XRP price – Bitcoin price and Altcoins Rebound, Kakao’s KLAY Suddenly Enters Top 20; Arweave and Ankr Clinch New Record Highs

Bitcoin price is on a rebound after massive declines since the beginning of the week. Shortly after attaining highs of $60,100 on Mar. 18, Bitcoin price entered a downtrend till bulls bought the dip at $50,305. Following the quarterly Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Bitcoin and Ethereum options expiry and as the weekend approaches, investors expect Bitcoin price and Altcoins to gain ground from the current price levels.

Bitcoin leads the rest of the crypto market in a collective rebound, up by 4.50% at a present price of $54,700. Ripple (XRP) also posted gains of nearly 8% over the last 24 hours. Some selected Altcoins have posted double-digit gains including Terra (+11.39%), Holo’s HOT (+23.40%), Filecoin (+27.71%), and THORChain (+22.25%) while Arweave and Ankr clinched new record highs.

Klaytn (KLAY) is Kakao’s enterprise-grade, a service-centric platform that aims to bring a user-friendly blockchain experience to millions of users. Recent reports indicate that crypto exchange trading in South Korea is on the rise. Earlier in March, the reported volume across major platforms temporarily exceeded the market activity of the country’s stock market.

This has led many Analysts in South Korea to predicting a significant share price increase for internet giant Kakao (Kakao runs the most popular chat app in South Korea while making crypto transactions a part of their messaging app, KakaoTalk) amid the current Bitcoin bull market.

Last year September, Data indicates that Coinone, a South Korean exchange, saw its user base rise by about 10,000 people per month after listing Kakao’s Klaytn (KLAY) token in June. Fast forward to this year 2021, Klaytn (KLAY) suddenly emerges in the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap as listed by coinmarket cap.

Arweave (AR), a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data rose to all-time highs of $26.20 on Mar. 26.

The reason why Arweave (AR) is on the rise? Data storage remains a profitable business. Arweave stores data in a decentralized manner and asserts that it will be stored forever unlike centralized companies where users have to blindly accept their policies and hope the company will not go out of business and that they also use proper security measures to safeguard the data.

This is paramount during the present non-fungible token (NFT) frenzy where buyers are paying a huge amount in dollars to buy NFTs of their choice. If the NFT is misplaced or stolen due to any reason, it will incur a huge loss to the buyer. Therefore, Arweave’s claim of permanent storage may seem appealing for NFT owners.

At the time of writing, Arweave is trading at $25.13, up 25.28% in the last 24 hours and 36.12% weekly.

Filecoin, another decentralized storage system that aims to “store humanity’s most important information” has been on a tear since mid-March rallying to highs of $119. The asset has gained 28.45% in the last 24 hours and 41.66% weekly.

The Ankr network is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that aims to create an easy and affordable way for developers to deploy multiple blockchains to leverage idle computing power from devices and data centers.

Following a Coinbase listing on Mar. 25, ANKR rallied to new all-time highs of $15.24 (as seen on Binance). ANKR is up by 49.16% in the last 24 hours and 107.16% weekly as at the time of writing while trading at $0.1389.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

XRP price – Bitcoin price and Altcoins Rebound, Kakao’s KLAY Suddenly Enters Top 20; Arweave and Ankr Clinch New Record Highs Tags: XRP price

Austin-based Multicoin Capital has been around since 2017 investing in blockchain startups, cryptocurrencies and tokens with a venture fund and separate hedge fund. Today, the firm announced the raise of its second venture fund as it aims to further capitalize on rampant excitement in the crypto world. The new $100 million fund will help the company back new entrants in the space, including companies tackling DeFi, digital collectibles, Web3 and crypto-enabled infrastructure.

Multicoin’s team says that it has already been investing out of this fund for several months and it seems the timing is more aligned with the promotion of three of the firm’s employees — Matt Shapiro, Mable Jiang and John Robert Reed — to partner status. The team is just 12, but is looking to expand as they build out their remote presence in other geographies.

The firm’s previous bets include The Graph, Solana, Torus, StarkWare and Arweave, among others.

Coinbase’s direct listing alters the landscape for fintech and crypto startups

How Arweave’s Permaweb cheaply hosts sites & apps forever

Subscribe to:80 Firms Including MasterCard, Coinbase Spent $42 Mln Lobbying Crypto, Fintech Issues in Q1 Around 40 entities, including MasterCard and Coinbase, lobbied for bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain-related causes in the United States in Q1 2...Ether Price: 30% Weekly Gain Driven by Bitcoin Rally Next Stop $225? Ether rallied 30.29% this week as bulls pushed Bitcoin price from $7,400 to $10,540. Will Ether take out the $200 resistance next? from ...Chinese Cryptocurrency Mining Giant Files for $400 Million IPO in USn Crypto mining giant Canaan has filed for an initial public offering with the U.S SEC to raise $400 millionn from CryptScout #BitFeed RSS...

Crypto investment firm Multicoin Capital has launched a new fund worth $100 million, according to a Tuesday announcement.

The Venture Fund II would invest in several crypto sectors, including decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Web3 applications, and crypto infrastructure projects, said Multicoin.

Specifically, in DeFi, the fund is interested investing in projects that are building on Solana, which Multicoin invested in previously. 

Multicoin said that "there will be a burgeoning DeFi ecosystem on Solana written natively in Rust that takes advantage of Solana's performance, and plugs into Serum's composable on-chain order book."

As for NFTs, Multicoin said that it is "convinced" that virtual world projects, known by some as the Metaverse, will be a "massive" opportunity. When asked why, Kyle Samani, managing partner of Multicoin Capital, told The Block: "One of the most important trends in the world over the last 20 years has been that people spend an increasing percentage of their time online. The Metaverse represents the logical conclusion of that trend."

Besides DeFi and NFTs projects, Multicoin said it is also looking to invest in crypto-native distribution platforms for creators, gaming platforms, and Web3 infrastructure projects through its second fund.

"Over the next few years, there is going to be an incredible wave of innovation in Open Finance and Web3, as well as new kinds of crypto-enabled infrastructure and applications," said the firm. "This wave will only be possible because the underlying infrastructure has matured to a sufficient level. We expect to deploy a significant amount into these areas out of Venture Fund II over the next few years."

Multicoin's second fund was closed last November and has already made some investments, Samani told The Block, without sharing project names.

Multicoin's first fund is fully deployed, said Samani, but declined to share its size. That fund invested in more than 30 projects, including Solana, The Graph, Audius, Helium, and Arweave, as The Block Research reported recently.

Multicoin also announced that it has promoted three of its team members — Matt Shapiro, Mable Jiang, and John Robert Reed — to partners.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

After several days of price slumps, bitcoin has bounced off and neared the $55,000 level. Despite this increase, though, its market dominance has suffered as most altcoins have added more value in a day. Ethereum has jumped to $1,700, BNB is above $250 again, and Cardano has increased to $1.20.

The past several days didn’t go well for the primary cryptocurrency. Following a pro-BTC announcement from Elon Musk’s Tesla, the asset spiked to above $57,000. However, the situation sharply reversed, and bitcoin headed south vigorously.

In the next 48 hours, the cryptocurrency lost roughly $7,000 of value and even scared the bulls that it could dip beneath $50,000 for the first time since early March.

At that point, though, BTC reversed its trajectory and started slowly increasing and went to above $53,000. Although there were fears that the record-breaking $6 billion worth of options contracts that expired yesterday could plummet the price, they didn’t materialize.

Just the opposite, BTC continued its gradual ascend, which drove it to an intraday high of $55,600 (on Bitstamp). Since then, the cryptocurrency has retraced slightly and currently stands just beneath the coveted $55,000 price tag.

What’s arguably more notable is that bitcoin’s market capitalization managed to reclaim $1 trillion after a few day hiatus below it.

The altcoin market, which also suffered as its leader, has reacted well in the past 24 hours. Ethereum dropped to about $1,550 a few days ago but has bounced off nicely and currently stands around $1,700.

Binance Coin (BNB – 3%) has increased above $250, Cardano (ADA – 5%) has jumped to $1,20, and Ripple (XRP – 2.5%) is at $0.55. Polkadot and Uniswap have gained the most from the top ten. DOT is up by 6% to above $32, while UNI (6.1%) has neared $29.

THETA is the only top ten coin in the red after a 7% retracement on a 24 hours scale. Interestingly, the team behind the project said that it will delay the mainnet launch with a few months earlier this week.

Further gains are evident from Filecoin (40%), AscendEX Token (37%), Holo (32%), Nervos Network (21%), Ankr (20%), Voyager Token (20%), Arweave (19%), and more.

The rising altcoins have managed to reduce BTC’s market capitalization to 59.4%. Just a few days ago, the metric comparing bitcoin’s market cap with all other crypto assets was above 62%.

Source

Solana and CryptoLocally are forging ahead in their common aim of providing a decentralised platform for users. The listing of Sol on the CryptoLocally platform will enable peer-to-peer (P2P) trading of the highly sought-after cryptocurrency.

CryptoLocally is fast becoming one of the go-to platforms for trading of decentralised cryptos such as SOL. The tokens that are listed here are part of the CryptoLocally goal of providing a compelling trading experience for its users. 

Solana is a leading platform for Dapps and provides open-source decentralised finance solutions. The listing on CryptoLocally will enable both projects to gain more exposure to clients across the globe. 

A brief introduction to Solana 

Solana is a high-performance blockchain created by professionals from the world’s leading companies, such as: Apple, Google, Intel, and Microsoft. Top Cryptocurrency projects are choosing to build on Solana and these include: Waves, Swipe, Arweave, and Serum, among many others. 

Solana leverages the permissionless nature of Blockchain to enable the building of DApps on its platform. Innovations on Solana allow transaction speeds of 50,000 TPS, which make it: 

“the most performant blockchain and the world’s first web-scale decentralized network.” 

Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-founder of Solana Labs. 

The Solana blockchain hybrid protocol reduces transaction validation and smart contract execution considerably. The lightning-fast transaction and processing times are not only attracting individual user interest, but that of institutions as well. 

CryptoLocally – a trusted P2P trading platform 

The fact that CryptoLocally has no intermediaries for users to deal with, makes it the ideal, trusted P2P trading platform. CryptoLocally’s radical Smart Contract Escrow system enables users of the platform to buy and sell 20 varied and popular Cryptocurrencies with fiat currency – an excellent and cheaper alternative option to centralised exchanges such as Coinbase. 

Buyers and sellers can employ any means they choose in order to make transactions, whether that be peer-to-peer, payment processors, or bank transfers.  

A decentralised, peer-to-peer and fiat onramp, CryptoLocally might be considered the perfect platform to enable traders to buy the likes of SOL tokens in a decentralised way that obviates the need for a third party. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. 

Article source

”, Real Soon Now. I’ll certainly wait until that materialises and has been used for a while before I dip in to NFTs.

I’d recommend DSHR’s blog for good posts on this kind of security related thing (he’s also the author of LOCKSS, Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe, so he definitely knows what he’s talking about). This piece might be interesting to you: https://blog.dshr.org/2021/04/nfts-and-web-archiving.html .

Sorry that I’ve sounded a bit down on the idea. Hype, pyramid scams, pump and dump schemes etc always worry me, and it seems more likely than not that NFTs fit in that general class. Nevertheless, I do applaud you for trying this out. I see some healthy signs of scepticism in your article, and I look forward to further articles on how the whole process has gone, and what you feel about it.

(PS, I am NOT an expert on crypto, or NFTs, but I do know quite a lot about the issues involved in sustaining digital objects over the long term, having in the past been the Director of the UK’s Digital Curation Centre for 5 years.)

Dear Chris,

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment – we really appreciate it. This is exactly the kind of conversation we were hoping to have, i.e: are NFTs real, are there real opportunities here, what are those opportunities (if any) or if not – why not, what are the problems?

I take your points about decentralisation and the environment. Decentralisation is why we’ve stuck to Ethereum rather than a cheaper, smaller (more centralised) chain, despite the cost. There are still issues with Ethereum but hopefully layer 2 and Eth 2 / proof-of-stake will both deliver on their promises and that includes environmental ones. The latest timeline for that change seems to be end of 2021 / early 2022 – but who knows really.

On the other hand, the issue of NFT permanence is a huge one. The excellent article you linked to references IPFS as an option, and also points out a lot of issues with it. We’ve chosen to use Opensea.io for the auction which has longevity in the space, and we’ve also put our NFT files on Arweave as our alternate solution to IPFS. It’s not perfect and there are risks that the links will break if the Arweave project fails, but I think it’s an honest attempt to grapple with the issue and seems credible. (I’m 100% no expert on either Arweave or IPFS – that’s just my impression from reading around). Given your expertise in digital curation I wonder what you think!? Actually – I have many questions anyway about all our digital photography files. How do you store yours?

The final point about permanence is actually one of the reasons we were interested in film photography and NFTs in the first place. At the end of the day the photos are tangible assets that underpin the NFT, and that is (almost) unique at this point in the market. Most of the NFTs currently sold are purely digital art or gaming tokens. Of course some of our images are also digital, but they are still ultimately intended to be printed and displayed. If a buyer ever lost a link for whatever reason, the photographer could replace that digital object with a signed print and that would still have value. It may not make sense when you follow the logic underpinning NFTs through in the first place, but anyway I think that makes film photography a particularly interesting NFT proposition. Really though, at this point it’s all just exploration, discussion and supposition – hence the article!

Thank you again for taking the time to engage with the discussion. We will definitely give an update on what happens with the auction, and even it’s absolutely nothing – at the very least we hope it’s useful / interesting for the 35mmc community to have some exposure to these ideas and conversations.

I am 71 years old and haven’t got a clue, what NFT and Blockchain is! I have shot loads of film on numerous cameras, since the 1060’s. Unfortunately. Your introduction, might as well be in Servo Croat,. Please make articles legible for us morons.

Sorry! We get it – this isn’t for everyone. Come back for tomorrow’s article on 35mmc.com – it’s bound to make more sense.

I have many thought on this but Chris has covered most of them already. I would like to add comments mostly for sellers.

NFT seems like a great scheme for artists to sell their wares and there’s been some particular sales highlighted in the media. They are special cases. For the average seller, beware.

You are effectively selling a pointer to where the item currently lives. Do you want to have to maintain that item in that location until the end of time? How much is that going to cost you? What happens to your reputation as a seller when that item is no longer available?

For buyers, make sure you take a copy and keep it safe if you want it long term. But don’t show it to anyone or they can save a copy too. All you really own is a pointer to something that might still exist.

It’s a pyramid scheme that seems interesting at first glance and will make a few people rich but is unlikely to be viable in the longterm.

Thanks Peter. I think the issue of where the item lives (usually not on the blockchain) is a real problem. I wonder if you’ve looked at the permanent storage solutions like Arweave, and if so what you think of them?

Just to flesh out the issue of seller obligations – most of the auction platforms host the files themselves – for example Opensea.io hosts the photos that we’ve uploaded, plus we’ve added them to the permaweb so they will exist as long as Opensea.io exists (one of the oldest players in the space) and as long as the Arweave project works (currently aiming for 200+ years of online storage). There is no ongoing obligation to us to host the file at all – that’s been covered. Both those solutions can break of course, but there is redundancy and we’re not relying on our own resources any more.

I’m not sure what you mean about the issue of “not showing it to anyone or they can save a copy too”. Anyone can screen-shot the images – just like you take take photos of prints in a gallery. In exactly the same way as a picture taken in a gallery though, a screenshot of a photo does not mean that you own it. It’s the connection between the digital signature, which lives on the blockchain, and the file, which as you say should live somewhere permanent, that makes the ownership valid. That cannot be copied – the idea is that it’s as permanent as the blockchain and your storage solution. Think about physical signed prints and the comparision is still valid. What is a seller’s obligation to make sure the buyer stores their photo in archival conditions? What is the seller’s obligation if the buyer damages the print with light, mould or water? What if the buyer loses the print? There are no obligations on the seller in those cases, and the same goes for NFTs.

These are extremely early days but there are solutions to these issues proposed. I would gently challenge your assertion that it’s all a pyramid scheme. Why do you say that? The sale of bulk-created digital images that cost nothing to make and sell for thousands of dollars is definitely suspect. The sale of legitimate work (music, art, photos) by the creators of that art seems different. I think of the space like very early eBay. It’s the wild west, uncomfortable to use and there are scams around, but as the space matures I wonder what will happen. We don’t know of course, but this discussion is fun to have and interesting. As a group we’re fundamentally curious and experimental and this meets both those criteria.

Thank you for your thoughts!

Thanks for your reply, it’s an interesting but complex topic.

Regarding permanent storage, yes it’s an interesting problem. I haven’t looked at any potential solutions. I wouldn’t trust a promise that a file will be stored safely for 200 years. Also, I would not trust that the technology to view a jpeg file will still exist in future? File standards come and go, support for them gets dropped over time. I have plenty of backups of files that are now readable (available and uncorrupted) but are effectively unusable because viewers no longer support that version of the standard. It’s not all necessarily backward compatible so even if the file does still exist will may be able to view it? It makes me wonder about the need for reformatting etc in future. Do the NFT websites discuss that? I haven’t looked (yet).

Re not showing anyone, I’ve seen people post a copy of the art they just paid for as an NFT linked image. Anyone can then save a copy. Sure those people wouldn’t have a receipt but does having a receipt really mean anything. That’s what I meant, don’t show anyone. It makes me wonder about the point of it all.

Re Pyramid/Ponzi schemes, I think it was TOM answered that already. I’m in agreement with that reply and so won’t add further comment (yet) 🙂

All that said, perhaps it’s another means of supporting a favourite artist, a bit like Patreon. I’m not sure the economics quite work due to the costs pushing prices up. When you said images generated for no cost and sell for thousands, it made me wonder, but really there is a commission applied by the agent, so are they really zero cost? I need to read up on it and check some numbers to actually understand the costs of selling, but it seems the costs are a bit high to make it a competitor for things like Patreon.

I’ve seen a couple of people call NFTs a pyramid scheme now. Can anyone explain how/why that would be the case? A lot of this goes over my head, but I understand the concept of a pyramid scheme and I can’t see how that applies here…?

Hi Hamish,

The lads here have paid their hundred bucks to join the scheme and now they need to sell a token that points to a web page that hosts a copy of a scan of their photograph in order to make their ‘money’ back. If they want to create more NFTs to make more ‘money’ they need to spend more. It’s a pyramid scheme because the folks charging for all these transactions are taking real cash out of the system while inflating the value of the coins within the blockchain. If the value of the coins collapses the people who really lose out are the last ones to have joined the scheme. Their coins are worth nothing, and when they try to claim their ‘art’ they find out they own a token on a fancy database that says they own nothing.

This is a great discussion and thank you for adding this comment. I fundamentally agree that your first sentence summarises the way most NFTs work at the moment. I wonder why you put the word ‘money’ in quotation marks though? ‘Money’ makes it sound fake – but we spent a real $100! If we can sell these photos then we can make real money from them – we’ve been very upfront about that point and that is why we’re curious about the opportunities here. Spending money up front to create a product then trying to sell it for profit is pretty unremarkable. Certainly not a scam.

The issue, of course, is the product and the platform. The platforms are making a ton of money and most creators aren’t – that’s all laid out in the article we linked to under “risks”.

It’s here: -nfts-and-here-are-some-graphs-to-prove-it-c65718d4a1b8

Again, that seems pretty common when you look at places like Blurb, Amazon self-publishing etc etc etc – most creators struggle to make money, and most amateur photographers just give away their photos on Instagram. So while I agree it’s a risk, I’m not sure it’s a pyramid scheme.

So far, then, we have creators paying to make a product and platforms profiting off people’s belief they can sell things. Very normal.

The product and the coins are two different issues, as they are both new and untested.

The product we’ve discussed above. It needs to live somewhere permanent. There are solutions to this issue that are untested but seem plausible.

One of the major issues when discussing the product is the way people imagine they will be held and used. The two common scenarios at present are paying millions of dollars for celebrity faff, or paying hundreds of dollars for digital game tokens or cryptokitties or something. What we’re discussing though, is photography – specifically photos made by non-famous people. How much can these possibly be worth? There’s an aspect here of supporting emerging artists that is more like the Patreon model than the Beeple model. If someone overseas wants to support a person’s photography – say buy buying one of our photos (or your photos) but doesn’t want you to ship them a print – they really have no option other than making a donation. Well – once the environmental issues are solved – what about buying an NFT? Especially if it lives on the permaweb. It’s a new kind of transaction and it might suit some people. Might it not?

The coins themselves are completely different. Yes, they are highly volatile, highly speculative and largely untested in the real world. A few, however, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, do propose real-world uses that go beyond simple speculation. These are in total contrast to something like Dogecoin, which really has no foundation underpinning it at all and is identical to gambling. The thing is that you can exchange coins for money and vice versa. There’s no need to hold them and pray. Just sell your product for whatever you want and then exchange the value into your local currency.

Without going into the philosophy around if money can ever be considered real I put ‘money’ in quotes because, despite the name, I do not consider cryptocurrency to be a currency in any real sense. It’s an energy-intensive investment vehicle that relies on a steady influx of actual currency and computer calculations to keep the value up. NFTs are an additional layer to the bottom of the cryptocurrency pyramid. All power to your elbow on trying to sell a token that points to your work on there but don’t bet the farm on it. Looking at the China news today and the subsequent value crash tells me everything I need to know. Did your art just get devalued or the token you were given in exchange for it?

Thank you! I think we’re pretty much on the same page here. The tokens / “coins” are not yet currency (though they could be in time) but it is pretty easy to exchange coins for “real” money. I guess my take is that it’s a bit like your house price. You exchange money for a house, which means you own something of value, but when you want to exchange that back into money you are exposed to market forces and your asset may have appreciated or depreciated. Same with NFTs – but the market is much more volatile. Certainly tokens are not a safe store of value as yet so if you do sell a photo and you want to keep the money then best cash out into fiat (“real”) money asap.

I think though, one of the aspects of NFTs that appealed to us has been that the costs to the seller are relatively low. To sell a physical signed print or zine at the moment (and I appreciate the comparison is not perfect for reasons of permanence that we discussed in other replies) is pretty expensive to the photographer. You need to either print-on-demand, ship it to yourself, sign it, then ship to the customer OR you have to hold stock.

To offer an NFT (digitally-signed file) to an audience who already likes and is interested in NFTs is not very expensive really – it cost us about $25 / each up front. There’s no further costs no matter how many other photos we offer. There will be costs incurred if there is a sale and there are traps there for the unwary, but at least you’re at the point of a sale for a minimal outlay. That’s not prohibitive in my book – and no, I DEFINITELY would not bet the farm on this. No way. Agree with you completely on that.

The final point here is why have this discussion now, when so many issues remain with the technology? There are a few reasons:

1. It’s relevant – there is lots of talk about NFTs now, so people are interested 2. Solutions to the issues of environmental impact and permanence are coming – sooner or later – and it’s nice to look at the problems so we can, as a community, be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the solutions as they emerge 3. The traps and risks are real – and we should talk about them so that people don’t accidentally bet the farm on this stuff.

Thanks for replying : ) Chris

Crypto currencies rely on people sustaining the value of that currency by belief that they will make a profit if they buy and sell it. Although we’ve seen Bitcoin/Ethereum gain ‘value’ through this process there’s every chance in the future that a cryptocurrency could crash. So only people who get in, sell at a profit and get out are safe, like early investors in a pyramid scheme. If you add how much more difficult Bitcoin is to mine now compared to early on in it’s cycle you can add another simililarity.

When people talk about NFT’s on top of that, minting NFTs is a greater set cost with no guaranteed return. Of course, there are profits to be made – it isn’t impossible to sell big – but the gold rush of NFTs is dying down. So the people selling entry to the NFT club are the only people guaranteed to make money (digital shovels!). What’s Ponzi like about this is that in reality returns are diminishing, but the dream of NFT (get rich quick) is being sold to all comers by gatekeepers – who only charge a small fee with the promise of great reward.

There’s an argument that any currency relies on trust, and all currencies can fail. This is true – money is a mass suspension of belief, this piece of paper stands in for value, says the US Treasury/Queen, and we take that as given every day. But no-one is telling me that I have to pay to play, or adding an extra level of complexity by switching currency format in the hope that my luck holds and that someone else can carry the can when I cash out. Also, we can judge the environmental cost of commerce via the transaction. The environmental cost of calculating a blockchain has the potential to snowball as the calculations become more complex. A faint reassurance of ‘we’re working on it, it’ll be fine’ doesn’t really cut it for me.

Interesting, thanks Tom!

Thanks Tom. I think the big picture is that you’re right, certainly historically (ie: crypto’s only value was what people believed it to be) but these days there are real-world uses coming in which changes the market. People talk about “Web 3.0” which is a really interesting idea that has real-world implications way beyond money gambling / speculation. That’s all I really know about it and high levels of skepticism seem pretty reasonable – but there’s probably something useful hiding under all the hype and nonsense.

No doubt there are a huge cohort of people trying to “get rich quick” off NFTs – but that group certainly aren’t writing conversation-starter articles on 35mmc : )

I think we can agree the environmental concerns are real. Much like in the real world, these seem to be being ignored and addressed across a wide spectrum from “she’ll be right” through to “credible plan to address them”. My opinion is that Ethereum has a credible plan that is coming soon – but I could be wrong. Skepticism is also warranted and I agree with you on that.

I’m not sure though that I agree that “we can judge the environmental cost of commerce via the transaction” under the current system. Again – in what manner are all our supermarkets, Amazon, eBay, etc transparent and accountable for their environmental impacts? Variably. If we could all just transition to renewable energy then we could do alot of things – especially blockchain – without much impact at all.

Anyway – I think we’re all pretty close in these comments so far. Skeptical and curious enough to learn a bit – clearly. We’ve fallen out on different sides of “is this worth it” – but that’s ok. The only thing Pixels and Grain have done is give it some light by putting an experiment out there for discussion. This is great!

Let’s keep talking. – Chris

There’s nothing behind bitcoin either. It’s ‘value’ is inflated by hype and artificial scarcity. Sure it’s hard & costly (in electricity and environmental impact) to create each new one but it’s the artificial limit on the number of tokens that makes them scarce. Multiply the number of bitcoins by the supposed value of them, there isn’t that much actual cash in the system. It’s just trading and speculation, It all feels too much like the tulip craze & the tech bubble. FOMO leading people to make irrational decisions about perceived value.

Sure… but there’s nothing much to gold either other than the fact it’s hard and costly (in effort and environmental impact) to create each new bar and there’s a real limit on the amount of gold available that makes it scarce. Plus it’s a stable metal. I mean – you can’t eat it, or grow it and it’s not even great at making useful things.

But I take your point. There’s a lot of FOMO and irrational decision making around, especially at the moment.

re gold, agreed. It’s good to be cautious when everyone is saying buy, buy, buy, but it will be interesting to see what happens. Perhaps the issues can be resolved and, like you said, it is still early days…. It’s a great discussion so far, really interesting and making me think hard about my concerns and whether they are valid 🙂

I would argue against gold having “nothing much” to it. Bitcoin is intellectually fabricated and can only be used in trading value of bitcoin for something more tangible, like gold. Gold, is part of us (literally) and is important in electronics, science experiments, and more historically jewelry. All of these things are unimportant in a nihilistic view of life. Sure we could use other metals in place of gold, but they are often as rare.

Cryptocurrency, like money created from interest, is imaginary just like the price of gold. But clearly, gold is something useful to manufacturers and science.

I’ve had a few friends sell some NFTs. I appreciate the idea of cryptocurrency and have a small amount invested in it. I stream music and movies out of convenience and a minimalist uncluttered approach to life. However, if I buy an image as a piece of artwork, be it a photography, a painting, or even a digitally created file, I want to hang it on my wall as a physical/tangible object. I honestly just can’t wrap my head around the idea of owning a .jpg file. I don’t mean any offense in this post. I shoot film/Polaroids because I love the process and tangible results. I type my personal letters on a typewriter. I pull my espresso with an old school lever machine. I make my own belts and wallets out of leather. My partner makes almost all of her clothes and most of mine on a sewing machine. I still make and sell physical prints of my photographs from the darkroom. The joy of selling a framed and matted photograph I printed with my hands will always win over selling a .jpg I sold on the internet.

Thank you Duncan! I agree with everything you say, of course. To love film photography is to love tangible things.

I think our interest in NFTs is not to REPLACE something we currently do and love, but to see if there’s something NEW that could add to the hobby. For many people it might be a hard “no thank you”. Maybe even for us! (Hence the experiment – to try and see).

There clearly ARE some people in the world who appreciate NFTs though, that’s been proven. What we’re interested in is not converting those of us who love tangible things into loving NFTs, but to ask the question: can we offer something of value to people who ALREADY love NFTs?

If you think of the people who bought NFTs off your friends – do you think they’d buy a jpeg of a photo off you? If yes – would you sell? If they wouldn’t – why not? I think those are interesting questions.

Kind regards, Chris

[…] Read – 35mmc: NFT’s? Can you sell analog/vintage camera photos on a Blockchain? […]

Why is an NFT sale better than a normal sale? From reading the provided links, I’d make more money by not using NFTs.

Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz recently led a $5 million funding round for Arweave, a blockchain firm thats developing permanent online data storage solutions. The firm, founded by Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreesseen, has been one of the most active mainstream investors in the space with a dedicated $350 million fund launched last year. This funding round is led by Andreessen Horowitzs a16z Crypto division. Other major investors include Multicoin Capital and Union Square Ventures.Established in 2017 by Sam Williams, Arweaves main goal is to permanentlyhost data, web-based applications and pages via its so-called permaweb. Theinvestment will reportedly be used to help the company in promotion, outreachand adoption efforts. Arweaves new partners have joined the companys othersupporters, which include Arrington XRP Capital, early stage token fund 1kxs ChristopherHeymann and Lasse Clausen, and the Techstars global network. Cryptocurrency to have the most impact in the world While bitcoin is still the most popular use case for blockchain technology, AndreessenHorowitz general partner and co-head of the crypto fund Chris Dixon said he stronglybelieves cryptocurrency could have the most impact in the world. If this works the way we hope it does, it will be a new way to buildstart-up; You can build social networks and marketplaces using a lot of theseconcepts that have pretty profound business and social societal implications. Chris Dixon, Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz participated in 14 funding rounds with a total value ofroughly $850 million last year, according to Crunchbase. This year, the venturecapital firm is said to have backed five deals with a total value just over $75million.Last month, the firm announced the launchof a Crypto Startup School aimed to help entrepreneurs looking to developcryptocurrency projects. How useful was this post? Click on a star to rate it! Average rating 5 / 5. Vote count: 1 Michael.TSoftbank Bullish Despite 6.5 Billion LossSwiss Crypto Bank Sygnum Gets Singapore Banking LicenceMore from CryptoSIM-Swap victim sues Bittrex for $1 MillionCraig Wright Breaks Settlement Agreement, Billion Dollar Lawsuit ContinuesMore from StartupSwiss Crypto Bank Sygnum Gets Singapore Banking LicenceUber Lost Another $1.1 Billion In Third Quarter 2019

The cryptocurrency community is buzzing with reports and tweets about the prices. Bitcoin is frequently marking fresh yearly highs. Even the 2019 record of nearly $14,000 was taken down and seems far behind.

Just yesterday, the primary cryptocurrency gained about $1,500 of value in 24 hours. As something similar occurred precisely three years ago, before the all-time high of $20,000, it got the community speculating and anticipating a new record.

Although most alternative coins were late to the party, it seems that they have finally joined as well. Ethereum has surged to above $430, Ripple trades over $0.25, while coins such as Chainlink and Litecoin have marked double-digit price increases in the past 24 hours alone.

Ultimately, the total market capitalization has added over $60 billion in less than a week. The cumulative market cap of all cryptocurrency assets displayed $386 billion on November 3rd. As of writing these lines, it has neared $450 billion – the highest level since May 2018.

Despite the aforementioned impressive price performances, not all coins are equal. In fact, there’re several well-known names within the community that haven’t gained as much, and some are even deep in red.

CoinGecko data reveals that Arweave leads this negative trend from the top 100 coins. Actually, its 17.5% decline in the past week has threatened AR’s position in the top 100.

Huobi Token is next with a 14% decrease. The native cryptocurrency of the popular exchange has suffered lately, primarily due to controversy related to Huobi.

Reports recently emerged that the company’s COO was under investigation. Although Huobi denied the accusations immediately, it seems that the token’s price has felt the consequences.

Other notable losers from the past week include Crypto.com Coin (-12.7%), Yearn.Finance (-11.2%), and Nexus Mutual (-10%).

Even coins from the top 10 have lost some traction in the past week. Bitcoin Cash, which could undergo a hard fork later this month, has lost 4.7%. Binance Coin has also declined a bit by 3.4%, and it trades below $30.

BTC/USD is trading at $10,517 after plummeting towards $10,296 following a breakout of the U.S. dollar.  ETH/USD had a massive 12% crash and has only recovered slightly, currently trading at $348. XRP/USD has established a new monthly low at $0.2295 as bulls are struggling to defend the critical $0.23 support level. The entire crypto market suffered today erasing more than $22 billion in total market capitalization. Ethereum alone managed to delete $4 billion of its mcap in just a few hours after a tremendous drop. Bitcoin is also down 4% while XRP is down 6%. Only 8 cryptos out of 100 are in green today with the biggest loser being Celo followed by Aave and Arweave. The recent drop also came followed by a notable increase in trading volume from an average of $106 billion to a current peak of $130 billion indicating that bears are quite strong in the short-term. The rise in the U.S. dollar also affected European and U.S. stocks with the S&P 500 dropping 1% after an extremely weak open.   BitFlyer, one of the biggest Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges has now integrated PayPal deposits into its platform. Andy Bryant, COO of BitFlyer Europe stated:  Information on these pages contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Markets and instruments profiled on this page are for informational purposes only and should not in any way come across as a recommendation to buy or sell in these assets. You should do your own thorough research before making any investment decisions. FXStreet does not in any way guarantee that this information is free from mistakes, errors, or material misstatements. It also does not guarantee that this information is of a timely nature. Investing in Open Markets involves a great deal of risk, including the loss of all or a portion of your investment, as well as emotional distress. All risks, losses and costs associated with investing, including total loss of principal, are your responsibility. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of FXStreet nor its advertisers. The pioneer digital currency hit a new multi-year high at $16,491 and settled above the critical resistance of $16,000. At the time of writing, BTC/USD is changing hands at $16,350. 

It’s certainly been a Merry Crypto Christmas and a Happy New Bitcoin Year for hodlers ‘going long’ (as Arya Stark’s actress might agree.)

We had some incredible stats on the Iconomi fund, if you’re a part of that.

And now… we have a healthy correction for what was clearly unsustainable in the short-term.

Did you sell at peak, to buy the dip? Who cares? for… hopefully you’re not wasting your time trying to time the market, but may have some spare cash simply to buy up more.

And if prices slip too far down, you can continue ‘dollar cost averaging’ again.

However, it’s not likely this will happen again. Too much interest and too many converging influences on the market.

During this recent, terrific start to 2021, I read some article by a guy who was well pleased with himself for leaving the Bitcoin market and taking his profits, admittedly at (quite) a good time. But we’ve all been there. It’s funny, what a focus on short-time price and hope, will make people miss out on.

You see, this guy actually believes he won’t be back for more. The rabbit-hole I mean. The Crypto Ship. And I really wonder about how many real gains he will miss out this year, overall.

Because, there is only one elite crew of real winners on board the true, trusty crypto ship: the Patient Ones. The ones who are working to create a new landscape for money. The builders and explorers of web3. The ones catching and hodling many small-fish tokens and never letting them go.

So let the idea of trading crypto just… go. And you’ll be wiser and happier.

Bitcoin is proving itself to be a hedge in uncertain times, of which there are many to come, and technological adoption is also starting. Infrastructure and young, interoperable networks are also waking up.

When faced with a runaway Bitcoin price, hodlers everywhere are (hopefully) starting to answer their own questions more and more, as to why they are hodling… This might be you!

Perhaps you realise how awesomely liquid Bitcoin is, and how scarce it’s becoming.

Perhaps you realise how integral it is to the entire emerging crypto ecosystem.

You might realise you’re v. tired of banks, full stop. The delays, the freezing of funds, the many log-in codes etc, the patronising and dependence on intermediaries to ‘do a good job’ with your money. (That’s ok, most of us have – or will have – our Revolut accounts, Monolith card, or other crypto VISA top-up cards, for now.)

Not to mention the hypocrisy about laundering and corruption, where banks ‘lose’ hefty sums every year.

You realise that the ‘legendary’ volatility is only a temporary, short-term aspect of Bitcoin (and not as bad as most other cryptos), which hasn’t affected its long-term growth, and usually bounces back – v. nicely. Many assets including gold are highly volatile too by the way. But Bitcoin will be more than gold, which remains largely irrelevant to most non-ostentatious folk.

Perhaps you can’t stand the ‘concerned’ bodies like the FCA ‘advising you’ and apparently ‘protecting’ innocent little investors from disrupting their old system. Apparently, you must be prepared to ‘lose all your money’ investing in cryptocurrency. In fact, this year, you could lose all your money in a bank.

And, you just realise how much passive income you can make with your crypto, compared to traditional instruments. That’s called De-Fi by the way.

Or you realise you are in love with the technology, and the innovation Bitcoin has incited, and will not be separated from it merely by short-term price fluctuation.

Welcome on board, in fact… to Ade’s Crypto Press, and another year of secretive, sporadic insight from ‘down the rabbit hole’. Follow along and get the odd update. Here, we see right through mainstream media articles, although many of them are getting more readable, strangely.

And many secrets are more widely known, and they will continue to spread like a virus affecting all parts of the old financial order in 2021.

Web3 is coming, and no, it won’t be chilly at all…

Jan 2021. Uploaded to Arweave.

PS: Coins to watch in 2021 include Ethereum and Blockstack. And no, this is not ‘professional’ financial advice. This is crypto financial advice, which assumes you are starting to take responsibility for your own ‘money’!

Developers behind the cryptocurrency monero are ramping up efforts to keep specialized mining hardware from dominating its race for rewards.Of the coins that have a strong privacy focus, monero launched in 2014 possesses the largest market capitalization by far with an estimated. The annual mining rewards generated by the now 5-year-old blockchain total roughly $62 million, according to data site .But such rewards appear to be increasingly falling into the hands of ASIC operators, nudging out smaller, independent or hobbyist participants. To keep an even playing field, monero developers have conducted to stave off ASICs but analysis suggests that this approach has proven ineffectiveand that ASICs are keeping ahead of such efforts.ASIC manufacturers can make equipment far faster than we expected, said monero contributor Justin Ehrenhofer. It takes maybe a month for them to have chips designed and in production so they generally can still make a return on investment even within a six month period.Diego Salazar, another monero contributor, told CoinDesk:We [also] saw that this was very unsustainable. It takes a lot to keep [hard forking] again and again for one. For two, it may decentralize mining but it centralizes in another area. It centralizes on the developers because now theres a lot of trust in developers to keep hard forking.As such, monero developers are moving forward with activation of a new mining algorithm known as RandomX, designed to render ASICs non-competitive.The new code is based off CTO and founder of computer software firm Symas Corporation who also developed the database type the monero blockchain presently runs on. Four different audits of the RandomX code are now being completed for an expected code freeze date by July.As it stands, the algorithm could go live in October.Weve ultimately come to consensus in general that RandomX is what will be implemented. Its our best shot to preserve monero as it was founded, said Ehrenhofer. If this fails then monero will probably move to an ASIC-friendly algorithm.According to Salazar, RandomX is moneros last ditch effort to keep ASICs out.Putting CPUs at the foreRandomX according to Chu is designed to be CPU-centric.As opposed to application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), central processing units (CPUs) are a type of computer hardware designed for multi-purpose use.Calling it a spectrum of computing power, Salazar explained:On one end, where computers are a jack of all trades are the CPUs On the other end, computers which does only one thing but extremely well are ASICs.CPUs are the most widely distributed computing resource in the world, according to Chu.Practically everyone in the world now has a smart phone in their pocket with a CPU and memory thats capable of mining RandomX, highlighted Chu.With maximum miner decentralization as the goal, Chu predicts that RandomX will preserve an advantageous lead favoring CPU miners over ASICs for at least the next three to five years.Leaving GPUs behindAt the same time, estimates suggest the RandomX algorithm favors CPU miners over not only ASIC miners but GPU miners as well.Graphics processing units (GPUs) are optimized for what Chu calls a graphics workload which tends to be very sequential.Data goes in at the head of the pipeline and you do some munching on it and it all spits out at the end of the pipeline, Chu said. The main emphasis there is fast transfers of data from the input to the output, pretty much in a straight line.For moneros current mining algorithm, called CryptoNight, GPU miners take the lead over CPUs in terms of computation and energy efficiency. Originally, however, even CryptoNight was intended to boost CPU performance over other types of hardware.Its really again kind of an accident of fate that [CryptoNight] turned out to work fairly well on GPUs. Nobody expected CryptoNight to be good on GPUs and it was anyways, explained Chu. The fact is today GPUs have so much memory and so much massive memory bandwidth that its not very much of an obstacle when it comes to CryptoNight, which was designed back in 2013 or so.Soon, with the activation of RandomX, Chu predicts CPUs to be at least three times better than GPUs at mining on the monero blockchain.And while this has disgruntled a very vocal but extremely small minority of GPU miners, Ehrenhofer maintains that people with GPUs can always either resell or repurpose their hardware.If I have a monero ASIC, I dont have that same economic option available, said Ehrenhofer.As such, despite the impact RandomX will have on not only ASIC miners but also GPU miners on the monero network, Ehrenhofer maintains:Im not concerned about a community split here because RandomX is the closest algorithm that we can pick that retains a vast majority of moneros ideals.Lingering concernsPerhaps a more realistic concern in the mind of Ehrenhofer and others is the proliferation of botnets on the monero network as a result of a CPU-friendly mining algorithm like RandomX.The basic concern is theres millions or hundreds of millions of computers that are out there that are poorly secured, explained Chu. Its very easy for malware to invade these computers and take them over to do whatever a particular network operator wants to do.Such botnets, infected by malware, havealways been somewhat of an issue on monero, according to Ehrenhofer.Monero is by far the most illicitly mined cryptocurrency at the moment and it has been for several years, Ehrenhofer said. RandomX does not prevent people from crypto-jacking and other nefarious versions of malware.Indeed, given that moneros present mining algorithm CryptoNight has always favored CPU and GPU mining,Ehrenhofer notes that there are resources in place on the monero website and other related forums to help users whos devices are impacted.New partnershipsEven still, efforts to bootstrap RandomX have seen support from those outside of the community, particularly by other crypto projects that might make use of CPU-friendly mining algorithm.Arweave, which raised a reported $8.7 million in an initial coin offering (ICO), is testing RandomX.An ASIC-resistant proof-of-work algorithm like RandomX will further enhance our permanent, low-cost, tamper-resistant storage network, said Sam Williams, founder and CEO at Arweave, from earlier this month. RandomX helps us ensure that power over the decentralized content policies in the Arweave network remains well distributed across many globally distributed parties.To this, Arweave has funded one of the four audits over the RandomX code.Completed officially on , the audit was estimated to cost roughly $80,000. CEO and co-founder Dan Guido later affirmed to CoinDesk the final cost for Arweave was actually $28,000.Speaking to CoinDesk in an interview, Williams explained:It was one of our hopes going into the audit process that by helping to fund it we could do a small public service by making sure other [crypto] projects can see there is a programmatic proof-of-work algorithm that is likely ASIC-resistant in practice without fear of security.The other three audits totaling $130,000 that are still to be finalized by security firms Kudelski Security, X41 D-Sec, and QuarksLabwere funded through crowd-sourced donations from the monero community. They are expected to wrap up by July, according to Chu.The next step after that is an eventual launch of the algorithm on a public monero test network before a tentatively scheduled mainnet activation this October.Risky businessFor all the discussion that has gone into preparing RandomX for a mainnet implementation, Ehrenhofer maintains that the true benefits of RandomX wont be certain until its live on the network.We dont know if RandomX will work yet even if all the audits come back and they say your cryptography is pretty good. We dont know in practice how things will actually turnout, warnedEhrenhofer.But the worst-case scenario inEhrenhofersmind if the algorithm proves to be unsuccessful is a switch to an ASIC-friendly mining algorithm similar to the one currently utilized by bitcoin.I think if RandomX does fail and monero switches to something more ASIC-friendly, many in the bitcoin community will tell us, I told you so. Ehrenhofer joked.Even so, Salazar maintains that monero should have the runway to try new things and fail at them.Isnt the idea to see whats going to work best so that one day we can have a good digital, private, fungible cryptocurrency? Salazar asked. If monero is not but a stepping stone to get to that good currency then by all means let monero be the lost leader.Salazar concluded:The monero people are nothing if not resilient nerds that decide to take on the man. So we said, You know what? Lets give this a go, one last ditch effort.Monero miner image via CoinDesk archives

After dropping 13% yesterday, bitcoin is once again on the ascent. Meanwhile, Janet Yellen has offered a more nuanced view of crypto and small Ethereum mining pools are organizing a campaign against a potential network upgrade.

Miners revolt! Eight Ethereum mining pools amounting to around 30% of the network’s hash power have formed a quasi-cartel to push back against a proposed blockchain update that would reduce their mining fees. Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559, floated by Vitalik Buterin, would burn mining fees to help reduce transaction cost volatility. While larger mining pools, like BitFly, F2Pool and Sparkpool, are ambivalent about the upgrade, smaller miners are calling to nix EIP 1559, according to CoinDesk tech reporter Will Foxley.

Banking deposits Signature Bank disclosed $10 billion in deposits from its cryptocurrency company clients, in an earnings call Thursday. Representing 16% of the New York firm’s total deposits, this sum is also twice that of competitor Silvergate Bank, which is widely considered the first crypto-forward bank, CoinDesk’s Nathan DiCamillo reports. Without revealing names, Signature’s chief executive said it now banks the “top five crypto exchanges.”

Crypto sweep The U.S. government’s top investments watchdog flagged a series of unregistered cryptocurrency companies for allegedly duping mostly international investors with false corporate information. Of the 28 suspect investment firms the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) called out Thursday, CoinDesk reporter Danny Nelson found eight that appear to target would-be cryptocurrency investors.

Big in Japan Following the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple, Japanese XRP-stans are left wondering. The cryptocurrency has gained traction in the country as a remittance tool, is backed by one of the largest Japanese financial firms, SBI, and is considered a “cryptocurrency” – not a security, arguably – by Japan’s economy regulator. “The crypto community, I feel, sees this as a big blow to them and as kind of a precursor to what could come in the future, that other companies are also vulnerable,” Mike Kayamori, Liquid Global CEO, told CoinDesk’s Sandali Handagama.

BITCOIN ETF: Five reasons it should be approved. (Bloomberg opinion)

HUMAN TRADERS: A quant fund (not crypto-specific) is giving people a chance. (Bloomberg)

FOR THE FAITHFUL: Joe Weisenthal thinks bitcoin is a religion. Who’s the Pope? (Bloomberg)

BLUE SKIES? Jack Dorsey’s open-source social media platform released a 6o-page overview of the decentralized ecosystem. (Blog)

CUT TO THE CORE: A notable Bitcoin Core dev reflects on his time building and argues Bitcoin needs to decentralize. (Blog)

Efficient markets? Two events batted around to explain bitcoin’s 13% price drop on Thursday are a bit more complicated than they appear on the surface. Yesterday, bitcoin saw its biggest intraday drop since March 12, 2020, when bitcoin tumbled 39%.

CoinDesk tech reporter Colin Harper set the record straight: The transaction that looked like a double-spend – the very phenomenon Bitcoin was created to address – was a normal occurrence. The trouble bubbled up after BitMEX researchers found an orphan block containing a 0.00062063 BTC transaction that was also included in a valid block mined to the blockchain.

But it really was no big deal. In what’s called a block reorganization, Bitcoin programmatically dealt with the issue. While the bitcoin was technically “double-spent,” Harper notes, “no new coins were added to Bitcoin’s supply.”

Meanwhile, following a U.S. Senate hearing where Yellen spoke briefly about money laundering and terrorist funding issues that plague bitcoin on Wednesday, the former Federal Reserve Chair disclosed a nuanced opinion of crypto in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee a day later.

To wit: “I think we need to look closely at how to encourage their use for legitimate activities while curtailing their use for malign and illegal activities,” she wrote. “If confirmed, I intend to work closely with the Federal Reserve Board and the other federal banking and securities regulators on how to implement an effective regulatory framework for these and other fintech innovations.”

She is likely to be confirmed today, CoinDesk regulatory reporter Nikhilesh De said.

While neither the rumored double-spend nor Yellen’s concerns are nonevents, they were both based on limited or faulty information that was picked up, (including in yesterday’s Blockchain Bites).

That said, neither news items should be blamed for the market spat, nor should the new information in the public register be seen as leading to today’s price appreciation. As Nic Carter as written, the efficient market hypothesis, the idea that states that asset prices reflect all available information, is complicated.

For now, like during the panic in March, it’s best to keep in mind that “time in the market beats timing the market.”

Bitcoin’s support Yesterday was a show of solidarity in the Bitcoin community, after nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright pushed for cultural touchstones, Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org, to pull the first cryptocurrency white paper off their sites.

Wright, who has long claimed to be Bitcoin’s pseudo-anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, has filed for patents over Bitcoin’s earliest documentation and intellectual property. The notably rambunctious developer, law student and academic is also the creator of Bitcoin SV (for Satoshi’s Vision), a fork of Bitcoin Cash and competitor coin.

Bitcoin.org rebutted Wright’s legal challenge and kept the document up, though Bitcoincore.org – the main repository for the Bitcoin code base – took it down.

No matter, as CoinDesk Managing Editor Zack Seward reported, some of crypto’s most prominent voices have decided to host a mirror copy. These include Square, Coin Center, Facebook subsidiary Novi and CoinDesk, among dozens more companies, nonprofits and individuals. It has also been uploaded to the “uncensorable” Arweave platform as well as internet alternative the InterPlanetary File System (IFPS), Seward notes.

According to Bitcoin.org, the Bitcoin white paper was published under an open MIT license by Nakamoto, making it a public domain document. “There is no doubt” people have the legal right to host the white paper, the nonprofit said.

Wright has long been a thorn in the Bitcoin community’s side, launching several lawsuits against prominent personalities who questioned his claims of being the authentic Nakamoto. Hodlnaut, the pseudonymous account behind the lightning torch experiment and who was sued for defamation, was vaulted into the spotlight in 2019 with a wave of bitcoin enthusiasts adopting his cartoon cat avatar for their Twitter profile photos.

While the event shows Bitcoin is still capable of rallying together, the real issue at play is much bigger than Wright’s copyright claims. Dozens of businesses have patent key technologies off of, or that support, this open-source system. In some sense, some would argue, a copyright is simply anathema to Bitcoin’s core ideal of permissiveness.

Will The Development Team Be Able to Overcome the Scalability Issue?AltcoinShareMonero and Arweave to Validate New Proof-of-Work Algorithm.Recently, the Monero (XMR) team announced for the phasing out of long payment IDs. These IDs are detrimental to privacy and a source of negative user experience. The team further recommended to the services an upgrade to sub-addresses as soon as possible. This can be seen as a positive step from developers in order to enhance the scalability.XMR/USD 3 Month Price Chart TradingViewMonero Price Statistics: On June 06, at 11:35 UTC, the price of Monero (XMR) was trading at 86.470 USD.Monero against BTC, at the same time, was around 0.01100434 BTC per chip.With an ROI of 3392.45%, Monero (XMR) is at 13th position in the crypto chart.Additionally, the market capitalization of the altcoin was $1,470,891,485.Again, the 24-hour trading volume of Monero was $132,162,982.Along with that, the total Monero chips in circulation were 17,025,498 XMR.XMR Comparison:On May 12, 25-days back, XMR price was trading at $78.80. But today, the altcoin has gained a momentum of almost 9.7%. However, in the weekly charts, Monero has gone down by 11.37%, from a marked price of $97.425 on May 30. Looking at the weekly charts, one might get dis-hearted, but Monero has gained some strength in the previous day trading. If you need the context of yesterday trading, the coin had opened the day at $83.41 and closed at $84.99, with a hike of $1.57 (1.89%).Monero Price Prediction:At present, the crypto space looks like a flat one, but the digital coin market is very unpredictable. As per our speculation, XMR is a strong altcoin and has sustained various ups and downs. From here, the future of coin looks bright, and it is probably to give a good return in the long run.Conclusion: Although scalability is a long term issue for the coin, most of the cryptos face some kind of issue. When it comes to the trading volume and number of transaction, XMR surpasses the big giants of the altcoin market. And it is going to move only upward from here.(Excerpt) Read more Here | 2019-06-06 13:09:14 Image credit: source

Reading Time: 2 minutesbyonJune 4, 2019 The anonymous cryptocurrency plans to a hard fork to make the network resistant to miners in an attempt to promote network decentralization. The erstwhile is likely to be removed in favor of RandomX to keep mining centralization at bay, June 4, 2019.Community Driven Consensus has been subject to rumors that since most miners are set up in China, they are effectively the Chinese governments beck and call.In an attempt to remove the slimmest possibility of this, Monero is developing a new proof of work (PoW) algorithm to make mining more efficient in CPUs and GPUs than ASIC miners.Monero has long been protesting the effect miners have on crypto networks and have been looking for ways to push out ASIC miners. As an anonymous cryptocurrency that champions individual financial privacy, the need for decentralization is necessary.RandomX, the new PoW algorithm, makes it necessary for anyone who wants to run an ASIC miner to build it specifically for Monero and reimplement their entire CPU a process not many are likely to burden themselves with.A randomly generated PoW, which is co-developed by the Monero team and , will help keep everyday computer hardware much more competitive for the near future. Arweave is a serverless storage protocol, and an ASIC resistant algorithm will enhance low cost and tamper-proof storage on their network.RandomX has been voted on and funded for three audits to make sure it is functional and Sybil resistant. However, there was a decision to perhaps carry out a fourth audit, which is still under discussion by the community.The Future of Anonymous CryptoWhile privacy is an important feature advocated across many networks in the form of and most recently, the , anonymity is something that regulators will inevitably crack down on.While cryptocurrencies like bitcoin harbor transparency in linking public keys to transactions, Monero uses ring signatures to disguise the true transactors. Monero is also slowly creeping up on Bitcoin to become a competitor for payments.Governments may not be too happy about cryptocurrencies like Monero, ZCash, and PivX flourishing in a digital ecosystem. Something that protects privacy but doesnt eradicate the possibility of triangulating identity would be an ideal solution to both citizens and authorities.However, with the ability to seize the network out of the governments hands, it will be interesting to watch how anonymous money fares over the next few years.Like BTCMANAGER? Send us a tip!Our Bitcoin Address: 3AbQrAyRsdM5NX5BQh8qWYePEpGjCYLCy4