Cryptocurrency is a form of digital money that is designed to be secure and, in many cases, anonymous.

It is a currency associated with the internet that uses cryptography, the process of converting legible information into an almost uncrackable code, to track purchases and transfers.

Cryptography was born out of the need for secure communication in the Second World War. It has evolved in the digital era with elements of mathematical theory and computer science to become a way to secure communications, information and money online.

You can get further information in this link: https://cryptocurrencyfacts.com/how-does-cryptocurrency-work-2/

Up 158 percent against the U.S. dollar this year, bitcoin is now the best-performing currency. Many are confused as to how this mathematical protocol can be worth more than $2,600, and why it keeps going up. The short answer: Bitcoin is money, just a little better and cheaper than the alternatives.

If you don’t understand money, you cannot understand bitcoin. For most of us, money is the U.S. dollar, the fiat currency of the United States issued by the Federal Reserve and maintained by the commercial banking system.

But even this system is confusing. Most people don’t hold Federal Reserve notes anymore; they hold money in checking accounts or use their credit cards to buy things. This is electronic fiat money, stored on the servers of banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.

This type of money is a great medium of exchange. Because the state mandates the acceptance of fiat money by all commercial actors, you can pay everywhere with dollars and, as a bonus, the prices of consumer goods seldom change more than a few percent per year.

Other attributes that make the dollar useful as a medium of exchange are its divisibility, recognizability, and indestructability—at least in electronic form—and the ease with which it can be exchanged.

Thank you for your information. I totally agree with you.

It’s anonymous. Any payment can be completed from multiple accounts,
a single wallet can have as many as you want receiving address and a different one for sending funds.
Account verification/validation might be mandatory for Bitcoin Exchanges,
places where you can buy the coins, but you don’t need to do this for your personal wallet or wallets.

 - Bitcoin is not backed by any single bank or country. It’s decentralized.
There is no authority to block a bitcoin transaction. And there are no reasons to do so.
You already know it,
Western Union and MoneyGram transactions could be blocked sometimes for a reason that might be from a good one to the most stupid one.
A blocked transaction will require your time and additional costs to resend us the payment.

 - Bitcoin payment processing time is almost immediate
365 days a year and 24 hours a day – Bitcoin payments are always available.
 Just make sure that your Internet connection is up and running.
 It’s like PayPal, credit/debit cards or any other online payment method you are used to,
 but with a much higher level of anonymity.

 

It's difficult to answer this question.bitcoin and ethereum are unique in their functionality.

Bitcoin is not governed by anyone and only open community is responsible to scale thier functionality,due to segwit hard fork Bitcoin also divided in 2 group .core and BTC.Similar thing happened with Ethereum and ethereum classic.

This forks certainly creates an issue amongst the community and investers .

However ETHEREUM has strong leadership of vitalik buterin and thier vision is clear where Ethereum should go whereas Bitcoin is just currency which store and transfer only values no contracts associated.

Definitely Ethereum has lot of scope for growth due to strong leadership whereas Bitcoin may grow potentially but it's future is uncertain as long as someone owns it.

These are some my views for bitcoin:

 - Bitcoin’s problems

Many people believe that Bitcoin is always going to be on top of digital currencies, because it was the first currency of its kind to take hold, and it now has an established market cap. It’s true, Bitcoin is the only case of a widespread, functioning blockchain. However, Bitcoin is not without its problems, the most important of which is user experience.

 - How the hell do I use this thing?

If people can’t use Bitcoin easily, then it doesn’t stand a chance of taking off. If Bitcoin isn’t as easy to use as PayPal, if people have to use long weird-looking strings of 34 characters, if they have to use a wallet that looks like it was designed in Visual Basic in 1997 (or even 2007), why would they ever want to use it? Bitcoin is great, but it’s not so great that people who don’t know anything about it will look past its appearances to use it. Normal people don’t extend themselves to use new technology – only nerds and enthusiasts do that. Normal people wait for new technology to come to them, or at least meet them halfway. If someone has to understand the technology to use it, that technology is not ready for mass adoption.

 - How big can it really get?

The other main problem is scalability. When I first heard of Bitcoin, I was seduced by the idea of rapid transactions and low fees, thinking about how micropayments would change the face of the web. When my time preference was low, I would even make transactions without paying a fee, and saw it come through within a few hours. Now, if I try to make a Bitcoin transaction without a fee, it’s may take days, or perhaps never be processed. Unprocessed transactions frequently exceed 10,000. Micropayments, and even small payments, are a dream of the past, with transaction fees now greater than 30 US cents. The block size debate has gone unresolved for more than a year, which points to a greater problem.

 - Who is in charge here?

Bitcoin has no formal governance structure, and the only way to make a big change is to introduce a hard fork – creating a second Bitcoin, and hoping that everyone will come along with it. If the community cannot resolve a simple issue such as doubling the amount of data per block, what hope would it have to solve more complex problems? Bitcoin has apparently fallen prey to the one thing which we thought it would save us from – politics.

Haha, No problems. I would like to know your ideas than reading your writing.
I also have some opinions about this.
SO, How Much Should I Save Versus How Much Should I Invest?

Saving money should almost always come before investing money. Think of it as the foundation upon which your financial house is built.

The reason is simple. Unless you inherit a large amount of wealth, it is your savings that will provide you with the capital to feed your investments. If times get tough and you require cash, you'll likely be selling out your investments at the worst possible time. That is not a recipe for getting rich.

There are two primary types of savings programs you should include in your life. They are:

     - As a general rule, your savings should be sufficient to cover all of your personal expenses, including your mortgage, loan payments, insurance costs, utility bills, food, and clothing expenses for at least six months. That way, if you lose your job, you’ll be able to have sufficient time to adjust your life without the extreme pressure that comes from living paycheck to paycheck.
     - Any specific purpose in your life that will require a large amount of cash in five years or less should be savings-driven, not investment-driven. The stock market in the short-run can be extremely volatile, losing more than 50 percent of its value in a single year. Purchasing a home is a great example as we discussed in Best Places To Invest Your Down Payment Money.

Only after that these things are in place, and you have health insurance, should you begin investing (this really is vital — for more information on the reasons, read Investing in Health Insurance – One of the First Lines of Defense for Your Portfolio. The only possible exception is putting money into a 401(k) plan at work if your company matches your contributions. That’s because not only will you get a substantial tax break for putting money into your retirement account, but the matching funds basically represent free cash that is being handed to you on a silver tray and there are material bankruptcy protections in place for assets held within such an account should you be wiped out entirely.)

Thank you for your opinions

I will give some extra information about this.

These are 5 Awesome and Totally Free Money Management Tools

XY Planning Network advisors and administrators love their apps and tools. And for good reason - as technology continues to exponentially improve, we have more and greater access to helpful programs and applications that make countless aspects of our lives easier and we're able to work more efficiently.

Many of our financial planners make use of a variety of technologies to make their practice better for themselves and their clients. They're able to communicate more effectively with a range of people - regardless of location. They're able to automate less important, back-end tasks so they're free to spend more time doing what really matters: namely, providing relationship-based services to you and me.

With a wide array of helpful tools at our disposal, it's never been easier to manage our financial lives in between meet-ups with our financial planners. Why not take advantage of the tech that's available? Especially if it means we find it easier to...

Save money
Track spending
Create budgets
Pay bills
Set financial goals
Earn cash or rewards
Here are 5 of our favorite, free money management tools that help us track our finances so we can focus on growing our wealth:

- For Budgets and the Big-Picture View of Your Finances: Mint
Mint is a free budgeting program that tracks almost every aspect of your finances. It creates a centralized spot so you can see what's going on across bank accounts, credit cards, and more, all in one place.

It's widely known as the best resource for managing your finances via a free account with their website (they also have mobile apps for tablets and smartphones).

The program is simple and easy to use, and visually it can't be beat. Mint will provide a number of graphs and charts for you to review, which makes this a perfect tool for people who learn visually. Sometimes, it's hard to really get it when you're just looking at a mass of numbers. Mint makes it easy to see what's happening, where money is coming from, and where cash is going.

Mint is completely automated, which means once you input your financial information it takes the reins. The app automatically sorts and categorizes all your spending and cash flow.

It can even suggest ways that you can save based off your financial habits, or you can input financial goals you want to reach and Mint will outline a plan for you to use to achieve them.

The only drawback? You do have to sync information like account and card numbers, which not everyone feels comfortable doing. Although Mint is a secure, safe site that encrypts information to protect their customers and accounts, the fact is all your financial information is being stored in one spot. While that's convenient, it is something know about before signing up.

 - For Organizing Your Financial Life: Check
Feeling stressed about keeping track of all your many bills, statements, and other financial documents? Check has you covered.

Much like Mint, Check works best when you input all your account information into the system so that it can track your big-picture financial situation for you.

It's a perfect tool for those who are a little forgetful and are comfortable using their smartphones to do business. Check reminds you when it's time to pay bills and allows you to pay bills instantly, on the spot. It also allows users to establish scheduled payments for the future.

Check keeps track of things like your checking account, too, and will alert you when funds are low. With this tool, you can stay on top of everything, keep yourself organized, and avoid late fees and overdraft charges.

Link Mint, Check uses a whole lot of security to protect account information. However, it is still everything in one place. That's convenient, but users should remain diligent. Just make sure you're regularly checking what's going on with your accounts (a good habit to practice whether or not you upload information to an app) and you should be set.

 - For Reaching Savings Goals: Smarty Pig
If you're having trouble tracking multiple savings goals at all once, Smarty Pig may be the money management tool you need.

Smarty Pig provides customers with free online savings accounts. The company encourages "systematically saving for specific purchases." In other words, you're supposed to utilize a Smarty Pig savings account to help you reach one savings goal at a time. If you need to save up to buy a new laptop, to go on a dream vacation, or for a down payment on a home, Smarty Pig

The accounts, while a little different than traditional accounts offered by brick-and-mortar banks, are FDIC insured and fee-free. They're also interest-bearing and require a $25 initial deposit. After that, you need to link up another bank account and set up automatic transfers to your online savings until your goal is met.

Smarty Pig allows you to share your goal via social media. While this might sound like a bit of over-sharing, most people are more likely to stick to a goal if they share it with friends and family (who can then help hold that individual accountable). Your network can even contribute to your account to help you reach your savings goal even faster.

An added benefit of using this tool to help you reach one-time financial goals? When you cash out your account, Smarty Pig offers rewards when you make your purchase (if you were saving up for something tangible) through one of their partners.

 - For Saving on Purchases: RetailMeNot
Clipping coupons can cost you more in time than it will save you in cents at the store, but RetailMeNot makes it quick and simple to score items below retail price.

With this free app, you can quickly check to see what coupons are available for a particular item or retailer. RetailMeNot can help you save in stores and online, as it shows coupon codes, too.

The app is set up so you can search and browse through their database for something specific, or you can view the day's "hot deals" section to see what's featured.

Make sure you use RetailMeNot with caution - coupons have a funny way of fooling us into thinking we're saving big bucks. But if you never planned to make a particular purchase in the first place, you're just out the cash you blew on buying something you didn't need.

 - For Keeping Up with Your Rewards: Award Wallet
Do you participate in multiple rewards programs in order to score freebies and save money? Smart consumer move on your part; give yourself a quick pat on the back for taking advantage of the offers some companies put on the table for their customers.

But it can get complicated to keep track of multiple rewards. Enter Award Wallet, an app that helps you organize and track things like airline miles, hotel points, and rewards you racked up for credit card purchases.

Your rewards points and miles can save you big bucks when you accumulate them over time, so use Award Wallet to help you keep up with your balances and what you have available to redeem.

What are your favorite money management tools? Any awesome apps we should know about that help people save, earn, or track money?

Viberate is a platform that joins the entire live music ecosystem under one roof. Currently it acts as IMDB for live music, where profiles are ranked according to their online popularity. It is built and curated by the Viberate user community.

Our end game is to disrupt the music industry as we know it by becoming the biggest global talent marketplace where event organizers will be able to book musicians directly through our service using cryptocurrencies. They will pick them up from the massive selection of profiles using our social media metrics and after the gig is over, the event organizer will review the musician and vice versa.

Listing both, demand and supply of the live music market, Viberate represents a great sales channel for already established acts, but more importantly - a priceless tool and an excellent sales showcase for millions of unrepresented (long-tail) musicians from all around the world. It's a matchmaking platform that digitizes the job that talent booking agencies have done for over a hundred years with one more important difference - any musician can join, regardless of genre, country, fame level or gig history.

We will utilize the advantage of smart contracts during the negotiation process. Crucial information about the booking will be negotiated and then written into the smart contract:
date and time of performance

venue and event organizer details

duration of performance

artist fee

technical and hospitality requirements


Viberate will use smart contracts, sourcing the above mentioned variables directly from the artist booking backend, where every artist will set their own booking requirements and preferences. Once agreed, the terms will be written into the smart contract, which will then be sealed with a timestamp and put onto the blockchain. Any additions or alterations will result in voiding the old contract and replacing it with a new one, provided both parties confirm the alteration on the blockchain.

When it comes to payments, one of the biggest advantages of using the blockchain technology in the artist booking process is the ability to offer escrow. It's the safest way for both parties when dealing with artist bookings. However, fiat currencies escrow in most countries requires a set of licenses from centralized authorities such as central bank or the Ministry of Treasury and Finance. Using a cryptocurrency with a combination of a smart contract solves this issue and allows for effective and safe escrow.

Bookings on Viberate will be made using Ether (ETH) and our own Vibes (VIB) and following these steps:

Upon digitally signing the contract, the event organizer (buyer) pays the agreed number of ETH or VIB plus a service fee to a specially created wallet that holds the coins until the event is fully executed.

The event organizer has 24 hours to file a complaint in case the artist has breached the contract in any way (no show, cutting the performance short for unexplained reason, excessive behavior, etc.) and after that period ends, the artist fee is released to the artist's wallet.

In case of a breach, a dispute is triggered, which is handled by a trained tribunal of music business experts who give the verdict, based on provided evidence (photos, exchanged e-mails etc.). The members then vote and decide whether to return the withheld fee to the organizer or clear the payment into the artist's wallet.

When the booking is fully executed and the event is over, both parties will review each other and the reviews will be published on their profiles.


Telegram: https://t.me/ViberateOfficial

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/viberate

For the foreseeable future, I would argue no. Bitcoin is a new type of electronic money created by a software engineer (Satoshi Nakamoto) in 2009. Bitcoins are not controlled by a central bank, but rather are created by users who generate new Bitcoins when they use their computing power to verify and process Bitcoin transactions (a process known as “mining”).

The answer to the question on whether Bitcoin will become a common currency of the world turns, to me, on whether Bitcoins satisfy the three key functions of money (medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value). It is a medium of exchange. Fees are low (certainly when compared with using credit cards), transactions can be made anonymously (for those who value their privacy).

But Bitcoins are not good units of account or stores of value. The price of Bitcoins is very volatile (over seven times as volatile as the price of gold, and over eight times the volatility of stock market indices such as the S&P 500). For example, in 2011, the price of Bitcoins fluctuated between 30 cents and $32. It rose to $255 on April 10, 2013, and fell all the way down to $55 on April 17. By November of the same year, it was up to $1125. Today it is worth about $1,365.

High volatility means Bitcoins do not function well as a store of value or a unit of account and so its use is likely to be severely limited in the foreseeable future.
Any ideas???

 

Yes that right I said new privacy coin. It’s not even listed on coin market cap yet. Masari is based off of Monero and can be stored on a Cli or GUI wallet. If you missed the monero train then you are going to love that masari is sitting at .10 cents right now at South x change. Best part about south x change is no personal information is required to register. I transfered litecoin over to the exchange and sold it for a higher price than Bittrex to fund my Masari. Also the Masari Developer is readily accessible for question on their discord channel or bitcoin talk page.

Who is the target audience for Internet?

Please understand bitcoin is not a product, company or any organisation. It's innovative technology , a technology has always changed the world.

and this time its no different.

the companies like amazon, HP and expedia have already accepting bitcoins. japan has considered bitcoin transaction in legal book.

Bitcoin is a global currency, so the target audience is not really one group or type of person (and not just humans in a futuristic AI world).  But the early majority of users would be people who value privacy, globalization, and decentralization.  It started out being popular with libertarian and anarchist types but has expanded to a more diverse audience as more people get interested in it, and it becomes easier to use.    

SO WHAT ARE BITCOINS? HOW DO BITCOINS WORK?
Bitcoin – the initial virtual banking currency of the internet – has existed for several years now and many people have questions about them. Where do they come from? Are they legal? Where can you get them? Why did they split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash? Here are the basics you need to know.

 - Cryptocurrency Defined
Cryptocurrencies are just lines of computer code that hold monetary value. Those lines of code are created by electricity and high-performance computers.

Cryptocurrency is also known as digital currency. Either way, it is a form of digital public money that is created by painstaking mathematical computations and policed by millions of computer users called 'miners'. Physically, there is nothing to hold although you can exchange crypto for cash.

'Crypto' comes from the word cryptography, the security process used to protect transactions that send the lines of code out for purchases. Cryptography also controls the creation of new 'coins', the term used to describe specific amounts of code. There are literally hundreds of coins now; only a handful have the potential to become a viable investment.

Governments have no control over the creation of cryptocurrencies, which is what initially made them so popular. Most cryptocurrencies begin with a market cap in mind, which means that their production will decrease over time thus, ideally, making any particular coin more valuable in the future.

 - What Are Bitcoins?
Bitcoin was the first cryptocoin currency ever invented. No one knows exactly who created it – cryptocurrencies are designed for maximum anonymity – but bitcoins first appeared in 2009 from a developer supposedly named Satoshi Nakamoto. He has since disappeared and left behind a Bitcoin fortune.


Because Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to exist, all digital currencies created since then are called Altcoins, or alternative coins. Litecoin, Peercoin, Feathercoin, Ethereum and hundreds of other coins are all Altcoins because they are not Bitcoin.

One of the advantages of Bitcoin is that it can be stored offline on a person's local hardware. That process is called cold storage and it protects the currency from being taken by others. When the currency is stored on the internet somewhere (hot storage), there is high risk of it being stolen.

On the flip side, if a person loses access to the hardware that contains the bitcoins, the currency is simply gone forever. It's estimated that as much as $30 billion in bitcoins have been lost or misplaced by miners and investors. Nonetheless, Bitcoins remain incredibly popular as the most famous cryptocurrency over time.

 - How Bitcoins Work
Bitcoins are completely virtual coins designed to be 'self-contained' for their value, with no need for banks to move and store the money.

Once you own bitcoins, they behave like physical gold coins: they possess value and trade just as if they were nuggets of gold in your pocket. You can use your bitcoins to purchase goods and services online, or you can tuck them away and hope that their value increases over the years.

Bitcoins are traded from one personal 'wallet' to another. A wallet is a small personal database that you store on your computer drive (i.e cold storage), on your smartphone, on your tablet, or somewhere in the cloud (hot storage).

For all intents, bitcoins are forgery-resistant. It is so computationally-intensive to create a bitcoin, it isn't financially worth it for counterfeiters to manipulate the system.

 

The term “whale” is frequently used to describe the big money Bitcoin players that show their hand in the Bitcoin market. The ocean as a metaphor for the market is apt, since one can then extend it to include the big fish and the small fish; sharks; rallies as feeding frenzies; waves as market moves; and so forth. It may be, however, that the term “whale” has been applied to the wrong class of investor because the players described below are truly the biggest creatures in the ocean.

***BITCOIN DOLPHINS
They show themselves in the exchanges with orders of 1000 BTC, every now and again, and the common perception seems to be that the orderbook “whales” are the heavyweight players who move the market and can manipulate price if they so desire. However, this view is inaccurate.

The fact is that there are even bigger players than the so-called whales, who do not engage in the Bitcoin market via the dinky web interfaces the exchanges offer us, the “retail market” (small fish).

*** BITCOIN WHALES
bitcoin whaleThe large players being referred to are institutions such as Hedge Funds and Bitcoin Investment Funds. Some of these funds have announced their presence in the water:

   + Pantera Capital
   + Bitcoins Reserve
   + Binary Financial
   + Coin Capital Partners
   + Falcon Global Capital
   + Fortress
   + Bitcoin Investment Trust
   + Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund
Others have yet to put oar to water…

   + Bitcoin Index Fund
… and others may or may not exist, depending on your sources and the reach of your sonar.

These funds typically manage hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, which they strategically and covertly put through the exchanges via special arrangement – out of sight and obscured from regular retail traders.

With their large capital mass, institutions can move the market at will. It is here where the metaphor of a Bitcoin Whale comes into its own because any other inhabitant of the ocean must simply get out of the way, or be moved forcefully. Additionally, no current is strong enough to deflect the whale from its course, so its intention becomes the way.

 

STILL THE NO. 1 RULE FOR STOCK INVESTORS: ALWAYS CUT YOUR LOSSES SHORT
In the battle for investment survival, you can learn a lot from judo. The first and most important lesson in that martial art is the same for the stock market: damage control.

Judo masters begin not by learning how to throw, but how to fall. They practice this skill until it's as natural as breathing. No matter how many times they're flipped, they can rise to fight again.

Highly successful stock pickers go through similar training: They must learn how to cut their losses short. This means selling a stock when it's down 7% or 8% from your purchase price.

Sounds simple, but many investors have learned the hard way how difficult it is to master the most important rule in investing.

No one wants to sell for a loss. It's an admission that you made a mistake. But if you can set your ego aside, you can take a small loss and still be fit enough, both financially and mentally, to invest the next day. Cutting losses quickly prevents you from suffering a devastating fall that's too steep to recover from.

Consider the math. Say you buy a stock at 50. For whatever reason, it drops 8% to 46 during the next few days. You promptly unload it and move on. To reclaim that loss, you need to make an 8.7% gain on your next purchase with your remaining capital, which shouldn't be hard to do.

What if you hold on?

You're sure the stock will snap back. Your research convinces you it's worth $100, so why get scared by a minor setback?
There's one problem. The market doesn't care who you are, what you think or how much you believe in a stock. It says you miscalculated, at least in the short term — a message that gets louder as the stock drops 25% to 37-1/2. To get back even, now you need a 33% gain, which is much tougher to come by than that easy 8.7%.

ICch072516What if the market really doesn't like your stock and slices it in half to 25? You don't need a calculator for this one: To recover a 50% loss requires a 100% gain. How many stocks did you pick last year that doubled in price?

If you limit losses on initial purchases to 7% or 8%, you can stay out of trouble, even if only 1 out of 4 buys delivers a modest profit of 25% or 30%. You can be wrong 3 out of every 4 times and still live to invest another day.

A .250 batting average is nothing to crow about. But even the best hitters in baseball fail more than they succeed. Consider Tony Gwynn, who in 1999 became the 21st member of pro baseball's 3,000-hit club. That year, the former San Diego Padres outfielder finished the season with a batting average of .338. That means he was coming up empty nearly 2 out of 3 times at the plate.

You won't see Gwynn fret after grounding out. The same is true for successful investors. They calmly take a small loss and look for the next potential winner.

So leave your emotions behind. Cutting losses with discipline will help keep your head clear when it's time to return to the market. A great paradox of investing is that the ripest buying opportunities occur just after bear markets — when the major stock averages have declined 20% or more.

That's exactly when most investors who haven't cut their losses are reeling and don't want to be hit again. It's hard to think straight after losing thousands of dollars. But the market always recovers. What kind of shape will you be in?  

4 QUICK STEPS TO SAVE MONEY EFFECTIVELY
Do you want to know “the secret to saving money” that could make you become rich?
Money won’t save itself if you keep telling yourself to start saving it tomorrow. Let’s begin today!

•   CREATE A FORCED SAVING ENVIRONMENT
There are probably a variety of reasons why you haven’t been able to save money. Have you been blaming this on your lack of perseverance or endurance? If that is so, your way of thinking is incorrect. Saving money should not just stay at the emotional level. Forcing yourself to create a money-saving environment is important. When you decide to go on a diet, you won’t lose any pounds by just thinking about it. You have to decide on your daily intake, and eat only what you should eat instead of any kind of food; eventually, you will lose weight. The same idea applies to saving up money:

 - STEP 1: Write down all monthly income and expenses.
Write down the current household income. At the same time, write down in detail all your expenses.

 - STEP 2: Determine the amount of money you want to save.
Next, write down the amount of money you want to save per month. Remember, it’s not the amount of money you can save, but the amount that you would like to save monthly in order to reach your future goal. In other words, you should calculate backwards from your future savings goal instead of writing something like saving twice the amount of your income. For example, if you want to buy a US$10,000 car 2 years later, you will have to calculate how much you need to save monthly counting from today onwards.

 - STEP 3: Divide your expenses into 4 categories and determine their upper limits.
Then, divide your expenses into 4 categories and decide the necessary amount for each of them:
               1. Cost of living (include rent, food and utilities)
               2. Social costs (tuition, transportation, insurance,  ceremonial occasions)
               3. Entertainment (such as clothes, travel and eating out)
               4. Amount of money you want to save
Deduct the amount you want to save from your income, and allocate the remaining amount to the other 3 categories. For example, if your monthly income is US$2,500 and you want to save US$420 per month, the amount will be allocated like this:
               1. US$1380
               2. US$500
               3. US$200
               4. US$420
 
- STEP4: Transfer the determined amount every month to separated accounts
Till this step, all you have to do is to transfer the determined amounts to the 4 accounts each month when you get paid, and just remember to limit your living expenses to the determined amounts. Of course it would be ideal to live off of the same amount of money every month. However, utility bills will fluctuate and events or family occasions will change your monthly expenses. Therefore, the trick is to review your possible monthly expenses each month when you are paid, and adjust them accordingly.
By dividing your living expenses into different accounts in this way, you can easily save money every month without placing a finger on that saved money. This will also help you buy only the things you need and reduce the chance of wasting money. Create 4 bank accounts with the divided income and get started with your money-saving life now!

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!!! 

I definitely agree with you.
It's obvious that ,If you have to live in a country , you have to pay for its privileges . Privileges that the government of the country is giving to the citizens or trying to give to the citizens.

Government knows that the citizens need the privileges of Good Hospitals , Roads , Good Educational Institutions , Buildings ,etc and so , they work for the betterment and development of the country. You need to support the government in this process because the government needs huge fund investment in big and innovative projects which they get from Taxes.

If you care for the country , you have to pay something or anything. If you don't pay anything , then you don't Care for the Country at all and that's awful .

So , to get the privileges from the Government of the country and ensure better living ,you need to pay Taxes .

In addition, Think of taxes as your donation toward the public good. Taxes pay for public services such as roads, garbage collection, sewer systems, police and fire service, traffic signals, flood control, etc. that are shared by others in your community, your state and the country in which you live. Without taxes there would be no government, no laws, no services of any kind unless everyone pitched in and volunteered or everyone would be paying independently for private services so, for example, only the rich could afford a fire department or have drinkable water pumped to their home.
Now, we can certainly argue over whether or not taxes are fair and just for you and others in your community or country. But, that's a completely different discussion.

It's obvious that ,If you have to live in a country , you have to pay for its privileges . Privileges that the government of the country is giving to the citizens or trying to give to the citizens.

Government knows that the citizens need the privileges of Good Hospitals , Roads , Good Educational Institutions , Buildings ,etc and so , they work for the betterment and development of the country. You need to support the government in this process because the government needs huge fund investment in big and innovative projects which they get from Taxes.

If you care for the country , you have to pay something or anything. If you don't pay anything , then you don't Care for the Country at all and that's awful .

So , to get the privileges from the Government of the country and ensure better living ,you need to pay Taxes .

In addition, Think of taxes as your donation toward the public good. Taxes pay for public services such as roads, garbage collection, sewer systems, police and fire service, traffic signals, flood control, etc. that are shared by others in your community, your state and the country in which you live. Without taxes there would be no government, no laws, no services of any kind unless everyone pitched in and volunteered or everyone would be paying independently for private services so, for example, only the rich could afford a fire department or have drinkable water pumped to their home.
Now, we can certainly argue over whether or not taxes are fair and just for you and others in your community or country. But, that's a completely different discussion.

Thank you for your ideas. I also have something to share.
HOW TO INVEST EFFECTIVELY? - Hemant Rustagi
As an investor, you must have faced the dilemma of how to invest effectively. Adding to this, the anxieties arising out of uncertainties surrounding the financial markets might have affected your decision making process.

The fact, however, is that investing is a simple process that requires planning, perseverance and time. By following a disciplined approach to investing, you can not only achieve your investment goals but also keep emotions out of the process. Here's what you need to do to ensure your investments remain on track:
*** Have an investment plan
Many of us delay investing, either for the fear of choosing a wrong investment option or thinking we do not have enough money. Since investing is a continuous process, you can begin even if you don't have a lump sum amount to start with. However, you must have an investment plan in place. It would help keep you on track, disciplined and focused on your investment goals. A carefully designed asset allocation strategy, and the process of rebalancing it, from to time, will ensure you remain invested in originally selected asset classes at all times. It will also help you in tackling bull and bear markets without letting the “greed and fear” factors affect your mindset.

*** Don't underestimate risk and/or overestimate returns
While making investment decisions, a balance must be maintained between risk and reward. To ensure this, the key is not to underestimate risk and/or overestimate returns. Therefore, you must understand the potential and the risks associated with different asset classes in your portfolio. This helps in avoiding disappointments, and the consequent panic reactions that may derail your investment process.

*** Don't compromise your long-term goals

Many of us often lose sight of our long-term goals when we spot an opportunity to earn some short term gains. For example, in a current market-like situation, it can be tempting to pull the money out of equity markets and invest it in debt instruments. However, if you do so, you would be compromising the long-term prospects of your portfolio. Similarly, a depressed stock market may tempt you to invest even short-term money in it to make a quick buck. This could result in you either losing a part of your investments or earning low returns. Remember that timing the market is a strategy that even experts find difficult to implement successfully.

*** Have a tax-efficient portfolio
While paying taxes when necessary is understandable, paying more taxes than necessary is not! Therefore, ensuring your portfolio has the utmost tax efficiency is one key factor that can help improve your portfolio returns. While it is true that tax efficiency of the instruments alone cannot guarantee success, a tax-aware investment strategy can make a substantial difference to your portfolio's ultimate size.

Tax efficiency is important for both short-term as well as long-term investing. While we primarily focus on debt instruments, while investing for the short term, tax-efficient options such as a debt mutual fund can help you in earning higher post-tax returns. It becomes even more important when you plan for your medium and/or long-term investment goals such as children's education, buying a house and retirement planning. To achieve these very important goals of your lives, it is essential to invest in options that have the potential to provide higher as well as tax-efficient returns. This factor is very important, especially considering the escalating costs. That's why equity has an important role to play while designing a portfolio for long-term goals. Remember, investing to beat inflation generally involves steering clear of tax-inefficient instruments.

Lucky investment!!!  

I personally believe that Masternodes and Proof of Stake will be huge in the upcoming years. We noticed a trend and it seems that more and more cryptocurrencies decide to implement Masternodes & Proof of Stake.

*** Crypto Passive Income – Masternodes

Masternodes are nodes in the cryptocurrencies network that relay transactions and
sometimes also fulfill other specific functions.
Since Masternodes fulfill special functions for a cryptocurrency network but do cost
money and effort to operate, they are incentivized by gaining a share of the block
rewards in their respective cryptocurrency. The yield varies primarily according to the
masternode count and each coin might have different payout periods. A few coins
pay out daily; others pay out several times a day. This makes masternodes a form to
earn “passive income” on cryptocurrencies without having to run expensive mining
equipment. To create a masternode, a user needs to lock in a specific amount of
coin. Users can then either setup a server to host the masternode or ask a service
provider to do so on their behalf.

 - Conclusion
I personally think masternodes are a great way to hold your coins and earn some juicy
rewards. You need some technical knowledge to setup a masternode server, but
once you’ve done that it’s generating passive income and you only need to check
every once in a while if the coins come in.

*** Crypto Passive Income – Staking

Staking, also called Proof of Stake is a way to earn passive income by locking your
coins in a wallet for a certain fixed period of time. For doing that, you will be paid
additional coins as a reward. Mostly you need to keep the wallet open & your
computer running while you are staking your coins to gain reward. However, there
are some coins like NEO for example, where you can just leave them in your wallet
and close the wallet and it still generates reward.

 - Conclusion
I love staking and think it’s one of the easiest ways to earn passive income in crypto
without a lot of technical knowledge. NEO & some other coins are great because you
don’t even need to have the wallet open and you still generate some good rewards
for just holding your coins.

*** Final Words

Masternodes & Staking are definitely a great way to earn some juicy passive income from cryptocurrencies. I am trying to get as many Masternodes as possible to setup a whole farm and earn a nice side income. With the rising price of cryptocurrencies, we will also receive a better ROI with time.

Thanks for reading & have a nice Day! 

Most of us didn’t even know that cryptocurrencies existed at the beginning of 2017. And those who did know, thought that it was all about Bitcoin and Ethereum. But as 2017 progressed, cryptocurrencies boomed more than anything ever seen before.

The market capitalization of cryptocurrencies grew from $19 billion in January 2017 to $795 billion in January 2018. That’s a total growth of over 40000%!

Many new cryptocurrencies became a part of this success story, Monero being one of them. Monero is the 11th largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $3.35 billion.

Monero performed extremely well in 2017 and many investors are wondering whether it will be repeated in 2018. Those of you who are also questioning the future of Monero have come to the right place.

I will share the top Monero predictions 2018 and 2020 in this guide. I will also cover the basics of Monero and its historical price trends, so that you have a good understanding of what this cryptocurrency is capable of.

By the end of this guide, you should have a good understanding about the Monero future. In addition to using this information, I also recommend that you consult a financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

So, let’s cover a little bit about Monero before we get into its future.

HOW TO SPOT A GREAT ICO (AND LEAVE A BAD ONE ALONE).
The ICO phenomenon has started to play a significant role in the crypto-startup world. Lately, more and more experts are looking to decentralized crowd-funding methods with interest.
But, the absence of legal guidelines in the operation of these ICOs has resulted in more than a few scams. This is hardly abnormal for an entirely new, unregulated field; but, would-be investors, nonetheless, find it difficult to discern potential opportunities from grab-the-money-and-run schemes.
If you look at lists of recent ICO campaigns it is really hard to come up with any sort of reasonable filter. There’s so much to be obviously skeptical of in this space that wealthier and experienced investors won’t even consider it — with good reason.
As with any investment, nothing in the ICO space can be predicted or proved with absolute certainty. Analysis of the team, style and quality of management, and even some basic managerial accounting data is not available in most case. Still, most ICO trackers try to combine lists of presumably relevant parameters such as: who holds the collected money (in many cases investors do not even know!), what kind of social network activity a given project can boast, and other seemingly disparate data.
Does this mean ICOs are all bad? Of course not. I prefer to apply some patience, best-practices and investment experience to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater..
I think I have a working solution to help make an informed assessment of a given product in this domain. Despite the fact that most of the important parameters are not measurable, we found a simple and transparent matrix by which to judge a given ICO:

         •   PRODUCT DIMENSION

Some people like to build parallels between ICOs and the IPOs of the modern technological era. But, this analogy is incongruent — the problem being that the great majority of projects behind ICOs can not present a functioning product or service. In older and less tumultuous times, one could probably make a good enough judgement by reputations of individual team members, e.g. “It’s not Tesla, but Elon is doing a new app…”. Such an approach doesn’t work in crypto-oriented startups because even if the product in question is projecting future success based on past achievements of one or more team members it will likely be a within different legal, work, and management structure as the previous product with no guarantees.
Another important thought to be aware of is that the amount of money raised by an ICO in no way directly translates to a corresponding quality of product. Marketing budgets, clever branding, great intro videos, SEO-wizards…all of these things can help attract attention, bring funds, and inflate perceptions.
With this in mind, we have ranked ICO projects into three tiers: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*PIL8lCBWoXznLN2E.

                1. Lowest tier. No product. These projects lack anything users can touch or test. The company (or just a team if there’s no legal entity) presents only the project pitch and promise. Most of such projects — if not all — have GitHub accounts with some code; but, you would need a few full-time analysts to do even surface-level due diligence.
                2. Middle tier. Second/third/etc product. Example: Iconomi. The ICO result was also impressive: over ten million USD raised. Neither the Iconomi fund — the face product for the ICO — nor any clear full-scale technical description exists. Founders do not try to hide, though. They have Cashila — a great and well accepted product that has been around for a couple of years making many bitcoiners’ lives easier. The existence and usefulness of the team’s previous product seems to be enough of a promise for Iconomi investors.
                3. Highest tier. Functioning product. Rarely, does a project fall into this category by offering a usable iteration of their product during the ICO. Example: Ethereum, Swish.

         •      COIN DIMENSION
The middle and most important word in the ICO acronym is “coin”. We’ve written about how difficult it might be for a project to “coinify” itself. Sales of “coins” didn’t become the new type of crowdfunding overnight. The first appcoins were merely trying to repeat the success of Bitcoin and were mostly clones of it in technical sense. Later deviations became greater, alternative coins got transformed from cryptocurrency to “application coins” and this is where things got really mixed up.
The basic borderlines, however, remained where they were from the very beginning. Thus, projects can further be judged through a second set of criteria and fall into these three categories:

                1. Lowest category. A senseless app coin claim made. Examples are numerous, unfortunately. It is very hard to explain why KimDotCom’s project is okay with bitcoins while Steemit, Incent, Chronobank and dozens others are not. These coins have very little chance of success due to a) being fundamentally superfluous and b) trying to survive under strong speculative pressure.
                2. Middle category. There is an app coin and it is really needed, it is part of product’s essence. Example: Ethereum. This kind of project is very rare. They are generally less attractive compared to straight-forward DAOs or DACs (distributed autonomous organization or corporation) because it is extremely difficult to keep your inner currency, the blood of your product’s organism, in the needed temperature range under the pressure of free markets filled with short term traders (and hackers too).
                3. Highest category. No appcoin claim. Projects in this category do not try to create an “inner currency” proving this way or another that normal money (or even BTC) are not good enough for them. Such projects are basically incorporated companies or stable teams transforming their organization into a formalized form of a DAO with voting, petitions, and budgeting put on safe, distributed, rails. This case is the closest to “normal” IPO when companies just change their form of ownership via a general public offering for individual ownership of equities. Examples: Iconomi, Swish.

     •        MAPPING THE ICO SPACE: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*qYvf0RtN-WTBeDIb.
Our map divides the space into a nine-slot matrix with positive and negative spaces determined at various intersections. An interesting application of this map is measuring the risk parameter of your portfolio if you own a bunch of coins. There’s a simple set of rules we suggest:
             - Comparing two assets both in the negative territory: the greater the amount of money already collected by a project in the negative territory the greater your risk associated with owning its coins; negative-territory projects — lacking solid grounds in the first place — become even less stable when they grow larger.
             - Follow the contrary rule when comparing two assets that are both in the positive territory: the greater the amount collected by a project in the positive territory the lower your risk associated with owning its coins.
             - And, it goes without saying, one should avoid investing in ICOs with negative characteristics at all. Of course, sometimes there are factors that prevail, such as large “early-bird” bonuses making speculative investment more worthwhile.

***3 WAYS TO IDENTIFY AN ICO SCAM

1. The Developers Are Anonymous

The first and most blatant sign of an ICO scam is that the token’s developers are anonymous or otherwise-unknown. While it’s true that the creator of Bitcoin — a pseudonymous individual or group operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto — did not reveal his true identity, he was able to this because he created a network that did not depend on the trustworthiness of a central authority. This is not the case with ICOs and TGEs. By holding an ICO, a startup is asking token buyers to trust that the developers will deliver a working product instead of running off with their money, so the team should be willing to back up its promises and claims with verifiable identities.

If a team is unwilling to identify itself, token buyers should be very cautious about contributing to the project. While there may be valid reasons to desire this privacy, it is far more likely that their purposes are nefarious. PlexCoin, for instance, declined to reveal the identities of its team members, obfuscating the fact that one of its organizers had run afoul of securities regulations in Quebec on several occasions, both before and during the PlexCoin ICO.

2. The Token Does Not Have a Clear Use Case

Another sign of an ICO scam is that the developers are unable to clearly articulate a valid use case for the token. The token should serve a key purpose in the startup’s platform. If it does not, the token will not sustain its value over the long-term. Related to this problem are tokens that advertise themselves merely as digital currencies without offering any real innovations or improvements upon existing cryptocurrency technology.

3. The Whitepaper Sets Unrealistic Goals

However, even if the token does have a clear use case, token buyers should be wary of startups that advertise overly-optimistic roadmaps. If the whitepaper sets an unrealistic development schedule, it either means the developers are using deceptive tactics to attract token buyers or they lack the necessary experience to give a sensible scope to the project. Either way, this does not bode well for the success of the project and its corresponding token.

To avoid falling prey to ICO scams, token buyers should educate themselves and conduct due diligence before deciding to contribute to a project. Strategic Coin offers numerous resources to assist token buyers with their research, including token analysis reports and exclusive interviews with startups conducting token generation events.

Strategic Coin is your go-to source for information about launching and participating in utility token ICOs. Whether you are a start-up or existing business that desires to enlist the help of a professional utility token ICO advisor or a token buyer who needs help navigating the blockchain space, Strategic Coin will provide you with the resources you need to take advantage of market opportunities within the crypto marketplace.