now safely above the $7,000 support level.Source link hereOkay so I got no problem with Bakkt's rising trade volume whatsoever, but there is one thing that I am kinda concerned. Of course, Bitcoin has a good day yesterday. But I honestly believe that it might go even lower because of PlusToken's dumping of their BTC and ETH earnings. It's a good thing for Bakkt to break it's all-time high and they're definitely on a momentum. I'm just looking forward on what is going to happen next with Bakkt starting next year onward. I think that it's amazing how a project that was pretty much stillborn turned out successful after all. Moreover, I believe it's a good thing that at least something Bitcoin-related is gaining popularity and that its interests are now represented in the US government even (the Bakkt CEO). But is all that necessarily good for Bitcoin? I am not sure of that. I think that an important part of Bitcoin is its free market. Futures are oriented on quite the opposite, as far as I know. They offer to ignore the real market conditions and agree in advance about the buy/sell transactions. In this sense, the popularity of Bakkt might even harm Bitcoin if the former gets very popular. |
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Public chain with 'Bitcoin or ETH'(which price will keep going high) can support its ecosystem business going scale, Clearly the costs to the DAPP developer and the customers is going high along with.
Maybe every public chain without a stable coin will vanish eventually. Any ideas my friend?
This idea seems to presuppose a couple of things. #1 is that Bitcoin's main purpose is being money. While this idea is attractive, we have to take into account that in reality, it's not really the case. Many people keep holding Bitcoin, hoping that one day it will cost way more. Another category lives off the price volatility (traders). I bet these two categories would not consider that only stable coins should survive. #2 is that volatility is the biggest hindrance to Bitcoin adoption by retailers. While it's a big problem, I think that scalability is a bigger one. And then there's another thing a coin loses by being a stable coin (apart from decentralization, because it's been mentioned and you've answered to that), which is resistance to inflation. |
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Another day, another bad guy has been caught: An alleged teen crook stole the identities of 75 people and swiped $1 million in cryptocurrency all from the comfort of his Brooklyn apartment, authorities said.
Yousef Selassie, 19, used a sophisticated SIM-swapping scheme to take over the phones of people in 20 different states between Jan. 20 and May 19, 2019, according to the Manhattan District Attorneys Office.
He allegedly transferred his victims phone numbers to his own iPhones, enabling him to reset their passwords and gain access to their Gmail, cryptocurrency and other accounts. Meanwhile, his victims phones would suddenly go offline.
The stolen $1 million came from just two victims, authorities said. Selassie was arrested Dec. 5 in Corona, California, and extradited to New York.
He was arraigned Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court, where he pleaded not guilty to 87 counts of grand larceny, identity theft and other charges. Justice Mark Dwyer ordered him to surrender his passport and check in weekly with a supervised release program. The judge did not set bail.
Authorities executed search warrants on Selassies Brooklyn and California residences, where they seized half a dozen iPhones, two Rolex watches, a monogrammed Gucci wallet and numerous pieces of high-end jewelry, according to court papers. https://nypost.com/2019/12/18/teen-crook-hacked-into-75-phones-and-stole-1m-in-cryptocurrency-authorities/It's just a matter of time before these bad eggs are going to be caught, either they make a mistakes or authorities are simply hunting them down. 5-10 years sentence will be enough for this criminals? What do you think? Okay, let's sort some things out. Is it bad to steal identities and hack wallets? It is. Should this person receive some punishment if found guilty? Yes. But I think it's rather important that he (if it was him) did not steal the money from poor people. $1million from two wallets sounds like rich victims, and being so rich is likely to suggest that a person got an undeserved boost or even stole from the people, basically. Moreover, it's a young and talented person, so it's important not to destroy Yousef but help him use his talent for good (like, to improve phone security or help hack into the phones of terrorists). The aim of a penitentiary system is re-education and then rehabilitation of a person in society, so I hope that'll happen. |
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The Hong Kong Police, working with China, has frozen a major fund that was intended for arrested and injured protestors. The case for financial freedom with Bitcoin has never been more clear.
Bitcoins popularity always seems to spike when peoples wallets are directly affected. Throughout 2019, weve seen multiple fears of bank runs and ATMs running out of cash during crises. In October, BeInCrypto reported that Chilean ATMs were reportedly locked during a state of emergency. That same month, Bitcoin trading volume ballooned as Hong Kong residents found themselves locked out of ATMs.Source link hereNow that their funds were locked out, I think it's time for them to take Bitcoin seriously.Storing them in banks is such a bad idea, especially if they are using it for protests. If they could have stored it in Bitcoin, the police and government cannot stop them as they do not own or control the blockchain technology. Bitcoin took out the third party or intermediary in peer-to-peer transactions, and this is what Hongkong protesters should need if they want to keep their funds safe from being frozen. This is Bitcoin's time now. We're not just focusing on the price itself, but how can it be used without the risk of having our funds frozen. I've seen various articles about Hong-Kong protests and Bitcoin, and it seems that it's at least unclear whether the two are directly related and whether it's the protesters actively using Bitcoin. I mean, it would make sense for people who want to keep their money safe there, but such thoughts might be present in the minds of people in Hong-Kong, living in the uncertainty of the situation, rather than protesting, as well. And where there's some sort of chaos and war, there are always people finding a way to profit from it, so the traders of Hong-Kong might be doing that. And speaking of it being Bitcoin's time, there's also a solid problem. If a person wants to use the money for something in Hong-Kong, not to just secure some savings for the future, then the problem with Bitcoin is that it's probably not accepted as payment in most places, so buying something with it can be troublesome. |
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And this just makes things harder for email users to get their accounts secured knowing that it literally is an added vector of attack for those who want to do nefarious things. It's great that using tools such as email can be a medium/vehicle for transferring cryptocurrencies though those people who do no understand how to secure their account properly is at huge risk. Not that I'm underestimating these same people but you know, this just makes things easier for hackers to steal some funds.
Yeah, that's very unfortunate. I think that this technology calls for more information about making sure that one's email is safe. I, for one, am not sure enough about the measures I take, so I would not use email to send BTC. And to be honest, I don't understand what this technology actually allows and how it allows doing it. Like, would it help to solve the issues with the network being too busy? What's the practical application of this thing? From what I've read, it seems that email is just a medium, and it's crypto wallets that store the money. But how does the transaction happen in this case? |
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🏆 Dice of the Year 2019 AwardAs 2019 comes to an end, we want to know your opinion on wich crypto dice site was the best in 2019! Vote here: https://strawpoll.me/19102425👑 The top 3 voted sites will be listed as featured sites for whole year 2020 at https://blockz.networkVoting running until 12/31/2019 Tell us in this thread why and wich site you choose to be the best in 2019
There aren't many people voting, and this makes the poll's results worthless... I hope you'll get enough votes to see the general picture by the end of the year. For now, I've seen a lot of websites for the first time in that poll, and some of them are even on the top of the list by votes right now! Who are you in all this, by the way? Are you an analytic agency, a review website...? 'Cause, for now, it looks as if you're promoting Wixiplay or/and Wolfbet  . And I'm not saying that it's an unsuccessful marketing move, but it's not a very fair one. Are you blokz.network? It's also something I'm hearing of for the first time. |
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- Hard Fork - change block size
- Lightning Network
- Sharding
Is there any other methods which might solve the bitcoin scalability problem ?
Are we talking theoretically, or in practice? Because I don't think sharding will ever be implemented in Bitcoin. It completely trades off redundancy -- the backbone of the P2P protocol -- for scale. Ethereum is being forced to consider it because of its unsustainable throughput demands, but the "decentralist" camp won't let it happen in Bitcoin. Maybe we should start by identifying the exact issue. How do you define this "Bitcoin scalability problem?"Thanks for your comment. I would describe Bitcoin scalability problem as (correct me if I am wrong) - inability to process a large number of transactions (like for example VISA). which result in impossibility to implemented Bitcoin as normal daily payment method for large amouth of people. I think that the Bitcoin scalability topic has been well-covered already, but in case you want to broaden the horizon and learn as well as share some other info, please consider DAG technology which is used by some cryptocurrencies instead of a blockchain. DAG solves the scaling problem in a long-term perspective, but has another flaw that's been pushing it down for years: if Bitcoin is great at first and problematic as more people join, DAG has the opposite issue. But because DAG has transaction confirmation issues at the early stages, it did not get a chance to show what it's capable of if we get behind this stage. The most famous DAG crypto is IOTA, you can find out more info online if you're interested. Good luck! |
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Cryptocurrencies: A (Crazy) Decade in Review
The Bitcoin whitepaper was published by Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31, 2008. The following decade brought the growth of an entirely new industry and its been a wild ride filled with wealth, sorrow, and drama. Flash crashes, hacks involving hundreds of millions of dollars, illegal online marketplaces for drugs and weapons, all of it has led the massive growing industry we now know. As we near the end of the decade in 2020, lets take a look back at where crypto started and its journey to where it is today. I've written a lengthy piece covering the highlights of the last decade for our industry. Please click here to read the full story! https://www.coygo.app/blog/posts/cryptocurrencies-a-crazy-decade-in-review/ It's not a bad overview, but it did not meet my expectations. It's about the name of the article. I thought it would be about some of the less famous yet very dramatic events and stuff like that, whereas it was really just a review of the main events. I got to say that up until now I did not know about some of them, and in some cases, I simply disagree with the chosen events and believe that some of the important ones are lacking. Oh, and the description of the pizzas' transaction is misleading since while it's one of the earliest famous transactions, it's not even close to being the first known transaction. |
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Craig Wright: "BTC is not Bitcoin"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mItX9ku35UThe snake oil salesman is at it again. Pretending to be Satoshi again and saying everyone should not be running nodes and Bitcoin was not meant to be anonymous. Feel free to share your likes and dislikes on the video and please comments on this rubbish to expose the truth. I do not want to give him more exposure, but I also do not want his rubbish going uncontested. (It is obvious that he is choosing interviewers who are clueless and who would not challenge him on the bullshit he is spreading.)  Yeah, I'm not surprised this guy is so insistent on his version. To be fair, I don't tend to use Segwit as well, but I do recognize that Bitcoin and BTC are the same thing, whereas Bitcoin SV was a stupid idea. And another funny thing he says is that Bitcoin is good with micro-payments. Sadly, that's just not true. It's weird and somehow uncomfortable to hear the guy say "I" said and "I wrote" when talking about Satoshi, though. Then ETH is not Ethereum. Tell that to Vitalik.  The rightful owner is not claiming that he owns the discovery of bitcoin and yet this man is taking all the credits. But he can only do it in front of the media that is also on his side. That is foolishness. He may have some black propaganda behind this. Maybe a dump just to buy at a cheaper price. Is there no donation address for this guy? I think he really need that. Actually, it does follow a similar logic Ethereum Classis is Ethereum, whereas ETH is a new thing. |
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Yes, to some extent! US tax authority IRS is taking harsh measures to stop bitcoin and its impact on the economy disguised as a friend! In US, bitcoin is considered as a property instead of a security. That's the reason why people are liable to pay capital gains tax if they want to sell off their holdings! Even crypto to crypto swap calls for a tax event! So you can easily fathom the complexity a day traders has to face while declaring their tax. However, professional help is also available to make things easier for you!
US was always clear about their tax related matters! While the tax rules are pretty strict which gives you a very little chance for hiding anything, but not very unrealistic! Having a proper legal framework is always better than living in a limbo!
Wow, I knew about the capital gains tax, but I never thought of it this way. I thought of it imagining a person who's been holding BTC for, like a year, profited from it and has to pay a part of such profits to the government. And yeah, that also sucks, but at least it makes some sense. Why does every single transaction call for taxes? I mean, if the exchange rate between cryptos was roughly the same, there would be no capital gained, right? So why does the person have to pay or at least to the paperwork? When it comes to Bitcoin and taxes, I love the Singapore situation. Only income tax is applicable, and it's progressive. Moreover, if the revenue is below $20k per year, the person/company does not have to pay taxes at all. |
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I want to get some thoughts from the community about this perspective,
I have a simple structure looking at decentralized projects
Good government | Bad government
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For | |
Against | |
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For good government one can help with catching illegal behaviors, against good government include money laundry, gambling so on and forth
Against bad government is helping Venezuela escape its hyperinflation, we can put intentions in places we see fit.
And of course one can replace government with other centralized entities, governments are just easier for all to imagine
The tricky part is how is good and bad decided? What do you guys think?
You're right about a tricky part being the 'good/bad' distinction, so let's start with that. What's a good government? For me, a good government has the following characteristics: 1. It's acting based on justice (and justice is more or less in the sense that John Rawls had). 2. It protects human rights. 3. It's trying to make sure that the economics of the country is prosperous. If you take these factors into account, I think a good government would support decentralization (since it allows more freedom and transparency of the processes), whereas the bad government would tend to be totalitarian and would thus be against decentralization. But that's a simplification, of course, and some might reasonably disagree with that. |
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I agree with the comments in the article about the stuff this guy said. Bitcoin does not have intrinsic value, which is perfectly normal. It is indeed worth as much as people are willing to pay for it, which is the cornerstone of the free market. The problem is that this guy is looking at Bitcoin as a kind of valuable property, and then he's right that it's not like that. But Bitcoin, unlike stock/property/security is also money, and money is supposed to be like that. On the other hand, Bitcoin can be a profitable investment, but there's no wonder Mark Cuban does not see it. He's super-rich already, he has no motivation to risk or even learn something new. |
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