[What is it all about?]

What is it all about?

We want to explain the most important news about Bitcoin on a daily basis.

We've chosen Bitcointalk as we do appreciate your community. We've been thinking for a while where to post this thread. While we are a media outlet, we thought that Press would not be suitable for what we had in mind. After all, it's just about news, a short lead, and a link. We, on the other hand, were more thinking along the lines of offering some unique content and discussing it. And as we didn't want to spam the forum with numerous threads, we opted for creating just one.

What is forklog.media?

We are a crypto-media. We do comprehensive analysis to help users understand what's happening in crypto and why it's important. We explain the most important news about cryptocurrencies & blockchain and deliver investigations, guides, expert opinions on bitcoin price, digital assets, and mining since 2015.

What we are about, after all, is to create some value that, in our opinion, some other crypto-themed media have lost or even lacked, to begin with. We're not judging, of course. We set up a mission of telling "what's up with crypto and why it's important." To that end, we wish to become a place where everyone from the crypto-community could get some great insights or express their valuable opinion in the form of a comment or an op-ed, or even an interview. It's just because Bitcoin was a community effort in the first place, and we try to keep up with that philosophy in what we do as a media.

We're not newbies, anyway. Most of us got involved in Bitcoin back in 2012 or so. First, we started ForkLog.com, which has become the biggest crypto-themed media in Russian. We got some expertise from that and took our lumps in the process. Now we seek to reach a broader audience with the same values as before. And those values would be to produce interesting and quality content while keeping up the unbiased approach as much as humanly possible. We're all people after all.

Your comments will be highly appreciated!

Cheers!

Ethereum Classic price has been surging ever since the Agartha hard fork in mid-January. Starting at $5 before the hard fork, today the price has reached $12, seemingly continuing the upward trend. This led to an increased mining activity within the network, and the hash rate breaking all-time records with 20 TH.

What’s happening with Ethereum Classic? Is this truly a phoenix’s resurgence for this venerable altcoin? In this article, forklog.media will provide facts and suggest explanations.

Let’s start with a little bit of a backstory.

https://forklog.media/why-is-ethereum-classic-rallying-fluke-or-trend/

Let’s face it: crypto adoption has been going down for quite some time. There are fewer and fewer merchants accepting Bitcoin, let alone other cryptocurrencies. This is a bit surprising, given that many issues hampering adoption in the early days have been sorted out: user interfaces got a lot safer and friendlier, major cryptocurrencies are much less volatile than they once were, the assortment of tools for merchants as well as consumers has substantially increased, layer 2 solutions addressing bottlenecks are becoming practical, and yet…

A once-popular crypto-only travel agency, BTCtrip.com has closed shop, leaving unfulfilled orders and defaults on refunds in its wake. Restaurants that once accepted crypto payments no longer do. Fewer and fewer webshops offer crypto as payment options.

In this article Daniel Nagy, a software architect and Ethereum developer, explains why this is happening and how this trend can be reversed.

https://forklog.media/why-crypto-is-not-universally-adopted-and-how-to-change-it/

At the end of the last year, the G7 released a report, reading that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies “have so far failed to provide a reliable and attractive means of payment or store of value.”

The authors of the report believe that cryptocurrencies are excessively volatile and difficult to use, suffer from scalability problems, and face regulatory risks.

An American billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, said that the first cryptocurrency is a speculative asset and isn’t effective for payments or store of value.

We try to find out if Bitcoin is able to be money and what is it, exactly: the internet’s native money, a hedging instrument, or an asset for speculation?

https://forklog.media/what-is-bitcoin-internets-native-money-hedging-instrument-or-asset-for-speculation/

There is no shortage of coins and tokens in the crypto-industry. How many of them are any good is the question.

Evaluating the economics, technology, and marketing of just one project is hard. There are thousands of projects out there. It’s impossible to come up with a universally applicable method to tell good projects from bad ones.

Yet, somehow people get by and manage to navigate among all the options in the cryptocurrency market. How?

When there are too many things to choose from and the time is limited, people, animals, and computers sometimes use heuristics—problem-solving approaches that aren’t necessarily optimal or rational, but they work well enough in most cases and save some time if you’re lucky.

https://forklog.media/how-to-spot-a-shitcoin/

Choosing a crypto-wallet is usually one of the first challenges that a rookie cryptocurrency user has to face. Of course, the internet is full of guides on how to make the choice. Those guides can be good or bad, reasonable or silly, free or sponsored, and so forth. Still, while such reviews are abundant, there are much fewer pieces speaking about what NOT to choose.

We asked Jeff Fawkes, a cryptocurrency investigator, to take a look at the wallets that he believes people should avoid. In this piece, he speaks about the bad seeds and explains in great detail what is wrong with them and why rookies should keep away. Even though it’s Mr. Fawkes’ personal opinion that we not necessarily share, his investigation shows that at least part of the crypto-community does. And this fact alone makes it worth the attention.

https://forklog.media/dont-trust-the-wallet-in-apartment-23-what-bitcoin-wallets-have-worst-reputation-and-why/

The Block’s analyst Larry Cermak declared Initial Exchange Offerings dead, pointing out the concept’s bleak statistics for 2019.

IEOs are still dwarfed by the sums collected via ICOs back in the day. The entirety of the funds collected via IEOs over the only active period in the first half of 2019, which is estimated to be around $1.5–1.6 billion, is smaller than just one single ICO worth 4$ billion. Nevertheless, the model was expected to become the new go-to means of funding, which doesn’t involve conceptual death. How come?

Just last year, the PWC’s 5th ICO/STO Report noted that the development of the IEO model “has been strongly accelerating in terms of completed offerings and funding volume.” According to the paper, in the first five months of 2019, companies raised over $1.5 billion, although two-thirds of the total came from Bitfinex’s fundraising campaign.

The uptrend didn’t last, as Mr. Cermak’s research suggests.

Cermak’s analysis of IEO campaigns on several major crypto-exchanges has shown that only Binance had a positive return on investment. All others had substantial losses.

Cermak also posted information about average returns for particular campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the numbers are predominantly negative. Only 4 projects in the provided data snapshot show positive returns against USD price.

The analyst argues that the data provided are likely a sign of the concept’s death.

Nonetheless, it might be a little too soon to put the IEO concept into the grave.

forklog.media reached out to Alexander Temerev, CEO of Reactivity, and Pavlo Skoroplyas, author, cryptographer, crypto-trader, and miner for an expert opinion on the matter. Here’s their take on the problem.

https://forklog.media/ieo-declared-dead-but-dont-be-too-quick-to-bury-it/

In retrospect, Libra was the hype of 2019. Facebook, global payment processing, cryptocurrency all mushed together in a reptilian power fantasy. “What could have gone wrong?” we ask ourselves as we watch Vodaphone coyly quit the Libra Association, becoming the eighth company to pull out of the project.

So what happened? Is Libra as good as dead? Our today’s guest can shed some light on what’s up with it.

Today forklog.media talked to Gordon Einstein, the founding partner at CryptoLaw Partners, early Bitcoin adopter and “the most expensive lawyer in the world” that deals exclusively in crypto-related matters. Gordon has been closely following the developments at Libra from the moment of its inception and has become somewhat famous within the community for (among other things) his commentary on Libra.

We talked to Gordon about a slew of Libra-related topics. What is Libra, who stands behind it, and who fights against it? Why might it ultimately fail and how did it in some ways paradoxically succeed. And, of course, what happens next.

https://forklog.media/gordon-einstein-the-fact-that-libra-stalled-reemphasizes-why-bitcoins-autonomy-is-so-important/

The war of consensus algorithms is still raging on. While some believe that only Proof-of-Work can underpin a real cryptocurrency, others think that its time passed long ago, and now it’s time for other algorithms like Proof-of-Stake.

Whichever side you are on, it would seem obvious that no consensus algorithm is perfect in its own right. Any of them has its shortcomings that its competitors lack.

To better understand PoW and criticism directed at it, we’ve had a short conversation with Roman Oleynikov, Doctor of Engineering Sciences and research fellow at Input Output HK. Below is the transcript of what Dr. Oleynikov said.

https://forklog.media/opinion-pow-will-always-be-criticized-for-inefficiency/

Telegram has been litigating with the SEC for a while now. The main question of the case is whether the sale of Gram tokens by Telegram’s TON platform is a transaction of securities. Whatever the court ruling will be, it is likely to create a significant precedent for the entire crypto-industry to deal with.

In the recent few days, at least two blockchain-focused advocacy groups addressed the federal court in New York to provide their expertise and try to aid Telegram in their fight, CoinDesk reports.

One of the documents in question was the amicus curiae brief by the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a trade association representing the digital asset and blockchain industry.

The Chamber called for “a clear legal distinction between a transaction determined to be an investment contract and the digital asset that is the subject of the investment contract.” They argued that without this line the industry participants “may not be able to develop or use blockchain technology without unintentionally triggering the U.S. federal securities laws every time a digital asset is used as part of their network.”

Another important move from the crypto-industry stakeholders was the similar brief filed by the Blockchain Association, an advocacy group formed by big crypto-companies including Coinbase, Circle, 0x, Ripple.

The Blockchain Association urged the SEC to refrain from blocking “a long-planned, highly anticipated product launch by interfering with a contract between sophisticated private parties” and stressed that the blocking would “needlessly harm the investors that securities laws were designed to protect.”

https://forklog.media/sec-vs-ton-what-blockchain-association-involvement-means/

From the moment of its inception, the Tron platform and its founder Justin Sun have garnered significant attention from news media within the crypto-industry. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for this, such as important technological releases or major acquisitions. There is also an abundance of much more controversial news hooks, surrounding the person of this Chinese entrepreneur.

Even if Justin Sun himself does not yet comment on this, there may be something of greater importance behind the recent acquisitions of technology startups worth millions of dollars than it may seem at first glance. A more careful analysis of the business empire Sun is building spawns some quite interesting theories.

https://forklog.media/justin-suns-secret-projects-or-what-lies-beneath-tron-founders-empire/

Recently, we’ve published an investigation into a large-scale Ponzi-scheme called OneCoin. The scheme had its branches in several different countries across several continents, defrauding people of billions of dollars.

The project appeared dead and its official website onecoin.eu was shut down as of November 30th, 2019. But, since January 8th, 2020, the website is back online.

It seems that the scheme is still operating, at least in New Zealand.

forklog.media puts together the latest findings regarding OneCoin’s fate, as well as a brief reminder about its notorious past.

https://forklog.media/onecoin-ponzi-scheme-scam-of-the-decade-continues-in-2020s-oceania/

Craig Wright is undoubtedly a famous if not notorious figure in the crypto-industry. The entrepreneur has been involved in several notable controversies and is one of the most polarizing celebrities for the crypto-community.

Bitcoin SV, a Bitcoin fork headed by Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre, is a similarly polarizing phenomenon.

The last few days were quite busy for Wright, as he was litigating over a case involving a stash of 1.1 million BTC they mined together with David Kleiman.

While the case is an important story in its own right, it might have also affected the recent BSV price surge that had been unexpected to many, considering the negative publicity.

On January 14th, the price of BSV started rising, reaching the level of $450 per coin on some exchanges. For comparison, in December 2019, BSV was worth around $70. Yet, as soon as Craig Wright has been proven to have no access to the stash, BSV plunged and is currently remaining below $300.

forklog.media editorial board was sent an insightful article on the matter, providing certain unintuitive and potentially unpopular opinions. Below you will find the text with a few corrections concerning wording.

https://forklog.media/opinion-bsv-may-look-more-like-joke-but-theres-more-to-it/

As it became known, the mysterious party that had transferred 124 946.6 BTC proved to be BitFinex. According to the exchange’s CTO Paolo Ardoino, the transaction was but a part of transferring 150 thousand BTC to the company’s hot wallet.

The change of address means that nobody can spend funds stored there until the transaction is fully confirmed. It took 40 minutes to get 6 confirmations in the blockchain. This created the network’s second-biggest address topped only by Huobi’s cold wallet storing 255 502 BTC.

Reports state that the transaction fee comprised 0.0096 BTC ($80), which is relatively high. Notably, the transaction data in the blockchain shows a fee of 0.00005578 BTC. For comparison, a SegWit transaction of 40 000 BTC ($230 million at the time) in May 2019 was worth 0.0001 BTC or $0.57.

BitFinex’s transaction prompted @Rhythmtrader to praise the “true power of bitcoin” that no bank could match.

The transaction in question is, of course, large and noteworthy. But, although everything may seem fine, there are alarming conclusions to make.

Why bother?

https://forklog.media/is-1-1-billion-transaction-in-bitcoin-that-big-of-a-deal/

Many OneCoin investors still believe they are taking part in the global financial revolution. Despite a slew of arrests and serious allegations mounted against the organizers of the scheme, they continue to invest, oblivious to any criticism. What started as just another Ponzi scheme has eventually evolved into the largest scam of the decade and a semblance of a religious cult that exists independently of the founder who disappeared without trace back in 2017.

OneCoin was heralded as the “Bitcoin killer” that would very soon make investors fabulously rich and bring down the unfair world order. These lofty promises were never fulfilled and investors around the world lost billions of euros.

Where did the investor money go? Did OneCoin actually have influential godfathers in the post-Soviet space? All these questions could be answered by Dr. Ruja Ignatova, the founder of the scheme.

Before her disappearance, Ignatova warned Gilbert Armenta, one of her accountants, about the danger posed by influential Russians.

“You have to be fucking careful. What these Russian guys can do you can not imagine. […] Do not use emails. Face to face or in encrypted form. Nothing else is safe. Just believe me. Please. I can get everything that I want within 24 hours. And if I can they can too,” she said in a palpably scared voice.

ForkLog delved into the intricacies of this Ponzi scheme, which has already gone down in history. Not for its revolutionary nature of course but rather for the impudence of execution and the extent of the damage inflicted.

https://forklog.media/scam-of-the-decade-the-story-of-a-doctor-of-law-who-organized-the-onecoin-ponzi-scheme-and-vanished-with-billions-of-euros/

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies draw more and more attention from regulators and politicians around the world. Governments openly pursue monitoring of transactions. They tend to restrict or ban digital currencies that make the monitoring job harder.

The most well-known example is the set of guidelines for the cryptoindustry released by the FATF. According to the document, Bitcoin exchanges and other Virtual Asset Service Provides have to observe KYC, AML, and CFT procedures like traditional finance companies. However, the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies gets in the way of observing the guidelines to the letter.

In Bitcoin and some other altcoins there are ways to implement at least some form of surveillance. But when it comes to so-called “anonymous cryptocurrencies” this isn’t exactly the case.

Several recent cases show that some trading platforms aren’t going to bother and will simply delist problematic coins. On September 30th, a large Korean exchange Upbit delisted Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), Zcash (ZEC), Haven (XHV), BitTube (TUBE), and PIVX. On October 10th, another Korean exchange OKEx did the same. In both cases, the exchanges acted because of the inability to observe FATF recommendations.

This is an interesting precedent that may have a significant influence on anonymous cryptocurrencies. Some experts suggest that mass delistings may leave such coins in oblivion.

Is it that bad?

https://forklog.media/will-monero-dash-zcash-and-other-private-coins-be-delisted/

On June 21st 2019, the FATF presented the finalized version of governing provisions for the crypto industry. The document obligates bitcoin exchanges and other “virtual asset service providers” to comply with AML and CFT procedures similarly to traditional financial companies.

At the G20 summit in Osaka, member states endorsed those recommendations, thus formally starting the process of development of regulatory frameworks that agree with them.

While most proponents of cryptocurrencies were all for introducing proper regulation, it seemed that they should have been more careful with what they wished for. When the final recommendations have been released, it came as a shock to lots of people in the industry.

https://forklog.media/playing-gotcha-with-regulators-or-what-do-fatf-recommendations-mean-for-crypto-industry/

We all keep a lot of personal information on our phones and obviously don’t want to share our correspondence, cryptocurrency wallets, or contacts to become a part of the public domain. Nonetheless, in some cases, authorities can ask you to provide full access to your device.

Is this even legal? Can you refuse to give your phone to law enforcement? How can you protect your cryptocurrency wallet?

https://forklog.media/how-to-protect-your-crypto-wallet-during-phone-search/