Benchmark Protocol ($MARK) is a supply elastic, stablecoin-alternative that connects traditional finance with the cryptocurrency market by revolving around the volatility index. It provides liquidity to the DeFi space during periods of high volatility to optimize value and stability.

Founded by David Mass, the Benchmark protocol aims to bridge the digital currency market to traditional financing. The project was set in motion by a team composed of investors, blockchain engineers, and financial experts to strengthen security and the efficacity of loan collateral within the blockchain.

The sudden selling pressure experienced by the crypto market in march of 2020 prompted the team to act as they understood the risks within DeFi. The Birth of Benchmark exhibits the unique drive of the ambitious team behind the platform.

Ultimately, Benchmark’s team looks to be a household name within the market by staying relevant within the mainstream DeFi space and optimizing their product to the needs of the blockchain.

Benchmark Protocol is a supply-elastic collateral and hedging system driven by a volatility index. Simply put, the Benchmark Protocol lessens liquidation events and hedges risk with its very own cryptocurrency, the $MARK token.

Furthermore, Benchmark’s algorithm functions as a rule-based utility that adjusts supply, and is supported by the CBOE volatility index (VIX) and deviations from the target metric, which is equal to 1 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) unit. The Benchmark team believes that implementing the SDR creates a larger and far more efficient use case rather than exposure to just one currency.

The Benchmark Protocol provides a dynamic and supply-elastic token in the MARK token, as it manages to connect traditional capital markets to DeFi. The platform’s protocol is unique and efficient; completely separate from the crypto market prices and trends.

The protocol prides itself as an ideal hedge exhibiting total transparency with all users and transactions making a secure and reliable solution for the DeFi sector. Its immutability is robust enough to prevent systematic risk arising from cease and desist orders.

Benchmark’s innovative approach has isolated the recurring issue of overshooting the target peg within the varying market conditions. Through the MARK token, the platform can effectively rebalance supply within a 5-hour window after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ensuring the reduction of arbitrage activity for token users.

The distinct algorithm effectively adjusts to trends within DeFi while implementing traditional finance market strategies. The protocol actively monitors and regulates the total supply of tokens to compensate for anticipated price movements. This method helps in reducing excessive amplitudes of price percentage changes.

Since its implementation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the international reserve asset SDR has been an important factor concerning the health of the international financial system. SDR value is supported by five currencies: the Euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, U.S. dollar, and British pound sterling.

The Benchmark Protocol has been targeting the SDR’s historic price of $1.4075, with a long-term view utilizing macro-exposure to the world’s most established currency basket. The SDR is a superior and secured peg that will not face a tough path should the US Dollar experience strong inflation.

The Benchmark Protocol primarily benefits from SDR diversified and global currency risk instead of single currency risk, which will attract more users globally, thereby, contributing to the growth of the project long term.

Described as the market’s “fear indicator”, VIX is a real-time market index used to estimate the market’s expectations for the relative strength of near-term price changes and volatility typically within the S&P 500 index (SPX).

The blockchain-based platform relies on the VIX as an accurate and suitable predictive element for price development. The VIX enables the platform to be ahead of its competitors by allowing it to be more dynamic and proactive in the DeFi market.

The platform values Liquidity providers a great deal, as they are essential for the proper operation of the MARK token as a stable collateral utility. Furthermore, liquidity mining is an essential component of the Benchmark Protocol during the bootstrap phase.

The Press is the second phase of Benchmark’s liquidity providers rewards distribution program. It is the largest token allocation with 27% of the total supply provided to liquidity mining initiatives that compensate the liquidity providers’ active participation in the Benchmark network. The Press will feature core MARK Pairs, such as MARK-ETH and MARK-USDC on Uniswap.

The team plans to implement The Press for a period of 3 to 7 years, all depending on distribution velocity.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Mark Token is Benchmark’s native asset. MARK is an ERC-20 utility token and was released to the market while taking into consideration SDR and the VIX. So, MARK is secured to the world’s most stable currency (the SDR). Additionally, the token’s rebalances are smart and fast, derived from VIX.

Overall, Benchmark’s native token can be described as a supply-elastic collateral utility designated to increase liquidity during periods of high volatility and in direct correspondence with global equities markets.

MARK is a dynamic digital asset separate from other crypto implementations as it does not rival traditional fiat or paper currencies, which enables token holders to rely on a global currency risk profile versus a single currency risk profile. Additionally, through the platform’s utility token, users are shielded from inflation and further benefit from collateralization of risks.

xMARK is another ERC-20 utility token within the platform, which represents MARK but is not affected by rebases. xMark is designed to help move the platform towards on-chain governance. The token is minted by holders staking MARK tokens within the single-asset staking platform and is currently available on Binance Smart Chain and Quickswap.

Overall the Benchmark protocol manages to deal with the issues of volatility and inconsistency within the blockchain elegantly. Through MARK and xMARK utility tokens, users are ensured that rules-based, non-dilutive, and supply-elastic collateral will facilitate their crypto journey.

The DeFi sector is set to benefit tremendously from such technology, which provides a unique product that is currently lacking in the blockchain.

With content for both beginners and more advanced users, check out our YouTube DeFi series containing tutorials on the ESSENTIAL TOOLS you need for trading in the DeFi space e.g. MetaMask and Uniswap. As well as a deep dive into popular DeFi topics such as Reef.finance ($REEF) and Polkadot ($DOT)

The DeFi series on this website also covers topics not explored on YouTube. For an introduction on what is DeFi, check out Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Overview: A guide to the HOTTEST trend in cryptocurrency

Tutorials and guides for the ESSENTIAL DEFI TOOLS:

For in-depth information other specific DeFi projects, check out our DeFi token guides. Here’s some of our most POPULAR guides:

More videos and articles are coming soon as part of our DeFi series, so be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our Youtube channel and (for now) FREE weekly newsletter so you can be notified as soon as they come out!

The information provided in this article is intended for general guidance and information purposes only. Contents of this article are under no circumstances intended to be considered as investment, business, legal or tax advice. We do not accept any responsibility for individual decisions made based on this article and we strongly encourage you to do your own research before taking any action. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information provided herein is accurate and up to date, omissions, errors, or mistakes may occur.

Elastic finance (EeFi) offers an exciting monetary and technological innovation, the likes of which has not been seen in the cryptocurrency market in many years. The emerging elastic finance sub-sector – led by Ampleforth – features tokens that experience dynamic supply adjustments called rebases. The rebase allows crypto assets to absorb demand (as measured by price) in order to produce significant reductions in volatility. In theory the rebase should help elastic finance assets be relatively price stable — as compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

However, as is common with any new and disruptive innovation, the rise of elastic finance has led to controversy, confusion and debate among developers, investors and others. In fact, the current sentiment around elastic finance is negative, primarily due to four factors:

It’s time to take a second look at elastic finance and move past the conventional (negative) wisdom.

Our goal is to address common points of confusion and critiques of elastic finance by:

Let’s start out by revisiting the rebase. Many tend to focus on the mechanics of the rebase – specifically what triggers (from a mathematical and smart contract perspective) token supply expansions and contractions (positive and negative rebases). While the mechanics of the rebase are interesting, we think it is much more important to focus on the why rather than how. 

Why does the rebase exist? The sole purpose of the rebase is to incentivize individuals to engage in buying and selling activity that helps a token achieve stability around a specific price zone or target. There are two types of rebases: symmetric and asymmetric, as defined in the table below.

Ampleforth, the original elastic asset, has a symmetric rebase. Since Ampleforth was launched, a number of teams have introduced elastic tokens featuring asymmetric rebases, mainly in an effort to reduce the impact of negative rebases (supply contraction) on all token holders.

Whether the rebase is symmetric or asymmetric, elastic assets should be judged on their ability to maintain relative stability around their target price zone (or price peg) over extended periods of time. If an elastic asset has not achieved price stability over time, it has failed in its primary function.

For example, over a 12 month period (December 2019 to December 2020), Ampleforth’s price largely hovered around $1.00, as shown in the image below. (Ampleforth’s price target is plus or minus 5% the price of the 2019 US dollar.) During the same period, Ampleforth’s market capitalization grew roughly by 27,000% ($ 1.35 M to $ 367.11 M).

From a utility perspective, users and development teams can develop products, services and applications that leverage:

Since Ampleforth exploded in popularity in July 2020, dozens of teams have introduced elastic assets featuring symmetric and asymmetric rebase mechanics. This flood of elastic assets has left many people asking how they can determine which protocols are worth their time and attention. Here we introduce a new resource: The AmpleSense DAO Elastic Asset Assessment Framework. The Framework features five criteria that can be used to analyze the short-, medium- and long-term viability of elastic assets. We are sharing this Framework with the crypto community in the hopes that it will encourage informed, objective discussion and decision-making about the relevance and viability of various elastic assets.

Many elastic finance assets are being launched where the primary focus is on the rebase. Credible elastic assets will be designed to meet specific objectives (e.g., achieve price stability without collateralization), rather than simply positioning the rebase as a potential profit-generating mechanism.   

To be successful, elastic finance assets must be secure, operated via non-opaque smart contracts, and require the presence of a robust technical infrastructure, such as oracles.  

Successful elastic assets must be highly decentralized, non-censorable and widely adopted.

Investors, users and developers should consider the emerging regulatory landscape surrounding cryptocurrencies, especially as they relate to issues such as stablecoin issuance and securities regulations, when considering the long-term viability of different elastic assets.

The primary objective of the rebase mechanic is to achieve price stability over time. Temporal Price Stability is a metric that measures the amount of time the asset spends within its target range. If an asset is outside its target, the contraction phase (negative rebase) is more impactful on investors, developers and users than expansion (positive rebase).  

Note: It may be more difficult for elastic assets pegged to an individual cryptocurrency’s price, index (e.g., basket of currencies) or total crypto market capitalization to achieve high temporal price stability.

A common critique of elastic assets is that they serve no other purpose than speculation, or offer a solution in search of a problem. This is not the case.

From a macro crypto perspective, elastic assets – specifically those with proven ability to serve as generally stable stores of value and mediums of exchange — could lead to a more robust DeFi ecosystem, and even used as currencies, an achievement that no crypto has achieved. 

Many observers and analysts have noted that DeFi is increasingly vulnerable due to its over-reliance on collateralized and centralized stablecoins. Currently, policymakers and regulators are taking aim at stablecoins, with an eye toward reducing their impact and controlling their growth. One of the most recent developments was the publication of the STABLE Act in late 2020, which would prohibit centralized and decentralized stablecoin issuers from operating without securing a banking charter.

If adopted widely, elastic finance assets could greatly reduce the crypto ecosystem’s reliance on centralized stablecoins, and provide multiple ways to develop innovative, stable stores of value and financial instruments that have limited exposure to governments and regulators — and go beyond what stablecoins can offer.

Admittedly, utilizing elastic assets to help DeFi reduce its regulatory vulnerabilities is a long-term project. Are they any ways elastic assets are being utilized right now? Yes.

Are All Elastic Assets Stablecoins? No.

It is important to note that not all rebasing assets function as stablecoins. Many observers group all rebasing assets into the stablecoin category, which is inaccurate and incorrect. Different elastic tokens seek to achieve stability over varying time periods. Algorithmic stablecoins (that use the rebase mechanic to achieve a tight peg around $1 USD or another fiat currency) are only one type of elastic asset. There are others, as the table below illustrates.

Rebase is designed to enable the token to function as a reasonably stable store of value  (e.g., price generally returns to a target range over time), and uncorrelated asset.

Example: Ample

Rebase is combined with other techniques that encourage token supply reductions, to help the token maintain a peg as close to $1 as possible.

Example: Empty Set Dollar

Rebase is tied to a moving target such as the total crypto market cap, or price of a specific cryptocurrency to provide investors with exposure to a large market or growing protocol/token via a single asset.

Example: Base Protocol, Digg

We are reserving judgment on which of these use cases will be most impactful. Over time the market will determine which ones are most successful and valuable to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.  

 The objective of our independent, community-powered organization (the AmpleSense DAO) is to foster the development of a broad and robust elastic finance ecosystem. Given this, we have put a lot of thought into the various ways rebasing tokens can be utilized – along with the risk of these activities. Risk is defined as the potential for capital loss related to buying, trading holding or using these assets. The three tables below describe emerging and novel (un-launched) use cases for elastic finance assets. Our DAO is working on developing a few of these implementations currently.

There is potential for numerous other use cases to be introduced over the coming months and years, including using elastic assets as a unit of account in financial contracts.

Elastic finance represents a profoundly important innovation in crypto, on par with the introduction of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum, the first rebasing asset (Ampleforth), helped to launch an expanding crop of elastic finance innovations.

Over time the rebase will shift from a source of negativity and misunderstanding to an integral and accepted part of DeFi. It took more than 10 years for people to understand and begin to more broadly accept Bitcoin. Likewise, it may take many years for elastic assets to reach their fullest potential and adoption.

But we do not have to wait for the far future to benefit from elastic finance today. As we have shown, elastic assets can be objectively evaluated, have a clear and vital purpose, and possess use cases that go far beyond speculation and trading.

We look forward to helping to innovate, explain, track and grow the elastic finance ecosystem as this sub-sector matures. We’ll be back with new insights about how elastic finance is evolving and influencing DeFi and the broader crypto market in the future.

The AmpleSense DAO leadership team developed this essay. The DAO is an independent, community-powered organization focused on improving understanding and adoption of Ample and other high-quality elastic finance assets. The DAO’s governance token is kMPL. Learn about and join the DAO’s mission at www.amplesense.io.

What is Elastic (XEL) and is it a Good Investment? Cryptocurrency investors are truly spoilt for choice these days. Not only are there around 1,000 existing digital currencies and assets but there are also new digital tokens launching every week as the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market is experiencing a massive boom. To make more sense of this new asset class, BTCManager regularly highlights new cryptoassets to gauge whether or not they could potentially turn into profitable investments for its holders. In this article, you will be introduced to the Elastic Project and its native currency the elastic coin, which carries the ticket XEL.Contents0.0.1 Sponsored Links1 What is the Elastic Project?2 The Elastic Project ICO3 The Elastic Coin4 Elastic’s Big Opportunity5 Issues with the Elastic Project5.1 Departure of Key Project Member and Team Changes The Elastic Project is an open source project that aims to develop the first secure, trustless, decentralized, programmable supercomputer. A supercomputer is a computer that performs at or very near the highest operational rate possible for computers. Elastic has been in development over a year and provides the infrastructure for a decentralized supercomputer that can carry out computationally heavy tasks over the Internet. The infrastructure is powered by a cryptocurrency, called elastic (XEL), which allows individuals to buy and sell computational resources. Individuals or companies who require computational resources can model their problem using the elastic programming language and broadcast it to the Elastic network together with a certain amount of elastic coin. Elastic “miners” (node owners) can then offer their computational resources for a share of the offering elastic coins, and their reward will depend on the amount of work each miner has to contribute in relation to the other contributing miners who are participating in solving the problem. This allows individuals and companies to purchase computational power supplied by a range of GPUs and CPUs using elastic coins. Elastic held an initial coin offering in 2016 where it distributed elastic coins in exchange for what the project referred to as donations, accompanied with the disclaimer: “Please do not consider Elastic Coins (XEL) to be shares, futures, certificates, securities, bonds, treasuries, profit-sharing agreements, or anything similar. That is, do not expect any future rewards for your donation. Donating just means supporting the development of an open source project.” The ICO lasted from February 29, 2016, to August 19, 2016, and managed to raise around 710 BTC for the total supply of 100,000,000 XEL. The total supply of elastic coin is 100 million, and no new coins can be mined or minted. Currently, the total circulating supply is 78,054,996 coins. The cryptocurrency started trading on exchanges on June 24, 2017, and can currently be bought and sold on Bittrex and using the Heat Wallet with the former processing the lion’s share of the currency’s $500,000+ daily trading volume.   Since elastic coin became tradable on exchanges, the price has started with strong volatility and peaked at $1.32 on June 24 and spiked again on June 25 to $1.20 and has since trended downwards to currently stand at around $0.32 per elastic coin. The big argument as to why you should look into elastic coin as an investment is that the market for supercomputers is growing at a staggering rate and creating a fully-functioning decentralized supercomputer that gains adoption by key institutions and individuals in this market could bode very profitable for the Elastic project. According to data from Gartner.com, the worldwide revenue generated by the supercomputer market was estimated to be worth around $3.5 billion in 2016. By 2020, the market is expected to be worth $4.4 billion. If Elastic managed to establish itself in the very competitive supercomputer market, even as a smaller player, the profit potential would be very high. If the market welcomes a decentralized supercomputer with open arms, then Elastic could turn into a mega project, provided its team manages to deliver. However, the Elastic Project faces several issues that need to be acknowledged by potential investors. Departure of Key Project Member and Team Changes A leading figure in Elastic’s team with the pseudonym Lannister left the project, which has led to inaccessibility of the project’s ICO funds and scam accusations on the BitcoinTalk Forum to increase. According to a blog post on the Elastic Project website, “Lannister dropped out due to health reasons, the funds collected for the project were frozen (multi-sig wallet, so Lannister was needed to sign off, but was no longer available) so the project was in deep doo-doo land. With no money and lots of development work to be done, it looked like Elastic was finished.” Previous : What is Golem and Is it A Good Investment? Next : BTC-E’s Role in Mt. Gox Hack: Laundered $4 Billion Proceeds of Bitcoin Theft Google is Releasing a Blockchain-related Product for its Cloud Platform When Would an Industry Heavyweight Launch Their Own Coin? Huawei to Build Blockchain Smartphone Blockchain Studios Launch Virtual Reality Game in Conjunction with AmaZix

I am seeing a good deal of misunderstanding arise with the popularity of Bitcoin. Much of this seems to stem from a gold standard style of thinking. It can basically be boiled down to this: There are a lot of moving parts in that, but this idea that a fixed money supply is good is not consistent with the history of money or even the basic facts about how modern money works. Worse, it constrains our economy in ways that make us worse off in the long-run. Make no mistake, as I've explained before, the gold standard was silly and no one who understands money or the history of money should ever support it. But let's get back to Bitcoin…. The fact that Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21MM BTC is not an aspect that makes it a useful form of money. The reason for this is simple - while we generally think of money as something we have money is actually something we don't yet have, but can tap into. That is the essence of having credit. If you have credit you can access money when you need it. After all, credit IS money. For instance, most of the homes in the USA are bought with a mortgage. If you have good credit a bank will take credit risk to issue you new money so you can buy something you otherwise couldn't have afforded. When this is done our economy has that much more output and real goods (the house and the millions of building components that go into it). The borrower gets a house they couldn't have paid for with cash and our economy gets output it otherwise wouldn't have had. Likewise, when people borrow too much the money supply can contract to offset this excess. This is called an elastic money supply because the money supply can expand and contract as we need it to. Since many Bitcoin proponents are Silicon Valley based it might help to use a slightly different example - stocks. Stocks are a financial asset (just like a bank deposit that is created when a new loan is made) that can be created from thin air to help finance ventures. From the perspective of a corporation stocks are the most expensive form of borrowing. Firms issue stock and a venture capitalist or investment bank earns interest on the loan in the form of equity in the company. This is an elastic expansion of financial assets that helps the firm grow and innovate. While this elasticity is generally a good thing it can cut both ways. For instance, during the tech boom there was too much expansion in the supply of stocks to companies that weren't really creditworthy. The same thing happened in the mortgage market during the housing boom. So, this elastic nature can create booms that get out of control. But for the most part this elasticity gives creditworthy borrowers access to money when they need it. And this flexibility allows the economy to adapt and evolve across time as opposed to being constrained by a fixed force like the amount of gold that we can dig out of the ground. I've highlighted some of Bitcoin's weaknesses as a form of money in the last few weeks. Its primary weakness is that it is too volatile to serve as a reliable medium of exchange. But the inability to expand the Bitcoin money supply as the economy evolves is an equally problematic aspect that makes its network adoption relatively limited in scope. This can probably be resolved with some form of smart contract and alternative coin, but the fixed supply is an inherent flaw in Bitcoin's design that contributes to its flaws as a medium of exchange.4 ¹ - This one is particularly annoying coming from people in Silicon Valley where most of the ventures are funded by banks organized as hedge funds calling themselves "venture capitalists" charging their investors 2 & 20 (or more) and taking the absolute most expensive asset an entrepreneur has (the equity in their firm). I have absolutely nothing against VC's (or most banks for that matter), but you can't criticize banks for extending credit and charging fees on that credit when VC's help firms extend shares in exchange for a % of the firm and underlying fund fees. A VC, after all, is basically just a bank with a fancier name. ² - The USA never really had a true gold standard where gold was the only form of money that circulated. We've pretty much always had some form of credit layered on top of gold reserves. In this sense, gold was never a strict constraint.³ ³ - Another common response to this is that the USA experienced its highest growth during the era of the gold standard. Actually, the era of the 1800's was a period when the USA was an emerging market. The growth was largely due to its status as a small emerging economy. But it was also due to the fact that the money supply was somewhat elastic during periods like the Free Banking Era. Ironically, it was the lack of a Central Bank that made many of the downturns in the 1800's and early 1900's far worse than they should have been because there was no efficient mechanism for payment clearing across banks. 4 - Some people argue that the fixed supply of BTC is its greatest strength and that the coin can simply increase in value to allow the money supply expand and contract. But again, this misses the crucial feature of credit as money that allows people who DON'T have money to access money. The price increases in BTC's value only help people who already have access to the money. And in fact, this asset inflation hurts those who don't already have BTC in the first place as it becomes more expensive to acquire. NB - Don't come at me screaming about how I hate cryptocurrencies and am some apologist for the "old" monetary system. I am not remotely against cryptocurrencies. In fact, I hope some of my critiques help resolve some of the current flaws. The chat platform is currently undergoing maintenance. To see the chat, try to refresh in about 5-10 minutes. Chat is not supported in your browser version. Please upgrade your browser or use a different browser, such as Google Chrome. You do not have permissions for this room.

A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cost because of all the companies that failed since the 1990s.  I hope it’s obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them.  I think this is the first time we’re trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system.

Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin was created in 2009 as a way to remove third-party intermediaries that are typically needed to conduct monetary transactions. According to a message inscribed in the coinbase parameter of the first block in Bitcoin’s blockchain, this was at least partially in response to the Great Recession that lasted from 2007 through the early part of 2009. Most of us remember the difficulties that banks and other institutions faced as the credit crisis raged on. 

In contrast, Bitcoin was created to serve as a universally accepted and trustless cash system. Although several companies have tried that type of system over the years, Bitcoin’s success is unrivaled and is now attracting attention from global regulators.

As a new presidential administration takes power in the U.S., many wonder how President Biden’s team will handle the rising popularity of cryptocurrency markets. Two central figures on Biden’s team will be Gary Gensler and Janet Yellen. Although both Gensler and Yellen are considered to be pro-blockchain technology, they are also known to have reservations about some of the wheeling and dealing that occurs daily. As cryptocurrency’s popularity continues to rise, the way in which the U.S. reacts to that growth will take on added importance.

It’s clear that Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto had a distrust of centralized banking and finance after the pain that many people experienced during the Great Recession.  Bitcoin was created to get away from the multinational banks and the notion of “too big to fail.”  Given Bitcoin’s rise in popularity over the last four years in particular, there can be no doubting the currency’s success. However, despite that success, many still consider cryptocurrency to be the “Wild West” (rightly or wrongly) of finance.  

When the word “regulation” is tossed around in cryptocurrency communities, people tend to have a strong reaction. I think that is simply a case of not fully understanding that regulation can actually be a good thing if targeted at the right areas. The right areas are not taxation, KYC or AML, issues that can sometimes cause anxiety for those determined to live in a decentralized world. Rather, regulation should be focused on protecting investors and making them feel comfortable investing in an asset class that is still in its infancy.  

A recent example of the wrong type of regulation was discussed by Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, on his Twitter account in November 2020.  

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) November 25, 2020

The point should be clear that while the intention of the potential regulation may have been good, the outcome would be extremely burdensome for cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of having to verify ownership of each self-hosted wallet. Rather than requiring exchanges to devote resources, financial and personnel, toward this type of unnecessary regulation, we should be doing everything in our power to encourage and support exchanges and other crypto entrepreneurs in their endeavor to drive cryptocurrency adoption.

Another unfortunate aspect of an asset class that is just beginning to take shape is that past negative incidents can sometimes shape a false narrative. Case in point is when Yellen, the newly-confirmed Secretary of the Treasury, recently testified in her confirmation hearing that cryptocurrency transactions were used “mainly for illicit purposes.”  

While it’s true that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have sometimes been used for nefarious activities, the criminal share of all cryptocurrency activity was estimated to be just 0.34 percent in 2020. As it turns out, regulators fined banks approximately $10 billion over a 15-month period through 2019 for violating anti-money laundering rules and transacting with countries currently under sanctions. So, it certainly seems Bitcoin’s threat is overstated compared to what we already face. Yellen’s misunderstanding is an unfortunate result of hearing the occasional negative headline.  

Despite that, Yellen did recently acknowledge that digital currencies had the potential to improve the efficiency of the financial system. That viewpoint happens to align with that of Gensler, Biden’s choice to lead the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who is known for his pro-blockchain mentality. The first indication that Gensler will serve as a Bitcoin ambassador is that he taught a class covering blockchain technology’s potential at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. It’s hard to imagine a world where someone would teach about an asset’s potential and then do an about face and try to stifle it. A second sign that Gensler may be Bitcoin friendly is the fact that he penned an op ed for CoinDesk in which he argued that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology would serve as a catalyst for change:

This last point — crypto and blockchain technology acting as a catalyst for change — may not fulfill the heightened expectations of maximalists, but may be Nakamoto’s most enduring early contribution. This new form of private money and its underlying shared ledger technology already have been catalysts for central banks, big finance and big tech. Along with fintech innovations, crypto initiatives have spurned incumbents to update payment solutions and explore new approaches to finance and multiparty database management.

Gary Gensler

The evidence certainly points to Gensler being a friend, rather than a foe, of Bitcoin maximalists. That being said, Gensler developed a reputation for protecting investors while serving as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He is someone that isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with banks and corporations that go too far at the expense of investors.  

During a 2018 interview with Bloomberg Television, Gensler said: “I would say, you want some form of regulation, you want traffic lights and speed limits, because then the public is confident to drive on the roads.”  

Gensler also mentioned that he would like to see the big, established exchanges like Coinbase come within the SEC or CFTC.

It can be a bit challenging to get data on precisely how many people own bitcoin, but given that only 55 percent of Americans own stocks, it’s likely a percentage of the U.S. population in the single digits. Bitcoin and other digital assets have been discussed quite frequently throughout 2020, with several notable figures like Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio and Elon Musk making favorable statements and/or tweets. As that continues, it will certainly help convince more average investors to get involved. However, as it stands right now, the average investor may remain uneasy about investing their hard-earned money in an asset that they don’t fully understand.   

Some of that trepidation can be attributed to two main factors:

Volatility is certainly an issue for the average investor but one that may be difficult to address through regulation. The fact is that cryptocurrency is still a relatively new asset class and new asset classes generally experience volatility until they reach maturity. There is an investing principle known as the risk/reward ratio through which investors can determine whether the additional risk they are taking on is worth the potential reward. Despite the volatility, it’s hard to deny that early adopters haven’t been rewarded for taking on that extra risk.

The second issue for those still waiting to invest is that many aren’t sure how to get started.  Fortunately, what once was once a barrier to entry is now actually quite easy. Investors have several options for investing in crypto. 

They can deposit money directly at a bitcoin ATM, which is actually quite useful for those who don’t have access to traditional banking options, though fees for this can be quite expensive with limited transparency. However, the preferred method and the way to really drive mainstream adoption is to deposit funds directly at a cryptocurrency exchange that serves as an offramp for fiat. By looking at CoinMarketCap’s top exchanges (as ranked by volume), it appears as though investors generally do tend to gravitate toward exchanges that are regulated.

Many of the above exchanges do allow customers to send funds directly via ACH and/or bank wire. Once the funds are received by the exchange, investors can begin trading. Many of these regulated exchanges have developed a reputation for being among the most secure due to the following:

Despite the above security measures that are generally followed, a big question that investors always seem to ask is whether deposited funds are safe. The answer is generally yes, but unlike the brokerage industry, there is often no FDIC-style guarantee of safety. This is perhaps one area that regulators could explore in order to ease the concerns for investors still waiting on the sidelines.

It’s clear that cryptocurrency has captured both the imagination of many and the attention of global regulators. While the goals of these two groups couldn’t be more different, they will need to find a way to coexist for the market to grow to the levels that are often dreamed of.  

To spur that growth, regulation is necessary, but it needs to be targeted at addressing the concerns of the average investor. With a new administration now calling the shots in the U.S., it will be interesting to see whether these issues are addressed or whether the can gets kicked down the road, again.

This is a guest post by Thomas Meyer. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

HomepageAbout membershipSign inGet startedHomepagePink PantherBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingJul 3, 2017Fundamental Analysis of Elastic (XEL)By Bronson Tang for Pink PantherJuly 3, 2017Elastic Quick FactsOverview:FactsElastic Coin is known as XELTotal Coin Supply: 100.000.000 XELDistributed Coins: 100.000.000 XELElastic features the “Elastic PL” programming languageNormal nodes broadcast unverified POW/bountiesSuper nodes verify work and broadcast verified POW/bountiesGuard nodes cross verify certain percentages of signed POW/bounties by supernodes to detect malicious behaviorQuestion:What is ElasticAnswer:Elastic: It is a decentralized, trust-less, secure, programmable super computer.There are three main components that make up Elastic:Elastic Coin: The Elastic coin/token (XEL) is the fuelElastic Programming Language: The Elastic Programming Language (Elastic PL) is the mapElastic Project: Decentralized Supercomputer is the vehicle that will get you to your destinationIn this Analysis, I will address the following:What is ElasticElastic CoinElastic Programming LanguageElastic ProjectElastic Compared to the CompetitionElastic IssuesICO Funds TakenElastic Team AnonymousElastic as an experimental non-commercial projectElastic uses transactions pools for tasksChallengesRoad MapTrend AnalysisConclusionWHAT IS ELASTIC IN GREATER DETAIL?Elastic is an open-source project that aims to build the first decentralized supercomputer. Elastic has been developed over the last year or so and provides the infrastructure for a decentralized and distributed super computer, designed to carry out arbitrary tasks over the internet. In this context, Elastic is powered by a crypto currency (XEL) and provides a market-based mechanism to buy and sell computational resources. Those who need computational resources, model their problem using Elastic’s programming language (Elastic PL) and broadcast it on the network, along with a certain amount of XEL coins. The Elastic miners are then motivated to offer their computational resources in exchange for a portion of those XEL coins. The size of their reward depends on the amount of work a miner has contributed in relation to the rest of the miners that have also participated in the task. Using XEL as the driving force, Elastic offers potential buyers a large parallel computation cluster composed of many CPUs and GPUs supplied by the miners.ELASTIC COINElastic Coin provides the infrastructure for a decentralized and distributed computation of arbitrary tasks over the internet. In this context, Elastic Coin is built on-top of a crypto currency and provides a market-based mechanism to buy and sell computational resources. Buyers, those who need computational resources, model their problem using Elastic Coin’s software development kit and broadcast it, along with a certain amount of XEL coins, to the network.The so-called miners are then motivated to offer their computational resources in exchange for a portion of those XEL coins. The size of this portion depends on the amount of work a miner has contributed in relation to the rest of the network. Using XEL as the driving force, Elastic Coin offers potential buyers a large parallel computation cluster composed of many CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and other devices supplied by the miners.According to one of the moderators in the Elastic Chat Forum:  “There are 100 million XEL in existence. These are distributed amongst the original donators to the project. There’s some 70 million been redeemed so far.These will be released to a greater audience (or at least a part of them will), via the large exchanges and then the buyers purchase them from there to pay for their computational task.XEL is just a token, so no smart contract within it, nor any ability to attach a smart contract. XEL is literally just the fuel of the system.So, the buyer (or job author) sends their work (written in Elastic PL) to the Elastic system along with the necessary XEL to pay for:Securing the system (a small amount of the XEL is paid towards the node owners) A bounty for finding the solution to the problem On-going work on the program to motivate miners to mine that problem/programSince the miners are rewarded in XEL, they then sell their XEL on the exchanges, where a buyer can then buy them.Basically, the price of XEL is set by the market from the buyer on the exchange. For the miner, you’re right, there’s a complex algorithm that will work out what % of the total fee will be paid to someone using their smartphone, laptop, sever, etc. as computational power.”Elastic Coin constitutes a market that matches buyers and sellers of computational resources according to economic criteria. Buyers, in this context, are those who demand computational resources in order to solve some arbitrary and computationally intensive task. They submit their task to the network and attach a certain amount of XEL|that is the currency of Elastic Coin|to it. Then, sellers, in the remainder of the paper termed miners, are then motivated to offer their computational resources for solving these tasks in exchange for a portion of the attached XEL. The size of this portion depends on the amount of work a miner has contributed in relation to the rest of the network. All this happens \behind the scenes” in a process termed mining without the requirement of manual intervention.ELASTIC PROGRAMMING LANGUAGEThe Elastic programming language allows Elastic job authors to express complex algorithms to be solved for bounties, paid for with XEL. The language is loosely based on the C programming language incorporating many of the basic operators and functions. There are no FOR, WHILE, or DO loops in Elastic PL in order to ensure that programs will not run indefinitely. Instead, job authors will use the Elastic PL REPEAT function.Elastic works different: They do not have one specific use case, instead the use case has to be coded by the users in Elastic’s own programming language — Elastic PL It is similar to C but with limited functionality so it can be guaranteed that Elastic code can be executed on other machines without causing any harm. You can write a program in Elastic PL and be sure that if executed correctly, no exploits, no endless loops, no data leakage.So while Elastic is more flexible in designing tasks, it does not perform better for one particular use case over other systems. With other super computer models, If you want to do 6 different tasks you need 6 separate use cases. With Elastic you can do them all at once. As the Elastic PL is further developed, so the diversity of tasks will become more complex. Currently, only tasks which explore a search space can be performed, and not tasks which are divided into multiple packages (like rendering divides a large image into many smaller tiles).Elastic PL will get better over time with the flexibility that Elastic PL provides. The system is built and designed this way from ground up to allow user configurable tasks. This makes Elastic the only system that currently offer this. The potential of Elastic is basically limitless.To learn more about the Elastic Program Language please click the d>-pl/blob/master/README.mdELASTIC PROJECTThe Elastic Project is a cryptocurrency driven infrastructure for decentralized computation.Elastic is not just a super computer, it is THE super computer. In our vision, people (such as scientists) who are in need of large amounts of computation power do not have to rent an expensive, commercial cloud computing solution anymore. Instead, they can submit their tasks to the Elastic Network along with a certain amount of Elastic Coins. Other users can then offer their spare processing power to contribute to the calculation of those tasks and earn Elastic Coins in exchange. This is similar to the Bitcoin mining process, but without wasting the energy.Elastic Project is one of those platforms, which is entirely decentralized. It is an open source project with contributors from around the world. In fact, Elastic Project was started with a vague idea on Bitcointalk that interested me, which I have then pursued and learnt more once I was involved. This idea then was improved by a number of very bright members of the Elastic community. At the moment, we have a very precise idea of how Elastic should be built to ensure reliability, robustness and security.Elastic Project is a “loose formation of developers. As such, nobody can speak with authority in the name of the Elastic network.”Schedule to launch during the summer of 2016, an Alpha and Beta version can be expected earlier.Elastic Project offers many interesting topics of research. This includes for example the verifiable computation part, the prunability of the blockchain, or the security of the blockchain in terms of a certain type of attacks.ELASTIC COMPARED TO THE COMPETITIONEthereumAccording to this Ethereum is a “world-computer”. However, the use-case of Ethereum is entirely different than the one of Elastic. Ethereum is not used to obtain a certain amount of computation power which can be directed at a complex algorithm that someone wants to have solved. It is more to be understood as a world computer with only one single processor without the support for multi-threading or parallel execution. As a matter of fact, Ethereum can be used to execute arbitrary code and the consensus algorithm ensures that the code is executed correctly. While handy to code, e.g., smart contracts which are then executed by all peers that participate in the Ethereum ecosystem, it cannot be used to bundle the computational power of the peers. The very simple reason is that every peer executes the same thing: Ethereum executes the same code at many peers redundantly.Elastic on the other hand has different aims: it does not want everyone to execute the same thing, but to execute something different. One could say, in Elastic your work is split into many different small parts which every peer in the Elastic network executes a subset of. This way, the computational power of all “miners” is bundled.On the contrary, Elastic cannot be used to implement smart contracts or any other code constructs which are meant to be executed the same way on all nodes. It’s just a totally different use case.GridcoinGridcoin uses a mechanism termed “Proof-of-Research” to measure the amount of computational contribution of the “miners”. According to this, this mechanism is premised on BOINC, a centralized third-party service. More precisely, “miners” download the BOINC software which provides idle CPU processing power to various projects which likewise are centrally hosted. The amount of computational contribution is then measured in a formula named the Recent Average Credit (RAC). The distribution of Gridcoins (GRC) is then conducted dependent on the miners’ individual RAC.The problem with this approach is the involvement of a central authority. The distribution of Gridcoins (GRC) can be tampered arbitrarily the moment an attacker gains access to the centralized service. Also, the existence of Gridcoin depends on the existence of BOINC. If the latter service dies, so does Gridcoin unless an update is rolled out which moves the Proof-of-Research mechanism to a different service.In Elastic, we do not have such problems: we do not rely on any other third-party service and neither do we depend the payout process on any kind of external (not tamper proof) factors. Instead, the measurement of the amount of computational contribution as well as the payout process is done entirely in the protocol itself.ZennetZennet can be understood as an open market platform for computational resources. According to this, a publisher (the entity who is in demand of computational resources) negotiates a contract with a provider (the entity who provides the requested computational resources) using the blockchain. In this context, the publisher may specify special requirements, e.g., in terms of hardware capabilities that the provider has to match. After the negotiation is completed, the provider creates a virtual machine and gives the publisher SSH access to it.The payment process is modeled as follows: the publisher allocates a certain amount of XenCoins (the underlying cryptocurrency). Then, periodically, accumulated usage measurements are read. Based on those measurements a micropayments protocol is used to periodically pay out small amounts of the allocated funds to the provider.Zennet identifies the problem of this “trust based system” itself: the provider may use a handcrafted VM which lies about its benchmarks score claiming to provide more resources than it actually does. It’s the publishers’ sole responsibility to verify that the claimed amount of computational power reflects the reality. Due to the micropayments protocol, malicious behavior (if manually detected) can be penalized by cancelling the contract and charge back the remainder of the funds. A reputation system keeps track of such malicious behavior to help publishers separating the honest providers from malicious ones.From our perspective, this system is not ideal as it adds some overhead in terms of manual responsibility for monitoring the honesty. Also, if very large amounts of computational power are needed which can only be obtained by renting multiple providers, the publisher has to take care about parallelization and distributing his work across multiple SSH instances himself. Moreover, the provider has to verify himself that the VM is actually doing what it is supposed to do and not, e.g., performing the calculations erroneously. According to privacy, the SSH access (if not used via a VPN or TOR) may expose the IP address (and so the own identity) to the provider.While we think that this scheme is perfectly valid and works flawlessly, Elastic tries to get rid of any trust-based factors entirely. In Elastic, the verification of correctly performed work as well as the true amount of invested computational effort is done by the protocol itself.However, since Elastic uses the protocol to verify “work” and “computational” resources, Elastic is limited to the common denominator in terms of hardware … the CPU. That is, GPU tasks could not be verified by nodes that are equipped with CPUs only (But still, since the operations of Elastic’s own programming language ElasticPL are very basic, GPU enhanced miners are of course possible). Still, especially when looking for VMs with special capabilities, Zennet is superior to Elastic.On the contrary, Elastic in our eyes overtakes when it comes down to get computational tasks done quickly without any trust and without the requirement to manually verify anything or synchronizing tasks across multiple virtual machines: you just create a program which is then distributed to as many miners as possible, and you can be sure that the result you get back has been calculated correctly. Please refer to How Does Mining Work to learn about the advantages (and of course disadvantages) of our scheme.VoltcoinAccording to this, Voltcoin works very similar to Zennet.GolemGolem also tries to bring together those who have spare computational power and those who require it. According to this these entities are termed requester nodes, these nodes that announce computing tasks, and compute nodes, nodes that perform computations. As of now, the computation tasks are limited to rendering tasks using blender. Nevertheless, However, Golem seems to be just a “peer-to-peer market” for computational resources and not a cryptographically secure protocol to ensure the correct distribution of, and payment for computational power.The biggest problem in our eyes, and at the same time the reason why from our perspective Golem does NOT constitute a decentralized computer, is that the submitted results are not automatically verified for correctness. That means, that the result someone sends may very well be garbage and so it has to be checked manually by the requester nodes before he acknowledges the release of the funds. At the same time, malicious requester nodes may claim that their work was not carried out correctly and charge back the funds even though the compute node has carried out the task correctly.While a ranking/reputation mechanism, as implemented here, helps to identify malicious users (similar to the reputation system of online auctions where you can “over time” separate honest sellers from malicious ones) this concept differs totally from what we want to achieve in Elastic.We do not want to build a peer-to-peer market where users may betray each other, mitigating malicious behavior only by using trust-based reputation systems! We rather want to build a system which is robust against such kinds of attacks due to a “higher force”, i.e., the protocol, making sure that work is carried out correctly, and workers are guaranteed to be paid out for their efforts.ELASTIC ISSUESAs no technology is infallible nor is any project nor crypto/blockchain technology.ICO Funds Taken by former team memberElastic Team AnonymousElastic as an experimental non-commercial projectElastic uses transactions pools for tasksDuring my investigation, I came across several issues that I wanted to address in this investigation. Items b thru c can be found at the following link: 6I wanted to investigate these issues for myself and see what I could uncover, here is what I have found so far.This post from bitcointalk.org was done by the folks at SONM. So there is a conflict of interest.I don’t think I need to comment any further on “conflict of interest” but I will address their supposed claims in the off chance that one of you reading this actually believes and take credence into what one competitor has to say about another.Let’s first address the Lannister issue and the ICO funds.In April 2017, “Lannister” one the programmers for the Elastic Project left the project and as a result ICO funds were also missing.This is the Elastic official response to the situation:Lannister is gone. ICO funds are gone. We don’t know why. We don’t know if we ever see him again. It’s not like “he took all the funds and run away” because before disappearing he rewarded some of community members with some BTC for their work. He mentioned that he have some health problems also. That’s all we know now.It’s not like he didn’t helped us. He helped a lot. Mostly on server and scripts side. Personally, I remember him as very intelligent person with very rich English vocabulary. I hope that he will come back to us even without funds incognito with another account. He was nice addition to this community.We can safely (jokingly) assume that XEL is proof of burn coin like XCP. But instead of burning our BTC in dead address we burned them in Lannister hands.Please remember that every donator knew before any action that this is just donation and can be spent on development or ice creams.What I have found somewhat interesting and fascinating is that despite this incident, the project is moving forward. And the community that surrounds the Elastic Project has not been diminished. That does speak highly for the project, however it does show something that needs to be addressed in the future when it comes to funds and donations.Albeit, on their site, Elastic does state that donations can be used for whatever they project wishes. And as most people know donations are just that, donations without strings nor conditions attached, and that unfortunately includes a rogue contributor to the project disappearing and the funds as well.Team AnonymousUnfortunately, the team at Elastic has chosen at this time to remain anonymous. It is my understanding that the developers are working part-time and many are working on donations.As such, it does make sense, as an open source project to remain anonymous as the Elastic project is a group/community.Now I realize that this could be construed as a major red flag when it comes to looking at a project such as this, but we must remember that anonymous is not synonymous with “bad” or “untrustworthy” it is just that, the developers’ choice to remain discreet.Now personally, I do not like to invest in projects where the team is anonymous, but there do exist quite successful projects that have remained anonymous and that has not been a deterrent to the success of the overall standing in the public’s eyes. Projects such as NXT, Crown Coin, and event Sia have somewhat anonymous team profiles.Elastic is an experimental non-commercial project  In the article that states this supposed flaw of Elastic, they go on to state that the Elastic project “doesn’t have any financial model or clear marketing plan” and that Elastic has received funding but “their token aren’t listed on any crypto exchange”. As of yesterday, July 1, 2017 Elastic was listed on Bittrex and as far as the claim that Elastic does not have any financial model or clear marketing plan, in no way equates to the viability of a project and whether it has commercial value or not. That is decided by the marketplace and not by a financial model or marketing plan which any tom, dick or harry can create with a spreadsheet and document processor. That is what we might call a logical fallacy.Elastic uses transactions pools for tasksI need to set some groundwork, the original claim stated that:“This leads to a serious problem, a transaction block must be confirmed in a certain amount of time, so a task must be processed in this certain time frame. In the case of general purpose calculations for example protein folding, we can’t know with certain how much time will it take to process the task. Elastic uses its own programming language to solve this issue with a mechanism similar to Ethereum which leads to excessive parallelism and the necessity to run the code on all machines in the network.”I wanted to find out the answer to this supposed claim and this is what one of the programmers wrote me,“Elastic uses a transactions pool for tasks, a mechanism similar to that used by traditional blockchain systems such as cryptocurrencies.” by saying, “All submitted jobs, pow solutions, and bounty solutions are transactions on the blockchain so they behave the same as all other txns in the Elastic network. But I’m thinking the question was trying to get at something else…so if they clarify, please let me know.”Elastic PL — this is the programming language of Elastic. It is based on C and has been modified so that such things as endless loops won’t occur. Basically, Elastic PL has been designed so that it can’t harm the machines it runs on. By making sure that all programmes that run on Elastic are written in Elastic PL, it safeguards the computers of the miners so they can’t be harmed by any of the programs written by the buyers (or job authors as they can be called) and makes the system safe. This is one of the key advantages of Elastic. The fact that it has its own safe, programming language.It also means that instead of a limited number of use cases, if a program can be written in Elastic PL, it can be run on the Elastic system.”I followed up with a bit more clarification and I was forwarded this message:As I’ve previously mentioned, there are three forms of payments, one of which is to reward miners for ON-GOING work. In other words, the miners are not doing the same work SIMULTANEOUSLY and a task DOES NOT need to be completed in a certain amount of time. We do not operate in the same way as Ethereum!Read the section here on Ethereum and you will see that what the people at SONM are saying is NONSENSE, since it explains the difference between Elastic and Ethereum. her-competitors/30Reexamining the original claim comparing Elastic to Ethereum we can read that:According to this Ethereum is a “world-computer”. However, the use-case of Ethereum is entirely different than the one of Elastic. Ethereum is not used to obtain a certain amount of computation power which can be directed at a complex algorithm that someone wants to have solved. It is more to be understood as a world computer with only one single processor without the support for multi-threading or parallel execution. As a matter of fact, Ethereum can be used to execute arbitrary code and the consensus algorithm ensures that the code is executed correctly. While handy to code, e.g., smart contracts which are then executed by all peers that participate in the Ethereum ecosystem, it cannot be used to bundle the computational power of the peers. The very simple reason is that every peer executes the same thing: Ethereum executes the same code at many peers redundantly.Elastic on the other hand has different aims: it does not want everyone to execute the same thing, but to execute something different. One could say, in Elastic your work is split into many different small parts which every peer in the Elastic network executes a subset of. This way, the computational power of all “miners” is bundled.On the contrary, Elastic cannot be used to implement smart contracts or any other code constructs which are meant to be executed the same way on all nodes. It’s just a totally different use case.CHALLENGESIt seems that in investigating the Elastic project a potential major challenge is gaining the “right” mass user adoption.This “right” mass user adoption could come in the form of the following based on sentiment from the community:“Getting serious scientific attention…”“Having researchers and serious institutions using this system to reach advancements in their respected field”“Affiliation(s) with leading tech companies and personnel who recognize the value this system brings.”“Potential partnerships with a university, or a research company”In other words, gaining the real-world recognition/attention from the “ideal” interested party as listed above.ROAD MAPNow, there is not project road map that is publicly visible nor readily available. In addition, as the members of this project are not paid, it is a challenge to keep a road map as that would construe stringent timeframes for a free workforce. However, I have been told that now that there are funds a road map is being put in place over the next month.Immediate next steps are:Identify tasks that need to be completed (a roadmap)Raise funds from the community to pay for tasksApply timeline to taskComplete taskGeneral StatsCreated: 2016Headquarters LocationUnknown/Open Source ProjectCoins Supply100,000,000 XEL Total Supply76,450,177 XEL Circulating SupplyExchangesBittrexHeat WalletFunding AvailabilityElastic Coin is known as XELTotal Coin Supply: 100.000.000 XELDistributed Coins: 100.000.000 XELElastic features the “Elastic PL” programming languageNormal nodes broadcast unverified POW/bountiesSuper nodes verify work and broadcast verified POW/bountiesGuard nodes cross verify certain percentages of signed POW/bounties by supernodes to detect malicious behaviorWho is the customer base?“Getting serious scientific attention…”“Having researchers and serious institutions using this system to reach advancements in their respected field”“Affiliation(s) with leading tech companies and personnel who recognize the value this system brings.”“Potential partnerships with a university, or a research company”Strategy to Gain AdoptionUnknownTREND ANALYSISIn past analysis, I have referenced Gartner’s Trends, and as now one organization has the proverbial crystal ball into the future, we can use this as a baseline for creating supporting evidence that the path for which the Elastic Project is based has true and lasting merit.Below are several trends in the world of supercomputers worth focusing on.This statistic shows the annual revenue of the supercomputer market, from 2015 to 2020. In 2016, the supercomputer market is expected to be worth 3.5 billion U.S. dollars.Worldwide revenue from the supercomputer market from 2015 to 2020 (in billion U.S. dollars)This ranking lists the 10 fastest supercomputers according to the Linpack benchmark Rmax score. The fourth fastest supercomputer as of November 2016, the Sequoia, achieved a Linpack benchmark score of 17 petaflops, completing 17 quadrillion floating point operations per second.Top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world, as of November 2016, by Linpack benchmark score (in TFlops per second)This statistic shows the revenue generated by the leading vendors of supercomputers worldwide, in 2015. That year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) generated more than 1.23 billion U.S. dollars from the sale of supercomputers. In total, the supercomputer market, which is part of the larger high-performance computing (HPC) market, was worth around 3.28 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.Worldwide revenue from supercomputers in 2015, by vendor (in million U.S. dollars)CONCLUSIONThere is clearly a race to build the very best decentralized supercomputer. Based on my research, the Elastic Project, is in the forefront of this technology. They have a clear advantage, and that is that they are relatively unknown in the wider market. Another advantage is that their competitors, are not actually taking them seriously. This flying under the radar, will be a key component to their success.Potential challenges that they face are funding and mass user adoption.I see these two as really the major hurdles that the Elastic Project needs to address in the short, medium and long-term vision of their project.As with all businesses, and make no mistake the Elastic Project is a business, albeit an open source project, nevertheless they are a business, they need to understand that their major resources of time, energy and money can be their ally or their enemy.A business is an organizational entity involved in the provision of goods and services to consumers.I very much like this project and I see huge potential for them in the future. I see the Elastic Project potentially embracing a social entrepreneur approach which may add even more greater appeal to gaining the mass user adoption that would be necessary to take this project to where the Elastic community wants it to go.BlockchainSupercomputerXelElasticprojectBitcoinOne clap, two clap, three clap, forty?By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out.784BlockedUnblockFollowFollowingPink Panther78Never miss a story from Pink Panther, when you sign up for Medium. Learn moreNever miss a story from Pink PantherBlockedUnblockFollowGet updates

In this video, Im explaining Ampleforth. Ampleforth is a very interesting and unique project, it tries to be an uncorrelated asset to the crypto markets and achieves this through elastic supply. You will learn exactly what it is, how it works and how it will be used. https://www.ampleforth.org/ WANT TO BE SEEN ON THE CHANNEL? EMAIL contact@ivanontech.com JOIN ACADEMY https://academy.ivanontech.com/webinar JOIN TELEGRAM GROUP https://t.me/ivanontechvip Ampleforth are sponsoring this episode. GET $10 TO BUY YOUR FIRST CRYPTO: https://www.coinbase.com/join/59d1738ff36136022bd9ee10 BUY PHYSICAL BULLION GOLD: http://www.bullionvaultaffiliate.com/ivanli/en BEST ALTCOIN EXCHANGE: https://www.binance.com/en?ref=35933746 BEST WALLET: https://www.ledger.com?r=5a56aa023b40&tracker=IOT Good Morning Crypto Want to be a Sponsor? EMAIL contact@ivanontech.com Join my online academy https://academy.ivanontech.com Join the crypto discussion forum https://forum.toshitimes.com Join Telegram channel https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE2xJE4l8xhC8MU4cg If you would like me to speak at your conference, book me here: https://ivanontech.com #bitcoin #blockchain #ivanontech Social: LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/ivanliljeqvist/ Instagram: http://instagram.com/ivanontech/ Steemit: https://steemit.com/@ivanli Facebook: http://facebook.com/ivanontech/ Exclusive email list: http://eepurl.com/c0hyc9 DISCLAIMER: This is NOT financial advice. This is just my opinions. I am not responsible for any investment decisions that you choose to make. Ivan on Tech is all about cryptocurrencies and the technology behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, IOTA. We also cover Bitcoin price, altcoin price, investing, analytics, different altcoins. Ivan on Tech by Ivan LiljeqvistArticle Categories:Ivan on Tech Videos

In today’s Money Morning…the first episode of our podcast…recent pullback in bitcoin has something to do with India…this time it’s different…and more…

Editor’s note: In our first episode of the Money Morning Podcast, I speak to Leigh Travers who is Executive Director of DigitalX Ltd [ASX:DCC]. Among other projects, DigitalX runs a bitcoin fund. We discuss the recent impact of Elon Musk and Tesla on the bitcoin price as well as a range of topics in the world of cryptocurrencies, including monetary policy, institutional sentiment, and what DigitalX is doing to capitalise on trends within the market.

There’s a podcast in this editorial for the first time, be sure to watch it.

Speaking of bitcoin…

I spend enough time looking at charts and financial statements for those things to occasionally enter my subconscious.

And a couple months ago, I had a dream about the Bitcoin [BTC] price chart.

Wow! It just keeps going up, I thought.

We won’t get too deep into Freud and Jung today, but suffice to say bitcoin is on a lot of people’s minds at the moment.

I dare say a lot of retail investors out there are looking at the chart below thinking they have missed the boat:

To be clear, I don’t think you’ve missed the boat yet, depending on how long you HODL.

And this is the bitcoin price in AUD, which will look slightly more subdued than the BTC price in USD.

Which is because of the relative weakness/strength of the USD and the Aussie dollar.

If you’re a true crypto believer you probably think of crypto in terms of crypto, not crypto relative to fiat.

But what happens if crypto and fiat go to war?

Bitcoin vs Gold: Which Should You Buy in 2021?

Here’s a quick explainer of what India is up to with regards to crypto via Reuters:

‘India will propose a law banning cryptocurrencies, fining anyone trading in the country or even holding such digital assets…

‘The bill, one of the world’s strictest policies against cryptocurrencies, would criminalise possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets…the bill would give holders of cryptocurrencies up to six months to liquidate, after which penalties will be levied, said the official, who asked not to be named as the contents of the bill are not public.

‘Officials are confident of getting the bill enacted into law as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government holds a comfortable majority in parliament.

‘If the ban becomes law, India would be the first major economy to make holding cryptocurrency illegal. Even China, which has banned mining and trading, does not penalise possession.’

Even China doesn’t do this…

Nice one, India.

To be fair, this kind of move was always on the cards.

Fiat was not going to walk quietly into the night.

And paradoxically, I think moves like this will actually accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrency rather than its demise.

Investors will likely turn up their nose at draconian policies that favour fiat.

More pressure means a quicker exit from fiat.

It’s like a desperate salesman using the wrong tactics on a potential buyer — push too hard and the buyer will walk.

It’s classic government behaviour, really.

As Leigh Travers noted in our podcast chat, bitcoin is directly benefitting from central bank monetary policy and government behaviour.

India won’t be alone.

Others will come forward trying to stop the inevitable.

You can’t turn off the Internet. At least, not without revealing that the emperor has no clothes.

And by that, I mean that if democracies engage in authoritarian behaviour to protect the value of fiat which they have spent the last few decades devaluing — people will vote with their feet.

They will emigrate to crypto-friendly jurisdictions.

They may even form their own countries without the traditional nation state borders.

The nation state will sign its own death warrant if it pushes ahead with crypto crackdowns.

It’s a scary prospect, but one you should be prepared for.

We’ve got a new service in the pipeline (in the coming months) to guide you through the age of techno-monetary competition.

Remember, central bank and government behaviour is largely predictable.

It’s what you do in light of this behaviour that really matters.

Finally, if you want an in-depth look at the world of crypto, be sure to check out that podcast.

Lachlann is also the Editorial Analyst at Exponential Stock Investor, a stock tipping newsletter that hunts for promising small-cap stocks. For information on how to subscribe and see what Lachy’s telling subscribers right now, please click here.

One of the representatives of virtual currency is bitcoin. Many books have been published and often featured in the media. Among them, there is a tendency to talk about the birth of the dream currency, and the virtual currency changes the world in a tone filled with dreams and hopes.

But is that the case?

Although it certainly has advantages over conventional currencies, behind it is the reality of dream and hope that he did not want to know if possible. In this series, he would like to consider three times whether the image of dream currency Bitcoin that is generally disseminated is correct.

 Do many people around the world use Bitcoin?

The address is one of the significant differences between Bitcoin and conventional currencies. An address is like an account number for exchanging Bitcoin with the other party, and there are 16 million addresses in the world. A significant number of 16 million appear to be trading bitcoins using these addresses.

However, at the number of bitcoins held by each address, 60% of the total is 0.001BTC (BTC is a bitcoin currency unit, 0.001BTC ≈ 800 yen, the end of November) less is occupying. If you add an address of 0.1BTC (≒80,000 yen) or less to this, it will fill 90% of the world’s addresses. The fact that the addresses with a small balance occupy the majority suggests that there are many trial addresses by those interested in the mechanism of virtual currency. In other words, the number of people who use Bitcoin positively is not as large as it looks.

Goldman Sachs still seems to be skeptical of cryptocurrencies, even with the news of setting up a Bitcoin trading desk. In its economic outlook, the bank’s investment strategy group said the price of Bitcoin, which had fallen 45% in 2018, would fall further.

The cryptocurrency will continue to decline is not changing. It has been proved sooner than you expected, said Cryptocurrencies would fall further in the future, given that they do not perform any of the three functions of traditional currencies: the medium of exchange, the measure of value, or the preservation of value.  The bitcoin supreme is one of the secure bitcoin trading sites which is like by most of bitcoin traders.

The blockchain technology that supports it, has been welcomed as a destroyer of the international financial system because it theoretically improves the efficiency of databases, speeds up transactions, and enhances operational transparency. But, at least for now, Goldman Sachs believes cryptocurrencies will not have the same impact as other asset classes.

You don’t think the decline in cryptocurrencies will hurt financial assets’ performance in a broader sense. As of mid-2018, cryptocurrencies represented only 0.3% of global GDP. It’s not there. The report says. Cryptocurrencies are getting more attention than ever on traditional and social media

Some of these Bit coin’s privacy features are welcomed by major financial institutions that value the confidentiality of their transactions, Buck said. There is a possibility that privacy implementation will mature Bitcoin as digital cash and attract big money.

However, there are various trade-offs in these features, and it is unknown whether they will be implemented smoothly and quickly with the agreement of the Bitcoin developer. As in the bitcoin world, optimism is forbidden, as the developer community has been cracked by block size increase. While there is a wide range of privacy technologies, the question is whether these features will be implemented in Bitcoin’s underlying layers without conflict of thought.

There is a concern that a bitcoin will be created to strengthen the confidentiality of transactions, and the anti-inflation performance of bitcoin will be destroyed.

Adam, who develops join market, a virtual currency wallet with a coin join function, said, Blockchain is a public authentication mechanism by its nature, so it is dangerous to obscure important information by cryptography.

Recently there were inflation bugs in Monero, Bitcoin, etc. So thinks that technology that does not record transactions directly on the Blockchain is preferable in terms of privacy and scalability. Lightning Network is a clear example of that.

So bitcoin grow to high level in small interval of time and now it is first choice of trader for making money.

Amid all the excitement of crypto’s biggest bull run in history, some assets have been outperforming even the current high-performing market. In particular, Synthetix (SNX) has been on an epic tear, leading the growth of the whole niche. 

Beyond the Coinbase effect, the main reason for the increase in SNX’s price is the genuine demand for what Synthetix has to offer — namely digital, synthetic assets. So, why all the excitement about these instruments, and what are they used for?

Like many other elements of the cryptocurrency markets, synthetics arrived from the traditional financial sector. Synthetics are used to simulate particular instruments while altering some key characteristics. This allows investors to gain exposure to underlying assets without necessarily having to hold them.

In the cryptocurrency space, tokens are a digital synthetic representation of any other asset, including those in the real world, such as stocks, commodities or fiat currencies. Crypto synthetics can also be used to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies and tokens. A simple example could be some of the “wrapped” assets used in Ethereum’s DeFi applications.

Synthetix benefits from being the first to market with a decentralized exchange that also allows users to mint synthetic assets, known as Synths, using cryptocurrencies as collateral. The platform operates SNX as its native token. Holders can use SNX as collateral to mint Synths and earn a share of fees paid by Synthetix DEX users. Therefore, the SNX token offers real utility, as it incentivizes users to create Synths on the platform and create further value for the token itself.

Over the last three months, Synthetix has been undergoing significant growth, rising from around $500 million locked in late October to over $2.3 billion at the time of writing, according to DeFi Pulse.

Although there are Synths that allow traders to speculate on the price of non-crypto assets, such as oil, it’s evident that the vast majority of users are taking advantage of Synthetix to gain access to synthetic USD and crypto assets, with sUSD, sEther and sBitcoin being the most popular on the platform. They account for over 75% of the total market cap of all synths, according to the Synthetix stats page.

The sUSD Synth alone is around 50% of the total Synth market cap, indicating that DeFi users continue to have an appetite for stable currencies for trading. However, sUSD is also the most liquid Synth, which is tradable on centralized exchanges including Binance and KuCoin, as well as on decentralized exchanges Curve and Balancer.

The most popular is the sUSD/sETH pair on the Synthetix Exchange, which currently has around $10 million in daily volume. Despite this, the number of traders using the platform is quite low, with an average of around 130 in the last 30 days. This indicates that liquidity is highly concentrated.

Given the rapid expansion of decentralized finance, it seems likely that other companies will enter the space. Currently, there are two major contenders in operation.

Universal Market Access is an open-source protocol that allows users to set up priceless financial contracts on Ethereum, based on templates, and prices are determined according to an oracle. Put simply, this means that developers can set up ERC-20 tokens to trade a synthetic version of any asset.

Currently, there is over $63 million locked in UMA across nine projects. Of these, PerlinX allows users to generate their own synthetic assets. Like Synthetix, PerlinX uses a native token called PERL, which is staked as collateral against the synthetic asset generated. The platform launched in the third quarter of 2020 and currently has $250,000 locked, although it hit a peak above $600,000 in December, according to DeFi Pulse.

At the time of writing, PerlinX hasn’t yet switched on the feature that enables a user to create their own synthetic assets, so, like Synthetix, it’s up to the application owners to decide which ones make it onto the platform. This is likely to limit the utility of the platform, so PerlinX could become a more significant rival to Synthetix once users can mint their own assets.

Another project, Mirror Protocol, has recently launched on the Terra platform, which is one of the most used blockchains thanks to the Chai payments app, which has a base of 2 million users in South Korea, according to the company. Mirror appears to be in a developed state, with many “mAsset” synthetics already live. They track stocks, indexes and commodities.

Currently, Mirror Protocol has around $93 million locked, so it has quite some way to go before it’s a genuine rival to Synthetix. However, liquidity has risen sharply since the launch in December. It’s also evident from the types of assets available that Mirror is attracting those wanting to speculate on the broader financial markets, whereas Synthetix is a base for the Ethereum DeFi crowd.

Due to the popularity of Synthetix and the fact that there are other new market entrants poised to launch in 2021, it seems likely that synthetic crypto assets are fixed into the DeFi landscape and that the market will continue to grow.

With the potential for disruption in the traditional financial markets, it’s reasonable to expect to see more competition emerge for digital synthetics that mirror all kinds of real-world assets. This is one corner of the DeFi space that’s definitely worth watching as the year pans out.

When Terrance Leonard first started seriously investing in the cryptocurrency space in 2019, his original goal was to achieve financial independence.

The long-term plan was to invest enough in crypto that he could cash out of some of those investments, purchase real-estate assets and rent those out to earn additional income. That way he wouldn’t necessarily need to a work a traditional job to make ends meet.

But then his ideal home came on the market. Leonard, who works as a software engineer in Washington, D.C., already owned a row-home. But he wanted a home with a larger yard for his dog to play in and a garage.

“I thought, ‘This is exactly what I want,’” Leonard said. “And I’m ready to pull the trigger right now.”

To afford the $650,000 home, Leonard opted to use his cryptocurrency investments to cover a down payment and as proof of funds for the mortgage he took out to buy the home — he opted for a mortgage, rather than buying the home outright, because of the low interest-rate environment.

The process, as he would find out, wasn’t as simple as transferring his cryptocurrency holdings to the relevant parties. “There was back and forth between the lender and the title company making sure that was okay,” Leonard said.

Around two years ago, Leonard went all-in on crypto, taking a big bet on the relatively new asset class. “When I realized the potential of crypto — and I realized how well it was doing for me in the beginning — I sold all of my stocks, my 401(k), everything and moved it all into crypto,” Leonard said.

Today, he attributes his ability to purchase his “perfect” home to the success of the investing strategy he adopted. “Without investing in crypto there would have been no way that I would have been able to buy this at the time when it came on the market,” he said.

So what was that strategy? To take a long-term approach and target coins that are well-positioned for longevity. That means no meme coins, like Dogecoin DOGEUSD, 35.88%.

Instead, Leonard likes to think of the crypto market as being in a similar position as the dot-com boom was in the 1990s, before the bust. “I’m looking for the Googles GOOGL, -1.50%, the HPs HPE, -0.85%, the Oracles ORCL, 0.87%, ” he said.

He looks at the top 10 coins, and goes from there. Some of his investments were in bitcoin BTCUSD, -2.10% and Ethereum ETHUSD, +1.56%, but the bulk of his money went toward purchasing Chainlink LINKUSD, -4.54%, a cryptocurrency launched in 2017 that sends real-world data to blockchains.

When Leonard bought his first home, the process was quite standard. As a veteran, he was able to take advantage of the VA loan program and the process was “pretty seamless.”

Originally, he reached out to his lender, Veterans United Home Loans, to see if he could refinance the loan on his first home to convert it into an investment property, which would allow him to get a VA loan for his new home. Ultimately, that wasn’t possible.

So when Leonard had to get another loan to purchase the property that caught his eye, he figured he would use his crypto profits for his down payment and the earnest-money deposit. This time around, the process wasn’t as seamless.

“There were some issues with proof of funds,” Leonard said. “I just wanted to be able to say, ‘Here’s my wallet.’”

He couldn’t just transfer over the crypto investments or show his account on Coinbase to satisfy the lender and his title company. Instead, he needed to cash out into a bank account, like someone might do with money earned in the stock market.

The process might have been easier had Leonard sought out a home from a real-estate broker who specializes in transactions involving cryptocurrency. Some brokerages have begun listing properties where the seller only wants to be paid in cryptocurrency, sometimes specifying a specific investment vehicle. Unfortunately for Leonard, those brokerages didn’t have the types of properties he wanted, plus he wasn’t necessarily inclined to make an all-cash (or rather, all-crypto) deal.

“We had the lowest interest rates in a very long time, so I was not going to pass up on that opportunity,” he said, adding that he’s more likely to see a better return on his crypto investments, even after taxes, than he would if he sunk all his money into the home.

In the mortgage and real-estate industries, the use of cryptocurrency investments to purchase homes is still very much a novel concept. And lenders are still wrapping their heads around how to treat those assets.

Crypto is such a new concept that even determining how many loans have involved home buyers with crypto investments is a challenge, said Chris Birk, director of education at Veterans United. “Mortgage origination software doesn’t have fields for tracking something like this,” Birk said.

Right now, lenders are flying blind with these prospective borrowers, as regulators and other mortgage entities are only just beginning to put out guidelines for how to gauge the soundness of crypto assets.

Fannie Mae FNMA, -2.11%, one of the two government-sponsored enterprises that securitizes a majority of the mortgages nationwide, requires proceeds from bitcoin and other digital currencies to be converted into U.S. currency for them to be eligible assets when underwriting a loan. Fannie also requires documentation showing the digital currency was owned by the borrower.

However, Freddie Mac FMCC, -2.52% does not consider cryptocurrency to be an eligible source of funds. And other agencies have yet to provide any specific guidance. The Department of Veterans Affairs has no regulations in place that specifically reference cryptocurrency, an agency spokesman said. But the VA does require verification of deposits.

Lenders may request a 30- to 60-day transaction history for crypto accounts.

Lenders will generally request a paper trail, demonstrating a 30- to 60-day transaction history for the crypto account. But, as Birk noted in a recent blog post, cryptocurrency accounts don’t always provide monthly statements as a bank would.And for the time being, lenders will expect borrowers to cash out their crypto investments early in the process.

“You can’t pay your closing costs with a Van Gogh — it’s the same with your bitcoin,” Birk said. “It’s going to have to be converted, it’s going to have to be seasons and there’s going to be documentation to satisfy the lender.”

In part, this strict approach is reflective of mortgage companies’ responsibilities to flag potential criminal behavior, including money laundering. Underwriters need to be able to see potential red flags, which isn’t as easy with crypto wallets per se.

Despite the hassles he faced with buying his new home, Leonard isn’t deterred from investing in crypto. Right now, he still earns enough from his remaining crypto investments to cover the mortgage payments on his former home.

“I’m not in a rush to sell,” Leonard said. “I want to make sure that I make the right financial play.”

This article was first published by www.marketwatch.com

Is Decentralization Still A Dream? By on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE 3 min readMany blockchains have been released and there are almost a thousand ICOs(Initial Coin Offerings) were done raising billions of dollars, pitching they will improve the existing technical industry. Do we really achieve decentralization as promised by blockchain experts?But Whats Left in the Technical Industry to Improve? Do the speaking humanoids or the dancing virtual glasses needs improvement? Will, they are a kind of luxurious things which makes humans less smart than computers. But what does it have to do with our topic? Nothing!! People are crowding against the cloud computing technologies and the corporates are betting on them heavily, but its like getting a loan to repay a debt. The electronic industrys scaling down speeds already started to violate Moores law, which means our hardware sizes couldnt be scaled down too much. So for handling huge data, is the billion-dollar data centers an only way?Decentralization A Castle Built on Air People argue that the bitcoin will bring in a change to the existing financial industry as it provides decentralization, transparency and is not confined to a central bank. Lets leave such political dramas and focus on that term decentralization and how it could change our daily lives if it were a reality. Remember that no cryptocurrency is decentralized as most of them are controlled by the top 34 mining farms with an immense amount of hashing rate. They are tampering these databases if they are convinced simultaneously.Real Decentralization Most of the computing which we come across are done with some powerful data centers across the globe which were built with billions of dollars. But blockchain can revolutionize the entire data storage industry. What happens if you can store your image on yours friends mobile phone but only you can access it? Cool, Isnt it. The same will happen if blockchain-based internet is built. People can utilize the unused spaces for their computing power and there is no necessary for powerful hardware and costly storage devices. It is also based on the P2P protocol so there will be no intermediary organization involved in the data transfers and only the person with the key pairs can access it. If decentralization is a reality then the entire database management industry will be revolutionized as we can use everyones mobile phone to build a datacenter 100x powerful than all the supercomputers available. Isnt it a greater concept to store your data on a mobile phone of someone and get it when needed. Still, we are in the initial phases of blockchain development, but Im sure it will be more than Artificial Intelligence. We can call this as storage intelligence.Altcoin Magazine (@Alt__Magazine) | TwitterThe latest Tweets from Altcoin Magazine (@Alt__Magazine). Our goal is to educate the world on crypto and ultimately totwitter.com

Last night i had the weirdest dream about Bitcoin (seriously) I dreamed Bitcoin was going fully parabolic all of the sudden, FOMO in full effect, everybody was buying, trying to take profit only to re-buy immediately, within seconds, couple of minutes tops it went up to about 630.000 to 640.000 $. It hovered there for a moment and then started to collapse to zero. The moment it reached 0$ the whole network was gone, just vanished and with it all the Bitcoins. I was really pissed about it .. because i had just sold before it went parabolic, i could have been multimillionaire. :'( The only people that were happy, were those who sold before 630k. Moments (day's ? who knows in a dream) later it became known that the person or people behind Bitcoin had this all planned from the start. It was meant to be something like that Banksy self-shredding painting the whole time. I felt this dream idk why.. Thats all you remember from the dream?

Bitcoin maximalists never give up. Bitcoin’s price has crashed from over $19,000 a year ago to under $4,000 today, and there are no signs that the price is going to rise again any time soon. But maximalists don’t care. They are in this for the long haul. Their belief? Eventually, Bitcoin will replace all government-issued money. So all they have to do is HODL on to large amounts of the future world currency, and they will become the next generation of fantastically rich elites. Or so they think.A bitcoin token sits next to the image of George Washington on a U.S. one dollar bill.   Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg© 2018 Bloomberg Finance LPOf course, what we mean by "Bitcoin" is disputed. The Bitcoin community resisted hard forks for a long time, but eventually Bitcoin was forked, creating Bitcoin Cash, whose advocates claimed that it was the “true Bitcoin” as defined in Satoshi Nakamoto’s original white paper. Bitcoiners who held to the “one true faith” firmly expected Bitcoin Cash to die. But if there is one thing that the cryptocurrency forkfest of the last two years has taught us, it is that old coins don’t die. Both the new chain and the old one continued to be mined, often by the same miners, who rather enjoyed the arbitrage opportunities that two versions of the same coin create. Exchanges eventually listed both versions of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Cash was never worth as much as Bitcoin, but it certainly didn't die.Old coins also keep forking on. Bitcoin has now forked multiple times. Hard forks don’t just create new coins, they also create new tribes: each version of Bitcoin has its tribe of fervent advocates. So, we now have proliferating tribes of ardent Bitcoiners, each claiming that its version of Bitcoin is the “true Bitcoin.” Some of them appear to be willing to fight to the death to defend their coins, too: recent price falls have been partly blamed on a “hash war” between two versions of Bitcoin Cash.So what would replace government-issued currency is not exactly clear. However, most Bitcoin maximalists are supporters of the version of Bitcoin that remained after the first hard fork, now known as Bitcoin Core or simply “Bitcoin” (BTC). It is also sometimes called “digital gold.” It is this version that maximalists believe will become the base unit of account for a new worldwide payments system which will eventually replace all government-issued currencies.Here is Bitcoin Magazine predicting what will be in the history books of the future:Bitcoin maximalist philosophy in a single tweet. However, this is the last in a series of tweets, so to understand the context, we need to look at the other tweets.The first tweet in the series is about this article from Time magazine. The article argues that for an estimated four billion people worldwide, Bitcoin could be a useful way of protecting their wealth from predatory governments and hyperinflation. “For people living under authoritarian governments,” it says, “Bitcoin can be a valuable financial tool as a censorship-resistant medium of exchange.” And it highlights four countries:Time’s article is well-argued and reasonable. There are indeed very good reasons for people in these countries, and some others, to use Bitcoin as an alternative to government-issued currency, though personally I doubt that Bitcoin would become the main currency in any of these countries. But nowhere in the article does Time suggest that Bitcoin might replace government-issued currencies for anyone other than the four billion, who are slightly more than half the world’s population and disproportionately concentrated in China. So how did this lead to Bitcoin Magazine’s claim that all government-issued currencies would eventually disappear?Tweeting the link to Time’s article, Adam Back said it discusses using Bitcoin to protect against government “cashless and negative rate policies”. But it doesn’t. Time’s article is about authoritarian governments and economic basket cases, not democratically-elected governments in stable developed countries using negative rates to counter deflation and recession. True, it warns against the dangers of a cashless society, and cites Sweden briefly in this context. But it doesn’t even mention negative rates, which are currently used not only by Sweden but also by the Eurozone, Switzerland and Japan.It seems that Adam Back deliberately misrepresented Time’s article to promote Bitcoin as an alternative to government-issued currencies in stable Western democracies. Samson Mow, a paid apologist for Bitcoin Core, then went further. According to him, far more than four billion people can’t trust their governments:The total population of the world is only about 7.7 billion. Mow is in effect saying that no government in the world can be trusted. This is full-on libertarian “destroy the State” thinking.From here, it is only a short step to “all government-issued currencies will disappear.” It’s not just government-issued currencies that would disappear, though. After all, if no-one trusts government, democratic government can't exist. In Bitcoin Magazine’s brave new world, therefore, democratically-elected governments would also disappear, presumably replaced with technological superstructures automatically executing code written by unaccountable elites, blind and deaf to the horrible consequences of applying rigid rules to the messy lives of real people. We have already gone too far down this road. The resurgence of nationalism around the world is a reaction to the dominance of unelected, unaccountable, supranational elites. Replacing one set of elites with another is no solution.Fortunately, Bitcoin Magazine’s terrible forecast may never come to pass. History is littered with attempts to replace national currencies with undemocratic and unaccountable international currencies. They have all failed, except for (so far) the Euro and its African offshoot, the CFA franc (though the CFA franc is under growing political pressure because of its colonial origins.) There is no particular reason why Bitcoin should be different, or the Euro, for that matter. I predict that history books of the future will contain interesting discussions of the reasons why some crazy people thought they could replace government-issued currencies, and why they failed.Sadly, though, this will not be the last such attempt. Humans have short memories and long beliefs; ideological belief in a single world currency has proved extraordinarily resilient despite overwhelming historical evidence that supranational currencies either become national currencies (e.g. U.S. dollar and British pound) or are eventually torn apart by massive political and economic forces.But perhaps Bitcoin has something to teach us  – if we are able to listen. The forking of Bitcoin has demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that a currency is fundamentally an expression of tribal identity. This is true regardless of who or what issues it. Just as the various versions of Bitcoin have their own “tribes,” so too do government-issued currencies. If a government issues a currency, and the people accept it, the currency expresses their national identity. History shows us that currencies issued by governments that have lost all credibility with their own people fail – indeed, Venezuela is showing us this right now. So too do currencies that are not anchored by a stable tribal identity; this is why the currencies of states that lose wars often hyperinflate. The reason why we have multiple versions of Bitcoin is that someone still believes in every single one of those versions. So Bitcoin does at least have a tribal identity or twenty. But it's not exactly stable, is it?If currencies are fundamentally tribal, how can Bitcoin possibly become the "new gold standard", as maximalists dream? Humans don't take kindly to attempts by other tribes to eliminate their tribal symbols and impose those of another tribe. They have to be persuaded, not coerced. Currently, Bitcoin maximalists can't even persuade other Bitcoiners to support their coin. The idea that they could persuade all the people of the world to throw away their tribal currencies and adopt their version of Bitcoin is laughable. When's the next fork, by the way?Bitcoin has shown us the tribal nature of currencies. For that, we should be grateful. But Bitcoin becoming the One True Currency for the whole world? No, that is an impossible dream.I used to work for banks. Now I write about them, and about finance and economics generally. Although I originally trained as a musician and singer, I worked in banking for 17 years and did an MBA at Cass Business School in London, where I specialized in financial risk mana...I used to work for banks. Now I write about them, and about finance and economics generally. Although I originally trained as a musician and singer, I worked in banking for 17 years and did an MBA at Cass Business School in London, where I specialized in financial risk mana...

by Ravikash March 28, 2019, 9:17 am 244 Views 31 Votes 0 Comments Every darknet market which has effectively launched in the distant or recent past will effectively shut down eventually. Whereas some of the most promising darknet markets were shut down in the past few years, things have gone rather quiet in the scene. However, it now seems Dream Market will shut down at the end of April. This appears to coincide with a recent raid by Europol, as the agency arrested multiple individuals this week. One of the main reason why darknet markets matter to cryptocurrency enthusiasts is because Bitcoin and select altcoins are the preferred payment methods. On the one hand, this will give cryptocurrencies a very bad reputation, as has become apparent in recent years. However, the other side of the medallion is how there is an increase in global cryptocurrency usage, which should benefit the ecosystem in the long run. That latter aspect may become less prevalent, as numerous marketplaces have been shut down in the past half decade.Whereas darknet markets were once thriving and popping up in every corner of the world, the landscape has changed significantly. All of the top marketplaces are long gone by now, and Dream Market was the only bastion still standing. Sadly for its users, that will not be the case for much longer. On its website, the team has confirmed Dream Market will shut down on April 30, 20198. The message also states how all services will be transferred to a partner company, which means the concept of Dream Market will live on as a new darknet marketplace. What is always worrisome when such messages are shared, is whether or not the “new” platform is trustworthy. For all one knows, this could be a message put up by Europol after seizing control of the Dream market Onion domain. Creating honey traps for darknet vendors and customers is nothing new in this industry. In fact, it is a rather common tactic which tends to yield in multiple arrests over the course of many years to come. For now, it remains to be determined how legitimate this “partner company” will prove to be. To make matters even more interesting, Europol has recently confirmed several individuals have been arrested. All of these users are linked to darknet activity, which could indicate Dream Market has been a target of this agency for some time now. While there is no official mention of this top marketplace in the report itself, the timing seems a bit too convenient to indicate otherwise. During the Europol raid, conducted with the help of the FBI, DEA, and Canadian police forces, plenty of drugs, weapons, and cryptocurrency were seized in the process. When Dream Market will shut down in about a month from now, a lot of darknet users will have to look for a new home. While the partner company could be an outlet to keep an eye on, there are plenty of concerns as of how this platform should not be trusted. It is rather uncommon for a top market to refer to any alternatives. As such, it seems caution is more than warranted at this time. Hansa, another top market which was shut down a while ago, went through a somewhat similar procedure. How this new development will affect the cryptocurrency scene, is difficult to predict. Fewer outlets to give Bitcoin and altcoins a terrible reputation is a good sign, but it will also make this form of money less “useful” to a lot of people. It seems likely to assume a fair few new darknet marketplaces will pop up in the near future where Bitcoin and other similar currencies are welcomed with open arms. One also has to commend Europol for trying to make the internet a slightly safer space, even though these agencies are fighting an uphill battle first and foremost. Browse and manage your reactions from your Member Profile PageYour email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Coin Treat offers original coverage of the global blockchain and cryptocurrency news, provides opinions, reviews, guides, introduces to Crypto people with an aim to help the general public understand and successfully use these technologies now and in the future. Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password. To use social login you have to agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website. %privacy_policy%