Search results for - enigma virtual box 240

(30%) 0.0004 (65%) 0.001 (3%) 0.0025 (1.9%) 0.005 (0.099%) 2 (0.001%)

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New ZCash faucet! Get free ZEC every 60 minutes! 60 sats (30%) 90 sats (65%) 150 sats (3%) 300 sats (1.9%) 1000 sats (0.099%) 500000 sats (0.001%)

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Amount : 0.00902256 XVG Timer : Every 240 seconds (4 min)

dt-oss

Reward: 10 satoshi every 10 minutes

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Adbit – earn unlimited bitcoin by visit ads, without captcha.

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zec-faucet.com

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Claim Free Zcash (ZEC) every 240 minutes 1 Zcash (ZEC) = 53.05782 USD

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BlockSmash – Our users have opened thousands of free loot boxes and received massive Bitcoin rewards! Join BlockSmash and open your first box now!

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Coingratisan is a place where you can earn Free Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Dash, Zcash, Peercoin , Primecoin , Stellar Lumens, Litkoin, Agricoin by Faucet, Auto Faucet, Mining for free.

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0.04 Doge in ten minutes

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Claim between 5/100 satoshi every 30 min directly to your FaucetHub account!

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By AviramDayan and Cgerabit

The number of Dogecoins you win depends on the number you roll, and its paid according to its corresponding position in the payout table below.

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Stellar Lumens (XLM) Faucet. Get XLM every 60 Minutes! 0.0004 XLM (30%) 0.0005 XLM (65%) 0.001 XLM (3%) 0.0025 XLM (1.9%) 0.01 XLM (0.099%) 4 XLM (0.001%)

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Claim Free Ethereum (ETH) every 60 minutes

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By dileepkumawat and AviramDayan

Claim Free Dash (DASH) every 240 minutes

litecoin faucet.info

New Litecoin faucet! Get free LTC every 60 minutes! 150 (30%) 200 (65%) 500 (3%) 1000 (1.9%) 5000 (0.099%) 1000000 (0.001%)

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By dileepkumawat and AviramDayan

Claim random BTC every 5 minutes.

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Claim between 0.1/10 doge every 60 min directly to your FaucetHub account!

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Best Free Dogecoin Faucet, Claim Free DOGE Every minute!

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This will allow you to add your own More TV Time url for ANY site and the amount of claims in which you want to redeem daily! (Suggested is 50 per day to avoid bot detection. (i.e set timer to wait 12 hours to 12 hours 1 minute and claims to 25) Disclaimer: This script is a MODIFIED version of CGERabbits code for MoreTVTime scripts but allows for ANY site to be added! Notes: – Progress bar log removed as it did not post anything but 0%

kotibablo

Kotibablo Stable working

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By AviramDayan and BitStylez

claim 10 to 15 satoshi – daily (20 times in day)

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Amount : 0.00020690 UBQ Timer : Every 240 seconds (4 min)

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In our free game you can earn free monero. You don‘t have to spend any monero, it‘s free and you can win more than 250$ each hour! Look at the table bellow. It depend on the number. If you roll 10000 you win 250$, but if you want to win more you can multiply your monero in our Multiply game. Enjoy!

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New Lisk faucet! Get free LSK every 60 minutes! 0.00002 LSK (30%) 0.000021 LSK (65%) 0.00005 LSK (3%) 0.0001 LSK (1.9%) 0.0005 LSK (0.099%) 0.1 LSK (0.001%)

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Get Free NXT every 60 Minutes.

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bch faucet.info

Claim 10 – 250 BCH Satoshi every Hour All you have to do is enter your Bitcoin Cash Address and solve the REcaptcha Min withdraw of 20.000 BCH Satoshi direct to Wallet

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Bitcohitz is a Bitcoin advertising platform for advertisers and Bitcoin earning opportunity for members with various methods.

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By cgerabit and AviramDayan

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BtcFree is a Bitcoin advertising platform for advertisers and Bitcoin earning opportunity for members with various methods.

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6 – 9 Satoshi every 5 minutes

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High paying free Dogecoin faucet – rewards with multiplier. Direct automatic weekly withdrawals.

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Earn satoshi every 5 min

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By AviramDayan and amunishkin

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pentafaucet

Claim from 5 to 25 satoshi every 5 minutes

pursefaucet

Claim 1 satoshi every 1 minutes

RollerBit.Net satohero.com wizco.in

Wizco is a paid-to-click (PTC) site where members can earn BTC for viewing ads and advertisers can target bitcoin users.

Xbit.co.in

Faucet Xbit.co.in is a website which you can get free Satoshi from that for doing nothing. You just have to enter your wallet address and enter a captcha to get your free Satoshis.

btc bounty

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Claim your free bitcoin from the faucet once every 15 minutes. You will receive a random amount up to $1000 in free bitcoins!

freeb.tc

Freeb – Earn 30 Satoshi every 30min.

monero faucet.info

New Monero faucet! Get free Monero (XMR) every 60 minutes! 0.000001XMR (30%) 0.0000021XMR (65%) 0.000005XMR (3%) 0.00001XMR (1.9%) 0.00005XMR (0.099%) 0.005XMR (0.001%)

bitbux.cc

BitBux is a paid-to-click (PTC) site where members can earn BTC for viewing ads and advertisers can target bitcoin users.

factom faucet.info

New Factom faucet! Get free FCT every 60 minutes! 0.000009FCT (30%) 0.00001FCT (65%) 0.000025FCT (3%) 0.00005FCT (1.9%) 0.0001FCT (0.099%) 0.05FCT (0.001%)

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New Peercoin faucet! Get free PPC every 60 minutes! 5000 (30%) 9000 (65%) 25000 (3%) 50000 (1.9%) 500000 (0.099%) 50000000 (0.001%)

dogeworker.io

Different types of workers. Choose your!

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Claim between 500/1000 Litetoshi every 60 min directly to your FaucetHub account!

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New NEM faucet! Get free NEM every 60 minutes! 0.0003 (30%) 0.0004 (65%) 0.0015 (3%) 0.003 (1.9%) 0.01 (0.099%) 3 (0.001%)

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New Aeon faucet! Get free AEON every 60 minutes! 0.0001 AEON (30%) 0.00014 AEON (65%) 0.00025 AEON (3%) 0.0005 AEON (1.9%) 0.001 AEON (0.099%) 0.5 AEON (0.001%)

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New Blackcoin faucet! Get free Blackcoin every 60 minutes! 100000 blacktoshi every 60 minutes!

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Coingratisan is a place where you can earn Free Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Dash, Zcash, Peercoin , Primecoin , Stellar Lumens, Litkoin, Agricoin by Faucet, Auto Faucet, Mining for free.

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bitvideo

Earn Rewards By Watching Videos

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Amount : 0.00076677 GAME Timer : Every 240 seconds (4 min)

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bytecoin faucet.info

New Bytecoin faucet! Get free BCN every 60 minutes! 0.01BCN (30%) 0.02BCN (65%) 0.1BCN (3%) 0.25BCN (1.9%) 2BCN (0.099%) 100BCN (0.001%)

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By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Claim free crypto currency by doing simple taks like sovling captcha, visiting shortlinks and even even more for inviting your friends !

firebitco.in

View Advertisements to earn money

coinopen

Please fill in the captcha below and click the button to get your free bitcoins. The amount of free bitcoins that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every hour to win free bitcoins each time!

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All faucets together

doge-faucet.com

By dileepkumawat and AviramDayan

Claim Free Dogecoin (DOGE) every 60 minutes

reddcoin faucet.info

New Reddcoin faucet! Get free Reddcoin every 60 minutes! 0.02 RDD (30%) 0.025 RDD (65%) 0.1 RDD (3%) 0.25 RDD (1.9%) 1 RDD (0.099%) 100 RDD (0.001%)

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BitcoinFaucet is a multicoin earning site. Instant payouts to FaucetHub.io

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IndigoCoin – cloud mining service, founded at the end of 2014. As demand for cryptocurrency mining grows, our service and its user base expanded, our team of specialists grew, and the number of new mining farms increased. IndigoCoin is created by professionals for both experienced people in this field, and for beginners who want to participate in cryptocurrency mining. We provide the opportunity to earn with minimal investment and without going into technical aspects.

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New Primecoin faucet! Get free XPM every 60 minutes! 9,000 (30%) 10,000 (65%) 25,000 (3%) 50,000 (1.9%) 100,000 (0.099%) 50,000,000 (0.001%)

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Claim 1 satoshi every 1 minutes

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Bitcoin-Faucet.com faucet – Here you can claim every 20 minutes

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Coingratisan is a place where you can earn Free Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Ethereum, Dash, Zcash, Peercoin , Primecoin , Stellar Lumens, Litkoin, Agricoin by Faucet, Auto Faucet, Mining for free.

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Get Free XEL every 60 Minutes.

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New Ethereum faucet! Get free ether every 60 minutes! 100 gwei (30%) 300 gwei (65%) 500 gwei (3%) 1000 gwei (1.9%) 5000 gwei (0.099%) 2500000 gwei (0.001%)

lootbits.io

LootBits.io – Our users have opened thousands of free loot boxes and received massive Bitcoin rewards! Join Lootbits and open your first box now!

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Earn free bitcoin.

theazote.tk

The Azote — Claim Satoshis Claim 50 satoshis every 60 minutes.

webgate

Claim unlimited Satoshi & 50% referrals commission with WebGate BitCoin

weheartcoin

Easy way to earn Bitcoin Claim up to 1000 satoshi per action Up to 20 satoshi per ad view Earn from your referrals actions

xmr-faucet.com

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

XMR-Faucet.com – Free Monero Faucet and Lottery Claim Free Monero (XMR) every 240 minutes 1 Monero (XMR) = 42.79277 USD

my.dropz.xyz

my.dropz.xyz – Earn unlimited Ripple – XRP.

neobits.net TradeSanta

TradeSanta.Com – get some activity “Token” when you are login every day.

hideout tv

Waitch Videos, get coins

es.btcnewz.com

ESFaucet is a Multi-crypto faucet. Es, BITCOIN, LITECOIN, DOGECOIN, TRTL, EOS, TRX, VSYS, BCG, BKBT

getfree.co.in dgb

Claim Free DigiByte! 0.03 DGB every 10 minutes directly to your FaucetHUB.io account.

faucetpay.io

FaucetPay – is a micro wallet provider where you receive micropayments from faucets and other sites without any extra fees.

today bitcoin

Get 1-3 Satoshis every 5 minutes for 50 times per day Best timer: 29 min – 29 Max to run it 24/7 or 3-6 minutes to claim 50x within 2,5-5 hours Note: Payout threshold is 200 satoshis to faucethub and now payments are automatic every second day

rotate4allptp

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bchjolly

Bitcoin Cash Cloud Earning. Earn 2.65% daily profit, each second. Note: Unknown yet if they are legit.

earnbtc.io

By AviramDayan & Cgerabit

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EasyHits4U promotes your ads to our members. We have delivered billions of ad views and site visits to our members since 2003. Free and easy to use, EasyHits4U is one of the most prominent internet marketing programs on the web with over 1,473,262 members.

bitcoinsfor.me

By wangting0703 and AviramDayan

5 minute faucet, Hourly Jackpot Roll, High Paying Offerwalls, Watch Videos, Mining, 20% Referral Program, Weekly payments via Xapo, Faucethub or Coinbase (with low minimum 500 satoshi cashout)

kickasstraffic

Earn Free Bitcoins For Visiting Websites

BetFury.io

BetFury – Social i-Gaming Crypto platform with the first BTC Dividend pool in industry. 1000+ games, BFG Staking, Dividends in BTC, TRX, USDT, BTT, Jackpots, Cashback up to 25%, friendly 24/7 support

Ad-Doge

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satoking.com Beta.Cent.Co

Beta.Cent.Co.fc – Earn ETH when you do “Vote” or Comment.

satoshi hero

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Satoshi Hero is a simple and fun way to earn bitcoins. We are offering a completely FREE bitcoin faucet paying out three times per 10 minutes.

satoshilabs video

Earn 90 Credits each minute!

coinhub.es

CoinHub – Earn “DOGE”

ganarbitcoin.us

GanarBitcoin – Earn “DOGE”

freebitcoin.win

Claim free bitcoin, dogecoin, litecoin, potcoin : 6 cryptocurrencies, daily bonus, play slots and dice, PTC ads, all in one place!

yannik.biz

By ivan2003 and AviramDayan

Faucet OnLine since 2015, operation similar to MoonBitcoin, direct payment on Faucethub to reach 15000 sat or Direct 30000 sat. Tested and paying.

3btc.org

Earn free of charge crypto coin: Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), Bitcore (BTX), Bytecoin (BCN), Dash (DASH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Needlecoin (NDC), Potcoin (POT), Ripple (XRP), Stellar (XLM).

freedogeon.com

WIN FREE DOGECOINS EVERY HOUR!

CryptoScourge

Claim between 100-200 coins every 60 min!

freebccvideo

MORE TV TIME. GET PAID TO WATCH VIDEOS AND READ ARTICLES. ALLOW THE PUSH NOTIFICATION ON SITE TO EARN.

aditif

You can choose total 14 cryptocurrency and set time freely based on your ABP. You can get unlimited balance with do unlimited tasks like solving shortlinks, PTC, Mining with CPU, Offer Walls, complete surveys offer, app installs, playing mini game, watch a video, claim Faucet and Daily Bonus. Check coin rate here to know how long autosend coin can run. You can choose all coins to FAST LEVEL UP. Raise your level to reduce autosend timer duration until minimum autosend timer duration is 1 minute.

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FocusGames – provide daily bonus & Faucet & Casino games.

freedgb.com

Claim 0.0461 DGB every 60 minutes

YTMonster.Net

YTMonster.Net – YTMonster is the most familiar exchange platform for “YouTube” to get organic actions 1 on 1 If you do something, then will do for you (if you have points) on any topic: YouTube Views, YouTube Subscribers, YouTube Likes, YouTube Comments, so get “Free Bonus” every day! – only if you already watched the daily amount that needed, for each “topic” in: YouTube Views, YouTube Subscribers, YouTube Likes, YouTube Comments.

coinpayu

Earn bitcoins just by clicking ads or promoting us.

neobux

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

s an extremely popular PTC (paid to click) site that has been around since 2006. In the world of PTC, that is a very long time. If you aren’t familiar with PTC, they’re websites that let you sign up, usually for free, and click on ads to earn money.

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Earn Bitcoin Cash just by viewing advertisements.

moonhash.cc coinfaucet

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luckybits all

By AviramDayan and Cgerabit

Welcome to LuckyBits.io multifaucet Join NOW and earn up to 7,778 bitcoin sat on our lottery ! You get free tickets from claims!

adltc

Earn Litecoin just by viewing advertisements.

clix4btc

View Advertisements and Earn Btc

cranefive

Choose your favorite coin and start earning! The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every hour to win additional free coin each time!

FairPlay(FairSpin)

FairPlay.io – Eran Token when you are active every day,

helicoin.pw

A great faucet to start earning your first crypto You do not need any investments to earn a crypto. Here you can perform simple tasks after a certain time in order to earn a cryptocurrency instantly on your account in CCBOX. On this site you can earn Ethereum (ETH).

ibits.io

Visit Websites and earn bitcoin

likecoin.pro

LikeCoin.Pro – Likecoin is a digital currency – based on Blockchain technology, that give you reward amount for any “Like” that you do on “YouTube” videos, also you can get some activity “Token” when you are login every day – this is the future, do not miss it.

Earn one ‘stamp’ (%discount) each day you login to “Wish” site.

evefaucet

Win free Coins Every hour you can could win more than $300 in Coins

freecardano.com ada

By Nekodoll and AviramDayam

Free Cardano (ADA) that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table. You can come back and play every hour to win additional Free Cardano each time

freenem.com xem

By cgerabit and AviramDayam

Please click on the ROLL button to get your Free NEM. The amount of Free NEM that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every hour to win additional Free NEM each time! You would also get 50% of what your referrals get from us as well.

freebcc

THE AVAILABLE TOKENS ARE RESET EVERY 24 HOURS. THE AVAILABILLITY OF THE TOKENS MAY DIFFER PER DAY. AFTER CLAIMING YOU MAY CHOOSE YOUR PREFERRED CURRENCY TO WITHDRAW THEM IN.

Allcoins.pw All

Earn free coins from faucet Bitcoin Faucet Dogecoin Faucet Litecoin Faucet Ethereum Faucet Dash Faucet Monero Faucet BitcoinCash Faucet Ethereum Classic Faucet IDA Token Faucet Stellar Lumens Faucet Ripple Faucet Tron Faucet Bittorrent Token Faucet

cointiplyptc

View ads to earn coins

contract-minerscript

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StakeCube

StakeCube – Claim multiple faucets every 24 hours. Multicoin: SCC,SPE,MMO,ESBC,APR,TRBO,VSX,ASAFE,ABET,CTSC,KYDC,PRIV,GPKR, BTC,LTC,DOGE,DASH,DC,BLOCK,DGB,PIVX

crex24 faucet

CREX24 faucets allow registered users to get free cryptocurrencies. There are fixed time intervals and limits on payments for each available currency.

LuckyFish

Get multi faucets to play in casino: btc,doge,ltc,eth,bch,xlm,xrp,dash,zec,usdt,bsv,eos, “LuckyFish” based multiplayer betting gambling website.Classic Dice,Multiplayer Dice,Roulette.

ClaimBits

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cliquebook

View Ads to earn money

CodBits

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scarletcliks

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bitsler

Bitsler offers casino games like dice and roulette with bitcoin, ethereum, ripple and 17 other cryptocurrencies. Win part of our $1,000,000+ yearly gambling contests!

wordlofbitcoin

WorldOfBitco.in – it is a Bitcoin faucet. You can get your Satoshis every 5 minutes. You just have to enter your Bitcoin address and enter a captcha to get your free Satoshis.

Randomit.Eu

Earn from 3 to 20 Satoshi every 60 Seconds Win quickly and easily with our faucet

free-ethereum.io

In our free game you can win Ethereum. You don‘t have to spend any money, it‘s free and you can win more than 200$ each hour! Look at the table bellow. It depend on the number. If you roll 10000 you win 200$, but if you want to win more you can multiply your ethereum in our Multiply game. Enjoy!

earnfreefaucets

Earn Free Coins every 60 minutes

fautsy btc

Claim 7 Free satoshi every 5 Minutes

bitsfree

Earn FREE Satoshi every hour Earn up to 20% from your referrals earnings Receive BTC into your FaucetHub account or Bitcoin Wallet No limits on earning amounts or referrals PTC Ads, Shortlinks, Offerwalls, CPU Mining and more Fast & professional support

CoinFaucet.Net

Earn every 1 hour.

litecoinads

Instant payments to walcrypt.com and faucetpay no minimun to withdraw or direct to your litecoin wallet (0.02 ltc) 10% referral for life unlimited referrals no click nedeed to earn from referrals increase your money with adpacks up to 150% of the money deposited

sunbtcspace

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Bitcoin faucet Sunbtc. Here you can claim every 5 minutes. These claim rates are adjusted automatically depending on a number of factors (Сurrent Bitcoin/USD exchange rate – now: USD per 1 BTC, and revenue received from adverts).

cointiply ptc wall-clix

Click Ads & Complete Offers to Earn Coins

hotflashhits

Free satoshi per click! Surfing, Referring, Promouting & PTC!

DiscordTip (Tip.cc)

•DiscordTip Main – Vote •DiscordTip Main – server – with 3 “AirDrop” Channels •DiscordTip FaucetCollector – server – with 1 “AirDrop” Channel •DiscordTip LaccsFaucet – Vote •DiscordTip LaccsFaucet – server – with 1 “AirDrop” Channel •DiscordTip CryptoMoon – server – with 3 “AirDrop” Channels •DiscordTip DreamTeam – server – with 2 “AirDrop” Channel •DiscordTip Zero – server – with 1 “AirDrop” Channel •DiscordTip FreeCryptoWorld – server – with 5 “AirDrop” Channels

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By Faucet Collector and AviramDayam

FREE Ripple Every Hour. Get Free Ripple absolutely free every hour by playing a very simple game and you can win up to $300 in Free Ripple! Instant Withdrawals. You don’t have to wait to get paid. With FreeRipple.com you would get paid instantly once you reach our very minimum withdrawal amount.

forumcoin.win btx

1300 satoshi every 1 minutes.

crypto fun space doge

earn 0.1 DOGE every 10 minutes.

timebucks

By cgerabit & AviramDayan

In this task you will get paid to click on links from advertisers. You must view the website for the specified time in seconds to receive your credit. You can only view 1 ad at a time. If you close the tab before the timer ends, the timer will stop and you won’t receive your credit. You can allow a sound to play when the timer finishes. You can also start your own click campaign by going to Advertise > Clicks.

ExpressCrypto

ExpressCrypto – is a brand new cryptocurrency micro wallet powered by ExpressGroup, designed to receive payouts from faucets. You can earn from different ways, we offer also exchanger where you can deposit and withdraw coins with super low fee powered with coinmarketcap rate.

coindice.win

Claim free bitcoin, litecoin, potcoin all in one place!

adxrp

Earn XRP by viewing ads

hitsprosper

Solve two of the most frustrating problems a marketer faces online : Finding quality website traffic and establishing a quality tracking system.

getdoge.io

You can earn by OVER 1000 BITS DAILY by doing:

xcolander trx

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

xcolander xrp

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

bitearn

A High-Paying Faucet Bitcoin For People Like You BitEarn is a perfect solution if you would like to earn some cash on the web with little to no efforts. Claiming here is both easy and fun. The claimed amounts are credited to your FaucetPay.io account.

BTCMaker.io

Every hour, we give away up to 0.00055 btc for free through our bitcoin faucet. No frills, no hidden agenda – just a way to get you started with the incredible worldwide phenomena known as bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

CoinPayments.Net

CoinPayments.Net – get free LTCT every day

qoinad ptc

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Flash Traffic from 1.5 Satoshi/Visitor! Highly Effective Full Tab PTC Ads starting from 5.5 Satoshi/Visitor!

topltcfaucet.pw – bitcoin cash

TopLtcFaucet.Pw – Bitcoin Cash

topltcfaucet.pw – litecoin uniclique

ur innovative features for members give them flexibility and more earning potencial. Earn up to $0.04 per click Earn up to $0.02 per referral click Advanced Referral Activity Filter Multiple payment options

autobitcoin

Get free coins automatically

BankCex

BankCex – get free “Token” “BXC” when you are login every day.

Bololex

Bololex – is Trading/exchange place that you also can claim each day free “faucet” with multi coins, you also can get free “Airdrop” to get free “Bolo” OR get > Energies to “vote” or spin in “Airdrop” .

coinbulb

Earn up to 0.00020 mBTC per click Earn 60%-100% referral bonuses Minimum payout is only 0.1 mBTC Instant payment to your Bitcoin wallet

faucetheroscript

FaucetHero is a faucet hosting community, providing members with the opportunity to earn multiple cryptocurrencies through faucets, games, weekly lottery and more.

forumcoinspeedyblk

50000 Blackoshi every 0 minutes. – simple captchas – Great to claim manually to get more Claims/perHour ! Pays straight to Faucethub after every Claim.

FreeSteam

FreeSteam.io – Steam from CSGO – Games Market – to withdraw your amount, go to “steampowered.com” domain – and get the “email” that you registered through him, after go to “FreeSteam.io” and set your “email” in “withdraw address” .

getyourbitcoin

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Claim your satoshi every 5 minutes

LuckyGames

Luckygames – Casino & Faucet – Earn “Token” anytime if your amount under 0.1 “Token”

rushbitcoin

Earn FREE Bitcoin Join the most complex, secure and paying Bitcoin faucet & rewards site and earn thousands of Satoshis every day.

voxinadz

Earn up to $0.02 per click Earn up to $0.02 per referral click Fast Payments and Receiving System Guaranteed ads daily Huge Offers and Promotions Profesional Support

YTMonster.RU

YTMonster.RU – YTMonster is the most familiar exchange platform for “YouTube” to get organic actions 1 on 1 If you do something, then will do for you (if you have points) on any topic: YouTube Views, YouTube Subscribers, YouTube Likes, YouTube Comments, so get “Free Bonus” every day! – only if you already watched the daily amount that needed, for each “topic” in: YouTube Views, YouTube Subscribers, YouTube Likes, YouTube Comments.

hitlink

Welcome to HitLink.com HitLink is an open social network and web site marketing portal with the purpose of showcasing your websites, business opportunities products and building connections.

NanoGames

NanoGames.io is – Blockchain Game platform with Casino games, MultiCoins Faucet, Multi Daily bonus

forumcoin.win eth

22 gwei every 1 minutes.

faucetcryptoscript

Earn Free Cryptocurrencies Are you looking for a easy to use faucet for free cryptocurrencies? What are you waiting for? Grab your free coins today!

gobits.io

Claim up to 35 satoshi every 5 minutes | using ReCaptcha Method

woowee.de

Earn € by visit ads.

btcfox.info faucet

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

We have Bitcoin Faucet giving our users free bitcoin rewards every hour.

ClaimBTC

ClaimBTC – earn BTC every 60 min.

quickiebtc

The fastest and highest paying faucet

spin bitcoins

Reward: 10 to 30,000 satoshi every 30 minutes

dash faucet.net

New Dash faucet! Get free DASH every 60 minutes! 30 (30%) 40 (65%) 100 (3%) 250 (1.9%) 500 (0.099%) 300000 (0.001%)

forumcoin.win doge

0.0275 DOGE every 1 minutes.

1xbit

Are you a fellow sports enthusiast, but can’t find the right site to wager on? 1xBit is the website for you

Bagi.co.in

Free 4 Satoshi BTC Every 10 Minutes, Withdraw to FaucetPay.io and Referral Bonus 25% and other crypto currencies

fly-faucet

Faucets included in this MasterScript are: “DASH” https://fly-dash.com “LTC” https://fly-ltc.com “DOGE” https://fly-doge.com “BTC” https://fly-btc.com

Primedice

Primedice – is the most popular bitcoin gambling site, featuring high-limit unique games among other bitcoin casino favourites. Now you can also play with Ethereum and Litecoin. Features: Reload, Reback, BonusTelegram, Vault, Aff, SpecificGames.

xcolander bcd

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

Bitforce

Bitforce – earn bitcoin.

chronox

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Whereas most faucets only allow you to claim once per hour or once per day, we allow you to claim as often or as little as you like. The faucet will gradually fill up – quite quickly initially but it will slow down over time – until you make a claim. So the longer you leave it the more you will be able to claim. You may prefer to claim a smaller amount every 5 minutes, or visit once per day and claim the large amount that has built up while you were away!

coinfutur.com

Coinfutur – earn bitcoin.

earnfree.xyz zec larvelfaucet

advertise here You can get bitcoin or altcoin everyday, Some shorturls are reset after few minutes to few hours, Check back this page often to complete shorturl and get paid

321cryptocasino

321cryptocasino – Eran Token when you are active every day,

abitfaucet.com

The Bitmonster’s Faucet

AdsTell.com

You can claim upto 20 Satoshi Every 60 Minutes

AliExpress

Get free points daily, when you are visit the site every day.

Betmatch

Betmatch – bets with cryptocurrency & Daily/Weekly reward.

BitGame

BitGame – get BUSDT token & Lucky token (LUT).

bitking.biz BitKong

BitKong – claim faucet & play in most popular game.

BitStarz

BitStarz – Eran Token when you are active every day,

bloxawards.com

Bloxawards.com – Earn Free Robux by doing simple tasks

BonusTrade

BonusTrade – Trading place, which brings you BonusTickets, and with it, you can trade or withdraw.

BPlay

Trusted and Fair Cryptocurrency Games ✯ Multi-Crypto Support ✯ Low House Edge ✯ Register Anonymously ✯ Social and Fun ✯ Official Binance Partner.

btcspinner.io

The amount of free BTC that you get is from 0.00000005 to 0.00000015 BTC, and chosen by random.

Campeonbet

Campeonbet.com – Earn Token when you are active.

cashfat

Earn FREE Bitcoin Join the most complex, secure and paying Bitcoin faucet & rewards site and earn thousands of Satoshis every day.

CasinoFair

CasinoFair – the first blockchain casino fast and fair casino games, that based on “ETH” that generate “FUN” Tokens, with daily “FUN” tokens.

CloudBet

Cloudbet best bitcoin betting casino & sportsbook since 2013. Crypto gambling in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT & more, sports games & welcome bonus.

coinbitscript

Earn 2 Satoshi every 5 minutes Win quickly and easily with our faucet

Coinsbit

Coinsbit – the most popular trading platform, that give you also free “Token” – Coinsbit coin, when you are login every day.

CoinSpiller

Eran 100 satoshi when you are active every day,

CryptoCasino

CryptoCasino – the first blockchain casino fast and fair casino games, that based on “ETH” that generate “FUN” Tokens, with daily “FUN” tokens.

CryptoLocally

CryptoLocally.Com – APP – you can get each day free spin and you will get “GIV” Token, to convert to ETH & trade in site OR to connect to “wax.io” to play games.

cryptoo.me

Cryptoo.me – Is online web-based Bitcoin micropayment platform that offer daily faucet – very important to insert the address from “Cryptoo.me”, otherwise you will not get Reward.

CryptoPlay DarkUSD.com

Darkusd.com, Free Cryptocoins, Free USD faucet site.

dogemate

EARN FREE CRYPTO COINS Get Free Crypto Coins from our High paying Roll Games, Shortlinks, Offerwall, PTC and We support various types of instant payment!. What are you waiting for? Grab your free coins today!

DuckDice

Best crypto dice game on the web: instant BTC deposits & withdrawals, a bunch of bonuses, highest faucets, live support, lossback available for HR.

DuelBits EarnDoge

Earn Dogecoin without limitation.

earnfree-dash.xyz earnfree-dgb.xyz earnfree-etc.xyz earnfree-ltc.xyz earnsato

Get Paid to Claim Satoshi Every 30 Minutes Get Paid to View Ads Get Paid to View ShortLinks Get Paid to Complete Tasks Get Paid to Complete Offers (Offer Walls) – Best Rates, Automatic System!

EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus.Com – Eran “USD” when you are active every day, to spend on “EmailOctopus” campaigns + increase your “submission” limit.

Evobet

Evobet.com – Earn Token when you are active.

FairMillions

FairMillions.com – Free Bitcoins. Deposit. 18+ years old. Gambling may be addictive, please play responsibly. Home, Translate, Help · Contact Us. Copyright © 2019 Fair Millions.

faucetspin.com faucetstar

Earn Up to 50 Satoshis Every 0 Seconds

fly-btc.com

BTC is a cryptocurrency. It is a decentralized digital currency without a central bank or single administrator that can be sent from user to user on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network without the need for intermediaries.

forumcoinspeedyxmr

100 Monero Satoshi every Minute getting paid straight to faucethub after every claim

freefaucet.io

FreeFaucet.io – Free Faucet: Store and grow your cryptocurrency portfolio with our multi-coin wallet. Store Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Litecoin, Brazio and more.

FreeGridco.in

Lucky Number Roll Faucet Win between 0.05 GRC and 55GRC each Hour Also they do add 0.0134 % to user Balance daily as compound interest.

Free-Tether

Win free Tether every hour!

GamDom Get-Bitco

Claim every 15 minutes, receive up to 50 satoshi per claim, DAILY BONUS 20% of the day’s earnings.

Get-Bitcoin

By AviramDayan & Cgerabit

Claim free Bitcoin every 5 minutes and WIN more.

grab.tc

Earn Thousands of Satoshis every day Claim upto 0.03405000 BTC every hour Earn Free Bitcoin daily by completing Surveys, Offerwalls, Shortlinks & much more!

graviex.net

Graviex.Net – about 60+ free faucet tokens every day – Blockchain Crypto Exchange, Cryptocurrency Exchange, Bitcoin Trading, Ethereum price trend, GIO, BTC price, BTCUSD, ETH wallet registration, LTC price, Graviex, Binance, Poloniex, Bittrex, Криптовалютная Биржа, Биржа, Криптобиржа, free btc, free bitcoin, stock exchange, free eth, buy bitcoin, coinbase, bitfinex, airdrop, block chain.

GridCoinStats HotCryp hourlyads

Win free bitcoin every hour

iqfaucet

Claim 100 Satoshi Every 5 Minutes !

jetgame.io

JetGame is – Blockchain Game platform with Casino games, MultiCoins Faucet, Multi Daily bonus

KingTiger

KingTiger – the first blockchain casino fast and fair casino games, that based on “ETH” that generate “FUN” Tokens, with daily “FUN” tokens.

KuCoin

KuCoin – the most popular trading platform, that give you also free “Tokens” – when you are login every day.

LBTCE

Claim between 2 and 3 satoshi every 5 minutes

listabitcoin.com

ListABitcoin – Claim 1 to 100 satoshi every 30 min

litegpt

offer you competitive prices and multiples advertise ways. You will be able to reach thousands of real customers and increase your traffic. ✓ Geographic filter ✓ Anti-cheat system allowing reals clicks ✓ Details statistics ✓ Purchase clicks or time exposure ✓ Start and Pause your campaign at any time ✓ Good Alexa rank ✓ Cheapest advertising system

mayaclixfamily

Join our dedicated community for free and earn with the thousands of members making extra money every day just by viewing our advertisers’ Website

mBitCasino

mBitCasino – get free Token “mBit”

money-clicker.com

Money-Clicker.com – MCC, is a virtual way to earn money online.

MozPlay – cryptorotator.website

Claim 1 satoshi (0.00044 USD) every 5 minutes

MyBitcoinTube

myBitcoinTube is an video advertising platform that pays you to interact with advertisers. Video advertisers purchase video ads in our system. We then deliver those videos to proven valuable users, and provide those users with instant cash incentives to interact with the video advertiser.

OKEx – Free Bitcoin – Earn 400 Satoshi each day, by clicking on 5 ADS.

OneHash

OneHash.com – Independent Bitcoin mutual betting service. Made by and for BTC enthusiasts. Dynamic multiplier. No registration. Pure emotions!

Paradice

Paradice – dice game & faucet.

PlayRoyal

PlayRoyal.com – get free Token “RWD”

qashbits.com

arn FREE Satoshi every 5 minutes Earn up to 20% from your referrals claims Receive BTC into your FaucetPay, KSWallet or Bitcoin Wallet No limits on earning amounts or Bitstarz australia review referrals PTC Ads, Shortlinks, Offerwalls, CPU Mining and more 100% Provably Fair Investment Game

queenfaucetscript

Claim coins every 5 minutes

Rocket

Rocket.run – Offering a unique betting experience – Fascinating Graphics, 99% Winning Chance, Provably Fair, Mobile Friendly.

Rocketpot RollBit

RollBit.com – Innovative and fun crypto gambling platform. Win and trade Bitcoin and Ethereum. Provably fair games. 1000+ slots and New casino sites no deposit free spins live games. Instantly withdraw, no fees!

RooBet

RooBet.com – The Honest Online Casino.

SendPulse

SendPulse – Eran Token (MERCI) when you are active every day, to spend on “SendPulse” campaigns + increase your “submission” limit.

Sendy

Sendy – Eran Token when you are active every day,

skybtc.com

Get Your Free Bitcoins Now! We already paid 3 BTC to our users! What are you waiting for?

sky-eth.com sky-faucet

Claim Free Coins Every 60 minutes Trusted free Coins faucet site

speedsatoshi

SpeedSatoshi is a website that enables its users to earn FREE cryptocurrencies. Build a stable and scalable modern day economy without the need of a bank or any other third-party organization. Grab your share of crypto completely for FREE and keep up with the blockchain fashion until it becomes a revolution!

StakeCenter

StakeCenter – Claim multiple faucets every 24 hours. Multicoin: SCC,SPE,MMO,ESBC,APR,TRBO,VSX,ASAFE,ABET,CTSC,KYDC,PRIV,GPKR, BTC,LTC,DOGE,DASH,DC,BLOCK,DGB,PIVX

starbux.io

Earn FREE Bitcoin Join the most complex, secure and paying Bitcoin faucet & rewards site and earn thousands of Satoshis every day.

surf-TRX

Earn TRON just by viewing advertisements.

tezzers surf

Tezzers Send Motivated Buyers And Hot Prospects To You The Fast And Easy Way!

Tower.Bet

Tower.Bet – Bitcoin Casino: Provably Fair Crypto Gambling Site, with TWG token.

TrueFlip

TrueFlip – is a fair casino games, based on the blockchain technology with Faucet & Bonuses, also you can Get free FLC (FlipCoin) Faucet – every 24hour. FLC (FlipCoin) is a virtual currency of the True Flip platform. In order to receive FLC, FLC can be used for receiving bonuses in future (in TFL Token ) .

TXBIT

TXBIT – the most popular trading platform, that give you also free “Tokens” (Solaris XLR) – when you are login every day.

VerveCasino

VerveCasino – Claim BTC.

ViveBtc

ViveBtc – give you a lots of tools to earn like: FaucetClaim, ViveGrid, MachineCoins, ShortLink, and many more..

weatherx

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

This is faucet bitcoin faucet where you can get free Satoshi from that for doing nothing. You just have to enter your wallet address and enter a captcha to get your free Satoshis. Now you get satoshi every 5 minutes. Rewards based on several factors, such as Bitcoin price(now: for 1 BTC) and revenue received from adverts. So it can be higher or lower at any time.

WinDice

Get auto “Bitcoin” faucet to play in casino: “WinDice” based multiplayer betting gambling website.Classic Dice,Multiplayer Dice,Roulette.

xcolander unit

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

xcolander zec

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

YOLOdice

Get auto “Bitcoin” faucet to play in casino: “YOLOdice” based multiplayer betting gambling website.Classic Dice,Multiplayer Dice,Roulette.

Zorgo btcclicks

Earn up to 0.00032 mBTC per click Earn up to 0.00025 mBTC per affiliate/referral click Minimum payout is 0.10000 mBTC Affiliate/referral program with a 40% to 80% commission! Premium membership costs 0.97200 mBTC/3 months and earn x2 your earnings.

autoclaim.in

Get free coins automatically

bitpick.co forumcoin.win bch

16 satoshi every 1 minutes.

Stake

Stake – is the most popular bitcoin gambling site, featuring high-limit unique games among other bitcoin casino favourites. Now you can also play with Ethereum and Litecoin. Features: Reload, Reback, BonusTelegram, Vault, Aff, SpecificGames.

digitask.ru

Free Dogecoins no time limit.

starbits.io

Claim 7 satoshi every 5 Minutes.

blackminerfaucet

Claim your free UltraNote coin

cryptomininggame

In Crypto Mining Game, play as a Cryptocurrency Miner in an Original Crypto-Universe!! Mine for game your favorite Crypto-currencies (will never use cpu), do mission to earn Hpower and Ingame Stuff, Collect Original Cards and play with it to Crypto-related Mini-games!

familybtc

amilyClix is designed from scratch. Our innovative features for members give them flexibility and more earning potencial. We are always ready to take any advice into consideration.

speedupfaucet

Claim 100 Token, No Time Limit. Withdraw To BTC, BCH, LTC, DOGE Or ETH.

topcoinsscript

Binance Coin and BAT Faucet

Wolf.Bet – is a high-quality dice game with unique features like 7-day streak bonus or wager contest! Each dice roll provides a lot of excitement and fun!

xcolander btg

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

forumcoin.win ppc

6000 peeroshi every 1 minutes

freebitcoin.io btc

By 1clickfilehosts and AviramDayam

FreeBitcoin.io – Free Bitcoin Faucet, Free BTC, Free Giveaways and more! Win up to 300$ of BTC every 60 Minutes.

8bet – FreeLottery – hit random number every 8 hours

bittube

Bittube is a unique Bitcoin Faucet that allows you to earn Bitcoin by watching any Youtube video you like. We have no popups or popunders and NO WITHDRAWAL MINIMUM.

forumcoin.win ltc

90 litoshi every 1 minutes.

coinadster

CoinAdster – more than just crypto platform

gptplanet

At GPTplanet you can earn by completing simple tasks like viewing advertisements, referring new members and completing offers.

xcolander xlm

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

CyberDice

CyberDice.net – Best Bitcoin dice game. 100% trusted and provably-fair. Free BTC faucet. 1% house edge. 24/7 Support.

Free-Lottery.net

are you ready to play some amazing lottery games for free? Take part today for your chance to win £500 in the Daily Draw or an incredible £10,000 in the Weekly Draw!

imajbux

REGISTER LOOKING TO EARN EXTRA CASH ONLINE? Join our dedicated community for free now and start earning cash for your online activities, including: Visiting Websites Referring Others Playing ImajGrid Micro Tasks Contests Free Offers

just good traffic

“The Traffic Exchange That Limits Surfing To 1000 Pages A Day To Ensure Top Quality Traffic”

ojooo traffic

raffic Exchange is a system of free exchange of traffic between websites. As a WAD user, you earn points by viewing other users’ pages, and they can view your pages in return, when your points get assigned to the particular campaing.

seafaucets

Claim Free Coins Every 60 minutes Trusted free Coins faucet site

autclaim.in manualfaucet

With Manual claim you can get high payment in one go. Without any time limit, you can earn by repeating this operation. The coins that you gained will be added to your wallet account on our site. You can withdraw any time without any limit.

ClaimFreeCoins.io

Claim Free Coins Claim Free Coins Every 5 minutes

forumcoin.win btc

2 satoshi every 5 minutes

ggfaucetscript

For the first 20 claims wou will be able to use random system After first 20 claims you will get 2 Satoshi until you make 100 claims After 100 claims you will not receive Satoshi until the end of the day

litking.biz xcolander ltc

Please click on the roll button (Claim) to get your free coins. The amount of free coin that you get will depend on the number that you roll and paid out according to the payout table below. You can come back and play every 15 min to win additional free coin each time!

autofaucet manual

With Manual claim you can get high payment in one go. Without any time limit, you can earn by repeating this operation. The coins that you gained will be added to your wallet account on our site. You can withdraw any time without any limit.

radioearn.com

RadioEarn – Earn money alone with listening radio or insert our API to your website and let other user listen for you. Quick and simple.

timeforbitcoin

TimeForBitco.in – it is a bitcoin faucet. You can get your satoshis every 5 minutes. You just have to enter your bitcoin address and enter a captcha to get your free satoshis.

claimbits shortlinks

Claimbits.net Shortlinks Convert your Bits into Bitcoin and withdraw on FaucetHub OR on your Bitcoin Wallet.

forumcoin.win dash

30 dashoshi every 1 minutes

BestChange

Claim 1 to 100 satoshi every 60 min

forumcoin.win pot

120000 potoshi every 1 minutes

clixco.in

By cgerabit and AviramDayan

Earn up to 500 Satoshi per click and up to 50% referral/affiliate commission!

btcbux.io

BTCBux provides lots of easy ways to earn free bitcoin, such as viewing ad, rolling faucet, doing offers, etc.

btcheat.com

BtcHeat – Play free slots and win Bitcoins! No deposits required. Reach minimum payment and get paid out in Bitcoin. Spins are unlimited and refill every 3 hours!

faucetwow

FREE TOKENS FROM VARIOUS METHODS.

moremoney.io

Earn FREE Bitcoin Join the most complex, secure and paying bitcoin faucet & rewards site and earn thousands of Satoshis every day.

optimalbux playnano.online

See why Nano is the best cryptocurrency, with feeless and instant use cases. Earn, play, bet, and spend – no account or login required.

bitgames

Earn as many coins as you can in week and the miner with the most coins wins

bitrig

BitRig is a new kind of Bitcoin Faucet where you feed little miners and they mine bitcoin for you. Dont worry, it is NOT a cpu miner.

BitSonar

BitSonar – the most popular trading platform, that give you also free “Token” – BitSonar coin, when you are login every day.

bitsroll.com

Claim 5 – 30 Satoshi each thirty Minutes Payout to Faucethub or BTC Wallet Its REcaptcha only. The dayli Shortlinks do work, but You must tick the Checkbox for it manually and untick if done.

Bitvest

Bitvest – claim “Token” to play in casino, your profile must to be under 50 to claim.

bizzcare

Join us free with few seconds and make easy money with 3 easy way,view ads, complete offer ,referring others and get paid direct to your account with one click.

ByBit

Bybit is the safest, fastest, most transparent, and user friendly Bitcoin and Ethereum trading platform offering cryptocurrency perpetual contracts and faucet.

clixblue

Instant Payout! * Watch Advertisement! * Tasks and Offers! * Rented Referral Bonus System! * Earn with Offerwalls! Join now!Join us for Free and start earning

coinmonster.pw

Get your FREE coins now! Coinmonster.pw will help you to earn some crypto, playing some crypto games and many other things. Coinmonster.pw is completely free, so register now!

CryptoSkull

CryptoSkull – claim faucet & play in most popular game.

directbidscript

Earn 2 Satoshi every 60 Seconds Win quickly and easily with our faucet

earnfree-eth.xyz faucetwow —- shortlink

FREE TOKENS FROM VARIOUS METHODS.

FortuneJack freebitcoin.vip

FreeBitcoin.Vip is the best & fastest growing multicoin faucet in faucet industry. You can claim multiple cryptocoins every 5 minutes & you can also do tasks to earn more without waiting time. We also have an auto faucet for each coins & you can also mine with our webminer. And we have daily lottery so you get more chances of winning more .

haugames.com

Neo Faucet – earn every 15 min.

indexbitco.in

By AviramDayan and Cgerabit

A free Bitcoin earning and Advertising site where you can earn massive.

investimer

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> Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-1,713,025 12 1 $1,000.00 1-in-29,965 686 25 $200.00 1-in-4,085 5032 103 $100.00 1-in-880 23362 524 $50.00 1-in-357 57580 1354 $30.00 1-in-271 75979 1808 $20.00 1-in-150 137042 3457 $10.00 1-in-50 411126 10760 $5.00 1-in-50 411126 12985 $4.00 1-in-14 1507391 54297 $2.00 1-in-11 1918516 112594

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.52

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X” or “20X” symbol, win 2, 5, 10 or 20 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WIN ALL DOUBLER NUMBER in the DOUBLER BOX, win DOUBLE ALL PRIZES shown.

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: January 13, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $100,000.00 1-in-2,488,785 20 3 $1,000.00 1-in-25,831 1927 133 $400.00 1-in-29,985 1660 82 $100.00 1-in-672 74038 4386 $50.00 1-in-186 267616 15176 $20.00 1-in-150 331838 17227 $10.00 1-in-50 995514 40597 $5.00 1-in-75 663676 25606 $4.00 1-in-14 3650643 195457 $2.00 1-in-11 4646024 387507

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.68

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch off the “CALLER CARDS” and the one “BONUS CALLER CARD” to reveal 15 LOTERIA? symbols. Scratch the corresponding symbols on the “PLAYING BOARD” that match the “CALLER CARDS” and the “BONUS CALLER CARD” symbols. Match all 4 symbols in any complete horizontal, vertical or diagonal line in the “PLAYING BOARD” to win prize shown for that line.

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: December 02, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-3,343,000 15 3 $10,000.00 1-in-2,005,800 25 5 $400.00 1-in-90,678 553 31 $340.00 1-in-91,007 551 14 $300.00 1-in-59,982 836 24 $250.00 1-in-59,343 845 12 $225.00 1-in-59,982 836 19 $200.00 1-in-7,188 6976 413 $150.00 1-in-22,366 2242 40 $125.00 1-in-7,189 6975 138 $100.00 1-in-890 56334 3431 $70.00 1-in-3,605 13910 297 $50.00 1-in-3,596 13944 416 $40.00 1-in-1,800 27866 1514 $30.00 1-in-225 222775 5573 $25.00 1-in-450 111507 2996 $20.00 1-in-150 334300 17907 $15.00 1-in-150 334231 9690 $10.00 1-in-75 668639 38793 $5.00 1-in-14 3677359 230548 $2.00 1-in-9 5348899 463647

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.63

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “DOLLAR BILL” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “STACK OF BILLS” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol!

Bonus Box: Get a “2020” symbol in the BONUS BOX, win PRIZE shown automatically!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: December 02, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-1,259,438 16 1 $10,000.00 1-in-671,700 30 2 $1,000.00 1-in-25,540 789 43 $400.00 1-in-9,016 2235 98 $100.00 1-in-782 25759 1418 $40.00 1-in-744 27101 1483 $30.00 1-in-240 84000 4548 $25.00 1-in-600 33575 1791 $20.00 1-in-150 134340 7995 $10.00 1-in-50 403020 25981 $5.00 1-in-75 268680 19012 $4.00 1-in-12 1611964 128360 $2.00 1-in-10 2015088 222760

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.37

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “BANKROLL” symbol, win TRIPLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: February 25, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-2,411,175 10 0 $10,000.00 1-in-1,148,179 21 0 $3,000.00 1-in-91,332 264 17 $1,000.00 1-in-29,952 805 56 $300.00 1-in-7,493 3218 212 $150.00 1-in-3,318 7268 453 $100.00 1-in-970 24853 1503 $30.00 1-in-186 129872 8700 $20.00 1-in-150 160745 10879 $15.00 1-in-150 160745 11006 $10.00 1-in-50 482235 34184 $5.00 1-in-75 321490 23682 $4.00 1-in-17 1446705 112305 $2.00 1-in-9 2571696 243951

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.54

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: January 14, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-906,788 72 2 $1,000.00 1-in-25,684 2542 121 $400.00 1-in-22,336 2923 48 $100.00 1-in-743 87819 2931 $50.00 1-in-189 344547 10130 $20.00 1-in-150 435258 17052 $10.00 1-in-50 1305774 49822 $5.00 1-in-75 870516 28861 $4.00 1-in-14 4787838 184857 $2.00 1-in-11 6093831 395384

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.69

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch the “CALLER CARDS” to reveal 14 LOTERIA™ symbols. Scratch the corresponding symbols on the “PLAYING BOARD” that match the “CALLER CARDS” symbols. Match ALL 4 symbols in any complete horizontal, vertical or diagonal line in the “PLAYING BOARD” to win prize shown for that line

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: December 03, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-2,010,955 30 4 $10,000.00 1-in-1,206,573 50 14 $400.00 1-in-88,980 678 45 $340.00 1-in-89,112 677 11 $300.00 1-in-61,247 985 29 $250.00 1-in-60,510 997 21 $225.00 1-in-59,850 1008 14 $200.00 1-in-7,190 8391 518 $150.00 1-in-22,486 2683 49 $125.00 1-in-7,215 8362 177 $100.00 1-in-1,322 45627 2682 $70.00 1-in-3,603 16744 306 $50.00 1-in-3,595 16783 403 $40.00 1-in-1,124 53695 2679 $30.00 1-in-346 174468 3684 $25.00 1-in-300 200988 4530 $20.00 1-in-150 402191 18733 $15.00 1-in-150 401975 9953 $10.00 1-in-75 804497 40925 $5.00 1-in-12 4826089 261982 $2.00 1-in-9 6435373 484725

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.5

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “BILL” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “$50 BURST” symbol, win $50 automatically! Get a “WIN ALL” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: September 17, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $20,000.00 1-in-800,485 30 1 $1,000.00 1-in-29,943 802 43 $200.00 1-in-3,767 6375 249 $100.00 1-in-899 26717 1084 $50.00 1-in-349 68748 2924 $25.00 1-in-225 106736 4474 $20.00 1-in-150 160097 6935 $10.00 1-in-50 480291 22100 $5.00 1-in-50 480291 23452 $4.00 1-in-14 1761067 92499 $2.00 1-in-11 2241358 161341

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.5

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GO” symbol, win $200 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: July 02, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-2,442,735 20 1 $2,500.00 1-in-179,613 272 9 $1,000.00 1-in-29,899 1634 42 $200.00 1-in-2,494 19586 578 $100.00 1-in-858 56971 1861 $50.00 1-in-422 115637 3443 $25.00 1-in-250 195283 5989 $20.00 1-in-150 325698 11544 $10.00 1-in-50 977094 38771 $5.00 1-in-75 651396 26383 $4.00 1-in-14 3582678 179181 $2.00 1-in-9 5211168 378668

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.39

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “LUCKY” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “$100 BURST” symbol, win $100 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: February 26, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-803,525 30 1 $1,000.00 1-in-29,834 808 36 $200.00 1-in-3,746 6435 244 $100.00 1-in-439 54899 2075 $25.00 1-in-200 120481 4535 $20.00 1-in-150 160705 6500 $10.00 1-in-50 482115 20738 $5.00 1-in-50 482115 21344 $4.00 1-in-14 1767755 85184 $2.00 1-in-11 2249870 156688

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.53

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “BILL” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “MONEYROLL” symbol, win $50 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: September 16, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $20,000.00 1-in-807,660 30 5 $1,000.00 1-in-30,025 807 116 $200.00 1-in-3,744 6471 850 $100.00 1-in-900 26907 3644 $50.00 1-in-349 69347 9424 $25.00 1-in-225 107755 14703 $20.00 1-in-150 161532 22209 $10.00 1-in-50 484596 67782 $5.00 1-in-50 484596 68245 $4.00 1-in-14 1776852 257386 $2.00 1-in-11 2261448 370928

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.5

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “CA$H” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “$$” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a MONEYBAG symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: August 07, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-2,418,765 10 1 $10,000.00 1-in-806,255 30 3 $1,000.00 1-in-30,197 801 120 $400.00 1-in-7,815 3095 440 $100.00 1-in-751 32226 4674 $40.00 1-in-1,301 18590 2678 $30.00 1-in-212 114281 16571 $25.00 1-in-451 53685 7814 $20.00 1-in-150 161251 23922 $10.00 1-in-50 483753 72884 $5.00 1-in-75 322502 48842 $4.00 1-in-12 1935012 304075 $2.00 1-in-10 2418765 418798

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.36

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win “10 TIMES” the PRIZE shown for that symbol!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: January 12, 2016

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-1,304,925 40 11 $1,000.00 1-in-25,421 1927 502 $400.00 1-in-30,825 1639 408 $100.00 1-in-680 72709 18608 $50.00 1-in-187 262843 66444 $20.00 1-in-150 328021 82847 $10.00 1-in-50 984063 253901 $5.00 1-in-75 656042 168468 $4.00 1-in-14 3608231 952726 $2.00 1-in-11 4592294 1285001

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.68

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win “10 TIMES” the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: January 13, 2015

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-1,034,332 80 5 $1,000.00 1-in-25,786 3209 150 $400.00 1-in-30,079 2751 87 $100.00 1-in-697 118635 4579 $50.00 1-in-189 436808 14388 $20.00 1-in-150 551644 17180 $10.00 1-in-50 1654932 63424 $5.00 1-in-75 1103288 39402 $4.00 1-in-50 6068084 280382 $2.00 1-in-11 7723016 511824

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.68

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

$3 Games How to Play

1. Scratch the YOUR 20 LETTERS box to reveal your twenty (20) letters.

2. Scratch the letters in the CASHWORD PUZZLE that match any of YOUR 20 LETTERS. The letters in the CASHWORD PUZZLE will turn white when scratched.

3. If you have completely matched two (2) or more words in the CASHWORD PUZZLE, you win the corresponding prize in the PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched.

4. If you win in the CASHWORD PUZZLE, scratch the POWER PLAY MULTIPLIER. Multiply your PRIZE won by the multiplier revealed! (1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X)

NOTE:

A. A “word” must contain at least three letters.

B. A “word” cannot be formed by linking letters diagonally or by reading the letters from the bottom to top or right to left.

C. Letters combined to form a “word” must appear in an unbroken horizontal or vertical string of letters in the CASHWORD PUZZLE. An unbroken string of letters: (a) cannot be interrupted by a blank space and (b) must contain every single letter square between two (2) blank spaces or an edge and a blank space.

D. Every single letter in the unbroken string must: (a) be revealed in YOUR 20 LETTERS and (b) be included to form a “word”.

E. The possible complete words for this ticket are shown on the CASHWORD PUZZLE. Each possible complete word consists of three (3) or more letters and occupies an entire word space. You must match all of the letters in a possible complete word in order to complete the word.

F. Only highest prize won paid per ticket.

If you win in the CASHWORD PUZZLE, scratch the POWER PLAY MULTIPLIER. Multiply your PRIZE won by the multiplier revealed! (1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X)

Ticket Price: $3.00

Launch Date: August 17, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $150,000.00 1-in-2,455,320 15 5 $1,000.00 1-in-25,737 1431 548 $200.00 1-in-5,297 6953 2134 $100.00 1-in-1,158 31810 9898 $60.00 1-in-783 47045 14821 $50.00 1-in-450 81829 25534 $40.00 1-in-600 61382 19217 $30.00 1-in-277 132994 42997 $20.00 1-in-100 368298 115702 $15.00 1-in-100 368298 129457 $12.00 1-in-100 368298 125501 $10.00 1-in-100 368298 117097 $9.00 1-in-100 368456 130899 $6.00 1-in-11 3314475 1139938 $3.00 1-in-10 3682912 1335360

Overall Odds: 1-in-4

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch the CALLER’S CARD. Scratch all numbers on CARDS 1 through 6 that match the numbers on the CALLER’S CARD. The numbers on CARDS 1 through 6 will appear in white when rubbed. If, on any one of CARDS 1 through 6, you match all numbers in one of the following patterns, you win the associated prize shown for that card. The patterns are as follows:

-a complete horizontal, vertical or diagonal line, or -four corners, or

-an “X” (consisting of eight numbers + “FREE”)

A “FREE” space will appear in the center of each player’s card and can substitute as a number in a pattern of which it is a part.

The “TOP HAT” symbol is a FREE spot and can substitute as a number. If it completes a winning line pattern, win TRIPLE the line prize for that card.

Ticket Price: $3.00

Launch Date: May 20, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $150,000.00 1-in-5,562,488 8 1 $25,000.00 1-in-3,708,325 12 3 $10,000.00 1-in-2,224,995 20 4 $3,000.00 1-in-181,632 245 55 $1,000.00 1-in-60,216 739 118 $500.00 1-in-22,475 1980 325 $300.00 1-in-29,866 1490 216 $225.00 1-in-35,829 1242 110 $200.00 1-in-17,936 2481 223 $175.00 1-in-18,009 2471 250 $100.00 1-in-529 84073 10771 $90.00 1-in-9,028 4929 574 $75.00 1-in-2,996 14854 1639 $60.00 1-in-1,797 24769 4423 $52.00 1-in-3,610 12326 1019 $50.00 1-in-1,501 29643 3020 $40.00 1-in-749 59392 8297 $30.00 1-in-225 197907 25993 $25.00 1-in-1,797 24761 2790 $21.00 1-in-100 445022 39617 $15.00 1-in-100 444976 40154 $10.00 1-in-100 444999 66534 $9.00 1-in-33 1334997 153551 $6.00 1-in-17 2670017 377193 $3.00 1-in-8 5339938 765429

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.99

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

1. Scratch the YOUR SCRABBLE LETTERS tiles to reveal your 20 letters.

2. Scratch the letters on the SCRABBLE BOARD that match any of YOUR SCRABBLE LETTERS. The letters on the SCRABBLE BOARD will turn yellow when scratched.

3. If you have completely matched two (2) or more words on the SCRABBLE BOARD, you win the corresponding prize in the PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched.

A. A “word” must contain at least three (3) letters.

B. A “word” cannot be formed by linking letters diagonally or by reading the letters from the bottom to top or right to left.

C. Letters combined to form a “word” must appear in an unbroken horizontal or vertical string of letters on the SCRABBLE BOARD. An unbroken string of letters: (a) cannot be interrupted by a blank space and (b) must contain every single letter square between two (2) blank spaces or the edge and a blank space.

D. Every single letter in the unbroken string must: (a) be revealed in YOUR SCRABBLE LETTERS and (b) be included to form a “word”.

E. The possible complete words for this ticket are shown on the SCRABBLE BOARD. Each possible complete word consists of three (3) or more letters and occupies an entire word space. You must match all of the letters in a possible complete word in order to complete the word.

TO WIN:

If the letters revealed form two (2) or more complete words on the SCRABBLE BOARD, each of which occupies a complete word space, you win the prize shown in the PRIZE LEGEND for forming that number of words.

MULTIPLIER FEATURE:

If you win on the SCRABBLE BOARD and any one of the completed words has a BLUE square in the word, win DOUBLE the prize indicated in the PRIZE LEGEND. If you win on the SCRABBLE BOARD and any one of the completed words has a RED square in the word, win TRIPLE the prize indicated in the PRIZE LEGEND.

Only highest prize won paid per ticket.

Ticket Price: $3.00

Launch Date: December 04, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-778,732 40 1 $3,000.00 1-in-182,160 171 5 $2,000.00 1-in-174,996 178 4 $1,000.00 1-in-87,253 357 4 $400.00 1-in-18,058 1725 30 $300.00 1-in-17,892 1741 43 $200.00 1-in-18,227 1709 47 $150.00 1-in-18,037 1727 27 $100.00 1-in-584 53330 1116 $90.00 1-in-4,478 6956 153 $60.00 1-in-898 34689 833 $50.00 1-in-360 86570 2079 $40.00 1-in-900 34624 835 $30.00 1-in-225 138423 3397 $20.00 1-in-100 311493 8585 $12.00 1-in-100 311493 13322 $10.00 1-in-100 311493 9600 $9.00 1-in-100 311493 24176 $6.00 1-in-11 2803437 207653 $3.00 1-in-10 3114930 353420

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.14

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

$5 Games How to Play

Get 3 like symbols in the same GAME, win the PRIZE for that GAME. Find a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that GAME. Find a “9X” symbol, win 9 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that GAME. “DIAMOND” symbols may appear in any GAME. Count the number of “DIAMOND” symbols revealed in GAMES 1-16 and refer to the DIAMOND PRIZE LEGEND to determine the PRIZE won.

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: December 07, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500,000.00 1-in-2,368,910 6 0 $10,000.00 1-in-284,269 50 0 $2,000.00 1-in-140,727 101 3 $1,000.00 1-in-12,045 1180 116 $500.00 1-in-3,006 4728 126 $250.00 1-in-2,010 7071 180 $100.00 1-in-240 59216 2184 $50.00 1-in-240 59266 3115 $40.00 1-in-240 59259 1291 $30.00 1-in-300 47307 1006 $20.00 1-in-60 236891 15207 $10.00 1-in-9 1658237 50314 $5.00 1-in-10 1421257 63521

Overall Odds: 1-in-4

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win the PRIZE shown for that ROW. If you win in a ROW and the MULTIPLIER symbol for that ROW matches a MULTIPLIER SYMBOL in the MULTIPLIER LEGEND, multiply the PRIZE for that ROW by the number shown in the MULTIPLIER LEGEND.

MONEY BONUS BOX #1484 – PAY ME!

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X”, “10X” or “20X” symbol, win 5, 10 or 20 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “PAY ME” symbol and win ALL 12 PRIZES shown. Get a “CASH” symbol, win $50 automatically.

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: February 22, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500,000.00 1-in-1,055,996 16 7 $10,000.00 1-in-121,554 139 70 $2,000.00 1-in-23,966 705 356 $1,000.00 1-in-17,188 983 498 $400.00 1-in-8,503 1987 799 $150.00 1-in-3,435 4919 2026 $100.00 1-in-297 56943 23291 $50.00 1-in-665 25413 10431 $40.00 1-in-160 105415 43495 $25.00 1-in-160 105522 43782 $20.00 1-in-60 281599 117444 $10.00 1-in-10 1689622 714868 $5.00 1-in-9 1971101 877098

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.98

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any WINNING NUMBER, New online bitcoin casinos accepting us players 2020 win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” or “10X” symbol, win 5 or 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “GOLD BAR” symbol and win $500 instantly! Match a WINNING NUMBER to any BONUS SPOT, win the amount for that spot.

Enter your non-winning GOLD RUSH SUPREME tickets into the Gold Rush Supreme Bonus Play Promotion to earn drawing entries for the chance to win exciting cash prizes, including the growing Jackpot prize! Plus, you could instantly win a Bonus prize of a free Florida Lottery Scratch-Off ticket or $25 cash just for entering!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: January 18, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-2,423,288 24 14 $10,000.00 1-in-120,163 484 302 $2,000.00 1-in-19,938 2917 1815 $1,000.00 1-in-14,943 3892 2455 $500.00 1-in-5,708 10189 5647 $200.00 1-in-3,536 16450 9236 $100.00 1-in-325 178803 99824 $50.00 1-in-629 92429 52052 $40.00 1-in-146 397574 222250 $25.00 1-in-160 363529 205309 $20.00 1-in-60 969315 549979 $10.00 1-in-10 5815890 3342107 $5.00 1-in-9 6785639 4023936

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.97

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “SNOWFLAKE” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically. Get a “SLEIGH” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “WREATH” symbol, win all 12 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: October 26, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-4,024,155 4 1 $50,000.00 1-in-804,831 20 4 $10,000.00 1-in-118,358 136 17 $2,500.00 1-in-60,062 268 39 $1,000.00 1-in-9,936 1620 275 $500.00 1-in-3,606 4464 520 $200.00 1-in-2,188 7357 840 $100.00 1-in-363 44307 5209 $50.00 1-in-399 40304 4737 $40.00 1-in-278 57880 6928 $30.00 1-in-300 53706 6520 $20.00 1-in-50 321952 39200 $15.00 1-in-60 268277 33637 $10.00 1-in-10 1609634 212461 $5.00 1-in-10 1609690 246629

Overall Odds: 1-in-4

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS or any of the BONUS NUMBERS to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X”, “20X” or “50X” symbol and win 2, 5, 10, 20 or 50 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “STAR” symbol and win DOUBLE all 15 PRIZES!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: September 21, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-3,811,410 15 6 $10,000.00 1-in-117,274 482 238 $2,000.00 1-in-24,077 2379 1218 $1,000.00 1-in-12,119 4731 2416 $400.00 1-in-4,831 11860 5571 $150.00 1-in-3,169 18065 8448 $100.00 1-in-235 242896 114331 $50.00 1-in-250 228757 107678 $40.00 1-in-209 274093 129127 $25.00 1-in-119 481431 227648 $20.00 1-in-60 952801 451461 $10.00 1-in-10 5526022 2660710 $5.00 1-in-9 6669738 3342135

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.97

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or Bitstarz casino promo codes other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GO” symbol, win $200 automatically! Get a “TREASURE CHEST” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 13 PRIZES shown! Match the BONUS NUMBER to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for the BONUS NUMBER!

Beginning July 6, 2020, players can enter non-winning MONOPOLY BONUS SPECTACULAR tickets into the Monopoly Bonus Promotion for a chance to win cash prizes from $1,000 to $20,000! Entries will be weighted by price point and players can earn up to ten (10) entries per ticket. A total of 123 winners will win $300,000 in total cash prizes!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: July 06, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-4,797,135 8 2 $10,000.00 1-in-40,143 956 275 $1,000.00 1-in-10,010 3834 1140 $500.00 1-in-4,814 7972 1993 $200.00 1-in-2,399 15998 4024 $100.00 1-in-296 129823 32237 $50.00 1-in-343 111914 28368 $30.00 1-in-161 238448 60041 $25.00 1-in-173 221819 56028 $20.00 1-in-60 639618 162587 $10.00 1-in-9 4477315 1190212 $5.00 1-in-10 3837835 1164225

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.96

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

1. Scratch the YOUR LETTERS box to reveal your 20 letters.

2. Scratch the letters in GAME #1 and GAME #2 that match any of YOUR LETTERS. The letters in GAME #1 and GAME #2 will turn white when scratched.

3. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in Game #1, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #1 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #1. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in Game #2, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #2 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #2. Players can win in both games.

Note:

A. A “word” must contain at least three (3) letters.

B. A “word” cannot be formed by linking letters diagonally or by reading the letters from the bottom to top or right to left.

C. Letters combined to form a “word” must appear in an unbroken horizontal or vertical string of letters in the CROSSWORD PUZZLE.

An unbroken string of letters: (a) cannot be interrupted by a blank space and (b) must contain every single letter square between two blank spaces or the edge and a blank space.

D. Every single letter in the unbroken string must: (a) be revealed in YOUR LETTERS and (b) be included to form a “word”.

E. GAME 1 and GAME 2 are played independently. Words in one game cannot be used in the other game.

F. The possible complete words for this ticket are shown on each CROSSWORD PUZZLE. Each possible complete word consists of three (3) or more letters and occupies an entire word space. You must match all of the letters in a possible complete word in order to complete the word.

MULTIPLIER BONUS: Uncover the MULTIPLIER BONUS above and multiply your total winnings by that number. (1X, 2X, 5X or 20X)

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: July 23, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500,000.00 1-in-2,299,830 14 5 $10,000.00 1-in-214,651 150 58 $1,000.00 1-in-7,542 4269 1672 $500.00 1-in-4,990 6452 2152 $200.00 1-in-1,201 26819 8962 $100.00 1-in-300 107397 37272 $60.00 1-in-1,199 26857 8885 $50.00 1-in-631 50991 17170 $40.00 1-in-801 40186 13393 $30.00 1-in-113 285814 95419 $20.00 1-in-60 536627 182501 $15.00 1-in-60 536627 181174 $10.00 1-in-10 3219971 1163346 $5.00 1-in-10 3219762 1219271

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.99

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X”, “20X” or “50X” symbol, win 2, 5, 10, 20 or 50 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WIN ALL DOUBLER NUMBER in the DOUBLER BOX, win DOUBLE ALL PRIZES shown.

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: January 13, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-3,192,820 12 1 $10,000.00 1-in-119,731 320 18 $2,000.00 1-in-20,081 1908 171 $1,000.00 1-in-13,364 2867 281 $400.00 1-in-4,154 9224 810 $150.00 1-in-2,730 14032 861 $100.00 1-in-226 169704 8572 $50.00 1-in-240 159647 2838 $40.00 1-in-240 159710 2813 $25.00 1-in-120 319405 6008 $20.00 1-in-60 638564 12813 $10.00 1-in-10 3831250 130942 $5.00 1-in-10 3831160 231936

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.19

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

WHAT’S UP FOR BID:If YOUR BID matches the ACTUAL RETAIL PRICE in a GAME, win PRIZE shown for that GAME. Each GAME (across) plays separately.

GRAND $ GAME™: If any of your GROCERY ITEMS have a lower price than the TARGET PRICE, win PRIZE shown for that item.

BONUS ROUND: Reveal a “100” symbol in the BONUS ROUND, win $100 automatically!

PLINKO BOARDŽ: Scratch off the PLINKO BOARD. Reveal a “CIRCLE $” symbol, win corresponding PRIZE for that symbol!

SHOWCASE SHOWDOWN:Reveal YOUR BID and the ACTUAL PRICE. If YOUR BID matches the ACTUAL PRICE of that SHOWCASE, win PRIZE shown for that SHOWCASE!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: April 09, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-2,823,450 6 1 $10,000.00 1-in-121,876 139 15 $2,000.00 1-in-24,166 701 36 $1,000.00 1-in-12,040 1407 87 $400.00 1-in-4,012 4223 190 $150.00 1-in-1,993 8500 355 $100.00 1-in-244 69494 3730 $50.00 1-in-400 42324 2099 $40.00 1-in-160 105940 5149 $25.00 1-in-120 141156 7174 $20.00 1-in-60 282345 14227 $10.00 1-in-10 1694070 99939 $5.00 1-in-10 1694070 147196

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.19

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a BLACK “13” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a GREEN “LUCKY” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a GREEN”CLOVER” symbol, win all 12 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: September 16, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $250,000.00 1-in-1,325,404 16 2 $10,000.00 1-in-119,811 177 25 $2,000.00 1-in-23,935 886 145 $1,000.00 1-in-11,988 1769 242 $400.00 1-in-3,987 5319 721 $200.00 1-in-2,394 8857 1175 $100.00 1-in-238 89247 12040 $50.00 1-in-375 56526 7004 $40.00 1-in-444 47769 5938 $30.00 1-in-172 123618 16378 $20.00 1-in-60 353441 49502 $15.00 1-in-60 353441 45116 $10.00 1-in-10 2120646 330690 $5.00 1-in-10 2120646 325530

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.01

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a BLACK “10” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a RED “10” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a BLACK “GEM” symbol, win all 12 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: April 11, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $250,000.00 1-in-1,328,348 16 2 $10,000.00 1-in-117,423 181 24 $2,000.00 1-in-23,800 893 122 $1,000.00 1-in-12,042 1765 227 $400.00 1-in-3,989 5328 702 $200.00 1-in-2,398 8862 1155 $100.00 1-in-238 89418 11695 $50.00 1-in-375 56653 6787 $40.00 1-in-445 47803 5695 $30.00 1-in-172 123880 15783 $20.00 1-in-60 354226 48424 $15.00 1-in-60 354226 43729 $10.00 1-in-10 2125356 384755 $5.00 1-in-10 2125356 312550

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.01

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch the “CALLER CARDS” and the one BONUS CALLER CARD” to reveal 15 LOTERIA&#174 symbols. Scratch the corresponding symbols on the “PLAYING BOARDS” that match the “CALLER CARDS” symbols. Match ALL 4 symbols in any complete horizontal or vertical line in the “PLAYING BOARD” to win prize shown for that line. If you complete a horizontal or vertical line using the BONUS CALLER CARD”, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that line.

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: March 16, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $250,000.00 1-in-1,278,439 16 3 $10,000.00 1-in-119,620 171 13 $1,000.00 1-in-8,605 2377 127 $500.00 1-in-4,001 5112 193 $200.00 1-in-3,329 6144 220 $100.00 1-in-270 75880 2563 $75.00 1-in-1,001 20431 630 $50.00 1-in-311 65677 2362 $30.00 1-in-200 102269 3944 $25.00 1-in-240 85236 2942 $20.00 1-in-60 340917 16584 $15.00 1-in-60 340917 13734 $10.00 1-in-10 2045502 128340 $5.00 1-in-10 2045502 123101

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.98

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “CASH” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 12 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: February 28, 2017

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $250,000.00 1-in-1,324,279 16 0 $10,000.00 1-in-119,036 178 15 $5,000.00 1-in-59,686 355 18 $1,000.00 1-in-8,017 2643 133 $500.00 1-in-2,176 9738 283 $100.00 1-in-267 79498 2572 $50.00 1-in-300 70698 2337 $30.00 1-in-293 72399 2183 $25.00 1-in-286 74156 2228 $20.00 1-in-60 353141 12152 $15.00 1-in-60 353141 12188 $10.00 1-in-10 2118846 79131 $5.00 1-in-10 2118846 123352

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.03

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “STACK OF COINS” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “$100 BILL” symbol, win $100 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 12 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: December 06, 2016

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $250,000.00 1-in-1,269,895 12 1 $10,000.00 1-in-119,990 127 5 $2,000.00 1-in-24,036 634 24 $1,000.00 1-in-8,639 1764 53 $400.00 1-in-4,012 3798 86 $200.00 1-in-3,006 5069 108 $100.00 1-in-273 55838 1540 $50.00 1-in-288 52858 1424 $30.00 1-in-200 76310 2001 $25.00 1-in-240 63400 1691 $20.00 1-in-60 253979 6433 $15.00 1-in-60 253979 6896 $10.00 1-in-10 1523874 46766 $5.00 1-in-10 1523874 77585

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.99

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “WIN” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “2X”symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win “10 TIMES” the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 12 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: February 23, 2016

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $250,000.00 1-in-1,283,335 20 2 $10,000.00 1-in-119,380 213 33 $5,000.00 1-in-61,111 427 61 $1,000.00 1-in-7,979 3208 422 $500.00 1-in-2,185 11768 1374 $100.00 1-in-273 94121 11632 $50.00 1-in-300 85551 10712 $30.00 1-in-293 87679 10847 $25.00 1-in-286 89922 11072 $20.00 1-in-60 428024 53890 $15.00 1-in-60 428024 53998 $10.00 1-in-10 2568144 328266 $5.00 1-in-10 2568144 380645

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.03

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “20X” symbol, win “20 TIMES” the PRIZE shown for that symbol!

Ticket Price: $5.00

Launch Date: January 12, 2016

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500,000.00 1-in-1,267,610 24 4 $10,000.00 1-in-118,838 268 41 $2,000.00 1-in-19,806 1646 261 $1,000.00 1-in-12,034 2719 393 $400.00 1-in-3,006 10899 1548 $150.00 1-in-1,997 16377 2221 $100.00 1-in-296 110610 15382 $50.00 1-in-462 70926 9988 $40.00 1-in-214 152897 21502 $25.00 1-in-120 272862 38943 $20.00 1-in-60 545806 77953 $10.00 1-in-10 3274836 499340 $5.00 1-in-10 3274836 562273

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.23

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

$10 Games How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” symbol and win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “10X” symbol and win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol.

BONUS SPOT

Get a “$20 BURST” symbol, win $20!

Get a “$50 BURST” symbol, win $50!

Get a “$100 BURST” symbol, win $100!

Get a “$500 BURST” symbol, win $500!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: April 05, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-2,012,982 10 8 $100,000.00 1-in-1,006,491 20 15 $10,000.00 1-in-40,179 501 415 $5,000.00 1-in-20,333 990 825 $1,000.00 1-in-3,000 6709 5774 $500.00 1-in-1,997 10079 7752 $150.00 1-in-320 62885 48311 $100.00 1-in-133 150870 116615 $50.00 1-in-185 109070 84311 $30.00 1-in-100 201243 155349 $25.00 1-in-114 176143 136196 $20.00 1-in-11 1878755 1455316 $15.00 1-in-15 1342090 1040927 $10.00 1-in-10 2013244 1565612

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.381

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” or “10X” symbol, win 5 or 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “GOLD BAR” symbol and win $500 instantly! Match a WINNING NUMBER to any BONUS SPOT, win the amount for that spot.

Enter your non-winning GOLD RUSH SUPREME tickets into the Gold Rush Supreme Bonus Play Promotion to earn drawing entries for the chance to win exciting cash prizes, including the growing Jackpot prize! Plus, you could instantly win a Bonus prize of a free Florida Lottery Scratch-Off ticket or $25 cash just for entering!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: January 18, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000.00 1-in-4,212,592 10 6 $100,000.00 1-in-495,599 85 51 $10,000.00 1-in-39,977 1050 661 $1,000.00 1-in-3,329 12672 8190 $500.00 1-in-5,002 8418 4796 $250.00 1-in-1,716 24573 14192 $150.00 1-in-1,622 25942 15003 $100.00 1-in-75 561624 324201 $50.00 1-in-240 175540 102023 $40.00 1-in-120 350786 203932 $30.00 1-in-86 491557 285923 $25.00 1-in-70 604236 352025 $20.00 1-in-15 2808140 1646036 $15.00 1-in-15 2808292 1653592 $10.00 1-in-10 4212210 2501425

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.49

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

1. Scratch the YOUR LETTERS box to reveal your 20 letters.

2. Scratch the letters in GAME #1, GAME #2 and GAME #3 that match any of YOUR LETTERS. The letters in GAME #1, GAME #2 and GAME #3 will turn white when scratched.

3. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #1, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #1 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #1. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #2, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #2 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #2. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #3, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #3 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #3. Players can win in all three GAMES.

NOTE:

A. A “word” must contain at least three (3) letters.

B. A “word” cannot be formed by linking letters diagonally or by reading the letters from the bottom to top or right to left.

C. Letters combined to form a “word” must appear in an unbroken horizontal or vertical string of letters in the CROSSWORD PUZZLE.

An unbroken string of letters: (a) cannot be interrupted by a blank space and (b) must contain every single letter square between two blank spaces or the edge and a blank space.

D. Every single letter in the unbroken string must: (a) be revealed in YOUR LETTERS and (b) be included to form a “word”.

E. GAME 1, GAME 2 and GAME 3 are played independently. Words in one GAME cannot be used in another GAME.

F. The possible complete words for this ticket are shown on each CROSSWORD PUZZLE. Each possible complete word consists of three (3) or more letters and occupies an entire word space. You must match all of the letters in a possible complete word in order to complete the word.

CASHWORD MULTIPLIER:

If YOUR LETTERS completely match the letters in the CASHWORD MULTIPLIER, multiply your ticket winnings by the multiplier shown.

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: December 07, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000.00 1-in-3,899,992 8 5 $100,000.00 1-in-1,559,997 20 14 $10,000.00 1-in-40,206 776 527 $1,000.00 1-in-2,452 12726 9076 $500.00 1-in-1,714 18206 12176 $200.00 1-in-1,199 26028 17313 $100.00 1-in-71 436809 291212 $50.00 1-in-171 182068 121386 $40.00 1-in-109 286092 190865 $30.00 1-in-63 494273 330188 $20.00 1-in-12 2599995 1742524 $10.00 1-in-6 5200077 3571417

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.37

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR GIFT NUMBERS to any of the WINNING GIFT NUMBERS and win the PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “$50 BURST” symbol and win $50 automatically! Get a “$100 BILL” symbol and win $100 automatically! Get a “$500 BURST” symbol and win $500 automatically!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: October 26, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500.00 1-in-1,000 19951 519 $100.00 1-in-35 565124 14984 $50.00 1-in-12 1661875 51147

Overall Odds: 1-in-8.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS or any of the BONUS NUMBERS to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X”, “20X”, “50X” or “100X” symbol and win 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “STAR” symbol and win DOUBLE all 20 PRIZES!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: September 21, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000.00 1-in-4,000,638 10 4 $100,000.00 1-in-2,000,319 20 12 $10,000.00 1-in-59,711 670 351 $5,000.00 1-in-39,847 1004 505 $1,000.00 1-in-2,784 14371 7473 $500.00 1-in-3,166 12636 5922 $250.00 1-in-3,422 11690 5503 $150.00 1-in-2,004 19966 9424 $100.00 1-in-72 558221 263877 $50.00 1-in-160 250064 118560 $40.00 1-in-174 230107 109035 $30.00 1-in-78 509971 242198 $25.00 1-in-80 500253 238380 $20.00 1-in-15 2667092 1275737 $15.00 1-in-12 3333782 1596135 $10.00 1-in-12 3333971 1621985

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.5

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZEshown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GO” symbol, win $200 automatically! Get a “TREASURE CHEST” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 16 PRIZES shown! Match the BONUS NUMBER to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for the BONUS NUMBER!

Beginning July 6, 2020, players can enter non-winning MONOPOLY BONUS SPECTACULAR tickets into the Monopoly Bonus Promotion for a chance to win cash prizes from $1,000 to $20,000! Entries will be weighted by price point and players can earn up to ten (10) entries per ticket. A total of 123 winners will win $300,000 in total cash prizes!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: July 06, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000.00 1-in-5,562,600 4 1 $10,000.00 1-in-39,875 558 156 $5,000.00 1-in-23,925 930 239 $1,000.00 1-in-2,855 7794 1994 $500.00 1-in-1,665 13367 2782 $200.00 1-in-1,000 22259 4521 $100.00 1-in-72 308998 64285 $50.00 1-in-240 92679 19864 $30.00 1-in-41 543293 116548 $25.00 1-in-80 277980 59804 $20.00 1-in-15 1483360 326542 $15.00 1-in-20 1112520 251238 $10.00 1-in-9 2595563 592431

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.44

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “$” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “$500 BURST” symbol, win $500 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 15 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: April 06, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500.00 1-in-136 444390 75452 $150.00 1-in-1,712 35224 5960 $100.00 1-in-343 175937 30127 $50.00 1-in-480 125595 21645 $30.00 1-in-240 251427 43323 $25.00 1-in-120 502334 86758 $20.00 1-in-20 3015084 519975 $15.00 1-in-15 4020252 710630 $10.00 1-in-10 6030012 1090129

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.13

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X”, “20X”, “50X” or “100X” symbol, win 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WIN ALL DOUBLER NUMBER in the DOUBLER BOX, win DOUBLE ALL PRIZES shown.

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: January 13, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000.00 1-in-5,046,818 8 0 $100,000.00 1-in-403,745 100 12 $10,000.00 1-in-403,745 100 17 $5,000.00 1-in-40,014 1009 76 $1,000.00 1-in-3,000 13458 1797 $500.00 1-in-3,343 12078 1669 $250.00 1-in-3,428 11779 1504 $150.00 1-in-2,142 18845 2314 $100.00 1-in-71 565472 59822 $50.00 1-in-160 252468 17633 $40.00 1-in-160 252348 17640 $30.00 1-in-65 622244 42445 $25.00 1-in-80 504906 36052 $20.00 1-in-15 2691636 201270 $15.00 1-in-12 3364545 251250 $10.00 1-in-12 3364880 292533

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.46

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch the YOUR LETTERS box to reveal your 20 letters.

Scratch the letters in GAME #1, GAME #2 and GAME #3 that match any of YOUR LETTERS. The letters in GAME #1, GAME #2 and GAME #3 will turn white when scratched.

If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #1, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #1 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #1.

If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #2, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #2 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #2.

If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #3, you win the corresponding prize in the GAME #3 PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #3.

Players can win in all three GAMES.

A. A “word” must contain at least three (3) letters.

B. A “word” cannot be formed by linking letters diagonally or by reading the letters from the bottom to top or right to left.

C. Letters combined to form a “word” must appear in an unbroken horizontal or vertical string of letters in the CROSSWORD PUZZLE.

An unbroken string of letters: (a) cannot be interrupted by a blank space and (b) must contain every single letter square between two blank spaces or the edge and a blank space.

D. Every single letter in the unbroken string must: (a) be revealed in YOUR LETTERS and (b) be included to form a “word”.

E. GAME 1, GAME 2 and GAME 3 are played independently. Words in one GAME cannot be used in the other GAME.

F. The possible complete words for this ticket are shown on each CROSSWORD PUZZLE. Each possible complete word consists of three (3) or more letters and occupies an entire word space. You must match all of the letters in a possible complete word in order to complete the word.

If YOUR LETTERS completely match the letters in the CASHWORD BONUS, win PRIZE in the PRIZE BOX!

CASHWORD BONUS is played independently and cannot be used in other GAMES.

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: June 05, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000.00 1-in-2,609,580 10 1 $100,000.00 1-in-1,003,685 26 1 $10,000.00 1-in-40,209 649 47 $1,000.00 1-in-2,855 9141 768 $500.00 1-in-5,000 5219 343 $250.00 1-in-2,502 10429 626 $200.00 1-in-1,933 13498 896 $150.00 1-in-999 26134 1624 $100.00 1-in-74 352421 22389 $50.00 1-in-191 136952 8981 $40.00 1-in-109 239196 15144 $30.00 1-in-63 413214 26873 $20.00 1-in-12 2174650 162868 $10.00 1-in-6 4349922 500454

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.38

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “STACK OF COINS” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “$50” symbol, win $50 automatically! Get a “$100” symbol, win $100 automatically! Get a “$500” symbol, win $500 automatically!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: April 08, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $500.00 1-in-999 56303 443 $100.00 1-in-35 1593462 12259 $50.00 1-in-12 4685646 45847

Overall Odds: 1-in-8.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GO” symbol, win $200 automatically! Get a “CHEST” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 15 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $10.00

Launch Date: July 02, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $2,000,000 1-in-3,022,838 8 1 $10,000.00 1-in-119,127 203 13 $5,000.00 1-in-23,896 1012 33 $1,000.00 1-in-3,004 8049 291 $500.00 1-in-1,790 13510 398 $200.00 1-in-1,001 24160 661 $100.00 1-in-71 342552 10048 $50.00 1-in-240 100807 3422 $30.00 1-in-41 586385 19591 $25.00 1-in-80 302414 10003 $20.00 1-in-15 1612180 58765 $15.00 1-in-20 1209135 48956 $10.00 1-in-9 2821315 119623

Overall Odds: 1-in-3.44

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

$20 Games How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS or any of the BONUS NUMBERS to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X”, “20X”, “50X”, “100X” or “200X” symbol and win 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 or 200 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “STAR” symbol and win DOUBLE all 30 PRIZES!

Ticket Price: $20.00

Launch Date: September 21, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000,000.00 1-in-2,994,555 10 3 $1,000,000.00 1-in-1,497,278 20 6 $100,000.00 1-in-998,185 30 9 $20,000.00 1-in-39,768 753 224 $10,000.00 1-in-59,298 505 156 $5,000.00 1-in-39,981 749 231 $1,000.00 1-in-2,854 10494 3414 $500.00 1-in-901 33233 8210 $200.00 1-in-129 232051 58052 $100.00 1-in-110 272000 68010 $50.00 1-in-30 998185 253094 $40.00 1-in-30 998075 253665 $30.00 1-in-12 2396125 609271 $20.00 1-in-6 5190208 1334967

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.96

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

1. Scratch the YOUR LETTERS box to reveal your 20 letters.

2. Scratch the letters in GAME #1 and GAME #2 that match any of YOUR LETTERS. The letters in GAME #1 and GAME #2 will turn white when scratched.

3. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #1, you win the corresponding prize in the PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #1. If you have completely matched three (3) or more words in GAME #2, you win the corresponding prize in the PRIZE LEGEND for the total number of words matched in GAME #2. Players can win in both GAMES.

NOTE:

A. A “word” must contain at least three (3) letters.

B. A “word” cannot be formed by linking letters diagonally or by reading the letters from the bottom to top or right to left.

C. Letters combined to form a “word” must appear in an unbroken horizontal or vertical string of letters in the CASHWORD GAME.

An unbroken string of letters: (a) cannot be interrupted by a blank space and (b) must contain every single letter square between two blank spaces or the edge and a blank space.

D. Every single letter in the unbroken string must: (a) be revealed in YOUR LETTERS and (b) be included to form a “word”.

E. GAME 1 and GAME 2 are played independently. Words in one GAME cannot be used in the other GAME.

F. The possible complete words for this ticket are shown on each CASHWORD GAME. Each possible complete word consists of three (3) or more letters and occupies an entire word space. You must match all of the letters in a possible complete word in order to complete the word.

CASHWORD BONUS

If you completely uncover a CASHWORD BONUS word using YOUR LETTERS, win PRIZE shown in the CASHWORD BONUS PRIZE box for that CASHWORD! CASHWORD BONUS words are played separately.

Ticket Price: $20.00

Launch Date: May 18, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000,000.00 1-in-4,027,792 8 6 $1,000,000.00 1-in-1,342,598 24 17 $100,000.00 1-in-1,342,598 24 16 $1,000.00 1-in-2,733 11789 8225 $500.00 1-in-4,000 8056 5409 $250.00 1-in-1,503 21443 14347 $200.00 1-in-461 69836 46871 $150.00 1-in-400 80545 54014 $100.00 1-in-26 1217324 817200 $50.00 1-in-30 1074078 723122 $40.00 1-in-30 1074078 722611 $30.00 1-in-15 2148156 1447288 $20.00 1-in-6 5370698 3654668

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.91

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS , win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “POT OF GOLD” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “LUCK” symbol, win all 20 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $20.00

Launch Date: September 16, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000,000.00 1-in-3,718,900 12 3 $1,000,000.00 1-in-1,115,670 40 15 $100,000.00 1-in-656,276 68 26 $10,000.00 1-in-40,060 1119 379 $5,000.00 1-in-40,132 1121 379 $1,000.00 1-in-3,007 14850 5145 $500.00 1-in-749 59576 18805 $200.00 1-in-300 149070 47048 $100.00 1-in-32 1389379 438187 $50.00 1-in-30 1489609 473037 $40.00 1-in-30 1489609 472531 $30.00 1-in-30 1489609 474013 $25.00 1-in-30 1489609 473822 $20.00 1-in-6 7449062 2380626

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.97

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “10X” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GOLDBAR” symbol, win $500 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 20 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $20.00

Launch Date: October 08, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000,000.00 1-in-10,149,500 9 2 $1,000,000.00 1-in-2,029,900 45 12 $100,000.00 1-in-3,044,850 30 8 $10,000.00 1-in-120,112 761 203 $1,000.00 1-in-4,996 18303 4775 $500.00 1-in-153 598854 136167 $100.00 1-in-37 2501447 578601 $50.00 1-in-30 3050727 710438 $40.00 1-in-30 3050727 710395 $30.00 1-in-30 3050727 712134 $25.00 1-in-30 3050727 714831 $20.00 1-in-6 15253588 3576410

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.99

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “CHEST” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GO” symbol, win $200 automatically! Get a “FREE PARKING” symbol, win 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 20 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $20.00

Launch Date: September 17, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000,000.00 1-in-4,575,305 6 0 $1,000,000.00 1-in-1,372,592 20 0 $100,000.00 1-in-1,143,826 24 3 $20,000.00 1-in-60,467 454 15 $10,000.00 1-in-60,600 453 18 $5,000.00 1-in-39,499 695 20 $1,000.00 1-in-2,230 12312 349 $500.00 1-in-1,225 22403 345 $200.00 1-in-171 160229 1899 $100.00 1-in-33 823598 15536 $50.00 1-in-30 915061 18015 $40.00 1-in-30 915061 17120 $30.00 1-in-30 915061 17766 $25.00 1-in-30 915061 17885 $20.00 1-in-6 4575305 122545

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.97

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

$30 Games How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” or “10X” symbol, win 5 or 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “GOLD BAR” symbol and win $500 instantly! Match a WINNING NUMBER to any BONUS SPOT, win the amount for that spot.

Ticket Price: $30.00

Launch Date: February 22, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $15,000,000.00 1-in-11,553,592 4 3 $1,000,000.00 1-in-1,925,599 24 20 $100,000.00 1-in-2,310,718 20 16 $20,000.00 1-in-59,478 777 666 $10,000.00 1-in-59,555 776 658 $5,000.00 1-in-19,929 2319 1992 $1,000.00 1-in-821 56273 48890 $500.00 1-in-368 125615 103525 $200.00 1-in-120 385024 317531 $100.00 1-in-26 1810302 1493134 $50.00 1-in-15 3081057 2543479 $40.00 1-in-10 4621437 3818493 $30.00 1-in-6 7702204 6370192

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.598

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to any of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X”, “20X” or “200X” symbol and win 2, 5, 10, 20 or 200 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “$100 BURST” symbol and win $100 automatically.

Scratch the 5 bonus spots in the BONUS BOX. Find a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically!

Ticket Price: $30.00

Launch Date: February 24, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $1,000,000.00 1-in-270,717 155 63 $100,000.00 1-in-4,196,106 10 4 $20,000.00 1-in-59,351 707 253 $10,000.00 1-in-60,289 696 261 $5,000.00 1-in-20,271 2070 750 $1,000.00 1-in-780 53813 20460 $500.00 1-in-443 94774 31638 $200.00 1-in-120 349969 117082 $100.00 1-in-21 1958607 653522 $50.00 1-in-30 1398702 474210 $40.00 1-in-10 4195952 1433229 $30.00 1-in-6 6993309 2372274

Overall Odds: 1-in-2.79

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

1 bitcoin how much at online casino, How to Open Bitcoin Casino or Crypto Casino

How to Open Bitcoin Casino or Crypto Casino Why start a casino using Bitcoins? Table of contents 1. Intro

Being considered just a virtual-world currency and not being legally recognized as a real money currency by any state in the world is the biggest advantage of Bitcoin.

Using it as a currency for your casino and accepting deposits only in Bitcoins can mean that your gaming website can run without requiring a casino license (a casino license costs minimum 10,000$ ), since you will not be undergoing any real-money gambling activities. In other words, you will never transaction any real money or goods if you are using Bitcoin as your casino currency. The law governing gambling involves banks, cash and credit card processors. Bitcoin does not use any of those things. It also does not meet the definition of currency in any of the current laws.

Using Bitcoins within your casino website would be like allowing people to deposit “World of Warcraft” Gold or “Second Life” Linden dollars into your casino and gamble them, which is perfectly legal. The value of Bitcoins is also not regulated by any authority or by any bank. The entire network influences the price of Bitcoin, as long as people are still trading it. Its popularity is growing every day and this is facilitated by how easy anybody can create a Bitcoin wallet and receive Bitcoins in it.

Another advantage of using Bitcoins, for both casino owners and players would be the extreme privacy that Bitcoin gives. Since this is an untraceable currency, there’s no way for other people to know where the payment comes from. Therefore, third parties can’t access your personal and financial information. Also, no credit card chargebacks or refunds are going to be any of your concerns. Bitcoin transactions are non-refundable and are not the subject of any chargebacks. With Bitcoin casinos, the privacy of your players is fully ensured. That is the reason why many people might prefer to exchange their money to Bitcoins and play at a Bitcoin casino.

Lastly, one of the most attractive benefits you can get from having a Bitcoin casino is the incredibly short waiting time for account deposits and withdrawals. The account deposits can be automated so that when a player sends money to the Bitcoin address of your casino, New online bitcoin slots his account will instantly be given the amount equal to the value of Bitcoins sent, without you having to do anything. Withdrawals can also be automated, after approval, meaning that for each withdrawal request, you will see a pending status in the administrator panel that will require you to verify it (optional) and then click the COMPLETE button. The moment you do that, the funds will be sent to the crypto address provided by the user.

Running a Bitcoin casino is a self-sustaining business (it will basically run by itself and you only need to promote it).

In this article we discuss only about Bitcoin usage. We can help you start an online casino using any cryptocurrency that you prefer. If it’s Ethereum, DogeCoin, Ripple, LiteCoin, NetCoin, LottoCoin, etc. then you came to the right place. Many of the information from this article applies to the other cryptocurrency coins as well. Here is a list with just a few of the altcoins that we can integrate:

BTC, LTC, ADT, ANC, BQC, CAP, CGB, DGC, DVC, DOGE, FRK, FTC, GLD, IFC, KGC, MEC, NET, NMC, NVC, PPC, QRK, RED, SXC, TRC, WDC, XPM, YAC, ZET, LTCT. We support over 100 crypto-currencies and all the integrations are done through a 3rd party payment gateway, for security reasons. Your casino will never host any cryptocurrency wallets.

In December 2017, Bitcoin has reached its highest value and went over 20,000$. Since then, its value fluctuated, but this tells us about the huge potential that a cryptocurrency can have. Bitcoin is the first, but definitely not the last cryptocurrency to get over the 20,000$ milestone.

2. Legality

To understand the legality of Bitcoin gambling, there are some important aspects that we want to mention:

There are no specific laws mentioning that offering to players the option to wager Bitcoins requires a gambling license or that this type of business is illegal, There are no specific laws that recognise Bitcoin as having real money value. All gambling regulatory institutes governate only over real money gambling activities, If the players will deposit only cryptocurrency, gamble cryptocurrency and withdraw cryptocurrency, then your business will not transaction real money and a gambling license will not be required, All the Bitcoin transactions are private and the reason/source of how you obtained them cannot be back-traced. It would be impossible for anybody to prove how you obtained your Bitcoins. The privacy of Bitcoin transfers goes both ways, so players are also protected if they live in a country where gambling is illegal and they use Bitcoins for gambling. For now, in USA, online real money gambling is illegal, but Bitcoin gambling is not regulated and it is in the grey area (there are no laws that mention that it is either legal or illegal) Do you need a gambling license? The answer is no. Since all your casino transactions take place in the blockchain and the money enter no bank account (therefore they do not enter the territory of any legal jurisdiction), then you will not need a gambling license.

Even so, we advise all our customers to start a Bitcoin gambling website with or without a license, but if their business will flourish they should obtain an offshore gambling license and declare their income there, when exchanging the Bitcoins to real money and to their bank accounts. For more information on how to obtain a gambling license, please refer to this article. The costs for a gambling license are around 10,000$ and it can be obtained in less than 1 month.

The following article comes from high reputation websites and they claim Bitcoin gambling to be legal:

http://www.Bitcoingg.com/Bitcoin-gambling-legal/

3. Quick list of advantages and disadvantages Advantages No gambling license required (see the Legality section above). You will save time and money. The cheapest gambling license costs 10,000$ and you need a few weeks to get it. No legal authority is ever going to suspect you for doing illegal things, no real money is involved on your website. Having a Bitcoin casino is like offering gambling options in an online game such as World of Warcraft, where no real money is involved, It is impossible to trace the source of your Bitcoin income because all the Bitcoin transactions are private, You don’t have to deal with credit-card chargebacks, because Bitcoin transactions are non-refundable, Fast and easy growing marketing, due to the low competition among cryptocoin powered casinos, Bitcoin offers full privacy to you and to your players for every Bitcoin transaction. Nobody can track a Bitcoin payment! You will be using a currency that is being valued better and better on the exchange market with each day that passes. Bitcoin jumped from 600$ to over 20,000$ in less than 12 months. Many countries of the world, including USA, do not allow online gambling. Using Bitcoins would allow you to accept players from all over the world, including those countries, since Bitcoins are not recognized as a real money currency by any central authority, and gambling occurs only when real-money are wagered. Recently, Bitcoin casinos have been invaded by players from USA. Bitcoins are not subject to taxation, meaning that if you receive Bitcoins you do not need to pay any corporate or income taxes. So if you want to spend your Bitcoins on services or online goods that can be bought directly with Bitcoins, then you will save a good amount of money. However, in some states, if you exchange the Bitcoins to real money, then you will have to pay income taxes and other fees, following your legal obligations. Using our solutions, you can accept other cryptocurrencies, not just Bitcoins. This will help you attract gamblers who invested in altcoins such as ETH, LTC, XPR, etc. Disadvantages Considered a disadvantage in the past, the time required to buy Bitcoins with real money has been reduced by a lot in the last few years. This is because the Bitcoin popularity has increased very much lately. Purchasing Bitcoins has never been easier. It is now just a 2-minute job and there are even physical ATM machines where you can deposit real money and they give you Bitcoins in your digital wallet in a few seconds. If that is not possible, then localbitcoins.com allows you to meet with individuals from your country and sell your Bitcoin face-to-face. CreditCard and Bank Transfer methods are of course available, with many reputable websites offering this service. 4. What can you do with Bitcoins?

After you receive the Bitcoins from the players, you can exchange the profit of Bitcoins to real money using any Bitcoin exchange company such as Luno.com, CoinBase.com or you can trade with individuals using LocalBitcoins.com and receive your money via MoneyGram, Western Union, Bank Transfer or even cash.

There are also many websites that allow you to pay with Bitcoin, mostly due to the no-tax policy that Bitcoin offers.

Any of the above things can be done by your players too, which makes us say that at this moment, probably any sort of goods and services can be bought with Bitcoins.

The possibilities and benefits of Bitcoins are infinite.

You can also decide to keep your Bitcoins and wait for their price to increase and transaction them at a later date, or use them on other Bitcoin sites to purchase goods.

A video tutorial can be added to your website to help players understand how to obtain or how to buy Bitcoins. Complementary to that, you can hire a support team to teach every player how to buy Bitcoins.

5. Bitcoin Software – Starting a Bitcoin Casino using our products Easy management

With our Casino Management Software we have included a set of important features that will allow any Bitcoin casino owner to run his website without any trouble.

Our software comes with a player affiliate system, meaning that each player can register and play the games and with the same account he can also act as an affiliate and receive a 20% share from the loss of his affiliated players. By using the “AFFILIATE CENTER”, the player can generate his affiliate link and he can start referring new players to the casino.

The casino can be configured to accept over 100 altcoins (ETH, LTC, BCC, etc.).

Players can receive an automatic account, the moment when they access the casino. They can either claim this account by entering their email address or they can log out and register a new account.

Among other features, we would like to mention the possibility for the casino owner to adjust the PAYOUT RATE of the slot games. Either way, the player will receive his wins over a determined period of time. A lot more features which are available if you want to start your Bitcoin casino, can be seen here.

The casino games that we offer are provably fair, which will make the player to never doubt about the fairness and the reputation of your business.

Fast payments

If you decide to buy the Bitcoin payment add-on ( 500 EUR ), you will be able to accept Bitcoin payments at any moment and the casino credits will be given to the player automatically after the transaction is confirmed. Basically, you do not need to do anything for players to start playing at your Bitcoin casino. The only moment when you must take action is when players request withdrawals. You must verify each withdrawal request and then approve it with the click of a button, from the administrator panel. However if you want, this can be made totally automatic (withdrawals will be sent automatically to player wallets, the moment when they are submitted), but we do not recommend it, for security reasons.

Provably fair

With our Bitcoin casino solution, you can offer your players a trustable and “provably fair” solution, meaning that the gameplay data of each hand played can be tested by each user from his lobby. He can see if everything was randomly shuffled like in a real casino where the dealer physically takes the package of cards and shuffles it before dealing a new game hand. If the player knows that he was treated correctly he will make a new deposit in the future and will say good words about your casino. All this is done by revealing the hashed shuffled deck before the gameplay starts and then allowing the user to verify the data after the gameplay has finished. Also, when shuffling the deck, the seed used for shuffling is created from a combination of server-side code and client-side code. This way, the seed used for shuffling the numbers from the deck cannot be manipulated by neither us or by the player.

The client seed can be set and changed from provably fair tab. To guarantee a 100% fair deck, we are using a complex algorithm based on the Fisher-Yates algorithm for actually shuffling the cards. First we are shuffling the deck using a server seed, then we hash it and send it to you and then we allow you to influence the randomness of the deck by setting a client seed for another shuffle. This reduces the chance of manipulating anything to 0% .

By using the above described method, the player will trust your casino more, because he would be able to influence two very important things:

1.He would be allowed to influence the way the deck is shuffled, by setting the custom seed from his account.

2.He will know that the deck was not manipulated, since he will receive the deck hashed and once the gameplay ends, he can unlock it and verify it.

A similar method can be implemented for the other games like the dice, roulette or slot games. More information about the provably fair concept can be found here.

Large variation of altcoins – multi-cryptocurrency integration

At the moment, we can offer over 100 cryptocurrencies for the players to deposit at your casino. However, all these altcoins will be exchanged to Bitcoins and then to Credits. If your cryptocurrency is not in our list, then we can still implement it, if it has an API. For more details, please contact us.

If you are the founder of a cryptocurrency, running an online casino can help a lot to boost its popularity.

Terms

Our games can be used with Bitcoin casinos only as No-Copyright (without “Powered by CasinoWebScripts.com” logo) or with Source Codes.

You can see comparison chart here between Copyright-CWS, No-Copyright and Source Codes versions.

Our solutions are ideal because we charge 0% monthly fees and everything is hosted on your webservers, so you can have full control over your business.

As payment for our products, we accept Bank Transfer or Bitcoins.

To help you get started, we have prepared a special discounted casino Bitcoin package, which is available for only 18,000 EUR (discounted from 29,500 EUR ). You can check it here.

If you want to pick your own games, then please follow the next steps to start a Bitcoin casino:

1. Go to our casino software page and “add to cart” the Casino Management Software among with the other “EXTRA FEATURES” that you would like to see in your casino.

2. The second step is to go to our casino games page or to our promotional games package page and choose the titles you want to have on your website. For Bitcoin casinos we allow only No-Copyright games or games with Source Codes to be purchased.

If you need any help with making a decision about choosing your casino games, simply contact us and we will provide you with the best information about how to choose the best games for your target market. You can buy more casino games at any time after you will start your online casino.

3. Click the cart button on top right of the screen, SAVE your package, then contact us and mention your package ID in the message and that you want to open a Bitcoin Casino. The extra fee for integrating Bitcoin with your casino is only 500 EUR. To work without license you must accept deposits only in Bitcoins and players can withdraw their credit only in Bitcoins.

4. Our team will contact you in just a few hours to discuss the final details and answer any queries about how to start your online Bitcoin casino website.

5. You will be sent a contract that will require your signature and company stamp in order to finalize the order. This is required to make everything legal, and to avoid any future problems with the software and games license.

6. After this you will receive the payment details so that you can pay for the desired products. In 24 hours after the money entered our account, you will receive the software, along with the documentation and the games. We accept Bitcoin or Bank Transfer for our products.

7. Upload the files on your webserver and run the installation instructions provided within the package.

8. Your Bitcoin casino website is now set up and ready to receive players!

The key to success for any online business is represented by its marketing, so having a good strategy to start with will play a major fact in how your profits will increase.

With Bitcoin popularity having increased tremendously in the past few months, the multitude of options that can be achieved with this cryptocoin became endless. In countries where gambling is not permitted, Bitcoin casinos became some of the most visited Bitcoin related websites, and thus a refugee for players that could not experience online gambling before. Players from USA, Canada or the Asian continent found a source of entertainment in all Bitcoin casinos, so these territories represent just a few large markets to exploit for all casino operators, including you.

This is a very important fact when considering which geographical location to target when doing marketing for your online Bitcoin Casino.

Our Bitcoin Casino Solution allows you to determine the country of each user and see which geographical location brings you the most players. Based on this, you should focus the marketing efforts into the right direction.

Bitcoin casino marketing should be done by covering multiple areas, and not just one. First you must convince players that come to your casino for the first time, to make a deposit. Such thing can be done by placing large visible banners with deposit bonus codes.

Having high payouts and making new visitors notice that other players experienced large wins at your casino can prove to be a crucial move. One way of doing this is to have a podium with the top winners on your Bitcoin casino website.

Rewarding players with free chips or bonus freespins on Bitcoin related forums will surely attract some new players that might just want to try out your offering.

In a small community, where competition is tight, but not very big, reputation plays a vital role. A visible “provably fair” banner, or a certificate that attests the fairness of your online casino will make players feel safe when deciding to make a deposit.

Advertisements on Bitcoin related websites should not be ignored, even if the costs for such marketing strategies might be a little over the average.

Newsletter should be used to offer new bonuses to existing players, and inform them about new games.

Press releases can be used to let everybody know about your promotions and who hit the jackpots recently.

A method that is very common for promoting any online business. Creating a Facebook page that is updated daily, having bonus codes made public via Twitter, placing videos from players that won your jackpots on Vimeo or YouTube (to convince them to do such, you can give an extra bonus to whoever wins the jackpot and records it in a video file), creating tournament events for players to join, should keep your community happy and with more desire towards gambling.

Offering new ways of entertainment to your players is also important. This can be done by giving them free chips, bonus freespins based on their loyalty, daily login bonuses, VIP programs and of course new games. New games and new content will always bring back old players that might just want to try out the new graphics. Consider that this an important aspect for maintaining your Bitcoin casino at high rankings.

Using the administrator panel of our Bitcoin casino solution, you can do all the above with no difficulties. For more advice, please check our online casino operator’s guide.

Bitcoin is a virtual world crypto-currency, introduced in 2010, where the creation and transfer of Bitcoins is based on a cryptographic protocol that is independent of any central authority.

Bitcoin system uses a well-known peer-to-peer technology to operate, having all its transactions and the creation of Bitcoins carried out collectively by the network of Bitcoin users. Nobody owns or controls Bitcoin.

While not legally recognized as a money currency in any of state of the world, the popularity of Bitcoin has increased tremendously in the last few years, mostly because people can earn free Bitcoins just by owning a PC and running the Bitcoin software which will automatically generate Bitcoins, and after that, convert their Bitcoins to real money. However, the more Bitcoins are mined, the more difficult it gets to mine more Bitcoins, this way preventing people from obtaining a large number of Bitcoins in a short amount of time. The Bitcoin network can only handle a limit of 21 million Bitcoins. In less than 5 years, more than 16 million Bitcoins have been mined, but given the difficulty of the algorithms, it is expected that the last Bitcoin will be mined in year 2140.

The value of Bitcoin has fluctuated a lot. Since its release, it stayed under 1500$ for more than 4 years, but in 2017 it saw a huge increase and reached the value of 20,000$ .

You can get Bitcoins by purchasing them with real money or by using your PC and the Bitcoin software to farm them.

You can also trade Bitcoins for real money.

A Bitcoin wallet is a website or program which you can use to store Bitcoins and make transactions. Binance.com, Luno.com and other Bitcoin exchange websites offer a free wallet upon account registration. You can read more about Bitcoin wallets here.

Your “Bitcoin address” is a 34 – 36 character string and starts with 1. This address is all you need to receive payments.

You can use PayPal/Skrill/NETELLER/Bank Transfer/Credit Card or even cash to buy Bitcoins from any Bitcoin exchange website such as eToro or localBitcoins.

Make sure you have enough Bitcoins in your Bitcoin wallet. Then click on Send Bitcoins and then enter the Bitcoin address that will appear on your screen at the casino website. That is all you need to do to make a deposit at a casino with Bitcoins.

Many people have become rich just by opening their PC, downloading the Bitcoin software and putting their PC to solve mathematical blocks and farm them Bitcoins.

You can help the community by simply running the original Bitcoin client on it. The original client is more resource intensive and will take a complete day to synchronize. After that your computer will contribute to the network by checking and relaying transactions, solving mathematical blocks and generating Bitcoins into your Bitcoin wallet. You can download the Bitcoin software here: http://Bitcoin.org/en/download

There are other alternatives and more efficient mining programs, but the above is the most popular one.

Farming Bitcoins is an energy-consuming process, so make sure that the costs for your energy, combined with the efficiency of your hardware will be able to generate you some profits, before investing more resources into this business.

*Disclaimer: All the information related in this article was gathered from multiple public sources found on the internet, until 26 January 2018. We take no responsibility if the information provided will become outdated or inaccurate.

Scratch-Offs How to Play

Florida Lottery Scratch-Off games are fun to play, and best of all, they give you a chance to win lots of cash instantly! Scratch-Off games offer top prizes ranging from $50 to more than $1 million, with many other prize levels on each ticket, too. With our wide variety of games to choose from, you could play a different game every day.

Read and follow play instructions on ticket. Scratch off the scratch-off coating on your ticket to see if you have won!

Scratch-Off games are easy to play. Just scratch the scratch-off coating on your ticket with a coin to see if you have won. Game instructions are printed on the face of your ticket. Each of the Scratch-Off games will vary in price, prize structure, play style, and play instructions.

Current Games on Sale $1 Games How to Play

Get a “LUCK” symbol in the PLAY AREA, win PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “CLOVER” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown. Get a “HORSESHOE” symbol, win $25!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: April 05, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000.00 1-in-442,400 36 26 $200.00 1-in-16,153 986 590 $100.00 1-in-3,183 5003 2881 $40.00 1-in-2,355 6764 3855 $30.00 1-in-1,262 12623 7190 $25.00 1-in-636 25059 14522 $15.00 1-in-300 53101 30686 $10.00 1-in-115 138016 80604 $6.00 1-in-150 106101 62535 $4.00 1-in-50 318568 189804 $2.00 1-in-14 1114940 688273 $1.00 1-in-11 1486376 919341

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.87

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “$50 BURST” symbol, win $50 automatically. Get an “ALL” symbol, win all 5 PRIZES!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: February 22, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $5,000.00 1-in-348,104 52 30 $500.00 1-in-47,635 380 178 $200.00 1-in-29,920 605 310 $100.00 1-in-4,796 3774 1755 $50.00 1-in-3,995 4531 2159 $40.00 1-in-2,392 7569 3628 $30.00 1-in-1,502 12052 5865 $20.00 1-in-300 60338 29501 $10.00 1-in-100 181022 89749 $5.00 1-in-100 181009 90656 $4.00 1-in-50 361956 184086 $2.00 1-in-15 1206811 620678 $1.00 1-in-11 1689389 890207

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.879

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” symbol, win 5 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Match the WINNING NUMBER to the $10 BONUS SPOT, win $10 automatically.

Enter your non-winning GOLD RUSH SUPREME tickets into the Gold Rush Supreme Bonus Play Promotion to earn drawing entries for the chance to win exciting cash prizes, including the growing Jackpot prize! Plus, you could instantly win a Bonus prize of a free Florida Lottery Scratch-Off ticket or $25 cash just for entering!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: January 18, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-392,892 100 60 $200.00 1-in-14,067 2793 1484 $100.00 1-in-3,693 10639 5687 $40.00 1-in-1,998 19661 10483 $30.00 1-in-1,542 25482 13649 $20.00 1-in-300 130964 71120 $10.00 1-in-100 392892 216583 $5.00 1-in-150 261928 146338 $4.00 1-in-50 785784 438776 $2.00 1-in-14 2750343 1576845 $1.00 1-in-11 3667195 2165451

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, john chancer casino royale may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “STOCKING” symbol, win 3 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: October 26, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-651,000 36 10 $300.00 1-in-23,817 984 234 $100.00 1-in-2,414 9708 2278 $40.00 1-in-1,720 13627 3247 $30.00 1-in-1,597 14671 3643 $20.00 1-in-300 78120 19288 $10.00 1-in-100 234360 60583 $5.00 1-in-150 156240 42631 $4.00 1-in-50 468720 131310 $2.00 1-in-14 1640472 487788 $1.00 1-in-11 2187312 692712

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS or the BONUS NUMBER to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X” or “10X” symbol and win 2, 5 or 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “STAR” symbol and win DOUBLE all 6 PRIZES!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: September 21, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-528,484 80 36 $200.00 1-in-13,283 3183 1257 $100.00 1-in-3,695 11443 4513 $40.00 1-in-1,313 32210 12489 $30.00 1-in-1,500 28192 10973 $20.00 1-in-300 140929 57528 $10.00 1-in-100 422787 170428 $5.00 1-in-150 281858 114242 $4.00 1-in-50 845454 341243 $2.00 1-in-14 2959460 1298503 $1.00 1-in-11 3945808 1740963

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “NEON” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “7” symbol, win all 5 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: August 17, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-799,110 20 8 $500.00 1-in-23,961 667 201 $100.00 1-in-2,668 5990 1889 $40.00 1-in-2,534 6308 1989 $30.00 1-in-2,406 6642 2110 $20.00 1-in-214 74617 26637 $10.00 1-in-136 117134 37553 $5.00 1-in-107 149177 50221 $4.00 1-in-50 319718 83922 $2.00 1-in-14 1118638 312140 $1.00 1-in-11 1491593 432536

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.86

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 6 PRIZES shown! Match the BONUS NUMBER to the WINNING NUMBER, win the PRIZE shown for the BONUS NUMBER.

Beginning July 6, 2020, players can enter non-winning MONOPOLY BONUS SPECTACULAR tickets into the Monopoly Bonus Promotion for a chance to win cash prizes from $1,000 to $20,000! Entries will be weighted by price point and players can earn up to ten (10) entries per ticket. A total of 123 winners will win $300,000 in total cash prizes!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: July 06, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-530,910 50 18 $200.00 1-in-48,977 542 170 $100.00 1-in-2,408 11026 3236 $50.00 1-in-4,790 5542 1700 $25.00 1-in-959 27690 8436 $20.00 1-in-300 88485 27167 $10.00 1-in-100 265455 83362 $5.00 1-in-150 176970 56470 $4.00 1-in-43 619395 202188 $2.00 1-in-14 1858296 642925 $1.00 1-in-11 2389206 905998

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “PAYDAY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 5 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: May 18, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-476,162 34 4 $200.00 1-in-19,889 814 60 $100.00 1-in-2,827 5726 546 $40.00 1-in-2,290 7070 685 $30.00 1-in-1,515 10683 1033 $20.00 1-in-300 53965 5541 $10.00 1-in-100 161895 17240 $5.00 1-in-60 269825 30495 $4.00 1-in-38 431722 50542 $2.00 1-in-14 1187218 160012 $1.00 1-in-11 1511018 216467

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.45

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch the PLAY AREA to reveal coins. If coins add to over $1.00, win PRIZE shown in the PRIZE BOX! Get a “BILL” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown in the PRIZE BOX automatically!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: February 24, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-456,885 40 9 $200.00 1-in-30,009 609 102 $100.00 1-in-2,674 6835 1011 $50.00 1-in-23,827 767 105 $40.00 1-in-11,984 1525 221 $30.00 1-in-996 18349 2649 $20.00 1-in-300 60918 8964 $15.00 1-in-300 60896 9371 $10.00 1-in-150 121816 18219 $5.00 1-in-150 121794 19690 $4.00 1-in-75 243672 39132 $2.00 1-in-12 1462032 254937 $1.00 1-in-11 1705746 327466

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.8

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X” or “10X” symbol, win 2, 5, or 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to the WIN ALL DOUBLER NUMBER in the DOUBLER BOX, win DOUBLE ALL PRIZES shown.

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: January 13, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $10,000.00 1-in-425,820 100 19 $200.00 1-in-34,525 1233 238 $100.00 1-in-2,673 15930 3013 $40.00 1-in-1,624 26226 4893 $30.00 1-in-1,523 27962 5500 $20.00 1-in-300 141940 28242 $10.00 1-in-100 425754 88316 $5.00 1-in-150 283880 52915 $4.00 1-in-50 851640 156630 $2.00 1-in-14 2980693 673127 $1.00 1-in-11 3974273 925762

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.88

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Get a “STACK OF BILLS” symbol in the PLAY AREA, win PRIZE shown for that symbol. Get a “$50 BURST” symbol, win $50 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 6 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $1.00

Launch Date: December 02, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $3,000.00 1-in-238,252 75 7 $100.00 1-in-23,953 746 77 $50.00 1-in-787 22702 2309 $30.00 1-in-2,387 7487 733 $25.00 1-in-856 20872 2177 $15.00 1-in-300 59563 6176 $10.00 Odds: 1-in-4.18

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Each time you get the YOUR MONEY NUMBER in any GAME, win PRIZE shown for that GAME. Get a “$$” symbol in any GAME, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that GAME. Each GAME plays seperately.

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: April 08, 2019

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-1,217,115 20 2 $1,000.00 1-in-30,276 804 66 $250.00 1-in-3,579 6801 414 $100.00 1-in-1,197 20344 1483 $50.00 1-in-372 65523 4665 $25.00 1-in-240 101512 6339 $20.00 1-in-150 162282 10235 $10.00 1-in-50 486846 32890 $5.00 1-in-50 486846 36000 $4.00 1-in-12 1947384 149248 $2.00 1-in-11 2272019 221811

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.39

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “JOKER” symbol and win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “WILD” symbol and win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: August 06, 2018

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-1,536,131 16 5 $10,000.00 1-in-2,048,175 12 4 $1,000.00 1-in-30,570 804 259 $400.00 1-in-9,033 2721 829 $100.00 1-in-856 28709 8863 $40.00 1-in-800 30719 9488 $30.00 1-in-288 85476 26142 $25.00 1-in-259 94852 29068 $20.00 1-in-150 163854 50585 $10.00 1-in-50 491562 152852 $5.00 1-in-75 327708 103336 $4.00 1-in-12 1966248 627701 $2.00 1-in-10 2457810 820391

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.35

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEY ROLL” symbol, win TRIPLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: April 05, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-1,608,495 10 9 $10,000.00 1-in-804,248 20 16 $1,000.00 1-in-22,528 714 551 $400.00 1-in-8,971 1793 1128 $200.00 1-in-3,592 4478 2759 $100.00 1-in-1,126 14289 8737 $30.00 1-in-215 74966 46549 $20.00 1-in-125 128656 80087 $15.00 1-in-94 171560 107179 $10.00 1-in-58 278817 175147 $6.00 1-in-75 214471 136190 $5.00 1-in-62 257462 163073 $3.00 1-in-25 643382 413158 $2.00 1-in-10 1608521 1042667

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.73

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch the PLAY AREA. Count the number of “MONEY” symbols in the PLAY AREA and win the corresponding PRIZE shown in the PRIZE LEGEND.

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: February 22, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-2,032,725 10 5 $10,000.00 1-in-508,181 40 22 $1,000.00 1-in-29,937 679 391 $500.00 1-in-5,956 3413 1652 $200.00 1-in-2,250 9035 4402 $100.00 1-in-1,798 11304 5420 $50.00 1-in-1,123 18099 8697 $30.00 1-in-300 67773 32786 $20.00 1-in-94 216801 105913 $10.00 1-in-58 352381 173738 $5.00 1-in-50 406554 203271 $4.00 1-in-15 1355172 683417 $2.00 1-in-11 1897181 988348

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.685

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “5X” or “10X” symbol, win 5 or 10 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol. Match a WINNING NUMBER to either BONUS SPOT, win the amount for that spot.

Enter your non-winning GOLD RUSH SUPREME tickets into the Gold Rush Supreme Bonus Play Promotion to earn drawing entries for the chance to win exciting cash prizes, including the growing Jackpot prize! Plus, you could instantly win a Bonus prize of a free Florida Lottery Scratch-Off ticket or $25 cash just for entering!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: January 18, 2021

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $100,000.00 1-in-1,823,533 36 25 $1,000.00 1-in-25,623 2562 1803 $400.00 1-in-29,826 2201 1414 $100.00 1-in-796 82427 53024 $50.00 1-in-189 346618 222708 $20.00 1-in-150 437648 284156 $10.00 1-in-50 1312944 857353 $5.00 1-in-75 875296 574226 $4.00 1-in-14 4814128 3177824 $2.00 1-in-11 6127140 4138331

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.69

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Scratch off the “CALLER CARDS” and the one “BONUS CALLER CARD” to reveal 15 LOTERIA&#153 symbols. Scratch the corresponding symbols on the “PLAYING BOARD” that match the “CALLER CARDS” and the “BONUS CALLER CARD” symbols. Match all 4 symbols in any complete horizontal, vertical or diagonal line in the “PLAYING BOARD” to win prize shown for that line.

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: December 07, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-3,546,881 16 12 $10,000.00 1-in-2,026,789 28 18 $400.00 1-in-88,396 635 398 $340.00 1-in-89,511 630 379 $300.00 1-in-59,486 941 578 $250.00 1-in-59,238 952 572 $225.00 1-in-59,238 951 578 $200.00 1-in-7,227 7861 4858 $150.00 1-in-22,700 2513 1506 $125.00 1-in-7,204 7870 4737 $100.00 1-in-891 63664 39377 $70.00 1-in-3,595 15754 9487 $50.00 1-in-3,604 15736 9559 $40.00 1-in-1,804 31492 19344 $30.00 1-in-225 252107 152662 $25.00 1-in-450 126079 76401 $20.00 1-in-150 378128 233854 $15.00 1-in-150 377973 230289 $10.00 1-in-75 756420 469940 $5.00 1-in-14 4159680 2599332 $2.00 1-in-9 6050194 3855908

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.63

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “DOLLAR BILL” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “STACK OF BILLS” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol and win DOUBLE all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: December 07, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $30,000.00 1-in-1,343,738 12 3 $10,000.00 1-in-671,869 24 10 $1,000.00 1-in-26,177 616 217 $400.00 1-in-8,978 1796 561 $100.00 1-in-780 20685 6733 $40.00 1-in-734 21968 7201 $30.00 1-in-240 67211 21996 $25.00 1-in-599 26903 8752 $20.00 1-in-150 107499 36020 $10.00 1-in-50 322497 108487 $5.00 1-in-75 214998 74067 $4.00 1-in-12 1290056 451088 $2.00 1-in-10 1612528 596458

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.37

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS or the BONUS NUMBER to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “SNOWFLAKE” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “CANDY CANE” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: October 26, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $50,000.00 1-in-2,725,875 8 4 $10,000.00 1-in-778,821 28 13 $1,000.00 1-in-36,467 598 217 $400.00 1-in-9,049 2410 845 $200.00 1-in-3,599 6059 2169 $100.00 1-in-819 26622 9418 $30.00 1-in-194 112540 40752 $20.00 1-in-150 145380 53060 $15.00 1-in-150 145380 53323 $10.00 1-in-75 290760 108406 $5.00 1-in-75 290760 110228 $4.00 1-in-12 1744589 673294 $2.00 1-in-10 2180719 873939

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.41

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS or either of the BONUS NUMBERS to either WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “2X”, “5X”, “10X” or “20X” symbol and win 2, 5, 10 or 20 TIMES the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “STAR” symbol and win DOUBLE all 12 PRIZES!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: September 21, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $100,000.00 1-in-2,486,992 20 11 $1,000.00 1-in-25,429 1956 855 $400.00 1-in-30,311 1641 646 $100.00 1-in-671 74079 28971 $50.00 1-in-186 267472 104610 $20.00 1-in-150 331599 130496 $10.00 1-in-50 994797 400500 $5.00 1-in-75 663179 268390 $4.00 1-in-14 3647557 1510581 $2.00 1-in-11 4642449 2079009

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.68

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “MR. MONOPOLY” symbol, win DOUBLE the PRIZE shown for that symbol! Get a “GO” symbol, win $200 automatically! Get a “MONEYBAG” symbol, win all 11 PRIZES shown! Match the BONUS NUMBER to either WINNING NUMBER, win PRIZE shown for the BONUS NUMBER!

Beginning July 6, 2020, players can enter non-winning MONOPOLY BONUS SPECTACULAR tickets into the Monopoly Bonus Promotion for a chance to win cash prizes from $1,000 to $20,000! Entries will be weighted by price point and players can earn up to ten (10) entries per ticket. A total of 123 winners will win $300,000 in total cash prizes!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: July 06, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount Odds of Winning Total Prizes Prizes Remaining $100,000.00 1-in-3,905,445 10 2 $10,000.00 1-in-781,089 50 20 $1,000.00 1-in-25,796 1514 475 $200.00 1-in-2,897 13479 3685 $100.00 1-in-857 45562 12959 $50.00 1-in-420 93010 26409 $25.00 1-in-250 155979 44676 $20.00 1-in-150 260363 75800 $10.00 1-in-50 781089 229192 $5.00 1-in-75 520726 155963 $4.00 1-in-14 2863911 884999 $2.00 1-in-9 4165662 1473758

Overall Odds: 1-in-4.39

PLEASE NOTE: Prizes, including the top prizes, may be unavailable at time of ticket purchase due to prior sale or other causes occurring in the normal course of business.

Every effort has been made to ensure the information provided above is accurate. However, in the event of an error, the game rules shall be controlling.

How to Play

Match any of YOUR NUMBERS to either of the WINNING NUMBERS, win PRIZE shown for that number. Get a “BILL” symbol, win PRIZE shown for that symbol automatically! Get a “$50 BURST” symbol, win $50 automatically! Get a “WALLET” symbol, win DOUBLE all 10 PRIZES shown!

Ticket Price: $2.00

Launch Date: February 24, 2020

End Date: TBA

Redemption Deadline: TBA

Odds of Winnings and Prizes Prize Amount

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They’re a very good indicator of what’s actually happening in the marketplace because it is driven by crown consensus rather than firm odds. As placing a bet is so quickly in the exchange you can bet during a race or in the last few minutes of a football match, nba bitcoin over under model.Nba bitcoin finals winning odds, nba bitcoin betting expert picks    There are plenty of good bookmakers in India, but my personal preference would have to be Bet365. They have the best selection of sports such as cricket and football and allow you to bet live. On the other hand, I have a friend who really likes playing on LeoVegas because they offer tons of casino games and make it really simple for Indian players to deposit money! So in the end, the choice really depends on your personal needs and preferences, nba bitcoin finals winning odds. Compare live nba odds, lines and spreads. Up to date betting odds of the top sportsbooks including money lines, point spreads, totals and futures on sbr. The miami heat opened the 2020-21 regular season with the sixth shortest odds to win the nba championship, paying $1500 on a $100 bet. They will be tested right from the start. Oddsmakers are apparently aware of that fact as well as his odds to win nba finals mvp have moved from -500 (83. 3% implied odds) to -834 (89. Odds as of january 26 at bovada. Why are the lakers favored to win 2021 nba championship? having arguably the best 1-2 punch in the nba in lebron james and anthony davis automatically makes the los angeles lakers a top-three team in the league to win the championship but when you consider their new supporting cast, it’s hard to envision them not lifting the larry o’brien trophy again in 2021. We offer the latest philadelphia 76ers game odds, 76ers live odds, this weeks philadelphia 76ers team totals, spreads and lines. The latest philadelphia team stats, nba futures & specials, including vegas odds the 76ers winning the nba championship, philadelphia nba news & other info on the philadelphia 76ers. Looking ahead to whenever next year’s finals will take place, golden state has some of the best odds at taking home the larry o’brien trophy. Following the los angeles lakers’ clinching of this year’s nba title , the warriors have the fourth-best odds at winning the 2021 nba finals, with +750 odds (a $100 bet wins you $750). Eastern conference finals game 5 odds. Odds predict that the celtics would extend the series in game 5. All three sportsbooks agree with this prediction. Io, for example, gave the celtics 1. 62 odds to win against the heat. 31 odds to win are on the side of the heat, and this is not good for the team. The next-best nba championship odds belong to houston rockets, philadelphia 76ers, boston celtics, denver nuggets, and utah jazz. They are all between +1400 (7% chance) and +2200 (4% chance). If these five bitcoin sportsbooks will be followed, they all predict the lakers win the trophy, with a commanding gap between the heat’s odds to win nba finals. Sportsbet nba betting at sportsbet. Io , bettors will find 1. 26 odds for the lakers to win the finals this season, with the heat only having 4. All-star forward giannis antetokounmpo is second in the league in both points (29. 6 ppg) and rebounds (13. Milwaukee goes to orlando as the odds-on favorite to win the nba championship. 53-12 record (1 st in the eastern conference, best overall record in the nba) +240 odds to win the nba championship (according to draftkings sportsbook). Those rounds will take place from may 22 to july 6, with the nba finals scheduled from july 8 to 22, just one day before the 2021 summer olympics are scheduled to open in japan. Nba finals odds: futures betting 101. Nba futures bets function like futures bets in other sports. They’re typically based on an end-of-season outcome. With that, bitcoin odds checker, in partnership with nitrogen sports, presents the nba finals challenge. This special promotion gives everyone a chance to win up to $100 worth of nitrogen sports tickets. All you have to do is predict the total score of the last nba finals game. It’s as simple as that!       

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It is one of the great mysteries of the digital age. The hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive creator of Bitcoin, has captivated even those who think the virtual currency is some sort of online Ponzi scheme. A legend has emerged from a jumble of facts: Someone using the name Satoshi Nakamoto released the software for Bitcoin in early 2009 and communicated with the nascent currency’s users via email — but never by phone or in person. Then, in 2011, just as the technology began to attract wider attention, the emails stopped. Suddenly, Satoshi was gone, but the stories grew larger. Over the last year, as I worked on a book about the history of Bitcoin, it was hard to avoid being drawn in by the almost mystical riddle of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. Just as I began my research, Newsweek made a splash with a cover article in March 2014 claiming that Satoshi was an unemployed engineer in his 60s who lived in suburban Los Angeles. Within a day of publication, however, most people knowledgeable about Bitcoin had concluded that the magazine had the wrong man. Many in the Bitcoin community told me that, in deference to the Bitcoin creator’s clear desire for privacy, they didn’t want to see the wizard unmasked. But even among those who said this, few could resist debating the clues the founder left behind. As I had these conversations with the programmers and entrepreneurs who are most deeply involved in Bitcoin, I encountered a quiet but widely held belief that much of the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo. Mr. Szabo is nearly as much of a mystery as Satoshi. But in the course of my reporting I kept turning up new hints that drew me further into the chase, and I even stumbled into a rare encounter with Mr. Szabo at a private gathering of top Bitcoin programmers and entrepreneurs. At that event, Mr. Szabo denied that he was Satoshi, as he has consistently in electronic communications, including in an email on Wednesday. But he acknowledged that his history left little question that he was among a small group of people who, over decades, working sometimes cooperatively and sometimes in competition, laid the foundation for Bitcoin and created many parts that later went into the virtual currency. Mr. Szabo’s most notable contribution was a Bitcoin predecessor known as bit gold that achieved many of the same goals using similar tools of advanced math and cryptography. It may be impossible to prove Satoshi’s identity until the person or people behind Bitcoin’s curtain decide to come forward and prove ownership of Satoshi’s old electronic accounts. At this point, the creator’s identity is no longer important to Bitcoin’s future. Since Satoshi stopped contributing to the project in 2011, most of the open-source code has been rewritten by a group of programmers whose identities are known. But Mr. Szabo’s story provides insight into often misunderstood elements of Bitcoin’s creation. The software was not a bolt out of the blue, as is sometimes assumed, but was instead built on the ideas of multiple people over several decades. This history is more than just a matter of curiosity. The software has come to be viewed in academic and financial circles as a significant computer science breakthrough that may reshape the way money looks and moves. Recently, banks like Goldman Sachs have taken the first steps toward embracing the technology. Mr. Szabo himself has continued to be quietly involved in the work. In the beginning of 2014, Mr. Szabo joined Vaurum, a Bitcoin start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., that was operating in stealth mode and that aimed to build a better Bitcoin exchange. After his arrival, Mr. Szabo helped reorient the company to take advantage of the Bitcoin software’s capability for so-called smart contracts, which enable self-executing financial transactions, according to people briefed on the company’s operations who spoke on condition of anonymity. After Mr. Szabo led the company in a new direction, it was renamed Mirror, and it recently raised $12.5 million from several prominent venture capitalists, these people said. The company declined to comment for this article. Mr. Szabo’s role at Vaurum has been kept a secret because of his desire for privacy, and he left in late 2014 after becoming nervous about public exposure, according to the people briefed on the company’s operations. While he was still there, though, the array of arcane skills and knowledge at his command led several colleagues to conclude that Mr. Szabo was most likely involved in the creation of Bitcoin, even if he didn’t do it all himself. I met Mr. Szabo, a large bearded man, in March 2014 at a Bitcoin event at the Lake Tahoe vacation home of Dan Morehead, a former Goldman Sachs executive who now runs a Bitcoin-focused investment firm, Pantera Capital. Mr. Szabo worked for Vaurum at the time. Mr. Morehead and other hedge fund executives in attendance dressed in expensive loafers and slim-cut jeans; Mr. Szabo, his bald pate encircled by a ring of salt-and-pepper hair, wore beat-up black sneakers and an untucked striped shirt. While he kept to himself, I managed to corner him in the kitchen during the cocktail hour. He was notably reserved and deflected questions about where he lived and had worked, but he bristled when I cited what was being said about him on the Internet — including that he was a law professor at George Washington University — and the notion that he had created Bitcoin. “Well, I will say this, in the hope of setting the record straight,” he said acidly. “I’m not Satoshi, and I’m not a college professor. In fact, I never was a college professor.” The conversation grew less heated when I asked about the origin of the many complicated pieces of code and cryptography that went into the Bitcoin software, and about the small number of people who would have had the expertise to put them together. Mr. Szabo mentioned bit gold, saying it harnessed many of the same obscure concepts, like secure property titles and digital time stamps, that made Bitcoin possible. “There are a whole bunch of parallels,” he told me. “I mean, the reason people tag me is because you can go through secure property titles and bit gold — there are so many parallels between that and Bitcoin that you can’t find anywhere else.” When I asked if he believed that Satoshi had been familiar with his work, Mr. Szabo said he understood why there was so much speculation about his own role: “All I’m saying is, there are all these parallels, and it looks funny to me, and looks funny to a lot of other people.” Dinner began, interrupting the conversation, and I never got another chance to talk to Mr. Szabo. When I emailed him on Wednesday, he repeated his denial: “As I’ve stated many times before, all this speculation is flattering, but wrong — I am not Satoshi.” While regulators debate the pros and cons of bitcoins, this volatile digital currency inspires the question: What makes money, money? Many concepts central to Bitcoin were developed in an online community known as the Cypherpunks, a loosely organized group of digital privacy activists. As part of their mission, they set out to create digital money that would be as anonymous as physical cash. Mr. Szabo was a member, and in 1993, he wrote a message to fellow Cypherpunks describing the diverse motivations of attendees at a group meeting that had just taken place. Some people, he wrote, “are libertarians who want government out of our lives, others are liberals fighting the N.S.A., others find it great fun to ding people in power with cool hacks.” Mr. Szabo had a libertarian mind-set. He was drawn to those ideas partly, he told me, because of his father, who fought the communists in Hungary in the 1950s before coming to the United States, where Mr. Szabo was born 51 years ago. Reared in Washington State, Mr. Szabo studied computer science at the University of Washington. Several experiments in digital cash circulated on the Cypherpunk lists in the 1990s. Adam Back, a British researcher, created one called hashcash that later became a central component of Bitcoin. Another, called b money, was designed by an intensely private computer engineer named Wei Dai. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. View all New York Times newsletters. When these experiments failed to take off, many Cypherpunks lost interest. But not Mr. Szabo. He worked for six months as a consultant for a company called DigiCash, he has written on his blog. In 1998, he sent the outline for his own version of digital money, which he called bit gold, to a small group that was still pursuing the project, including Mr. Dai and Hal Finney, a programmer based in Santa Barbara, Calif., who tried to create a working version of bit gold. The concept behind bit gold was very similar to Bitcoin: It included a digital token that was scarce, like gold, and could be sent electronically without needing to pass through a central authority like a bank. This history points to the important role that Mr. Szabo and several others played in developing the building blocks that went into Bitcoin. When Satoshi Nakamoto’s paper describing Bitcoin appeared in the fall of 2008, it cited Mr. Back’s hashcash. The first people Satoshi emailed privately were Mr. Back and Mr. Dai, both men have said. And Mr. Finney, who recently died, helped Satoshi improve the Bitcoin software in the fall of 2008, before it was publicly released, according to emails shared with me by Mr. Finney and his family. It is, though, Mr. Szabo’s activity in 2008, as Bitcoin emerged into the world, that has generated much of the suspicion about his role in the project. That spring, before anyone had ever heard of Satoshi Nakamoto or Bitcoin, Mr. Szabo revived his bit gold idea on his personal blog, and in an online conversation about creating a live version of the virtual currency, he asked his readers: “Anybody want to help me code one up?” After Bitcoin appeared, Mr. Szabo reposted the item on his blog in a way that changed the date at the top and made it appear as though it was written after Bitcoin’s release, archived versions of the website show. Mr. Szabo’s writing about bit gold from that time contains many striking parallels with Satoshi’s description of Bitcoin, including similar phrasings and even common writing mannerisms. In 2014, researchers at Aston University, in England, compared the writing of several people who have been suspected to be Satoshi and found that none matched up nearly as well as Mr. Szabo’s. The similarity was “uncanny,” said Jack Grieve, the lecturer who led the effort. When I went back and read Mr. Szabo’s online writings, it was obvious that in the year before Satoshi appeared on the scene and released Bitcoin, Mr. Szabo was again thinking seriously about digital money. He wrote frequently, over several months, about the concepts involved in digital money, including those smart contracts, a concept so specialized that Mr. Szabo is often given credit for inventing the term. Smart contracts later showed up as an essential piece of the Bitcoin software. Mr. Szabo’s blog explained why he was examining these issues with such passion: The global financial crisis then underway suggested to him that the monetary system was broken and in need of replacement. “For those who love our once and future freedoms, now is the time to strike,” Mr. Szabo wrote in an item on his blog in late 2007 endorsing the libertarian Ron Paul’s bid for the presidency, in part because of Mr. Paul’s views on the financial system. For many Bitcoin watchers, just as notable as what Mr. Szabo wrote in that period was his silence once Bitcoin appeared in October 2008. After all, the virtual currency was an experiment in everything he had been writing about for years. Unlike Mr. Dai, Mr. Finney and Mr. Back, Mr. Szabo has not released any correspondence from Satoshi from this period or acknowledged communicating with him. Mr. Szabo first made brief mention of Bitcoin on his blog in mid-2009, and in 2011, when the currency was still struggling to gain traction, he wrote about it again at greater length, noting the similarity between bit gold and Bitcoin. He acknowledged that few people would have had the expertise and the instinct to create either of them: “Myself, Wei Dai and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai’s case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai).” That item, in May 2011, was one of the last posts Mr. Szabo made before he went on a lengthy hiatus to work, he said later, on a new concept he called temporal programming. May 2011 was also the last time Satoshi communicated privately with other Bitcoin contributors. In an email that month to Martti Malmi, one of the earliest participants, Satoshi wrote, “I’ve moved on to other things and probably won’t be around in the future.” Whoever it is, the real Satoshi Nakamoto has many good reasons for wanting to stay anonymous. Perhaps the most obvious is potential danger. Sergio Demian Lerner, an Argentine researcher, has concluded that Satoshi Nakamoto most likely collected nearly a million Bitcoins during the system’s first year. Given that each Bitcoin is now worth about $240, the stash could be worth more than $200 million. That could make Satoshi a target. With his modest clothes and unassuming manner, Mr. Szabo could be the kind of person who could have a fortune and not spend any of it — or even throw away the keys to the bank. People who know him say he drives a car from the 1990s. That modest outward appearance hasn’t diminished the deference toward him among Bitcoin cognoscenti. Potential employees were drawn to Vaurum when they heard that Mr. Szabo worked there, people who interviewed at the company said. They wanted to work alongside the person they suspected could be Satoshi Nakamoto — or who at least participated in Bitcoin’s invention. Some material in this article appears in “Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money,” to be published this month by Harper, a division of HarperCollins. A version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2015, on Page BU8 of the New York edition with the headline: Decoding the Enigma of Bitcoin’s Birth. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe We’re interested in your feedback on this page. Tell us what you think.

HomepageAbout membershipSign inGet startedHomepage Member previewFrancesco CoreaBlockedUnblockFollowFollowingComplexity scientist, data strategist, tech investor and AI advisor. All opinions are my own.Dec 1, 2017The convergence of AI and Blockchain: what’s the deal?Why a decentralized intelligence may affect our futureImage Credit: Zapp2Photo/ShutterstockIt is undeniable that AI and blockchain are two of the major technologies that are catalyzing the pace of innovation and introducing radical shifts in every industry. Each technology has its own degree of technical complexity as well as business implications but the joint use of the two may be able to redesign the entire technological (and human) paradigm from scratch.This article wants to give a flavor of the potentialities realized at the intersection of AI and Blockchain and discuss standard definitions, challenges, and benefits of this alliance, as well as about some interesting player in this space.I. Setting the stageImage Credit: 4zevar/ShutterstockI have been talking and writing about AI since a while now, so I will not waste any time defining what it is and what is not (if you want to know more about it, you can check my explanation or a brief history of AI).However, I never touched upon blockchain and cryptocurrencies so far, so I will dedicate this first block to describe what it is and how it works.A blockchain is a secure distributed immutable database shared by all parties in a distributed network where transaction data can be recorded (either on-chain for basic information or off-chain in case of extra attachments) and easily audited.A blockchain is a secure distributed immutable database shared by all parties in a distributed networkPut simply (with Bank of England’s words), the blockchain is “a technology that allows people who don’t know each other to trust a shared record of events”.The data are stored in rigid structures called blocks, which are connected to each other in a chain through a hash (each block also includes a timestamp and a link to the previous block via its hash). The blocks have a header, which includes metadata, and a content, which includes the real transaction data. Since every block is connected to the previous one, as the number of participants and blocks grow, it is extremely hard to modify any information without having the network consensus.The network can validate the transaction through different mechanisms, but mainly through either a “proof-of-work” or a “proof-of-stake”. A proof-of-work (Nakamoto, 2008) asks the participants (called “miners”) to solve complex mathematical problems in order to add a block, which in turn require a ton of energy and hardware capacity to be decoded. A proof-of-stake (Vasin, 2014) instead tries to solve this energy efficiency issue attributing (roughly) more mining power to participants who own more coins (there are many variations of it and some skepticism around its famous “nothing at stake” problem — see Buterin’s blog post to know more on this).Additional mechanisms are the Byzantine-fault-tolerant algorithm (Castro and Liskov, 2002), the Quorum slicing (Mazieres, 2016), as well as variations of the Proof-of-stake (Mingxiao et al., 2017), but we will not get into those now.The final characteristic that needs to be explained is the category of blockchain based on the different network access permission, i.e., whether it is free for anyone to view it (permissionless vs permissioned) or to participate in the consensus formation (public vs private). In the former case, anyone can access and read or write data from the ledger, while in the latter one predetermined participants have the power to join the network (and of course only in the public permissionless case a reward structure for miners has been designed).It should be clear by now the intrinsic power of this technology, which is not simply a disruptive innovation but rather a foundational technology that aims to “change the scope of intermediation” (Catalini and Gans, 2017). Distributed ledger technologies will indeed reduce both the costs of verification and networking, influencing then the market structure and eventually allowing the creation of new marketplaces. Iansiti and Lakhani (2017) also drew a brilliant parallel between blockchain and TCP/IP in a recent work (which I highly recommend), showing how blockchain is slowly going through the four phases that identify previous foundational technologies such as the TCP/IP, i.e., single-use, localized use, substitution, and transformation. As they explained, the “novelty” of such a technology makes it harder for people to understand the solution domain, while its “complexity” requires a larger institutional change to foster an easy adoption.However, it is also true that the blockchain is shifting the traditional business models distributing value in an opposite way with respect to previous stacks: if it made more sense to invest in applications rather than protocol technologies fifteen years ago, in a blockchain world the value is concentrated in the shared protocol layer and only marginally at the application level (see the “Fat Protocol” theory by Joel Monegro).It’s a stack with “fat” protocols and “thin” applications (Joel Monegro).To conclude this introductory section, I will just mention on the fly the possibility for the blockchain to not simply allow for transactions but also the possibility to create (smart) contracts that are triggered by specific events and threshold and that are traceable and auditable without effort.Bonus Paragraph: Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs)A big hype is nowadays surrounding this new phenomenon of the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Even if many people are pouring money into that because of its resemblance to the most common (and valuable) Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), an ICO is nothing more than a token sale, where a token is the smallest functional unit of a specific network (or application).ICOs experts (if any) will forgive my approximate definition, but an ICO is a hybrid concept that has elements of a shares allocation, a pre-sales/crowdfunding campaign, and a currency with a limited power and application’s domain.It is definitely an interesting innovation that introduces new unregulated ways to raise capitals, but it also poses several issues to an unprepared community. I am happy to receive feedback on this, but I would distill the key points of an ICO evaluation in what follows:a token has an additional utility with respect to the exchange of value and companies selling token with the only goal of raising capital are sending a bad signal to the market. Tokens are needed to create a users’ base and to incentivize stakeholders to participate in the ecosystem at the earliest stage. A good white paper is not enough;Be wary of token sales that are uncapped;Be wary of token sales that have no time limit;Be wary of token sales that do not clearly state the (present and future) number as well as the value of the token (it could sound absurd, but you may be surprised of how non-transparent an ICO can look like).II. How AI can change BlockchainImage Credit: Phonlamai Photo/ShutterstockAlthough extremely powerful, a blockchain has its own limitations as well. Some of them are technology-related while others come from the old-minded culture inherited from the financial services sector, but all of them can be affected by AI in a way or another:Energy consumption: mining is an incredibly hard task that requires a ton of energy (and then money) to be completed (O’Dwyer and David Malone, 2014). AI has already proven to be very efficient in optimizing energy consumption, so I believe similar results can be achieved for the blockchain as well. This would probably also result in lower investments in mining hardware;Scalability: the blockchain is growing at a steady pace of 1MB every 10 minutes and it already adds up to 85GB. Satoshi (2008) first mentioned “blockchain pruning” (i.e., deleting unnecessary data about fully spent transactions in order to not hold the entire blockchain on a single laptop) as a possible solution but AI can introduce new decentralized learning systems such as federated learning, for example, or new data sharding techniques to make the system more efficient;Security: even if the blockchain is almost impossible to hack, its further layers and applications are not so secure (e.g., the DAO, Mt Gox, Bitfinex, etc.). The incredible progress made by machine learning in the last two years makes AI a fantastic ally for the blockchain to guarantee a secure applications deployment, especially given the fixed structure of the system;Privacy: the privacy issue of owning personal data raises regulatory and strategic concerns for competitive advantages (Unicredit, 2016). Homomorphic encryption (performing operations directly on encrypted data), the Enigma project (Zyskind et al., 2015) or the Zerocash project (Sasson et al., 2014), are definitely potential solutions, but I see this problem as closely connected to the previous two, i.e., scalability and security, and I think they will go pari passu;Efficiency: Deloitte (2016) estimated the total running costs associated with validating and sharing transactions on the blockchain to be as much as $600 million a year. An intelligent system might be eventually able to compute on the fly the likelihood for specific nodes to be the first performing a certain task, giving the possibility to other miners to shut down their efforts for that specific transaction and cut down the total costs. Furthermore, even if some structural constraints are present, a better efficiency and a lower energy consumption may reduce the network latency allowing then faster transactions;Hardware: miners (and not necessarily companies but also individuals) poured an incredible amount of money into specialized hardware components. Since energy consumption has always been a key issue, many solutions have been proposed and much more will be introduced in the future. As soon as the system becomes more efficient, some piece of hardware might be converted (sometimes partially) for neural nets use (the mining colossus Bitmain is doing exactly this);Lack of talent: this is leap of faith, but in the same way we are trying to automate data science itself (unsuccessfully, to my current knowledge), I don’t see why we couldn’t create virtual agents that can create new ledgers themselves (and even interact on it and maintain it);Data gates: in a future where all our data will be available on a blockchain and companies will be able to directly buy them from us, we will need help to grant access, track data usage, and generally make sense of what happens to our personal information at a computer speed. This is a job for (intelligent) machines.III. How Blockchain can change business/3317In the previous section, we quickly touched upon the effects that AI might eventually have on the blockchain. Now instead, we will make the opposite exercise understanding what impact can the blockchain have on the development of machine learning systems. More in details, blockchain could:Help AI explaining itself (and making us believe it): the AI black-box suffers from an explainability problem. Having a clear audit trail can not only improve the trustworthiness of the data as well as of the models but also provide a clear route to trace back the machine decision process;Increase AI effectiveness: a secure data sharing means more data (and more training data), and then better models, better actions, better results…and better new data. Network effect is all that matter at the end of the day;Lower the market barriers to entry: let’s go step by step. Blockchain technologies can secure your data. So why won’t you store all your data privately and maybe sell it? Well, you probably will. So first of all, blockchain will foster the creation of cleaner and more organized personal data. Second, it will allow the emergence of new marketplaces: a data marketplace (low-hanging fruit); a models marketplace (much more interesting); and finally even an AI marketplace (see what Ben Goertzel is trying to do with SingularityNET). Hence, easy data-sharing and new marketplaces, jointly with blockchain data verification, will provide a more fluid integration that lowers the barrier to entry for smaller players and shrinks the competitive advantage of tech giants. In the effort of lowering the barriers to entry, we are then actually solving two problems, i.e., providing a wider data access and a more efficient data monetization mechanism;Increase artificial trust: as soon as part of our tasks will be managed by autonomous virtual agents, having a clear audit trail will help bots to trust each other (and us to trust them). It will also eventually increase every machine-to-machine interaction (Outlier Ventures, 2017) and transaction providing a secure way to share data and coordinate decisions, as well as a robust mechanism to reach a quorum (extremely relevant for swarm robotics and multiple agents scenarios). Rob May expressed a similar concept in one of his last newsletters (that I highly recommend — you should definitely subscribe);Reduce catastrophic risks scenario: an AI coded in a DAO with specific smart contracts will be able to only perform those actions, and nothing more (it will have a limited action space then).In spite of all the benefits that AI will receive from an interaction with blockchain technologies, I do have one big question with no answer whatsoever.AI was born as in an open-source environment where data was the real moat. With this data democratization (and open-source software) how can we be sure that AI will prosper and will keep being developed? What would be the new moat? My only guess at the moment? Talent…IV. Decentralized Intelligent CompaniesImage Credit: Wit Olszewski/ShutterstockThere are plenty of landscapes of blockchain and cryptocurrencies startups out there. I am anyway only interested in those companies working at the intersection (or the convergence, as someone calls it) of AI and blockchain, which apparently are not that many. They are mainly concentrated in San Francisco area and London, but there are examples in New York, Australia, China, as well as some European countries.They are indeed so few of them that is quite hard to classify them into clusters. I usually like to try to understand the underlying patterns and the type of impact/application certain groups of companies are having in the industry, but in this case is extremely difficult given the low number of data points so I will simply categorize them as follows:Decentralized Intelligence: TraneAI (training AI in a decentralized way); Neureal (peer-to-peer AI supercomputing); SingularityNET (AI marketplace); Neuromation (synthetic datasets generation and algorithm training platform); AI Blockchain (multi-application intelligence); BurstIQ (healthcare data marketplace); AtMatrix (decentralized bots); OpenMined project (data marketplace to train machine learning locally); Synapse.ai (data and AI marketplace); Dopamine.ai (B2B AI monetization platform); Effect.ai (decentralized AI workforce and services marketplace);Conversational Platform: Green Running (home energy virtual assistant); Talla (chatbot); doc.ai (quantified biology and healthcare insights);Prediction Platform: Augur (collective intelligence); Sharpe Capital (crowd-source sentiment predictions);Intellectual Property: Loci.io (IP discovery and mining);Data provenance: KapeIQ (fraud detection on healthcare entities); Data Quarka (facts checking); Priops (data compliance); Signzy (KYC)Trading: Euklid (bitcoin investments); EthVentures (investments on digital tokens). For other (theoretical) applications in finance, see Lipton (2017);Insurance: Mutual.life (P2P insurance), Inari (general);Miscellaneous: Social Coin (citizens’ reward systems); HealthyTail (pet analytics); Crowdz (e-commerce); DeepSee (media platform); ChainMind (cybersecurity).A few general comments:It looks interesting that many AI-blockchain companies have larger advisory board than teams. It might be an early sign that the convergence is not fully realized yet and there are more things we don’t understand that those ones we know;I am personally very excited to see the development of the first category (decentralized intelligence) but I also see a huge development in conversational and prediction platforms as well as intellectual property. I grouped other examples under “miscellaneous” because I don’t think at this stage they represent a specific category but rather only single attempt to match AI and blockchain;Those companies are incredibly hard to evaluate. The websites are often cryptic enough to not really understand what they do and how (a bit paradoxical if you want to buy the blockchain transparency paradigm) and technology requires a high tech-education to be fully assessed. Cutting through the hype is a demanding task and this makes it very easy to be fooled. But let me give you a concrete example: ever heard of Magos AI? In the effort of researching companies for this post, I found myself reading several articles on this forecasting blockchain AI-driven platform company (Wired, Prnewswire, etc.), which just did an ICO for over half a million dollars and that made great promises on its deliverables. The website didn’t work — weird, if you consider that they need to share material/information on the ICOs. But you know, it might happen. I made then an extra effort because I read it on Wired and I was curious to know more about it. I was able to find its co-founders, which I couldn’t find eventually on Linkedin. Weird again. Well, there are people who do not like socials, fair enough, especially if you consider that until three months ago there was no proof of the company existence whatsoever. Let me look into the rest of the team. Nothing even there, and no traceable indications of their previous experiences (except for the CTO master in analytics, that I found no proof of). I tried to then dig into the technology: white papers, blue papers, yellow papers, you name it. I only found reviews of them, no original copies. Final two steps: I don’t consider myself an expert in blockchain at all, but I read, a lot. And I also believe I am fairly knowledgeable when it comes to AI and what is happening in the industry. These guys claimed they created 5 different neural nets that could achieve the same accuracy in complex different domains than Libratus (or DeepStack) reached in Poker, but I never heard of them — very weird. Well, you know what? Maybe I could write them and meet them to understand. Their address points to the AXA office in Zurich. Ah.After 5 minutes of research, I finally Google the two key words: “Magos scam”. It seems these guys took the money and disappeared. They are surely building the 6 neural net somewhere, so stay tuned.My point here is that exponential technologies are fantastic and can advance mankind, but as much as the benefits increase also the potential “negative convergence” increases exponentially. Stay alert.V. ConclusionImage Credit: Sasun Bughdaryan/ShutterstockBlockchain and AI are the two extreme sides of the technology spectrum: one fostering centralized intelligence on close data platforms, the other promoting decentralized applications in an open-data environment. However, if we find an intelligent way to make them working together, the total positive externalities could be amplified in a blink.There are of course technical and ethical implications arising from the interaction between these two powerful technologies, as for example how do we edit (or even forget) data on a blockchain? Is an editable blockchain the solution? And is not an AI-blockchain pushing us to become data hoarder?Honestly, I think the only thing we can do is keep experimenting.ReferencesCastro, M., Liskov, B. (2002). “Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance and Proactive Recovery”. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 20(4): 398–461.Catalini, C., Gans, J. S. (2017). “Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain”. MIT Sloan School Working Paper: 5191–16.Deloitte (2016). “Blockchain Enigma. Paradox. Opportunity”. White Paper.Iansiti, M., Lakhani, K. R. (2017). “The Truth About Blockchain”. Harvard Business Review, January–February 2017: 118–127.Lipton, A. (2017). “Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers in Retrospective and Perspective”. arXiv:1703.01505.Mazieres, D. (2016). “The stellar consensus protocol: A federated model for internet-level consensus”. White Paper.Mingxiao, D., Xiaofeng, M., Zhe, Z., Xiangwei, W., Qijun, C. (2017). “A Review on Consensus Algorithm of Blockchain”. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) Banff Center, Banff, Canada, October 5–8, 2017Nakamoto, S. (2008). “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. White Paper.O’Dwyer, K. J., Malone, D. (2014). “Bitcoin mining and its energy footprint”. 25th IET Irish Signals & Systems Conference 2014 and 2014 China-Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (ISSC 2014/CIICT 2014), Limerick, pp. 280–285.Outlier Ventures (2017). “Blockchain-Enabled Convergence”. White Paper.Sasson, E. B., Chiesa, A., Garman, C., Green, M., Miers, I., Tromer, E., Virza, M. (2014). “Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from bitcoin”. In Security and Privacy (SP), 2014 IEEE Symposium on, pp. 459–474.Unicredit (2016). “Blockchain Technology and Applications from a Financial Perspective”. Technical Report.Vasin, P. (2014). “BlackCoin’s Proof-of-Stake Protocol v2”. White Paper.Zyskind, G., Nathan, O., Pentland, A. (2015). “Enigma: Decentralized computation platform with guaranteed privacy”. arXiv:1506.03471.BlockchainArtificial IntelligenceMachine LearningData ScienceBig DataOne clap, two clap, three clap, forty?By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out.5.7K38BlockedUnblockFollowFollowingFrancesco CoreaMedium member since Mar 2017Complexity scientist, data strategist, tech investor and AI advisor. All opinions are my own.

It starts with nightmarish messages like this: Yesterday, we discovered that funds were improperly removed from the Tether treasury wallet through malicious action by an external attacker. Tether integrators must take immediate action, as discussed below, to prevent further ecosystem disruption. Disappeared: $31 million in tether tokens. This was reported Monday night by Tether, the company behind the cryptocurrency “tether,” with a market capitalization of $673 million, according to CoinMarketCap. The value of tether, which is “tethered” to the US dollar, continued to hover around $1. But bitcoin plunged 5% and then recovered. Tether is used is used as a medium to transfer cryptocurrencies to other exchanges in other countries without using the dollar and without using banks. The hack had taken place on November 19, Tether said. The tokens were sent to an “unauthorized bitcoin address.” The company said it’s trying to prevent the stolen tokens from being converted into dollars or enter “the broader ecosystem.” Sure, there are thefts of all currencies. But there’s a difference. When someone steals money from your bank account by hacking into the bank, the bank is responsible and makes you whole. When someone hacks into a cryptocurrency, no one covers it. These hacks of cryptocurrencies are just about as old as cryptocurrencies themselves. In June, 2011, a user named ALLINVAIN made off with 25,000 bitcoins, at the time valued at $775,000, today valued at $200 million. It went on from there. The biggest hack remains Mt. Gox, which at the time was handling 70% of the global bitcoin transactions. The exchange, located in Tokyo, revealed the hack in February 2014. Apparently 650,000 bitcoins ($473 million at the time) had disappeared over a period of several years. At today’s prices, the hack would have amounted to $5.2 billion. August 2017, Enigma ICO (Initial Coin Offering)  was hacked, 1,500 Ether ($500,000) stolen. Store of Value writes: The hacker was able to break into Enigma’s website, Slack group, and mailing list and sent fraudulent messages to the project’s community asking for money. This allowed the hacker to gather almost 1,500 Ether (about $500,000). This is despite a previous warning by Enigma that it would not collect money in this way until its ICO in September. July 2017, Veritaseum’s Ether wallet hacked, about $8 million stolen after its ICO on May 26th. Store of Value: July 2017, Parity Multisig Wallet was hacked, according to ParityTech. “A vulnerability in the Parity Wallet library contract of the standard multi-sig contract has been found,” the company said. Via this vulnerability, hackers drained 153,037 Ether ($32 million) from three multi-signature contracts that were used to store funds from prior ICOs (Swarm City, Edgeless Casino, and æternity). July 2017, Bithumb, the world’s fourth largest Bitcoin exchange and largest Ether exchange, was hacked, according to Hacker News. Claims “started to surface” that “billions of won” disappeared from compromised accounts at the Korean exchange. At the time, actual loss data remained unclear. July 2017 (a busy month for cryptocurrency thefts), CoinDash ICO was hacked and 37,000 ether ($7 million) were stolen. Store of Value: CoinDash is an Israeli startup that conducted an ICO in July of this year to raise funds. However, just 13 minutes into the crowdsale, a hacker was able to change the Ethereum address posted on the ICO’s website. This address is where interested investors should send their Ether to in order to receive CoinDash tokens in return. October 2016, Bitcurex, a bitcoin trading platform in Poland, suddenly shut down. A few days later, it posted a notice on the otherwise dead site that an update had gone awry and asked customers to be patient. January 2017, the owner of the exchange “disappears,” as the exchange remained shut down and its 2,300 bitcoins ($2.6 million) are gone. Polish authorities started investigating. August 2016, Bitfinex, which doesn’t even disclose where it is located (it’s incorporated in the British Virgin Islands at a mailbox address and files some paperwork in Hong Kong), was hacked again, after its May 2015 hack. This time, 119,756 bitcoins were stolen ($72 million), at the time the second largest heist, after Mt. Gox. The exchange is the world’s largest dollar-based bitcoin exchange. The same people that own Bitfinex set up Tether, also in the British Virgin Islands, a fact that became known via the leaked “Paradise Papers.” July 2016, social media blockchain Steemit was hacked, 260 accounts compromised, and $85,000 in Steem and Steem Dollars stolen. June 2016, Ethereum project Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was hacked, “more than 3,600,000 ether” ($72 million at the time) were stolen. Hackers had exploited a known vulnerability. CoinDesk explains: Unfortunately, while programmers were working on fixing this and other problems, an unknown attacker began using this approach to start draining The DAO of ether collected from the sale of its tokens. May 2016, Gatecoin, a Hong Kong based exchange, was hacked. It claimed it lost 250 bitcoins and 185,000 Ether, about $2.14 million at the time. March 2016, Canada-based Cointrader shut down after an audit showed “a deficiency of bitcoin.” March 2016, ShapeShift which on its site claims to be “the safest, fastest asset exchange on Earth” was hacked three times in a two-week period. Each time, the hot wallets were cleaned out. Disappeared: 469 bitcoins, 5,800 Ether, 1,900 Litecoins ($230,000 in total). January 2016, Cryptsy claimed it had been hacked and shut down. Disappeared: about $6 million in bitcoin and Litecoin. In August 2016, CoindDesk reported: Cryptsy CEO Paul Vernon may have stolen as much as $3.3 million from the now-defunct digital currency exchange and destroyed evidence of his illicit actions. That’s according to new court documents from the ongoing class action lawsuit filed against the troubled industry exec. May 2015, Bitfinex announced that it was hacked and its “hot wallet might have been compromised.” Turns out, 1,500 bitcoin (at the time $350,000) were stolen. January 2015, Bitstamp was hacked after a phishing expedition that targeted employees, as was later revealed. In total, 18,866 bitcoins ($4.3 million at the time) were stolen. January 2015, BTer in China was hacked, 7,170 bitcoins ($1.8 million at the time) were stolen. January 2015, KipCoin in China was hacked, about 3,000 bitcoins were stolen ($800,000 at the time). Going deeper into history, here are some more cryptocurrency hacks, via Bitcoin Exchange Guide: July 2014, 3,700 bitcoins ($2 million) stolen on Mintpal. July 2014, 5,000 bitcoins ($1.8 million) stolen on Bitpay. March, 2014, 150 bitcoins ($101,000) stolen on bitCoin. March 2014, 896 bitcoins ($572,000) stolen on Flexcoin. February 2014, 650,000 bitcoins stolen on Mt.Gox, largest heist so far (see above). November 2013, 1,296 bitcoins ($1.46 million) stolen on BIPS. November 2013, 4,100 bitcoins ($5.6 million) stolen on Inputs. November 2013, $6,000 bitcoins ($6.7 million) stolen on PicoStocks. November 2012, 263,024 bitcoin ($3.4 million) stolen on ironically named Bitcoin Saving & Trust. That would amount to $2 billion at today’s price. September 2012, 24,000 bitcoins ($250,000) stolen on Bitfloor. March 2012, 46,703 bitcoins ($6 million) stolen on Bitcoinica. June 2011, 25,000 bitcoins ($775,000) stolen by a user known as “ALLINVAIN.” Is his Peak Crypto Craziness? This is what happened over the weekend ten days ago. Read…   “Bitcoin Cash” Quadruples in 2 Days. Bitcoin Crashes by $35 Billion Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here. A fool and their money are lucky enough to get together in the first place as Gordon Gekko said. Here’s an odd one, courtesy of Globe and Mail ( I think ) Apparently some preppers are storing bitcoin as insurance against the crash, I guess, of either civilization or maybe just the economy. Whatever anyone thinks of a crypto as an ‘investment’ or as an exchange medium, I do not get storing it as safety net against the type of scenario preppers worry about. What if there’s no power, internet or exchanges? As I understand it a bitcoin is just a pseudorandom number and with block chains the “legitimate” transfers of the bitcoins is traceable. I don’t understand why stolen bitcoins can’t be invalidated and substituted for with a new pseudorandom number. It seems it should be virtually impossible to get away with theft, once the theft is detected. The whole thing looks like a ponzi scam where they’re using all these cryptos to buy each other and I imagine it possible that there is more than one claim to many a unit, token and coin. Does anybody know who put out the cash value that all the cryptos represent and who has it now? Where would the money come from if everybody tried to cash out at once. A run on bitcoin. Hmmm. “more than one claim”. No, that is power of blockchain. Once a crypto-currency amount is put into a transaction, it cannot have “more than one claim”. You may nefariously print out “check 1001” copies, pointing to your bank checking account, by the dozens, and each receiver would make a claim on check 1001, without knowing who else is making a claim. But that cannot happen with cryptocurrencies. I dislike the whole cryptocurrency scheme, by the way. The most important feature of a currency as a means of exchange is CONFIDENCE in its value going forward. I repeat myself: Cryptocurrencies will be rendererd valueless two minutes after the first quantum computer goes online. If you think so, you should check The Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL), the only cryptocurrency which han post-quantum cryptography. My bet. So you are saying quantum computing can crack crypto-encryption by brute force? How and how about a link? “So you are saying quantum computing can crack crypto-encryption by brute force” No encryption has remained unbroken for that long for well over 1000 years. Even the Israleis can hack “i phones” as has been proven. Why should “block chain” be any different. My money says it has already been broken the issue is that the people who have arent talking about it. The FBI was really quiet sloppy, admitting they had somebody hack the “i phone” for them. Do state agencies tell you, what Biological pathogens they have, and have developed???? Waht teh Nuclear launch codes are. Only in Stupid countries like America can the state be forced to admit it can hack/De-crypt various items. Without thinking to hard about it, you start to De-crypt block-chain the same way you start to De-crypt a cell phone transmission, “Spoof” a Node/Tower in the network. Absolutely. This a question that is rarely asked and never answered. I am struggling to understand which is the logic that people apply which put a lot of money in crypto albeit the coins can obviously vanish without leaving a trace and their former owners a chance to pursue the the pilferers and bring them to justice. I’m starting to think cryptos may be a more reliable store of value than USD, which saw $4.5T printed in a few years. At least with cryptos, there are rules to prevent arbitrary creation of the currency. Developed market currencies are being debased at a rapid pace. The coordinated debasing hides the damage, but the fact remains these currencies are losing value anywhere from 2% to 15% per year, depending on how you gauge inflation. In fact, the inflation created by central banks is a matter of POLICY, so you are guaranteed to lose value if you hold USD. Given the uncertainty the Fed and other central banks have created, we need an alternative to developed market currency. The only viable alternative in the long term is an electronic platform like the top cryptos have. The security issues will clearly get cleaned up over time. Also, consider that the top 2 or 3 cryptos are seeing network effects as adoption and users increase. Network effects can increase value quickly. For example, see Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc. Gold might continue to have value, relative to USD, but platforms like bitcoin will clearly beat out gold. The supply of something like bitcoin is actually more restricted and transparent than gold. There have been over 1,000 cryptos created over the past few years. Anyone can create them. There are no rules. Some cryptos like bitcoin have a mechanism built in that limits further mining of that particular crypto, but it doesn’t stop other cryptos from being created. Hundreds of cryptos have already become worthless. People have lost a lot of money on them. No one writes about them. That doesn’t negate what Bobber wrote, though. The failed crypto currencies failed because they were unsuccessful at developing a network. The same can be said about the innumerable “social networks” that did not gain mass adoption. Despite the massive amount of failed networks, though, social media is one of the most powerful movers in the information age. Most cryptocurrencies will fail. This does not make them worthless as a whole, though. The crypto that eventually reaches critical mass and adoption will become a central part of life, not unlike Facebook. My money is on Ethereum and OmiseGo. No. If I intially have a 1000 sheet stack of green paper (Stack1) to print usd, does that fact set a hard limit on dollar creation? If bitcoin Set a hard limit of 20,000 coins, (blockchain1) does that mean that there can be no more bitcoins created? I think in both situations the answer is obvious. you can have stack2 and you can have blockchain 2. Unless the paper in stack1 and the bit coin‘s in blockchain1, Are distinctly tied to a hard asset like gold, they simply can be proliferated to infinity. Because these are currencies, they are simply mediums of transaction, they are not a store of value. They only become stores the value if they become legally attached to a finite And what about tethers? It seem like they can just add new tethers anytime they want to. For example right after the $31mm hack, $50 mm tethers were added. But then they don’t make any public statement on whether they fixed the security problem. Nope, they just print up new tethers at will the same way the FED prints dollars. There is no difference. You say, “The only viable alternative in the long term is an electronic platform like the top cryptos have. The security issues will clearly get cleaned up over time.” Precious metals (gold and silver) are historically a viable alternative. Future Crypto-currency security is a hope, not necessarily reality. When cryptocurrency use becomes too widespread, governments will step in and control them, as China has done. Governments like to have control of currencies. The NSA can hack any of these cryptos anytime they want. They have MASSIVELY parallel processing power and UNLIMITED electricity–the only 2 things you need to “mine” bitcoins. The question is can the Russians, or the Chinese do it as well? This is true for a Proof of Work crypto. Many currencies are moving to a Proof of Stake protocol, though. On a PoS protocol, consensus is reached through using your network share instead of your computing power to “vote” on the next version of the blockchain. On a PoS protocol, you can’t attack the blockchain simply by investing money into computers and electricity. You have to buy a part of the network. Trying to buy 50% of outstanding coins on any network would drive the cost per coin into the stratosphere. Ethereum is a great example. Currently, 1 ETH costs approximately $370. If a single person tried to buy out 50% of all ETH, this would spike the cost to hundreds of thousands of dollars per ETH. This would be prohibitively expensive for even the NSA, as they would need 50M ETH to gain control of the network. Easier to hack a coin exchange or the block chain …. You only need to own 50%+1 of the Bitcoin miners in order to reject all transactions. I have no doubt the NSA has this capability at least in the short term. I’m a software engineer by trade. It is possible to write perfectly secure software. But you have to be extremely knowledgeable about writing software and software security. And as the software gets larger and more complex it becomes exponentially more difficult to make sure your software is secure. In larger systems, you cannot trust that everyone has the level of knowledge required. So you must do extensive code reviews and write to extremely tight coding standards. This is exceptionally expensive, which means few organizations do it. Which is why systems get hacked so often. That having been said, this is why I will never keep my money in bitcoins or other electronic coin technology. And I will never own a self-driving car. Nor will I ever let a UPS delivery guy enter my house with an electronic Amazon key system. Nor will I involve the County I work for in the Internet of Things. But to each his/her own. Well sir .. I am the family member of a DHS employee as well as friends with several within the NSA and I can guarantee you point blank that there is no such thing as perfectly secure software .e.g. Any code written by a human or a machine created by a human can and will be broken by another human or a machine created by another human regardless of the complexity or sophistication assuming enough motivation and/or gain is in place justifying the time and effort to do so e.g. The higher the stakes ,, the higher the motivation .. the higher the probability . Well said, whatever the human mind can do it can undo. It is as futile as making an pickable lock. What you have to do is make breaking the system more trouble (or higher risk) than it is worth. You can write software that – itself – doesn’t have known vulnerabilities. If you have the budget and skill set, you can even keep that software patched as new vulnerabilities publicly surface. a) the underlying programming language may have issues. b) software needs to be hosted on servers, and there’s simply no such thing as a completely secure server (even ones not connected to the internet have been known to get “air gapped”). c) there are many parties with lists of vulnerabilities that aren’t publicly known (and the disclosure may be restricted by nation states). d) and there’s always a disgruntled, dishonest employee somewhere, who can leverage internal access. The best programmer in the world can’t fully mitigate these issues. I think a better solution entirely would be for the industry to understand that this isn’t about preventing all hacking attempts, but rather the intelligent mitigation of potential damage up front: a) don’t collect data that isn’t actually required; b) don’t insist on all data being available online if it isn’t necessary for the functionality of the system; c) have appropriate policies in place (and enforced, and tested) for who can access what; d) and for crypto-currency, store the tokens in an offline wallet (boy are people lazy; it’s just a few small extra steps, for goodness sake). Another thing about security – don’t bet the entire farm on one barrier! People here would put the amazon lock on a small box outside their home for the delivery person. “I’m a software engineer by trade. It is possible to write perfectly secure software.” I’m also a software engineer. There is absolutely no way you could ever be completely sure of having written a perfectly secure software. Uncertainty will always be there, giving you nightmares. Since USPS carries and delivers the last couple of miles for Amazon, your postman will enter your house, drink your scotch and video your interior (videoclip for sale to others). I also am a software engineer and I too agree that it is not possible to create a software program or system which cannot be compromised. Even though Kent is technically correct, any compromised individual can undo the hard work of any impeachable software system. I’m not a software engineer but for micro=analogous reasons to yours, I will also never do any of the things in your last paragraph. I don’t understand cryptocurrencies. Can you actually exchange them for real US dollars or UK pounds? If so who buys them? If not why bother with them? No, I haven’t participated in any of the aforementioned heists nor any other undiscovered ones and nor am I planning such a heist. I’m just curious. You can exchange certain crypto currencies for fiat. I can’t speak for the full range spectrum, but in the US, you can sell bitcoin, litecoin and etherium tokens for fiat on Genesis, Coinbase, and Kraken. In Europe, Russia and Asia, they are more savvy on cryptos. Example- in South Korea, they’ve had bank ATM machines where you can buy and sell bitcoin (with proceeds, I imagine, coming from and going into a bank account. In these In Japan, bitcoin is a legal currency. As for why bother with them: it is trustless- you do not need a third party to verify trust. Open source software, and a decentralized ledger of transactions ensures consensus. It is peer-to-peer- you bypass having a centralized authority/body dictate transaction costs and permission of who to transmit (and by that transaction, communicate information via store-of-value) to. No SWIFT network bans. As for transaction costs, you can send any value in Litecoin for about $0.15, literally within seconds (the Lighting network is FAST,) to anyone, anywhere in the world that has an internet or wireless connection (if they have a digital wallet installed on their smart phone.) Compare that to the time and costs of wiring money somewhere. Also, the open blockchain ensures that the money doesn’t take the scenic route to get to intended end party and earn a few overnight loan dollars along the way. If you want a good primer on crytpocurrencies, watch some videos with Andreas Antonopoulis – he’s been talking crytpos for years and puts it’s utility and application into simple language. The answer is that, yes, you trade cryptocurrencies like you would trade any other financial commodity. The most common way to trade cryptocurrencies is to create an “exchange wallet”, meaning an account where both cryptocurrencies and money are kept, in an exchange website. Yes, just like Mt Gox, Cryptsy and ShapeShift. When you want to sell cryptocurrencies these exchanges allow you to trade them like stocks or bonds: you submit a selling order and the system will take care of selling your cryptocurrency units at the price you want. The exchange owner will obviously take a fee (usually a fixed sum per operation) and the money from the sale will then appear in your “exchange wallet”. You can then choose whether to transfer it to your bank account, buy other cryptocurrencies or just leave it there while you make up your mind. However since cryptocurrencies are not tightly regulated, you can also sell through a variety of informal means, including putting an ad in a local newspaper or in an online forum. While there’s no middleman and hence no extra fees, here you are working on trust alone. If you send the cryptocurrency units and the buyer doesn’t pay you, getting your “money” back is extremely hard. Who buys these currencies? The only reliable Bitcoin numbers we have is volume by country and here countries can be broken down in three categories: early adopters and steady users, which include those countries where Bitcoins have been traded in large quantities since its inception such as the US, the UK, Sweden and Switzerland, early adopters but occasional users, which include those countries where Bitcoins have been traded since their inception but in frenzied fits of trading activity followed by long spells of little or even no volume such as Iran, Dubai, Japan and South Africa, and then those countries where Bitcoin volumes literally exploded in 2016 to take off like a rocket the present year. The present mania started off on the so-called Pacific Rim, with very large volumes starting to be traded in The Philippines in April 2016, followed in close order by Malaysia and Indonesia. China didn’t start to trade Bitcoins in meaningful quantities until February 18 2017 when they jumped from literal pocket change to over 60 million yuan in a single day. Geodata are more or less all we have to try paint an identikit for Bitcoin users and they aren’t really helping that much, but that’s the whole point of cryptocurrencies: anonymous, hard to trace transactions. The blockchain may be useful for other accounting procedures, but it is too slow for digital money transactions. Placing your account on the internet opens it for theft from a infinite number of thieves, and then nobody is liable to pay for the loss. Cryto’s more an asset class to be traded and stolen, than use as digital money. Rather, i see it as the exact opposite. They are not an asset because they are essentially just infinitely reproducible digital code. But they are useful as currency to be bought seconds before making a transaction and then being sold out of the second the transaction is over. All the while, ideally, keeping your assets tied to the non infinitely inflatable physical world. Meanwhile, my physical precious metals sit in quiet repose in my safe deposit box, unthreatened by any hackers. You can’t make money out of certainty. That’s why cash reliably loses value. “Meanwhile, my physical precious metals sit in quiet repose in my safe deposit box, unthreatened by any hackers.” The ignorance of banking systems in this statement is HUGE< Agreed. As of 2015, you can not store cash or gold in a JPMorgan safe deposit box. Box contents are not FDIC insured. Bank employees open boxes without customer knowledge or consent. Many banks have sold or leased their safe deposit vault and box businesses to third parties. You have no recourse if something goes missing in your safe deposit box. Better solution: store your valuables in the trunk underneath the spare tire of an old car with no license plates parked in your garage. No old car that no one will steal: cut the heart out of good steak – put your encased stuff in the cavity and wrap, freeze and store in your freezer. And, if you use these or other private methods, tell no one (other than one trusted adult you live with) what you are doing. Secrecy is what will protect you. Unfortunately, I know people who use these means and can not keep their mouths shut. Better to write the info down in handwriting together with the list of all your passwords and account Ids and keep the envelope in a separate place. Or, if you’re like I am, colon cancer survivor but fecaly incontinent, keep a fiew gold pieces in your underpants. You arent telling me much new here, but some other might hopefully learn from it. Did you know frozen Weed is odorless? Boat keels are interesting, when boat is ugly, and Moored in safe Shallow water Anchorage. Especially since bolt on “keel bulbs” which are then glassed over, have become common these days. NO Bank controlled safety deposit box, in the whole country, could be opened, for the first time since the closure’s. With out the presence of a state tax Auditor/Inspector. Some people in greece, are still waiting, for that regulation to be rescinded. Bank safety deposit boxes are pretty worthless for keeping much beyond Birth certificates Etc. I like the wheel well of the old car idea cuz u can’t find with a metal detector. The old steak can get tossed by someone cleaning house. My fave is to bury it in the woods of a large public park that u can be pretty sure is not gojng to be developed (dig up or built over) without your knowing it. “Meanwhile, my physical precious metals sit in quiet repose in my safe deposit box, unthreatened by any hackers.” …and currently unthreatened by the Federal Government…currently unthreatened. And what if your worst fears come to pass? Gold is at $20,000 per ounce, and you want to buy a $100 loaf of bread? The bodega on the corner may not make change for your one oz. bullion coin…what to do? Who will convert the coin to currency? At what discount? At what risk to your wellbeing? I assume you will be heavily armed. I expect that you can trust your local pawnbroker….yeah…. Point of gold is in a economic system fail you can preserve some wealth to start over. Not to buy consumables. every down turn has a recovery….. except 2008…lol….in a recovery you most likely will be able to buy the new currency with gold. Honestly unless you have 5 million you don’t care about holding for generations gold is pretty meaningless. The average person is probably better just to start over vs hold gold for years with minor gains. Being useful is the true gold. Ever looked at a not so long term gold chart? Say starting at year 2000. Compare it to stock market index. Compare it to the money printing that has occurred since 2000. You can’t pay for a McBurger with gold but unless you are WAAAY out in the boonies there will be a precious metal dealer within an hour. In my city of 100K there is one ten minutes away. Of course you wouldn’t go to a typical pawn broker. You will find that a reputable gold and silver dealer will buy and sell at very low spreads. Bid and ask will be a couple of percent apart on a larger deal. For many currencies you will pay a higher commission to sell or convert. How to convert the $20,000 gold coin? rich persons problem. Who to turn to complain when your 401k and IRA Retirement assets are socialized by Uncle Scam? poor persons problem. Your safe box in the bank does not belong to you… Another day, another cryptocurrency scam. er-raising-375k-in-ico/ What’s the percentage of actual bitcoin coins compared with the numbers representing bitcoin in accounts? Like 3% of dollars is in cash the rest is electronic. So cannot they just be deleted ,written off? Now that I think about it, I don’t know. There’s a lot of established legal weight thrown behind dollar banking, which means that the dollars you have in the bank can be used whether they’re electronic or not, and you have recourse if the bank breaks its promises. I think that if you have Bitcoins in a wallet with your own cryptographic keys, then you have real Bitcoins. Whereas if you have someone’s promise to clear your Bitcoin transactions for you, then in extremis you have nothing. Seems like the best currency is called “startup”. It appears to draw in money from every where. There’s a scam born every minute. All these Crypto hacks yet no FX brokerage hacks, of any note, where FX brokerages have way more liquidity. And I thought people who invested in Juicero were stupid. It seems Cryptocurrencies is the real suckers magnet. I was half expecting Elon Musk to only take bitcoin for his latest car (that will likely never be made en masse). Just stitch together all the ponzis he can, make the new car have a built in juicero to keep you occupied while its charging at a rate that defies physics! Lets see, a government prints it’s own sovereign fiat currency, an endless amount, then it gets transfered into bitcoin. So how is bitcoin not just another form of fiat currency? I find it esp silly that governments print fake money and allow one another to trade fake currency for real commodity money such as gold. My favourite are the people who think that “GoingtoZeroCoin” or whatever the latest one is will be a medium for dodging the evil government(s) of WhereverStan. Uh, if the intel agency of WhereverStan wants your “GoingtoZeroCoin” it gets it at a few keystrokes I imagine. Same as if they want to confiscate your actual currency, but quicker and theoretically with no legal recourse. It’s a trade. Nothing more. And anyone who trades this is an idiot. I am going to guess that 99% of the folks buying any of these alt-coins have no idea who is behind said coin and how the software actually works. Which means it could just as easily be the FBI getting notified every time you import fentanyl from China or order gay snuff porn. Useful knowledge when you want to run for Congress. “I am going to guess that 99% of the folks buying any of these alt-coins have no idea who is behind said coin and how the software actually works” No, Nooo, Alt-coins are a good investment… I know nothing about crypto-currencies and I can’t predict the future, but I do know what makes a good monetary token. Money is a token in an accounting system that tracks the exchange of promises for goods and services. The accounting system must be accountable. If the accounting system becomes full of fake accounting entries, then it is no longer trustworthy. Think Enron which was worth $70 billion one day and worth nothing two weeks later. Did the money just quickly disappear? No, the accounting system was fraudulent. Remember playing monopoly as a kid? The first rule of being the banker was that you were not allowed to commingle your money with the banking money, and all banking transactions had to be made in full view of the players. If you didn’t trust your friends in a friendly game of monopoly, why are we trusting a financial system (accounting system) which is maintained in secret? Money is a promise. Don’t believe promises from people or groups you cannot trust. But there is no perfect money. All money has its vulnerabilities of theft, embezzlement, default, etc. give a person 5 % compounded interest on their hard earned principal insured money and many of the topics/issues discussed in this forum will become non existent . How do you expect the Fed to bilk savers out of interest income and force them to play in Wall Street’s rigged casino if they get 5% compound interest? Meanwhile, gold popped nicely today as the Fed FOMC notes revealed – shocker – continued Fed “dovishness” i.e. debasement of the currency. Imagine that…. and from CME, Bitcoin futures are coming: _announceslaunchofbitcoinfutures.html Long time reader…..I don’t understand people’s hostility towards bubbles and asset appreciation. Why be upset by it. It’s not your money….unless you count the housing bubble….thanks tax payers…..but who cares if crypto fails. Imagine if it works and takes off. Way too much negativity on this site. Love it but it kinda feels like the golf club 50 year olds that didn’t quite make it. Smart enough to understand the market but because of bad luck or bad decisions they are less successful vs their peers…..now I sound negative…..on a side note I would love to see wolf explain how leases work for cars nowadays. I remember 2008 where Ford and Chev lost their shirts on leasing…..we are looking for a new suv the past week and have been pushed by ever dealer to lease….. If someone invested $100,000 in eUSD on October 22, he or she would by now have lost 97.4%. All they would have left is $2,600. There are hundreds of these types of cryptocurrency examples. It’s form of online gambling, some big winners, a lot of big losers, and if you keep playing long enough, you can lose it all. “It’s form of online gambling, some big winners, a lot of big losers, and if you keep playing long enough, you can lose it al” Your listing of “Disappearances” of funds and the fact that in some case the same peopel have had more than 1 disappearance. In more than 1 entity. Which is simply not credible. “The best and safest way to rob a bank, is to own it” I think a lot of the hostility towards cryptos comes from people who are not comfortable with rapid change and feel like they’ve missed the boat. If someone ‘invested’ $1000 in Etherium two years ago, they’d have $360,000 today. It’s hard not to be resentful when you see supposedly foolish people making those kinds of gains. As far as cryptos themselves, I see them as just another currency to FX speculators to play with. With the inherent computational and energy costs of bitcoin transactions, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be using it for everyday purchases. I’ve read that a single bitcoin transaction burns on average around 200 KWh of energy. According to my electric bill, that’s enough to run my house for about a week and a half — not exactly an eco-friendly long-term outlook. The benefit of cryptos versus other currencies is cryptos they are limited, and thus cannot be forever inflated through ‘money printing’ as traditional fiat currencies. Yes, sure, anyone can create other parallel cryptos, but so also can anyone create their own traditional paper currencies. That doesn’t automatically devalue existing, established systems. The proof of the pudding is in the eating: there’s about 1400 cryptos listed by CoinMarketCap and probably thousands more in the works, but that doesn’t seem to be dragging down the apparent value of the established ones. “Doesn’t seem to be dragging down the value….” What of the volatility surrounding emergence of bitcoin cash, forking, etal? Anyway, the “history” you are hanging your hat on is minuscule, especially given that cryptos haven’t been through a full market cycle. Ie a bear market in assets. Besides that Who would argue that any paper currency has been a store of value over the last 100 years relative to gold? people should stay away from tethers and this Exchange it,s the new mtgox. A part from that Bitcoin’s blockchain capacity will not be augmented bitcoin is like a store of value .You will simply have a few sidechain network like litcoin in which to transact. In a strategic sense could work or maybe not? bitcoin satellites is also a interesting concept or maybe not?even more fun then a james bond movie like moonraker The next battleground in crypto will be mining to break the monopole of bitmain and the chinese miners One problem with cryptocurrencies is the amount of electricity needed to mine them. This is already at unsustainable levels (more than many countries). I think this is an existential problem for cryptocurrencies and one that cannot be solved. For holding physical coins, I prefer a large jar of peanut butter shoved to the back of a dumb fridge. Bitcoin is not sound money, it is not currency and it is nothing like gold so: Please ask yourself to clearly explain to everyone –> how does a cryptocurrency perform when a bad transaction takes place? • Such as a grocer in good faith buys, using bitcoin, some avocados and they turn out to be poison. Who sold them and where is that person located? How do you correct this bad transaction and horrible situation, when the transaction itself is anonymous and irreversible? This is a nightmare waiting to happen for this and other reasons. • Mining limited to very modest universal income amount • Mining available to all on a random basis to everyone equally and purely voluntary and compensated only up to the universal income • Completely distributed across all hardware and networks • Secure in an off-line electronic/paper vault under the owner’s strict control • Open source with quantum compatibility Remove the anonymity and governments with their central banks will control your money as they do now, Bitcoin then becomes nothing but a nuisance. And you still have the irreversibly of the transaction to deal with, evil businessmen love it. Bitcoin has little use other than to launder money and conduct other illegal transactions. However, it does provide a strong way to hide even legal transactions but there are other ways to accomplish this (cash for example). When the “Financialization” wheels finally come off… if Bitcoin or any other crypto won’t buy gold then you will know which one won and not until then. Blockchain technology is useful, and that is all there is. Today’s Bitcoin ripoff de jour. But…but…secure wallets! Uncrackable block chain! public-wireless-network Bitcoin hitting new highs. How long with the Fed tolerate the existence of a competitor that creates funny money out of thin air with zero intrinsic value? How long can the IRS tolerate the existence of untaxed fortunes and nominal wealth gains? The assertion that exploiting an aggregator is the same as exploiting the cryptocurrency itself, needs to die in a fire. It shows that whoever wrote the story is ignorant of the thing they’re writing about. If someone exploited a vulnerability in the data backend of this site (and I can say with probability 1 that exploitable datasec vulns exist on this site), it would be a category error to assert that “financial analysis” had been hacked. Literally none of these events is a ‘hack’ of a cryptocurrency: they are all exploits of poorly-structured data security at the cryptocurrency “clearinghouse” (for want of a better word). If someone tunnels into a bank vault, or scams a teller by “soc-eng”-ing them into giving access to another client’s account, nobody would assert that the US Mint had been ‘hacked’. There has never been a hack of the blockchain – and that would be the ‘big get’, since any successful hack could credit themselves with new BTC, undetectably. We all know that journalists have little more than a dilettante understanding of literally any subject of moderate complexity, so perhaps it’s not sensible for folks like me to expect dilettantes to wait until they understand an issue before they write clickbait drivel about it. So here’s what actually happened (aside from the outright fraud where the site owners make off with the loot directly… which is hardly a ‘hack’). A bunch of datasec neophytes built websites for people to transact in cryptocurrencies. Those websites (and their associated backends) were riddled with known security vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities were exploited and some people who entrusted their cryptocurrencies to the site owners, lost some or all of their value. The end. So the ‘take-away’ from this: it turns out that datasec neophytes are the wrong person to write a secure backend. (Captain Obvious… please go to the nearest courtesy phone). The corollary to this: people who entrust their purchasing power to institutions without performing adequate due diligence will be over-represented in ‘bad outcomes’. New tech predictably results in a rush of charlatans claiming expertise in a bid to make bank. These charlatans exploit the enthusiasm of risk-tolerant but boundedly-competent individuals who are early-adopters of the tech. I have spent some time trying to convince In much the same way, economic dilettantes (mostly arbitrageurs from various forms of utter charlatanry – e.g., psych) have built careers and reputations by asserting that they’ve ‘falsified economic rationality’ as a result of some pointless ‘trick question’ study (where N = 15 white middle class undergrads). “There has never been a hack of the blockchain – and that would be the ‘big get’, since any successful hack could credit themselves with new BTC, undetectably.” You have just said there is no god. When there might be. But you would need to die, to find out, if there is, or isnt. Just because you dont know something has or hasn’t been hacked dosent mean, it has or hasten. Its an encryption medium. It is possible to break it. just like the iphone, broken by Israel. My money says, the possibility that the same unit, that broke the iphone, has already broken Blockchain. Is very high. Its what they do. All day, everyday, sometimes for decades. They were very unhappy with the Americans. After helping them, the Americans unnecessarily admitted they had hacked the iphone. So the last people they will tell they have hacked blockchain will be anybody in the US Intelligence/security establishment. Enter email to get WOLF STREET updates Easter fell into March this year, and March Lasted till April 2. It’ll take many more sell-offs and the collapse of many more iffy stocks before this over-enthusiasm, after nine years of central bank nurturing, is finally wrung out of the market. And private equity firms are at the helm. But nothing goes to heck in a straight line. Enter your email to get WOLF STREET updates Copyright © 2011 - 2018 Wolf Street Corp. All Rights Reserved. See our Privacy Policy

or re-evaluate your menace because the marketplace continues its decrease highs or sideways momentum. Remember: the toughest combat lies inside of your self. A business magazine is a precious device with which you’ll be able to cling your self to account for the mistakes you are making, and it is going far towards removing the inconsistencies on your buying and selling taste. As Brett Steenbarger, the creator of “The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets” put it: “The journal is a business plan. The right plan, executed faithfully, can be the difference between success and failure in any endeavor.” Disclosure: The creator holds no cryptocurrency on the time of writing. Like what you learn? Give us one like or percentage it for your palsoriginal post… You have reacted on "3 Things Every Crypto Trading Journal Needs" Italy’s Senate Moves to Set Legal Foundation for B... ‘0% Success’: Why Blockchain Apps Just Aren’t Taki... Gold Price May Offer Clues About Next Big Bitcoin ... Back Above $4K: Bitcoin’s Price Hits a Two-Week Hi... VanEck: Bitcoin (BTC) Investors’ #1 2019 Investmen... Morgan Creek Digital Joins $3.1 Million Round for ... I’m As Certain As Ever – Bitcoin’s Revolution Is O... ‘Decentralized Airbnb’ Starts Charging Fees as ICO... Bitcoin Cash Keeps Shining as Wider Crypto Market ... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); VanEck: Bitcoin (BTC) Investors’ #1 2019 Investment Is Gold Per earlier reviews from Ethereum World News, mere days in the past, funding guru Jan Van Eck, the present leader government of Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund hopeful VanEck, took to CNBC to show that his company’s collaborative ETF software used to be to be withdrawn. In the interview, the Wall Streeter, whose father used to be the founding father of VanEck, defined that the federal government shutdown (which just lately ended) disallowed its representatives from actively conversing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And as such, making an allowance for that the SEC nonetheless expressed considerations in regards to the crypto marketplace’s, such because the loss of liquidity, manipulation, and custody considerations, VanEck, CBOE, and SolidX sought it proper to drag their software. However, what flew beneath many traders’ radar used to be that Van Eck drew consideration to the truth that traders’ call for for Bitcoin has probably begun to wane. Speaking at the outlet’s “ETF Edge” section, the VanEck leader government remarked that whilst BTC pulled a “little bit of demand away from gold” in 2017, the tides became in 2018 and heading into 2019. Citing a survey issued via his company, which polled 4,000 cryptocurrency traders, Van Eck famous that Bitcoin traders’ #1 funding for 2019 is chilly, arduous gold, no longer stocks and even different virtual belongings. Tim Seymour, the executive funding officer of Seymour Asset Management, echoed the sentiment published via VanEck’s ballot. Seymour famous that no longer simplest has liquidity all however disappeared for cryptocurrencies, most probably referencing the loss of publicly-reported volumes on exchanges, famous that Bitcoin’s standing as a Store of Value (SoV) is “very difficult” to argue for. The investor even quipped that there’s no level in wondering gold’s hegemony because the de-facto go-to SoV. While (former) Bitcoin traders might be flocking to standard gold en-masse, the flagship cryptocurrency has nonetheless been deemed virtual gold via many pundits, even whilst Wall Streeters would brazenly beg to vary. In a longer Twitter thread, Dan Held, a former product supervisor at Blockchain.com and long-time crypto fanatic, drew consideration to his rationale why BTC is inherently a SoV. Held remarked that Bitcoin used to be “purpose-built to first be a SoV,” quipping that the virtual money arguments that cite Satoshi’s whitepaper and discussion board feedback are cherry-picking. The co-founder of crypto asset supervisor Interchange therefore went directly to breakdown Satoshi’s “intentions,” drawing consideration to the author’s feedback, during which they particularly discussed gold, long-term worth expansion, and Bitcoin’s commodity standing. The cryptocurrency godfather, because it have been, even discussed shortage now and then, with Held claiming that Satoshi “highlights that Bitcoin’s scarcity gives it value… as a SoV.” Cementing his view, Held drew consideration to the community’s underlying laws — 21 million BTC provide cap, ten-minute blocks, and block measurement caps — claiming that Satoshi can have altered those values to push the virtual cash narrative. But he didn’t. In reality, throughout his lively years as a developer, Satoshi used to be most commonly in opposition to pushing block capacities upper, and used to be adamant that the BTC issuance agenda must be stored as is. With all this in thoughts, Held wrote: “What he was trying to accomplish was clear, he wanted to build a new backbone for the financial system. Bitcoin isn’t merely digital cash, but an alternative to banks… People pushing the MoE narrative at this moment in time are counterproductive to adoption.” Title Image Courtesy of Aperture Vintage on Unsplash Like what you learn? Give us one like or proportion it in your buddiesoriginal post… You have reacted on "VanEck: Bitcoin (BTC) Investors’ #1 2019 Invest..." Russia Denies Buying $10 Billion in Bitcoin, Teleg... Dow, Bitcoin Flash Red — What’s Dragging on the Ma... Was November the Last Big Bitcoin Sell-Off? Trader... Bitcoin (BTC) rockets above $4,000 as sure newsflo... Op-Ed: Bitcoin Security — How Do We Arrive at Cons... MimbleWimble: Is Bitcoin’s Curse Looming on The Ho... Binance , OKEx and More to Support the Upcoming Bi... Bitcoin Price Celebrates New Year Inside a Near-Te... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); Apple Co-Founder Wozniak Turned 2,800% Profit On Bitcoin (BTC) Bought At $700, Solid At $20okay — Apple Co-Founder’s Bitcoin Story In mid-2017, amid the near-peak of the latest blockchain growth, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, to not be at a loss for words with the overdue Steve Jobs, divulged that he had bought Bitcoin (BTC) at $700, quipping that he sought after to “experiment” with the asset and the decentralized financial system/sector. While main points have been scant about Wozniak’s intended experiments, the business insider took to a public level on Saturday to provide an explanation for what has came about since he financially delved into this nascent sector. Wozniak, the present leader scientist of Primary Data, explained on the Nordic Business Forum, an tournament positioned in Stockholm, defined that by the point Bitcoin surpassed the $20,000 milestone, he had sufficient, liquidating his holdings (he didn’t expose if he purchased extra BTC after his preliminary $700 buy-in). In a Q&A with Seth Godin, Wozniak defined that once the cryptocurrency marketplace exploded, he didn’t wish to be “one of those people who watches and watches it and cares about the number.” He quipped that he doesn’t wish to fear about BTC actively. In reality, he defined that certainly one of his tactics to reach happiness is to mitigate worries, and promoting his holdings was once a part of carrying out that. If what Wozniak is announcing is correct, and assuming that he most effective purchased BTC at $700, the long-time tech entrepreneur made 2,800% on his business, which was once most probably opened and closed inside of a 12 months’s time. Interestingly, he defined that Bitcoin’s premise as a virtual type of cost hasn’t grow to be a fact but, noting that his objective was once to trip and only use BTC, whether or not it’s at a resort or eating place. While he liquidated his cryptocurrency place, which probably wasn’t value a life-changing sum, Wozniak lauded Bitcoin for being a viable type of virtual gold. In an interview with CNBC, which Ethereum World News reported on up to now, the Apple co-founder remarked that Bitcoin, a mathematically outlined, allotted, and restricted asset, is “pure digital gold.” Wozniak is certainly one of a line of many pundits that imagine that BTC is a viable virtual Store of Value (SoV). Per earlier stories from us, Alistair Milne, Digital Currency Fund’s leader funding officer, just lately took to Twitter to say that Bitcoin has additionally noticed its Store of Value (SoV) proposition grow to be extra obvious. More particularly, he famous that Bitcoin’s buyers at the moment are “very aware that BTC is like trading gold with 100x leverage,” along side the truth that the flagship cryptocurrency’s inflation fee can be decrease than that of the dear steel. And, as “no one appears to doubt the usefulness of gold,” Milne famous that buyers shouldn’t doubt the opportunity of BTC, the de-facto virtual gold. This apart, in spite of his seeming loss of ‘skin in the game’, Wozniak has nonetheless made strikes on this nascent business. In August, Woz remarked that blockchain applied sciences are just like the “internet when it was brand new,” including that the innovation may well be implemented to many sectors, together with Uber-esque platforms, actual property avenues, and easy monetary transactions. Like what you learn? Give us one like or percentage it in your buddiesoriginal post… You have reacted on "Apple Co-Founder Wozniak Turned 2,800% Profit O..." Binance , OKEx and More to Support the Upcoming Bi... Why Jeff Bezos’ Divorce Could be Bullish for Amazo... Bitcoin Price Oversold, May Have Found a Bottom: B... Best Discord Crypto Groups Cryptocurrency/Blockcha... China’s Easing Up On Game Approval Ban, So Why Are... UK Financial Watchdog Plans Oversight of Security ... Ford Touts Growth in North America, Downplays Loss... Echo Chamber: Craig Wright Takes Twitter Account P... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); Crypto Hacker Scores $28,600 After Hack Of Bitcoin Exchange Attacker Bags Eight Bitcoin (BTC) In NativeBitcoins Breach The crypto marketplace will have slowed, with Bitcoin (BTC) falling by means of upwards of 70% all through yesteryear, however formidable attackers have endured their makes an attempt to breach trade upstarts. Most just lately, rumors arose that NativeBitcoins, a well-liked peer-to-peer, non-conventional change, had fallen sufferer to a safety breach. Per a tweet from Francisco Memoria, a crypto journalist at CryptoGlobe, LocalBitcoins, one of the vital fashionable upstarts on this sector’s historical past, has purportedly been comprised, with malicious actors netting at least 8 BTC, or ~$28,000 value of the cryptocurrency. How did this occur? @LocalBitcoins has it sounds as if been compromised. Users are claiming its boards had been redirecting them to a login web page that used to be a phishing web page. An cope with shared on social media already has $28,000 value of #BTC in it after tricking five sufferers. Forums at the moment are diabled. #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/iKLyMQ0Unf — Francisco Memoria (@FranciscoMemor) January 26, 2019 According to Memoria, coupled with a highly-upvoted Reddit thread at the subject, the hacker controlled to hack the P2P change’s web page to execute phishing assaults. It used to be defined that once customers went to the platform’s in-house discussion board, they had been redirected to a suspicious login web page, which most likely recorded pertinent knowledge, together with two-factor authentication codes, that used to be therefore relayed to a hacker. Once password and different bits of data had been submitted, meant sufferers at the Bitcoin subreddit claimed that their change wallets had been emptied, permitting the attacker to attain 1000’s of greenbacks value of BTC. In a remark at the thread, supposedly issued by means of a sufferer who misplaced 0.14 BTC, a suspicious Bitcoin cope with used to be uncovered, which had 5 incoming transactions previous Saturday. The 5 incoming transactions, most likely relating NativeBitcoins customers, amounted to 7.95 BTC. The biggest transaction used to be a jaw-dropping 4.6 BTC. Ouch. While this hasn’t been showed, one Reddit person remarked that his/her 11 BTC used to be additionally snatched, however no transaction IDs had been flagged or stipulated. However, taking into account the recognition of NativeBitcoins, there’s a possibility that there have been greater than 5 sufferers on this maximum trade contemporary safety breach. While there used to be radio silence at the finish of NativeBitcoins’ press and media crew for quite a few hours, company representatives have since issued a reaction on its corporate subreddit. Vera of NativeBitcoins just lately wrote that at 10:00 UTC on Saturday, the crew on the upstart detected an “unauthorized source” that possessed the potential to ship outgoing transactions from victimized accounts. And as such, the change’s crew instantly iced over transactions, as an investigation commenced. Per the post-mortem, the still-anonymous attacker used to be ready to breach a third-party instrument utilized by NativeBitcoins, however used to be temporarily close down. Interestingly, Vera claimed that six circumstances had been all however showed, contradicting the 5 incoming transactions at the suspicious cope with. This discrepancy wasn’t addressed, so it may be assumed that the hacker controlled to siphon budget into any other cope with. The company has now not addressed whether or not or now not it is going to be answerable for the stolen budget, a few of which will have been owned by means of Venezuelan Bitcoin customers, as peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions are relatively fashionable within the country. This contemporary debacle comes simply weeks after Cryptopia, a New Zealand-based crypto upstart, misplaced a supposed $16 million of Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens in a shocking breach. Like what you learn? Give us one like or proportion it for your palsoriginal post… You have reacted on "Crypto Hacker Scores $28,600 After Hack Of Bitc..." Everything You Need to Know About Cryptocurrency R... BitPay Says It Processed Over $1 Billion in Crypto... Japan Not Considering Approval of Bitcoin ETF, FSA... Op-Ed: Why the Bitcoin Bubble Burst is Good for Cr... Georgia State Senator Arrested for Lying about ‘St... $3 Billion Google-Backed AI Unicorn UiPath Set to ... Ford, IBM, LG Partner to Track Your Smartphone &a...; jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); 2 Executives Are Leaving Blockchain Startup R3 in Management Shake-Up Distributed ledger era supplier R3 has performed an in depth inside reorganization, ensuing within the departure of 2 participants of its control committee, CoinDesk has realized. Brian McNulty, a managing director and head of worldwide services and products, and Lauren Carroll, leader administrative officer, are leaving the corporate, R3 instructed staff at the town corridor conferences Friday, consistent with folks aware of the location. An R3 spokesperson showed the interior reorganization, which he stated will come with an expansive hiring program for 2019, however declined to touch upon particular person team of workers departures. Neither McNulty nor Carroll responded requests for remark by means of press time. McNulty joined R3 in March 2016 when the start-up used to be busy onboarding consortium member banks. He had up to now based the PTDL (Post Trade Distributed Ledger) Group, a rival blockchain workforce which numbered round 40 participants together with CME Group, State Street Bank and the London Stock Exchange. Carroll used to be previously in-house suggest at ICAP ahead of transitioning into trade control roles on the digital buying and selling company. As a part of the reorganization, co-founder Todd McDonald will run a brand new “design” crew that mixes all of R3’s product and advertising efforts, consistent with a memo CEO David Rutter despatched the corporate’s more or less 200 staff after Friday’s the town corridor conferences. Product control used to be up to now in the similar department as engineering, which Richard Gendal Brown will proceed to guide. The memo additionally defined a number of different adjustments: Chief engineer James Carlyle will run a brand new “production” crew devoted to supporting the deployment of R3’s era at shopper corporations. The common suggest’s place of business has been merged with exterior affairs and positioned underneath Charley Cooper, who has lengthy overseen regulatory affairs and public members of the family for R3. Chief of team of workers Zack Kavanaugh assumed added duties for recruiting, HR and trade sources. Chief monetary officer (CFO) Paul Harris will oversee a blended finance and corporate development (M&A crew. A seek is underway for a primary earnings officer (CRO) to guide the gross sales crew. As CoinDesk reported previous this month, Scott Grayson, R3’s former leader gross sales officer, left in September and not too long ago joined the blockchain services firm AlphaPoint. In June 2018 R3 needed to box media speculation that the corporate used to be operating in need of price range. More not too long ago, a prison dispute with Ripple relating to a freelance to buy 5 billion XRP tokens was resolved. Image: R3 founder David Rutter at Consensus, from CoinDesk archives Like what you learn? Give us one like or proportion it for your buddiesoriginal post… You have reacted on "2 Executives Are Leaving Blockchain Startup R3 ..." Thai Stock Exchange Plans to Launch a Token Tradin... Crypto Hacker Scores $28,600 After Hack Of Bitcoin... Coinbase Integrates TurboTax to Help US Clients Fi... Cardano (ADA) Founder: Crypto Prices Could Take 10... XRP Market Cap May Be Overstated by Billions, Mess... OKCoin Founder Star Xu Seeks to Acquire Public Fir... ING Bank, R3 Ink Deal for ‘Unlimited’ Corda Blockc... BitPay Says It Processed Over $1 Billion in Crypto... Coinbase Hires New Compliance Chief for UK Operati... Circle’s USDC Stablecoin Fully Dollar Backed, Says... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); Coinbase Integrates TurboTax to Help its US Customers File Crypto Taxes The American tax season is an annual length between past due January until round mid April. With the federal government shutdown quickly suspended for 3 weeks, workers on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will soon be reporting to work to begin this 12 months’s tax go back season. For many crypto buyers, the method of cataloging and curating trades price a complete 12 months is somewhat tense. Coinbase has due to this fact made the method more uncomplicated for its US shoppers to claim their income or losses from crypto buying and selling, via integrating onto the well-known tax preparation device referred to as TurboTax. The crew at Coinbase has announced a resource center to scale back the confusion many crypto buyers have when submitting taxes associated with their crypto buying and selling transactions. The change has long past on to explain that Coinbase is needed to offer a 1099-K form to any of its US shoppers who has engaged in a minimum of 200 crypto transactions whose general price is equivalent or more than $20,000. This quantity varies from state to state in the United States. For its shoppers who meet the necessities for the 1099-Okay, TurboTax has a brand new crypto segment in its TurboTax Premier product that shall we customers add their Coinbase transactions and account main points for features and losses. Coinbase consumers can add as much as 100 transactions directly. The crew at Coinbase explains the method of the usage of TurboTax as follows. First, obtain your Coinbase transaction historical past here. Next, you’ll be guided as a part of the TurboTax Premier enjoy to add this transaction historical past immediately into TurboTax Premier. Please notice that the TurboTax crypto import function pulls in transactions from Coinbase (now not Coinbase Pro) and the iOS and Android apps. If you additionally use Coinbase Pro and need lend a hand compiling a unmarried transaction historical past throughout exchanges, see underneath for details about the usage of our spouse CoinTracker. Clients wishing to make use of TurboTax will stand up to $20 off via the usage of this link supplied via Coinbase. For its skilled consumers, Coinbase has partnered with CoinTracker to help in summarizing all transaction process for the remaining 12 months regardless of the Coinbase platform used to industry. More in this carrier may also be discovered at the CoinTracker website. What are your ideas on Coinbase integrating TurboTax products and services onto its platform for its US shoppers? Please tell us within the remark segment underneath.  Disclaimer: This article isn’t supposed to offer monetary recommendation. Any further opinion herein is solely the writer’s and does now not constitute the opinion of Ethereum World News or any of its different writers. Please perform your individual analysis prior to making an investment in any of the a large number of cryptocurrencies to be had. Thank you. Like what you learn? Give us one like or percentage it for your buddiesoriginal post… You have reacted on "Coinbase Integrates TurboTax to Help its US Cus..." Robinhood, LibertyX Receive Licenses from New York... BitTorrent’s Creator Wants You to Know He’s Not In... Rosenberg: No Fundamentals to US Stock Market Reco... Bitcoin (BTC) Darknet Transactions Doubled In 2018... Please Don’t Hurt Us! BIS Report Proves Central Ba... Litecoin (LTC) Market Cap Marches Further Away fro... Cboe Exchange Withdraws Proposal for VanEck-SolidX... What Are Crypto Executives Still Positive About Af... China: Anti-Crypto Central Bank Worried Cash Losin... Forget Bitcoin: Why Criminals are Using Fortnite t... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); Tom Lee: Bitcoin (BTC) At $25,000 Is “Fair,” But It Needs Time As Bitcoin (BTC) made enormous strikes within the fourth quarter of 2017, crypto pundits took to mainstream information shops and social media mediums en-masse to make zany value predictions. While some zealots, influenced through the non secular fervor of this motion, referred to as for sextuple digits (and even septuple digits), one calm voice made a scaled-back value prediction of a then-mere $25,000. Per earlier experiences from Ethereum World News, the soothsayer in query used to be Tom Lee, an government at Fundstrat Global Advisors with a seeming enamorment with virtual property. At the time, the analysis head on the New York-headquartered funding marketing consultant claimed that BTC used to be undervalued. And over the process 2018, the believer maintained his prediction as perfect he may just, whilst the wider crypto marketplace collapsed. In May, as BTC ranged a tad underneath quintuple digits, Lee explained that the tumult used to be “typical crypto volatility.” Then, the Fundstrat consultant added that a lot of BTC’s historic parabolic runs happened inside of a question of a couple of weeks, explaining that it’s logical to think that the marketplace may just rally dramatically in a proverbial flash. Considering the then-current catalysts of mining prices, comparable to Wall Street participation and break-even mining prices, Lee made it transparent that $25,000 wasn’t out of achieve. But within the months that adopted, cryptocurrencies persisted to plummet. Yet once more, Lee remained bullish, taking to CNBC multiple times to care for that $25,000 fee consistent with Bitcoin wasn’t as quixotic as cynics gave the impression. On one instance in October, the relentless forecaster quipped that “people are too bearish,” including that his company’s research signifies that BTC incessantly surges after it plunges underneath its 200-MA. Lee even remarked that anecdotal proof indicated {that a} backside used to be inbound, mentioning reasoning that after 100% of buyers propagate bearish sentiment, capitulation has happened. As the trade now is aware of, this wasn’t the case, as BTC fell to a every year low of $3,150 in mid-December. And as such, talking to Bloomberg at 2018’s finish, the trade player made it transparent that he wouldn’t make time-bound, specific value predictions at some point. But, it sort of feels like there have been some nuances to that self-imposed rule. In a up to date Fox Business interview, Lee touched at the prediction once more, for the apparently umpteenth time. The Fundstrat consultant that the truth that BTC didn’t achieve $25,000 through 2018’s finish used to be a “huge disappointment,” noting that yesteryear used to be a yr of robust adjustment for the wider crypto house, particularly with regards to the cave in of ICOs and the impact that they performed on Bitcoin. When requested if he may just retrace his steps and retract his prediction, Lee strangely stated that the $25,000 is “actually a fair value for Bitcoin,” however made it transparent that he wasn’t creating a time-bound forecast. Backing his name, Lee famous that BTC has had 70% pullbacks up to now, and survived, even thrived. He added that as crypto turns into a viable asset magnificence, BTC is most likely going to guide a transfer to the upside. Like what you learn? Give us one like or proportion it on your palsoriginal post… You have reacted on "Tom Lee: Bitcoin (BTC) At $25,000 Is “Fair,” Bu..." 10 Reasons Bitcoin Won’t Ever ‘Go to Zero’ as Davo... Bitcoin Price Not Oversold at $3,000? Analyst Says... ‘Decentralized Airbnb’ Starts Charging Fees as ICO... Cryptocurrency Creditors Making a Killing Despite ... Why the BitTorrent Airdrops Will Benefit the Value... Here is BiTorrent’s Official List of Exchanges and... Traders: Bitcoin Price Recovery Above $3,400 May L... ‘Big Bitcoin Heist’ Ringleader Jailed for Massive ... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); Edward Woodford is the co-founder and CEO of Seed CX, which, provides a certified change for institutional buying and selling and agreement of spot virtual asset merchandise and plans to supply a marketplace for CFTC-regulated virtual asset derivatives. The following is an unique contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review. While 2018’s falling bitcoin costs led many observers to put in writing off virtual belongings altogether, the correction must in reality assist drive the marketplace as a complete to mature. That maturation is strictly what the distance wishes to draw extra institutional buyers, whose arrival en masse will reinforce the marketplace for everybody through expanding liquidity, each immediately, by way of the price range they make investments, and not directly, by way of the truth in their adoption. Their access will sign to different buyers that the marketplace is strong and devoted. Between 2015 and overdue 2017, when the cost of bitcoin was once ceaselessly emerging, there was once bullish euphoria available in the market. Traders have been prepared to depend on little-known or unregulated exchanges regardless of the hazards – the prospective upside made the ones dangers profitable. In the early days, virtual belongings offered a novel state of affairs through standard buying and selling requirements: the operational threat (threat of loss from insufficient procedures, safety, and insurance policies used to habits operations) of buying and selling was once more than the marketplace threat (threat of economic loss because of the existing stipulations of a marketplace an investor is invested in). Loss of a few cash (or virtual belongings) right here and there to hacking, for instance, might be outweighed through the truth that returns have been astronomical and buyers have been detached to the cost of bitcoin and different virtual belongings because it was once expanding, exponentially, in an overly brief time period. For instance, bitcoin skilled a price increase of 460+ percent over the six-month length from July 1, 2017 ($2,492.60) to January 1, 2018 ($14,112.20). Trading on platforms with very prime operational dangers might be fully logical the usage of an “adjusted” Sharpe Ratio, a risk-weighted measure. The adjusted Sharpe Ratio would take into accout the go back of making an investment in bitcoin over a time period and the risk-free fee of making an investment in a risk-free asset (akin to a U.S. Ttreasury bond) and resolve the chance of the portfolio (marketplace and operational dangers) to resolve the risk-adjusted go back. Using the instance above, taking a risk-free fee of roughly 1.five %, the portfolio’s go back, which exceeds 460 %, and the portfolio’s threat of, let’s say, 135 % (35 % for marketplace threat and 100 % for operational threat), would yield a Sharpe Ratio of roughly 3. This Sharpe Ratio would constitute a stupendous risk-weighted go back because the go back exceeds the chance through a a couple of of 3. Today, returns have normalized for arbitrage alternatives as liquidity has greater throughout exchanges. Those who hired a purely lengthy technique and loved exponential returns would now be experiencing losses if using the similar technique during the last six months. Aside from a purely directional technique, buyers will inform you that “easy returns,” akin to easy arbitrage alternatives (purchasing the similar asset on one change and promoting it at a miles upper worth on every other) have disappeared. When the returns they’re seeing are nearer to what they’d be expecting from extra established asset categories, buyers’ willingness to just accept the op-risk, or attainable of losses from hacking and different preventable reasons, is a great deal lowered. In brief, the exchange to the risk-reward ratio implies that exchanges are not given a go for deficient operations, lax safety, troubling conflicts of hobby, and inadequate oversight. For instance, maximum exchanges use a unmarried pockets to carry belongings for all individuals. Even with the majority of belongings held in chilly garage, a unmarried pockets creates a tempting goal for hackers and different criminals. Now, we’re seeing extra exchanges introduce segmented pockets infrastructure (as at Seed CX, the place we create a devoted pockets for every change player). This angle shift method exchanges that provide devoted wallets and different security-focused options – those who have the bottom operational threat – will draw in extra institutional buyers, who should believe now not handiest monetary and operational dangers but additionally dangers to their popularity when buying and selling virtual belongings. It additionally method exchanges have to supply the surveillance and account infrastructures required to stop inefficient or suspect buying and selling: industry signals, circuit breakers, order e-book audit trails, and so forth. As we discussed above, adjustments available in the market since 2017’s rally imply that “long-only” methods are not workable and “easy return” alternatives are a lot more difficult to come back through as a result of extra teams are chasing the similar alternatives. For instance, DeVere Capital just lately announced the release of an actively controlled cryptocurrency fund that will likely be excited about arbitrage alternatives between exchanges. This method exchanges that need to draw in and stay buyers should construct the infrastructure to supply extra subtle buying and selling methods, together with swaps, derivatives, and choices, to not point out mixtures of the ones and see markets. The transformation of the marketplace infrastructure nonetheless has an overhang of its historical past. In the primary 3 quarters of 2018, hackers stole $927 million of cryptocurrency from exchanges and different buying and selling platforms. And whilst many exchanges nonetheless fall brief on security features, others are making vital strides ahead. In addition to segmented wallets, we’re seeing larger use of multi-signature safety (at Seed CX we require two keys, generated through unbiased events, to get entry to wallets), extra enforcement of whitelisted withdrawal IP addresses, and the greater pursuit of regulatory licenses. Two years in the past, the doorway of institutional buyers to the virtual asset house gave the impression far away and not likely. Today, due to falling costs, institutional buyers don’t seem to be handiest getting into the marketplace however are an increasing number of dictating the phrases of {the marketplace} – to the advantage of everybody buying and selling in it. Glass ball and dollars symbol by way of Shutterstock. Like what you learn? Give us one like or proportion it in your buddiesoriginal post… You have reacted on "Stranger Things: The Upside of Down Bitcoin Prices" Augur Interface Veil Acquires Search Engine for Pr... China First, EU Next? Donald Trump Faces New Major... State of Lightning: What’s the Path for Network Ad... Apple is Not Learning From its Mistake: 3 iPhone M... Interview: Crypto Exchange CEO on Bringing Bitcoin... The Finance Prof. Who Says Bitcoin’s Going to ‘Bit... ‘Bitcoin is a Garbage Network’: Fortune 500 Softwa... Dow Futures Prep for Opening Bell Plunge as Bitcoi... South Africa: Two Arrested for Kidnapping Boy, Dem... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); Free Markets Don’t Create Free People: Bitcoin’s Tech Success Masks Its Failure James Bridle is a author running throughout applied sciences and disciplines and writer of “The New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.” His paintings may also be discovered at http://jamesbridle.com. The following paintings will seem as an creation to “The White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto” to be revealed through Ignota Books.  For extra on bitcoin’s 10th anniversary, take a look at our new interactive function Bitcoin At 10.  It’s tricky to grasp when people first began securing or ‘encrypting’ messages to cover them from undesirable readers; the apply will have to, through human nature, be nearly as outdated as written language, even supposing examples are sparse. We know, for instance, that Julius Caesar used a easy type of letter substitution to keep up a correspondence together with his generals, transferring every personality 3 steps down the alphabet with the intention to scramble it. The historical Greeks, in particular the military-minded Spartans, used a tool referred to as a scytale, which allowed a hidden textual content to be learn through wrapping a strip of parchment round a cylinder of a selected dimension in order that the letters coated up in a selected order. Tales of the Greco-Persian Wars are filled with secret messages, now not least the tale of Histiaeus, a commander who, in line with Herodotus, shaved the pinnacle of his favourite slave and had it tattooed with a message urging revolution within the town of Miletus. When the slave’s hair grew again he was once dispatched to town, with the directions that the recipient will have to shave him as soon as once more and skim the message there printed. Such excessive measures had been taken because of the concern of presidency surveillance, a justification incessantly cited these days. The Persian king managed the roadways, and had the facility to inspect any message – and messenger – that travelled on them. From the very starting, cryptography has been each an army era and a device for undermining present powers. Cryptography’s price as an army instrument is double-edged, after all. Like different guns, its effectiveness depends upon the facility of 1 aspect to outgun the opposite. For a very long time, this steadiness most commonly held, with efforts through one aspect to crack the secrets and techniques of the opposite forming long-running and engaging backstories to many standard conflicts. It was once an act of decryption that introduced the United States into the First World War when British intelligence services and products decoded the notorious Zimmermann Telegram proposing an alliance between Germany and Mexico. In the final months of the struggle, the cracking of Germany’s ADFGVX cipher through French cryptanalysts enabled the Allies to stave off a last German offensive on Paris. Cryptography was once first mass-manufactured within the Second World War, within the type of the Third Reich’s Enigma machines, after which digitized within the type of the Colossus, the arena’s first programmable digital pc, evolved to wreck the German army’s Lorenz cipher. The wild invention and supreme good fortune of the Bletchley codebreakers over their Nazi adversaries may also be learn as the primary of many circumstances of the virtual overcoming the bodily; the Lorenz SZ42 was once a large, advanced device of rotating cogs and wheels which defied codebreakers for years. By the top of the struggle, it was once utterly readable through an digital device. The secrecy across the Colossus itself supposed that its life had little affect on long term pc design, nevertheless it marks the purpose at which cryptography modified radically in nature – as a result of what’s virtual is in the end distributable, even supposing it will take the expansion of the web within the 1990s for this to change into extensively understood. In 1991, a pc safety researcher referred to as Phil Zimmermann created a programme referred to as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), which enabled customers of house computer systems to strongly encrypt electronic mail messages the usage of a mixture of a lot of well known algorithms. What grew to become PGP from any other selfmade device product into one of the contentious artifacts of the last decade wasn’t the way it was once made, however the way it was once disbursed. Since the Second World War, international locations have been compelled to legally outline cryptography as a weapon; like another munition, cryptography was once matter to one thing referred to as the Arms Export Control Act. At the time of PGP’s liberate, any cryptosystem which used keys – the strings of randomly generated numbers which secured hidden messages – longer than 40 bits required a licence for export. PGP used keys which have been 128 bits lengthy and nearly not possible to crack on the time, and this made it exactly the type of era that US government sought after to forestall falling into overseas palms. Zimmermann by no means supposed to export PGP, however, fearing that it will be banned outright, he began distributing it to pals, announcing, “I sought after to give a boost to democracy, to make certain that Americans may continue to protect their privacy.” Shortly after that, PGP discovered its means onto the web after which in another country. In 1993, the USA authorities began a proper investigation into Zimmermann – for exporting munitions with out a license. As wisdom of the case unfold, it was a flashpoint for early virtual activists who insisted at the rights of everybody to offer protection to their very own secrets and techniques and their very own personal lives. The freedoms and risks of code was the topic of earnest debate, and in any other foreshadowing of long term virtual taste, of hacks, pranks and stunts. Zimmermann had the device’s supply code published as a hardback ebook, permitting any individual to buy a duplicate and kind up the device themselves. As he was once keen on mentioning, export of goods repeatedly regarded as munitions – bombs, weapons and planes – may well be limited, however books had been safe through the First Amendment. Variants at the RSA set of rules – the 128-bit procedure on the middle of PGP – had been published on T-shirts bearing the message ‘This shirt is classified as a munition’. Some went additional, having strains of code tattooed onto their hands and chests. The Crypto Wars, as they was identified, galvanized a group across the perception of private – slightly than nationwide – safety, which tied into the utopian creativeness of a brand new, extra loose, extra equivalent and extra simply society growing in our on-line world. Another building that brought on standard public disquiet was once the USA authorities’s proposal for a chipset for cell phones. The Clipper chip was once designed through the NSA to supply encryption for customers whilst permitting regulation enforcement to listen in on communications – a state of affairs that was once ripe for abuse, both through corrupt officers or through professional hackers.Noelle Acheson is a veteran of corporate research and member of CoinDesk’s product group. The following article initially seemed in Institutional Crypto via CoinDesk, a publication for the institutional marketplace, with information and perspectives on crypto infrastructure delivered each and every Tuesday. Sign up here. ——————– Spare a idea for the monetary regulators: the American ones, without a paycheck right through the federal government shut-down and a whopping backlog looking ahead to once they in the end get again to paintings; and the European ones, with a fragmenting union, disjointed capital markets and a glut of latest regulations seeping during the labyrinthine halls of energy. Now, evaluate the very other approaches to crypto asset law from every aspect of the Atlantic. While the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is considering the larger image and dealing on drawing up sector-wide regulations, it’s also passing judgment and handing out punitive fines. Last 12 months noticed 18 virtual token-related actions from the SEC, in comparison to 5 in 2017. The European aspect, alternatively, appears to be extra eager about understanding how to think about the larger image. It’s fascinated with what construction the decision-making procedure will have to take. It’s forming committees. Recommendations are flying around the departmental divides, and arrangements are being made for the deliberations. It appears to be ceaselessly considering about regulating virtual property, quite than in truth doing so. As an instance, previous this month you will have spotted yet more calls for EU-wide crypto regulations, this time from each the European Banking Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). This would possibly at the floor look like the cultural variations that movie fanatics are already conversant in: the quick, action-heavy method of the U.S. blockbusters vs. the considerate and cautious taste of the European indies. But it’s greater than that. The variations are in truth embedded in prison constructions and traditions and spotlight the unfathomable issue of attaining settlement on how the brand new elegance of crypto property will have to be regulated. European legislation is in response to Napoleonic code, or “civil law,” through which the whole lot is regulated via pre-established legislation or administrative resolution. Codified statutes predominate, and law is continuously much more complete than it must be, which additionally makes it much less agile. Its goal, alternatively, is to supply a uniform algorithm to hide all situations and to foster harmonious coordination. The U.S. runs on a “common law” device, through which judges have a better position in resolution making and regulations are made on a case-by-case foundation, continuously (however no longer all the time) in response to earlier rulings. Another giant distinction is that the European Union has sovereign realms to respond to to. Many of the selections taken via the EU must be ratified via the true international locations, which provides them much more scope to undermine Europe-wide tasks, relying on their nationwide pastime. Getting issues completed on a top-down, regional foundation could be very, very tricky. What’s extra, in Europe securities legislation remains to be, at the complete, nationwide. The push against capital markets union is shifting slowly, despite being some of the priorities of the present mandate: of the 13 foundational legislative texts offered via the fee since 2014, only three were followed. And time is working out: the present mandate leads to May, and the urgency fuelled via expanding worry over Brexit and the opportunity of some other monetary disaster does no longer appear to have speeded up the tempo of development. In the U.S., the connection between the states and the federal businesses is more practical. An extended historical past of enforcement of the appliance of federal rules via the Supreme Court has introduced a veil of interoperability to the patchwork of state law. So, comprehensible frustrations over the loss of readability at the a part of the U.S. regulators and their sluggish, case-by-case method will have to be tempered with an appreciation that a minimum of they aren’t as bulky as their European opposite numbers. That, blended with the sheer dimension of the U.S. capital markets, approach that each one eyes are on what steps the SEC will take relating to crypto property. Yet that’s to not say that the European Union isn’t taking crypto property significantly. The file launched via ESMA final week published the result of a months-long survey of member states’ regulators, in a bid to spot not unusual definitions and parameters relating to virtual tokens. It additionally highlighted gaps in present law and steered measures to near them. The regional securities frame known, alternatively, that most of the attainable answers have been beyond its remit, implying that exact agreed-upon measures have been nonetheless some distance off. Meanwhile, we’re prone to see person international locations in Europe take tentative steps towards permitting crypto asset issuance on regulated exchanges. Yet the diminished dimension of the native markets and the fragmented regulations governing exchanges and custody are prone to constrain tokens issued in Europe, particularly since community results – which depend on a huge marketplace – are a elementary a part of token valuations. In the U.S., however, 2019 is prone to convey a flurry of movements and statements from the SEC, as unregistered securities choices are punished, list proposals are tested and readability is given as to expectancies going ahead. While this may increasingly affect different securities regulators all over the world and edge the sphere against a extra complete framework, regional variations and nationwide issues make that most definitely wishful considering. Yet even disappointing development is healthier than none. The structural stumbling blocks that obstruct the great intentions of sprawling financial blocs, and the diminished dimension of extra agile and “crypto-friendly” jurisdictions, will consolidate the U.S. position as some of the extra safe and liquid markets for virtual tokens. And its regulators gets the danger to set the precedent for crypto asset law going ahead. Let’s simply hope they may be able to get again to paintings quickly. Like what you learn? Give us one like or proportion it for your palsoriginal post… You have reacted on "Oceans Apart: Crypto Regulation in the US and EU" Japan Not Considering Approval of Bitcoin ETF, FSA... Coinbase Hires New Compliance Chief for UK Operati... 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Required fields are marked *Comment Name * State of Lightning: What’s the Path for Network Adoption in 2019? This is a visualization of the lightning community taken at 22:29 (UTC) on Friday. Created by way of blockchain analytics startup 1ML, the snapshot represents all the nodes working lightning tool and developing public fee channels atop the bitcoin blockchain. Looks complicated, proper? And consider it or now not, this community is getting steadily higher on a daily basis in keeping with 1ML. In the previous 30 days on my own, the choice of lightning fee channels has greater by way of kind of 36 %, bringing to general to kind of 22,000 channels. Active lightning nodes have in a similar fashion shot up – over 16 % in contemporary days – and at the moment sit down at round 5,690 allotted nodes. Launched in beta last March, the layer-2 bills era is actively maintained and advanced by way of over six other building groups unfold out around the globe. These come with Eclair by way of Acinq, Lightning Network Daemon (LND) by way of Lightning Labs, c-lightning by way of Blockstream, ptarmigan by way of Nayuta, Rust-Lightning by way of Matt Corallo and Lit by way of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI). And even outdoor of those six, Pierre-Marie Padiou, co-founder and CEO of Acinq, predicts there are part a dozen extra out “in the wild.” Highlighting that the codebase to construct lightning purchasers is open-source and to be had to any individual “without asking permission,” Padiou added {that a} record of 30 some-odd enhancements to the community have been agreed upon by way of builders throughout a summit in Adelaide, Australia November of closing yr. “Now, after the summit, the work will continue to formalize the decisions taken during the summit, and implement them in the clients so that they can be deployed,” defined Christian Decker – core tech engineer at Blockstream – in a former interview with CoinDesk.  Since November, one characteristic has already been launched by way of CTO of Lightning Labs Olaoluwa Osuntokun enabling “the ability to send a payment to a destination without first needing to have an invoice,” as detailed on GitHub. Explaining that every shopper workforce “has their own favorite features,” Decker added that extra adjustments to the community can be launched in “incremental” steps rising piecemeal over coming weeks and months. As such, lightning builders are constructive concerning the endured luck of the lightning community, anticipating expansion traits noticed in 2018 to proceed to upward thrust in 2019. “We have been seeing tremendous activity during the past few months and are confident that this trend is going to amplify in 2019.” According to blockchain analytics web site P2SH.data, the volume of bitcoin despatched via lightning channels since closing June has skyrocketed from not up to 25 BTC to 578 BTC. State of the lightning community on bitcoin mainnet. Source: www.p2sh.info  Speaking to bigger adoption figures in 2019, Decker advised CoinDesk that the important thing in the back of growing “a very active and engaged community … building and improving lightning” would come all the way down to its endured doable to “change how we do payments in the future.” Indeed, the principle use case of the lightning community as described at the authentic webpage is “lighting-fast blockchain payments without worrying about block confirmation times.” Transactions the use of the lightning networks takes seconds to finish, in comparison to the nine or so mins – on reasonable, no less than, with fluctuations in accordance with block variance and miner good fortune – for transactions at once at the bitcoin blockchain, in keeping with knowledge from bitinfocharts.com. And whilst bills for items and services and products the use of a debit or bank card is finished with relative ease in maximum advanced economies, restrictions to such conventional banking services and products is a commonplace battle for marginalized populations inside of (and outdoor) first global nations. According to a global map of the general public lightning channels unfold out around the globe, lots of the servers working at the lightning community are concentrated in North America and Europe. World map of the lightning community. Source: https://explorer.acinq.co Speaking to this consumer demographic, Padiou defined to CoinDesk that whilst bitcoin’s building group has “historically been stronger in North America and Europe,” the nodes being depicted at the map didn’t display the choice of cellular customers for lightning, who could also be “a bit more evenly distributed.” “I consider that the language barrier is continuously underestimated, and tasks like [Reading Bitcoin] which offer translations to Chinese, Japanese and Korean [people] are very helpful.” From Decker’s standpoint, the map of public lightning channels “matches pretty closely with the map of Internet users, or the map of deployed bitcoin nodes” which is “to be expected since those are the regions that are most likely to know about bitcoin, have some bitcoins, and [are] testing the software.” Nevertheless, Decker affirmed that builders are devoted in 2019 “to extend the reach of bitcoin and lightning globally.” “I’m not aware of any specific plans to foster adoption in certain regions specifically [but] we’d definitely welcome any user from those regions, and do our best to support them,” stated Decker. Since March of closing yr, the lightning community has noticed the choice of new fee channels develop from kind of 1,500 channels to over 20,000. Growth of lighting fixtures community channels through the years. Source: https://bitcoinvisuals.com For now, there aren’t particular numeric goals at the time table for lightning builders to achieve by way of the tip of 2019, even though as discussed there’s a lengthy record of options geared toward increasing community capability anticipated for roll-out in months to return. Standing for “Basis of Lightning Technology,” BOLT 1.Zero is a commonplace, open-source repository of code that accommodates the entire important technical necessities or specs for customers to take part within the lightning community. Not to be puzzled with BOLT – a lightning-inspired zcash implementation of the community launched August closing yr by way of Dr. Ayo Akinyele  – BOLT 1.1 is the envisioned improve to BOLT 1.Zero that may surround the brand new building paintings going into lightning. Speaking to CoinDesk in a former interview, Osuntokun said that the precise roadmap for BOLT 1.1 was once “difficult to put estimates on … as it largely comes down to the prioritization of the various development team for each implementation.” “[Clients] will implement features in parallel, according to their own prioritization and to the extent that suits them best … some implementations may choose to omit some of the features,” added Decker. The 5 options that Osuntokun highlighted with CoinDesk as possessing the “biggest impact to the end-user” contains: 1. Splicing: Currently, every fee channel possesses a set capability simplest ready to ship the volume of bitcoin to start with staked on the outset of channel advent. However, within the tournament {that a} consumer wish to build up or lower channel capability, they require opening a completely new channel with the similar contributors. Requiring the same quantity of charges and affirmation wait time as a typical bitcoin transaction, splicing guarantees customers are ready to keep away from the preliminary ache of constructing a brand new channel by way of making changes to the capability of present ones. 2. AMP: Standing for “Atomic Multipath Payments,” AMP in keeping with Osuntokun items “a massive boost in usability” for the lightning community. Instead of bills being routed alongside a novel trail at the community, AMP permits customers to ship via fragments of bills via a couple of public channels within the community. Additionally, as identified by way of c-lightning developer Rusty Russell, AMP will also be leveraged by way of customers as a “bill splitting” characteristic when making lightning bills to a unmarried birthday celebration from a couple of other assets. 
3. Wumbo Channels: Named after an episode in an American youngsters’s caricature display known as Spongebob Squarepants the place starfish personality Patrick makes use of the time period “wumbo” to indicate will increase in measurement, wumbo channels seek advice from an build up at the most choice of bitcoin that may be despatched inside of a lightning fee channel. Put in position by way of lightning builders for protection causes, the utmost capability of a channel at time of writing is 0.16 BTC or kind of $570. 4. Static Address for/to faraway outputs: Aimed at making improvements to “disaster-recovery scenarios” at the lightning community, Padiou explains that static addresses be certain simple fund restoration for customers. “This feature – the static information address – means that with only the seed to your lightning wallet you would be able to recover the main balance in your channel,” stated Padiou. The seed being a mnemonic restoration word connected to all lightning (and bitcoin) wallets, customers these days require each this data and channel-specific data to recuperate misplaced price range. 5. 2p-ECDSA: Perhaps the good improve within the eyes of Osuntokun, 2p-ECDSA would camouflage the transactions performed at the bitcoin blockchain to create lightning fee channels. At provide, transactions opening and shutting a fee channel are simply differentiable from transactions on-chain. This growth as soon as carried out would upload an additional stage of anonymity for customers by way of making lightning channel process tougher to differentiate from conventional bitcoin bills process. Speaking to the entire expected adjustments to the BOLT repository, Padiou highlighted: “We didn’t have to change very important, very low-level design decisions … It’s very good news because we could have made big mistakes and could have had to start over but it’s not the case. Going to 1.1 is just building upon the already working first version.” Through the lens of the improvement time table set for 2019, the concern, then, in Padiou’s thoughts, is “reliability in all its aspects” to inspire endured adoption of the tech. “A payment network needs to ‘just work.’ It only has value if it allows you to send and receive money when you need it,” Padiou contended, including: “The more reliable it gets, the more companies with large user base will be ready to support it.” Like what you learn? Give us one like or percentage it for your palsoriginal post… You have reacted on "State of Lightning: What’s the Path for Network..." The Time Is Now: We Need an Active Approach to Blo... Who’s Left, Joined and Almost Joined Coinbase Sinc... Hong Kong Stock Exchange CEO Casts Doubt on Crypto... MimbleWimble: Is Bitcoin’s Curse Looming on The Ho... Cardano (ADA) Founder: Crypto Prices Could Take 10... Op-Ed: Why the Bitcoin Bubble Burst is Good for Cr... Dow Futures Prep for Opening Bell Plunge as Bitcoi... The ‘Thirdening’ Approaches: How to Watch Ethereum... Ford Touts Growth in North America, Downplays Loss... jQuery('.yuzo_related_post .yuzo_wraps').equalizer({ columns : '> div' }); A buying and selling magazine is without doubt one of the main components that separates newbie buyers from pros. Trading journals are supposed to trace the efficiency and reasoning at the back of all trades. They can help within the essential considering and decision-making procedure by means of tough a justification for each and every unmarried business any person makes. In maximum circumstances, main buying and selling corporations require their analysts to stay a business magazine or notes outlining their reasoning and the technical setup into which they’ve entered.  Ultimately, buying and selling journals are supposed to lend a hand establish patterns in a dealer’s method that lead to losses by means of highlighting the mistakes in a dealer’s judgment. The end-goal is to create a procedure for doing in order that is each clear and unfastened from bias, taking into consideration the type of mirrored image that makes a really perfect dealer. The extra you report and write issues down, the better it’s to retain and interpret that piece of knowledge being able to rule out inconsistencies on your studying.  The identical will also be stated for conserving monitor your trades all through the yr with the method of bettering your mindset – geared against successful small winning stakes and lowering private mistakes. Your psychological state on the time is, due to this fact, some of the 3 main components you must come with on your magazine. You’ll wish to define what sort of emotional state you had been in while you entered a business. If you can not persistently follow a ‘confident’ stance at the trades you’re making, then there should be some a part of your technique and technical setup you don’t agree with. For instance, let’s say you entered into an extended business with 10 % of the grubstake on Monday and wrote “unsure/high-risk business/cautiously bullish within the mentality segment. By Friday, that business is shaving off 30 % of your buying and selling account. A glance again on the buying and selling magazine will inform what went flawed. To get started with, you invested 10 % of your overall budget in a high-risk business. Seasoned buyers check dangerous waters with small bets and continuously take hedges with the intention to decrease losses. Simply put, your buying and selling magazine is like retaining up a replicate and tracking the irrational exuberance and shortage of control regulations. Just ask your self: “am I entering into the right trade feeling confident and does it favor my stringent self-applied ruleset?” The extra you start to observe writing and recording, the extra you’ll understand your mindset starts to switch with it as you expand agree with on your personal buying and selling taste. This brings us to our 2nd standards each and every magazine wishes: business efficiency. This might appear somewhat obtrusive in the beginning look, as all buying and selling journals must possess an access/go out place, the placement measurement, and date in addition to benefit/loss and any forestall losses you carried out. However, oftentimes the technical reasoning at the back of the business is overlooked and this is without doubt one of the extra an important components in business efficiency. Assuming your bias is checked and your rulesets lend a hand to split your emotional state from doing the rest drastic – akin to going all-in for ‘Lambo gains’ – then the reasoning at the back of your trades stand as crucial justification on why you entered them within the first position. If from a technical viewpoint, you noticed a falling wedge adopted by means of a big uptick in rising bullish quantity and also you took an extended business feeling assured, then that might lend a hand to streamline your essential considering and once more spotlight spaces the place you’re more potent whilst indicating different spaces on your research that want growth must you lose. From a fundamentalist standpoint, it’s possible you’ll want to observe sure main information bulletins or an organization hiring a specific CEO with a very good monitor report that might in the end impact an organization’s final analysis. This brings us to our 3rd standards all nice buying and selling journals must possess: marketplace stipulations. The stipulations define precisely what the present state of a specific marketplace was once in on the time while you entered your business. This is vital as it is helping you start to spotlight patterns on your buying and selling taste which are inconsistent with marketplace situation. If you map out days during which you’re feeling assured buying and selling, then, by means of all way, observe the marketplace stipulations down and provides a coarse define of what was once taking place on that given day. If you’re buying and selling greater than 2-Four occasions a month on unsure days, then possibly it’s perfect you allow that exact marketplace on my own

Bitcoin’s recent amazing price increase has helped raise awareness of other ‘alt coins’ and that has helped push up the value of Ethereum, litecoin and cryptocurrencies.  Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain by market size, is something we’ve been covering on Legit Reviews since June 2017. Ethereum (known as Ether or ETH) crossed the $750 mark for the very first time this week and that put it at up around 8,800% over the past year. These are unbelievable all-time highs and many feel that cryptocurrencies are here to stay and that this historic price surge still has some legs.  At the time of writing, Ether (ETH) has pulled back slightly from the all-time high of $754.01 per ETH and was trading around $675. This is still puts ETH up over 100% in a month and over 8,000% for the year. If you want to get in on the cryptocurrency freight train you can either invest into it buy buying coins at any exchange or you can mine it with your PC. We’re a PC hardware site, so we’ve spent the past half year covering the mining of coins like Ethereum. So, you want to mine Ethereum and gain some extra income? The recent price increase in Ethreum has increased the profit one can make from mining Ether, so people are back at looking how to set up a computer to mine Ethereum. Ether mining is done on the GPU inside a computer and the CPU and system memory is barely used. This means you’ll want to build a mining PC that has the most cost effective CPU and a motherboard that supports as many GPUs as you can fit. More on this later. There are many ways to mine Ethereum, but we are going to give you a very quick overview of how to get mining in a matter of minutes. You need to create a wallet to store your Ether! Services like MyEtherWallet will allow you to create a wallet and a private key. Always make sure you are going to the right URL to avoid phising scams! Once you create a wallet you are responsible for the key and there is no way to recover it, so protect your key at all cost. Printing off the key and tossing it a safety deposit box isn’t a bad idea here. Unless you are mining on 50+ video cards you are best off joining a pool to actually mine Ethereum and there are a bunch of them. You have Ethermine, f2pool, dwarfpool, ethfans, miningpoolhub, nanopool just to name a handful. The one you pick it up to you, but we suggest picking one that has reliable servers in your region with good ping times. We’ve been using Ethermine here in the United States and have had no issues. They have a 1% fee for joining they pool that they take, but you get a professional helpdesk and a global mining network with DDOS protected servers in the US East, US West, EU (France) and Singapore. Now that you have a wallet to store your earnings from mining and a pool to mine with you need a mining client. You can pick from whatever utility you like, but Ethminer and Claymores Miner are the two big ones to pick from. Pick either one and then you need to create a .bat file with custom commands to mine to your pool of choice (regional server) and your wallet address in order for them to pay you. We’ve been using Claymore’s Dual Ethereum AMD+NVIDIA GPU Miner (Windows/Linux) as it supports a dual mining mode that lets you mine both Ethereum and Decred/Siacoin/Lbry/Pascal at the same time, with virtually no impact on Ethereum mining speed. If you use Claymore’s miner you’ll get hit with a 1% fee for Ether mining or a 2% fee if you dual mine. Doing these three steps should take you about 10-15 minutes to complete at most on a system that already has Windows 10 installed with the latest GPU drivers. Custom Mining Rig Build By mininghardware on ECF Mining is fun and you’ll quickly find yourself addicted once you get your ‘money printing’ machine up and running. Mining with one or two cards won’t make you much money, so you’ll quickly find yourself wanting to make more money. For this you’ll need to build dedicated mining computer and find the best graphics card for mining the cryptocurrency that you are interested in. This is the part that we’ve been covering for over half a year, so please reference back to our original article that we published when Ethereum broke $250 for the first time. You can take those hashrates and plug them into online calculators like this one to see how much money you might be able to make. Quick List of Hardware For a Dedicated Mining PC Motherboard:  You are looking for a motherboard that supports six to seven video cards. The Intel Z170 and Z270 motherboards for LGA1151 processors are the best deals right now. Our favorite board right for GPU mining is the ASUS PRIME Z270-A at $149.00 shipped. People are actually mining with eight video cards on the ASUS PRIME Z270-A motherboard thanks to an M.2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 adapter than can be had for $8.95 shipped. The ASUS Prime Z270-P for $119.99 shipped also works with 8 GPUs if you use two of the M.2 to PCIe 3.0 x4 adapters. If you only plan on running 6 or fewer video cards that board is afforable Processor: For the Intel LGA1151 platform something like the Intel Celeron G3900 ($43.00 shipped) or an Intel Celeron G3930 ($43.60 shipped) would not be a bad choice. Both have a TDP of 51 Watts and come with a heatsink fan (HSF) that you can use. We highly suggest turning off the Windows 10 search indexing service (simple guide) on your dedicated mining rigs as that eats up power for something that isn’t needed. Power Supply: Your system is going to be running 24/7 at load,  so you’ll want to drop some coin on a good model. We highly suggest an 80 PLUS Gold or 80 PLUS Platinum rated power supply that will handle the video cards that you’ll be running.  We’ve used the Enermax Platimax 1350W ($299.99 shipped) with good success on systems with 6-8 video cards like Radeon RX 580’s or GeForce GTX 1070’s as you’ll likely be pulling 800-1100 watts with a system like that. If you undervolting the GPU you’ll be able to reduce the systems overall power consumption you should be able to get away with a smaller power supply. The Seasonic FOCUS Plust series SSR-850FX 850W power supply is 80+ GOLD rated and $115.00 shipped. Not bad as it comes with six PCIe 6/8 pin connectors and 10 SATA connectors. If you plan on running two power supplies on one system you might want to pick up a dual power supply connector to power up and shut down both power supplies like normal. Memory: Depending on what motherboard you got, you’ll likely need a stick of DDR4 memory. You can get away with single channel memory, so an 8GB (2x4GB) memory kit will be all you need for two systems. A typical DDR4 2133 MHz 8GB (2x4GB) memory kit will run you about $79.99 from a big name brand. Storage Drive: Small and inexpensive is again the name of the game here. You likely don’t want to use a M.2 PCIe graphics card as some boards will disable PCIe slots when a M.2 PCIe SSD is inserted into the board. If you don’t care about brand names or how easy it is to RMA if it breaks the DREVO X1 Pro 64GB SSD at $39.99 shipped is cheap and will hold an OS. Riser Cards: Most go with USB powered 1x to 16x riser cards. These sell out often and they are mostly all made by companies that no one has heard of. The reviews on most are mixed, so you’ll just need to pick some and roll the dice. You’ll likely be paying around $8 each. It is highly advised by the mining community that you don’t use SATA to PCIe power adapters, but a good number of people run SATA to 8-pin PCIe power adapters to connect all the video cards. Case: Get creative and make your own! Our favorite GPU mining builds are done using milk crates, some PVC pipes and zip ties. The might not look fancy, but they cost under $15 to make. Mouse/Monitor/Keyboard: Whatever is cheap! The AmazonBasics wired keyboard and mouse is just $14.00 shipped. OS: Windows 10 works and is essentially free if you try out the trial. Electricity Power Usage Meter: We highly suggest picking up a Kill-A-Watt P3 P4400  or P4460 power usage monitor to see how much power your system is using. This will allow you to calculate your bills and dial in your GPUs by lower the power usage to your liking. It will also keep you from burning your home down. Keep in mind that a 20 Amp breaker is only designed to have 16 Amps of continuous power and a more common 15 Amp electrical breaker is designed to have at most 12 Amps of continuous load. Power Cord: Are you building multiple systems or plan on putting them in a garage or basement? You might need a heavy-duty power extension cord to get to the power outlet or split systems up between breakers. Video Cards: AMD Radeon RX 470/480 and Radeon RX 570/580 video cards are all the rage right now when it comes to ethereum mining, but they are extremely tough to find since they are all being bought to mine ether. If you need hardware help or suggestions please ask in the comment section below! Sample Ethereum Mining RIG with Four GeForce GTX 1060 Video Cards on 12/14/2017: We are running a high-end Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake processor ($404.00 shipped) on a Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7 motherboard ($219.99 shipped) with four NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics cards (starting at $205 each). When we run the Ethereum mining program on all four cards the only 1-5% of the processor is being used at any given time. An Intel Celeron G3900 ($43.00 shipped) or an Intel Celeron G3930 ($43.60 shipped) would be much better choices here due to their lower price. We’ve tried to save power by lowering the power target down to 58% and have overclocked the memory on the cards to 675MHz for a better hashrate. Using Claymore’s Dual Ethereum AMD+NVIDIA GPU Miner v10.2 we are able to get around 24.3 MH/s from each GeForce GTX 1060 6GB video card and 20.3 MH/s from the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. We are big fans of these cards as they are easy to find and they only have one 6-pin or 8-pin PCIe connector on them. The total system power configured like this was fluctuating right around 390 Watts at the wall, which is great for four NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 cards to be mining. If you are able to pick up four NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB video cards at $240 each you’ll be getting about $295 in ETH per month before electricity costs. At around $0.10 per kWh you are looking at $28 a month in electric to run this rig 24/7. At the current ETH price, DAG Epoch size, difficulty level, mining pool size, mining reward and transactions a day you are looking to bring in around $261 of profit per month on .435 Ether or $3,100 a year after electric costs with a rig like this. To pay off the $960 in graphics cards you are looking at 4 months and obviously longer than this if you needed to go out and build an entire mining system. Keep in mind that the hardware in your mining rig will still have value when you are done with it, so when you sell your hardware you’ll be able to recoup some of the startup costs. If you know about how much money you want to make in a year you can use online mining calculators to see how many and what model cards you’ll need to hit that mark. Building a single system and sitting in your basement, garage or attic and forgetting about it might not be a bad idea right now. Those that have been mining for 6+ months that got in on this the last time it made headlines should easily be in the black by now. If you believe the price of Ethereum is going to continue to increase then you might want to hold (HODL!!!!!!) those coins and see what happens. To the moon! If you want to cash out into fiat then you can transfer your ETH to an exchange of choice, Poloniex, Kraken, CEX or Coinbase for example. Once you have it in an exchange you can sell your ETH for dollars, BTC or other coins. from there you can transfer the dollars to your bank account. Or if you want something simpler you can rent out your mining rig to a service like NiceHash, but we all know what just happened to them.

[Editor’s note, see http://www.iqdupont.com/ and H/T Žarko Almuli] It was April 10th, 2013 and the price of a single Bitcoin surged past 250 USD on the Mt. Gox exchange. A few months prior I had purchased seven Bitcoins for just under $200, and now they were nearing $2000 in value (Figure 1). But, just as fast as the market went up, it came down. Ever the amateur gambler, I panicked and sold too early. But, I was lulled by my humming money machine, permuting cryptographic codes by the millions every second. I was not the only one interested in playing the Bitcoin market, and the increasing price of Bitcoin was due to a number of factors, including a sustained distributed denial-of-service attack on Mt. Gox, and other people like me gambling in the latest crypto-anarchist adventure. It was April 10th, 2013 and the price of a single Bitcoin surged past 250 USD on the Mt. Gox exchange. A few months prior I had purchased seven Bitcoins for just under $200, and now they were nearing $2000 in value (Figure 1). But, just as fast as the market went up, it came down. Ever the amateur gambler, I panicked and sold too early. But, I was lulled by my humming money machine, permuting cryptographic codes by the millions every second. I was not the only one interested in playing the Bitcoin market, and the increasing price of Bitcoin was due to a number of factors, including a sustained distributed denial-of-service attack on Mt. Gox, and other people like me gambling in the latest crypto-anarchist adventure. Like many other modern currencies, Bitcoin is fiat money. But, unlike traditional fiat money, Bitcoin is cryptographic and electronic. There is no “physical” substrate to Bitcoin; the “coins” exist only as cryptographic representations stored in digital wallets. In the simplest caricature of complex economics, fiat money has no intrinsic value and thus requires people to trust that it will retain value. Usually government backing provides this semblance of trust, but when this trust is eroded (e.g., a weak government), value often plummets. Technical flaws also cripple the trust that sustains fiat money, such as rampant fraud, counterfeiting, or hyperinflation. Trust in Bitcoin rests on a range of technical advantages supplied by cryptography. According to advocates, cryptography is secure (safe from technical or mathematical error).iii When applied to economic apparatuses, counterfeiting and double-spending is prevented through the use of public key cryptography, and hyperinflation is kept in check because the cryptographically-secure mining protocol ensures the measured production of money (with a maximum number of coins produced). Yet, as with general discussions of cryptography, complicated political issues often transform into a binary of state versus personal power. On the one hand, when cryptography is used for Privacy Enhancing Technologies it is seen as a block against government snooping. On the other hand, these same cryptographic technologies are often used against the people. This debate is particularly important for crypto/cyber-libertarians,iv who often believe that Bitcoin’s lack of government backing is a virtue (J.M.P., 2013). Described generally, cryptography is typically understood as a means to ensure “information security” or “information secrecy” (see e.g. Kohno et al., 2010). Here, security and secrecy are understood in terms of social relations (c.f. Bellman, 1979). Modelled in its simplest formulation, a secret is some information that I possess and you do not, while information security might be described more abstractly as control of information within a relationship. Or, the encyclopaedic definition: “the aim [of cryptography] is secrecy and confidentiality: the practice of keeping secrets, maintaining privacy, or concealing valuables” (Bauer, 2005). Though the conceptual analysis usually stops here, cryptography also functions more deeply, in ways rarely appreciated by those developing the technology. Understanding how cryptography functions at this deeper level is essential to understanding how Bitcoin functions. I argue that cryptography is central to Bitcoin and yet produces a set of non-secret powers for its social (and economic) effect. This paper suggests that cryptography can be reimagined and reconceptualised, putting forth an alternative to the dominant view that cryptography is secrecy. The long history of cryptography is abbreviated to show that cryptography previously functioned in many different ways, but has been systematically black-boxed. By opening up this black box and reconceptualizing cryptography I argue that we can attend to the history of cryptography yet retain analytical rigour by viewing cryptography as a discrete notational system. Then, returning to Bitcoin, I describe the specific cryptographic mechanisms as used in Bitcoin. Building on this foundation I offer a description of a full Bitcoin transaction. My method for understanding this technical foundation was to engage in praxis, and so, returning to my introductory story about my own experiences with Bitcoin I describe the lessons I learned by running a Bitcoin mining machine. Finally, I take up Gilles Deleuze’s suggestion to “look for new weapons” in our control society. By drawing on my reconceptualization of cryptography as a discrete notational system I suggest that Bitcoin functions as a new weapon in a logic of order. Given the important role that cryptography plays in our lives, it is surprising how little attention it receives outside of the academic worlds of mathematics/engineering and privacy/law. A few authors outside of these fields have explored how cryptography intersects with other domains, but for the most part, cryptography has been a mathematical and legal concern.v Perhaps the most useful of these authors is Kahn (1967) who provides a history of cryptography,vi identifying how the golden age of Western cryptography started with Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Reaching far beyond mathematics and law, Alberti identified cryptography as an intriguing mix of technologies and practices: the “occult arts,” “mysteries of nature,” “strange characters with unusual meanings,” ”movable type,” and secrecy (Alberti, 2010). Over the next six centuries these themes played out in interesting ways. In the 17th century, John Wilkins (1614-1672) developed a proposal for an unambiguous, universal/philosophical language (1668) after developing the ideas in Mercury (1694), the first English-language cryptography manual.vii Athanasius Kircher (c. 1601-1680), similarly, reworked Johannes Trithemius’ (1462-1516) troubled work on cryptography for his universal language scheme (Figure 2).viii Francis Bacon (1561-1626) worked out a method for universally signifying nature with his bilateral cipher before launching his “great reformation” of scientific interpretation (Bacon, 1762). And Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) contributed to discrete mathematics after writing his dissertation (1989) on the cryptographic combinatorics of Raymund Lull’s (1232-1315) occult and cabalistic science (Gardner, 1958). The richness of these historical themes has now, in contemporary cryptography, practically disappeared. Cryptography has become operationalized and nearly univocal—gone are the vibrant connections to language, science, and art. Today, our most influential conceptualization is Claude Shannon’s (1945) linked notion of secrecy and information. Prior to his famous Mathematical Theory of Communication (Shannon and Weaver, 1948), Shannon had been working on war-time encryption systems.x Shannon’s cryptographic work stemmed from a long line of influences and prior work (e.g., Nyquist, Hartley, and Wiener) (Thomsen, 2009), as well a richer, multivocal, and open conceptual backdrop (Cherry, 1953; Geoghegan, 2008). Research on cryptography set the stage for Shannon’s more general, and more rigorous portrayal of information. It was in working out the coding issues for cryptography that Shannon developed his theory of information.xi In contrast to much of the engineering work being done on information transmission at that time, Shannon focused on discrete rather than continuous signals (Thomsen, 2009). Drawing on Hartley, Shannon bracketed the issue of meaning, and discussed only how much information can pass through a channel. This conceptualization, combined with Nyquist’s observation that information transmission obeys a logarithmic rule, allowed Shannon to generalize the issue and show that information accords to physical properties of the world (Aspray, 1985; Hayles, 1999). Despite being central to his study, Shannon left his understanding of “secrecy” implicit. The closest we get to a description of secrecy is that it arises from the “a priori probability associated with… choosing that [enciphering] key” (Shannon, 1945). The a priori probability is a function of the statistics of the transformation from one (information) space to another. In ideal situations, secrecy becomes a matter of making guesses in the presence of a stochastic phenomenon. Before Shannon “won” the battle for our history—how we come to think of cryptography—the field of possibility was more open (Cherry, 1953). Competing conceptualizations existed but none were better prepared than Shannon’s for the coming changes in cybernetics and informatics (also made possible, in large part, by his work on the Mathematical Theory of Communication). By identifying “secret information” as the endpoint of cryptographic conceptualization, however, we risk teleological explanations that make it difficult to understand cryptography’s non-secret role in contemporary society. If we start to reconfigure our understanding of cryptography—open the socio-technical black box—we stand to gain a deeper appreciation, and may be better able to understand the politics of technologies that use cryptography. In order to open the black box of cryptography our metaphors must also be rethought. The analysis of cryptography rarely penetrates beyond metaphors, so it is especially important to dispel any mistaken notions. There are two closely related classes of metaphor most often used to describe cryptography: the dead, and the missing or hidden. The metaphor of death is most common in literary accounts, if for no other reason than the association of “crypt” and “cryptography.” On this account cryptography “buries” (Derrida, 1998; Turing quoted in Mackenzie, 1996) and even communes with the dead (Poe, 1991; Rosenheim, 1997). The metaphor of being “hidden” is likely due to the perceived semiotic shift that occurs when a text gets encrypted: at one moment it is there and seen by all, and (like a good magic trick) the next moment it is gone (until conjured up again in decryption). Here the language used is “hidden” (Schmeh, 2012), “veiled” (Cooke, 1983), or perhaps text containing a “false bottom” (Glidden, 1987). These metaphors are evocative but lacking. As will become clear below, a more useful metaphor is “discreet,” in the sense of being circumspect, but also “discrete” as separate or distinct.xii I argue that cryptography can be re-conceptualized as a generic notational system, quite appropriately sharing the ambiguous name “code.” To get to this conclusion, I argue that cryptography is unspeakable in the sense of being a written language without syllables (which perhaps disqualifies it as a language at all). Due to the curious nature of being unspeakable, cryptography shifts from mimetic to algorithmic representation. Algorithmic representation permits the transposition and combination of its symbolic elements, but only when made of disjoint, articulate, and unambiguous marks. This system of marks is a discrete notational scheme. Additionally, because algorithmic representation permits the rearrangement of its symbolic structure it can be used to order the world, in subtle but powerful ways. “Literature has nothing more to say,” remarks Friedrich Kittler, “because it all ends in cryptograms” (1999). This is only true if we take Kittler very literally, that literature has been silenced and can no longer speak. Kittler reminds us that speaking written words is not natural and immediate. First, the Greeks needed to “invent” vowels so as to create a storage system able to capture the wealth of articulable knowledge (Winthrop-Young, 2011). Second, in what Kittler (1990) called the Discourse Network 1800, the Mother’s Mouth must teach children how to speak these written marks. Kittler goes on to accuse those languages lacking written vowels as being unable to perfectly capture the world’s information. Written languages that lack vowels are not as expressive, Kittler problematically suggests, and so are not as mimetic (Winthrop-Young, 2011). Kittler remarks, “nobody knows how the heretic king Akhneten called his N-f-r-t-t when they were making children” (Kittler quoted in Winthrop-Young, 2011, p. 91). But, of course, this is a challenge for history, not the Egyptians. The Egyptians were able to speak the name that was recorded as N-f-r-t-t because they added the appropriate vowels, that is, they created syllables in speech. It is hard to underline this important point in the written form—I suggest you try speaking the letters, but out loud: N-f-r-t-t. The punchline is that in order to be voiced, syllables must be created, making sounds like “nef eff arr tee tee.” In the audio book version of E.A. Poe’s The Gold Bug (2013) this same comedy plays out when the poor narrator is forced to articulate a long series of cryptographic symbols, so that 5 3 ‡ ‡ † 3 0 in the text becomes “five, three, double dagger, double dagger, single dagger, three, zero” in the audio book (and to great comedic effect, this goes on for half a page). While the narrator demonstrated that it is possible to speak a cryptogram in some fashion, it no longer counts as speech in the sense of meaningful language. This is the lesson that the Mother’s Mouth must teach her children, separating the grunts of animals from those of human language (Kittler, 1990). The reason cryptography cannot be spoken is because it has very particular syntactic requirements. These requirements where formalized by Nelson Goodman (1976) in his analysis of notational schemes. Roughly, a notational scheme requires that marks can be interchanged within a class of marks without difference, and that one can in theory determine what character a particular mark belongs to. The result of this analysis is that a number of forms of writing, upon inspection, share a common ancestor. In addition to cryptography, notational schemes include musical notation, Morse code, and binary (e.g., compiled software code). Although Kittler’s accusations that consonantal written languages are less mimetic than their vowelized cousins is problematic, this lack becomes very real when writing transforms into a notational scheme. The smooth contours of the world are not well represented in a notational scheme. In Kittler’s media triptych, the gramophone and film camera are highly mimetic in that they record every gradient of nature, whereas the typewriter eradicates the “continuous movement of the hand” in handwriting (Benjamin quoted in Kittler, 1999, p. 196). The representation of likeness or verisimilitude is easy to imagine with a photograph, and yet even a typed, well-crafted story can also be very mimetic, as though the reader is transported into the scene. So the typewriter can, of course, be used to write a mimetic story, but it excels when it reduces the world to discrete symbols. Putting aside, for the moment, Kittler’s (1999) penchant for inaccurate but provocative history, it is a short historical step from typewriter to cryptogram, with the transformation of Nietzsche’s Malling typewriter into the German crypto-typewriter, the Enigma machine (Figure 3). Unlike the gramophone and film camera, recording N-f-r-t-t is no trouble for the typewriter. While the typewriter cannot capture voiced syllabification, it perfectly represents the alphabetization of language. And for the typewriter so too for cryptography: when encrypted, N-f-r-t-t readily becomes A-S-E-G-G. While notational schemes are poor at mimetic representation, the ease in which parts can be split and rearranged make them ideal for what I call “algorithmic” representation. Algorithmic technologies are powerful because they chop the world up in to discrete pieces and then re-arrange the results.xiii These technologies order the world rather than model or recreate it. To underline the point, all cryptography is just the simple substitution cipher, shuffling symbols about in determined, ordered ways. And the same principle is at work in all notational systems, where complex and surprising uses abound. Conceptualized in light of a notational scheme, cryptography surpasses the typical narrow conceptualization as secrecy. For example, Kittler’s barbarian Spartans invented a writing technology called the skytale. The skytale is a leather strap along which letters are written that, once wrapped around a wooden rod of a particular diameter, reveals a message. The device was once thought to facilitate a kind of primitive encryption, but recent research has shown it to be something else (Kelly, 1998; West, 1988).xiv How this technology was actually used is unknown, and somewhat beside the point: the skytale exemplified an early algorithmic machine, made of Kittler’s alphabet but impossible to phonetically speak. In fact, there is good evidence that the device may have been used to ensure silence, as a way of guarding against the accidental articulation of bad omens and the like (c.f. Lateiner, 2005; Montiglio, 2000). The skytaleis, perhaps, the first device to destroy syllabification, and to depart from mimetic media and move towards ordering language and the world. Another important aspect of cryptography is that it decomposes language into identical, modular pieces. This fact works equally well for other applications of the discrete notational scheme too. A thousand years after the Spartans, Alberti ushered in a new notational method for architecture that replaced the older craft-oriented way of building (Carpo, 2011). This notational system permitted architects to become designers, not makers, and enabled the construction of identical but modular buildings. So close is the connection between the notational schemes of architecture and cryptography, in fact, that Alberti generalized his architectural advancements and applied the same thinking to language to develop polyalphabetic cryptography (Alberti, 2010; Kahn, 1980). Similarly, Leibniz employed a notational scheme when he established the groundwork for discrete mathematics, and specifically, the mode of mathematics that we now use to analyze and model cryptography, known as combinatorics (what Leibniz called “complexions”). In Leibniz’s early work, Dissertation on the Art of Combinations (Dissertatio de arte combinatoria) (1989), he develops Raymund Lull’s cabalistic method of interrogating language and the natural world, setting it on firm mathematical and logical ground (Figure 4).xv To do so, Leibniz derives his metaphysical analysis of order from the existence of natural parts and wholes (or “unities”). Leibniz writes, “let the whole be ABC; then AB, BC, and AC will be smaller wholes,” which “by reason of order” results in “abcd, bcda, cbab, dabc” (calculated to be “arranged in 24 ways”) (Leibniz, 1989, p. 78). Leibniz’s development of order ultimately leads to modern symbolic logic, and by way of Stanhope, Jevons, and others to the calculating machine (Gardner, 1958). Eventually, it can be surmised, Turing’s machine would read a tape of Leibniz’s letters and re-order the input, perhaps (after von Neumann) according to a particular programmed algorithm. Although Shannon recognized the importance of discrete symbol processing (as noted above), it was Turing that really advanced this position by seeing the potential in ordering discrete symbols (Figure 5). The link from Alberti to Turing arrives by way of representational machines that employ a discrete notational scheme. When this representation is set in motion, the complex ordering is not limited to language. Cryptography has long been used to investigate the natural world or create art, and is now poised to order the economy. Before showing how Bitcoin orders the economy we must understand how cryptography functions in Bitcoin. The cryptography used in Bitcoin is not unusual or exemplary; in fact, there are no cryptographic innovations in Bitcoin (in computer security terms, this is a virtue of the system). Bitcoin uses a standard SHA-256 hashing algorithm. This hashing algorithm is put to some seemingly strange uses, but nothing unique to the history of cryptography since the development of public key cryptography in the 1970s. For the vast majority of the history of cryptography—its development from substitution ciphers and code systems to polyalphabetic and keyed algorithms—the encrypting mechanism was unitary. With the invention of public (or asymmetric) key cryptography in the 1970s it became possible to create a system that “split” the cryptographic key.xvi Splitting the cryptographic key (explained below) ushered in new uses for cryptography, and was well timed for the coming advance of the Internet and popularization of point-to-point electronic communication. In simple “code” systems (often called “nomenclators”) a letter, word, or entire phrase may be replaced with an alternative, with the substitution presumably kept private between the two communicating parties (Kahn, 1967). The basic principle is captured by so-called substitution ciphers, which exchange one letter for another in a deterministic manner. From this mechanism more complicated forms of cryptography were invented. Polyalphabetic cryptography uses multiple alphabets for the substitution, sometimes jumping from one alphabet to another according to an agreed-upon secret “key.” For much of the history of cryptography no notion of cryptographic “key” existed. In more recent usage the key became analytically separated from the cryptographic algorithm, as a result of “industrial” uses of cryptography that require reusable ciphers. We now generally speak of an immutable (public) algorithm, and a mutable (private) key. In fact, the key is no more important than the set of transformations (and should be characterized as part of the system of transformation). For purposes of cryptanalysis (“codebreaking”) a key is only as valuable as knowledge of the corresponding mechanism or set of transformations. Yet, in recent years cryptographic best practice requires keeping the key secret and the mechanism public (working on the assumption that the mechanism will eventually be discovered and reverse-engineered anyway). Symmetric-key cryptography employs the same key for encryption and decryption, so the shared secret item is identical among parties. The obvious downside is that to maintain secret communications all parties must ensure that the shared key is kept private from any so-called adversaries. Modern forms of symmetric-key cryptography work on digital bits, either encrypting the bits one at a time (or, more realistically, encrypting byte by byte or in prescribed bit-length “words”), or grouping the bits into blocks (and adding padding as needed so that each block includes the same number of bits). Other non-cryptographic features may be present in a modern cryptographic system, such as error detection, compression, and so on. The symbolic transformations in symmetric-key cryptography are fundamentally the same as that of asymmetric-key cryptography—in fact, symmetric-key primitives can be used to build asymmetric-key systems. The sole (but critically important) difference between symmetric-key and asymmetric-key cryptography is that rather than sharing a single (unitary) secret key, asymmetric-key). This paper showed how the traditional (secrecy) conceptualization of cryptography is wanting; in its place, I argued for a new conceptualization as a notational system. As Leibniz and Turing understood, a notational system can order the world in powerful ways. Reading the politics of Bitcoin in light of a reimagination of Deleuze’s control society (replacing modulation with order) I suggested that cryptography is a powerful “new weapon,” functioning as an ordering machine. I argued that Bitcoin is at the forefront of advancing this ordering logic, updating the economic system for our new control society. Quinn DuPont quinn.dupont@utoronto.ca Faculty of Information, University of Toronto i Mt. Gox was the most popular bitcoin exchange, and dealt primarily in USD, although many other exchanges are available (some with regional or jurisdictional foci). Mt. Gox started as a trading card exchange for the online game Magic: The Gathering Online, but eventually rebranded to focus exclusively on bitcoin. ii This was the first spike in value for 2013; the second (much larger) spike occurred a few months later when bitcoins were trading above 1000 USD/bitcoin, often swinging more than 50% in value in a matter of hours. iii The recent revelations of US military contractor Edward Snowden perpetuate this ideology, even if they eroded the universal trust in cryptography. For many, the response was simply a need for better cryptography, seemingly safe from the revealed fact that US Intelligence services can readily crack or circumvent available cryptography. iv The Electronic Frontier Foundation advocates the widespread use of cryptography (Opsahl et al., 2013); see below for evidence of bitcoin’s origins on the Cypherpunks mailing list. v See for example Rosenheim (1997) and Shoptaw (2000) on literature and poetics, Ellison (2011, 2008) on textual studies, Gleick (2011) on information, Pesic (2000a, 2000b, 1997) on science, Blanchette (2012) on documentation, Eco (1986) on semiotics, and Zielinski (2008) on media. vi See the journal of record, Cryptologia, for the history of cryptography. While many of the articles published in Cryptologia are the only source of history and should be applauded for their trailblazing work, most are published by hobbyists or experts in engineering who have an interest in historical matters. Even Kahn himself, who over the years has become a highly capable self-trained historian, started as a journalist. These histories, correspondingly, usually suffer from the evils of bad historiographical methodology: “impact” accounts of technical change, over-reporting of military technologies, and whiggish, teleologically-driven narratives. vii Although written prior to his famous Essay, Mercury was published posthumously. viii For an assessment of universal and philosophical language schemes, with occasional reference to the role of cryptography, see (Cohen, 1954; Formigari, 2004, 1993, 1988; Maat, 2004; Rossi, 2000; Salmon, 1971, 1966; Slaughter, 1982; Wilding, 2001). ix Note that Glidden (1987) argues that the French version (here pictured) of Trithemius’ Polygraphiae contains a slightly artificial “reinforced” link to Lullian and cabalistic influences. x Cryptography is often twinned with war. At times these associations can be productive (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Kittler, 1999), but far too often they constrain our thinking, leading to discourse (and associated models) of “adversaries,” “man-in-the-middle,” “attack” and so on. The bellicose nature of cryptography cannot be dismissed—it is a war machine—but I think we should derive, not assume, such connections. xi Although only occasionally recognized, the histories of information and cryptography are intimately tied (see e.g., Gleick, 2011). xii “Discrete” and “discreet” share the Latin origin discretus. xiii For a more extensive description of the dialectic of mimetic and algorithmic technologies see Takhteyev and DuPont (n.d.). xiv The skytale has been disqualified as cryptography simply because it doesn’t offer plausibly good secrecy. As I have been trying to argue, we need to think more expansively about our conceptualization of cryptography, and may want to return to the original understanding of the skytale as an encryption device, but one that offers something other than secrecy. xv It is worth noting that Alberti’s cryptographic work was also influenced by Lull (Kahn, 1980). xvi Asymmetric-key cryptography was initially invented in 1973 at the Government Communication Headquarters in the UK by James Ellis, Clifford Cocks, and Malcom Williamson but kept secret; it was then publically re-invented in 1976 by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman (Levy, 2002). xvii More complicated three-pass schemes are possible too, in which I encrypt a message and pass it to you, then you encrypt the already-encrypted message and pass it back, I then decrypt my encryption and pass it back to you, at which point you can finally decrypt your encryption and read the message—successfully transferred in public while remaining encrypted. xviii At this point the anarchist/libertarian undercurrents are completely at the fore, Dai (1998) starts his proposal, “I am fascinated by Tim May’s crypto-anarchy.” xix Of course, this is the ideal scenario. Any competing network of greater computational power could best the legitimate one, and therefore human vagaries of collusion and consolidation come to play. This has actually happened, when due to a technical bug the blockchain became “forked,” and was only reset when a cartel of powerful mining pools colluded to switch to the “corrected” blockchain. Alberti, G. B. (2010). De componendis cifris. In K. Williams, L. March, & S. R. Wassell (Eds.), The Mathematical Works of Leon Battista Alberti (pp. 169–187). Basel: Springer Basel. Retrieved from 007%2F978-3-0346-0474-1_4 Aspray, W. F. (1985). The Scientific Conceptualization of Information: A Survey. Annals of the History of Computing, 7(2), 117–140. Back, A. (1997, March 28). hash cash postage implementation. Cypherpunks. Retrieved from http://www.hashcash.org/papers/announce.txt Bacon, F. (1762). Novum organum scientiarum. Venetiis: Typis G. Girardi. Bauer, F. L. (2005). Cryptology. In Encyclopedia of cryptography and security. 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(1561). Polygraphie: Universelle escriture Cabalistique de M.I. Tritheme Abbé. Paris: Jaques Keruer. Retrieved from http://fantastic.library.cornell.edu/bookrecord.php?record=F034 Turing, A. (c. 1939-42). Turing’s Notes on the Enigma Machine (Catalogue reference: HW 25/3). Retrieved from West, S. (1988). Archilochus’ Message-Stick. The Classical Quarterly, 38(1), 42–48. Wilding, N. (2001). “If You Have A Secret, Either Keep It, Or Reveal It”: Cryptography and Universal Language. In D. Stolzenberg (Ed.), The Great Art of Knowing: The Baroque Encyclopedia of Athanasius Kircher (pp. 93–103). Firenze, Italia: CADMO. Wilkins, J. (1668). Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. London: Royal Society. Wilkins, J. (1694). Mercury: or, The secret and swift messenger. Shewing, how a man may with privacy and speed communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance. London: R. Baldwin. Winthrop-Young, G. (2011). Kittler and the Media. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press. Zielinski, S. (2008). Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means. (G. Custance, Trans.). The MIT Press. You must be logged in to post a comment. Joining Humanity+ as a Full, Plus or Sponsor Member enables you to participate in Humanity+ governance and decision-making - an important role in the growing Transhumanist movement. It also, of course, gives you the opportunity to support us in the work Humanity+ does!

Regular price: $19.95 The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy has arrived, and it's not self-driving cars, solar energy, or artificial intelligence. It's called the blockchain. The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second generation - powered by blockchain technology - is bringing us the Internet of value: a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better. In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive societys faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive societys faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. Understanding Ethereum now could equip you with the knowledge ahead of a major technological revolution in these early stages of development. After listening to this audiobook, you will understand how to easily set up an Ether wallet and then buy and trade Ether. This audiobook always contains information about mining Ether including cloud mining and more advanced Ethereum topics. Understanding Ethereum now could equip you with the knowledge ahead of a major technological revolution in these early stages of development. After listening to this audiobook, you will understand how to easily set up an Ether wallet and then buy and trade Ether. This audiobook always contains information about mining Ether including cloud mining and more advanced Ethereum topics. Blockchain technology has been called the greatest innovation since the Internet. Governments and companies are rushing to implement blockchain technology in a range of areas that could impact every person on the planet within a few years. Is blockchain technology one of the greatest technological revolutions in history, or is it just hype? Will blockchain technology cause governments and banking systems to change the way they process information, or will it be business as usual? In this book we'll look at the answers to these questions along with addressing the different sides of the arguments for and against blockchain technology. Blockchain is not just bitcoin; blockchain technology is much bigger than bitcoin, and it is predicted to change the world. With the rise of bitcoin and blockchain technology, investors can capitalize on the greatest investment opportunity since the Internet. Bitcoin was the first cryptoasset, but today there are over 800 and counting, including ether, ripple, litecoin, monero, and more. This clear, concise, and accessible guide from two industry insiders shows you how to navigate this brave new blockchain world - and how to invest in these emerging assets to secure your financial future. Cryptocurrency and its disruptive architecture, Blockchain, is now making the biggest revolution in the finance sector for the last 100 years. There is a lot of hype surrounding the concept of the blockchain, but what does this term actually mean? What is Blockchain technology? Why does it matter? These questions are not always answered with due diligence in the sea of headlines that deal with digital currencies using blockchains. The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy has arrived, and it's not self-driving cars, solar energy, or artificial intelligence. It's called the blockchain. The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second generation - powered by blockchain technology - is bringing us the Internet of value: a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better. In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive societys faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive societys faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. Understanding Ethereum now could equip you with the knowledge ahead of a major technological revolution in these early stages of development. After listening to this audiobook, you will understand how to easily set up an Ether wallet and then buy and trade Ether. This audiobook always contains information about mining Ether including cloud mining and more advanced Ethereum topics. Understanding Ethereum now could equip you with the knowledge ahead of a major technological revolution in these early stages of development. After listening to this audiobook, you will understand how to easily set up an Ether wallet and then buy and trade Ether. This audiobook always contains information about mining Ether including cloud mining and more advanced Ethereum topics. Blockchain technology has been called the greatest innovation since the Internet. Governments and companies are rushing to implement blockchain technology in a range of areas that could impact every person on the planet within a few years. Is blockchain technology one of the greatest technological revolutions in history, or is it just hype? Will blockchain technology cause governments and banking systems to change the way they process information, or will it be business as usual? 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And "these things" will play just as important a role as the internet has for the past 20 years. You know who "won" with the internet? A front-line industry insider's look at the financial technology explosion. The FINTECH Book is your primary guide to the financial technology revolution, and the disruption, innovation, and opportunity therein. Written by prominent thought leaders in the global fintech investment space, this book aggregates diverse industry expertise into a single informative volume to provide entrepreneurs, bankers, and investors with the answers they need to capitalize on this lucrative market. Richard Jacobs discovered Bitcoin in 2013 by reading an article in the New York Times, but dismissed the idea as a curiosity (like many). Fast forward to October 2016, when he started a podcast called Future Tech Podcast - the goal was and is to learn about round-the-corner new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 3D-printing, stem cells, regenerative medicine, Bitcoin and blockchain (of course), and more. He is now a crypto-enthusiast, and small-time "hodler". Richard Jacobs discovered Bitcoin in 2013 by reading an article in the New York Times, but dismissed the idea as a curiosity (like many). Fast forward to October 2016, when he started a podcast called Future Tech Podcast - the goal was and is to learn about round-the-corner new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 3D-printing, stem cells, regenerative medicine, Bitcoin and blockchain (of course), and more. He is now a crypto-enthusiast, and small-time "hodler".The definitive pioneering blueprint covering the what, why, and how of the blockchain. Blockchains are new technology layers that rewire the Internet and threaten to side-step older legacy constructs and centrally served businesses. At its core, a blockchain injects trust into the network, cutting off some intermediaries from serving that function and creatively disrupting how they operate. Metaphorically, blockchains are the ultimate non-stop computers. Once launched, they never go down, and offer an incredible amount of resiliency, making them dependable and attractive for running a new generation of decentralized services and software applications. The Business Blockchain charts new territory in advancing our understanding of the blockchain by unpacking its elements like no other before. William Mougayar anticipates a future that consists of thousands, if not millions of blockchains that will enable not only frictionless value exchange, but also a new flow of value, redefining roles, relationships, power, and governance. In this book, Mougayar makes two other strategic assertions. First, the blockchain has polymorphic characteristics; its application will result in a multiplicity of effects. Second, we shouldn't ask ourselves what problems the blockchain solves, because that gives us a narrow view on its potential. Rather, we should imagine new opportunities, and tackle even more ambitious problems that cross organizational, regulatory and mental boundaries. Drawing on 34 years of technology industry experience as an executive, analyst, consultant, entrepreneur, startup mentor, author, blogger, educator, thought leader, and investor, William Mougayar describes a future that is influenced by fundamental shifts brought by blockchain technology as the catalyst for change. William Mougayar has been described as the most sophisticated blockchain business thinker. He is a blockchain industry insider whose work has already shaped and influenced the understanding of blockchain for people around the world via his generous blogging and rigorous research insights. He is a direct participant in the crypto-technology market, working alongside startups, entrepreneurs, pioneers, leaders, innovators, creators, enterprise executives, and practitioners; in addition to being an investor, advisor, and board member in some of the leading organizations in this space, such as the Ethereum Foundation, OpenBazaar, and Coin Center. Just as the Internet created new possibilities that we didn't foresee in its early years, the blockchain will give rise to new business models and ideas that may still be invisible. There is nothing in this book that you can't find in any general discussion of blockchain. Lots of generalizations and hyperbole. Basically, hardly any meat to be found anywhere. What does the reader learn from reading this book? That he should check out another one. 6 of 7 people found this review helpful Without question I enjoyed this book. The author is very clearly knowledgeable on the topic. At times rambling through attempts to explain his thoughts on what the reality is or future potential is with blockchain technology. 2 of 2 people found this review helpful Great for those that want to fully explore the possibilities, as well as limitations of blockchain as it gradually integrates into society. This book will open your eyes to why Blockchain technology is so revolutionary, often making comparisons to the early days of the internet. I will be coming back to this book often over the years to remind myself of the days where Blockchain was in it's infancy. 2 of 2 people found this review helpful It's okay. Doesn't really teach you too much about Blockchain. Rather just mentions the potential etc 4 of 5 people found this review helpful Overall, a good introduction to block chain technologies. If you're hoping for anything in depth, you're looking at the wrong book. The sections concerning smart contracts and smart oracles was especially informative. So was mention of the Ethereum virtual machine.There were points when the author seems to just be padding stuff out. Endless lists of "block chain will this" and "block chain will that` make me want to throw my phone out the window. 1 of 1 people found this review helpful I didn't like the narrator at all. Terrible diction, bad pronunciation. I don't know if he is famous but I never focused completely on the subject thanks to the narrator. But book instead 1 of 1 people found this review helpful A truly fascinating evolution to the existing internet, may be just as profound as the web.The authors were not technical and not too simplistic in their analysis of the technology of the blockchain. Although it was more catered towards business specifically financial institutions.The block chain has always been associated with crypto currency since bitcoin was the initial innovator. It's really a simple idea that can expand to include very complex innovations that reach well beyond business. The idea that the many can better do what the single can, even if the single is an expert.The authors explained this as a decentralised system where operations, authentications, certifications etc. can be spread across many individually autonomous nodes (computers) thus eliminating the middle men and vastly reducing costs while providing better and quicker service.This idea, or to put it more precisely, network philosophy, is a threat to governments, old school businesses, financial institutions, and jobs in general. The author unfortunately did not touch on some implications.Again a technology that is on the move and probably unstoppable by any government or regulators, and a major disruptor to our way of life, while having the potential to transform the world hopefully to a more efficient machine.An important subject, as indicated by the high rating given. The author could have said more though. 2 of 3 people found this review helpful It helps that I'm already technically literate. I work with startups so it is important to keep current. This book helps. This was a great overview of cryptocurrency and blockchains. Their potential in shaping the future of business, which we are starting to see today. This book provides many insights and explanations about Blockchain technology and is role as a disruptive platform our future digital world. Readable, deeply insightful, and written by those who have been knee deep in its development. Also highly recommend The Book of Satoshi that is also available on Audible. It's a good book, and is well read, but doesn't contain a huge amount of information you couldn't get by spending an hour googling and reading blog posts / articles. I'm fairly sold on the blockchain concept and high level applications, I was really looking for more depth. Rather than fifty fleetingly described ideas I'd have rather heard fifteen but with deeper detail. 9 of 11 people found this review helpful Good overall view, breaks down concepts clearly. Worth a listen as an introduction to the topic. 1 of 1 people found this review helpful Narrator was abit monotonous at times and made it a hard to follow some of the ideas.Aside from that, a great book to open your eyes to the world of blockchain. Can really see how blockchains can potentially be implemented into business ideas and even change the world we live in.This title will help ideas flow but by no means a technical book to refer to. Very good for who just stepped into blockchain territory, though is stays rather high-lever for the more tech-savvy. But the title is fair and should set correct expectations. Dont expect to come away from this book with a detailed understanding of blockchain technology. Instead this is a great overview of blockchain potential that can spark creativity and think to new applications and ideas. As I'm a developer, I found this a very heavy read a there was loads of jardon so it was hard to make sense of certain points. It is worth listening too but it felt more like reading a college book rather than an informative business book. Vitalik's insight into Blockchain proves invaluable to the crypto tech investor and enthusiast. After listening to this book you would have a good understanding of the macro future of blockchain technology and general direction the industry is progressing towards. This guy reads the bitcoin whitepaper! :(so many redundant words..buzz words..Not useful. Waste of time and money. I was looking for something a bit more inclusive of what and how of the block chain in business, but this had a lot of superlatives but not as much substance as I would have liked.

0 Beware! Ellir has stopped paying! Do not invest there! Hi all! Well its been a strange start to the business week in the HYIP industry, with the closure of perhaps one of the biggest programs of the year so far being met with so many new opportunities rushing in to fill the void. Im surprised to be saying this but Ive got no less than three new additions to the MNO Premium List to introduce today, mainly because as of mid November the HYIP industry often tends to be winding down for the year, without much going on of note between now and Christmas/New Year. Plenty to catch up on this week and next on MNO though, starting with a new medium term program called Ellir. Without getting too excited I think this one bears all the hallmarks of a highly organized and professionally run outfit. Of course the final decision to play or pass will ultimately lie with you the investor. Ill try my best to describe the main features for you here as clearly and simply as Im able, and you can think about it yourselves from there. I have a feeling though that Ellir might be a name working its way into a lot of portfolios in the coming weeks as I know a lot of you will be looking for something new. So lets see what Ellir is all about and if you think its worth taking a risk on. You have four investment plans to choose from in Ellir, all of which make daily interest payments. The most affordable of these is called The Minimal Plan which can be joined for a $10 opening deposit. The term runs for 7 calendar days, also making it the shortest running option. During that time Ellir offer you a daily payment of 16% back on your money. Sounds a bit high at first, however your principal is also included as part of the payments. That means by the time you receive your final payment Ellir will have returned 112% in total, or your own money back plus 12% net profit. The maximum spending limit is capped at $500 for this plan. For a bigger investment you can consider The Stable Plan, which is nonetheless still very affordable with a $25 opening deposit required to join. The term runs for 14 calendar days this time with Ellir offering members a daily payment of 9.3% interest on all deposits up to a maximum limit of $1,000. Lower than the previous option, but with more individual payments the final amount comes to a more generous total of 130%. With Ellir again counting your principal as part of the payments, that means you get your own money back plus 30% net profit for yourself. The next set of plans change direction somewhat in the sense that the Ellir admin offers your principal returned in a separate payment to the interest. So we continue with The Advanced Plan which opens with a $50 minimum investment. The term length runs for 15 calendar days with Ellir paying members 2.67% interest per day. This adds up to 40.05% in interest alone, which then becomes net profit when the admin returns your principal on expiry. The maximum spending limit is capped at $2,500 for this one. And finally for a $100 minimum investment Ellir have The Premium Plan. For a term running 30 calendar days investors here are being offered a daily interest rate of 3.34% on their money. That eventually adds up to 100.2% in total by the time you receive your final payment, at which point Ellir then add your initial principal on top of that. So its pretty much double your money in a month. Theres a maximum spending limit of $5,000 for this one. So if you like the look of the plans and think it might be worth a shot, then next on the agenda is what your payment options will be. This is up to a reasonable industry standard I would say, and I think enough to satisfy demand from most investors. There are currently four of the most popular e-currency options available in Ellir, with PerfectMoney, Payeer, and AdvCash for those who prefer the regular payment handlers, and BitCoin available for members who favour the more direct approach of using their own digital crypto-currencies. Interest accruals are all made together at the same time every morning to all accounts regardless of what plan you are in. As long as you have completed your first day in the program Ellir will then credit your account at 12:00 noon server time which you can then withdraw. Payout requests need to be submitted from inside your Ellir members account area, though once done something I think most readers will like is the fact that transactions should then be completed instantly. Just send the request and the money should be with you in under a minute. Just make sure that youve added your e-currency accounts under the account Settings tab, then Payment Systems inside of your Ellir account area. I know it sounds obvious but because Ellir is not using one of the generic scripts most of you might be familiar with in most other programs it can be an easy thing to forget. Also, prior to that, when making your initial deposit you need to hit the Replenishtab in your members area in order to fund your account. Once youve done this you then need to redirect that money into the plan of your choice in order to have an actual active deposit that earns you interest. To make a withdrawal then first you click the Deposits tab. Under the headline Actions you will then see the amount you are owed. Click on this figure to return that amount to your account balance. From your balance then you simply need to click the Withdrawal button from inside your members account area. This will show you a drop-down box with the list of possible payment processors, plus the amount you are owed. Just follow the instructions from there and click withdraw for an instant payout. Moving on to the more technical side of things now such as design and security, not much has been left to chance as Ellir measures up to a fairly high standard. Hosting is on a dedicated server by DDosGuard who are also providing the website with protection from any malicious attacks. For an extra layer of security and account protection the Ellir website is SSL encrypted by Comodo for safer browsing and more secure transactions. The one single feature which most caught my eye was the unique script Ellir is running off. Its very high grade yet remains easy to navigate and customer friendly. Theres no snags or tricky areas you might not understand and no hidden or secret functions that are difficult to find. Its a decent quality product and shows both initiative from the admin and some bigger financial resources supporting the programs initial set-up. There are three languages versions of the Ellir website, which aside from the default English version include Russian and German. There is a short video presentation of Ellir which has been also embedded on the MNOVision page to give you some background on the program. For any further questions, comments, or account related issues theres a number of communication channels open to you. Theres the sensible message on the contact page telling you before contacting customer support, please see the FAQ section. If you do not find what you are looking for there, we are happy to answer your questions. If you still need to proceed after that then you can reach the Ellir admin or support team first of all by filling in your details on the online customer support form and submitting it through the websites contact page. There is a built-in Live Chat feature, so check to see if theres an operator online who might be able to answer your questions in real time. Theres a postal address for Ellir in The UK, something I wouldnt bother looking into too closely. I mean Im sure the address is there, I just doubt youll find anyone whos ever heard of Ellir in there were you to visit, these things generally only being virtual serviced offices used for correspondence, company registration, etc. Ellir also features a UK certificate of incorporation to go with the address. Perhaps of more practical use to members will be the social media profiles that Ellir are keeping on Facebook, VK, YouTube, and further chat options available through Skype and Telegram. And of course theres always the option to e-mail the Ellir admin directly at the address listed on the websites contact page. I guess thats about all I can think of for now. A program combining sustainable moderate daily returns with a decent level of profit is always likely to be a popular choice for investors, so lets hope Ellir turns out to be it. For the record by the way the claim is that Ellir is involved with digital currency trading (OK, the claim might not be original but the texts are). Experienced HYIP players will all know and no doubt share my own feelings about this, but once again I would make this point to the newbies even if all of this was 100% true, you still need to accept that no business can guarantee either a profit or even the safety of your investment. So if you are joining Ellir, just like any other online HYIP, treat it like a form of gambling. It might be a good program but that doesnt mean there wont be an end to it at some point in the future. The two basic fundamentals of protecting yourself first and foremost in the HYIP industry do not change here set yourself a sensible spending limit which you can comfortably afford to lose, and if joining Ellir at all then try to keep them as a smaller part of a wider more diverse portfolio. If you are already familiar with Ellir then or have already made a decision on what you think of them, I hope you wont mind sharing your thoughts with your fellow readers. I would appreciate it if you would please take a second to answer the following opinion poll, and remember it will be completely 100% anonymous at all times. I think it will be extremely interesting to refer back to in the coming weeks and months once the degree of success obtained by Ellir becomes apparent. The question is: Will you make an active deposit in Ellir? Yes, definitely I already did At this point, probably not I'll see how it develops and think about it later View Results Loading ... DAILY NEWS FROM THE HYIP INDUSTRY BITFINE INTRODUCTION The first addition to be introduced on my blog today is the Premium listed Bitfine whose admin also purchased the tower banner on the MNO blog for one month in advance. Whether Bitfine itself is going to last for that long remains to be seen, but with such high returns of 10% to 25% daily forever I would not bet on it. Still, if you think that the program might last for 4 to 11 days it might be a decent shot for some investors to make a profit. Higher profits are only available from 2 BTC investments and honestly I dont believe there will be a lot of takers for deposits starting from $13,000 which at the current exchange rate is approximately the equivalent of 2 BTC. Bitfine is working not only with BitCoin but also via PerfectMoney and Payeer. The thing about Bitfine is that USD is not the main currency here and everything is operating in BTC, so both on depositing and withdrawing your available balance is converted to BTC. Keep it in mind so when dealing with Bitfine where the minimum to invest starts from 0.001 BTC or its equivalent in USD while a withdrawal can be requested once you accumulate at least 0.0005 BTC in your account. The good thing is that all the withdrawals are processed instantly, so you dont have to wait once you want to get your profits. Bitfine only launched today, but I was contacted by the admin well in in advance and the listing was pre-paid over a week ago. All this time I believe he has been working to bring the program online, and the result is quite satisfying. Although Bitfine is running off a licensed GoldCoders script you can see that its heavily modified to suit the programs needs and requirements for working primarily with BitCoin. The site features a superior EV SSL from Comodo, and is hosted on a dedicated DDoS protected server by AntiDDoS. Bitfine is available in English plus Russian and Chinese which should give it an edge over the competition and appeal to a wider audience. There are some other features on the website which Im going to discuss in a more detailed review of Bitfine in a few days, but I can already confirm that the program pays instantly and is on Paying Status on the MNO monitor. You can check out the program and see if you like it now as with such high returns on a permanent basis its hard to say for how long it can be sustained. In any case, below is the welcome message from the Bitfine admin posted on the official launch earlier today: Bitfine Limited Today, Bitfine Limited is beginning to have a full service in the field of fiduciary management. For those who first learned about the company, we encourage you to read about our activity in the About Us section on this website. Bitfine Limited is fairly young, but also quite experienced company, which is involved in cryptocurrency trading. The scope of our activities includes also private exchange. We offer favorable investment conditions that can bring you from 10% to 25% profits on a daily basis for life. Low threshold to start investing is a pleasant part of our cooperation. We very much hope that the companys proposal will become popular and provide an opportunity to earn for a lot of our customers. Starting today, we are open to dialogue! Join us! ACO INTRODUCTION ACO which stands for Automatic Currency Operations is another program joining the Premium List on MNO today. Its launched about a week ago and as it offers four short- to medium-term plans we should expect the first investors to profits within the next few days. Although Im not sure if it was wise from the admins side to set up a very high (compared to competing programs) investment minimum of $100 if you wish to invest via PerfectMoney, Payeer, or BitCoin, or 0.02 BTC (which is currently well over a hundred bucks too!) if you invest via BitCoin. Actually, you can invest not only in USD, but in EUR and RUB as well, but the minimum is still high with 100 EUR and 5,000 RUB respectively. The good thing about ACO is that the same minimum applies to all investment plans 9% for 12 days, 7% for 17 days, 5% for 28 days, 4% for 50 days which all pays on calendar days and include your principal in profits. The range of possible profit rates are very high indeed and you can potentially earn from an 8% profit within 12 days time to a more sizeable 100% (double your investment) if you choose to go with the longest 50 day plan. ACO is running off a unique script which promises to send automatic payouts without request directly to the same e-currency account you join with. I cannot verify this yet as Im still waiting for my first payment, but by the time the program is reviewed I will confirm. ACO is an SSL-secured website that is hosted on a dedicated protected server by GeniusSecurity. An unusual incorporation certificate from the Commonwealth of Dominica is available to view. Overall ACO looks very different and I hope it will succeed in the long run. Im looking forward exploring it in more depth, so stay tuned for that, folks! STRIKE7 INTRODUCTION Strike7 is the third and the last program added to the Premium List on MNO just a couple of hours ago, straight after its official launch. As comes from its name Strike7 offers 7% daily returns paid over a term of 40 calendar days with instant payouts and a chance to earn up to 280% back on your deposit. I will confirm if payouts are instant when Im paid for the first time by tomorrow. Although Strike7 works exclusively with BitCoin you can make an investment by converting your USD to BTC with the minimum starting from $20. Strike7 runs off a licensed GoldCoders script, which is pretty typical and apart from the USD to BTC conversion there is nothing special about it. The site is hosted on a dedicated server with support and protection by GeniusSecurity and features an SSL cert by Comodo. Overall a very simple website which might be a blessing or a curse depending on how potential investors view it. Well see pretty soon as the full review is scheduled sometime next week, as for now please check the website and see if you like it and read the welcome message from the programs admin below: Were Online Dear visitors, Were glad to announce that Strike7 has finally launched and were looking forward to be serving you for the present & the future. Please start your journey with us by registering an account & taking full advantage of our investment opportunities. What are you waiting for? Grab the opportunity to make a passive income. BITCY HOW TO EARN REFERRAL PROGRAM AND GET PAID FASTER Over the last few days the BitCoin network being congested is no secret and some programs (like LaserOnline) even used it as a lame excuse for scamming. When it comes to Bitcy which exclusively works with BitCoin they simply advise their members to be patient as the time for confirming transactions is much longer now and as the fees in Blockchain are higher you should not withdraw from Bitcy unless you accumulate at least 0.003 BTC on your balance. That will just save you on fees and waiting time, as the maximum processing time for Bitcy withdrawal requests is set at 72 hours. In practice however they are processed much faster and many people have already managed to profit from one of the plans 2.3% for 15 days, 2.6% for 25 days, 0.13% for 1440 hours (principal back), 155% after 15 business days, 550% after 20 business days, 1700% after 40 business days, 1200% after 60 business days, 7000% after 100 business days. Bitcy (reviewed here) is actually so popular that it reached the #1 position on the MNO monitor among the Premium listed programs after LaserOnlines collapse. Along with the profits paid to your Bitcy account daily, hourly, or once on expiry you can also supplement your income by becoming a representative if you have a sizeable deposit and are looking for higher commissions, as explained below: Referral program from Bitcy Limited earning without investment Bitcy Limited offers three opportunities for earning: investment of funds, the Bounty-program and the referral program. Many choose the latter method since it does not require investment of funds and generates good income on a daily basis. Register new users and get 7-2 % from each of their investments. You can also become a representative of the company and then your income will be 10-2-1%. So, for example, if a referral invests $1000, the representative receives a bonus of $100. How to earn on the referral program? 1. Copy the referral link in your account going to the Referrals section 2. Tell your friends about Bitcys opportunities and send them your link 3. Help new partners register and create their first deposits Place our creative banners on your personal pages, sites and in communities to attract new users. Remember, the more people you register, the higher your passive income will be. Use your opportunities to the fullest! With Bitcy Limited your happy tomorrow becomes real! Bitcoin network overloaded earn only to the fullest! A large number of transactions in the Bitcoin network has entailed its overload. In connection with this today there is already a huge number of unconfirmed operations which can be tracked following the link: https://blockchain.info/en/unconfirmed-transactions. Our company keeps fulfilling its obligations to provide maximum comfort of work on our platform. We have optimized the system, and now the time for processing requests will be reduced. However, when creating a request for the withdrawal of a small amount the commission fee will be low to increase transaction speed. As a result, the waiting period for the receipt of funds is extended. For this reason we recommend you withdraw not less than 0.003 BTC. Depending on the amount, the system will automatically calculate the commission which is optimal for a quick transfer of funds to your account. Therefore, we recommend that you make a re-investment from the balance instead of waiting until your funds are credited to the account. Make money work for you at the time when the others are waiting for transaction confirmation in the blockchain! The company Bitcy Limited does everything possible for your financial well-being. Do not waste time waiting use every free minute to earn money! ELLIR REPRESENTATIVES STATUS EXPLAINED The admin of the above reviewed Ellir has also dedicated a special update on his programs representative program where the two types of commissions are available for two types of investor. Read below for more information on that, as it might entice you to have a larger investment in Ellir to increase your earnings: REPRESENTATIVES Dear participants! For active partners, leaders, and regional representatives, an advanced partnership program is available. The terms are determined individually. In order to receive partners compensation in the standard program, the only thing you will need to do is open an account on our website. In order to receive partners compensation in the VIP program, you will need to place a deposit of 500$ or more. Best regards, administration. RENAISSANCEINVEST IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION ON SHORTER-TERM INVESTMENT PLANS While reviewing RenaissanceInvest on my blog yesterday (click here to read) I totally missed an important point regarding the newly added 90-day long investment plans. Although the daily interest offered on that plan is covered correctly (youll get paid 0.8%-1.2% per business days for 90 days) you can actually withdraw your initial deposit from this plan at any time without fees. The standard withdrawal fees that gradually reduce over the investment term only apply to the initial 1.6%-2% per business day for 180 days plan. That might be a deciding factor for many potential investors of RenaissanceInvest, so I do apologize for omitting that important fact as emphasized on the programs news page. Everything else in the review is still valid with a $10 minimum deposit required via PerfectMoney, OkPay, BitCoin, and AdvCash and fast withdrawals. By the way, one more minor update includes the icon Info. Clicking this allows you to read more information on the companys activities: Dear investors. We have opened 3 new investment plans. The investment period is half that in our first tariffs. Also for these tariffs, the opportunity is activated to withdraw their investments at any time WITHOUT PENALTIES. You can familiarize yourself with the new investment plans on the main page of the site or in your personal account in the Information section. We will be happy to answer your questions. Dear investors! In your personal account, we placed the Info icon in the upper right corner of the screen. By clicking on this icon you can find out more information about our company. TRADEXTOP BETTER LOOKING THAN EVER AND VIDEO PRESENTATION AVAILABLE IN RUSSIAN Some more good news was posted today by the increasingly popular TradexTop which was added to MNO 24 days ago and reviewed here. During this time not only did the program process instant payouts to members on multiple investment offers 2% for 7 days, 2.5% for 14 days, 3.1% for 21 days, 3.8% for 28 days, 4.6% for 35 days, 5.5% for 42 days (all with principal back on expiry), 150% after 15 days, 190% after 20 days, 240% after 25 days, 300% after 30 days, but it also improves significantly. With now even more language versions TradexTop features a fully adaptive website that works perfectly OK on any device whatever you use to browse the site from. Also, along with the English language video introduction of TradexTop (can also be viewed on the MNOVision page) there was a special version for Russian speaking investors launched today. Its already available on YouTube and the link is given below in one of the two latest updates from TradexTop. The program accepts PerfectMoney, Payeer, AdvCash, NixMoney, BitCoin, LiteCoin, DogeCoin, Ethereum, BitcoinCash, Zcash, and Dash: Adaptive website version We have adapted the interface of our platform to different screen resolutions of your devices. Visit TradexTop from any laptop, tablet PC or smartphone, and invest funds or control profit accrual without any inconvenience with website displaying. Video presentation in Russian As a moderate manifestation of care and service improvement, specially for Russian-speaking investors, we added a presentation video about TradexTop in Russian. https://youtu.be/1Bs1VftNRuE. CRYPTOSOLUTION ADVCASH ADDED AND NEW HOURLY PLAN ADDITION I already mentioned the newly added HourlyBot Plan now available in CryptoSolution and have edited the original review posted here to include this. However in the latest newsletter there was also an important mention of AdvCash which has been added as the very first conventional payment processor that is now accepted in CryptoSolution along with so many cryptocurrencies. The full list includes BitCoin, Ethereum, LiteCoin, EthereumClassic, BitcoinCash, Lisk, Dash, Ripple, Monero, Zcash, DogeCoin, and BitConnect. Quite an extensive list and along with the already mentioned hourly plan paying 0.1875% for 672 hours, you can also join CryptoSolution by investing in its daily 4%-5% for 30 days or weekly 27% for 5 weeks payment plans. The choice is entirely up up you and as the program has only be monitored on MNO for twelve days CryptoSolution has a lot to prove over the next few weeks. Heres the latest newsletter with all the info: DEAR INVESTORS, ITS BEEN A LITTLE OVER A WEEK FROM THE DAY OF OUR OPENING! We continue to develop and improve the website, taking into account the wishes of each visitor and investor. Huge work on optimization of the website, and of course our Neural BOT continues to please us, soon we will publish a report on his work with one of the exchanges. Was connected to CloudFlare protection against DDOS attacks. CloudFlare also allows the site to run more stable, fixed a lot minor bugs, no damage to visitors and investors. IN FRONT OF US IS THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF NEWS IN THE WORLD OF CRYPTOCURRENCY AND INNOVATIONS ON OUR WEBSITE. So, what pleasantly appeared on the website for investors: 1 We hooked up a new payment system AdvCash (start work 11.11.2017 00:00 UTC) 2 There is a new Investment plan HOURLY BOT. GET PAID REPORT FOR 14/11/2017 Here is the list of the programs from my monitor that paid me for the last 36 hours: From MNO Sticky list:ChainGroupService,Octoin. From MNO Premium list:TerminalSkyNet, AlpexTrade,Ellir,CryptoSolution, CoinPlace,Bitfine (the first instant payments received). From MNO Standard list: TradexTop,RenaissanceInvest. From MNO Basic list:BitWaves,HouseHash,RiseFinance (the first payment received). Thats it for today, guys. As you can clearly see, even with the collapse of LaserOnline there is no shortage of quality new programs o compete for investors money in this pre-festive season. That might be your last chance to earn some good profits from quality HYIPs before Christmas. So keep reading MNO as the only online resource dedicated exclusively to covering high-budget HYIPs from experienced admins. Dont miss a thing and follow MNO on Telegram, Facebook, or Twitter and subscribe to get regular updates directly to your email address. Ill take a day off tomorrow and will be back on Thursday with a full review of CoinPlace plus all the latest updates from the HYIP industry you might be interested in hearing about. Stay tuned for the latest trends and biggest investment opportunities with MNO For Money Lovers! Related posts: No related posts.

Blockchain: The Invisible Technology That's Changing the World By Rob Marvin Aug. 30, 2017, 12:08 a.m. Large swaths of your digital life will soon run atop a blockchain foundation just beneath the surfaceand you may not even realize it. Blockchain isn't a household buzzword, like the cloud or the Internet of Things. It's not an in-your-face innovation you can see and touch as easily as a smartphone or a package from Amazon. But in a world where anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, blockchain is the answer to a question we've been asking since the dawn of the internet age: How can we collectively trust what happens online? Every year we run more of our livesmore core functions of our governments, economies, and societieson the internet. We do our banking online. We shop online. We log into apps and services that make up our digital selves and send information back and forth. Think of blockchain as a historical fabric underneath recording everything that happensevery digital transaction; exchange of value, goods and services; or private dataexactly as it occurs. Then the chain stitches that data into encrypted blocks that can never be modified and scatters the pieces across a worldwide network of distributed computers or "nodes." Think about a blockchain as a distributed database that maintains a shared list of records. These records are called blocks, and each encrypted block of code contains the history of every block that came before it with timestamped transaction data down to the second. In effect, you know, chaining those blocks together. Hence blockchain. A blockchain is made up of two primary components: a decentralized network facilitating and verifying transactions, and the immutable ledger that network maintains. Everyone in the network can see this shared transaction ledger, but there is no single point of failure from which records or digital assets can be hacked or corrupted. Because of that decentralized trust, there's also no one organization controlling that data, be it a big bank or a tech giant like Facebook or Google. No third-parties serving as the gatekeepers of the internet. The power of blockchain's distributed ledger technology has applications across every kind of digital record and transaction, and we're already beginning to see major industries leaning into the shift. First up are the big banks and tech giants. Big business will always drive innovation, and the rise of blockchain-based smart contracts (read on for a deeper explanation) turns blockchain into a middleman to execute all manner of complex business deals, legal agreements, and automated exchanges of data. Companies such as Microsoft and IBM are using their cloud infrastructure to build custom blockchains for customers and experiment with their own use cases, like building a worldwide food safety network of manufacturers and retailers. On the academic side, researchers are exploring blockchain applications for projects ranging from digital identity to medical and insurance records. At the same time, dozens of startups are using the technology for everything from global payments to music sharing, from tracking diamond sales to the legal marijuana industry. That's why blockchain's potential is so vast: When it comes to digital assets and transactions, you can put absolutely anything on a blockchain. A host of economic, legal, regulatory, and technological hurdles must be scaled before we see widespread adoption of blockchain technology, but first movers are making incredible strides. Within the next handful of years, large swaths of your digital life may begin to run atop a blockchain foundationand you may not even realize it. Beyond Bitcoin Blockchain is the data structure that allows Bitcoin (BTC) and other up-and-coming cryptocurrencies such as Ether (ETH) to thrive through a combination of decentralized encryption, anonymity, immutability, and global scale. It's the not-so-secret weapon behind the cryptocurrency's rise, and to explain how blockchain came to be, we have to begin briefly with the legacy of Bitcoin. On Oct. 31, 2008, Bitcoin founder and still-mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) published his famous white paper introducing the concept of a peer-to-peer (P2P) electronic cash system he called Bitcoin. The Bitcoin blockchain launched a few months later on Jan. 3, 2009. For Jeff Garzik, it started the way many a buzzy idea in the tech community has over the years: with a post on "news for nerds" and OG tech aggregator Slashdot.org. Garzik is the CEO and cofounder of enterprise blockchain startup Bloq, but has spent years as a Bitcoin core developer. He was also recently elected to the Board of Directors of The Linux Foundation (as the first member with a blockchain and cryptocurrency background). In July 2010, Garzik was working on Linux at enterprise software company Red Hat when what he calls "The Great Slashdotting" occurred. One viral post introduced programmers, investors, and tech nerd-dom at large to the concept of Bitcoin, and by extension, to blockchain. Garzik had always been fascinated with the goal of making seamless digital payments work on a global scale and across borders. When he realized how Bitcoin's underlying technology worked, he said it "knocked him on his bum." "I had already thought to myself about how someone might create a decentralized version of PayPal. When Elon [Musk] and Peter Thiel and the other founders created PayPal, they had this vision of a global ledger that could easily and cheaply add entries between users like a database entry. That vision met reality with banking laws and cross-border friction, with legal hurdles and regulations not only in the U.S. but around the world. It made that kind of decentralized global currency impossible, or so we thought. "Bitcoin turned all of that on its head," Garzik went on. "From an engineering perspective, the proof of work was this very elegant way to elect a leader, the block creator, in this decentralized and potentially adversarial system. Bitcoin layered on top of that engineering a set of economic and game-theory incentives that paid you in the script of the system itself, creating this virtuous cycle where it's in your best economic interest to to follow the consensus rules and create the longest, strongest chain possible. I didn't realize until that post on that day how elegantly it could be done." It's important to understand why Bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing. In Garzik's TEDx Talk (above), he described Bitcoin as "an organism." It has layers, like other software. On top of the public Bitcoin blockchain sits billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, but beneath that is a ledger just like any other blockchain. That decentralized ledger technology, and its myriad potential uses for securely transferring data and digital assets over the internet, is the subject of this feature. For a deeper dive into the nuances of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and the complex political dynamics at work in those communities, check out our explainer on why blockchains fork. Garzik said Bitcoin was just the first demo application of what blockchain can do. In this case, it built a monetary revolution on the back of an all-seeing ledger, one that's everywhere and nowhere at once, and gave the cryptocurrency its power. Blockchain for Beginners People often get bogged down in technological complexity when trying to understand blockchain, but the basic concept is a simple and universal one. We have facts and information we don't want accessed, copied, or tampered with, but on the internet, there's always a chance it could be hacked or modified. Blockchain gives us a constanta bedrock we know won't change once we put something on it and where a transaction will be verified only if it follows the rules. The Nakamoto white paper explains the basics of "mining" data into a block, then using a hash (a time-stamped link) to chain those blocks together across a decentralized network of "nodes" that verify each and every transaction. The other key innovation in the white paper is using what's known as the proof-of-work (PoW) model to create distributed "trustless" consensus and solve the double-spend problem (ensuring cryptocurrency isn't spent more than once). A "trustless system" doesn't mean it's a system you can't trust. Quite the opposite. Because the blockchain verifies each transaction through PoW, this means no trust is required between participants in a transaction. Where does the proof-of-work come from? The miners. A P2P network of Bitcoin "miners" generates PoW as they hash blocks together, verifying transactions that then go into the ledger. In the 2016 book Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World, authors Don and Alex Tapscott explain Nakamoto's Bitcoin model about as succinctly as one can: "Bitcoin or other digital currency isn't saved in a file somewhere; it's represented by transactions recorded in a blockchainkind of like a global spreadsheet or ledger, which leverages the resources of a large P2P network to verify and approve each Bitcoin transaction. Each blockchain, like the [Bitcoin blockchain] is distributed: it runs on computers provided by volunteers around the world. There is no central database to hack. The blockchain is public: anyone can view it at any time because it resides on the network and the blockchain is encrypted it uses public and private keys (rather like a two-key system to access a safety deposit box) to maintain virtual security." Note that nothing is completely unhackable, particularly when you don't use it as intended. Blockchain's security works not only because it's encrypted but also because it's also decentralized. Victims of the biggest blockchain breaches and cryptocurrency heists (Mt. Gox in 2014 and Bitfinex in 2016) were targeted and pilfered clean because they tried to centralize a decentralized system. Ethereum has seen a number of hacks and security incidents as well. Last year's DAO hack was traced to exploited loopholes in smart contracts written atop an established blockchain. More recently South Korea's largest Ethereum exchange was hacked, and an Israeli startup's initial coin offering (ICO) was hijacked when their website was hacked. These issues all stemmed from vulnerabilities in systems connected to the blockchain, not within the blockchain itself. Blockchain's underlying security and encryption model is a sound one. How that security is executed is a story for another feature. So we've explained how the network functions and how security works, but how do the blocks actually connect to one another? Why does a blockchain get stronger the longer it gets? Where does the immutability come in? The Tapscotts' explanation continues: "Every ten minutes, like the heartbeat of the Bitcoin network, all the transactions conducted are verified, cleared, and stored in a block which is linked to the preceding block, thereby creating a chain. Each block must refer to the preceding block to be valid. The structure permanently time-stamps and stores exchanges of value, preventing anyone from altering the ledger so the blockchain is a distributed ledger representing a network consensus of every transaction that has ever occurred. Like the World Wide Web of information, it's the World Wide Ledger of value This new digital ledger can be programmed to record virtually everything of value and importance to humankind: birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, deeds and titles of ownership, educational degrees, financial accounts, medical procedures, insurance claims, votes, provenance of food, or anything else that can be expressed in code." The concept of immutability is maybe the most crucial to understand when trying to wrap your head around blockchain and why it's important. An object that once created can never be changed has infinite value in our editable, ephemeral digital world. Harking back to the "strength in numbers" principle, the more nodes a blockchain is distributed over, the stronger and more trusted it becomes. It's verification on top of verification to infinity. Bloq's Garzik talked about how the network effect of blockchain is key to its immutability, and why it's the reason the public Bitcoin blockchain is still the most popular and trusted blockchain out there: "The immutability factor is very much dependent on the network effect," said Garzik. "You see that with Bitcoin very specifically. The cost of creating a new digital asset is essentially zero. Therefore you have to demonstrate an overwhelming amount of value in overcoming that network effect if you want to convince someone to switch away from the Bitcoin blockchain, which not only has a good track record but high security value from a technical perspective. Security and immutability are a direct function of the economicshow much investment there is in the ecosystem, and how many people are using it." Public vs. Private Blockchains People within the industry talk a lot about public versus private blockchains. On a basic level, public blockchains are cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, enabling peer-to-peer transactions and, therefore, a revolution in seamless global payments. Interacting with public blockchains fundamentally requires tokens, and comes with its own rules of engagement, agreed upon by the P2P network. Private blockchains (those being built by distributed ledger consortium R3, for example) use blockchain-based application development platforms such as Ethereum or blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms such as those offered by Microsoft and IBM, running on private cloud infrastructure. Brian Forde, Director of Digital Currency at the MIT Media Lab, likens public versus private blockchains to the relationship between an open-source technology, such as Linux, and companies like Red Hat that build on that tech for enterprise use. Public blockchains like Bitcoin were the open-source movement that started it all, and private blockchains such as R3 are taking that technology and commercializing it for businesses. "A private blockchain is an intranet, and a public blockchain is the Internet. The world was changed by the Internet, not a bunch of intranets. Where companies will be disrupted the most is not by private blockchains but public ones," said Forde. Bloq's Garzik echoed a similar thought when explaining the difference between public and private blockchains, but he uses the open-source analogy a bit differently. Bloq bills itself as a "Red Hat for blockchain" of sorts, but its platform is built atop the Bitcoin blockchain rather than a private or "permissioned" one. (Permissioned blockchains include an access control layer governing who can participate in the network.) Garzik's biggest question when looking at cloud providers and others building private blockchains and BaaS offerings is: Who's running that network? "On the private and permissioned side, it's very much a question of who the referees are. I use that term specifically because what blockchains really provide is a neutral, level playing field for the execution of rules," said Garzik. "Those rules are applied to transactions that the actors create from that network. For Bitcoin, it's rules like the monetary supply; the number of transactions that can fit into a block. All of that forms the economic incentives and ultimately consensus rules that everyone in the network complies with and cross-checks to create this system of checks and balances. "Some of the other blockchain networks, whether it's [open-source project] Hyperledger, Ethereum, or a bank chain [such as R3] are opening the question of trust and trust shifting," Garzik went on. "It's less about the technology, and much more about a rapid, near real-time adjudication of rules between actors on a network. That's what blockchains do." Once you understand what a blockchain is and how it works, the next question an everyday tech user would have is how it'll affect them. If you're not a business that's building a blockchain-based product or service, why should you care? As Don Tapscott explained it in Blockchain Revolution and in a 2016 TED Talk of his own, it's because blockchain brings us from the Internet of information into the "Internet of value." From his TED talk: "For the past few decades, we've had the Internet of information," says Tapscott. "When I send you an email or a PowerPoint file, I'm actually not sending you the original; I'm sending you a copy. That's great, and it has democratized information. But when it comes to assets; things like money, financial assets like stocks and bonds, loyalty points, intellectual property, music, art, a vote sending you a copy is a really bad idea. If I send you $100, it's really important that I don't have the money afterward. "Today, we rely entirely on big intermediaries; middlemen like banks, government, big social media companies, credit companies, and so on to establish trust in our economy," Tapscott continued. "These intermediaries perform all the business and transaction logic of every kind of commerce, from identification and authentication of people through to clearing, settling, and record-keeping they capture our data, which means we can't monetize or use it to better manage our lives, and our privacy is being undermined so what if there were not only an Internet of information, but an Internet of value. Some kind of vast, global, distributed ledger running on millions of computers and available to everybody, and where every kind of asset from money to music could be stored, moved, transacted, exchanged, and managed, all without powerful intermediaries." That, in a nutshell, is blockchain. What Are Smart Contracts? If you think of blockchain as an operating system for data, then smart contracts are its killer app. Smart contracts add complex logic and rules atop a blockchain that can automate traditional contract management and digitize the world around us the same way apps like Uber are automating away the need to wave your hand in the air to hail a cab. You can't talk about the future of blockchain without explaining the role smart contracts will play. If the world is going to run on blockchain, much of it will rely on smart contracts to execute the data exchanges and program in rules to govern how each code-triggered agreement works. Smart contracts are also a flexible mechanism that can serve as the blockchain middleman for all manner of agreements and data exchanges, down to something as simple as verifying someone's identity to ensure they're of legal drinking age. "Think about getting carded at a bar," said Jerry Cuomo, Vice President of Blockchain Technologies at IBM. "From an identity perspective, I can imagine a blockchain managing verification of a citizen's identity. A smart contract could ensure something like my daughter going out for her 21st birthday and the bouncer only being able to see her age, not her address. Blockchain could set up a centralized identity verification system that could make the world safer for dads like myself." Identity management is an application to watch, but the list goes on and on. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, the leading trade association that represents the blockchain industry, runs the Smart Contracts Alliance. The Chamber and Alliance (in collaboration with Deloitte) released a white paper entitled "Smart Contracts: 12 Uses Cases for Business & Beyond" detailing a dozen broad areas and industries where smart contracts could change the game. In a broad legal sense, smart contracts provide what Bloq's Garzik calls ""adjudication-as-a-service:" a real-time version of the court system that, for finance scenarios, can cut time on deal closings, banking and securities transactions, and even global trade finance from weeks or months to days, hours, or minutes. On the digital identity front, the white paper calls smart contracts a "user-centered Internet for individuals" giving users control over the data, digital assets, and online reputation associated with them. Blockchain also affords the ability to decide what personal data is and isn't shared with businessesthe same concept behind the driver's license analogy. Beyond identity, the white paper also talks about how smart contracts can be applied to getting a mortgage and instantaneously processing auto-insurance claims. In the medical research field, they can serve as a mechanism to ensure better patient privacy in clinical trials while promoting more open data-sharing in the cancer research community. Another of the paper's use cases is land titling. Countries around the world, including Ghana, Georgia, and Honduras, that are typically rife with property fraud and land disputes are already implementing smart contracts to facilitate property transfers and land ownership. Real-world smart contracts are also gaining traction in a few other interesting ways. Everledger is a blockchain-based fraud-detection system for valuable physical assets, particularly jewelry and diamonds. It uses a hybrid blockchain that combines the Bitcoin blockchain with its own private blockchain to build smart contracts that certify physical diamonds. It combats the sale of conflict diamonds by keeping a transaction history for each gem. "Everledger takes a diamond or a piece of art and hashes it to the blockchain," said MIT's Forde. "For something like a diamond ring, Everledger takes an image of itlike a unique diamond fingerprintwhich can then be scanned against the blockchain to verify it's the same one." Once you open the door of tracking and manage physical assets, smart contracts can tackle the whole supply chain. IBM and Walmart are even partnering in China to track the movement of pork (seriously) to keep people from eating tainted meat. You can also use smart contracts for digital content such as music. Mycelia, a "collective of creatives, professionals and lovers of music" founded by musician Imogen Heap, is a blockchain-based protective ecosystem pushing smart contracts as a way for musicians to share free-trade music and to ensure the profits go back to the artists. Mycelia is an example of blockchain and smart contracts' potential for digital rights management (DRM). Smart contracts in digital music files or other copyrighted material might enable artists to better sell directly to consumers without the need for labels, lawyers, or accountants, with royalties paid out automatically. A sleeping giant in this conversation is the effect smart contracts could have on the Internet of Things. Think about all the data smart devices collect. Fitness trackers collect your body's vital statistics. Thermostats collect temperature data. Alexa has records of every search and request you've ever asked of her. If the IoT ran on a blockchain, and smart contracts governed that real-time data, it could create a whole new class of lending and other usage-based agreements, according to Erin Fonte, Head of the Financial Services Regulatory and Compliance Practice Group at corporate law firm Dykema. "If you had smart and connected cars that could report back actual usage stats, you could tie pricing into real-time usage and have it automatically adjust over the length of your vehicle lease and financing," said Fonte. Think about how connected devices enable mobile payments without traditional credit card swiping at the point of sale. Instead of swiping your card at a terminal, you touch a thumb to your iPhone to use Apple Pay. The automated payment system is authenticating individuals and providing verifiable legal proof of transaction authorization, just as a smart contract using those same two permissionsauthorization and permissionin an IoT device can make a transaction legally enforceable against a buyer or seller, which is particularly applicable in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. "Amazon Dash buttons are a prime example," said Fonte. "It's one little branded button you stick in your house, and then you don't have to log onto Amazon to reorder. Just press the button, and it repeats its last order. For connected homes and cars, blockchain's ability to monitor, collect, and make sense of data for transactions will drive the ability for humans to authorize machines to carry out activities like this as agents. The next step is that you don't need a button. Manufacturers will create customer and end-user [smart contract] agreements on the back end. "Your washing machine will have that feature built into the product itself." How We Build a Blockchain-Based World Blockchain is still in its infancy. Before we see widespread adoption on the scale the technology is capable of, a lot needs to happen. We must have buy-in from government (which in the U.S. means working state-by-state on policies and legislation). The industry has to clear a labyrinth of legal and regulatory hurdles before blockchain can power better banking, identity, records, or anything else requiring official documentation that now runs on legacy government systems or even (still) on paper. We also need open standards to tie the blockchain industry together. The most prominent coalition working to make that happen is the Hyperledger project. Hyperledger is an open-source initiative to create an open, standardized, and enterprise-grade distributed ledger framework and code base to be used across industries. Overseen by The Linux Foundation, its members include tech companies (Cisco, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Samsung, VMware, and more), big banks (JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and so on), blockchain startups such as Bloq, and a host of others. The project recently released the first production-ready version of Hyperledger Fabric as a foundation for building blockchain apps. Big blockhain players like Microsoft are beginning to get into the standardization game as well, with Redmond releasing its own Coco Framework to work with existing protocols and build more powerful governance and data confidentiality into private blockchains. "The Linux Foundation is the key layer of governance for shepherding and maturing open-source products," said Garzik. "There are many blockchain peddlers out in the market right now, and one of the biggest pain points we see is incompatibility; a large bank that has merged 10 businesses over the past decade and has a lot of halfway-compatible internal legacy systems. That's where the foundation and Hyperledger really come to the fore. As young as the blockchain industry is, the kind of technical standards-making we need for interoperability has so far been absent." Another important Hyperledger member is R3, the wealthy elephant in the room when it comes to blockchain standardization. R3 is a consortium dedicated to research and development of advanced distributed ledger technologies for global financial markets. It also represents most of the biggest banks and financial institutions on the planet: Barclays, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, the Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and a number of others. We're already beginning to see the kind of blockchain-based international trading R3 is after. Last fall, the first cross-border transaction between banks using multiple blockchain applications took place between the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Wells Fargo, resulting in a shipment of cotton to China from the United States. R3 is also becoming an example of how difficult standardizing blockchain can be. Goldman Sachs and Santander both left R3 in late 2016 in the midst of big-bank jockeying over control of a new funding round for the consortium. R3 is doing just fine, though. The consortium announced a new $107 round of funding in May. As Ethereum and the value of the Ether currency have exploded in popularity in the past year, standardization efforts have emerged around its blockchain platform as well. The membership of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has amassed more than 150 enterprise organizations since its launch in February, spanning tech corporations, banks and financial institutions, blockchain and cryptocurrency startups, industries such as healthcare and energy, and even a few governments. Few know the challenge of pushing for blockchain adoption better than Perianne Boring, president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. The Chamber is currently engaged in lobbying and advocacy efforts in 14 states and counting. In North Carolina, the chamber's efforts helped pass the North Carolina Money Transmitter Act in July 2016, which updates the state's existing laws to include a defined "virtual currency." Boring said the law is a big win for blockchain and digital currency but still only a drop in the bucket of patchwork state-by-state regulations and the even more muddled web of federal agencies. In the past year, Chamber representatives have testified at cryptocurrency regulation hearings in New Hampshire, lobbied regulatory proposals in New York and Washington states, and made official comments on virtual currency acts and regulatory frameworks from the Uniform Law Commission and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). "How is digital currency supposed to be regulated? This is a huge national debate around how states can effectively regulate digital currency and money transmission, and every state has its own opinion and a completely different way of doing things," explained Boring. "New York says businesses need a separate digital currency license to operate in the state. North Carolina said that's way too complicated and regulatory overkill, and decided instead to amend their existing money transmission laws to incorporate digital currency. We prefer the latter approach." Boring also stressed the importance of keeping blockchain technology and policy on the same page. The Chamber is also a Hyperledger member, and Boring said the Chamber will work to actively bring Hyperledger into policy discussions, to ensure lawmakers understand the pros and cons of regulations. Yet as difficult as overcoming entrenched legacy systems and regulations can be, we already have a blueprint of how it can be done. Over the past two years, the state of Delaware has shown how governments can legislate, sanction, adopt, and implement blockchain technology to power core services. As with much of the legislation, regulation, and business drivers behind blockchain, it starts with fintech (financial technology). More than a million companies and 66 percent of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated and legally headquartered in Delaware, in large part because of the state's largest export: uncertified shares (meaning the ability to own shares in a company without holding the actual stock certificate). In partnership with blockchain fintech company Symbiont, the Delaware Blockchain Initiative announced in 2016 will completely automate stock issuance and recordkeeping on a blockchain ledger. 'Before the Delaware Blockchain Initiative, there was no technological solution to support digital representation of share ownership," explained Symbiont CEO Mark Smith. "From what can only be described as a forward-thinking agenda from the state, they embraced that they could reimagine how to deliver their marquee service on a distributed ledger, using Symbiont's technology to create a new type of share and change the way a corporation works from now into the foreseeable future." A little finance background: The genesis moment of a private equity is when you incorporate a company. As Smith explained, now companies will have the ability to carry that equity all the way from incorporation up to and including an initial public offering (85 percent of IPOs happen in Delaware), all via the blockchain, with complete financial transparency for state lawyers and regulatory agencies. The entire process will run automatically on smart contracts. Overstock Bets Big on BlockchainE-commerce retailer Overstock.com became the first publicly traded company to issue stock on the blockchain this past December, selling 126,565 shares through its subsidiary, t0: the first-ever blockchain-based trading platform for stocks and securities. Overstock has been developing t0 for more than two years to serve as a distributed immutable ledger for capital markets.Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has called t0 a blockchain version of Wall Street, and in a Q&A with PCMag, the outspoken executive talked about how the platform works, making history with t0, and how blockchain could turn capital markets into Game of Thrones."I think what's going to happen is similar to what English common law did over a century ago. Blockchain is going to disrupt all kinds of legal work, notary publics, contracts, lawyers, judges, you name it," said Byrne. "You're going to start seeing open-source, self-executing contracts gradually improve over time. What the Internet did to publishing, blockchain will do to about 160 different industries. It's crazy."Read our entire interview with Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne here. Even greater implications lie in what the Delaware Blockchain Initiative is doing beyond digital shares. At the Consensus blockchain technology summit this past year, Delaware Governor Jack Markell gave a keynote speech announcing the initiative and laying out a blockchain roadmap for the next five years, including a new joint effort with Symbiont to digitize and store the entire Delaware Public Archives on a blockchain ledger in 2017. Symbiont's Smith, who is also a co-chair of the Chamber of Digital Commerce's Smart Contracts Alliance, explained how Delaware is building cryptographic document control that will ultimately overhaul how city, county, and state municipalities share information that in many cases still exists on paper in filing cabinets. Smith's first conversation with Delaware officials was in October 2015, and between then and now, the state has gone from knowing nothing about blockchain to embracing it in its biggest export and mobilizing to push new legislation and initiatives around it. "The state is completely reimagining how it stores and distributes public records to its citizens. Land and property titling, licensing, birth and death certificates, automobile VIN numbers, heavy machinery and luxury good registrations, all these things are being incorporated into Symbiont's technology stack behind the Delaware blockchain," said Smith. "Distributed ledger technology is not a silver bulletit's not going to solve every problembut it does solve some very big ones. "When [Delaware] Governor Markell came out publicly announcing the initiative, he said he wanted to challenge us to use this powerful technology," Smith continued. "Delaware should serve as a blueprint for many other states, each of which could operate a node right next to Delaware and build critical mass and momentum from a government perspective that could lead to other nations joining in." Potchain: Where Blockchain Meets MarijuanaMedical and recreational marijuana is being legalized in more and more states across the U.S. This new, fast-growing sector of the economy presents challenges we haven't dealt with before, partly because even in states where it's legal, there are still a lot of things cannabis-related businesses can't do. Blockchain is helping fill in gaps for entrepreneurs, particularly when it comes to banking and legal protection.Current federal banking regulations still preclude banks from doing business with cannabis companies, leaving them without a dedicated banking system. Tokken, a digital bank startup, gives cannabusinesses a bank account and blockchain-based transaction history that's linked to brick-and-mortar banking institutions and seed-to-sale systems, with Tokken as the middleman.More interesting is what Medical Genomics is doing on the science side of the potchain. The life sciences company is mapping and sequencing the DNA of different cannabis strains, then storing and registering that info on the Bitcoin blockchain. The company lists this information on its public-facing Kannapedia strain database, but of far greater importance is how the company uses blockchain-based strain DNA as intellectual property (IP) protection for growers. The government makes it very difficult to obtain trademarks and patents for weed strains. But a blockchain provides irrefutable legal proof a grower can use to prove ownership of a strain if challenged by other growers or the pharmaceutical corporations that will ultimately enter the legal industry.Check out the whole story for more on how blockchain is blazing a new trail for the legal cannabis industry. Welcome to Our Blockchain Future The change blockchain represents to our digital world is tectonic. Blockchain is broad and coming to the fore on such a massive scale that explaining it often falls back on the abstract, rather than grounding it in the kind of foundational change the technology will have on the culture of how we interact online. The Web 1.0 was a read-only Internet of static web pages. Web 2.0, where we are now, added dynamic user-generated content and the rise of social media. Web 3.0 has many definitions, but one of the most popular is that of connective intelligence: where the next generation of applications, data, concepts, and people are connected by an unmediated fabric where you don't need a trust broker like a bank or tech company in the middle to ensure privacy and security. In blockchain, we finally have the technology to power Web 3.0. "The first four decades of the Internet brought us email, the World Wide Web, dot-coms, social media, the mobile web, Big Data, cloud computing, and the early days of the Internet of Things," the Tapscotts write in Blockchain Revolution. Through that lens, MIT's Brian Forde said, we can understand where blockchain fits into our lives. "People have forgotten how powerful it is not to have to worry about what email app you use. When I email you, it doesn't matter if you're using Gmail or Outlook or Yahooyou just give me your email address and go. Now think about sending money today. If I want to send you $20, we're going to play a game of 20 questions. Do you have PayPal? How about Venmo?" said Forde. "Imagine if we still chose our cell phone carriers and ISPs based on whether your friends and family were using Sprint or AT&T," Forde went on. "That's still the world we live in today for most digital services. You joined Facebook because your friends did. You're not going to sign up with a new payments startup if your friends are all on PayPal. It's going to be incredibly powerful for consumers to have more choice when everything running on blockchain just works." 10 Blockchain Startups to WatchTons of innovative startups are pushing the envelope of what's possible with blockchain technology. Here are other 10 exciting companies to keep an eye on as the space evolves:Abra: A blockchain-based digital wallet that lives on your smartphone. Abra allows you to send or receive funds from any source in the world, without requiring bank accounts or transfer fees, using its own community of "tellers."Augur: Through Augur's decentralized prediction market, you can bet on events in the real world. Using blockchain-based tokens, you can make wagers on pretty much anything, from the score of a game or winning lottery numbers to whether or not an Antarctic ice shelf will collapse (that's a real betting market on the site).BlockCypher: This company is a cloud-based Web services platform for blockchain apps. What Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to cloud infrastructure, BlockCypher wants to be for blockchain.Bluzelle: Between Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all the other blockchains out there, the industry already has interoperability issues. Bluzelle is middleware that supports all blockchain protocols and smooths out banking and payments transactions in what CEO Pavel Bains describes as the "Red Hat of blockchain."Brave: Founded by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, Brave is a new kind of browser that automatically blocks ads and trackers and instead helps drive publisher revenue through blockchain-based micropayments. As ad revenues for the digital media industry continue to decline, Brave's micropayments model could be an answer.Credit Dream: Access to credit can be difficult to come by in developing nations, and carry enormous interest if you're lucky enough to get it. Currently active in Brazil, Credit Dream is a mobile-based blockchain platform for connecting investors in any country to loan borrowers in any country for affordable, verified loans.Enigma: A stealth startup from MIT Media Lab, Enigma takes the blockchain's privacy and security advantages and rolls them into a decentralized cloud platform that guarantees privacy. Enigma encrypts and protects data even when you share it with others, allowing data to be stored, shared, and analyzed without ever being fully revealed to any party.Slock.it: Slock.it is the manifestation of how blockchain and the IoT fit together. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the startup is embedding smart contracts in connected cars, homes, and other IoT devices with the goal of enabling anyone to rent, sell, or share their connected property without a middleman. Think about renting your apartment on Airbnb with Slock.it automatically opening and locking your door.Plex: Plex uses the Ethereum blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to give insurance companies real-time remote diagnostics on cars and drivers.Zcash: As cryptocurrencies go, Zcash is the most exciting one this side of Bitcoin. Zcash uses something called zero-knowledge proofs to create truly anonymous digital transactions. While it's mined on a public blockchain just like Bitcoin, Zcash provides a fully anonymous cryptographic key in which no private information needs to be exchanged. Next to Bitcoin, it currently has the highest price of any cryptocurrency. Blockchain is taking root within a wide swath of industries. To discover which ones, all you need to do is follow the money. A Deloitte survey released in December 2016 polled blockchain-knowledgeable senior executives at organizations with $500 million or more in annual revenue. Of the 308 respondents, 28 percent reported that their companies have already invested $5 million or more in blockchain technology, with 10 percent investing $10 million or more. Although the fintech industry was early to show interest in blockchain and accounts for a significant amount of investment and activity, the survey revealed other industries aggressively pursuing blockchain. Within the consumer products and manufacturing industry, 42 percent of respondents said they're planning to invest $5 million or more in 2017, compared to 27 percent in the media and telecoms industry, and 23 percent in financial services. Put together, 30 percent of consumer manufacturing and media/telco industry respondents said their companies have already deployed blockchain into production. Yet the industry the Deloitte report identifies with the most aggressive deployment plans is healthcare and life sciences: 35 percent of respondents in that industry say their companies plan to deploy blockchain in production within the next calendar year. When you look at some of the blockchain healthcare initiatives already out there, that stat starts to make a lot of sense. One exciting project Forde pointed to is MedRec, an MIT initiative creating a blockchain to serve as a digital family history of medical records.Think about sitting down in a doctor's office and being asked your family medical history for a certain illness. You might, off the top of your head, have no idea of the answer. But with MedRec blockchain, families and medical providers can create a shared medical history that can be passed from generation to generation. "With medical records, we're all asked that question: Is there any family history of this? The answer is usually 'I don't know,'" said Forde. "What's interesting here, as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we now have this mandate for electronic health records, and the government subsidizes doctors to get those records. But that data is still siloed. There needs to be a technology or protocol allowing all that data to be shared, regardless of provider. MedRec helps facilitate that. It's not just about the interoperability of your data; it's also about the protection of your data from fraud." Forde said the project is also evolving as a way for hospitals and medical practices to interface with consumer tech. Think about all the real-time health data collected by wearables and fitness trackers and even apps like Apple Health. MedRec is exploring the possibility of using blockchain to give doctors and hospitals access to that data, if you consent. "You've got Fitbit, Apple Watch, all this consumer tech collecting data on your blood pressure, heart rate, etc," said Forde. "Then you go to the hospital or your doctor and they have their own system. You see the allergist and they've got their own system, and none of it is connected. If there's no interoperability between any of these systems, how are you going to get the best possible care?" The federal government recognizes blockchain's potential for health care, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already doing something about it. The HHS Blockchain Challenge gathered more than 70 submissions of academic papers on blockchain usage in health IT and health-related research, announcing 15 winners this past September spanning organizations including Deloitte, IBM, MIT (MedRec was one of the winners), and The Mayo Clinic. The winners, who presented to the HHS for possible development and implementation, proposed blockchain solutions for everything from health insurance claims and payments to data interoperability and Medicaid applications. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, which participated in the challenge, sees blockchain's potential to transform healthcare and beyond. "HHS received so many amazing ideas," said the Chamber's Boring. "In the healthcare industry, we are seeing a huge influx of interest and a lot of major problems blockchain is addressing, from patient privacy and electronic health records to tracking pharmaceuticals and doctor shopping. Blockchain technology is also extremely powerful when it comes to victims of identity theft. Blockchain provides for an unprecedented level of privacy and security that can be leveraged to confirm your digital identity as we do more and more of our daily activities online." That notion of identity is key. Through the digital "wallet" a blockchain creates around not only virtual money but the pieces of data that make up your identity, blockchain will act as a gatekeeper of sorts to how we interact with the digital world. Blockchain-based identity is being explored and experimented with in a host of ways, from the IoT governance model to more secure voting, and in the case of Blocksafe, as a way to reduce gun violence by securing firearms with "smart locks." "These digital wallets will become control centers," explained Bloq's Garzik." In a multi-chain, multi-network world, you wind up with a digital experience that secures itself with several factors of authentication.Then once [the blockchain verifies] that I'm Jeff, it'll say things like, 'Do you want to send your autonomous car from home over to your wife's office? Do you want to unlock the door for a guest coming over? Are you allowed to drink at this bar? Are you licensed to carry a gun?'" One of the futures envisioned in Blockchain Revolution is a "second era of democracy": one in which blockchain technology can create the conditions for fair, secure, and convenient digital voting that galvanizes the citizenry by removing so many of the systemic voting roadblocks plaguing our current system. Putting democracy on a blockchain is complicated, but startups including Follow My Vote and Settlemint are already laying out frameworks centered around blockchain-based tokens serving as votes, dropped in digital wallets for each candidate. At a time in America when the integrity of our voting process is under intense scrutiny, blockchainas with every manifestation of the technology laid out in this featurecould provide a new way forward. The book points to a 2015 paper published by the University of Athens introducing DEMOS, an end-to-end e-voting system, and an organization and "political app" in Australia called Flux that's already using blockchain voting to try to transform the political process. When I spoke to Don Tapscott for this story, he discussed how the opportunity to "reinvent democracy" speaks to the universal power of what blockchain can do. "Young people didn't vote in [the 2016 presidential] election because they're not engaged. We urgently need to fix this. In the book, we argue for a new era of democracy based on accountability, smart contracts, and a culture of public deliberation and active citizenship enabled by the blockchain," said Tapscott. "We should move many things onto blockchains. I think governments could move toward creating a blockchain-based identity. Think about your health records, your academic records, your citizenship and ability to vote, all unified and facilitated via blockchain. As a voter, you need 100 percent assurance that your vote was counted for the person whom you voted, that it can't be reallocated, and that it was private. In e-voting, only blockchains can guarantee that level of assurance. "But it goes far beyond e-voting," Tapscott continued. "Leaders could come to power with a smart contract where they're accountable to citizens and have to abide by the terms of the contract. There are opportunities everywhere. Look at the different hats we all wear every day. You're a parent, a consumer, a listener of music, an employee, a voter, a citizen. Blockchain affects you in every way." This feature was originally published in the PCMag Digital Edition, and has been updated since. var colombia = colombia || {}; colombia.fns = colombia.fns || []; Next Article

Blockchain: The Invisible Technology That's Changing the World By Rob Marvin Aug. 30, 2017, 12:08 a.m. Large swaths of your digital life will soon run atop a blockchain foundation just beneath the surfaceand you may not even realize it. Blockchain isn't a household buzzword, like the cloud or the Internet of Things. It's not an in-your-face innovation you can see and touch as easily as a smartphone or a package from Amazon. But in a world where anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, blockchain is the answer to a question we've been asking since the dawn of the internet age: How can we collectively trust what happens online? Every year we run more of our livesmore core functions of our governments, economies, and societieson the internet. We do our banking online. We shop online. We log into apps and services that make up our digital selves and send information back and forth. Think of blockchain as a historical fabric underneath recording everything that happensevery digital transaction; exchange of value, goods and services; or private dataexactly as it occurs. Then the chain stitches that data into encrypted blocks that can never be modified and scatters the pieces across a worldwide network of distributed computers or "nodes." Think about a blockchain as a distributed database that maintains a shared list of records. These records are called blocks, and each encrypted block of code contains the history of every block that came before it with timestamped transaction data down to the second. In effect, you know, chaining those blocks together. Hence blockchain. A blockchain is made up of two primary components: a decentralized network facilitating and verifying transactions, and the immutable ledger that network maintains. Everyone in the network can see this shared transaction ledger, but there is no single point of failure from which records or digital assets can be hacked or corrupted. Because of that decentralized trust, there's also no one organization controlling that data, be it a big bank or a tech giant like Facebook or Google. No third-parties serving as the gatekeepers of the internet. The power of blockchain's distributed ledger technology has applications across every kind of digital record and transaction, and we're already beginning to see major industries leaning into the shift. First up are the big banks and tech giants. Big business will always drive innovation, and the rise of blockchain-based smart contracts (read on for a deeper explanation) turns blockchain into a middleman to execute all manner of complex business deals, legal agreements, and automated exchanges of data. Companies such as Microsoft and IBM are using their cloud infrastructure to build custom blockchains for customers and experiment with their own use cases, like building a worldwide food safety network of manufacturers and retailers. On the academic side, researchers are exploring blockchain applications for projects ranging from digital identity to medical and insurance records. At the same time, dozens of startups are using the technology for everything from global payments to music sharing, from tracking diamond sales to the legal marijuana industry. That's why blockchain's potential is so vast: When it comes to digital assets and transactions, you can put absolutely anything on a blockchain. A host of economic, legal, regulatory, and technological hurdles must be scaled before we see widespread adoption of blockchain technology, but first movers are making incredible strides. Within the next handful of years, large swaths of your digital life may begin to run atop a blockchain foundationand you may not even realize it. Beyond Bitcoin Blockchain is the data structure that allows Bitcoin (BTC) and other up-and-coming cryptocurrencies such as Ether (ETH) to thrive through a combination of decentralized encryption, anonymity, immutability, and global scale. It's the not-so-secret weapon behind the cryptocurrency's rise, and to explain how blockchain came to be, we have to begin briefly with the legacy of Bitcoin. On Oct. 31, 2008, Bitcoin founder and still-mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto (a pseudonym) published his famous white paper introducing the concept of a peer-to-peer (P2P) electronic cash system he called Bitcoin. The Bitcoin blockchain launched a few months later on Jan. 3, 2009. For Jeff Garzik, it started the way many a buzzy idea in the tech community has over the years: with a post on "news for nerds" and OG tech aggregator Slashdot.org. Garzik is the CEO and cofounder of enterprise blockchain startup Bloq, but has spent years as a Bitcoin core developer. He was also recently elected to the Board of Directors of The Linux Foundation (as the first member with a blockchain and cryptocurrency background). In July 2010, Garzik was working on Linux at enterprise software company Red Hat when what he calls "The Great Slashdotting" occurred. One viral post introduced programmers, investors, and tech nerd-dom at large to the concept of Bitcoin, and by extension, to blockchain. Garzik had always been fascinated with the goal of making seamless digital payments work on a global scale and across borders. When he realized how Bitcoin's underlying technology worked, he said it "knocked him on his bum." "I had already thought to myself about how someone might create a decentralized version of PayPal. When Elon [Musk] and Peter Thiel and the other founders created PayPal, they had this vision of a global ledger that could easily and cheaply add entries between users like a database entry. That vision met reality with banking laws and cross-border friction, with legal hurdles and regulations not only in the U.S. but around the world. It made that kind of decentralized global currency impossible, or so we thought. "Bitcoin turned all of that on its head," Garzik went on. "From an engineering perspective, the proof of work was this very elegant way to elect a leader, the block creator, in this decentralized and potentially adversarial system. Bitcoin layered on top of that engineering a set of economic and game-theory incentives that paid you in the script of the system itself, creating this virtuous cycle where it's in your best economic interest to to follow the consensus rules and create the longest, strongest chain possible. I didn't realize until that post on that day how elegantly it could be done." It's important to understand why Bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing. In Garzik's TEDx Talk (above), he described Bitcoin as "an organism." It has layers, like other software. On top of the public Bitcoin blockchain sits billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, but beneath that is a ledger just like any other blockchain. That decentralized ledger technology, and its myriad potential uses for securely transferring data and digital assets over the internet, is the subject of this feature. For a deeper dive into the nuances of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum and the complex political dynamics at work in those communities, check out our explainer on why blockchains fork. Garzik said Bitcoin was just the first demo application of what blockchain can do. In this case, it built a monetary revolution on the back of an all-seeing ledger, one that's everywhere and nowhere at once, and gave the cryptocurrency its power. Blockchain for Beginners People often get bogged down in technological complexity when trying to understand blockchain, but the basic concept is a simple and universal one. We have facts and information we don't want accessed, copied, or tampered with, but on the internet, there's always a chance it could be hacked or modified. Blockchain gives us a constanta bedrock we know won't change once we put something on it and where a transaction will be verified only if it follows the rules. The Nakamoto white paper explains the basics of "mining" data into a block, then using a hash (a time-stamped link) to chain those blocks together across a decentralized network of "nodes" that verify each and every transaction. The other key innovation in the white paper is using what's known as the proof-of-work (PoW) model to create distributed "trustless" consensus and solve the double-spend problem (ensuring cryptocurrency isn't spent more than once). A "trustless system" doesn't mean it's a system you can't trust. Quite the opposite. Because the blockchain verifies each transaction through PoW, this means no trust is required between participants in a transaction. Where does the proof-of-work come from? The miners. A P2P network of Bitcoin "miners" generates PoW as they hash blocks together, verifying transactions that then go into the ledger. In the 2016 book Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World, authors Don and Alex Tapscott explain Nakamoto's Bitcoin model about as succinctly as one can: "Bitcoin or other digital currency isn't saved in a file somewhere; it's represented by transactions recorded in a blockchainkind of like a global spreadsheet or ledger, which leverages the resources of a large P2P network to verify and approve each Bitcoin transaction. Each blockchain, like the [Bitcoin blockchain] is distributed: it runs on computers provided by volunteers around the world. There is no central database to hack. The blockchain is public: anyone can view it at any time because it resides on the network and the blockchain is encrypted it uses public and private keys (rather like a two-key system to access a safety deposit box) to maintain virtual security." Note that nothing is completely unhackable, particularly when you don't use it as intended. Blockchain's security works not only because it's encrypted but also because it's also decentralized. Victims of the biggest blockchain breaches and cryptocurrency heists (Mt. Gox in 2014 and Bitfinex in 2016) were targeted and pilfered clean because they tried to centralize a decentralized system. Ethereum has seen a number of hacks and security incidents as well. Last year's DAO hack was traced to exploited loopholes in smart contracts written atop an established blockchain. More recently South Korea's largest Ethereum exchange was hacked, and an Israeli startup's initial coin offering (ICO) was hijacked when their website was hacked. These issues all stemmed from vulnerabilities in systems connected to the blockchain, not within the blockchain itself. Blockchain's underlying security and encryption model is a sound one. How that security is executed is a story for another feature. So we've explained how the network functions and how security works, but how do the blocks actually connect to one another? Why does a blockchain get stronger the longer it gets? Where does the immutability come in? The Tapscotts' explanation continues: "Every ten minutes, like the heartbeat of the Bitcoin network, all the transactions conducted are verified, cleared, and stored in a block which is linked to the preceding block, thereby creating a chain. Each block must refer to the preceding block to be valid. The structure permanently time-stamps and stores exchanges of value, preventing anyone from altering the ledger so the blockchain is a distributed ledger representing a network consensus of every transaction that has ever occurred. Like the World Wide Web of information, it's the World Wide Ledger of value This new digital ledger can be programmed to record virtually everything of value and importance to humankind: birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, deeds and titles of ownership, educational degrees, financial accounts, medical procedures, insurance claims, votes, provenance of food, or anything else that can be expressed in code." The concept of immutability is maybe the most crucial to understand when trying to wrap your head around blockchain and why it's important. An object that once created can never be changed has infinite value in our editable, ephemeral digital world. Harking back to the "strength in numbers" principle, the more nodes a blockchain is distributed over, the stronger and more trusted it becomes. It's verification on top of verification to infinity. Bloq's Garzik talked about how the network effect of blockchain is key to its immutability, and why it's the reason the public Bitcoin blockchain is still the most popular and trusted blockchain out there: "The immutability factor is very much dependent on the network effect," said Garzik. "You see that with Bitcoin very specifically. The cost of creating a new digital asset is essentially zero. Therefore you have to demonstrate an overwhelming amount of value in overcoming that network effect if you want to convince someone to switch away from the Bitcoin blockchain, which not only has a good track record but high security value from a technical perspective. Security and immutability are a direct function of the economicshow much investment there is in the ecosystem, and how many people are using it." Public vs. Private Blockchains People within the industry talk a lot about public versus private blockchains. On a basic level, public blockchains are cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, enabling peer-to-peer transactions and, therefore, a revolution in seamless global payments. Interacting with public blockchains fundamentally requires tokens, and comes with its own rules of engagement, agreed upon by the P2P network. Private blockchains (those being built by distributed ledger consortium R3, for example) use blockchain-based application development platforms such as Ethereum or blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms such as those offered by Microsoft and IBM, running on private cloud infrastructure. Brian Forde, Director of Digital Currency at the MIT Media Lab, likens public versus private blockchains to the relationship between an open-source technology, such as Linux, and companies like Red Hat that build on that tech for enterprise use. Public blockchains like Bitcoin were the open-source movement that started it all, and private blockchains such as R3 are taking that technology and commercializing it for businesses. "A private blockchain is an intranet, and a public blockchain is the Internet. The world was changed by the Internet, not a bunch of intranets. Where companies will be disrupted the most is not by private blockchains but public ones," said Forde. Bloq's Garzik echoed a similar thought when explaining the difference between public and private blockchains, but he uses the open-source analogy a bit differently. Bloq bills itself as a "Red Hat for blockchain" of sorts, but its platform is built atop the Bitcoin blockchain rather than a private or "permissioned" one. (Permissioned blockchains include an access control layer governing who can participate in the network.) Garzik's biggest question when looking at cloud providers and others building private blockchains and BaaS offerings is: Who's running that network? "On the private and permissioned side, it's very much a question of who the referees are. I use that term specifically because what blockchains really provide is a neutral, level playing field for the execution of rules," said Garzik. "Those rules are applied to transactions that the actors create from that network. For Bitcoin, it's rules like the monetary supply; the number of transactions that can fit into a block. All of that forms the economic incentives and ultimately consensus rules that everyone in the network complies with and cross-checks to create this system of checks and balances. "Some of the other blockchain networks, whether it's [open-source project] Hyperledger, Ethereum, or a bank chain [such as R3] are opening the question of trust and trust shifting," Garzik went on. "It's less about the technology, and much more about a rapid, near real-time adjudication of rules between actors on a network. That's what blockchains do." Once you understand what a blockchain is and how it works, the next question an everyday tech user would have is how it'll affect them. If you're not a business that's building a blockchain-based product or service, why should you care? As Don Tapscott explained it in Blockchain Revolution and in a 2016 TED Talk of his own, it's because blockchain brings us from the Internet of information into the "Internet of value." From his TED talk: "For the past few decades, we've had the Internet of information," says Tapscott. "When I send you an email or a PowerPoint file, I'm actually not sending you the original; I'm sending you a copy. That's great, and it has democratized information. But when it comes to assets; things like money, financial assets like stocks and bonds, loyalty points, intellectual property, music, art, a vote sending you a copy is a really bad idea. If I send you $100, it's really important that I don't have the money afterward. "Today, we rely entirely on big intermediaries; middlemen like banks, government, big social media companies, credit companies, and so on to establish trust in our economy," Tapscott continued. "These intermediaries perform all the business and transaction logic of every kind of commerce, from identification and authentication of people through to clearing, settling, and record-keeping they capture our data, which means we can't monetize or use it to better manage our lives, and our privacy is being undermined so what if there were not only an Internet of information, but an Internet of value. Some kind of vast, global, distributed ledger running on millions of computers and available to everybody, and where every kind of asset from money to music could be stored, moved, transacted, exchanged, and managed, all without powerful intermediaries." That, in a nutshell, is blockchain. What Are Smart Contracts? If you think of blockchain as an operating system for data, then smart contracts are its killer app. Smart contracts add complex logic and rules atop a blockchain that can automate traditional contract management and digitize the world around us the same way apps like Uber are automating away the need to wave your hand in the air to hail a cab. You can't talk about the future of blockchain without explaining the role smart contracts will play. If the world is going to run on blockchain, much of it will rely on smart contracts to execute the data exchanges and program in rules to govern how each code-triggered agreement works. Smart contracts are also a flexible mechanism that can serve as the blockchain middleman for all manner of agreements and data exchanges, down to something as simple as verifying someone's identity to ensure they're of legal drinking age. "Think about getting carded at a bar," said Jerry Cuomo, Vice President of Blockchain Technologies at IBM. "From an identity perspective, I can imagine a blockchain managing verification of a citizen's identity. A smart contract could ensure something like my daughter going out for her 21st birthday and the bouncer only being able to see her age, not her address. Blockchain could set up a centralized identity verification system that could make the world safer for dads like myself." Identity management is an application to watch, but the list goes on and on. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, the leading trade association that represents the blockchain industry, runs the Smart Contracts Alliance. The Chamber and Alliance (in collaboration with Deloitte) released a white paper entitled "Smart Contracts: 12 Uses Cases for Business & Beyond" detailing a dozen broad areas and industries where smart contracts could change the game. In a broad legal sense, smart contracts provide what Bloq's Garzik calls ""adjudication-as-a-service:" a real-time version of the court system that, for finance scenarios, can cut time on deal closings, banking and securities transactions, and even global trade finance from weeks or months to days, hours, or minutes. On the digital identity front, the white paper calls smart contracts a "user-centered Internet for individuals" giving users control over the data, digital assets, and online reputation associated with them. Blockchain also affords the ability to decide what personal data is and isn't shared with businessesthe same concept behind the driver's license analogy. Beyond identity, the white paper also talks about how smart contracts can be applied to getting a mortgage and instantaneously processing auto-insurance claims. In the medical research field, they can serve as a mechanism to ensure better patient privacy in clinical trials while promoting more open data-sharing in the cancer research community. Another of the paper's use cases is land titling. Countries around the world, including Ghana, Georgia, and Honduras, that are typically rife with property fraud and land disputes are already implementing smart contracts to facilitate property transfers and land ownership. Real-world smart contracts are also gaining traction in a few other interesting ways. Everledger is a blockchain-based fraud-detection system for valuable physical assets, particularly jewelry and diamonds. It uses a hybrid blockchain that combines the Bitcoin blockchain with its own private blockchain to build smart contracts that certify physical diamonds. It combats the sale of conflict diamonds by keeping a transaction history for each gem. "Everledger takes a diamond or a piece of art and hashes it to the blockchain," said MIT's Forde. "For something like a diamond ring, Everledger takes an image of itlike a unique diamond fingerprintwhich can then be scanned against the blockchain to verify it's the same one." Once you open the door of tracking and manage physical assets, smart contracts can tackle the whole supply chain. IBM and Walmart are even partnering in China to track the movement of pork (seriously) to keep people from eating tainted meat. You can also use smart contracts for digital content such as music. Mycelia, a "collective of creatives, professionals and lovers of music" founded by musician Imogen Heap, is a blockchain-based protective ecosystem pushing smart contracts as a way for musicians to share free-trade music and to ensure the profits go back to the artists. Mycelia is an example of blockchain and smart contracts' potential for digital rights management (DRM). Smart contracts in digital music files or other copyrighted material might enable artists to better sell directly to consumers without the need for labels, lawyers, or accountants, with royalties paid out automatically. A sleeping giant in this conversation is the effect smart contracts could have on the Internet of Things. Think about all the data smart devices collect. Fitness trackers collect your body's vital statistics. Thermostats collect temperature data. Alexa has records of every search and request you've ever asked of her. If the IoT ran on a blockchain, and smart contracts governed that real-time data, it could create a whole new class of lending and other usage-based agreements, according to Erin Fonte, Head of the Financial Services Regulatory and Compliance Practice Group at corporate law firm Dykema. "If you had smart and connected cars that could report back actual usage stats, you could tie pricing into real-time usage and have it automatically adjust over the length of your vehicle lease and financing," said Fonte. Think about how connected devices enable mobile payments without traditional credit card swiping at the point of sale. Instead of swiping your card at a terminal, you touch a thumb to your iPhone to use Apple Pay. The automated payment system is authenticating individuals and providing verifiable legal proof of transaction authorization, just as a smart contract using those same two permissionsauthorization and permissionin an IoT device can make a transaction legally enforceable against a buyer or seller, which is particularly applicable in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. "Amazon Dash buttons are a prime example," said Fonte. "It's one little branded button you stick in your house, and then you don't have to log onto Amazon to reorder. Just press the button, and it repeats its last order. For connected homes and cars, blockchain's ability to monitor, collect, and make sense of data for transactions will drive the ability for humans to authorize machines to carry out activities like this as agents. The next step is that you don't need a button. Manufacturers will create customer and end-user [smart contract] agreements on the back end. "Your washing machine will have that feature built into the product itself." How We Build a Blockchain-Based World Blockchain is still in its infancy. Before we see widespread adoption on the scale the technology is capable of, a lot needs to happen. We must have buy-in from government (which in the U.S. means working state-by-state on policies and legislation). The industry has to clear a labyrinth of legal and regulatory hurdles before blockchain can power better banking, identity, records, or anything else requiring official documentation that now runs on legacy government systems or even (still) on paper. We also need open standards to tie the blockchain industry together. The most prominent coalition working to make that happen is the Hyperledger project. Hyperledger is an open-source initiative to create an open, standardized, and enterprise-grade distributed ledger framework and code base to be used across industries. Overseen by The Linux Foundation, its members include tech companies (Cisco, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Samsung, VMware, and more), big banks (JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and so on), blockchain startups such as Bloq, and a host of others. The project recently released the first production-ready version of Hyperledger Fabric as a foundation for building blockchain apps. Big blockhain players like Microsoft are beginning to get into the standardization game as well, with Redmond releasing its own Coco Framework to work with existing protocols and build more powerful governance and data confidentiality into private blockchains. "The Linux Foundation is the key layer of governance for shepherding and maturing open-source products," said Garzik. "There are many blockchain peddlers out in the market right now, and one of the biggest pain points we see is incompatibility; a large bank that has merged 10 businesses over the past decade and has a lot of halfway-compatible internal legacy systems. That's where the foundation and Hyperledger really come to the fore. As young as the blockchain industry is, the kind of technical standards-making we need for interoperability has so far been absent." Another important Hyperledger member is R3, the wealthy elephant in the room when it comes to blockchain standardization. R3 is a consortium dedicated to research and development of advanced distributed ledger technologies for global financial markets. It also represents most of the biggest banks and financial institutions on the planet: Barclays, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, the Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and a number of others. We're already beginning to see the kind of blockchain-based international trading R3 is after. Last fall, the first cross-border transaction between banks using multiple blockchain applications took place between the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Wells Fargo, resulting in a shipment of cotton to China from the United States. R3 is also becoming an example of how difficult standardizing blockchain can be. Goldman Sachs and Santander both left R3 in late 2016 in the midst of big-bank jockeying over control of a new funding round for the consortium. R3 is doing just fine, though. The consortium announced a new $107 round of funding in May. As Ethereum and the value of the Ether currency have exploded in popularity in the past year, standardization efforts have emerged around its blockchain platform as well. The membership of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has amassed more than 150 enterprise organizations since its launch in February, spanning tech corporations, banks and financial institutions, blockchain and cryptocurrency startups, industries such as healthcare and energy, and even a few governments. Few know the challenge of pushing for blockchain adoption better than Perianne Boring, president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. The Chamber is currently engaged in lobbying and advocacy efforts in 14 states and counting. In North Carolina, the chamber's efforts helped pass the North Carolina Money Transmitter Act in July 2016, which updates the state's existing laws to include a defined "virtual currency." Boring said the law is a big win for blockchain and digital currency but still only a drop in the bucket of patchwork state-by-state regulations and the even more muddled web of federal agencies. In the past year, Chamber representatives have testified at cryptocurrency regulation hearings in New Hampshire, lobbied regulatory proposals in New York and Washington states, and made official comments on virtual currency acts and regulatory frameworks from the Uniform Law Commission and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS). "How is digital currency supposed to be regulated? This is a huge national debate around how states can effectively regulate digital currency and money transmission, and every state has its own opinion and a completely different way of doing things," explained Boring. "New York says businesses need a separate digital currency license to operate in the state. North Carolina said that's way too complicated and regulatory overkill, and decided instead to amend their existing money transmission laws to incorporate digital currency. We prefer the latter approach." Boring also stressed the importance of keeping blockchain technology and policy on the same page. The Chamber is also a Hyperledger member, and Boring said the Chamber will work to actively bring Hyperledger into policy discussions, to ensure lawmakers understand the pros and cons of regulations. Yet as difficult as overcoming entrenched legacy systems and regulations can be, we already have a blueprint of how it can be done. Over the past two years, the state of Delaware has shown how governments can legislate, sanction, adopt, and implement blockchain technology to power core services. As with much of the legislation, regulation, and business drivers behind blockchain, it starts with fintech (financial technology). More than a million companies and 66 percent of Fortune 500 companies are incorporated and legally headquartered in Delaware, in large part because of the state's largest export: uncertified shares (meaning the ability to own shares in a company without holding the actual stock certificate). In partnership with blockchain fintech company Symbiont, the Delaware Blockchain Initiative announced in 2016 will completely automate stock issuance and recordkeeping on a blockchain ledger. 'Before the Delaware Blockchain Initiative, there was no technological solution to support digital representation of share ownership," explained Symbiont CEO Mark Smith. "From what can only be described as a forward-thinking agenda from the state, they embraced that they could reimagine how to deliver their marquee service on a distributed ledger, using Symbiont's technology to create a new type of share and change the way a corporation works from now into the foreseeable future." A little finance background: The genesis moment of a private equity is when you incorporate a company. As Smith explained, now companies will have the ability to carry that equity all the way from incorporation up to and including an initial public offering (85 percent of IPOs happen in Delaware), all via the blockchain, with complete financial transparency for state lawyers and regulatory agencies. The entire process will run automatically on smart contracts. Overstock Bets Big on BlockchainE-commerce retailer Overstock.com became the first publicly traded company to issue stock on the blockchain this past December, selling 126,565 shares through its subsidiary, t0: the first-ever blockchain-based trading platform for stocks and securities. Overstock has been developing t0 for more than two years to serve as a distributed immutable ledger for capital markets.Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has called t0 a blockchain version of Wall Street, and in a Q&A with PCMag, the outspoken executive talked about how the platform works, making history with t0, and how blockchain could turn capital markets into Game of Thrones."I think what's going to happen is similar to what English common law did over a century ago. Blockchain is going to disrupt all kinds of legal work, notary publics, contracts, lawyers, judges, you name it," said Byrne. "You're going to start seeing open-source, self-executing contracts gradually improve over time. What the Internet did to publishing, blockchain will do to about 160 different industries. It's crazy."Read our entire interview with Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne here. Even greater implications lie in what the Delaware Blockchain Initiative is doing beyond digital shares. At the Consensus blockchain technology summit this past year, Delaware Governor Jack Markell gave a keynote speech announcing the initiative and laying out a blockchain roadmap for the next five years, including a new joint effort with Symbiont to digitize and store the entire Delaware Public Archives on a blockchain ledger in 2017. Symbiont's Smith, who is also a co-chair of the Chamber of Digital Commerce's Smart Contracts Alliance, explained how Delaware is building cryptographic document control that will ultimately overhaul how city, county, and state municipalities share information that in many cases still exists on paper in filing cabinets. Smith's first conversation with Delaware officials was in October 2015, and between then and now, the state has gone from knowing nothing about blockchain to embracing it in its biggest export and mobilizing to push new legislation and initiatives around it. "The state is completely reimagining how it stores and distributes public records to its citizens. Land and property titling, licensing, birth and death certificates, automobile VIN numbers, heavy machinery and luxury good registrations, all these things are being incorporated into Symbiont's technology stack behind the Delaware blockchain," said Smith. "Distributed ledger technology is not a silver bulletit's not going to solve every problembut it does solve some very big ones. "When [Delaware] Governor Markell came out publicly announcing the initiative, he said he wanted to challenge us to use this powerful technology," Smith continued. "Delaware should serve as a blueprint for many other states, each of which could operate a node right next to Delaware and build critical mass and momentum from a government perspective that could lead to other nations joining in." Potchain: Where Blockchain Meets MarijuanaMedical and recreational marijuana is being legalized in more and more states across the U.S. This new, fast-growing sector of the economy presents challenges we haven't dealt with before, partly because even in states where it's legal, there are still a lot of things cannabis-related businesses can't do. Blockchain is helping fill in gaps for entrepreneurs, particularly when it comes to banking and legal protection.Current federal banking regulations still preclude banks from doing business with cannabis companies, leaving them without a dedicated banking system. Tokken, a digital bank startup, gives cannabusinesses a bank account and blockchain-based transaction history that's linked to brick-and-mortar banking institutions and seed-to-sale systems, with Tokken as the middleman.More interesting is what Medical Genomics is doing on the science side of the potchain. The life sciences company is mapping and sequencing the DNA of different cannabis strains, then storing and registering that info on the Bitcoin blockchain. The company lists this information on its public-facing Kannapedia strain database, but of far greater importance is how the company uses blockchain-based strain DNA as intellectual property (IP) protection for growers. The government makes it very difficult to obtain trademarks and patents for weed strains. But a blockchain provides irrefutable legal proof a grower can use to prove ownership of a strain if challenged by other growers or the pharmaceutical corporations that will ultimately enter the legal industry.Check out the whole story for more on how blockchain is blazing a new trail for the legal cannabis industry. Welcome to Our Blockchain Future The change blockchain represents to our digital world is tectonic. Blockchain is broad and coming to the fore on such a massive scale that explaining it often falls back on the abstract, rather than grounding it in the kind of foundational change the technology will have on the culture of how we interact online. The Web 1.0 was a read-only Internet of static web pages. Web 2.0, where we are now, added dynamic user-generated content and the rise of social media. Web 3.0 has many definitions, but one of the most popular is that of connective intelligence: where the next generation of applications, data, concepts, and people are connected by an unmediated fabric where you don't need a trust broker like a bank or tech company in the middle to ensure privacy and security. In blockchain, we finally have the technology to power Web 3.0. "The first four decades of the Internet brought us email, the World Wide Web, dot-coms, social media, the mobile web, Big Data, cloud computing, and the early days of the Internet of Things," the Tapscotts write in Blockchain Revolution. Through that lens, MIT's Brian Forde said, we can understand where blockchain fits into our lives. "People have forgotten how powerful it is not to have to worry about what email app you use. When I email you, it doesn't matter if you're using Gmail or Outlook or Yahooyou just give me your email address and go. Now think about sending money today. If I want to send you $20, we're going to play a game of 20 questions. Do you have PayPal? How about Venmo?" said Forde. "Imagine if we still chose our cell phone carriers and ISPs based on whether your friends and family were using Sprint or AT&T," Forde went on. "That's still the world we live in today for most digital services. You joined Facebook because your friends did. You're not going to sign up with a new payments startup if your friends are all on PayPal. It's going to be incredibly powerful for consumers to have more choice when everything running on blockchain just works." 10 Blockchain Startups to WatchTons of innovative startups are pushing the envelope of what's possible with blockchain technology. Here are other 10 exciting companies to keep an eye on as the space evolves:Abra: A blockchain-based digital wallet that lives on your smartphone. Abra allows you to send or receive funds from any source in the world, without requiring bank accounts or transfer fees, using its own community of "tellers."Augur: Through Augur's decentralized prediction market, you can bet on events in the real world. Using blockchain-based tokens, you can make wagers on pretty much anything, from the score of a game or winning lottery numbers to whether or not an Antarctic ice shelf will collapse (that's a real betting market on the site).BlockCypher: This company is a cloud-based Web services platform for blockchain apps. What Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to cloud infrastructure, BlockCypher wants to be for blockchain.Bluzelle: Between Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all the other blockchains out there, the industry already has interoperability issues. Bluzelle is middleware that supports all blockchain protocols and smooths out banking and payments transactions in what CEO Pavel Bains describes as the "Red Hat of blockchain."Brave: Founded by Mozilla co-founder Brendan Eich, Brave is a new kind of browser that automatically blocks ads and trackers and instead helps drive publisher revenue through blockchain-based micropayments. As ad revenues for the digital media industry continue to decline, Brave's micropayments model could be an answer.Credit Dream: Access to credit can be difficult to come by in developing nations, and carry enormous interest if you're lucky enough to get it. Currently active in Brazil, Credit Dream is a mobile-based blockchain platform for connecting investors in any country to loan borrowers in any country for affordable, verified loans.Enigma: A stealth startup from MIT Media Lab, Enigma takes the blockchain's privacy and security advantages and rolls them into a decentralized cloud platform that guarantees privacy. Enigma encrypts and protects data even when you share it with others, allowing data to be stored, shared, and analyzed without ever being fully revealed to any party.Slock.it: Slock.it is the manifestation of how blockchain and the IoT fit together. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the startup is embedding smart contracts in connected cars, homes, and other IoT devices with the goal of enabling anyone to rent, sell, or share their connected property without a middleman. Think about renting your apartment on Airbnb with Slock.it automatically opening and locking your door.Plex: Plex uses the Ethereum blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to give insurance companies real-time remote diagnostics on cars and drivers.Zcash: As cryptocurrencies go, Zcash is the most exciting one this side of Bitcoin. Zcash uses something called zero-knowledge proofs to create truly anonymous digital transactions. While it's mined on a public blockchain just like Bitcoin, Zcash provides a fully anonymous cryptographic key in which no private information needs to be exchanged. Next to Bitcoin, it currently has the highest price of any cryptocurrency. Blockchain is taking root within a wide swath of industries. To discover which ones, all you need to do is follow the money. A Deloitte survey released in December 2016 polled blockchain-knowledgeable senior executives at organizations with $500 million or more in annual revenue. Of the 308 respondents, 28 percent reported that their companies have already invested $5 million or more in blockchain technology, with 10 percent investing $10 million or more. Although the fintech industry was early to show interest in blockchain and accounts for a significant amount of investment and activity, the survey revealed other industries aggressively pursuing blockchain. Within the consumer products and manufacturing industry, 42 percent of respondents said they're planning to invest $5 million or more in 2017, compared to 27 percent in the media and telecoms industry, and 23 percent in financial services. Put together, 30 percent of consumer manufacturing and media/telco industry respondents said their companies have already deployed blockchain into production. Yet the industry the Deloitte report identifies with the most aggressive deployment plans is healthcare and life sciences: 35 percent of respondents in that industry say their companies plan to deploy blockchain in production within the next calendar year. When you look at some of the blockchain healthcare initiatives already out there, that stat starts to make a lot of sense. One exciting project Forde pointed to is MedRec, an MIT initiative creating a blockchain to serve as a digital family history of medical records.Think about sitting down in a doctor's office and being asked your family medical history for a certain illness. You might, off the top of your head, have no idea of the answer. But with MedRec blockchain, families and medical providers can create a shared medical history that can be passed from generation to generation. "With medical records, we're all asked that question: Is there any family history of this? The answer is usually 'I don't know,'" said Forde. "What's interesting here, as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we now have this mandate for electronic health records, and the government subsidizes doctors to get those records. But that data is still siloed. There needs to be a technology or protocol allowing all that data to be shared, regardless of provider. MedRec helps facilitate that. It's not just about the interoperability of your data; it's also about the protection of your data from fraud." Forde said the project is also evolving as a way for hospitals and medical practices to interface with consumer tech. Think about all the real-time health data collected by wearables and fitness trackers and even apps like Apple Health. MedRec is exploring the possibility of using blockchain to give doctors and hospitals access to that data, if you consent. "You've got Fitbit, Apple Watch, all this consumer tech collecting data on your blood pressure, heart rate, etc," said Forde. "Then you go to the hospital or your doctor and they have their own system. You see the allergist and they've got their own system, and none of it is connected. If there's no interoperability between any of these systems, how are you going to get the best possible care?" The federal government recognizes blockchain's potential for health care, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already doing something about it. The HHS Blockchain Challenge gathered more than 70 submissions of academic papers on blockchain usage in health IT and health-related research, announcing 15 winners this past September spanning organizations including Deloitte, IBM, MIT (MedRec was one of the winners), and The Mayo Clinic. The winners, who presented to the HHS for possible development and implementation, proposed blockchain solutions for everything from health insurance claims and payments to data interoperability and Medicaid applications. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, which participated in the challenge, sees blockchain's potential to transform healthcare and beyond. "HHS received so many amazing ideas," said the Chamber's Boring. "In the healthcare industry, we are seeing a huge influx of interest and a lot of major problems blockchain is addressing, from patient privacy and electronic health records to tracking pharmaceuticals and doctor shopping. Blockchain technology is also extremely powerful when it comes to victims of identity theft. Blockchain provides for an unprecedented level of privacy and security that can be leveraged to confirm your digital identity as we do more and more of our daily activities online." That notion of identity is key. Through the digital "wallet" a blockchain creates around not only virtual money but the pieces of data that make up your identity, blockchain will act as a gatekeeper of sorts to how we interact with the digital world. Blockchain-based identity is being explored and experimented with in a host of ways, from the IoT governance model to more secure voting, and in the case of Blocksafe, as a way to reduce gun violence by securing firearms with "smart locks." "These digital wallets will become control centers," explained Bloq's Garzik." In a multi-chain, multi-network world, you wind up with a digital experience that secures itself with several factors of authentication.Then once [the blockchain verifies] that I'm Jeff, it'll say things like, 'Do you want to send your autonomous car from home over to your wife's office? Do you want to unlock the door for a guest coming over? Are you allowed to drink at this bar? Are you licensed to carry a gun?'" One of the futures envisioned in Blockchain Revolution is a "second era of democracy": one in which blockchain technology can create the conditions for fair, secure, and convenient digital voting that galvanizes the citizenry by removing so many of the systemic voting roadblocks plaguing our current system. Putting democracy on a blockchain is complicated, but startups including Follow My Vote and Settlemint are already laying out frameworks centered around blockchain-based tokens serving as votes, dropped in digital wallets for each candidate. At a time in America when the integrity of our voting process is under intense scrutiny, blockchainas with every manifestation of the technology laid out in this featurecould provide a new way forward. The book points to a 2015 paper published by the University of Athens introducing DEMOS, an end-to-end e-voting system, and an organization and "political app" in Australia called Flux that's already using blockchain voting to try to transform the political process. When I spoke to Don Tapscott for this story, he discussed how the opportunity to "reinvent democracy" speaks to the universal power of what blockchain can do. "Young people didn't vote in [the 2016 presidential] election because they're not engaged. We urgently need to fix this. In the book, we argue for a new era of democracy based on accountability, smart contracts, and a culture of public deliberation and active citizenship enabled by the blockchain," said Tapscott. "We should move many things onto blockchains. I think governments could move toward creating a blockchain-based identity. Think about your health records, your academic records, your citizenship and ability to vote, all unified and facilitated via blockchain. As a voter, you need 100 percent assurance that your vote was counted for the person whom you voted, that it can't be reallocated, and that it was private. In e-voting, only blockchains can guarantee that level of assurance. "But it goes far beyond e-voting," Tapscott continued. "Leaders could come to power with a smart contract where they're accountable to citizens and have to abide by the terms of the contract. There are opportunities everywhere. Look at the different hats we all wear every day. You're a parent, a consumer, a listener of music, an employee, a voter, a citizen. Blockchain affects you in every way." This feature was originally published in the PCMag Digital Edition, and has been updated since. var colombia = colombia || {}; colombia.fns = colombia.fns || []; Next Article

On my trip to Singapore two weeks ago I read through a new book The Age of Cryptocurrency, written by Michael Casey and Paul Vigna — two journalists with The Wall Street Journal. Let’s start with the good.  I think Chapter 2 is probably the best chapter in the book and the information mid-chapter is some of the best historical look on the topic of previous electronic currency initiatives.  I also think their writing style is quite good.  Sentences and ideas flow without any sharp disconnects.  They also have a number of endnotes in the back for in-depth reading on certain sub-topics. In this review I look at each chapter and provide some counterpoints to a number of the claims made. [Note: I manually typed the quotes from the book, all transcription errors are my own and should not reflect on the book itself.] The book starts by discussing a company now called bitLanders which pays content creators in bitcoin.  The authors introduce us to Francesco Rulli who pays his bloggers in bitcoin and tries to forbid them from cashing out in fiat, so that they create a circular flow of income.1 One blogger they focus on is Parisa Ahmadi, a young Afghani woman who lacks access to the payment channels and platforms that we take for granted.  It is a nice feel good story that hits all the high notes. Unfortunately the experience that individuals like Ahmadi, are not fully reflective of what takes place in practice (and this is not the fault of bitLanders).  For instance, the authors state on p. 2 that: “Bitcoins are stored in digital bank accounts or “wallets” that can be set up at home by anyone with Internet access.  There is no trip to the bank to set up an account, no need for documentation or proof that you’re a man.” This is untrue in practice.  Nearly all venture capital (VC) funded hosted “wallets” and exchanges now require not only Know-Your-Customer (KYC) but in order for any type of fiat conversion, bank accounts.  Thus there is a paradox: how can unbanked individuals connect a bank account they do not have to a platform that requires it?  This question is never answered in the book yet it represents the single most difficult aspect to the on-boarding experience today. Starting on page 3, the authors use the term “digital currency” to refer to bitcoins, a practice done throughout the remainder of the book.  This contrasts with the term “virtual currency” which they only use 12 times — 11 of which are quotes from regulators.  The sole time “virtual currency” is not used by a regulator to describe bitcoins is from David Larimer from Invictus (Bitshares).  It is unclear if this was an oversight. Is there a difference between a “digital currency” and “virtual currency”?  Yes.  And I have made the same mistake before. Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are not digital currencies.  Digital currencies are legal tender, as of this writing, bitcoins are not.  This may seem like splitting hairs but the reason regulators use the term “virtual currency” still in 2015 is because no jurisdiction recognizes bitcoins as legal tender.  In contrast, there are already dozens of digital currencies — nearly every dollar that is spent on any given day in the US is electronic and digital and has been for over a decade.  This issue also runs into the discussion on nemo dat described a couple weeks ago. On page 4 the authors very briefly describe the origination of currency exchange which dates back to the Medici family during the Florentine Renaissance.  Yet not once in the book is the term “bearer asset” mentioned.  Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are virtual bearer instruments and as shown in practice, a mega pain to safely secure.  500 years ago bearer assets were also just as difficult to secure and consequently individuals outsourced the security of it to what we now call banks.  And this same behavior has once again occurred as large quantities — perhaps the majority — of bitcoins now are stored in trusted third party depositories such as Coinbase and Xapo. Again recall that the term “trusted third party” was used 11 times (in the body, 13 times altogether) in the original Nakamoto whitepaper; whoever created Bitcoin was laser focused on building a mechanism to route around trusted third parties due to the additional “mediation and transaction costs” (section 1) these create.  Note: that later on page 29 they briefly mentioned legal tender laws and coins (as it related to the Roman Empire). On page 8 the authors describe the current world as “tyranny of centralized trust” and on page 10 that “Bitcoin promises to take at least some of that power away from governments and hand it to the people.” While that may be a popular narrative on social media, not everyone involved with Bitcoin (or the umbrella “blockchain” world) holds the same view.  Nor do the authors describe some kind of blue print for how this is done.  Recall that in order to obtain bitcoins in the first place a user can do one of three things: In practice mining is out of the hands of “the people” due to economies of scale which have trended towards warehouse mining – it is unlikely that embedded ASICs such as from 21 inc, will change that dynamic much, if any.  Why?  Because for every device added to the network a corresponding amount of difficulty is also added, diluting the revenue to below dust levels.  Remember how Tom Sawyer convinced kids to whitewash a fence and they did so eagerly without question?  What if he asked you to mine bitcoins for him for free?  A trojan botnet?  While none of the products have been announced and changes could occur, from the press release that seems to be the underlying assumption of the 21 inc business model. In terms of the second point, nearly all VC funded exchanges require KYC and bank accounts.  The ironic aspect is that “unbanked” and “underbanked” individuals often lack the necessary “valid” credentials that can be used by cheaper automated KYC technology (from Jumio) and thus expensive manual processing is done, costs that must be borne by someone.  These same credential-less individuals typically lack a bank account (hence the name “unbanked”). Lastly with the third point, while there are any number of merchants that now accept bitcoin, in practice very few actually do receive bitcoins on any given day.  Several weeks ago I broke down the numbers that BitPay reported and the verdict is payment processing is stagnant for now. Why is this last point important to what the authors refer to as “the people”? Ten days after Ripple Labs was fined by FinCEN for not appropriately enforcing AML/KYC regulations, Xapo  — a VC funded hosted wallet startup — moved off-shore, uprooting itself from Palo Alto to Switzerland.  While the stated reason is “privacy” concerns, it is likely due to regulatory concerns of a different nature. In his interview with CoinDesk last week, Wences Casares, the CEO and founder of Xapo noted that: Still, Casares indicated that Xapo’s customers are most often using its accounts primarily for storage and security. He noted that many of its clientele have “never made a bitcoin payment”, meaning its holdings are primarily long-term bets of high net-worth customers and family offices. “Ninety-six percent of the coins that we hold in custody are in the hands of people who are keeping those coins as an investment,” Casares continued. 96% of the coins held in custody by Xapo are inert.  According to a dated presentation, the same phenomenon takes place with Coinbase users too. Perhaps this behavior will change in the future, though, if not it seems unclear how this particular “to the people” narrative can take place when few large holders of a static money supply are willing to part with their virtual collectibles.  But this dovetails into differences of opinion on rebasing money supplies and that is a topic for a different post. On page 11 the authors describe five stages of psychologically accepting Bitcoin.  In stage one they note that: Stage One: Disdain.  Not even denial, but disdain.  Here’s this thing, it’s supposed to be money, but it doesn’t have any of the characteristics of money with which we’re familiar. I think this is unnecessarily biased.  While I cannot speak for other “skeptics,” I actually started out very enthusiastic — I even mined for over a year — and never went through this strange five step process.  Replace the word “Bitcoin” with any particular exciting technology or philosophy from the past 200 years and the five stage process seems half-baked at best. On page 13 they state, “Public anxiety over such risks could prompt an excessive response from regulators, strangling the project in its infancy.”  Similarly on page 118 regarding the proposed New York BitLicense, “It seemed farm more draconian than expected and prompted an immediate backlash from a suddenly well-organized bitcoin community.” This is a fairly alarmist statement.  It could be argued that due to its anarchic code-as-law coupled with its intended decentralized topology, that it could not be strangled.  If a certain amount of block creating processors (miners) was co-opted by organizations like a government, then a fork would likely occur and participants with differing politics would likely diverge.  A KYC chain versus an anarchic chain (which is what we see in practice with altchains such as Monero and Dash).  Similarly, since there are no real self-regulating organizations (SRO) or efforts to expunge the numerous bad actors in the ecosystem, what did the enthusiasts and authors expect would occur when regulators are faced with complaints? With that said — and I am likely in a small minority here — I do not think the responses thus far from US regulators (among many others) has been anywhere near “excessive,” but that’s my subjective view.  Excessive to me would be explicitly outlawing usage, ownership and mining of cryptocurrencies.  Instead what has occurred is numerous fact finding missions, hearings and even appearances by regulators at events. On page 13 the authors state that “Cryptocurrency’s rapid development is in some ways a quirk of history: launched in the throes of the 2008 financial crisis, bitcoin offered an alternative to a system — the existing financial system — that was blowing itself up and threatening to take a few billion people down with it.” This is retcon.  Satoshi Nakamoto, if he is to be believed, stated that he began coding the project in mid-2007.  It is more of a coincidence than anything else that this project was completed around the same time that global stock indices were at their lowest in decades. On page 21 the authors state that, “Bitcoin seeks to address this challenge by offering users a system of trust based not on human being but on the inviolable laws of mathematics.” While the first part is true, it is a bit cliche to throw in the “maths” reason.  There are numerous projects in the financial world alone that are run by programs that use math.  In fact, all computer programs and networks use some type of math at their foundation, yet no one claims that the NYSE, pace-makers, traffic intersections or airplanes are run by “math-based logic” (or on page 66, “”inviolable-algorithm-based system”).  A more accurate description is that Bitcoin’s monetary system is rule-based, using a static perfectly inelastic supply in contrast to either the dynamic or discretionary world humans live in.  Whether this is desirable or not is a different topic. On page 26 they describe the Chartalist school of thought, the view that money is political, that “looks past the thing of currency and focuses instead on the credit and trust relationships between the individual and society at large that currency embodies” […] “currency is merely the token or symbol around which this complex system is arranged.” This is in contrast to the ‘metallist’ mindset of some others in the Bitcoin community, such as Wences Casares and Jon Matonis (perhaps there is a distinct third group for “barterists”?). I thought this section was well-written and balanced (e.g., appropriate citation of David Graeber on page 28; and description of what “seigniorage” is on page 30 and again on page 133). On page 27 the authors write, “Yet many other cryptocurrency believers, including a cross section of techies and businessmen who see a chance to disrupt the bank centric payments system are de facto charatalists.  They describe bitcoin not as a currency but as a payments protocol.” Perhaps this is true.  Yet from the original Nakamoto whitepaper, perhaps he too was a chartalist?  Stating in section 1: Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. A payments rail, a currency, perhaps both? Fun fact: the word “payment” appears 12 times in the whole white paper, just one time less than the word “trust” appears. On page 29 they cite the Code of Hammurabi.  I too think this is a good reference, having made a similar reference to the Code in Chapter 2 of my book last year. On page 31 they write, “Today, China grapples with competition to its sovereign currency, the yuan, due both to its citizens’ demand for foreign national currencies such as the dollar and to a fledgling but potentially important threat from private, digital currencies such as bitcoin.” That is a bit of a stretch.  While Chinese policy makers do likely sweat over the creative ways residents breach and maneuver around capital controls, it is highly unlikely that bitcoin is even on the radar as a high level “threat.”  There is no bitcoin merchant economy in China.  The vast majority of activity continues to be related to mining and trading on exchanges, most of which is inflated by internal market making bots (e.g., the top three exchanges each run bots that dramatically inflate the volume via tape painting).  And due to how WeChat and other social media apps in China frictionlessly connect residents with their mainland bank accounts, it is unlikely that bitcoin will make inroads in the near future. On page 36 they write, “By 1973, once every country had taken its currency off the dollar peg, the pact was dead, a radical change.” In point of fact, there are 23 countries that still peg their currency to the US dollar.  Post-1973 saw a number of flexible and managed exchange rate regimes as well as notable events such as the Plaza Accord and Asian Financial Crisis (that impacted the local pegs). On page 39 they write, “By that score, bitcoin has something to offer: a remarkable capacity to facilitate low-cost, near-instant transfer of value anywhere in the world.” The point of contention here is the “low-cost” — something that the authors never really discuss the logistics of.  They are aware of “seigniorage” and inflationary “block rewards” yet they do not describe the actual costs of maintaining the network which in the long run, the marginal costs equal the marginal value (MC=MV). This is an issue that I tried to bring up with them at the Google Author Talk last month (I asked them both questions during the Q&A): The problem for Vigna’s view, (starting around 59m) is that if the value of a bitcoin fell to $30, not only would the network collectively “be cheaper” to maintain, but also to attack. On paper, the cost to successfully attack the network today by obtaining more than 50% of the hashrate at this $30 price point would be $2,250 per hour (roughly 0.5 x MC) or roughly an order of magnitude less than it does at today’s market price (although in practice it is a lot less due to centralization).  Recall that the security of bitcoin was purposefully designed around proportionalism, that in the long run it costs a bitcoin to secure a bitcoin.  We will talk about fees later at the end of next chapter. On page 43, in the note at the bottom related to Ray Dillinger’s characterization that bitcoin is “highly inflationary” — Dillinger is correct in the short run.  The money supply will increase by 11% alone this year.  And while in the long run the network is deflationary (via block reward halving), the fact that the credentials to the bearer assets (bitcoins) are lost and destroyed each year results in a non-negligible amount of deflation. For instance, in chapter 12 I noted some research: in terms of losing bitcoins, the chart below illustrates what the money supply looks like with an annual loss of 5% (blue), 1% (red) and 0.1% (green) of all mined bitcoins. Source: Kay Hamacher and Stefan Katzenbeisser In December 2011, German researchers Kay Hamacher and Stefan Katzenbeisser presented research about the impact of losing the private key to a bitcoin. The chart above shows the asymptote of the money supply (Y-axis) over time (X-axis). So to get rid of inflation, they designed the protocol that over time, there is this creation of new bitcoins – that this goes up and saturates at some level which is 21 million bitcoins in the end. But that is rather a naïve picture. Probably you have as bad luck I have, I have had several hard drive crashes in my lifetime, and what happens when your wallet where your bitcoins are stored and your private key vanish? Then your bitcoins are probably still in the system so to speak, so they are somewhat identifiable in all the transactions but they are not accessible so they are of no economic value anymore. You cannot exchange them because you cannot access them. Or think more in the future, someone dies but his family doesn’t know the password – no economic value in those bitcoins anymore. They cannot be used for any exchange anymore. And that is the amount of bitcoins when just a fraction per year vanish for different fractions. So the blue curve is 5% of all the bitcoins per year vanish by whatever means there could be other mechanisms. It is unclear exactly how many bitcoins can be categorized in such a manner today or what the decay rate is. On page 45 the authors write, “Some immediately homed in on a criticism of bitcoin that would become common: the energy it would take to harvest “bitbux” would cost more than they were worth, not to mention be environmentally disastrous.” While I am unaware of anyone who states that it would cost more than what they’re worth, as stated in Appendix B and in Chapter 3 (among many other places), the network was intentionally designed to be expensive, otherwise it would be “cheap to attack.”  And those costs scale in proportion to the token value. For instance, last year O’Dwyer and Malone found that Bitcoin mining consumes roughly the same amount of energy as Ireland does annually.  It is likely that their estimate was too high and based on Dave Hudson’s calculations closer to 10% of Ireland’s energy consumption.23 Furthermore, it has likely declined since their study because, as previously explored in Appendix B, this scales in proportion with the value of the token which has declined over the past year. The previous post looked at bitcoin payments processed by BitPay and found that as an aggregate the above-board activity on the Bitcoin network was likely around $350 million a year.  Ireland’s nominal GDP is expected to reach around $252 billion this year.  Thus, once Hudson’s estimates are integrated into it, above-board commercial bitcoin activity appears to be about two orders of magnitude less than what Ireland produces for the same amount of energy. Or in other words, the original responses to Nakamoto six and a half years ago empirically was correct.  It is expensive and resource intensive to maintain and it was designed to be so, otherwise it would be easy to attack, censor and modify the history of votes. Starting on page 56 they describe Mondex, Secure Electronic Transaction (SET), Electronic Monetary System, Citi’s e-cash model and a variety of other digital dollar systems that were developed during the 1990s.  Very interesting from a historical perspective and it would be curious to know what more of these developers now think of cryptocurrency systems.  My own view, is that the middle half of Chapter 2 is the best part of the book: very well researched and well distilled. [T]hat Nakamoto launched his project with a reminder that his new currency would require no government, no banks and no financial intermediaries, “no trusted third party.” In theory this may be true, but in practice, the Bitcoin network does not natively provide any of the services banks do beyond a lock box.  There is a difference between money and the cornucopia of financial instruments that now exist and are natively unavailable to Bitcoin users without the use of intermediaries (such as lending). On page 66 they write, “He knew that the ever-thinning supply of bitcoins would eventually require an alternative carrot to keep miners engaged, so he incorporated a system of modest transaction fees to compensate them for the resources they contributed.  These fees would kick in as time went on and as the payoff for miners decreased.” That’s the theory and the popular narrative. However, what does it look like in practice? Above is a chart visualizing fees to miners denominated in USD from January 2009 to May 17, 2015.  Perhaps the fees will indeed increase to replace block rewards, or conversely, maybe as VC funding declines in the coming years, the companies that are willing and able to pay fees for each transaction declines. On page 67, the authors introduce us to Laszlo Hanyecz, a computer programmer in Florida who according to the brief history of Bitcoin lore, purchased two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins on May 22, 2010 (almost five years ago to the day).  He is said to have sold 40,000 bitcoins in this manner and generated all of the bitcoins through mining.  He claims to be the first person to do GPU mining, ramping up to “over 800 times” of a CPU; and during this time “he was getting about half of all the bitcoins mined.”  According to him, he originally used a Nvidia 9800 GTX+ and later switched to 2 AMD Radeon 5970s.  It is unclear how long he mined or when he stopped. In looking at the index of his server, there are indeed relevant OpenCL software files.  If this is true, then he beat ArtForz to GPU mining by at least two months. Source: Laszlo Hanyecz personal server On page 77 they write, “Anybody can go on the Web, download the code for no cost, and start running it as a miner.” While technically this is true, that you can indeed download the Satoshi Bitcoin core client for free, restated in 2015 it is not viable for hoi polloi.  In practice you will not generate any bitcoins solo-mining on a desktop machine unless you do pooled mining circa 2011.  Today, even pooled mining with the best Xeon processors will be unprofitable.  Instead, the only way to generate enough funds to cover both the capital expenditures and operating expenditures is through the purchase of single-use hardware known as an ASIC miner, which is a depreciating capital good.  Mining has been beyond the breakeven reach of most non-savvy home users for two years now, not to mention it will not be double-spent let alone confirmed and packaged into a block.  See also replace-by-fee proposal. Small note on page 132, “the bitcoin protocol won’t let it use those bitcoins in a payment until a total of ninety-nine additional blocks have been built on top its block.” Sometimes it depends on the client and may be up to 120 blocks altogether, not just 100. On page 133 they write, “Anyone can become a miner and is free to use whatever computing equipment he or she can come up with to participate.” This may have been the case in 2009 but not true today.  In order to reduce payout variance, the means of production as it were, have gravitated towards large pools of capital in the form of hashing farms.  See also: The Gambler’s Guide to Bitcoin Mining. On page 135 they write, “Some cryptocurrency designers have created nonprofit foundations and charged them with distributing the coins based on certain criteria — to eligible charities, for example. But that requires the involvement of an identifiable and trusted founder to create the foundation.” The FinCEN enforcement action and fine on Ripple Labs may put a kibosh on this in the future.  Why?  If organizations that hand out or sell coins are deemed under the purview of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) it is clear that most, if not all, crowdfunding or initial coin offerings (ICO) are violating this by not implementing KYC/AML requirements on participants or filing SARs. On page 136 they write, “Both seigniorage and transaction fees represent a transfer of value to those running the network. Still, in the grand scheme of things, these costs are far lower than anything found in the old system.” This is untrue and an inaccurate comparison.  We know that at the current bitcoin price of $240 it costs roughly $315 million to operate the network for the entire year.  If bitcoin-based consumer spending patterns hold up and reflect last years trends seen by BitPay, then roughly $350 million will be spent through payment processors, nearly half of which includes mining payouts. Or in other words, for roughly every dollar spent on commerce another dollar is spent securing it.  This is massive oversecurity relative to the commerce involve.  Neither Saudi Arabia or even North Korea spend half of, let alone 100% of their GDP on military expenditures (yet). Small nitpick on page 140, Butterfly Labs is based in Leawood, Kansas not Missouri (Leawood is on the west side of the dividing line). I think the story of Jason Whelan is illuminating and could help serve as a warning guide to anyone wanting to splurge on mining hardware. For instance on page 141, “And right from the start Whelan face the mathematical reality that his static hashrate was shrinking as a proportion of the ever-expanding network, whose computing power was by then almost doubling every month.” Not only was this well-written but it does summarize the problem most new miners have when they plan out their capital expenditures.  It is impossible to know what the network difficulty will be in 3 months yet what is known is that even if you are willing to tweak the hardware and risk burning out some part of your board, your hashrate could be diluted by faster more efficient machines.  And Whelan found out the hard way that he might as well bought and held onto bitcoins than mine.  In fact, Whelan did just about everything the wrong way, including buying hashing contracts with cloud miners from “PBCMining.com” (a non-functioning url). On page 144 the authors discussed the mining farms managed by now-defunct CoinTerra: With three in-built high-powered fans running at top speed to cool the rig while its internal chi races through calculations, each unit consumes two kilowatts per hour, enough power to run an ordinary laptop for a month. That makes for 20 kWh per tower, about ten times the electricity used for the same space by the neighboring server of more orthodox e-commerce firms. As noted in Chapter 2 above, this electricity has to be “wasted.”  Bitcoin was designed to be “inefficient” otherwise it would be easy to attack and censor.  And in the future, it cannot become more “efficient” — there is no free lunch when it comes to protecting it.  It also bears mentioning that CoinTerra was sued by its utility company in part for the $12,000 a day in electrical costs that were not being paid for. On page 145 they wrote that as of June 2014, “By that time, the network, which was then producing 88,000 trillion hashes every second, had a computing power six thousand times the combined power of the world’s top five hundred supercomputers.” This is not a fair comparison.  ASIC miners can do one sole function, they are unable to do anything aside from reorganize a few fields (such as date and nonce) with the aim of generating a new number below a target number.  They cannot run MS Office, Mozilla Firefox and more sobering: they cannot even run a Bitcoin client (the Pi computer run by the pool runs the client). In contrast, in order to be recognized as a Top 500 computer, only general purpose machines capable of running LINXPACK are considered eligible.  The entire comparison is apples-to-oranges. On page 147 the authors described a study from Guy Lane who used inaccurate energy consumption data from Blockchain.info.  And then they noted that, “So although the total consumption is significantly higher than the seven-thousand-home estimate, we’re a long way from bitcoin’s adding an entire country’s worth of power consumption to the world.” This is not quite true.  As noted above in the notes of Chapter 2 above, based on Dave Hudson’s calculations the current Bitcoin network consumes the equivalent of about 10% of Ireland’s annual energy usage yet produces two orders of magnitude less economic activity.  If the price of bitcoin increases so to does the amount of energy miners are willing to expend to chase after the seigniorage.  See also Appendix B. For one, power consumption must be measured against the value of validating transactions in a payment system, a social service that gold mining has never provided.  Second, the costs must be weighed against the high energy costs of the alternative, traditional payment system, with its bank branches, armored cars, and security systems. And finally, there’s the overriding incentive for efficiency that the profit motive delivers to innovators, which is why we’ve seen such giant reductions in power consumption for the new mining machines. If power costs make mining unprofitable, it will stop. First of all, validation is cheap and easy, as noted above it is typically done with something like a Pi computer.  Second, they could have looked into how much real commerce is taking place on the chain relative to the costs of securing it so the “social service” argument probably falls flat at this time. Thirdly, the above “armored cars and security systems” is not an apples-to-apples comparison.  Bitcoin does not provide any banking service beyond a lock box, it does not provide for home mortgages, small business loans or mezzanine financing.  The costs for maintaining those services in the traditional world do not equate to MC=MV as described at the end of Chapter 1 notes. Fourthly, they ignore the Red Queen effect.  If a new hashing machine is invented and consumes half as much energy as before then the farm owner will just double the amount of machines and the net effect is the same as before.  This happens in practice, not just in theory, hence the reason why electrical consumption has gone up in aggregate and not down. On page 149 they write, “But the genius of the consensus-building in the bitcoin system means such forks shouldn’t be allowed to go on for long. That’s because the mining community works on the assumption that the longest chain is the one that constitutes consensus.” That’s not quite accurate.  Each miner has different incentives.  And, as shown empirically with other altcoins, forks can reoccur frequently without incentives that align.  For now, some incentives apparently do.  But that does not mean that in the future, if say watermarked coins become more common place, that there will not be more frequent forks as certain miners attempt to double-spend or censor such metacoins. Ironically on page 151 the authors describe the fork situation of March 2013 and describe the fix in which a few core developers convince Mark Karpeles (who ran Mt. Gox) to unilaterally adopt one specific fork.  This is not trustless. On page 151 they write, “That’s come to be known as a 51 percent attack.  Nakamoto’s original paper stated that the bitcoin mining network could be guaranteed to treat everyone’s transactions fairly and honestly so long as no single miner or mining group owned more than 50 percent of the hashing power.” And continuing on page 153, “So, the open-source development community is now looking for added protections against selfish mining and 51 percent attacks.” While they do a good job explaining the issue, they don’t really discuss how it is resolved.  And it cannot be without gatekeepers or trusted hardware.  For instance, three weeks ago there was a good reddit thread discussing one of the problems of Andreas Antonopolous’  slippery slope view that you could just kick the attackers off the network.  First, there is no quick method for doing so; second, by blacklisting them you introduce a new problem of having the ability to censor miners which would be self-defeating for such a network as it introduces a form of trust into an expensive cost structure of trust minimization. On page 152 they cite a Coinometrics number, “in the summer of 2014 the cost of the mining equipment and electricity required for a 51 percent attack stood at $913 million.” This is a measurement of maximum costs based on hashrate brute force — a Maginot Line attack.  In practice it is cheaper to do via out of band attacks (e.g., rubber hose cryptanalysis).  There are many other, cheaper ways, to attack the P2P network itself (such as Eclipse attacks). On page 154 when discussing wealth disparity in Bitcoin they write, “First, some perspective.  As a wealth-gap measure, this is a lousy one.  For one, addresses are not wallets.  The total number of wallets cannot be known, but they are by definition considerably fewer than the address tally, even though many people hold more than one.” Finally.  So the past several chapters I have mentioned I will discuss wallets at some length.  Again, the authors for some reason uncritically cite the “wallet numbers” from Blockchain.info, Coinbase and others as actual digital wallets.  Yet here they explain that these metrics are bupkis.  And they are.  It costs nothing to generate a wallet and there are scripts you can run to auto generate them.  In fact, Zipzap and many others used to give every new user a Blockchain.info wallet por gratis. And this is problematic because press releases from Xapo and Blockchain.info continually cite a number that is wholly inaccurate and distorting.  For instance Wences Casares said in a presentation a couple months ago that there were 7 million users.  Where did that number come from?  Are these on-chain privkey holders?  Why are journalists not questioning these claims?  See also: A brief history of Bitcoin “wallet” growth. On page 154 they write, “These elites have an outsize impact on the bitcoin economy. They have a great interest in seeing the currency succeed and are both willing and able to make payments that others might not, simply to encourage adoption.” Perhaps this is true, but until there is a systematic study of the conspicuous consumption that takes place, it could also be the case that some of these same individuals just have an interest in seeing the price of bitcoin rise and not necessarily be widely adopted.  The two are not mutually exclusive. On page 155 and 156 they describe the bitsat project, to launch a full node into space which is aimed “at making the mining network less concentrated.” Unfortunately these types of full nodes are not block makers.  Thus they do not actually make the network less concentrated, but only add more propagating nodes.  The two are not the same. On page 156 they describe some of the altcoin projects, “They claim to take the good aspects of bitcoin’s decentralized structure but to get ride of its negative elements, such as the hashing-power arms race, the excessive use of electricity, and the concentration of industrialized mining power.” I am well aware of the dozens various coin projects out there due to work with a digital asset exchange over the past year.  Yet fundamentally all of the proof-of-work based coins end up along the same trend line, if they become popular and reach a certain level of “market cap” (an inaccurate term) specialized chips are designed to hash it.  And the term “excessive” energy related to proof-of-work is a bit of a non-starter.  Ignoring proof-of-stake systems, if it becomes less energy intensive to hash via POW, then it also becomes cheaper to attack.  Either miners will add more equipment or the price has dropped for the asset and it is therefore cheaper to attack. On page 157 regarding Litecoin they write that, “Miners still have an incentive to chase coin rewards, but the arms race and the electricity usage aren’t as intense.” That’s untrue.  Scrypt (which is used instead of Hashcash) is just as energy intensive.  Miners will deploy and utilize energy in the same patterns, directly in proportion to the token price.  The difference is memory usage (Litecoin was designed to be more memory intensive) but that is unrelated to electrical consumption. Continuing, “Litecoin’s main weakness is the corollary of its strength: because it’s cheaper to mine litecoins and because scrypt-based rigs can be used to mine other scrypt-based altcoins such as dogecoin, miners are less heavily invested in permanently working its blockchain.” This is untrue.  Again, Litecoin miners will in general only mine up to the point where it costs a litecoin to make a litecoin.  Obviously there are exceptions to it, but in percentage terms the energy usage is the same. Continuing, “Some also worry that scrypt-based mining is more insecure, with a less rigorous proof of work, in theory allowing false transactions to get through with incorrect confirmations.” This is not true.  The two difference in security are the difficulty rating and block intervals.  The higher the difficulty rating, the more energy is being used to bury blocks and in theory, the more secure the blocks are from reversal.  The question is then, is 2.5 minutes of proof-of-work as secure as burying blocks every 10 minutes?  Jonathan Levin, among others, has written about this before. Small nitpick on page 157, fairly certain that nextcoin should be referred to as NXT. If bitcoin is to scale up, it must be upgraded sot hat nodes, currently limited to one megabyte of data per ten-minute block, are free to process a much larger set of information.  That’s not technically difficult; but it would require miners to hash much larger blocks of transactions without big improvements in their compensation.  Developers are currently exploring a transaction-fee model that would provide fairer compensation for miners if the amount of data becomes excessive. This is not quite right.  There is a difference between block makers (pools) and hashers (mining farms).  The costs for larger blocks would impact block makers not hashers, as they would need to upgrade their network facilities and local hard drive.  This may seem trivial and unimportant, but Jonathan Levin’s research, as well as others suggest that block sizes does in fact impact orphan rates.5 It also impacts the amount of decentralization within the network as larger blocks become more expensive to propagate you will likely have fewer nodes.  This has been the topic of immense debate over the past several weeks on social media. The laboratory used by cryptocurrency developers, by contrast, is potentially as big as the world itself, the breadth of humanity that their projects seek to encompass. No company rulebook or top-down set of managerial instructions keeps people’s choice in line with a common corporate objective. Guiding people to optimal behavior in cryptocurrencies is entirely up to how the software is designed to affect human thinking, how effectively its incentive systems encourage that desired behavior This is wishful thinking and probably unrealistic considering that Bitcoin development permanently suffers from the tragedy of the commons.  There is no CEO which is both good and bad. For example, directions for where development goes is largely based on two things: This is no way to build a financial product.  Yet this type of lobbying is effectively how the community believes it will usurp well-capitalized private entities in the payments space. Several months ago a user, BitttBurger, made a similar observation: I’ve said it before and I will say it again. There is a reason why Developers should not be in control of product development priorities, naming, feature lists, or planning for a product. That is the job of the sales, marketing, and product development teams who actually interface with the customer. They are the ones who do the research and know what’s needed for a product. They are the ones who are supposed to decide what things are called, what features come next, and how quickly shit gets out the door. Bitcoin has none of that. You’ve got a Financial product, being created for a financial market, by a bunch of developers with no experience in finance, and (more importantly) absolutely no way for the market to have any input or control over what gets done, or what it’s called. That is crazy to me. Luke is a perfect example of why you don’t give developers control over anything other than the structure of the code. They are not supposed to be making product development decisions. They are not supposed to be naming anything. And they definitely are not supposed to be deciding “what comes next” or how quickly things get done. In any other company, this process would be considered suicide. Yet for some reason this is considered to be a feature rather than a bug (e.g., “what is your Web of Trust (WoT) number?”). On page 159 they write, “The vital thing to remember is that the collective brainpower applied to all the challenges facing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is enormous.  Under the open-source, decentralized model, these technologies are not hindered by the same constraints that bureaucracies and stodgy corporations face.” So, what is the Terms of Service for Bitcoin?  What is the customer support line?  There isn’t one.  Caveat emptor is pretty much the marketing slogan and that is perfectly fine for some participants yet expecting global adoption without a “stodgy” “bureaucracy” that helps coordinate customer service seems a bit of a stretch. And just because there is some avid interest from a number of skilled programmers around the world does not mean public goods problems surrounding development will be resolved.  For reference: there were over 5000 co-authors on a recent physics paper but that doesn’t mean their collective brain power will quickly resolve all the open questions and unsolved problems in physics. Small nitpick on page 160, “Bitcoin was born out of a crypto-anarchist vision of a decentralized government-free society, a sort of encrypted, networked utopia.” As noted above, there is actually no encryption used in Bitcoin. On page 162 they write, “Before we get too carried away, understand this is still early days.” That may be the case.  Perhaps decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are not actually the internet in the early 1990s like many investors claim but rather the internet in the 1980s when there were almost no real use-cases and it is difficult to use.  Or 1970s.  The problem is no one can actually know the answer ahead of time. And when you try to get put some milestone down on the ground, the most ardent of enthusiasts move the goal posts — no comparisons with existing tech companies are allowed unless it is to the benefit of Bitcoin somehow.  I saw this a lot last summer when I discussed the traction that M-Pesa and Venmo had. A more recent example is “rebittance” (a portmanteau of “bitcoin” and “remittance”).  A couple weeks ago Yakov Kofner, founder of Save On Send, published a really good piece comparing money transmitter operators with bitcoin-related companies noting that there currently is not much meat to the hype.  The reaction on reddit was unsurprisingly fist-shaking Bitcoin rules, everyone else drools. With Yakov Kofner (CEO Save On Send) When I was in NYC last week I had a chance to meet with him twice.  It turns out that he is actually quite interested in Bitcoin and even scoped out a project with a VC-funded Bitcoin company last year for a consumer remittances product. But they decided not to build and release it for a few reasons: 1) in practice, many consumers are not sensitive enough to a few percentage savings because of brand trust/loyalty/habit; 2) lacking smartphones and reliable internet infrastructure, the cash-in, cash-out aspect is still the main friction facing most remittance corridors in developing countries, bitcoin does not solve that; 3) it boils down to an execution race and it will be hard to compete against incumbents let alone well-funded MTO startups (like TransferWise). That’s not to say these rebittance products are not good and will not find success in niches. For instance, I also spoke with Marwan Forzley (below), CEO of Align Commerce last week.  Based on our conversation, in terms of volume his B2B product appears to have more traction than BitPay and it’s less than a year old.  What is one of the reasons why?  Because the cryptocurrency aspect is fully abstracted away from customers. Raja Ramachandran (R3CEV), Dan O’Prey (Hyperledger), Daniel Feichtinger (Hyperledger), Marwan Forzley (Align Commerce) In addition, both BitX and Coins.ph — based on my conversations in Singapore two weeks ago with their teams — seem to be gaining traction in a couple corridors in part because they are focusing on solving actual problems (automating the cash-in/cash-out process) and abstracting away the tech so that the average user is oblivious of what is going on behind the scenes. Markus Gnirck (StartupBootCamp), Antony Lewis (itBit) and Ron Hose (Coins.ph) at the DBS Hackathon event On page 162 and 163 the authors write about the Bay Area including 20Mission and Digital Tangible.  There is a joke in this space that every year in cryptoland is accelerated like dog years.  While 20Mission, the communal housing venue, still exists, the co-working space shut down late last year.  Similarly, Digital Tangible has rebranded as Serica and broadened from just precious metals and into securities.  In addition, Dan Held (page 164) left Blockchain.info and is now at ChangeTip. On page 164 they write, “But people attending would go on to become big names in the bitcoin world: Among them were Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, the founders of Coinbase, which is second only to Blockchain as a leader in digital-wallet services and one of the biggest processors of bitcoin payments for businesses.” 10 pages before this they said how useless digital wallet metrics are.  It would have been nice to press both Armstrong and Ehrsam to find out what their actual KYC’ed active users to see if the numbers are any different than the dated presentation. “It’s a very specific type of brain that’s obsessed with bitcoin,” says Adam Draper, the fourth-generation venture capitalist…” I hear this often but what does that mean?  Is investing genetic?  If so, surely there are more studies on it? For instance, later on page 176 they write, “The youngest Draper, who tells visitors to his personal web site that his life’s ambition is to assist int he creation of an iron-man suit, has clearly those who live in developing countries with poor electrical infrastructure or uncompetitive energy rates.  It is unlikely that embedded mining devices will change that equation due to the fact that every additional device increases the difficultly level whilst the device hashrate remains static. This ties in with what the authors also wrote on page 77, “You don’t buy bitcoin’s software as you would other products, which means you’re not just a customer.  What’s more, there’s no owner of the software — unlike, say, PayPal, which is part of eBay.” This is a bit misleading.  In order to use the Bitcoin network, users must obtain bitcoins somehow.  And in practice that usually occurs through trusted third parties such as Coinbase or Xapo which need to identify you via KYC/AML processes.  So while in 2009 their quote could have been true, in practice today that is largely untrue for most new participants — someone probably owns the software and your personal data.  In fact, a germane quote on reddit last week stated, “Why don’t you try using Bitcoin instead of Coinbase.” Furthermore, the lack of “ownership” of Bitcoin is dual-edged as there are a number of public goods problems with maintaining development that will be discussed later. On page 87 they describe Blockchain.info as a “high-profile wallet and analytics firm.”  I will come back to “wallets” later.  Note: most of these “wallets” are likely throwaway, temp wallets used to move funds to obfuscate provenance through the use of Shared Coin (one of the ways Blockchain.info generates revenue is by operating a mixer). Overall Chapter 3 was also fairly informative.  The one additional quibble I have is that Austin and Beccy Craig (the story at the end) were really only able to travel the globe and live off bitcoins for 101 days because they had a big cushion: they had held a fundraiser that raised $72,995 of additional capital.  That is enough money to feed and house a family in a big city for a whole year, let alone go globe trotting for a few months. On page 99 they describe seven different entities that have access to credit card information when you pay for a coffee at Starbucks manually.  Yet they do not describe the various entities that end up with the personal information when signing up for services such as Coinbase, ChangeTip, Circle and Xapo or what these depository institutions ultimately do with the data (see also Richard Brown’s description of the payment card system). When describing cash back rewards that card issuers provide to customers, on page 100 they write, “Still it’s an illusion to think you are not paying for any of this.  The costs are folded into various bank charges: card issuance fees, ATM fees, checking fees, and, of course, the interest charged on the millions of customers who don’t pay their balances in full each month.” Again, to be even handed they should also point out all the fees that Coinbase charges, Bitcoin ATMs charge and so forth.  Do any of these companies provide interest-bearing accounts or cash-back rewards? On page 100 they also stated that, “Add in the cost of fraud, and you can see how this “sand in the cogs” of the global payment system represents a hindrance to growth, efficiency, and progress.” That seems a bit biased here.  And my statement is not defending incumbents: global payment systems are decentralized yet many provide fraud protection and insurance — the very same services that Bitcoin companies are now trying to provide (such as FDIC insurance on fiat deposits) which are also not free. On page 100 they also write, “We need these middlemen because the world economy still depends on a system in which it is impossible to digitally send money from one person to another without turning to an independent third party to verify the identity of the customer and confirm his or her right to call on the funds in the account.” Again, in practice, this is now true for Bitcoin too because of how most adoption continues to take place on the edges in trusted third parties such as Coinbase and Circle. In letting the existing system develop, we’ve allowed Visa and MasterCard to form a de facto duopoly, which gives them and their banking partners power to manipulate the market, says Gil Luria, an analyst covering payment systems at Wedbush Securities.  Those card-network firms “not only get to extract very significant fees for themselves but have also created a marketplace in which banks can charge their own excessive fees,” he says. Why is it wrong to charge fees for a service?  What is excessive?  I am certainly not defending incumbents or regulatory favoritism but it is unclear how Bitcoin institutions in practice — not theory — actually are any different. And, the cost per transaction for Bitcoin is actually quite high (see chart below) relative to these other systems due to the fact that Bitcoin also tries to be a seigniorage system, something that neither Visa or MasterCard do. On page 102 when talking about MasterCard they state, “But as we’ve seen, that cumbersome system, as it is currently designed, is tightly interwoven into the traditional banking system, which always demands a cut.” The whole page actually is a series of apples-and-oranges comparisons.  Aside from settlement, the Bitcoin network does not provide any of the services that they are comparing it to.  There is nothing in the current network that provides credit/lending services whereas the existing “cumbersome” system was not intentionally designed to be cumbersome, but rather is intertwined and evolved over decades so that customers can have access to a variety of otherwise siloed services.  Again, this is not to say the situation cannot be improved but as it currently exists, Bitcoin does not provide a solution to this “cumbersome” system because it doesn’t provide similar services. On page 102 and 103 they write about payment processors such as BitPay and Coinbase, “These firms touted a new model to break the paradigm of merchants’ dependence on the bank-centric payment system described above.  These services charged monthly fees that amounted to significantly lower transaction costs for merchants than those charged in credit-card transactions and delivered swift, efficient payments online or on-site.” Except this is not really true.  The only reason that both BitPay and Coinbase are charging less than other payment processors is that VC funding is subsidizing it.  These companies still have to pay for customer service support and fraud protection because customer behavior in aggregate is the same.  And as we have seen with BitPay numbers, it is likely that BitPay’s business model is a losing proposition and unsustainable. On page 103 they mention some adoption metrics, “The good news is found in the steady expansion in the adoption of digital wallets, the software needed to send and receive bitcoins, with Blockchain and Coinbase, the two biggest providers of those, on track to top 2 million unique users each at the time of the writing.” This is at least the third time they talk about wallets this way and is important because it is misleading, I will discuss in-depth later. Blockchain cofounder Peter Smith says that a surprisingly large majority of its accounts — “many more than you would think,” he says cryptically — are characterized as “active.” This is just untrue and should have been pressed by the authors.  Spokesman from Blockchain.info continue to publish highly inflated numbers.  For instance in late February 2015, Blockchain.info claimed that “over $270 million in bitcoin transactions occurred via its wallets over the past seven days.” This is factually untrue.  As I mentioned three months ago: Organ of Corti pointed out that the 7 day average was indeed ~720,000 bitcoins in total output volume (thus making) the weekly volume would be about “5e06 btc for the network.” Is it valid to multiply the total output volume by USD (or euros or yen)?  No. Why not?  Because most of this activity is probably a combination of wallet shuffling, laundering and mixing of coins (e.g., use of SharedSend and burner wallets) or any number of superfluous activity.  It was not $270 million of economic trade. Blockchain.info’s press release seems to be implying that economic trade is taking place, in which all transactions are (probably) transactions to new individuals when in reality it could simply be a lot of “change” address movement.  And more to the point, the actual internal volume looks roughly the same as has been the past few months (why issue a press release now?). Continuing on page 103 they write, “For the first eight months months of 2014, around $50 million per day was passing thought the bitcoin network (some of which was just “change” that bitcoin transactions create as an accounting measure)…” There is a small typo above (in bold) but the important part is the estimate of volume.  There is no public research showing a detailed break down of average volume of economic activity.  Based on a working paper I published four months ago, it is fairly clear that this figure is probably in the low millions USD at most.  Perhaps this will change in the future. On page 106 they write about Circle and Xapo: For now, these firms make no charge to cover costs of insurance and security, betting that enough customers will be drawn to them and pay fees elsewhere — for buying and selling bitcoins, for example — or that their growing popularity will allow them to develop profitable merchant-payment services as well.  But over all, these undertaking must add costs back into the bitcoin economy, not to mention a certain dependence on “trusted third parties.”  It’s one of many areas of bitcoin development — another is regulation — where some businessmen are advocating a pragmatic approach to bolstering public confidence, one that would necessitate compromises on some of the philosophical principles behind a model of decentralization.  Naturally, this doesn’t sit well with bitcoin purists. While Paul Vigna may not have written this, he did say something very similar at the Google Author Talk event (above in the video). The problem with this view is that it is a red herring: this has nothing to do with purism or non-purism. The problem is that Bitcoin’s designer attempted to create a ‘permissionless’ system to accommodate pseudonymous actors.  The entire cost structure and threat model are tied to this.  If actors are no longer pseudonymous, then there is no need to have this cost structure, or to use proof-of-work at all.  In fact, I would argue that if KYC/KYM (Know Your Miner) are required then a user might just as well use a database or permissioned system.  And that is okay, there are businesses that will be built around that. This again has nothing to do with purism and everything to do with the costs of creating a reliable record of truth on a public network involving unknown, untrusted actors.  If any of those variables changes — such as adding real-world identity, then from a cost perspective it makes little sense to continue using the modified network due to the intentionally expensive proof-of-work. On page 107 they talk about bitcoin price volatility discussing the movements of gasoline.  The problem with this analogy is that no one is trying to use gasoline as money.  In practice consumers prefer purchasing power stability and there is no mechanism within the Bitcoin network that can provide this. The three slides above are from a recent presentation from Robert Sams.  Sams previously wrote a short paper on “Seigniorage Shares” — an endogenous way to rebase for purchasing power stability within a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s money supply is perfectly inelastic therefore the only way to reflect changes in demand is through changes in price.  And anytime there are future expectations of increased or decreased utility, this is reflected in prices via volatility. Oddly however, on page 110, they write, “A case can be made that bitcoin’s volatility is unavoidable for the time being.” Yet they do not provide any evidence — aside from feel good “Honey Badger” statements — for how bitcoin will somehow stabilize.  This is something the journalists should have drilled down on, talking to commodity traders or some experts on fuel hedging strategies (which is something airline companies spend a great deal of time and resources with). Instead they cite Bobby Lee, CEO of BTC China and Gil Luria once again.  Lee states that “Once its prices has risen far enough and bitcoin has proven itself as a store of value, then people will start to use it as a currency.” This is a collective action problem.  Because all participants each have different time preferences and horizons — and are decentralized — this type of activity is actually impossible to coordinate, just ask Josh Garza and the $20 Paycoin floor.  This also reminds me of one of my favorite comments on reddit: “Bitcoin will stabilize in price then go to the moon.” The writers then note that, “Gil Luria, the Wedbush analyst, even argues that volatility is a good thing, on the grounds that it draws profit-seeking traders into the marketplace.” But just because you have profit-seeking traders in the market place does not mean volatility disappears. For instance, in the chart above we can see how bitcoin trades relative to commodities over the past year: It bears mentioning that Ferdinando Ametrano has also described this issue in depth most recently in a presentation starting on slide 15. Continuing on page 111, the writers note that: Over time, the expansion of these desks, and the development of more and more sophisticated trading tools, delivered so much liquidity that exchange rates became relatively stable.  Luria is imagining a similar trajectory for bitcoin.  He says bitcoiners should be “embracing volatility,” since it will help “create the payment network infrastructure and monetary base” that bitcoin will need in the future. There are two problems with Luria’s argument: 1) As noted above, this does not happen with any other commodity and historically nothing with a perfectly inelastic supply 2) Empirically, as described by Wences Casares above, nearly all the bitcoins held at Xapo (and likely other “hosted wallets”) are being held as investments.  This reduces liquidity which translates into volatility due to once again the inability to slowly adjust the supply relative to the shifts in demand.  This ties into a number of issues discussed in, What is the “real price” of bitcoin? that are worth revisiting. Also on page 111, they write that “the exchange rate itself doesn’t matter.” Actually it does.  It directly impacts two things: 1) outside perception on the health of Bitcoin and therefore investor interest (just talk to Buttercoin); 2) on a ten-minute basis it impacts the bottom line of miners.  If prices decline, so to is the incentive to generate proof-of-work.  Bankruptcy, as CoinTerra faces, is a real phenomenon and if prices decline very quickly then the security of the network can also be reduced due to less proof-of-work being generated Continuing on page 111, “It’s expected that the mirror version of this will in time be set up for consumers to convert their dollars into bitcoins, which will then immediately be sent to the merchant.  Eventually, we could all be blind to these bitcoin conversions happening in the middle of all our transactions.” It’s unfortunate that they do not explain how this will be done without a trusted third party, or why this process is needed.  What is the advantage of going from USD-> paying a conversion fee -> BTC -> conversion fee -> back into USD?  Why not just spend USD and cut out the Bitcoin middleman? Lastly on page 111, “Still, someone will have to absorb the exchange-rate risk, if not the payment processors, then the investors with which they trade.” The problem with this is that its generally not in the mandate or scope of most VC firms to purchase commodities or currencies directly.  In fact, they may even need some kind of license to do so depending on the jurisdiction (because it is a foreign exchange play).  Yet expecting the payment processors to shoulder the volatility is probably a losing proposition: in the event of a protracted bear market how many bitcoins at BitPay — underwater or not — will need to be liquidated to pay for operating costs?4 On page 112 they write, ‘Bitcoin has features from all of them, but none in entirety.  So, while it might seem unsatisfying, our best answer to the question of whether cryptocurrency can challenge the Visa and MasterCard duopoly is, “maybe, maybe not.” On the face of it, it is a safe answer.  But upon deeper inspection we can probably say, maybe not.  Why?  Because for Bitcoin, once again, there is no native method for issuing credit (which is what Visa/MasterCard do with what are essentially micro-loans). For example, in order to natively add some kind of lending facility within the Bitcoin network a new “identity” system would need to be built and integrated (to enable credit checks) — yet by including real-world “identity” it would remove the pseudonymity of Bitcoin while simultaneously maintaining the same costly proof-of-work Sybil protection.  This is again, an unnecessary cost structure entirely and positions Bitcoin as a jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none.  Why?  Again recall that the cost structure is built around Dynamic Membership Multi-Party Signature (DMMS); if the signing validators are static and known you might as well use a database or permissioned ledgers. Or as Robert Sams recently explained, if censorship resistance is co-opted then the reason for proof-of-work falls to the wayside: Now, I am sure that the advocates of putting property titles on the bitcoin blockchain will object at this point. They will say that through meta protocols and multi-key signatures, third party authentication of transaction parties can be built-in, and we can create a registered asset system on top of bitcoin. This is true. But what’s the point of doing it that way? In one fell swoop a setup like that completely nullifies the censorship resistance offered by the bitcoin protocol, which is the whole raison d’etre of proof-of-work in the first place! These designs create a centralised transaction censoring system that imports the enormous costs of a decentralised one built for censorship-resistance, the worst of both worlds. If you are prepared to use trusted third parties for authentication of the counterparts to a transaction, I can see no compelling reason for not also requiring identity authentication of the transaction validators as well. By doing that, you can ditch the gross inefficiencies of proof-of-work and use a consensus algorithm of the one-node-one-vote variety instead that is not only thousands of times more efficient, but also places a governance structure over the validators that is far more resistant to attackers than proof-of-work can ever be. On page 113, they write, “the government might be able to take money out of your local bank account, but it couldn’t touch your bitcoin.  The Cyprus crisis sparked a stampede of money into bitcoin, which was now seen as a safe haven from the generalized threat of government confiscation everywhere.” In theory this may be true, but in practice, it is likely that a significant minority — if not majority — of bitcoins are now held in custody at depository institutions such as Xapo, Coinbase and Circle.  And these are not off-limits to social engineering.  For instance, last week an international joint-task force confiscated $80,000 in bitcoins from dark web operators.  The largest known seizure in history were 144,000 bitcoins from Ross Ulbricht (Dread Pirate Roberts) laptop. Similarly, while it probably is beyond the scope of their book, it would have been interesting to see a survey from Casey and Vigna covering the speculators during this early 2013 time frame.  Were the majority of people buying bitcoins during the “Cyprus event” actually worried about confiscation or is this just something that is assumed?  Fun fact: the largest transaction to BitPay of all time was on March 25, 2013 during the Cyprus event, amounting to 28,790 bitcoins. On page 114, the writers for the first time (unless I missed it elsewhere), use the term “virtual currency.”  Actually, they quote FinCEN director Jennifer Calvery who says that FincCEN, “recognizes the innovation virtual currencies provide , and the benefits they might offer society.” Again recall that most fiat currencies today are already digitized in some format — and they are legal tender.  In contrast, cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are not legal tender and are thus more accurately classified as virtual currencies.  Perhaps that will change in the future. On page 118 they note that, “More and more people opened wallets (more than 5 million as of this writing).” I will get to this later.  Note that on p. 123 they say Coupa Cafe has a “digital wallet” a term used throughout the entire book. On page 124, “Bitcoins exist only insofar as they assign value to a bitcoin address, a mini, one-off account with which people and firms send and receive the currency to and from other people’s firms’ addresses.” This is actually a pretty concise description of best-practices.  In reality however, many individuals and organizations (such as exchanges and payment processors) reuse addresses. Continuing on page 124, “This is an important distinction because it means there’s no actual currency file or document that can be copied or lost.” This is untrue.  In terms of security, the hardest and most expensive part in practice is securing the credentials — the private key that controls the UTXOs.  As Stefan Thomas, Jason Whelan (p. 139) and countless other people on /r/sorryforyourloss have discovered, this can be permanently lost.  Bearer assets are a pain to secure, hence the re-sprouting of trusted third parties in Bitcoinland. One small nitpick in the note at the bottom of page 125, “Sometimes the structure of the bitcoin address network is such that the wallet often can’t send the right amount in one go…” — note that this ‘change‘ is intentional (and very inconvenient to the average user). Another nitpick on page 128, “Each mining node or computer gathers this information and reduces it into an encrypted alphanumeric string of characters known as a hash.” There is actually no encryption used in Bitcoin, rather there are some cryptographic primitives that are used such as key signing but this is not technically called encryption (the two are different). On page 130, I thought it was good that they explained where the term nonce was first used — from Lewis Carroll who created the word “frabjous” and described it as a nonce word. On page 132, in describing proof-of-work, “While that seems like a mammoth task, these are high-powered computers; it’s not nearly as taxing as the nonce-creating game and can be done relatively quickly and easily.” They are correct in that something as simple as a Pi computer can and is used as the actual transaction validating machine.  Yet, at one point in 2009, this bifurcation did not exist: a full-node was both a miner and a hasher.  Today that is not the case and we technically have about a dozen or so actual miners on the network, the rest of the machines in “farms” just hash midstates. On page 132, regarding payment processors accepting zero-confirmation transactions, “They do this because non-confirmations — or the double-spending actions that lead to them — are very rare.” True they are very rare today in part because there are very few incentives to actually try and double-spend.  Perhaps that will change in the future with new incentives to say, double-spend watermarked coins from NASDAQ. And if payment processors are accepting zero confirmations, why bother using proof-of-work and confirmations at all?  Just because a UTXO is broadcast does not mean inherited his family’s entrepreneurial drive.” Perhaps Adam Draper is indeed both a bonafide investor and entrepreneur, but it does not seem to be the case that either can be or is necessarily inheritable. On page 167, “The only option was to “turn into a fractional-reserve bank,” he said jokingly, referring tot he bank model that allows banks to lend out deposits while holding a fraction of those funds in reserve.  “They call it a Ponzi scheme unless you have a banking license.” Why is this statement not challenged?  I am not defending rehypothecation or the current banking model, but fractional reserve banking as it is employed in the US is not a Ponzi scheme. Also on page 167 they write, “First, he had trouble with his payments processor, Dwolla which he later sued for $2 million over what Tradehill claimed were undue chargebacks.” A snarky thing would be to say he should have used bitcoin, no chargebacks.  But the issue here, one that the authors should have pressed is that Tradehill, like Coinbase and Xapo, are effectively behaving like banks.  It’s unclear why this irony is not discussed once in the book. For instance, several pages later on page 170 they once again talk about wallets: The word wallet is thrown around a lot in bitcoin circles, and it’s an evocative description, but it’s just a user application that allows you to send and receive bitcoins over the bitcoin network. You can download software to create your own wallet — if you really want to be your own bank — but most people go through a wallet provider such as Coinbase or Blockchain, which melded them into user-friendly Web sites and smart phone apps. I am not sure if it is intentional but the authors clearly understand that holding a private key is the equivalent of being a bank.  But rather than say Coinbase is a bank (because they too control private keys), they call them a wallet provider.  I have no inside track into how regulators view this but the euphemism of “wallet provider” is thin gruel.  On the other hand Blockchain.info does not hold custody of keys but instead provide a user interface — at no point do they touch a privkey (though that does not mean they could not via a man-in-the-middle-attack or scripting errors like the one last December). On page 171 they talk about Nathan Lands: The thirty-year-old high school dropout is the cofounder of QuickCoin, the maker of a wallet that’s aimed directly at finding the fastest easiest route to mass adoption.  The idea, which he dreamed up with fellow bitcoiner Marshall Hayner one night over a dinner at Ramen Underground, is to give nontechnical bitcoin newcomers access to an easy-to-use mobile wallet viat familiar tools of social media. Unfortunately this is not how it happened.  More in a moment. Continuing the authors write, “His successes allowed Lands to raise $10 million for one company, Gamestreamer.” Actually it was Gamify he raised money for (part of the confusion may be due to how it is phrased on his LinkedIn profile). Next the authors state: “He started buying coins online, where her ran into his eventual business partner, Hayner (with whom he later had a falling-out, and whose stake he bought).” One of the biggest problems I had with this book is that the authors take claims at face value.  To be fair, I probably did a bit too much myself with GCON. On this point, I checked with Marshall Hayner who noted that this narrative was untrue:  “Nathan never bought my stake, nor was I notified of any such exchange.” While the co-founder dispute deserves its own article or two, the rough timeline is that in late 2013 Hayner created QuickCoin and then several months later on brought Lands on to be the CEO.  After a soft launch in May 2014 (which my wife and I attended, see below) Lands maneuvered and got the other employees to first reduce the equity that Hayner had and then fired him so they could open up the cap table to other investors. QuickCoin launch party with Marshall Hayner, Jackson Palmer (Dogecoin), and my wife With Hayner out, QuickCoin quickly faded due to the fact that the team had no ties to the local cryptocurrency community.  Hayner went on to join Stellar and is now the co-founder of Trees.  QuickCoin folded by the end of the year and Lands started Blockai. On page 174 they discuss VCs involved in funding Bitcoin-related startups: Jerry Yang, who created the first successful search engine, Yahoo, put money from his AME Ventures into a $30 million funding round for processor BitPay and into one of two $20 million rounds raised by depository and wallet provider Xapo, which offers insurance to depositors and call itself a “bitcoin vault.” While they likely couldn’t have put it in this section, I think it would have been good for the authors to discuss the debate surrounding what hosted wallets actually are because regulators and courts may not agree with the marketing-speak of these startups.6 On page 177 they write about Boost VC which is run by Adam Draper, “He’d moved first and emerged as the leader in the filed, which meant his start-ups could draw in money from the bigger guys when it came time for larger funding rounds.” It would be interesting to see the clusters of what VCs do and do not co-invest with others.  Perhaps in a few years we can look back and see that indeed, Boost VC did lead the pack.  However while there are numerous incubated startups that went on to close seed rounds (Blockcypher, Align Commerce, Hedgy, Bitpagos) as of this writing there is only one incubated company in Boost that has closed a Series A round and that is Mirror (Coinbase, which did receive funding from Adam Draper, was not in Boost).  Maybe this is not a good measure for success, perhaps this will change in the future and maybe more have done so privately. On page 179-180 the discussion as to what Plug and Play Tech Center does and its history was well written. With every facet of our economy now dependent on the kinds of software developed and funded in the Bay Area, and with the Valley’s well-heeled communities becoming a vital fishing ground for political donations and patronage, we’re witnessing a migration of the political and economic power base away from Wall Street to this region. I have heard variations of this for the past couple of years.  Most recently I heard a VC claim that Andreessen Horrowitz (a16z) was the White House of the West Coast and that bankers in New York do not understand this tech.  Perhaps it is and perhaps bankers do not understand what a blockchain is. Either way we should be able to see the consequences to this empirically at some point.  Where is the evidence presented by the authors? Fast forwarding several chapters, on page 287 they write, “Visa, MasterCard, and Western Union combined – to name just three players whose businesses could be significantly reformed — had twenty-seven thousand employees in 2013.” Perhaps these figures will dramatically change soon, however, the above image are the market caps over the past 5 years of four incumbents: JP Morgan (the largest bank in the US), MasterCard and Visa (the largest card payment providers) and Western Union, the world’s largest money transfer operator. Will their labor force dramatically change because of cryptocurrencies?  That is an open question.  Although it is unclear why the labor force at these companies would necessarily shrink because of the existence of Bitcoin rather than expand in the event that these companies integrated parts of the tech (e.g., a distributed ledger) thereby reducing costs and increasing new types of services. On page 185 they write, “Those unimaginable possibilities exist with bitcoin, Dixon says, because “extensible software platforms that allow anyone to build on top of them are incredibly powerful and have all these unexpected uses. The stuff about fixing the existing payment system is interesting, but what’s superexciting is that you have this new platform on which you can move money and property and potentially build new areas of businesses.” Maybe this is true.  It is unclear from these statements as to what Chris Dixon views as broken about the current payment system.  Perhaps it is “broken” in that not everyone on the planet has access to secure, near-instant methods of global value transer.  However it is worth noting that cryptocurrencies are not the only competitors in the payments space. According to AngelList as of this writing: This chapter discussed “The Unbanked” and how Bitcoin supposedly can be a solution to banking these individuals. On page 188 they discuss a startup called 37coins: “It uses people in the region lucky enough to afford Android smartphones as “gateways” to transmit the messages.  In return, these gateways receive a small fee, which provides the corollary benefit of giving locals the opportunity to create a little business for themselves moving traffic.” This is a pretty neat idea, both HelloBit and Abra are doing something a little similar.  The question however is, why bitcoin?  Why do users need to go out of fiat, into bitcoin and back out to fiat?  If the end goal is to provide users in developing countries a method to transmit value, why is this extra friction part of the game plan? Last month I heard of another supposed cryptocurrency “killer app”: smart metering prepaid via bitcoin and how it is supposed to be amazing for the unbanked.  The unbanked, they are going to pay for smart metering with money they don’t have for cars they don’t own.  There seems to be a disconnect when it comes to financial inclusion as it is sometimes superficially treated in the cryptocurrency world.  Many Bitleaders and enthusiasts seem to want to pat themselves on the back for a job that has not been accomplished.  How can the cryptocurrency community bring the potential back down to real world situations without overinflating, overhyping or over promising? If Mercedes or Yamaha held a press conference to talk about the “under-cared” or “under-motorcycled” they would likely face a backlash on social media.  Bitcoin the bearer instrument, is treated like a luxury good and expecting under-electrified, under-plumbed, under-interneted people living in subsistence to buy and use it today without the ability to secure the privkey without a trusted third party, seems far fetched (“the under bitcoined!”).  Is there a blue print to help all individuals globally move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Financial Wants & Needs? “But in the developing world, where the costs of an ineffectual financial system and the burdens of transferring funds are all too clear, cryptocurrencies have a much more compelling pitch to make.” The problem is actually at the institutional level, institutions which do not disappear because of the Bitcoin blockchain.  Nor does Bitcoin solve the identity issue: users still need real-world identity for credit ratings so they can take out loans and obtain investment to build companies. For instance on page 190 the authors mention the costs of transferring funds to and from Argentina, the Philippines, India and Pakistan.  One of the reasons for the high costs is due to institutional problems which is not solved by Bitcoin. In fact, the authors write, “Banks won’t service these people for various reasons. It’s partly because the poor don’t offer as fat profits as the rich, and it’s partly because they live in places where there isn’t the infrastructure and security needed for banks to build physical branches. But mostly it’s because of weak legal institutions and underdeveloped titling laws.” This is true, but Bitcoin does not solve this.  If local courts or governments do not recognize the land titles that are hashed on the blockchain it does the local residents no good to use Proof of Existence or BlockSign. They do not clarify this problem through the rest of the chapter.  In fact the opposite takes place, as they double down on the reddit narrative: “Bitcoin, as we know, doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care how much money you are willing to save, send, or spend. You, your identity and your credit history are irrelevant. […] If you are living on $50 a week, the $5 you will save will matter a great deal.” This helps nobody. The people labeled as “unbanked” want to have access to capital markets and need a credit history so they can borrow money to create a companies and build homes.  Bitcoin as it currently exists, does not solve those problems. Furthermore, how do these people get bitcoins in the first place?  That challenge is not discussed in the chapter.  Nor is the volatility issue, one swift movement that can wipe out the savings of someone living in subsistence, broached.  Again, what part of the network does lending on-chain? On page 192 they write, “They lack access to banks not because they are uneducated, but because of the persistent structural and systemic obstacles confronting people of limited means there: undeveloped systems of documentation and property titling, excessive bureaucracy, cultural snobbery, and corruption. The banking system makes demands that poor people simply can’t meet.” This is very true.  The Singapore conference I attended two weeks ago is just one of many conferences held throughout this year that talked about financial inclusion.  Yet Bitcoin does not solve any of these problems.  You do not need a proof-of-work blockchain to solve these issues.  Perhaps new database or permissioned ledgers can help, but these are social engineering challenges — wet code — that technology qua technology does not necessarily resolve. Also on page 192 they write, “People who have suffered waves of financial crises are used to volatility. People who have spent years trusting expensive middlemen and flipping back and forth between dollars and their home currency are probably more likely to understand bitcoin’s advantages and weather its flaws.” This is probably wishful thinking too.  Residents of Argentina and Ukraine may be used to volatility but it does not mean it is something they want to adopt.  Why would they want to trade one volatile asset for another?  Perhaps they will but the authors do not provide any data for actual usage or adoption in these countries, or explain why the residents prefer bitcoin instead of something more global and stable such as the US dollar. On page 193 they write that, “In many cases, these countries virtually skip over legacy technology, going straight to high-tech fiber-optic cables.” While there is indeed a number of legacy systems used on any given day in the US, it is not like Bitcoin itself is shiny new tech.  While the libraries and BIPS may be new, the components within the consensus critical tech almost all dates back to the 20th century. For instance, according to Gwern Branwen, the key moving parts that Bitcoin uses: That’s not to say that Bitcoin is bad, old or that other systems are not old or bad but rather the term “legacy” is pretty relative and undefined in that passage. On page 194 they discuss China and bitcoin, “With bitcoin, the theory goes, people could bypass that unjust banking system and get their money out of China at low cost.” This is bad legal advice, just look at the problems this caused Coinbase with regulators a couple months ago.  And while you could probably do it low-scale, it then competes with laundering via art sales and Macau junkets and thus expecting this to be the killer use-case for adoption in China is fairly naive. On page 195 they write “Bitcoin in China is purely a speculator’s game, a way to gamble on its price, either through one of a number of mainland exchanges or by mining it. It is popular — Chinese trading volumes outstrip those seen anywhere else in the world.” Two months ago Goldman Sachs published a widely circulated report which stated that “80% of bitcoin volume is now exchanged into and out of Chinese yuan.” This is untrue though as it is solely based on self-reporting metrics from all of the exchanges (via Bitcoinity).  As mentioned in chapter 1 notes above, the top 3 exchanges in China run market-making bots which dramatically inflate trading volume by 50-70% each day.  While they likely still process a number of legitimate trades, it cannot be said that 80% of bitcoin volume is traded into and out of RMB.  The authors of both the report and the book should have investigated this in more depth. On page 196 they write, “This service, as well as e-marketplace Alibaba’s competing Alipay offering, is helping turn China into the world’s most dynamic e-commerce economy. How is bitcoin to compete with that?” Great question and the answer is it probably won’t.  See Understanding value transfers to and from China. Next on page 196 they write, “But what about the potential to get around the controls the government puts on cross-border fund transfers?” By-passing capital controls was discussed two pages before and will likely cause problems for any VC or PE-backed firm in China, the US and other jurisdictions.  I am not defending the current policies just being practical: if you are reading their book and plan to do this type of business, be sure to talk to a legal professional first. On page 197 they discuss a scenario for bitcoin adoption in China: bank crisis.  The problem with this is that in the history of banking crisis’ thus far, savers typically flock to other assets, such as US dollars or euros.  The authors do not explain why this would change.  Now obviously it could or in the words of the authors, the Chinese “may warm to bitcoin.”  But this is just idle speculation — where are the surveys or research that clarify this position?  Why is it that many killer use-cases for bitcoin typically assumes an economy or two crashes first? On page 198 they write, “The West Indies even band together to form one international cricket team when they play England, Australia, and other members of the Commonwealth. What they don’t have, however, is a common currency that could improve interisland commerce.” More idle speculation.  Bitcoin will probably not be used as a common currency because policy makers typically want to have discretion via elastic money supplies.  In addition, one of the problems that a “common currency” could have is what has plagued the eurozone: differing financial conditions in each country motivate policy makers in each country to lobby for specific monetary agendas (e.g., tightening, loosening).  Bitcoin in its current form, cannot be rebased to reflect the changes that policy makers could like to make.  While many Bitcoin enthusiasts like this, unless the authors of the book have evidence to the contrary, it is unlikely that the policy makers in the West Indies find this desirable. On page 199 they write, “A Caribbean dollar remains a pipe dream.” It is unclear why having a unified global or regional currency is a goal for the authors?  Furthermore, there is continued regional integration to remove some frictions, for instance, the ECACH (Eastern Caribbean Automated Clearing House) has been launched and is now live in all 8 member countries. On page 203 they spoke to Patrick Byrne from Overstock.com about ways Bitcoin supposedly saves merchants money.  They note that, “A few weeks later, Byrne announced he would not only be paying bitcoin-accepting vendors one week early, but that he’d also pay his employee bonuses in bitcoin.” Except so far this whole effort has been a flop for Overstock.com.  According to Overstock, in 2014 approximately 11,100 customers paid with bitcoin at both its US and international websites.  Altogether this represented roughly $3 million in sales which when coupled with low margin products (based on the top 10 list of things sold on Overstock) is an initiative that Stone Street Advisors labeled “distracting” (see slides 21, 32, 33, 37, 58). This continues onto page 204, “As a group of businesses in one region begins adopting the currency, it will become more appealing to others with whom they do business. Once such a network of intertwined businesses builds up, no one wants to be excluded from it. Or so the theory goes.”  Byrne then goes on to describe network effects and fax machines, suggesting that this is what will happen with bitcoin. In other words, a circular flow of income.  The challenge however goes back to the fact that the time preferences of individuals is different and has not lended towards the theory of spending.  As a whole, very few people spend and suppliers typically cash out to reduce their exposure to volatility.  Perhaps this will change, but there is no evidence that it has so far. On page 206 they talk to Rulli from Film Annex (who was introduced in the introduction): With bitcoin, “you can clearly break down the value of every single stroke on the keyboard, he says. Continuing the authors talk about Rulli: He wanted the exchange to be solely in bitcoin for other digital currencies, with no option to buy rupees or dollars: “The belief I have is that if you lock these people into this new economy, they will make that new economy as efficient as possible.” What about volatility?  Why are marginalized people being expected to hold onto an asset that fluctuates in value by more than 10% each month?  Rulli has a desire to turn the Film Annex Web site “into its own self enclosed bitcoin economy.”  There is a term for this: autarky or closed economy. Continuing Rulli states, ‘If you start giving people opportunities to get out of the economy, they will just cut it down, whereas if the only way for you to enrich yourself is by trading bitcoins for litecoins and dogecoins, you are going to become an expert in that… you will become the best trader in Pakistan.” This seems to be a questionable strategy: are these users on bitLanders supposed to be artisans or day traders?  Why are marginalized people expected to compete with world-class professional traders? On page 210 the second time the term “virtual currency” is mentioned, this time by the Argentinian central bank. On page 213 they write, “With bitcoin, it is possible to sen money via a mobile phone, directly between two parties, to bypass that entire cumbersome, expensive system for international transfers.” What an updated version to the book should include is an actual study for the roundtrip costs of doing international payments and remittances.  This is not to defend the incumbents, but rebittance companies and enthusiasts on reddit grossly overstate the savings in many corridors.7 And it still does not do away with the required cash-in / cash-out steps that people in these countries still want and need. On page 216 they write about the research of Hernando de Soto who discusses the impediments of economic development including the need to document ownership of property.  Unfortunately Bitcoin does not currently solve this because ultimately the recognition of a hash of a document on a blockchain comes down to recognition from the same institutions that some of these developing countries lack. Continuing on page 217 they write that, “Well, the blockchain, if taken to the extent that a new wave of bitcoin innovators believe possible, could replace many of those institutions with a decentralized authority for proving people’s legal obligations and status. In doing so, it could dramatically widen the net of inclusion.” How?  How is this done?  Without recognized title transfers, hashing documents onto a chain does not help these people.  This is an institutional issue, not one of technology.  Human corruption does not disappear because of the existence of Bitcoin. On page 219 they write, “Like everything else in the cryptocurrency world, the goal is to decentralize, to take power out of the hands of the middleman.” By recreating the same middleman, depository institutions, yet without robust financial controls. On page 220 and 221 they mention “basic encryption process” and “standard encryption models” — I believe that it is more accurately stated as cryptographic processes and cryptographic models. On page 222 they define “Bitcoin 2.0” / “Blockchain 2.0” and put SatoshiDice into that bucket.  Ignoring the labels for a moment, I don’t think SatoshiDice or any of the other on-chain casino games are “2.0” — they use the network without coloring any asset. One quibble with Mike Hearn’s explanation on page 223 is when he says, “But bitcoin has no intermediaries.”  This is only true if you control and secure the privkey by yourself.  In practice, many “users” do not. On page 225 they write, “Yet they are run by Wall Street banks and are written and litigated by high-powered lawyers pulling down six- or seven-figure retainers.” Is it a crime to be able to charge what the market bears for a service?  Perhaps some of this technology will eventually reduce the need for certain legal services, but it is unclear what the pay rate of attorneys in NYC has in relation with Bitcoin. Also on page 225 a small typo: “International Derivatives and Swaps Association (ISDA)” — need to flip Derivatives and Swaps. On page 226, 227, 229 and 244: nextcoin should be called NXT. On page 227 they write, “Theses are tradable for bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies on special altcoin exchanges such as Cryptsy, where their value is expected to rise and fall according to the success or failure of the protocol to which they belong.” There is a disconnect between the utility of a chain and the speculative activity around the token.  For instance, most day traders likely do not care about the actual decentralization of a network, for if they did, it would be reflected in prices of each chain.  There are technically more miners (block makers) on dozens of alternative proof-of-work chains than there in either bitcoin or litecoin yet market prices are (currently) not higher for more decentralized chains. “Under their model, the underlying bitcoin transactions are usually of small value — as low as a “Satoshi” (BTC0.00000001).  That’s because the bitcoin value is essentially irrelevant versus the more important purpose of conveying the decentralized application’s critical metadata across the network, even though some value exchange is needed to make the communication of information happen.” Actually in practice the limit for watermarked coins typically resides around 0.0001 BTC.  If it goes beneath 546 satoshi, then it is considered dust and not included into a block.  Watermarked coins also make the network top heavy and probably insecure.8 On page 209, the third time “virtual currency” is used and comes from Daniel Larimer, but without quotes. On page 230 they discuss an idea from Daniel Larimer to do blockchain-based voting.  While it sounds neat in theory, in practice it still would require identity which again, Bitcoin doesn’t solve.  Also, it is unclear from the example in the book as to why it is any more effective/superior than an E2E system such as Helios. On page 238 they write, “It gets back to the seigniorage problem we discussed in chapter 5 and which Nakamoto chose to tackle through the competition for bitcoins.” I am not sure I would classify it as a problem per se, it is by design one method for rewarding security and distributing tokens.  There may be other ways to do it in a decentralized manner but that is beyond the scope of this review. On page 239 they discuss MaidSafe and describe the “ecological disaster” that awaits data-center-based storage.  This seems a bit alarmist because just in terms of physics, centralized warehouses of storage space and compute will be more efficient than a decentralized topology (and faster too).  This is discussed in Chapter 3 (under “Another facsimile”). Continuing they quote the following statement from David Irvine, founder of MaidSafe: “Data centers, he says, are an enormous waste of electricity because they store vast amounts of underutilized computing power in huge warehouse that need air-condition and expensive maintenance.” On page 242 they mention Realcoin whose name has since been changed to Tether.  It is worth pointing out that Tether does not reduce counterparty risk, users are still reliant on the exchange (in this case Bitfinex) from not being hacked or shut down via social engineering. On page 244, again to illustrate how fast this space moves, Swarm has now pivoted from offering cryptocurrency-denominated investment vehicles into voting applications and Open-Transactions has hit a bit of a rough patch, its CTO, Chris Odom stepped down in March and the project has not had any public announcements since then. If you missed it, the last few weeks on social media have involved a large debate around blockchain stability with respect to increasing block sizes.  During one specific exchange, several developers debated as to “who was in charge,” with Mike Hearn insisting that Satoshi left Gavin in charge and Greg Maxwell stating that this is incorrect. This ties in with the beginning of page 247, the authors write about Gavin Andresen, “A week earlier he had cleared out his office at the home he shares with his wife, Michele – a geology professor at the University of Massachusetts — and two kids. He’d decided that a man essentially if not titularly in charge of running an $8 billion economy needed something more than a home office.” Who is in charge of Bitcoin?  Enthusiasts on reddit and at conferences claim no one is.  The Bitcoin Foundation claims five people are (those with commit access).  Occasionally mainstream media sites claim the Bitcoin CEO or CFO is fired/jailed/dead/bankrupt. The truth of the matter is that it is the miners who decide what code to update and use and for some reason they are pretty quiet during all of this hub bub.  Beyond that, there is a public goods problem and as shown in the image above, it devolves into various parties lobbying for one particular view over another. The authors wrote about this on page 247, “The foundation pays him to coordinate the input of the hundreds of far-flung techies who tinker away at the open-licensed software. Right now, the bitcoin community needed answers and in the absence of a CEO, a CTO, or any central authority to turn to, Andresen was their best hope.” It is unclear how this will evolve but is a ripe topic of study.  Perhaps the second edition will include other thoughts on how this role has changed over time. On page 251 they write, “Probably ten thousand of the best developers in the world are working on this project,” says Chris Dixon, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. How does he know this?  There are not 10,000 users making changes to Bitcoin core libraries on github or 10,000 subscribers to the bitcoin development mailing list or IRC rooms.  I doubt that if you added up all of the employees of every venture-backed company in the overall Bitcoin world, that the amount would equate to 2,000 let alone 10,000 developers.  Perhaps it will by the end of this year but this number seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. Continuing Dixon states, “You read these criticisms that ‘bitcoin has this flaw and bitcoin has that flaw,’ and we’re like ‘Well, great. Bitcoin has ten thousand people working hard on that.” This is not true.  There is a public goods problem and coordination problem.  Each developer and clique of developers has their own priorities and potential agenda for what to build and deploy.  It cannot be said that they’re all working towards one specific area.  How many are working on the Lightning Network?  Or on transaction malleability (which is still not “fixed”)?  How many are working on these CVE? On page 254 they discuss Paul Baran’s paper “On Distributed Communications Networks,” the image of which has been used over the years and I actually used for my paper last month. On page 255 the fourth usage of “virtual currency” appears regarding once more, FinCEN director Jennifer Shasky.  Followed by page 256 with another use of “virtual currency.”  On page 257 Benjamin Lawsky was quoted using “virtual currency.”  Page 259 the term “virtual currency” appears when the European Banking Authority is quoted.  Page 260 and 261 sees “virtual currency” being used in relation with NYDFS and Lawsky once more.  On page 264 another use of “virtual currency” is used and this time in relation with Canadian regulations from June 2014. On page 265 they mention “After the People’s Bank of China’s antibitcoin directives…” I am not sure the directives were necessarily anti-bitcoin per se.  Rather they prohibited financial institutions like banks and payment processors from directly handling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoins.  The regulatory framework is still quite nebulous but again, going back to “excessive” in the introduction above, it is unclear why this is deemed “anti-bitcoin” when mining and trading activity is still allowed to take place.  Inconsistent and unhelpful, yes.  Anti?  Maybe, maybe not. Also on page 265 they mention Temasek Holdings, a sovereign wealth fund in Singapore that allegedly has bitcoins in its portfolio.  When I was visiting there, I spoke with a managing director from Temasek two weeks ago and he said they are not invested in any Bitcoin companies and the lunchroom experiment with bitcoins has ended. On page 268 the authors discuss “wallets” once more this time in relation with Mt.Gox: “All the bitcoins were controlled by the exchange in its own wallets” and “Reuters reported that only Karpeles knew the passwords to the Mt. Gox wallets and that he refused a 2012 request from employees to expand access in the event that he became incapacitated.” On page 275 the authors use a good nonce, “übercentralization.” On page 277 they write, “While no self-respecting bitcoiner would ever describe Google or Facebook as decentralized institutions, not with their corporate-controlled servers and vast databases of customers’ personal information, these giant Internet firms of our day got there by encouraging peer-to-peer and middleman-free activities.” In the notes on the margin I wrote “huh?”  And I am still confused because each of these companies attempts to build a moat around their property.  Google has tried 47 different ways to create a social network even going so far as to cutting off its nose (Google Reader, RIP) to spite its face all with the goal of keeping traffic, clicks and eyeballs on platforms it owns.  And this is understandable.  Similarly Coinbase and other “universal hosted wallets” are also trying to build a walled garden of apps with the aim of stickiness — finding something that will keep users on their platform. On page 277 they also wrote that, “Perhaps these trends can continue to coexist if the decentralizing movements remains limited to areas of the economy that don’t bleed into the larger sectors that Big Business dominates.” What about Big Bitcoin?   The joke is that there are 300,027 advocacy groups in Bitcoinland: 300,000 privkey holders who invested in bitcoin and 27 actual organizations that actively promote Bitcoin.  There is probably only one quasi self-regulating organization (SRO), DATA.  And the advocacy groups are well funded by VC-backed companies and investors, just look at CoinCenter’s rolodex. On page 280 they write, “Embracing a cryptoccurency-like view of finance, it has started an investment program that allows people invest directly in the company, buying notes backed by specific hard assets, such as individual stores, trucks, even mattress pads. No investment bank is involved, no intermediary. Investors are simply lending U-Haul money, peer-to-peer, and in return getting a promissory note with fixed interested payments, underwritten by the company’s assets.” This sounds a lot like a security as defined by the Howey test.  Again, before participating in such an activity be sure to talk with a legal professional.9 On page 281 they use the term “virtual currencies” for the 11th time, this time in reference to MasterCard’s lobbying efforts in DC for Congress. On page 283 a small typo, “But here’s the rub: because they are tapped” — (should be trapped). On page 283 they write, “By comparison, bitcoin processors such as BitPay, Coinbase, and GoCoin say they’ve been profitable more or less from day one, given their low overheads and the comparatively tiny fees charged by miners on the blockchain.” This is probably false.  I would challenge this view, and that none of them are currently breaking even on merchant processing fees alone. In fact, they likely have the same user acquisition costs and compliance costs as all payment processors do. For instance, in October 2014, Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, co-founders of Coinbase, did a reddit AMA.  At the 21:12 minute mark (video): Q: Is Coinbase profitable or not, if not, when? A: It’s happened to be profitable at times, at the moment it’s not; we’re not burning too much cash.  I think that the basic idea here is to grow and by us growing we help the entire ecosystem grow — without dying.  So not at the moment but not far. It’s pretty clear from BitPay’s numbers that unless they’ve been operating a high volume exchange, they are likely unprofitable. Why?  Because, in part of the high burn rate.  What does this mean? Last week Moe Levin, former Director of European Business Development at BitPay, was interviewed by deBitcoin, below is one detailed exchange starting at 1:57m: Q: There was a lot of stories in the press about BitPay laying off people, can you comment on that? A: Yea, what happened was we had a high burn rate and the company necessarily needed to scale back a little bit on how many people we hired, how many people we had on board, how much we sponsored things.  I mean things were getting a little bit out of hand with sponsorships, football games and expansion — more care needed to be put on how and where we spent the money. Q: Can you elaborate on the burn rate?  Tim Swanson wrote a piece on BitPay in April, published this piece about the economy, the BitPay economy. Posted this piece on the burn rate and actual figures, have you read that piece?  Can you comment on that? A: Yes, it is especially hard for a company to build traction when they start off.  Any start up is difficult to build traction.  It’s doubly hard, the hardness is amplified when a company enters a market with competitors that have near unlimited resources because the other companies can either blow you out of the water or have better marketing strategies or they can do a ton of different things to make your startup more irrelevant.  Standard in any company but it is doubly difficult when you enter a market like that.  In the payments industry, forget about Bitcoin for a second, in the payments industry and the mobile commerce, ecommerce, company-to-company payments industry there are massive players with investments and venture backed companies in the billions.  Competing at that stage is tricky and it necessarily requires a burn rate that is much higher than the average startup because of how you need to compete in this space.  What is also important is that the regulation costs a lot of money for the startups in the Bitcoin economy.  It’s the perfect storm of how a startup will be hit with a ton of expenses early on and that can hurt the growth of a company.  Even though a lot of the money that went into it was growth capital it takes a while to get the balance right between spending and growing. On page 284 they write, “That leads us to one important question: What happens to banks as credit providers if that age arrives? Any threat to this role could be a negotiating chip for banks in their marketing battle with the new technology.” This is a good question and it dovetails with the “Fedcoin” discussion over the past 6 months.10 On page 285 they write, “With paper money they can purchase arms, launch wars, raise debt to finance those conflicts, and then demand tax payments in that same currency to repay those debts.” This is a common misconception, one involving lots of passionate Youtube videos, that before central banks were established or fiat currencies were issued, that there was no war or “less war.”  On page 309 they quote Roger Ver at a Bitcoin conference saying, “they’ll no longer be able to fund these giant war machines that are killing people around the world. So I see bitcoin as a lever that I can use to move the world in a more peaceful direction.” Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will not end wars for the same reason that precious metals did not prevent wars: the privkey has no control over the “wet code” on the edges.  Wars have occurred since time immemorial due to conflicts between humans and will likely continue to occur into the future (I am sure this statement will be misconstrued on reddit to say that I am in support of genocide and war). On page 286 they write, “Gil Luria, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who has done some of the most in-depth analysis of cryptocurrency’s potential, argues that 21 percent of U.S. GDP is based in “trust” industries, those that perform middlemen tasks that blockchain can digitize and automate.” In looking at the endnote citation (pdf) it is clear that Luria and his team is incorrect in just about all of the analysis that month as they rely on unfounded assumptions to both adoption and the price of bitcoin.  That’s not to say some type of black swan events cannot or will not occur, but probably not for the reasons laid out by the Wedbush team.  The metrics and probabilities are entirely arbitrary. For instance, the Wedbush analysts state, “Our conversation with bitcoin traders (and  Wall Street traders trading bitcoin lead us to believe they see opportunity in a market that has frequent disruptive news flow  and large movements that reflect that news flow.” Who are these traders?  Are they disinterested and objective parties? For instance, a year ago (in February 2014), Founders Grid asked 50 Bitcoin “experts” what their bitcoin price predictions were over the next year.  The end result — all but a couple were completely, very wrong (see this spreadsheet for a line-by-line itemization).  Later, in May 2014, CoinTelegraph asked (video) more than 30 Bitcoin “experts” as to what their bitcoin predictions were for the end of 2014.  Once again, all but a couple were completely, very wrong. Or in short, no one has a very good track record of predicting either prices or adoption.  Thus it is unclear from their statements why a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin will automatically begin performing the tasks that comprise 21% of US economic output based on “trust.” On page 288 they write, “So expect a backlash once banks start shutting back-office administrative centers in midtown Manhattan or London’s Canary Wharf when their merchant customers start booking more customer sales via cryptocurrency systems to avoid the 3 percent transaction fees.” I think there is a lot of conflation here.  For starters, back-offices could be reformed with the integration of distributed ledgers, but probably not cryptocurrency systems (why would a trusted network need proof-of-work?).  Secondly, the empirical data thus far suggests that it doesn’t matter how many merchants adopt cryptocurrencies as payments, what matters is consumer adoption — and thus far the former out paces the latter by several an enormous margin.  Third, that 3% is broken down and paid to a variety of other participants not just Visa or MasterCard.  Fourth, the US economy (like that of Europe and many other regions) is consumer driven — supply does not necessarily create its own demand. There is one more point, but first the authors quote Chris Dixon from Andreessen Horowitz, “On the one hand you have the bank person who loses their job, and everyone feels bad about that person, and on the other hand, everyone else saves three percent, which economically can have a huge impact because it means small businesses widen their profit margins.” This myth of “3%” savings is probably just a myth.  At the end of the day Coinbase, BitPay and other payment processors will likely absorb the same cost structures as existing payment processors in terms of user acquisition, customer support, insurance, compliance and so forth.  While the overhead may be lean, non-negligible operating costs still exist. There are two reasons for why it could be temporarily cheaper to use Coinbase: 1) VC funding and exchange activity subsidizes the “loss-leader” of payment processing; 2) because Coinbase outsources the actual transaction verification to a third party (miners), they are dependent on fees to miners staying low or non-existent.  At some point the fees will have to increase and those fees will then either need to be absorbed by Coinbase or passed on to customers. On page 290 they quote Larry Summers, “So it seems to me that the people who confidently reject all the innovation here [in blockchain-based payment and monetary systems] are on the wrong side of history.” Who are these people?  Even Jeffrey Robinson finds parts of the overall tech of interest.  I see this claim often on social media but it seems like a strawman.  Skepticism about extraordinary claims that lack extraordinary proof does not seem unwarranted or unjustified. On page 292 they write, “But, to borrow an idea from an editor of ours, such utopian projects often end up like Ultimate Frisbee competitions, which by design have no referees — only “observers” who arbitrate calls — and where disputes over rule violations often devolve into shouting matches that are won by whichever player yells the loudest, takes the most uncompromising stance, and persuades the observer.” This is the exact description of how Bitcoin development works via reddit, Twitter, Bitcoin Talk, the Bitcoin Dev mailing list, IRC and so forth.  This is not a rational way to build a financial product.  Increasing block sizes that impact a multi-billion dollar asset class should not be determined by how many Likes you get on Facebook or how often you get to sit on panels at conferences. On page 292 they write, “Nobody’s fully studied how much business merchants are doing with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, but actual and anecdotal reports tend to peg it at a low number, about 1 percent of total sales for the few that accept them.” My one quibble is that they as journalists were in a position to ask payment processors for these numbers. Fortunately we have a transparent, public record that serves as Plan B: reused addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain. As described in detail a couple weeks ago, the chart above is a log scale measuring the amount of bitcoins that both BitPay (in green) and Evolution (in red) received starting January 16, 2014.  The drop off at the end in March 2015 is related to the exit scam that Evolution underwent (and the drop off for BitPay is related to a limitation in WalletExplorer’s data). As we can see here, based on the clusters labeled by WalletExplorer, on any given day BitPay processes about 1,200 bitcoins (the actual number is probably about 10% higher). The chart above are self-reported transaction numbers from Coinbase.  While it is unclear what each transaction can or do represent, in aggregate it appears to be relatively flat over the past year.11 Perhaps that will change in the future. On page 295 they write, “Volatility in bitcoin’s price will also eventually decline as more traders enter the market and exchanges become more sophisticated.” As Christopher Hitchens once remarked, that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.  Those making a positive claim (that volatility will decline) are the party that needs to prove this and they do not in this book.  Perhaps volatility will somehow disappear, but not for the non-technical reasons they describe. At the bottom of page 295 they write, “Even so, we will go out on a limb here and argue that encryption-based, decentralized digital currencies do have a future.” Again, there is no encryption in cryptocurrencies, only cryptographic primitives.  Also, as described in the introductory notes above, virtual currencies are not synonymous with digital currencies. Also on page 295 they write, “Far more important, it solves some big problems that are impossible to address within the underlying payment infrastructure.” Yes, there are indeed problems with identity and fraud but it is unclear from this book what Bitcoin actually solves.  No one double-spends on the Visa network.  No one has, publicly, hacked the Visa Network (which has 42 firewalls and a moat).  The vulnerabilities and hacks that take place are almost always at the edges, in retailers such as Home Depot and Target (which is unfortunately named).  This is not to say that payment rails and access to them cannot be improved or made more accessible, but that case is not made in this book. On page 296 they write, “Imagine how much wider the use of cyptocurrency would be if a major retailer such as Walmart switched to a blockchain-based payment network in order to cut tens of billions of dollars in transaction costs off the $350 billion it sends annually to tens of thousands of suppliers worldwide.” Again this is conflating several things.  Walmart does not need a proof-of-work blockchain when it sends value to trusted third parties.  All the participants are doxxed and KCY’ed.  Nor does it need to convert fiat -> into a cryptocurrency -> into fiat to pay retailers.  Instead, Walmart in theory, could use some type of distributed ledger system like SKUChain to track the provenance of items, but again, proof-of-work used by Bitcoin are unneeded for this utility because parties are known. Also, while the authors recognize that bitcoins currently represent a small fraction of payments processed by most retailers, one of the reasons for why they may not have seen a dramatic improvement in their bottom line because people — as shown with the Wence Casares citation above (assuming the 96% figure is accurate) — do not typically purchase bitcoins in order to spend them but rather invest and permanently hold them.  Perhaps that may change in the future. On page 297 they write, “But now bitcoin offers an alternative, one that is significantly more useful than gold.” That’s an unfounded claim.  The two have different sets of utility and different trade-offs We know precious metals have some use-value beyond ornamentation, what are the industrial usages of bitcoin?  In terms of security vulnerabilities there are trade-offs of owning either one.  While gold can be confiscated and stolen, to some degree the same challenge holds true with cryptocurrencies due to its bearer nature (over a million bitcoins have been lost, stolen, seized and destroyed).12 One advantage that bitcoin seems to have is cheaper transportation costs but that is largely dependent on subsidized transaction fees (through block rewards) and the lack of incentives to attack high-value transactions thus far. On page 300 they write, “As you’ll know from having read this book, a bitcoin-dominant world would have far more sweeping implications: for one, both banks and governments would have less power.” That was not proven in this book.  In fact, the typical scenarios involved the success of trusted third parties like Coinbase and Xapo, which are banks by any other name.  And it is unclear why governments would have less power.  Maybe they will but that was not fleshed out. On page 301 they write, “In that case, cryptocurrency protocols and blockchain-based systems for confirming transactions would replace the cumbersome payment system that’s currently run by banks, credit-card companies, payment processors and foreign-exchange traders.” The authors use the word cumbersome too liberally.  To a consumer and even a merchant, the average swipeable (nonce!) credit card and debit card transaction is abstracted away and invisible.  In place of these institutions reviled by the authors are, in practice, the very same entities: banks (Coinbase, Xapo), credit-card companies (Snapcard, Freshpay), payment processors (BitPay, GoCoin) and foreign-exchange traders (a hundred different cryptocurrency exchanges).  Perhaps this will change in the future or maybe not. On page 305 they write about a “Digital dollar.”  Stating, “Central banks could, for example, set negative interest rates on bank deposits, since savers would no longer be able to flee into cash and avoid the penalty.” This is an interesting thought experiment, one raised by Miles Kimball several months ago and one that intersects with what Richard Brown and Robert Sams have discussed in relation to a Fedcoin. On page 306 they write about currency reserves, “we doubt officials in Paris or Beijing are conceiving of such things  right now, but if cryptocurrency technology lives up to its potential, they may have to think about it.” This is wishful thinking at best.  As described in Chapter 13, most proponents of a “Bitcoin reserve currency” are missing some fundamental understanding of what a reserve currency is or how a currency becomes one. Because there is an enormous amount of confusion in the Bitcoin community as to what reserve currencies are and how they are used, it is recommended that readers peruse what Patrick Chovanec wrote several years ago – perhaps the most concise explanation – as it relates to China (RMB), the United Kingdom (the pound) and the United States (the dollar): There are four main factors that set the Pound and the Dollar apart as viable and attractive reserve currencies. Each was necessary. They were liquid. They were available. And they were perceived as safe. I’m going to run through each of these conditions in turn. I will consider how they applied to the Pound and the Dollar, and to what extent they are satisfied by China’s Renminbi. (1) Necessity. The fundamental purpose of a reserve currency is to settle external obligations. The greater quantity and variety of obligations a particular currency can settle, the more useful it is as a reserve currency. The currency of a country that produces little of note and lacks funds to lend or invest is not nearly as useful as one whose home economy produces many goods and services desired around the world, serves as an important source of capital, and has many commercial partners who also find its currency relevant to meeting their own obligations. This idea — that the dominant reserve currency derives its status from its connection with the dominant national economy in an interconnected world – is what underlies Roubini’s reasoning that the Renminbi may be next in line to replace the Dollar. But this conclusion misses something important. A reserve currency must not only be capable of settling obligations in connection with a heavy-weight economy. It must be required to. Because if you can settle those obligations, as sizeable and important as they may be, using your own currency — or the currency of another leading economy — there is no reason to hold that country’s currency as a reserve. That is precisely the case today with China. It is unclear how or why some Bitcoin advocates can suggest that bitcoins will ever be used as a reserve currency when there is no demand for the currency to meet external trading obligations let alone in the magnitude that these other currencies do (RMB, USD, GBP). Under this imagined Bretton Woods II, perhaps the IMF would create its own cryptocurrency, with nodes for managing the blockchain situated in proportionate numbers within all the member countries, where none could ever have veto power, to avoid a state-run 51 percent attack. Proof-of-work mining on a trusted network is entirely unnecessary yet this type of scenario is propagated by a number of people in the Bitcoin space including Adam Ludwin (CEO of Chain.com) and Antonis Polemitis (investor at Ledra Capital).  Two months ago on a panel at the Stanford Blockchain event, Ludwin predicted that in the future governments would subsidize mining.  Again, the sole purpose of mining on a proof-of-work blockchain is because the actors cannot trust one another.  Yet on a government-run network, there are no unverified actors (Polemitis has proposed a similar proof-of-work solution for Fedcoin). Again, there is no reason for the Fed, or any bank for that matter, to use a Bitcoin-like system because all parties are known.  Proof-of-work is only useful and necessary when actors are unknown and untrusted.  The incentive and cost structure for maintaining a proof-of-work network is entirely unnecessary for financial services institutions.  Furthermore, maintaining anonymous validators while simultaneously requiring KYC/AML on end users is a bit nonsensical (which is what the Bitcoin community has done actually).  Not only do you have the cost structures of both worlds but you have none of the benefits.  If validators are known, then they can be held legally responsible for say, double spending or censoring transactions. Robert Sams recently noted the absurdity of this hydra, why permissionless systems are a poor method for managing off-chain assets: The financial system and its regulators go to great lengths to ensure that something called settlement finality takes place. There is a point in time in which a trade brings about the transfer of ownership–definitively. At some point settlement instructions are irrevocable and transactions are irreversible. This is a core design principle of the financial system because ambiguity about settlement finality is a systemic risk. Imagine if the line items of financial institution’s balance sheet were only probabilistic. You own … of … with 97.5% probability. That is, effectively, what a proof-of-work based distributed ledger gives you. Except that you don’t know what the probabilities are because the attack vectors are based not on provable results from computers science but economic models. Do you want to build a settlement system on that edifice? Though as shown by the NASDAQ annoucement, this will likely not stop people from trial by fire. Bertha Benz, wife of Karl Benz, is perhaps best known for her August 1886 jaunt through present day Baden-Württemberg in which she became the first person to travel “cross-country” in an automobile — a distance of 106 kilometers. It is unclear what will become of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, but if the enthusiasm of the 19th century German countryside echoed similar excitement as reddit sock puppets do about magic internet money, they must have been very disappointed by the long adoption process for horseless carriages to overtake horses as the primary mode of transportation.  For instance, despite depictions of a widely motorized Wehrmacht, during World War II the Teutonic Heer army depended largely on horses to move its divisions across the battlefields of Europe: 80% of its entire transportation was equestrian.  Or maybe as the popular narrative states: cryptocurrencies are like social networks and one or two will be adopted quickly, by everyone. So is this book the equivalent to a premature The Age of Automobile?  Or The New Age of Trusted Third Parties? Its strength is in simplicity and concision.  Yet it sacrifices some technical accuracy to achieve this. While it may appear that I hated the book or that each page was riddled with errors, it bears mentioning that there were many things they did a good job with in a fast-moving fluid industry.  They probably got more right than wrong and if someone is wholly unfamiliar with the topic this book would probably serve as a decent primer. Furthermore, a number of the incredulous comments that are discussed above relate more towards the people they interviewed than the authors themselves and you cannot really blame them if the interviewees are speaking on topics they are not experts on (such as volatility).  It is also worth pointing out that this book appears to have been completed around sometime last August and the space has evolved a bit since then and of which we have the benefit of hindsight to utilize. For me, I would have preferred more data.  VC funding is not necessarily a good metric for productive working capital (see the Cleantech boom and bust).  Furthermore, VCs can and often are wrong on their bets (hence the reason not all of them outperform the market).13 Notable venture-backed flops: Fab, Clinkle, DigiCash, Pets.com and Beenz.  I think we all miss the heady days of Cracked.com. Only two charts related to Bitcoin were used: 1) historical prices, 2) historical network hashrate.  In terms of balance, they only cited one actual “skeptic” and that was Mark Williams’ testimony — not from him personally.  For comparison, it had a different look and feel than Robinson’s “BitCon” (here’s my mini review). Both Michael and Paul were gracious to sign my book and answer my questions at Google and I think they genuinely mean well with their investigatory endeavor.  Furthermore, the decentralized/distributed ledger tent is big enough for a wide-array of views and disagreement.  While I am unaware of any future editions, I look forward to reading their articles that tackle some of the challenges I proposed above.  Or as is often unironically stated on reddit: you just strengthened (sic) my argument. Share the post "Book review: The Age of Cryptocurrency" Great, thankless work, Tim. More scales fall from my eyes every time you write about Bitcoin. I love that Great Wall of Numbers is right after Ethereum Blog in my feed reader so I can chase my crypto-utopian koolaid with a bracing shot of pragma seltzer. Little side point: you seem to be saying that there if the price of Bitcoin halves, the security of the network halves because the mining incentive also halves. Let’s take for granted that mining is proportional to coin market cap — a fair enough approximation — it’s also true that the smaller a coin gets the less interesting an attack becomes. If a $100 market cap coin can be taken over by buying $50 worth of mining power, why do it? The loot would be pretty disappointing… My guess would be that security is proportional to the ratio of mining power to (net) market cap, which in steady state does not depend on price (it disappears being in both numerator and denominator). Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

the American Scum did that to. Which is why their great grandchildren, still hate, and always rob, Americans.What goes around, Etc.Please provide a verifiable source for your claim.WWII Japanese were brutal in their take-over of local populations of the Pacific Islands. As a result, almost all native populations strongly supported defeat of the Japanese, and willingly & actively cooperated with the American or Australian forces.Thats pretty shameful to scam the locals.SergioYup, that would be shameful if it was true. Ive asked d & David Calder to provide verifiable sources for their accusations (I cant find any on GOOGLE or my reading of WWII history).An individual would also have tone scum to make such unsupported accusations.Do a search on John Frum. All the material flowing into the Pacific Islands, was from America. A whole religion sprouted, worshipping John Frum and his return with moar fabulous mountains of goods.David CalderPlease provide a verifiable source for your accusation.Ive read tens of history books about WWII in the Pacific and have never heard of your Monopoly money story. A 15 minute GOOGLE search does not turn up any stories of WWII US military personnel Monopoly money scams.Legitimate military script was often referred to as Monopoly money.Likewise, have never, ever heard tell of this before.Also, chocolate and cigarettes provided to GIs were more valuable as currency in the aftermath of the war.My 6th grade teacher in the 1950s told us the story that when the first of the construction battalions began work they were able to pass off actual Monopoly money to the natives on some of the more remote islands. He was a combat soldier but too many years have passed to remember if he was Army or Marine but Im sure he wasnt the one to have passed bogus money because he would have arrived after the Seabees or before them in an island assault when money of any type would have been worthless. He could have been passing of scuttlebutt but it resonated with 6th graders only a few years after the war.. My point was these bitcoins or any crypto will end up having the same value as worthless monopoly money..David CalderI have no doubt some guy scammed some other guy on some Pacific island at sometime.The problem with your 6th grade teachers anecdotal and unverifiable accusation (aka fake news, 1950s vintage) is it implies the practice was widespread (remember all the Pacific island natives that are supposed to still hate Americans in this story).Im calling BS on this one.I am bullish Bitcoin into 2019. I am not buying this crackdown from governments as we are concerned about Joe Public and his speculation habits.I am sure it is just the way I think but too much attention from governments to think this thing is going away. I also believe the beginnings and trial are different than the narrative and there MAY be larger purpose for the idea in mind. You really can buy time. One Bitcoin please.I predict, that when the smoke clears, we will all be Marxists, not Karl, Groucho. This situation calls for a man of the stature of Rufus T. Firefly. Only he would have the intelligence and gravitas to lead us out the morass. Only he would have the courage to revoke Ben Bernankes birth certificate..Most people I know who bought Cryptos are in their 20s. They are not aware of the dot.com pump and dump with lots of promises. I just had a bad feeling as a lot of these crypto exchanges allowed big leverageup to 300%. When prices are going up, leveraging looks like a smart idea. Now what do these exchanges do when the the tide turns and they have a lot of leveraged accounts? AnywayI know some twenty somethings who bought 10K of Cryptos the past year. If we have any type of recession in the next year or two they will have to sell their most liquid assets first which will be crytpos?I work out with a personal trainer in his 20s. He is big into Cryptos. Hes now reading books related to past financial crises as part of his education. When I told him that the lesson of the books is that the 4 most expensive words in the English language is this time its different he replied: this time its truly different.I rest my case.In a way he is right. The bubbles this time are beyond anything that came before and not just in one thing like tulips but in virtually everything.. Thats different!!As it has been said: history doesnt repeat itself, but it often rhymes.I have a friend who says the same thing. Hes up like 10k. Started buying early last year. He diversifies among the cryptos and says this technology is the future. Its going to change the world and hes just going to keep buying until he can retire years down the road when every cryptocurrency is 10-100x what it is valued now..I still havent bought any.Unless your friend only bought 1 coin, how on earth can he only be up $10,000? Buying early last year, Bitcoin was about $1000 its $11,500 as I type this did he only buy 1.000000 Bitcoin?@JavertIm guessing hes bought alt coins, like Ethereum and Litecoin (in addition to dozens of others). You can also buy fractions of a bitcoin, I believe. So he could have done that. 4 most expensive words in the English language is this time its different he repliedRates, I have two words that are vastly more expensivetrust me.Who is providing leverage to these highly skilled & experienced twenty somethings?Credit card offers in the mail and offered on campus, student loans, borrow against 401 there is credit everywhere. Getting credit to buy bitcoin is not a problem Ben Bernanke made sure of it.My niece brought a bitcoin millionaire friend to Thanksgiving dinner he bought his bitcoin four years ago with student loan money.The banks issuing their credit cards.Excellent point.My pension fund :(Thats OK: pension funds are so 20th century!Central Bankers will be having a field day when that $500B comes flooding back into Fiat they will be thrilled to supply more of their coinA big chunk of that $500M is going POOF! into thin air.If you bought at $100, and surfed the wave to $19,000, your paper gain was a spectacular $18,900! Absolutely splendid.If youre riding it down to $10,000, $9,000 of your paper gains just ween POOF! into thin air.Still up 1,000%JonIm a physicist & retired CFO Ive spent a LOT of time looking at numbers to see if they mean anything. Your 1,000% is meaningless. My Berkshire Hathaway stock is up over 330,000%. If you cherry-pick your start & end points, you can just about come up with any number you want.I can read financial statements, so I can relate BRK performance to underlying business performance (yea, yea, I know financial statements arent perfect); however, there is NOTHING underlying Bitcoin performanceexcept (my best guess) money laundering & highly inexperienced & gullible speculators gambling on Bitcoin. Money launderers are used to losing 50% of their illegal gross cash (normal cost of business); 20-something speculators probably arent.Besides, I an actually see stuff in my house made by Berkshire companies Duracell, Tyvek, Fruit of the Loom.Not just unicorns and fairy dust.One would bet that all of the missing bits of coins have already turned into USD, other safe currencies or REAL hard investments, even if they are subject to the losses from the coming bursting of bubbles.Wonder if Peter Thiel is still holding bitcoins. It would be hilarious if he got suckered like the common joe but I wouldnt bet on it.As a wealthy VC hes said that he puts money into lots of things and while only a few succeed, those few give him an ROI many times over. $15 $20 isnt a huge amount for him.Given all the billions he has, a few hundred million in evaporated gains dont really matter :-]I could see thiel having gotten in, but just more like pre 2014 than late 2017. But issac Newton got taken by the south sea bubbleIt seems all these coins are mostly fraud. And block chain technology, if developed, will be used by banks one way or another, i.e. no decentralized fin tech is possible, since the key word is CONTROL. Otherwise, chaos. No?they said people were using credit cards to buy bitcoin..For anyone thats got nothing left to loose thats a no brainer.This bitcoin fast turning to bitshit is an ocean of cesspools. It is now at different degrees of diahoerra and soon an avalanche of shit will race down the slopes engulfing those worshippers and those singing praises. Wealthy interest groups are into ways and means to get the small flies dabble into the cesspools so that they can make a quick exit with their start up money. Transactions in the bitcoin exchanges are anonymous right? Before the small flies can come to their senses the bitshit ecosystem will turn beyond recognition. Yes many main media participate in singing the bitshit songs. Because they are being paid handsomely by interest groups.Ripple up over 50% from the weekly lows. Bitcoin back above 11k. Ethereum back above 1k.Im amazed there are over 1,400 digital currencies. Just trying to get an accurate quote on Bitcoin (which Im assuming has largest market share) is difficult simultaneous price quotes vary by as much as 5%.Jon, now you see how totally nuts this is!!Yes, but did the Winklevoss twins cash any out or do they expect it to run past $30,000 or much more if they just wait a little longer? Heroes or suckers?This whole cryptocurrency thing has broken my brain. Wolf has done a good job following and explaining the phenomenon, but the concept is still eluding me. At my age it probably doesnt matter because I no longer chase leprechauns and unicorns.I think I will just hang on to my coin collection. Who knows what a Mercury Dime may be worth soon.Night TrainIm in the same boat.Sometimes a pet rock is just a rock. People enjoy the novelty until they dont, and the value goes to zero, No harm, no foul.Except I believe a lot of Bitcoin froth is money laundering. If true, innocent (aka: silly-assed) speculators are simply bloody hunks of raw meat in the shark tank.States are legalizing marijuana sales (a free people ought to have the right to do this) , but the Fed is not allowing them access to banks. This just seems like a taylor-made recipe for forcing billions into money laundering.And the more people they deny access to banks and to cash the more of the economy that goes underground. And bitcoins are probably a more practical substitute currency than boxes of Tide.Many facets on this deal. The sideline is the perfect place for me.Firewood?I hadnt thought about it from that perspective.ThanksStates are legalizing marijuana sales (a free people ought to have the right to do this) , but the Fed is not allowing them access to banks. This just seems like a taylor-made recipe for forcing billions into money laundering.Javert,I see something a bit more sinister. Anyone in any state with a Marijuana plant being knowingly grown on their property is subject to RICO laws and loss of their property. both real and physical.This is current Federal Law.I have several thousand Mercs from my youth. Never sold even one yet, but I WILL when necessary. Interesting thing, until reading your post I never really think about them. So, this morning I did. Heres what a common-date Merc is worth :http://www.coinflation.com/silver_coin_values.htmlBTW, if they went to $10.00 each well then I would have to sell 1000 of them right away, just because.One more thing, people have said to stackers like us, and they say it often, How would you sell them when the time comes? Too easy.Those of us who stack (meaning bullion coins) know how to sell them easily and quickly. Mercs too./// The basis of any monetary system is trust. As a matter of fact the word credit comes from latin credere to trust or to believe. To avoid this situation , lets call the situation fiat currency, nations have resolved to backing with hard currencygold. The chemical nature of gold is unique in that it can be found in its raw form naturally and does not need much refining, explaining its omnipresence in the history of mankind. And it also glitters. Hence, human kind has universally accepted gold as a form of payment, which is nothing more then againtrust. Though Gold is a limited resource, we have been mining it for the last 5000 years and somehow we keep finding more. /// To claim crypto is a money laundering scheme for evil villains well the bad guys are doing just fine with the dollar, arent they? /// I think we have to make a difference between speculative and user-designer supported crypto. Bitcoin is here to stay, most of the rest will be obliterated as easy as it came. The price will eventually stabilize somewhat higher then it was previously and they will keep rolling. /// The problem with bitcoin are currency stability, currency flow and conversion transaction. If money is not used it is not a currency, and if its lacks stablility it cannot be used. The conversion transactions have to be regulated, bitcoin needs to ask where the money comes from. /// Good luck bitcoiners, fortune favors the braveor maybe it doesnt. /// I own no Bitcoin or crypto, but I would hate to see a good idea go down the drain. ///I can see some validity to the argument that the Blockchain is here to stay I dont yet see why a new form of accounting will Change Everything, though thats a topic for another time but why is Bitcoin here to stay?Contrary to the hype weve been fed, its not truly anonymous, has long transaction/clearing times, and very high transaction costs (to say nothing of the fact that you cant readily spend it and cannot pay taxes with it), so why should we believe its going to Rule?/// The accounting doesnt need to change, but it would help keep financial transparency which will build trust of government entities allowing it to flow into the market, making it a currency. Governmentsif they cant tax it, they dont like it. /// Bitcoin specifically because their community is very strong and dedicated to making it work (there might be more out there, but I havent seen them around). Think of it as iPad, iPhone and other Apple products. They are not the best overall product yet they get away with charging 2-3x the market value because people believe in the product. The Bitcoin communitythey believe in their product, and their idea. And have been believing for 10-ish year now. Credere to trustin this case to trust in oneself. ///Maybe its me, but Im having some trouble grasping this simultaneous anonymous and transparent discrepancy.If my Bitcoin wallet sends your Bitcoin wallet a payment, theres a record of that, which can then be traced when you (inevitably, lest your Bitcoin remain functionally isolated and sterile) cash out. Wheres the anonymity?Think about it: central banks and law enforcement are hot to eliminate cash, which is truly anonymous, yet seem to have limited problems with Bitcoin.Funny, that.Yes the problem with this is the vast majority of people who are buying into bitcoin, tron, dogecoin, litecoin, et al. dont actually believe in the product because they cant actually explain the product.so,lack of volatility in equity markets: blinkered central bank intervention. absurdly lopsided valuations. p/e ratio at comically asymmetrical highs. will surely lead to an epic, horrific crash.volatility in crypto markets: THIS MARKET IS SO BROKEN LOOK AT HOW VOLATILE IT IS.maybe pick one? isnt the phenomenon we are witnessing just the interplay of the current historically unique, hyper-asset-inflated economic environment and a market where all means of price discovery HAS NOT been suppressed? yes, theres many suckers and morons and bagholders in this market. please name a market that is not full of suckers and morons and bagholders (i believe on wall street these are actually called pension fund managers). yes, theres garbage and fraud in this market. please name a market that is NOT full of garbage and fraud. at least here, the market can still behave like a market. but somehow that is a terrible, insane thing? OH WOW BITCONNECT WAS VALUED AT FOUR BILLION BUT THEN IT TURNED OUT TO BE FRAUD AND NOW ITS ZERO. holy crap thats never happened in the entire history of asset valuation.no one on earth knows how crypto is going to end up playing out. even the most insane bien-pensant techno-chiliasts agree on that. on the other hand, the tulip comparison is patently absurd only someone in willful ignorance of the underlying facts could make it (but it does play incredibly well with the butthurters, who are falling back to a position of moral superiority to assuage the intense pain caused by people who JUST DONT DESERVE IT getting rich). there is an enormous speculative bubble around crypto just as there is one in real estate, stocks, and a bunch of other garbage. but complaining about volatility in the middle of a speculative bubble while also complaining about suppression of volatility in the other markets i think is disingenuous (if not straightforwardly moronic). speculative bubbles have been a fixture of capitalism more or less since capitalism was invented, and violent valuation swings are part of the price discovery process. what is the endgame of all the whinging about the crypto bubble? government, please help?Stocks represent potential corporate profits, and can provide an income stream.Real estate can provide housing, food or timber/resource production, as well as an income stream.Aside from a fascinating instance of collective madness, what exactly does Bitcoin provide?what value does gold provide? what value does the us dollar provide?what value does a bank ledger provide?what value do wire transfers provide?if you have even a rudimentary understanding of the underlying system and really believe there is no value proposition whatever to an inflation-proof, decentralized system that allows you to securely access or transfer funds, i cant really help you. well have to agree that we do not agree.is the crypto bubble crazy and stupid: yes, this is obvious.is there a value proposition to crypto: yes, also obvious. just as amusing as watching the absurd excesses of the crypto bubble has been watching the tidal wave of commenters (many of them ostensibly libertarian) repeating, endlessly, the same incantations.Yes, well have to agree to disagree, since Gold has thousands of years of use as a monetary entity. Does Bitcoin? The dollar is accepted in exchange for virtually any product on earth, and is the only medium accepted as payment for tax obligations. Is Bitcoin? The ledgers of a chartered and regulated bank protect its customers from theft and fraud. Does Bitcoin? (Im trying to keep the smirk off my face with that one.) At this point, even wire transfers are cheaper and faster than Bitcoin. As for inflation-proof, its irrelevant for now, since Bitcoin is so unstable that is cannot accurately be called a medium of exchange, and in fact it isnt, unless youre looking to purchase drugs, guns or child pornography. Securely transfer funds? Youre kidding, right? Ask the hapless rubes who were standing outside Mt. Gox with sandwich boards, begging for their money back, how secure it is.The Blockchain may very well have broad functional uses, although I still fail to see why a new form of accounting is going to Change The World, but Im, at least glad that you agree with me that this bubble is crazy and stupid.But also quite entertaining.So have crypto hedge funds triggered the collapse by trying to get their money out of an illiquid market?Well DuH No need to get the money out when there are the futures to play with by manipulating an illiquid asset via insider trading. Its the raison dtre for Unregulated Markets. Maybe 1500 people owns 90% of the BTC ever mined, 400 of those probably know each others email or phone numbers. They would be stupid not to rig the market. The pricing behind Bitcoin works like this: Me and my dropout neighbour JimBob have 1000 Bitcoin we acquired ages ago for shit & giggles a while back when discussing The Collapse with crazy cousin Jack, who grows his own weed out in the forest and is always paranoid. Now, we have grown into older, wiser, colder people. We want to do something in life. Maybe we took an investment class online. There is talk about Bitcoin, so, applying our skillz, JimBob buys 5 BTC of me for 15000 USD. In return cause we are not millionaires and stuff here I get JimBobs truck. So we are even. Except now we have 995 BTC which are worth 14925000 USD. On top of all that sudden goodness, JimBob has 15000 USD cash, I have a working truck. Whats not to like?. With bitcoin futures coming along we can finally Collect, have our (hashish)cake and it it too, see? We can now convert the fluctuations from our own insider trading into real, taxable, capital gains and be proper folks. Of course the sharks will also be attracted, eventually they will be the ones gaming the BTC futures market. For now, they are bit-players due to the BTC market structure.fajensenSo where is the insider trading in your story?You could look at this another way :That is that inflation has hit bitcoin to the tune of 50% in just three weeks. What would the msm say if this happened to the dollar?Lots of these bitcoin shills are also believers in the global warming myth. Of course, bitcoin mining entails the production of huge quantities of greenhouse gasses, but lets not let destruction of the environment get in the way of naked greed.Youre saying you dont believe in climate change?And nothing comes close to the detrimental effect animal agriculture has on the planet. Nothing.Perhaps, but at least that animal agriculture provides food for human beings.What does Bitcoin provide, relative to its immense energy footprint, outside the closed system of Bitcoin itself?The crypto segment represents an emerging technology that is experiencing a frenzy of experimentation within a largely unregulated space. Many believe crypto technology represents the latest chapter of an exponentially accelerating pace of valuable scientific development. To be sure the crypto space has seen its share of seemingly obvious early hucksters like BitConnect social media has testimonials of life-savings losses and other problems due to lack investment prudence and adequate liquidity, among other things. But there is fascinating and reputable cutting edge work being done in the sphere that merits close and continued attention. It is not hard to find.Granting every (unsupported) premise you state, that provides no guarantee of Bitcoins (or any other cryptos) value or continued existence.Its interesting to note that China, a country where people have real jobs and produce real things, and once an enthusiastic adopter of bitcoin, has shut down exchanges and is phasing out mining. They also ban pornography. I guess they feel compulsive wanking and playing bitcoin are not particularly productive activities for their citizenry to engage in.TheyThat one word embodies all the difference from what we at least purport to ascribe to our constitution and its limitations on governance.At least ostensibly, they dont decide those matters; individuals at liberty do.For those crashing the fiat currency price of the cryptos by trying to convert their crypto holdings to fiat; I hear there is a secondary market in Holland that exchanges tulip bulbs for cryptos.At a good price, too!Crypto and blockchain is here to stay.The highs are not in yet. Not even close.Old ppl just cant wrap there head around it.Millennials now out number baby boomers.Millennials dont trust banks or Fiat.Its millennials world now. Adapt.Its the millennials world now.Not as long as they have all that student loan debt around their necks.It will be interesting to see what happens when society realizes that they wont pay it back since they now have their own money. Expect the boomers to be forced to pay dearly for assistance in their old age. Their US$s likely will be close to worthless.Their dollars may end up close to worthless, but its highly unlikely that Bitcoin will have anything to doBeer, Wine, & Food Brick and Mortar California Daydreamin Canada Cars, Trucks & Crashes Central Banks China Commercial Property Companies & Markets Consumers Credit Bubble Cryptos Debtor Nation Energy The French Debacle Teutonic Dilemmas Spain Federal Reserve Financial Repression Housing Bubble 2 Inflation & Devaluation Information Age Japans Juggle Jobs Transportation Wall St. ShenanigansAdvisor Perspectives, Doug ShortBlacklisted NewsBusiness InsiderMax KeiserMish's Global Economic AnalysisNaked CapitalismOf Two MindsOilprice.comPeak ProsperityRigged GameSGT ReportSilver for the PeopleThe Registry, Bay Area Real EstateZero HedgeAt the moment, cryptocurrencies and tokens are bouncing up and down in wild, double-digit gyrations by the hour.Bitcoin plunged below $9,300 and as Im writing this is trading at around $9,800, down about 50% from its peak on December 17. Gone up in smoke in one month: $168 billion.Ripple, the crypto that has recently been touted as the next bitcoin or better than bitcoin, plunged to $0.88 and is currently trading at $0.98, still down 76% from its peak on January 4. Gone up in smoke in two weeks: $110 billion.Ethereum, after having plunged to $775, is now at $852, down 40% from its peak on January 13. Gone up in smoke in two weeks: $60 billion.There are now over 1,400 of these cryptocurrencies and tokens out there, according to CoinMarketCap. Anyone can issue a new one. The supply is unlimited. On January 8, they were valued at $830 billion. Now theyre valued $472 billion. About $358 billion have been eradicated or transferred from those holding the bag to those that got out early.Then theres BitConnect, which is down 97% from $476 on December 28 to $14.39 currently, but bouncing wildly up and down. Nearly $4 billion evaporated, using the number cited by the Texas Securities Commissioner, which has entered an Emergency Cease and Desist Order. The Securities Division of the North Carolina Department of Secretary of State has issued a Temporary Order to Cease and Desist. Much of the operation has now been shut down.Gain financial freedom with a secure and practical alternative to centralized banking, BitConnect said on its website. In the crypto-craze, people fall for anything.So have crypto hedge funds triggered the collapse by trying to get their money out of an illiquid market?An index by Eurekahedgethat tracks nine crypto hedge funds soared 1,167% in 2017 through December 31 and over 17,000% since June 2013. So its understandable if, after this run-up, the funds might try to take some profits.But the index does not yet include the collapse so far this year.Other hedge funds, family offices, and wealthy individuals got caught up in the craze. They shoved serious money intoa market with little liquidity, which propelled the market higher. But now if they try to get even a modicum of money back out, prices collapse there being little liquidity.Regulators have woken up. European Securities and Markets Authority Chairman Steven Maijoor told Bloomberg that bitcoin investors should be prepared to lose all their money. US regulators, including the SEC and North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), have issued similar warnings, adding fraud as one of the risks. Chinese and Korean regulators are cracking down on the crypto space, including trading, crypto mining, and crypto exchanges.I believe there is still a nontrivial chance bitcoin goes to zero, fund manager Bill Miller mused at the end of October. One of his funds had over $50 million in bitcoin. So meanwhile enjoy the ride He said this fund was up 72.5% for the year, at a time when bitcoin was around $5,800. So if he kept the bitcoin stake through the rest of the year, 2017 ended very strongly for the fund. 2018 is another matter.Each day bitcoin does not go to zero, that chance declines as more venture capital flows into the bitcoin ecosystem and more people become familiar with bitcoin and buy it, he said.In other words, what might keep bitcoin from collapsing is artificial demand by venture capital flows and other funds. But this artificial demand can disappear without notice. And then with all the cryptos out there, whats left is no demand and unlimited supply.On January 2, at the peak of the craze, it was reported that a VC fund of Peter Thiel the don of the so-called PayPal mafia had bought $15 million to $20 million of bitcoins whose value had ballooned to hundreds of millions of dollars, as The Wall Street Journal put it, citing people familiar with the matter. This leak is precisely the sort of hype designed to drive this scheme ever higher by showing that the smartest and richest are buying into it. There is a fundamental understanding by every participant that there is just one job that everyone needs to do for this to work: creating more artificial demand.Bloomberg identified a few more hedge funds in the space, including:Altana Digital Currency Fund, started in 2014, was up 1,496% in 2017. The fund also engages in automated arbitrage, momentum trading and short-term, securitized bitcoin loans, according to Bloomberg. It warned in November that clients should only invest an amount they can afford to lose.Silver 8 Partners, a hedge fund focused on fintech, blockchain, and machine learning, started investing in cryptos in June 2015. In 2017, it made 750% mostly due to bullish bets on digital assets, according to Bloomberg.Crypto Asset Fund, which was started up in July 1, 2017, is into various aspects of the crypto space. For the six months of 2017, it gained 805%. All it did in its short life was buy, buy, buy. That was the easy part. Now comes the hard part: get out in an illiquid market.Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund, formerly a commodities hedge fund, became what it describes as the worlds first regulated bitcoin fund in September 2014, according to Bloomberg. It trades bitcoin and products related to bitcoin, such as the exchange-traded bitcoin products offered by XBT Provider. It also lends and borrows bitcoin. It gained about 300% in 2017. In late 2017, it switched to a more market-neutral arbitrage approach, reducing its exposure to bitcoin and missing out on some of the gains late in the year, according to co-founder Daniel Masters, but likely also missing out on the carnage in January.These and other funds and family offices have plowed large amounts of money into the crypto space in 2017; and with so little liquidity, they added fuel for the phenomenal price spikes last year, which lured even more funds into the space, driving prices up further.With billions of dollars begging to be taken out of the market, every such move demonstrates just how illiquid the market is, and how impossible it is to take a hedge-fund-appropriate sum of money out without causing a plunge. For this scheme to work, they need to engineer another flood of money into the market so that the funds can get their money out. But the speculators saviors-of-last-resort central banks have shown no inclination to step in and bail those folks out.Eleven days after I lambasted the outfit, the SEC steps in. Read SEC Halts Trading in my Biggest Blockchain Stock HeroWould you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.Buy buy .. bye.In order to buy many of these altcoins in the US, you must buy bitcoin first. People buying Ripple are gambling twice.Its a sort of derivative.It will be really interesting to see what happens when people/institutions go bankrupt having taken out loans or used credit to purchase crapto-coins.Theyll ask for a bailout although the crypto folks are supposedly anti government concentration. Thats the biggest joke of the whole thing. Theres a thread on Reddit where someone posted his experience losing 500K on BitConnect and him hoping for the government to step in.Buy buy BUY!!!Bitcoin is up over 20% since this morning!!!There is such an enormous ocean of dollars (electronic Fed Reserve tokens) sloshing around the world looking to purchase any possible asset before it loses ever more purchasing power that its nearly impossible to value an asset in dollars. Wealthy investors have been unloading dollars for years and now people everywhere are panicking.Buy anything anyone will sell you in exchange for your confetti dollars never mind the price better to have anything at all then be left with worthless confetti dollars.Stocks, Gold, Real Estate Anything! Buy anything you can for whatever price they ask. Confidence in the currency has been crushed and the time to search for value has passed that ship has sailed. The everything bubble will not pop because it was the currency that was in a bubble.Thank Ben Bernanke for the destruction of our monetary system and by extension our society (hell, even Greenspan admits what Bernanke did was reckless and insane).If you read how a well known crypto exchange is pumping the price of Bitcoin with simple Tether creation out of thin air (this thing is not audited, mind you) and if this is true, then this manipulation is not very different from the ways of the FED and other central scamsters.The question is how long they can sustain this, since crapto markets want to go down hard.ZarathustraActually, the Fed is materially different:o US currency/debt is backed by the full faith & credit of the US government (who knows exactly what this means, but the US has never defaulted in 240+ years)), Bitcoin et al. is backed by nada, zip zilch.o The collection powers of the US government are significant (try not paying your taxes)o Almost any commercial transaction can be conducted in US dollars; a tiny %age can be done in Bitcoin (try negotiating a contract requiring a long-term payment stream in Bitcoins).o Yup, the Fed runs the printing press; however, faith in US currency is derived from the strength of the US economy. Faith in Bitcoin requires belief in some hidden computer elf, but lots of the coins keep disappearing, in addition to market price crashing.Trying to run to something different is not the same as running to something safe.The USA experienced a financial melt-down in 2007-8, and the government mobilized resources to recover (we can argue about how effectively); Bitcoin is having a similar meltdown whos coming to the rescue? Nobody.@JC Im totally on board with naysaying bitcoin. But to say that people are buying the dollar based on the faith in the US economy? That may indeed be an illusion that people are playing in their own head. But anyone who looks at the math, which I gather youve probably seen, cannot rationally make a case for believing the dollars worth much more than toilet paper. This given the predilections of the voting public and 99% of their voting options.RagnarDI didnt intend to say the dollar is in perfect health.I was simply responding to equating the Fed with what I see as Bitcoin crapola.Actually, all any fiat currency has, ever has had or ever will have is confidence in the economy & political process backing it. If you tried to back currency with gold, the supply of gold only grows at about half the rate of global GDP.No system strikes me a perfect for all situations. Global GPD grows about 2.5-3.5%/year, physical gold supplies grow about 1.5%/year. At current prices, the worlds GDP is about $80T, the value of all gold is about $8T.There are a range of figures for the value of all global currencies, but a consensus is around $25-30T (again 100% of gold is about $8T).Somewhere along the line, you have to have trust; otherwise, you end up bartering that new BMW with dead chickens (or cows, etc)The U.S. dollar is backed by nothing its a confidence game. Confidence schemes fall apart when the confidence is lost. Bernanke and Yellen were poor stewards of the confidence they were charged with maintaining. Now the precious confidence is as good as gone and with it the value of the currency.Every payday I sell my dollars for any asset people will give me in exchange. The dollar is a hot potato drop it or get burned.The dollar is backed by the productive capacity and assets of the United States and many other nations around the world which are willing to trade in dollars. You can buy literally anything in the world with dollars.Which makes the dollar one of the most valuable assets in existence. The federal reserve monetized interest bearing assets, treasuries and securities, owned by large banks. Those dollars never left those banks.Try not paying your taxes and you will quickly learn that the dollar has value.The power masters/elite/shadow govt/wall st/CFR/masters of the world/ they are in control and are vested in the current system 100%, to the point that a revolution or uprising would be put down quickly and ruthlessly. They man all the switches, they vet any person who hopes to get elected to powers of position within the govt. they have facilitated the regulatory capture which now dictates terms and conditions in our society.This is how the dollar will maintain its preeminenceThe full faith and credit of the US government means, along with representing the productive capacity/potential of the US economy, that Men With Guns will show up if you dont pay your taxes in US dollars. It makes for a convincing argument.I appreciate your ideas on barter. It is an exchange of tangible assets at (todays) valuation, regardless of what you think of the dollar. The bartered item you got in exchange, will have a future value, which is not (today) calculable. It only has value as an asset to you, i.e., not a possible future acquirer. However, you now have a tangible asset. This compares favourably vs. a promise, which is the only thing that bitcoins possibly can promise.The U.S. dollar is backed by nothing its a confidence game.This is nonsense.The U.S. government owns hundreds of TRILLIONS of dollars of assets; land, mineral rights, fossil fuels, and infrastructure. That also ignores its taxation power and having the most powerful military in the world.There is plenty backing the U.S. dollar. Yours is a total know-nothing statement.well said!Chip, I think your conclusion at some point one has to have trust/confidence put you in a bad position. I hate to say this but in order to survive, trust NOBODY, especially people with power who can do things. You only trust competition in another word, if you behave bad, I will either refuse to deal with you or use violence against you. This is the only thing you can trust. After all, this is how this country was founded with the defused power since even the founders did NOT trust government and each other. Previously, if one central bank behaves bad, Incan hold other currencies. When all central banks do the same, what is the competition? There are all kinds of flaws about BTC, but nonetheless it is a competition. I am NOT suggesting you should trust BTC more than USD, but you should trust that the competition will make things better for people without power.Funny stuff.Imagine what will happen after a couple of surprise rate hikes at the Fed.Anyone capable of first grade arithmetic can see rates cant go up beyond a trivial level. If rates normalized and the government had to pay a more historically typical rate say 6% just the interest on the debt would exceed $1.2 trillion per year.If the Fed thinks normalized rates means 2% they are wrong. 2% is not normal. 2% rates are nothing short of debt monetizing. 2% is ultra easy yet achieving 2% is still data dependent. The economy is said to be doing great and assets have gone hockey stick parabolic yet the Fed funds rate is just 1.375% you gotta be kidding me.The U.S. government is defaulting through dollar devaluation and the Fed chairman is just an overpaid errand boy anyone could do that job it takes no special skills to rubber stamp money printing.Hysteria is entertaining, but reality is what you bet your money on.Historically, interest rates have been high enough to compensate the lender for inflation and a risk premium, plus any premium the market can generate. Interest rates high enough for a reasonable saver to live off of have been the historical norm.Bernanke came up with the idea to replace savings with financialization and asset inflation for earnings. QE was the distribution method and driving force. Inflation was supposed to devalue the debt over time. Absolutely none of his ideas worked. He will go down in history, along with his central bank peers from other countries, and a few famous economists as important inflection points in massive financial failure really bad ideas that became popular because a few could get filthy rich from them or countries could live off of printed money for a few years. I prefer to not conflate high debt balances with future shock. I prefer to start earning interest sooner than later and not be asked to subsidize the high cost of government spending indirectly. If it blows up, then it blows up. Well deal with it at that time. I suspect the quick buck crowd will have a great plan to kick the can when it happens.Interest rates high enough for a reasonable saver to live off of have been the historical norm.No, they havent. 1980 2007 was the only period where the 3-month T-bill (risk free rate) had a positive real return. And the only reason that was so, was because of ultra high interest rates in the 80s, and three decades of declining rates thereafter. 1980 2007: real return of 2.11% 1928 1980: real return of -0.19%It was an anomaly. Im happy to see any -evidence- you have to the contrary, other than your oft-repeated but incorrect opinion.Smingles, if rates rise today to only 4%, the income from that, added to my social security, will allow me to live better than before I retired. If rates rise even higher, which is probable if they actually normalize, I will be able to live like a king.So will you. I remember your previous post about your savings and savings habits. The miracle of compound interest will allow to to live the same or a better life when you retire from old age.Good research. However I might want to invest sideways. Eg first bitcoin capital and only a very small amount because it is working on aligned blockchain evolutions. And in the US the banks most wont fund cannabis ventures etc but the coin aptly named pot can be used. The question on my mind has always been the exit doors including potential tax because if you really think this is untraceabledont be a silly. Canadian Tire Money. and soon to be merged with Loblaws PC points. Optimim points for shoppers has always worked really well for me especially on those 20 times the points. With aph aprhia and leaf. Medreleaf as suppliers for online orders via shoppers drug mart for when Canada legalizes the Little green herb for recreational purposes. Maybe you can use those points to order on line???? Getting 14 loaves of bread stamped means you get a loaf for free so there have always been in tandem alternative currenciesbut they dont usually involve the hedge funds. as for the merchants accepting bitcoin like overstock. They must have real headaches setting so many coins for this or that. Airmiles is another one. These are loyalty cards but they do have considerable value. Just not the wild swings of the cryptosLittle known fact:Loblaws PC points were started by CTs CEO Bob Loblaw and 1/100 (1 cent) is called a BobLoblaw or 1 Blah Blah Blah.The 14 loaves is a deal with Cobbs. Get the card stamped. And on Tues you get two stamps for each loaf. Hot oven bakery similar. But they have a really sweet deal that if you buy something doesnt matter what you get your gourmet priced loaf of bread for two dollars. So if you add a dollar coffee or a fifty cent bagel you end up paying less and walking out with much more. Than had you not done the add onBitcoin: The ultimate wealth transfer. Advisory warning: The exits are crowded,please be patient and wait your turn. Did someone in the regulatory world yell fire? Unregulated world of crypto meet world regulation.Hmmm, the exits to get out of the dollar are looking more crowded than the exits to get out of bitcoin.If you want to exit the dollar in exchange for a modest home here in Seattle it will now take well over a million of those dollars, and youll be competing with lots of other people also seeking to dump their dollars for a tangible asset.1 bitcoin for 12,000 dollars = equals Even-Steven. They are both pretty much worthless. You can multiply a worthless token by any value you want but zero times anything is still zero and zero will always equal zero Even-Steven.There is nought as queer as folk. (Old northern English expression regaurding the stupidity of people)Pretend wealth in the clouds created by anyone, anywhere! Fake everything and Donalds small hands on a huge red button.Vertural Tulips look like a buy.If you hedged with puts then you would be up now. Some hedge funds may have offsets in futures re or did I misunderstand the news about trading futures and cryptos?$1 billion in options were said to have expired today and the largest open interest was at 10,000 strike so is it any surprise the price dipped down to make the calls worthless? The options market closed and the price rockets back 20%.The Bankers have arrived! (in case you forgot who runs this game). Im shocked, shocked! to see gambling going on in this establishment.Bankers dont care if an investment is real or tangible, they only care if it can be used as a tool to harvest wealth they seem to care about bitcoin.Question is, in this unregulated Bitcoin et al. never-never land, who is it that ensures the counter-party to your puts can complete the transaction?If you bought Bitcoin puts at $20,000, and its now trading at $11,300, thats FANTASTIC (well, I mean ignoring the probably very high cost of the put). Now try to actually collect from your counter-party.Ask yourself. The CME started futures trading. This is very big money. Bitcoin behaved accordingly.One of our tile supplier sales reps bought into bitcoin a few years ago hes all pumped up about a $20,000 gain. My advice was to sell it while its hot and enjoy the proceeds.I have no idea what hell do, but most people dont know what a pump-and-dump scheme is. People see these valuations as real liquid cash. The big fallacy is well said in this article- when you put in a lot of money into something illiquid, the value shoots up. In order to realize the gains, you need to get new buyers or the price will shoot down even faster when you sell. The real value of the underlying asset is often irrelevant- except that you can get in trouble with the SEC doing it with penny stocks, but its totally legit with unregulated crypto currencies.As with the tulip mania, which gave modern economics the definition of a bubble, the current crypto madness will be studied ages into the future. Men go quickly mad in groups, but return to sanity slowly and then only one at a time. Dont recall who said that, but is very descriptive of the crypto coin madness. Those that have lost wealth in their greed, are having to learn an old lesson again. There is no free lunch.Charles Mackay:Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.I dont have a crystal ball, so maybe bitcoin will eventually reach new all time highs.But to me, the bubble officially topped out when my girlfriend was watching E! Hollywood News and they were talking about bitcoin. It was literally right when it was at the all time highs a month or so ago. I had lots of friends buying in then, too, and Ive never seen a more clear picture of irrational exuberance in my life. That, and the fact that its biggest cheerleaders are a bunch of man-children on RedditIm old enough to remember American GIs using Monopoly money in the South Pacific during WW2 until the locals caught on. As far as I know no one lost their heads unlike todays suckers in this everything bubble..I only got the stories from the peopel with that.One teeny tiny problem:If you have non-forgivable student debt, and you have lots of assets (call them USD, British pound, bitcoins, gold bars, euros), if inspired, courts can attach & transfer or liquidate said assets.Still noe free lunch.Ouch!Jon, thats what Ive been saying for ages. My generation just don t realize how fast things change, for good or bad. Im not sure about the cryptos but I think the blockchain will survive and thrive.Just one heads up to you and your millennial buddies; I live in a swanky part of town populated by youngsters, hipsters and the like. Last time the power went out they were all at my house wondering why I had food, power etc.Went down to the gas station with a large quantites of small bills in hand. The guy gave me everything I wanted. The rest stood around looking like deer in the headlights. A little education goes a long way.Long live the WolfStreeters!! (Sounds like a gang doesnt it?)My generation just don t realize how fast things change, for good or bad.What change? I live in a house. I have furniture and bedding. I watch tv shows on occasion. I cook food. And it eat. I work for a living. I drive a car to and from work. I have fun on the weekends with friends. We boat, play golf, ride motorcycles, drink beer, have bbqs. I go to the movies on occasion. Sometimes a play or concert. I mow the yard and maintain the home. I talk to people on the phone. I pay bills. My father and grandfather did these things.Where is this magical world of the future that millennials live in? Did they finally get jet packs and flying cars?Kent The best you had was the the encyclopedia Brittanica and the MSM like National Geographic with its religious ideals that could not be questioned, Today we have the freedom to learn from the most brilliant and out of the box thought leaders from News to Health and History biology on and on. In short we have access to almost free and vast amounts of information that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago. And now lets hope we also get the power that comes with owning our own money.And so what has changed because we have access to all those thought leaders?Kent just got owned lol.Look, the world is changing and its doing so very fast. Adapt or die. Blockchain is the future. Cryptos are here to stay, at what price is unknown but it doesnt matter. Just wait for the next 10-15 years.With AI integration. The baby boomers will all be in senior living homes overweight and with health problems from eating too much meat and dairy and praying to a God in heaven that doesnt exist. Millennials are solving all the problems the baby boomers caused.Millennials are solving all the problems the baby boomers caused.Why cant you or farmboy actually mention some thing that has actually made a dramatic change to our life? Heck, video games came out 40 years ago, and the internet almost 30. Both created by boomers of course.JonIf memory serves (and it does), 18 year-old millennials were able to vote starting in 1998Obama came along in 2008.The national debt has more than doubled while millennials have been voting for the idiots we (all) send to congress.Jon, you seriously need to go look in the mirror you & your cohort are complicit.Adapt or die. hah! If that is the thinking, millennials should join this millennium and amount to something. See, When I need the sage and per-definition peaceful advice of a radical Islamic scholar, living in year 700 AD and getting year 700 outcomes, I know which mosque to join.Bitcoin is not money. Some guy named Satoshi says an encrypted computer file is money and a lots of drug dealers and money launders believe him. Now that belief has spread. IMHOCrypto block chain files are just a transaction ledger. It is not money until the government says it is. I have a bunch of files encrypted on my computer. There not block chains but they are encrypted files. I think I will call them crypto s instead of zipped files. I guess I should see if any millinels want to buy them. Anyway.I am pretyy sure the IRS says cryptos are an asset. Assets take many shapes or forms. A car, a house, land or even other digital assets that can be sold for a profit such as digital photo picture, a digital movie, a song, etc. You just have to report your capital gains when you sell or trade the asset.One day a block chain may be money but it probably cannot be money created by a lot of anonymous people. Otherwise you will have every Joe the plumber creating cryptos.What problems have millenials solved? Why the ignorant intergenerational attacks? What have they fixed ( besides frozen windows 10 computers)? Cryptos are in a giant unregulated bubbleBTW We overweight useless boomers did so little: -ending the draft for unjust wars -fighting for and winning the right to vote at age 18 -becoming activists in the civil rights, voting rights, gender equality and womens rights movements -becoming activists in the environmental movement -working and supporting ourselves from age 18 or younger -ushered in an era of material affluence -ended the existing era of political suppression with the free speech movement brought in an era some of the most fabulous music ever heard -Paid some of the highest tax rates ever due to the debt hangover from WWII etc, plus huge social security tax increases to fund ours, our parents, and grandparents retirement ( without complaint) risked our careers and safety by marching in the streets, voting, and organizing and sometimes suing corporations or the government for our (your) rights.Much of the above took place well before many of us reached the age of 30we were not sitting on the couch watching TV or playing games (video or other) in our 20s.We also failed, unlike some of our progeny, to whine about the state of the world our parents handed to us, recognizing that the world they inherited was no better than ours and that our parents suffered deeply through the great depression and WWII. Instead of whining, we took action. Although many of our best leaders were assassinated, we did not give up. Unfortunately, our government is no longer responsive to the will of the majority (perhaps it never was)and this is the major battle ahead.Some of the best people I have met are Millennials and I hope they will be the ones to change the world for the better, like many of the boomers and preceeding generations. We always stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. To think otherwise is to live in ignorance.Javert Chip,Who cares about national debt in highly flawed fiat money when baby boomers have destroyed the Earth probably beyond repair unless millennials use technology to save it somehow.Baby boomers have swung the pendulum too far to one side with all their inefficiencies and incredibly wasteful way of living (oil, single use plastic, animal agriculture, suburbia, golf courses, etc etc etc) and we are now trying to bring it back.Aint neo-religious hellfire sumpin, folks?Jon, Well the monetary system does matter since the cryptos are not actually a part of it. Thus, cryptos are not legal tender for all debts public or private, but fiat money is.Off topic, but responding yet again to misinformation herewhen I was a child in the 1950s signs were up in Aquatic Park, in San Francisco, forbidding swimming due to severe contamination. Water/ sewer projects fixed this.My first trip to LA in the 1960 s shocked me, due to the severe smog that left the sky brown whether day or night. Certain rivers in the eastern US regularly burst into flames due to contamination with chemicals. Contrary to your opinion, the environment in the US has improved in many aspects, at least you can breathe the air, swim in SF Bay if you dont mind 58* water.and we dont appear to have flaming rivers. We do have serious local and global problems in the environment, however, planet earth will survive. The real question is will our environmental niche survive (plant, animal, oceans, climate, soils, and atmosphere) upon which we depend. In other words, the earth will be here, the question is, will humans be here?Our flawed system is not due to the boomer generation, it is due to Capitalism wherein profits are privatized and negative externalities are socialized (paid for by all). Until economies hold Capital responsible financially and criminally for all negative externalities on a long time scale (say at least 100 years) nothing will change. If a culture and economy of social responsibility (personal,corporate, government) takes hold, we will have hope that we can save our ecological niche and humans may survive for millenia ahead.Perhaps this is the key project for all generations to work on together.Peace to all.So many times I hear this argument that fiat currency has no intrinsic value, that fiat currency is not backed by anything. This is plain wrong: all fiat currency has real value: It settles a tax obligation with the issuing government. An obligation that all economically active entities have. Furthermore if you are a bank (or other relevant financial institution) a fiat currency settles a reserve obligation at the issuers central bank. Both of these taxes and reserve obligations are enforced by law. Punishable by fines and/or prison time. Thats the underlying creator of demand for fiat currency. You can go off and do whatever you want in stocks, in USDs, in EURs, in bonds, in gold, in cryptocurrencies but at the end of the year you owe the government tax and you can only pay it in their currencies. Governments are of course superslow to react, which is why believers misinterpret this current sense of freedom it enjoys. But no govt will ever surrender monopoly of the ccy. So crypto ccys will end up on the receiving end of regulation. In fact, it could end up being the most regulated asset in the world because since no sovereign owns it everyone can regulate it. Or looking at it another way Since it must be maintained on multiple servers in multiple locations these host countries could all individually & simultaneously regulate it.i will take that a step farther. Commerce only happens because of state regulation. If I give you $5000 for your old car and you refuse to give me the car, I can call the state and they will send someone to force you to give me the car, or at least give me my money back.All the state has to do is say that they wont enforce a transaction in a crypto-currency and it immediately becomes worthless. The full faith and credit really means that the state stands behind a transaction in its currency. And the state has no reason to destroy the value of its currency unless it is overly indebted, in its own currency, to a foreign entity.Totally agree. Consumers want recourse out of a currency and actually they are prepared to pay fees for it. Forgotten your bitcoin password? All your wealth is lost. This is ridiculous. Like beyond insane ridiculous. Made a typo and wired to the wrong person? Tough. This is equally ridiculous. Fees are there in banking for a reason recourse. Maybe they are set too high but the zero recourse on offer with bitcoin is undesireable and unwanted.Also.The U.S. fiat currency does have backing. The U.S government has $265 Trillion in assets. These assets are national Parks , buildings , ships, roads, bridges, offshore and alaska oil fields, minerals 66This art suggests there was fraudulent activity in Bitcoin trading, aw shucks, really. Its pay to read so if you have a few extra Bitcoins laying around.If the bubble bursts a lot of people who are leveraged up are going to liquidate stocks, real estate, and default on loans and credit card bills. Depending on how deeply involved major institutions have become will the Fed save their ass this time? I think they will only because of their hubris and their secret desire to possess the technology for themselves.Wolf, why arent you covering Sweatcoin? ryptocurrency-for-working-out/ar-AAuOLPHGrossly negligent oversight?Wolf, can you give us some kind of reddit-style way of voting up and down comments? There are just too many and we want to know what the good ones are.To the crypto bubble-chasers: you aint seen nothing yet.I am gonna say this, this is basically gambling. Only the house seems to be losing a lot too.It will be great if u mention about the notorious tether (coded:usdt). Bitfinex claim this so called token to be pegged against us dollar! And the quantity in circulation ballon to 1.65B. Basically bitfinex=fed with one caveat. Bitfinexs term states: there is no contractual right or other right or legal claim against us to redeem or exchange your Tether for moneyQuite a departure from, This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, isnt it?No thanks, I think Ill pass on this oneComments are closed. Enter email to get WOLF STREET updates The two-year yield, now surging, is a leading indicator.Bonds, junk bonds, spreads, commercial real estate, leveraged loans, over-leveraged companies all get named as risks to the banks. This is why gradual tightening will continue for a long time.Retailers in bankruptcy are notoriously hard to restructure.Happily dreaming in La-la-land till the rude awakening.Unlike the New York Fed yesterday, ZEW named names and pointed fingers. Enter your email to get WOLF STREET updates Copyright 2011 - 2018 Wolf Street Corp. All Rights Reserved. See our Privacy Policy

-anniversary celebration, because it combined two things from which he recoils: parties and reminiscing.Yet hes also energetic and decisive, which makes him a valued counsellor. In 2006, Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for a billion dollars, and Accel Partners, Facebooks lead investor, urged Mark Zuckerberg to accept. Andreessen said, Every single person involved in Facebook wanted Mark to take the Yahoo! offer. The psychological pressure they put on this twenty-two-year-old was intense. Mark and I really bonded in that period, because I told him, Dont sell, dont sell, dont sell! Zuckerberg told me, Marc has this really deep belief that when companies are executing well on their vision they can have a much bigger effect on the world than people think, not just as a business but as a steward of humanityif they have the time to execute. He didnt sell; Facebook is now worth two hundred and eighteen billion dollars.Andreessens range of reference extends from Ibn Khaldun to South Park, yet he approaches new topics as if starved, eating through mens fashion or whiskey-making or congressional politics until it has yielded every micronutrient. In a tweetstorm about the question of net neutrality, he observed that anyone who took a position should be versed in the history, technology, and economics of backbones, interconnection agreement, peering, CDNs, caching, colocation, current and future telco and cable business models including capex and opex models, rate caps, cost of capital, return on investment, as well as a dozen other equally abstruse matters. He coyly noted that no one, himself included, understood them allthen stated his position. Andreessens learning fuses the idiosyncrasy of the autodidact with the thoroughness of what programmers call depth-first search. I could never tolerate not knowing why, he said. You have to work your way back to figure out the politics, the motivations. I always stop when I get to evolutionary psychology, and why we have tribesoh, O.K., were primates cursed with emotions and the ability to do logical thinking. He keeps rediscovering that were australopithecines, and keeps hoping to transform us into Homo habilis: man the tool user, able man.To this end, he addresses any topic, such as Googles purchase of the thermostat maker Nest, by launching a dialectics1) Either Nest is the most amazing company ever, or 2) Larry Page acqui-hired Tony Fadell for $3.2 billion and got a thermostat business on the sidewhose synthesis is often that the thesis and the antithesis were simplistic (Or, maybe Google has a larger plan for automating the home) or irrelevant (Whatever, whatever, we dont own it, so who cares?). Often, he discourses at such lucid length that his cheeks redden and he must pause for breath. If you seize the interval to demonstrate a basic grasp of his argument, hell say Ex-zact-ly, with a pleased smile, and upload another tranche. What saves him from pompous know-it-all-dom, most of the time, is this eagerness to communicate.He turns to theory the way a drinker turns to the minibar. But Horowitz told me that every once in a while Andreessen will get all Wisconsin on you, sticking up for his people. When we looked at an Internet pawnshop, people here said, Its immoral, and Marc went bananas. He said, If youve got no fucking money, and you need to pawn your watch to pay for your kids to eatyou think thats morally fucking wrong because it offends your sensibilities, you rich motherfuckers? He knew that guy who was pawning his watch because hed missed the harvest, or whatever. Or we saw an Uber-for-private-jets thing, or some wine thing that came through, and he just got incensed: We didnt start the firm for rich people to buy hundred-dollar bottles of wine or to fly around on fucking private jets! He reminds me of Kanye, that level of emotional intensityhis childhood was so intensely bad he just wont go there.One afternoon, Alexis Ringwald, the C.E.O. of LearnUp, a job-training startup that has worked with Staples and Old Navy, stood in a16zs conference room, all poise and smile. I like to launch movements to tackle huge problems, she said, launching into her presentation.Start at the beginning, where you grew up, Ben Horowitz said. A16z had made a small seed investment in Ringwalds company, but most of the general partners, who were about to tell her whether she was ready for an A round, didnt know much about her. Horowitz also routinely forces a founder to abandon her script and regroup. Its a stress test intended to elicit biography, resilience, and the real story.How many times do I have to tell you to stay inside the bowl?Ringwald, who is thirty-one, blinked, then shifted smoothly to an engaging account of her early years, her work interviewing people on the unemployment line, and how shed eventually realized that the countrys biggest gulf is between those who have the basic skills to be employableshowing up on time, dressing neatlyand those who dont. So its a modern My Fair Lady sort of thing? Horowitz asked, ingenuously. Ringwald crisply noted that her process triples an applicants chance of getting a job, and that eighty-two per cent of LearnUps trainees outperform their fellow-workers. Horowitz and Andreessen nodded: she could handle the pressure. Afterward, Horowitz told me, My big conclusion was shes a legit Pied Piper, with charisma and will and fury.Pitch meetings are minefields. If a V.C. asks you, When you get to a hundred engineers, are you worried about the company culture or excited?, the correct answer is A hundred? I want a thousand! Reid Hoffman, a V.C. at Greylock Partners who co-founded LinkedIn, told me, I look to see if someone has a marine strategy, for taking the beach; an army strategy, for taking the country; and a police strategy, for governing the country afterward.A16z wants to learn if the founder has a secreta novel insight, drawn from personal experience, about how the world could be better arranged. If that new arrangement is 10x better, consumers might be won over. Balaji Srinivasan contributed the concept of the idea maze: you want the entrepreneur to have spent years thinking her idea intoand out ofevery conceivable dead end. Entrepreneurs want to raise money from us, Andreessen told me, so the natural thing when we say What if you did this? is to tell us what we want to hear. But we dont want to hear what we want to hear. Its a delight when they look at you with contemptYou idiotand then walk you through the idea maze and explain why your idea wont work. Such tests help a16z determine whether the founder is a mercenary who wants to sell the company within four years, which will cap a16zs return at 5x, or a missionary, determined to change the world. At the same time, Andreessen said, were not funding Mother Teresa. Were funding imperial, will-to-power people who want to crush their competition. Companies can only have a big impact on the world if they get big.Ringwald, back into her planned remarks, promised bigness: LearnUp will transform employment in America. We can unleash human potential and move the needle on the G.D.P. Andreessen said, Question: This is a known problem. Why do companies not just do this themselves, once they see that it works? Ringwald replied, Well keep on differentiating by moving fast and collecting more data on what companies need now.Then a general partner named Chris Dixon asked, Is it a marketplace or an enterprise company? Marketplace companies sell to consumers; enterprise companies sell to other businesses. Clearly perplexed by the distinction, Ringwald said that she was signing up workers as well as companies. Everyone became a shade more remote.Afterward, Andreessen told his colleagues, She didnt really answer Chriss question. If its marketplace, its defensible; if its enterprise, she can be undercut. If Ringwalds customers were the workers, who would keep using LearnUp as they moved from job to job, she could create a network effect. If her customers were actually the companies, they could start doing the training themselvesor another startup could. A16z views marketplace and enterprise companies very differently. The firm invests early with enterprise, but waits with consumer companies, because they tend to take offsuddenly, everyone wants to be on Instagramor fail fast. Its a risk-averse way to embrace risk. In 2013, a16z passed on the A round of Oculus VR (waiting to see if it could resolve the nausea issue that has plagued virtual-reality systems) and came in on the B, six months later. It got the same ten per cent of the company it could have had in the Abut it paid thirty million dollars instead of six million. The internal rationale for this expensive de-risking is We paid up for certainty.The partners began to discuss how LearnUp might be valued. Valuation, particularly in a companys early rounds, often derives less from spreadsheets than from market forceswhat are other firms offering?and the What ifs of mental modelling. Does the companys traction, leadership team, and total addressable market call to mind a Pinterest, or does it feel more like a ShoeDazzle? One partner suggested that LearnUp was a ten on thirtyten million dollars should buy a third of the company, which would then be valued at forty million. Its more like ten on fifteen or twenty, Horowitz said, cutting the companys value in half. Or six on twelve, Andreessen said, whittling it further. Soon after the meeting, Ringwald turned LearnUp into an enterprise company.Most venture firms operate as a guild; each partner works with his own companies, and a small shared staff helps with business development and recruiting. A16z introduced a new model: the venture company. Its general partners make about three hundred thousand dollars a year, far less than the industry standard of at least a million dollars, and the savings pays for sixty-five specialists in executive talent, tech talent, market development, corporate development, and marketing. A16z maintains a network of twenty thousand contacts and brings two thousand established companies a year to its executive briefing center to meet its startups (which has produced a pipeline of deals worth three billion dollars). Andreessen told me, We give our founders the networking superpower, hyper-accelerating someone into a fully functional C.E.O. in five years.The firms fourteen-person deal team also enables it to rapidly assess any new technology, making a16z a kind of Iron Man suit for Andreessen as he pursues his flights of fancy. Jim Breyer, who led Facebooks first venture round at Accel Partners, told me, I spend most of my time trying to connect the dots for what the future will look like in five to seven years, but I dont believe I scale as well as Marc and Ben and their team. Theyve moved into next-gen agricultural products and wearables and drone software, where a lot of us dont have expertise or networks.Andreessen and Horowitz launched the firm in 2009, when venture investment was frozen by the recession. Their strategy was shaped by their friend Andy Rachleff, a former V.C. He told them that hed run the numbers and that fifteen technology companies a year reach a hundred million dollars in annual revenueand they account for ninety-eight per cent of the market capitalization of companies that go public. So a16z had to get those fifteen companies to pitch them. Deal flow is everything, Andreessen told me. If youre in a second-tier firm, you never get a chance at that great company. A leading investment banker who has taken numerous software companies public told me, I put ninety per cent of my effort into seeking out deals from the top eight venture firms, ten per cent into the next twelve, and zero per cent into all the rest.The dirty secret of the trade is that the bottom three-quarters of venture firms didnt beat the Nasdaq for the past five years. In a stinging 2012 report, the L.P. Diane Mulcahy calculated, Since 1997, less cash has been returned to V.C. investors than they have invested. The truth is that most V.C.s subsist entirely on fees, which they compound by raising a new fund every three years. Returns are kept hidden by nondisclosure agreements, and so V.C.s routinely overstate them, both to encourage investment and to attract entrepreneurs. You cant find a venture fund anywhere thats not in the top quartile, one L.P. said sardonically. V.C.s also logo shop, buying into late rounds of hot companies at high prices so they can list them on their portfolio page.When a16z began, it didnt have even an ersatz track record to promote. So Andreessen and Horowitz consulted on tactics with their friend Michael Ovitz, who co-founded the Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency, in 1974. Ovitz told me that hed advised them to distinguish themselves by treating the entrepreneur as a client: Take the long view of your platform, rather than a transactional one. Call everyone a partner, offer services the others dont, and help people who arent your clients. Disrupt to differentiate by becoming a dream-execution machine.Believing that founders make the best C.E.O.slook at Intel, Apple, Oracle, Google, FacebookAndreessen and Horowitz recruited only general partners whod been founders or run companies. Then they began constructing the illusion of authority, taking offices on Sand Hill Road and filling them with paintings by Robert Rauschenberg and Sol LeWittanother page from the book of Ovitz, who commissioned a Roy Lichtenstein painting for C.A.A.s lobby that was so large the firm had to leave it behind when it moved. They were studiously punctual (partners are fined ten dollars for each minute theyre late to a pitch), used glassware rather than plastic, and said no quickly and explained why (unless the reason was doubts about the entrepreneur) in a handwritten note. And, while most V.C.s were publicity averseSequoias slogan was The entrepreneurs behind the entrepreneursa16z banged the drum to draw startups. The tech publicist Margit Wennmachers built an eight-person marketing department and helped to orchestrate stories in Forbes and Fortune.They all lead back to this ball of yarn.Andreessen and Horowitz believed that it would take them years to get great deal flow. So instead of fighting for A-round financingsthe most competitive round, because its when you can buy the largest chunk of an up-and-coming companythey planned to make seed investments in eighty startups. They wouldnt take the customary board seats (otherwise, theyd each be sitting on forty boards), but theyd help all eighty companies and then lead the A round for the twelve best.The strategy had flaws. Entrepreneurs want V.C.s on their boards, and so do L.P.s: thats how you really learn a company. The firm would be sending a huge negative signal about companies it didnt reinvest inhardly an entrepreneur-friendly stance. Furthermore, by making so many investments, a16z would create significant opportunity costs. In its first year, it put two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into a company called Burbn, which soon pivoted and became Instagrambut a16z couldnt increase its share, because it had also taken a position in a short-lived photo app called PicPlz. Though the firm made 312x when Facebook bought Instagram, the huge multiple amounted to only seventy-eight million dollars. Elizabeth Obershaw, a managing director at Horsley Bridge, a prominent L.P. that invested in a16z after some debate, told me, Our list of cons was that we didnt think their original model would work at all. The pros were Marc and Benwe decided they were learners and adapters and would realize the model wasnt workable fast enough to fix itand an industry that was ripe for reinvention.They learned fast. After a16z raised a three-hundred-million-dollar fund and opened shop, in July, 2009, it did a lot of seed rounds, but it also spent fifty million dollars to buy three per cent of Skype. Two years later, Microsoft bought Skype, and the investment returned 4x. Andreessen believed that everyone had underestimated the size of the Internet market, so in 2010, after raising a much bigger second fund, the firm spent a hundred and thirty million dollars to acquire shares of Facebook and Twitter at unprecedented valuations. Other V.C.s sniped that a16z was trying to buy its way in: Skype was an established company, not a startup, and the Facebook and Twitter deals were mere logo shopping. But, as Ron Conway, Silicon Valleys leading angel investor, noted, In twenty-four months, Andreessen Horowitz was the talk of the town. The firm won a hundred-million-dollar A round for the coding company GitHub, which Conway called the most hotly contested deal in five years. Chris Wanstrath, GitHubs co-founder and C.E.O., said that a16zs services were a major attraction: Its like a buffetthey offered a bunch of great dishes, and we wanted to sample them all.After six years, Andreessen believes, a16z is meetingand winningenough new clients to place it comfortably in the top three V.C. firms. (This is not far off from the consensus in the Valley.) Its first fund has already returned 2x, and contains such powerhouses as Slack and the identity-management company Okta. The funds internal rate of return, a calculation of annualized profit, is fifty per cent, which places it very high among funds raised in 2009. (Sequoias rate for its corresponding fund is sixty-nine per cent.) The firms second fund includes Pinterest and Airbnb, and its third fund includes Zenefits, GitHub, and Mixpanel; both funds, on paper, are well into the black. A respected L.P. of the firm told me, Theyre one of our top performers. Yet Andreessen cautioned, We still have a lot to prove on returns. I wouldnt be comfortable saying were No. 1 until ten years have passed, maybe fifteen. Until then, its Schrdingers cat, and Ive got really good arguments on why the cats are both alive and dead.At Andreessens wedding, in 2006, Ben Horowitz said in his toast that the man hed long known was grouchy Marc, because hed gone through his whole life without anyone understanding him, being all by himself. No one had understood him in his farm town, no one had understood him in Silicon ValleyHell, I do not understand him. But now, at last, he was happy Marc, because hed found someone who totally gets him: the bride, a lecturer in philanthropy at Stanfords business school named Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen.In December, Andreessen invited me to their house in Atherton, five minutes from a16zs office, to watch television. He and Laura live in a modern, art-filled, nine-thousand-square-foot villa built in a style that she calls Northern California pastiche. The ceilings are scaled to Andreessens Brobdingnagian proportions, and everything is majestic, minimal, and new. The toilet in the powder room is so visionary, and the surrounding dimmer lights so flattering, that I had to study it for some time to figure out how it flushed.Arrillaga-Andreessen brought the couples dinners into the living room and placed them on matching Costco TV tables. The omelettes and Thai salads that their chef had prepared earlier had been freshly reheated (they have three microwaves, so their food will always be ready at the same time). Andreessen stroked her arm and beamed: Hello, gorgeous!Hello, my darling! she replied. Then she gave me a dramatic hug, as we hadnt seen each other since the previous day. Arrillaga-Andreessen is a tall, ethereal-seeming, yet effusive woman. When the couple met, in 2005, at a New Years Eve dinner thrown by the leading investor in eHarmony, they talked for six and a half hours. She told me that Andreessen satisfied most of the criteria on her checklist: he was a genius, he was a coder, he was funny, and he was bald. (I find it incredibly sexy to see the encasement of a cerebrum, she explained.) For his part, Andreessen felt that she was spectacular! My biggest concern was that she wanted to live a jet-set life. In one of the seventeen e-mails he sent her the next day, he asked, Whats your ideal evening? She responded, Stay home, do e-mail, make an omelette, watch TV, take a bath, go to bed. Before their second date, he delivered what she calls a twenty-five-minute monologue on why we should go steady, with a full intellectual decision tree in anticipation of my own decision tree. They were married nine months later. In her and her father, John, a billionaire Silicon Valley developer, Andreessen seems to have found a replacement family. Laura showed me a photograph of the two men side by side, both bald, self-made, and magisterial: Quite two peas in a pod.After some TV time together, the couple reads in bed, so that, she says, I can fall asleep holding my beloved. (She invariably refers to her husband as my beloved, rather than Marc.) I ask him questions about things I got curious about during the day, so every night Im going to sleep with a human Wikipedia that can go deeper and deeper and deeper, link upon link. In the past week, we talked about all the hardware components of a mobile phone, how binary code works, what might happen with drone regulation, and whether Putin is using Ukraine as a distraction from the financial crisis in Russia. Once shes dozed off, Andreessen returns to work in his home office, where, like a recharging cell phone, he gains energy through the night.He pushed a button to unroll the wall screen, then called up Apple TV. We were going to watch the final two episodes of the first season of the AMC drama Halt and Catch Fire, about a fictional company called Cardiff, which enters the personal-computer wars of the early eighties. The shows resonance for Andreessen was plain. In 1983, he said, I was twelve, and I didnt know anything about startups or venture capital, but I knew all the products. He used the school librarys Radio Shack TRS-80 to build a calculator for math homework. In 1992, as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he neglected his jobwriting Unix code for $6.85 an hourto team with another programmer to create Mosaic, the first graphical browser for the Web. After graduating, he moved to Silicon Valley, where he and a volatile serial entrepreneur named Jim Clark launched Netscape, to make the Internet available not just to scientists but to everyone. John Doerr, the V.C. who funded their A round, said that the genius of their browser was that it was like putting photos on the menu at Howard Johnson. You didnt need to know the language; you could just point. The story underlying that story, Arrillaga-Andreessen told methe secretwas that Netscape was based on my beloveds own inability, as a child, to access knowledge in a small town.Netscape Navigator, released in 1994, quickly claimed more than ninety per cent of the browser market, and Andreessen predicted that the Web would make operating systems such as Microsofts Windows irrelevant. When the company went public, in 1995, its stock rocketed from twenty-eight dollars a share to seventy-five dollars, and Andreessen was soon on the cover of Time, barefoot on a throne. But Marc 1.0 was very much in beta. Having given up coding, his first love, to manage coders, he scarfed Pepperidge Farm Nantuckets and Honeycomb cereal straight from the box, skipped meetings, and blazed up without warning. Youd see him vibrating, and it would inspire a combination of excitement and terror, Jason Rosenthal, a manager whom Andreessen actually liked, recalled. A favorite Andreessen response to underlings confusion was There are no stupid questions, only stupid people. Jim Barksdale, the companys C.E.O., said, Id tell Marc after meetings, You dont have to tell a dumb sumbitch hes a dumb sumbitch. Andreessen told me, I needed Netscape to work, it had to workit was my one-way doorso I was absolutely intolerant of anything that got in the waymeaning, he clarified, people. He could never relax: I am very paranoid. And the down cycle hurt a lot more than the up cycle felt good.The down cycle began when Microsoft bundled its own browser with its operating system, making it the nations browser of convenience, if not of choice. Netscape shifted from marketplace to enterprise, and began selling browser and server software, but it was fortunate to get bought by AOL, in 1999, for ten billion dollars. Peter Currie, the companys C.F.O., said, We made a difference, we invented cookies and pioneered downloading software from the Internet, yet Netscape is an asterisk in business history. Maybe the best way to think about it is as a classic tech story: a company creates, invents, succeedsand gets bypassed.In the first Halt and Catch Fire episode, Cardiffs entrepreneurs go to Comdex, the big trade show, and discover that another company has stolen their idea and beaten them to market. In response, Gordon, the hardware engineer, removes the interactive operating system from their Cardiff machinea system designed by Cameron, a punk female software prodigyand slots in Microsofts dos, which makes the machine I.B.M.-compatible, viable, and dull. It was an excruciating capitulation, but Andreessen nodded evenly: This was Microsofts moment, and Gordon is rightthey need to live to fight another day. But... He pointed at the screen, where Apples Macintosh was making its dbut at the trade show. Hello, Im Macintosh, the machine said. Andreessen laughed and continued, They were doomed from the start, because Apple in Cupertinoin Silicon Valleyhad spent three years building that. Ive been totally determined to be on the other side of that dynamic by being here, because success in software follows a power-law distribution. Its not Coke and Pepsi and a bunch of others; its winner take all. Second prize is a set of steak knives, and third prize is youre fired.In the season finale, Cameron launches her own startup. As Andreessen watched her manage her coders, he said, softly, The best scenes with Cameron were when she was alone in the basement, coding. I said I felt that she was the least satisfactory character: underwritten, inconsistent, lacking in plausible motivation. He smiled and replied, Because shes the future.In Why Software Is Eating the World, a widely invoked 2011 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Andreessen put the most optimistic spin on Silicon Valleys tendencies. The article proclaimed that tech companies are consuming vast swaths of the economy, from books and movies to financial services to agriculture to national defensewhich Andreessen saw as the healthful scavenging of a carrion way of life. On Twitter, he pursued the theme: Posit a world in which all material needs are provided free, by robots and material synthesizers.... Imagine six, or 10, billion people doing nothing but arts and sciences, culture and exploring and learning. What a world that would be, particularly as technological progress is precisely what makes a strong, rigorous social safety net affordable.Andreessens telepathic methodextrapolating the future from current trendsmay be the best available, but it has had doubtful results. Of the eighteen firms that V.C.s valued at more than a billion dollars in the heady days of 1999-2000, eleven have gone out of business or have been liquidated in fire sales, including @Home, eToys, and Webvan. A16z bought into Zulily, an online marketer, at a valuation of a billion dollars; it soared to a market capitalization of five billion dollars, and has since slumped to $1.3 billion. Another billion-dollar a16z company, the bargain-shopping site Fab, recently sold for about thirty million dollars. On the other hand, the firm wrote off the gaming company Slack to zeroand then it became an office-messaging app thats now valued at $2.8 billion.The random, contingent way that the future comes to pass is a source of endless frustration in the Valley. Sam Altman, the president of the startup incubator Y Combinator, notes that his early investment in Stripe is now worth, on paper, more than 2,000x. So ninety-seven per cent of my returns from 2010 and 2011 are concentrated in one investment, which I could easily have missed, he said. I only let myself think about this sort of thing on vacation, because if I acknowledged that I was wasting more than ninety per cent of my timewhich is true, from an economic perspectiveI couldnt get through my days.The key to investing, Andreessen contends, is to be aggressive and to fight your instinct to pattern-match. Breakthrough ideas look crazy, nuts, he said, adding, Its hard to think this wayI see it in other peoples body language, and I can feel it in my own, where I sometimes feel like I dont even care if its going to work, I cant take more change. Andreessen believes that the major barrier to change is sociological: people can embrace only so many new ideas at once. O.K., Google, O.K., Twitterbut Airbnb? People staying in each others houses without there being a lot of axe murders?A16z passed on Airbnbs A round in 2009. Reid Hoffman, the Greylock V.C., who led that round, and who is a friend of Andreessens, said, Once something like Airbnb gets going, Marc can get a very good sense of it, of the economic systembut hes not necessarily as good at the psychology of why it would get going in the first place.Brian Chesky, Airbnbs co-founder and C.E.O., told me, In 2011, when we were starting to get some traction, Marc and Ben did a one-eighty and were very humble. Marc said he now saw it through the lens of eBay: buying stuff from strangers. A16z led Airbnbs B round. Soon afterward, the company was battered by headlines about renters who trashed a San Francisco home. It wasnt axe murders, but, Chesky said, It was a P.R. nightmare. We had just expanded from being ten people living in a three-bedroom apartment and we had no idea how to be a billion-dollar company. Marc came to our office at midnight and read the letter Id written to our community about the Airbnb Guarantee, and the two changes he made changed the company forever. Id said we guarantee five thousand dollars for property damage, and he added a zero, which seemed crazy. Andreessen also added the proviso that claimants would have to file a police report, which he correctly believed would discourage scam artists. And he told me to add my personal e-mail address. He gave us permission to be bold.In venture, its not batting average that matters; its slugging average. Boldness is all. When Google Glass appeared, a16z joined a collective to seek out investments, and Andreessen declared that, without the face shield, people are going to find they feel, basically, naked and lonely. Google withdrew the product in January. But, he would argue, so what? His thesis is that such a16z failures as Fab and Rockmelt and Digg and Kno are not merely a tolerable by-product of the risk algorithm but a vital indicator of it. Its fine to have a lousy record of predicting the future, most of the time, as long as when youre right youre really right. Between 2004 and 2013, a mere 0.4 per cent of all venture investments returned at least 50x. The real mistakes arent the errors of commission, the companies that crashall you can lose is your investmentbut those of omission. There were good reasons that a16z passed on buying twelve per cent of Uber in 2011, including a deadline of just hours to make a decision. But the firm missed a profit, on paper, of more than three billion dollars.The beauty of betting on risky technologies is that youre sometimes proved right, eventuallyperhaps well all feel naked without Google Glass 3.0. When reverses occur, Andreessen tends to believe that he wasnt wrong so much as overly prescient. Yet, while he professes intellectual comfort with being wrong, he never mentions Ning, a social-networking company that he co-founded in 2004, because, as he conceded when I asked about the elision, It didnt do great. And he can be touchy about criticism. At one Q. & A. I attended, when the interviewer read him a snarky quote from Sam Biddle, a writer who worked for the gossip site Valleywag, Andreessen made a doobie-smoking gesture and plunged an imaginary needle into his vein to suggest the quality of Biddles thinking. Being the public face of venture means that you can be challenged on multiple fronts: even as you philosophize about ushering in a new age of democracy, you also have to make money for your L.P.s. And, while the ideal startup advances both goals, most, in truth, advance neither. The V.C. Bryce Roberts told me, Its an ego game, where you want to believe youre changing the world. But how can you write a check to Fab and believe that giving people discounted tchotchkes is changing the world?You two are fired as security guards. Now gather up your things and escort each other from the building.In 1999, Andreessen and Horowitz started Loudcloud, an early cloud-computing service that booked thirty-seven million dollars in contracts in its first nine months. Andreessen, meanwhile, was becoming Marc 2.0. He shed thirty pounds, started wearing Ermenegildo Zegna suits, and traded in his red Mustang for a white Mercedes. Marc 1.0 was Jim Clark, Andreessen told me, referring to his impulsive co-founder. Marc 2.0 was trying to get as polished as possible, more socialized. And Marc 3.0 is a combo. The goal is not to be elegant but to be blunt enough that theres no confusion. I learned the skills from reading all of Caros L.B.J. books.The dot-com crash hit Loudcloud hard, and, in 2002, it pivoted to become a software company with a new name: Opsware. In 2007, after years of slogging, Andreessen and Horowitz sold the company for $1.6 billion. Andreessen says that the tech crash scarred him: The overwhelming message to our generation in the early nineties was Youre dirty, youre all about grungeyou guys are fucking losers! Then the tech boom hit, and it was We are going to do amazing things! And then the roof caved in, and the wisdom was that the Internet was a mirage. I one hundred per cent believed that, because the rejection was so personalboth what everybody thought of me and what I thought of myself. I was not depressed, but I was growly. In retrospect, he concluded, we were five or six years too early.Peter Thiel, who is four years older than Andreessen, observed that the late nineties, for Gen Xers in Silicon Valley, was an experience as powerful as the late sixties was for the younger boomers. The sixties was a transformative moment that got short-circuited by Nixon, and, for Marc, the ninetieswhen Netscape was iconic, and he was deeply living the belief that technology was going to inspire liberalization everywherewas short-circuited by the super-powerful bust and return of the old economy. But Marc is very tenacious.Andreessen said he learned that, while technology improves steadily, psychologically theres no middle groundthe plane is always headed straight up or straight down. Recognizing that he was a poor manager, and needing to buffer those emotional and financial swings, Andreessen saw that the obvious next move was a portfolio of investments. In 2003, he and Horowitz began angel investing, separately and then together; they put ten million dollars into fifty companies, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Then Andreessen began pushing to start a venture firm. I always thought the entire venture thing was incredibly cool, he told me. Going to Kleiner Perkinsthe firm that funded Netscapewith the high ceilings, the markers on the wall of all the great companies theyd I.P.O.d, Larry Ellison walking through, and, at 11 a.m., the biggest buffet youve ever seen, at a time when I was eating at Subway? It was the closest thing to a cathedral for nerds. Mark Zuckerberg told me, When Marc started Andreessen Horowitz, I asked him why he didnt start another company instead, and he said, It would be like going back to kindergarten.A16z was designed not merely to succeed but also to deliver payback: it would right the wrongs that Andreessen and Horowitz had suffered as entrepreneurs. Most of those, in their telling, came from Benchmark Capital, the firm that funded Loudcloud, and recently led the A rounds of Uber and Snapchata five-partner boutique with no back-office specialists to provide the services theyd craved. We were always the anti-Benchmark, Horowitz told me. Our design was to not do what they did. Horowitz is still mad that one Benchmark partner asked him, in front of his co-founders, When are you going to get a real C.E.O.? And that Benchmarks best-known V.C., the six-feet-eight Bill Gurley, another outspoken giant with a large Twitter following, advised Horowitz to cut Andreessen and his six-million-dollar investment out of the company. Andreessen said, I cant stand him. If youve seen Seinfeld, Bill Gurley is my NewmanJerrys bte noire.A16zs services model made a strong impression on Sand Hill Road. Andreessen caused us to up our game on the marketing side, Sequoias Doug Leone told me. Younger founders pay attention to media, and we dont want to be de-positioned. Sequoia hired an in-house publicist and two new marketing specialists to complement the four it had, and most top firms made similar moves, even if they privately believed that a16zs services were simply a marketing tool. Todd McKinnon, the C.E.O. of Okta, said, Every firm we talk to now is Hey, were doing all this recruiting, and well introduce you to big customers. Its become the table stakes.Benchmark, by contrast, took down its Web site. Its like watching Coke and Pepsi go head to head, one C.E.O. told me. Bill Gurley declined my requests for comment, but he has publicly bemoaned all the money that firms such as a16z are pumping into the system at a time when he and many other V.C.s worry that the tech sector is experiencing another bubble. So many investors from outside the Valley want in on the startup world that valuations have been soaring: last year, thirty-eight U.S. startups received billion-dollar valuations, twenty-three more than in 2013. Many V.C.s have told their companies to raise as much money as possible now, to have a buffer against a crash.Benchmarks funds top out at four hundred million dollars and are reserved for early-round investing: the original, artisanal venture model. A16z raised $1.5 billion each for its third and fourth funds, in 2012 and 2014, with much of the money earmarked for later, costlier growth rounds, whose returns tend to be capped at 5x. Andreessen argues that startups now wait longer and raise more capital before going public, and a16z wants to be in those conversations, too. He also says that larger funds will allow the firm to provide even more of the services that its entrepreneurs crave. But, in the Valley, increasing your fund size so dramatically is customarily seen as smoking your own exhaust, or, among those with a classical turn of mind, hubris. Venture doesnt scale, Diane Mulcahy, the L.P. and venture critic, said. Raising and investing more doesnt increase the number of billion-dollar companies, and offering services to entrepreneurs wont help the firm generate returns. Its like a Saks Fifth Avenue that gives everybody a free iPhone. Are they going to attract everybody and see everybody? Yes. Are they going to make money? Not for long.When I pressed Andreessen on a16zs fund size, he said that even if the basic assumptions havent changedeven if only fifteen companies a year reach a hundred million dollars in revenuethose companies generate more money now. And, he said, Id bet the number of companies that reach that revenue is going up. With a playful smile, he referred to Gurley: If theres no profit opportunity beyond the first four hundred million, Bills making the case that everyone who follows Benchmark in a later investment round is a moron. I wouldnt say that.One morning, as I sat down to breakfast with Andreessen, a rival V.C. sent me a long e-mail about a16zs holdings. The V.C. estimated that because Andreessens firm had taken so many growth positions, its average ownership stake was roughly 7.5 per cent (its eight per cent), which meant that to get 5x to 10x across its four funds you would need your aggregate portfolio to be worth $240-$480B! You would, in other words, need to invest in every Facebook and Uber that came along. When I started to check the math with Andreessen, he made a jerking-off motion and said Blah-blah-blah. We have all the modelswere elephant hunting, going after big game!In addition to assuaging various slights from V.C.s, Andreessen is attempting to assuage the wound of the 2000 crash, by maintaining that it was an isolated event. The argument in favor of concern is cyclical, he told mebusts follow booms. The counterargument is that stuff works now. In 2000, you had fifty million people on the Internet, and the number of smartphones was zero. Today, you have three billion Internet users and two billion smartphones. Its Pong versus Nintendo. Its Carlota Perezs argument that technology is adopted on an S curve: the installation phase, the crashbecause the technology isnt ready yetand then the deployment phase, when technology gets adopted by everyone and the real money gets made. So the 2000 tech crash prefigured not the next crash but a sustained boom. And Andreessens portfolio, like the entire Sand Hill Road enterprise, wasnt so much overpriced as underappreciated.We even tried a visit from a celebrity.Still, he recently tweeted that startups were spending too much. When the market turns, he wrote, nobody will want to buy your cash-incinerating startup. There will be no Plan B. vaporize. And, come to think of it, maybe it wasnt prudent to raise too much, either. In one pitch meeting where a portfolio company sought a billion-dollar growth round, Andreessen raised his arms overhead and made an explosive sound to warn of what can happen when your valuation vastly exceeds your revenues: Thanks for playinggame over! The company went on to secure its round, with only a token contribution from a16z. Andreessen later said that, as in an increasing number of deals, growth investors had paid one round ahead of progresspaid in other words, for the results they hoped to see in the following round. Though the companys lofty valuation buoyed a16zs portfolio, his body language suggested that buying at such valuations was maybe not smartbut, as long as theyre sophisticated investors, its not our job to moralize on whether theyre overpaying.Another way of framing the growth-funding question, Peter Thiel suggests, is that Andreessen may not be as suited to making early, counterintuitive investments as he isa point that Andreessen concedes: Peter is just smarter than I am, and in a lateral way. But, Thiel says, Andreessen is well positioned, because of his broad knowledge and flexible mind-set, to respond to incremental changes in an array of fields. And that, he argues, is what the times reward: While Twitter is a lesser innovation than flying cars, its a much more valuable business. We live in a financial age, not a technological age.In December, Apoorva Mehta, the founder of a grocery-delivery app called Instacart, came to a16z to ask it to fill out his C round. The firm had led Mehtas B round with an investment of twenty-seven million dollars, but he reminded the team anyway that Instacart is quite a magical experience. Then he invoked a few sharing-economy shibboleths, including we dont have any infrastructure, mobile-powered independent contractors, and machine-learning-based fulfillment engine. In two years, Mehta had set up in fifteen cities, signed up many of the independent grocery chains, including Whole Foods, and showed profitability in a number of stores. And it was a defensible network, because he installed refrigerated lockers in the stores. At the same time, because Mehta had recently changed his model, Instacart was losing money on each delivery, and that amount was growing as he rapidly expanded into new markets.Andreessen applied a disinfecting wipe and said, Let me ask you a question I know the answer to. In 1999, there was no more flaming debacle of a business than grocery delivery online. You were probably twelve at the time of Webvan?Thirteen, Mehta said.So why now?The main reason is you have access to labor through smartphones. Its the same reason Uber and Lyft exist now.Andreessen nodded with satisfaction: You can orchestrate the entire supply chain through your phone. Webvan was what he called a ghost storya cautionary tale that still frightened investors. But Instacart proved that even haunted houses could be rehabilitated.Another partner asked about competitors, including Uber, TaskRabbit, Amazon Fresh, and Fresh Direct. The other, older models cant do instant delivery, Mehta replied. And the newer ones dont have anywhere near our coverage and range of data in groceries. So if you want slower delivery and smaller selection, go with them. Andreessen smiled, savoring the contempt.At the deal review, Jeff Jordan, who sits on Instacarts board, praised Mehtas progress, while noting concerns about unit economicshow hed get to profitability on each delivery. Referring to the venture communitys enthusiasm for the round, Jordan went on, This is an I missed Uber, I dont want to miss the next one climate. Balancing everything, he recommended that the firm put in ten million dollars.Horowitz argued for a bigger investment. Mehtas moat against competitors is really fucking deephe already has Whole Foods, monster of monsters. Its the biggest market of all time, incredibly huge.After other partners argued that the valuation seemed high, Andreessen looked at Horowitz: Ben, I think youre making an even more provocative point than people understand. It sounds like youre saying this could be an Uber for real.I think so, Horowitz said. What makes unit economics really scary is if youre in a competitive market. Hes in a monopoly.Andreessen said, We could go to the well, and go in higher. He beckoned, coaxingly. Horowitz thought it over, then said, I dont want to override Jeff. Andreessen, too, seemed content to temper his enthusiasm and to share the round with other firms. (Mehta eventually raised two hundred and twenty million dollars on a valuation of two billion.) Hed like to make twenty times the investments the firm does, but every opportunity comes with an opportunity cost, and even $1.5 billion doesnt last forever.Andrew Golden, the chief investment officer for Princeton University, an L.P. in a16zs last three funds, told me that, when the firm started, my worry was that Marc is such a big personality he wouldnt necessarily listen to someone who told him he was wearing fewer clothes than he thought. But now my working hypothesis is that Marc is smart enough to know that hell do better if he doesnt try to win every argumentif he doesnt try to go undefeated.In March, Andreessen and his wife announced the birth of their son, whod been carried to term by a gestational surrogate. They named him John, for Lauras father. I feel fantastic! Andreessen told me. Hell come of age in a world where ten or a hundred times more people will be able to contribute in science and medicine and the arts, a more peaceful and prosperous world. He added, tongue in cheek, Im going to teach him how to take over that world!Andreessen often remarks that, in the blue-collar milieu he came from, no parent wants his or her child to stay blue-collar. His own circumstances have changed dramaticallyhe is now a paper billionaire, though he argues that his net worth depends on how you value a16zso I told him it seemed paradoxical that some of his other babies, such as Instacart and Lyft, make their profits off blue-collar drivers and pickers who must freelance without a safety net to make ends meet. Unsurprisingly, he strongly disagreed: Maybe theres an alternate way of living, a free-form life where you press the button and get work when you want to.One afternoon, as we sat at his baronial dining table, he made an agonized but sincere effort to discuss his blue-collar childhood without mentioning his nuclear family. I really identified with Charles Schulz in the David Michaelis biography of him, Schulz and Peanuts, he said. I was struck by the parallels between Andreessen and both Peanutsin which Charlie Brown has a massive bald head and the parents are kept offstageand its creator. Charles Schulz, who grew up in Minnesota, was socially awkward, hated being embraced, and loathed his mothers Norwegian relatives, a farming family. Andreessen went on, Ninety-six per cent of the people who grow up like he and I did, in the Midwest, just stay there, but the ones who leavethe cartoonist, too, moved to Californiabecome intensely interested in the future. In Schulzs last ten years, he really focussed on Rerun, Linuss younger brotherthe youngest and most optimistic character.I told Andreessen that this seemed like a tendentious reading of Rerun, a bland character whose two most famous lines are Ill drink to that and My brother is the only one in the family with a blanket, and I dont want to end up like him. Taken aback, he explained, Hes the youngest, hes the newest, he has the most life in front of him. Andreessen, as he saw himself, was both an immigrant to the land of opportunity, like the entrepreneurs he preferred to fund, and someone whose childhood was merely an installation phase. He told me, It wasnt that I felt misunderstood or badly treated; it was that I was so completely different. I wasnt seeking understanding. I wasnt indexing myself against the people around me.Andreessen reminded mein his formidable achievements and manner, his thickly armored sensitivities and yearningsof Rilkes remark Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. When I told him so, he stared back in absolute horror.Last year, a programmer named Alex Payne wrote an open letter to Andreessen in which he observed, People are scared of so much wealth and control being in so few hands. Consequently, wherever you and other gatekeepers of capital direct your attentiontowards robots, 3D printers, biotech, whateveryoure going to detect a fearful response as people scramble to determine the impact of your decisions and whims, which only compound lingering structural unemployment and an accumulation of capital at the top of the economic pyramid.Good Evening, ladies and gentlemen! If I may have just a moment of your timemy name is Edward and Ill be sitting here reading the paper with my mouth shut. Thank you for you time, have a good evening and God bless!Payne addressed his thoughts to Andreessen because Andreessen represents the Valleyboth in its soaring vision and in its tendency to treat people as a fungible mass. But Andreessen waved away the criticisms as the ravings of a self-hating software engineer. When I persisted, he said, Ordinary people love the iPhone, Facebook, Google Search, Airbnb, and Lyft. Its only the intellectuals who worry. He raised counter-arguments, then dismissed them: technology would solve any environmental crisis hastened by an expanding economy, and as for the notion that, as he said, You American imperialist asshole, not everyone wants all that technologywell, bullshit! Go to a Chinese village and ask them. Technology gives us superpowers, makes us smarter, more powerful, happier. Would the world be a better place if there were fifty Silicon Valleys? he said. Obviously, yes. Over the past thirty years, the level of income throughout the developing world is rising, the number of people in poverty is shrinking, health outcomes are improving, birth rates are falling. And itll be even better in ten years. Pessimism always sounds more sophisticated than optimismits the Eden-collapse myth over and over againand then you look at G.D.P. per capita worldwide, and its up and to the right. If this is collapse, lets have more of it!Global unemployment is rising, toothis seems to be the first industrial revolution that wipes out more jobs than it creates. One 2013 paper argues that forty-seven per cent of all American jobs are destined to be automated. Andreessen argues that his firms entire portfolio is creating jobs, and that such companies as Udacity (which offers low-cost, online nanodegrees in programming) and Honor (which aims to provide better and better-paid in-home care for the elderly) bring us closer to a future in which everyone will either be doing more interesting work or be kicking back and painting sunsets. But when I brought up the raft of data suggesting that intra-country inequality is in fact increasing, even as it decreases when averaged across the globeAmericas wealth gap is the widest its been since the government began measuring itAndreessen rerouted the conversation, saying that such gaps were a skills problem, and that as robots ate the old, boring jobs humanity should simply retool. My response to Larry Summers, when he says that people are like horses, they have only their manual labor to offerhe threw up his hands. That is such a dark and dim and dystopian view of humanity I can hardly stand it!One challenge for Andreessen is whether venture itself has a skills problem. If software is truly eating the world, wouldnt venture capital be on the menu? The AngelList platform now allows investors to fund startups online. Its co-founder Naval Ravikant said that future companies will require more two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks and way fewer guys on Sand Hill Road. Jeff Fagnan, of Atlas Venture, which is the largest investor in AngelList, said, Software is already squeezing out other intermediariestravel agents, financial advisersand, at the end of the day, V.C.s are intermediaries. Were all just selling cash.Andreessen sometimes wonders if Ravikant is onto something. Hes asked Horowitz, What if were the most evolved dinosaur, and Naval is a bird? Already, more than half the tech companies that reached a billion-dollar valuation in the past decade were based outside Silicon Valley. And as Andreessen himself wrote in 2007, before he became a V.C., Odds are, nothing your V.C. does, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, is going to tip the balance between success and failure.He still believes thatbut he also thinks that a16z can cut a companys time to success in half, and time is money. He also believes that venture will maintain its incumbency because computers cant yet introduce you to just the right engineer or chief information officer at eBay, and machines cant yet come to your office at midnight to future-proof your letter to perturbed customers. Indeed, venture is one of the most human businesses going. Only human beings could have created such a supercollider of contradictions: a font of innovation that pools around conformity; a freedom train that speeds toward monopoly; a promoter of transparency that shrouds its own dealings; a guild thats dedicated to flattening hierarchies, and that rewards its leaders with imperial power.Naturally, Andreessen had to weigh the counterargument, and consider whether he added any value at all. One Sunday afternoon, as he sat alone at the head of a16zs conference table, he said, Chris Dixon argues that were in the magical-products businessthat we fool ourselves into thinking were building companies, but it doesnt matter if we dont have the magical products. And magic could not be summoned, only prepared for. Over twenty years, he continued, our returns are going to come down to two or three or four investments, and the rest of thishis gesture took in the building full of art, the devotions of more than a hundred eager souls, even the faux-Moorish rooftops of his competitors down the roadis the cost of getting the chance at those investments. Theres a sense in which all of this is mathyou just dont know which Tuesday Mark Zuckerberg is going to walk in.Yet math was no help with mass psychology. Even if we could do perfect analysis, we just cant know the future, he said. What if Google Ventures had access to all Google searchescould you predict hit products? Or perfect access to all of peoples conversations or purchases? You still wouldnt know whats going to happen. How is psychohistory going? he went on, referring to Isaac Asimovs invention, in his Foundation novels, of a statistical field that could predict the behavior of civilizations. Not very fucking good at all! Which, by the way, is part of what makes this job really fun. Its a people business. If we could revise the industry completely, wed just dump all the business plans and focus on peoplethe twenty-three-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs.He acknowledged, though, that his optimism dims once human beingswith their illogic, hidden agendas, and sheer bugginessenter the equation. Were imperfect people pursuing perfect ideas, and theres tremendous frustration in the gap, he said. Writing code, one or two people, thats the Platonic ideal. But when you want to impact the world you need one hundred people, then one thousand, then ten thousandand people have all these people issues. He examined the problem in silence. A world of just computers wouldnt work, he concluded wistfully. But a world of just people could certainly be improved.*An earlier version of this article misstated the name of Sequoia Capital.Tad Friend has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. He is the author of Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor.Read more More:Silicon ValleyTechnologyVenture CapitalistsNever miss a big New Yorker story again. Sign up for This Weeks Issue and get an e-mail every week with the stories you have to read.GoMost Popular1.Personal HistoryJunot Daz: The Legacy of Childhood TraumaBy Junot Daz2.Annals of AppearancesThe Great Sadness of Ben AffleckBy Naomi Fry3.News DeskMichael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump PresidencyBy Adam Davidson4.DispatchIn Rural Tennessee, a Big ICE Raid Makes Some Conservative Voters Rethink Trumps Immigration AgendaBy Jonathan Blitzer5.Annals of MedicineWhat Does It Mean to Die?By Rachel Avivour thirty most popularRecommended StoriesTrue Romance Dept.Web Surfing Solo, Seeking SameThe scramble to date and mate, helped and hindered by the Internet.ByNick PaumgartenJun. 27, 2011Art and TechLights, Camera, Virtual Reality!The pioneers discovering the storytelling potential of a mysterious, immersive new medium.ByAndrew MarantzApr. 18, 2016Personal HistoryJunot Daz: The Legacy of Childhood TraumaConfronting the legacy of childhood trauma.ByJunot DazAnnals of AppearancesThe Great Sadness of Ben AffleckTwo years after Affleck denied its existence, his phoenix back tattoo returned to haunt the headlines, itself rising from the ashes of gossip rags past.ByNaomi FryMar. 24, 2018Letter from CaliforniaMay 18, 2015 IssueTomorrows Advance ManMarc Andreessens plan to win the future.By Tad FriendAt his firm, Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capitalist routinely lays out what will happen in the next ten, twenty, thirty years.Photograph by Joe PuglieseOn a bright October morning, Suhail Doshi drove to Silicon Valley in his parents Honda Civic, carrying a laptop with a twelve-slide presentation that was surely worth at least fifty million dollars. Doshi, the twenty-six-year-old C.E.O. of a data-analytics startup called Mixpanel, had come from San Francisco to Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, where many of the worlds most prestigious venture-capital firms cluster, to pitch Andreessen Horowitz, the roads newest and most unusual firm. Inside the offices, he stood at the head of a massive beechwood conference table to address the firms deal team and its seven general partnersthe men who venture the money, take a seat on the board, and fire the entrepreneur if things go wrong.Marc Andreessen, the firms co-founder, fixed his gaze on Doshi as he disinfected his germless hands with a sanitizing wipe. Andreessen is forty-three years old and six feet five inches tall, with a cranium so large, bald, and oblong that you cant help but think of words like jumbo and Grade A. Two decades ago, he was the animating spirit of Netscape, the Web browser that launched the Internet boom. In many respects, he is the quintessential Silicon Valley venture capitalist: an imposing, fortyish, long-celebrated white man. (Forbess Midas List of the top hundred V.C.s includes just five women.) But, whereas most V.C.s maintain a casual-Friday vibe, Andreessen seethes with beliefs. Hes an evangelist for the church of technology, afire to reorder life as we know it. He believes that tech products will soon erase such primitive behaviors as paying cash (Bitcoin), eating cooked food (Soylent), and enduring a world unimproved by virtual reality (Oculus VR). He believes that Silicon Valley is mission control for mankind, which is therefore on a steep trajectory toward perfection. And when he so argues, fire-hosing you with syllogisms and data points and pre-refuting every potential rebuttal, hes very persuasive.Doshi, lean and quizzical in a maroon T-shirt and jeans, began his pitch by declaring, Most of the world will make decisions by either guessing or using their gut. They will be either lucky or wrong. Far better to apply Mixpanels analytics, which enable mobile-based companies to know exactly who their customers are and how they use their apps. Doshi rapidly escalated to rhetoricWe want to do data science for every single market in the worldthat would sound bumptious anywhere but on Sand Hill Road, where the young guy in jeans is obligated to astound the middle-aged guys in cashmere V-necks. Mediocre V.C.s want to see that your company has traction, Doshi told me. The top V.C.s want you to show them you can invent the future.If you have a crackerjack idea, one of your stops on Sand Hill Road will be Andreessen Horowitz, often referred to by its alphanumeric URL, a16z. (There are sixteen letters between the a in Andreessen and the z in Horowitz.) Since the firm was launched, six years ago, it has vaulted into the top echelon of venture concerns. Competing V.C.s, disturbed by its speed and its power and the lavish prices it paid for deals, gave it another nickname: AHo. Each year, three thousand startups approach a16z with a warm intro from someone the firm knows. A16z invests in fifteen. Of those, at least ten will fold, three or four will prosper, and one might soar to be worth more than a billion dollarsa unicorn, in the local parlance. With great luck, once a decade that unicorn will become a Google or a Facebook and return the V.C.s money a thousand times over: the storied 1,000x. There are eight hundred and three V.C. firms in the U.S., and last year they spent forty-eight billion dollars chasing that dream.Doshi had run the gantlet before. In 2012, he tracked down Andreessen and his equally if less splendidly bald co-founder, Ben Horowitz, at a Ritz-Carlton near Tucson. Then he pitched them in the lobby (having made sure that his parents Honda, which contained his father, was well out of sight). Doshi mentioned that hed become so dissatisfied with the incumbent database software that hed built his own. Andreessen later told me that this was like a cub reporter saying, I need to write the Great American Novel before I can really file this story. A16z gave Doshi ten million dollars, and he gave it twenty-five per cent of his company.Now he was back for more. He zipped through his slides: hundred-per-cent growth rate; head count doubling every six to nine months; and he still had all the money hed raised last time. As Andreessen drank an iced tea in two gulps and began to roam the room, Doshi called up a slide that showed his competitorsLocalytics, Amplitude, Google Analyticsgrouped into quadrants. Then he explained how hed crush each quadrant. I want to buy a machine-learning team, I want to buy cutting-edge server hardware, he said. Indicating his all-but-obliterated competitors, he added, I want to buy stuff no one here can afford. He jammed his hands in his pockets: questions?While entrepreneurs attack with historiographyThe great-man view of history is correct, and I am that great man!V.C.s defend with doubletalk. Youre definitely going to get funded! means But not by us. Who else is in? means Besides not us. And Im not sure I would ever use your product myself means So long! But the best V.C.s test the entrepreneurs mettle as well as their own assumptions. Andreessen gripped the back of his chair. So one way to describe what youre doing is a network effect, he said. More data gives you more customers, which allows you to build more services, which gives you more data, which allows you to get more customers, and you just turn the crank. Doshi thought this over and said, Sure! Andreessen grinned: hes a systems thinker, and hed grasped how Mixpanel fit into the system. After the pitch, he told me that Mixpanel is a picks-and-shovels business right in the middle of the gold rush.When a startup is just an idea and a few employees, it looks for seed-round funding. When it has a product that early adopters likeor when its run through its seed-round moneyit tries to raise an A round. Once the product catches on, its time for a B round, and on the rounds go. Most V.C.s contemplating an investment in one of these early rounds consider the same factors. The bottom seventy per cent of V.C.s just go down a checklist, Jordan Cooper, a New York entrepreneur and V.C., said. Monthly recurring revenue? Founder with experience? Good sales pipeline? X per cent of month-over-month growth? V.C.s also pattern-match. If the kids are into Snapchat, fund things like it: Yik Yak, Streetchat, ooVoo. Or, at a slightly deeper level, if two dropouts from Stanfords computer-science Ph.D. program created Google, fund more Stanford C.S.P. dropouts, because they blend superior capacity with monetizable dissatisfaction.Venture capitalists with a knack for the 1,000x know that true innovations dont follow a pattern. The future is always stranger than we expect: mobile phones and the Internet, not flying cars. Doug Leone, one of the leaders of Sequoia Capital, by consensus Silicon Valleys top firm, said, The biggest outcomes come when you break your previous mental model. The black-swan events of the past forty yearsthe PC, the router, the Internet, the iPhonenobody had theses around those. So whats useful to us is having Dumbo ears.* A great V.C. keeps his ears pricked for a disturbing story with the elements of a fairy tale. This tale begins in another age (which happens to be the future), and features a lowborn hero who knows a secret from his hardscrabble experience. The hero encounters royalty (the V.C.s) who test him, and he harnesses magic (technology) to prevail. The tale ends in heaping treasure chests for all, borne home on the unicorns back.At pitch meetings, Andreessen is relatively measured: he reserves his passion for the deal review afterward, when the firm decides whether to invest. Thats where he asks questions that oblige his partners to envision a new world. For the ride-sharing service Lyft: Dont think about how big the taxi market is. What if people no longer owned cars? For OfferUp: What if all this selling onlineeBay and Craigslistgoes to mobile? How big could it be? Ben Horowitz, who sits next to his co-founder at the head of the table, is an astute manager who quotes the rap lyrics of his friends Nas and Kanye West to inspire fearless thinkingbut he doesnt try to manage Andreessen. If you say to Marc, Dont bite somebodys fucking head off!, that would be wrong, Horowitz said. Because a lot of his value, when youre making giant decisions for huge amounts of money, is saying, Why arent you fucking considering this and this and this?In New York, we wouldnt call this quick.A16z was designed to be a full-throated argument about the future, a design predicated on its founders comfort with conflict. In 1996, when Horowitz was a Netscape product manager, he wrote a note to Andreessen, accusing him of prematurely revealing the companys new strategy to a reporter. Andreessen wrote back to say that it would be Horowitzs fault if the company failed: Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you. Ordinarily, relationship over. When he feels disrespected, Marc can cut you out of his life like a cancer, one of Andreessens close friends said. But Ben and Marc fight like cats and dogs, then forget about it. Two years later, when Netscape was floundering and forty per cent of its employees left, Horowitz announced that he was staying no matter what. Andreessen had never trusted anyone before, but he began to consider it. Their teamwork at a16z is complementary: Horowitz is the people-person C.E.O., and Andreessen is the farsighted theorist, the chairman. Yet Horowitz noted that Marc is much more sensitive than I am, actually. Hell get upset about my body languageGod damn it, Ben, you look like youre going to throw up when Im talking about this!Although Andreessen has been a board member of Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, and eBay, he doesnt take many board seats in a16zs portfolio companies, preferring to train his eyes on the horizon. Andreessen is tomorrows advance man, routinely laying out what will happen in the next ten, twenty, thirty years, as if he were glancing at his Google calendar. He views his acuity as a matter of careful observation and extrapolation, and often invokes William Gibsons observation The future is already hereits just not very evenly distributed. Jet packs have been around for half a century, but you still cant buy them at Target. To smooth out such lumps in distribution, Andreessen disseminates his views via every available podcast and panel discussion and CNN interview slot: hes a media soothsayer, Andreessen the Magnificent. He also tweets a hundred and ten times a day, inundating his three hundred and ten thousand followers with aphorisms and statistics and tweetstorm jeremiads. Andreessen says that he loves Twitter because reporters are obsessed with it. Its like a tube and I have loudspeakers installed in every reporting cubicle around the world. He believes that if you say it often enough and insistently enough it will comea glorious revenge. He told me, We have this theory of nerd nation, of forty or fifty million people all over the world who believe that other nerds have more in common with them than the people in their own country. So you get to choose what tribe or band or group youre a part of. The nation-states of Twitter will map the world.Mixpanel was emblematic of Silicon Valleys outsized worship of unicorns. At the companys deal review, Peter Levine, who sits on Doshis board, reported that the entrepreneur had e-mailed to say that hed love for his company to be valued at a billion dollarsan assessment that would set the price for the portion of it that a16z might now buy. However, Doshi would sell the firm ten per cent of his company for eighty million, suggesting a valuation of eight hundred million dollars. Andreessen said, The dogs are fucking jumping through the screen door to eat the dog food. And he hasnt done any marketing yet. And hes profitable!Horowitz exclaimed, How old is he, twenty-four? God damn it, lets give him all our money! A16z provided Doshi all his B-round fundingsixty-five million dollarsfor a further 7.5 per cent of the company, which was thus valued at eight hundred and sixty-five million dollars. Doshi was a little sorry that Mixpanel wasnt valued at a billion dollars, but he told me that he could wait: his business was growing so fast, and everyone was raising money so frequently in the current boom, that in six or twelve months well be a unicorn.Venture firms rarely do an entire follow-on round themselves, for fear of losing sight of a companys true market value; as Andreessen put it, You can be thinking your shit smells like ice cream. None of the half-dozen other firms that Doshi pitched last fall valued his company as highly as a16z did. But Andreessen applied a maxim from his friend and intellectual sparring partner Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in LinkedIn and Yelp. When a reputable venture firm leads two consecutive rounds of investment in a company, Andreessen told me, Thiel believes that that is a screaming buy signal, and the bigger the markup on the last round the more undervalued the company is. Thiels point, which takes a moment to digest, is that, when a company grows extremely rapidly, even its bullish V.C.s, having recently set a relatively low value on the previous round, will be slightly stuck in the past. The faster the growth, the farther behind theyll be. Andreessen grinned, appreciating the paradox: the more they paid for Mixpanelaccording to Thiel, anywaythe better a deal theyd be getting.Most businesses dont work like this. At least, not yet.Silicon Valley, the fifteen-hundred- square-mile shelf an hour south of San Francisco, was called the Santa Clara Valley until the rise of the microprocessor, in the nineteen-seventies. It remains contested ground. Armies of startups attack every incumbent, with early employeesand sometimes even their lawyers and landlordstaking deferred compensation, in the hope that their options and warrants will pay off down the line. Yet workers loyalty is not to a company or even to an idea but to the iterative promise of the region. Uber is built on the efforts of thousands of people in the Valley, the investor Naval Ravikant said. On the back of the iPhone and Android and G.P.S. and battery technology and online credit-card payments, all stacked on themselves.V.C.s give the Valley its continuityand its ammunition. They are the arms merchants who can turn your crazy idea and your expendable youth into a team of coders with Thunderbolt monitors. Apple and Microsoft got started with venture money; so did Starbucks, the Home Depot, Whole Foods Market, and JetBlue. V.C.s made their key introductions and stole from every page of Sun Tzu to help them penetrate markets. And yet V.C.s maintain a zone of embarrassed privacy around their activities. They tell strangers theyre investors, or work in technology, because, in a Valley that valorizes the entrepreneur, they dont want to be seen as just the money. I say Im in the software industry, one of the Valleys best-known V.C.s told me. Im ashamed of the truth.At a hundred and eleven dollars a square foot, Sand Hill Road is Americas most expensive office-rental marketan oak-and-eucalyptus-lined prospect stippled with bland, two-story ski chalets constrained by an ethos of nonconspicuous consumption (except for the Teslas in the parking lot). Its a community of paranoid optimists. The top firms coperate and compete by turns, suspicious of any company whose previous round wasnt led by another top-five firm even as theyre jealous of that firm for leading it. They call this Schadenfreude-riddled relationship co-opitition. Firms trumpet their boldness, yet they often follow one another, lemming-like, pursuing the latest innovationpen-based computers, biotech, interactive television, superconductors, clean techoff a cliff.Venture capital became a profession here when an investor named Arthur Rock bankrolled Intel, in 1968. Intels co-founder Gordon Moore coined the phrase vulture capital, because V.C.s could pick you clean. Semiretired millionaires who routinely arrived late for pitch meetings, theyd take half your company and replace you with a C.E.O. of their choosingif you were lucky. But V.C.s can also anoint you. The imprimatur of a top firms investment is so powerful that entrepreneurs routinely accept a twenty-five per cent lower valuation to get it. Patrick Collison, a co-founder of the online-payment company Stripe, says that landing Sequoia, Peter Thiel, and a16z as seed investors was a signal that was not lost on the banks we wanted to work with. Laughing, he noted that the valuation in the next round of fundingfor a pre-launch company from very untested entrepreneurs who had very few customerswas a hundred million dollars. Stewart Butterfield, a co-founder of the office-messaging app Slack, told me, Its hard to overestimate how much the perception of the quality of the V.C. firm youre with mattersthe signal it sends to other V.C.s, to potential employees, to customers, to the tech press. Its like where you went to college.A venture firm musters its ammunitionsay, a fund of a hundred and fifty million dollarsby recruiting investors such as university endowments and pension funds to become limited partners, or L.P.s, in the fund. The firm invests the money for three or four years, then harvests the returns for the remainder of the funds ten-year term. In theory, V.C.s, like entrepreneurs, are motivated by delayed gratification. The standard fee is two and twenty: two per cent of the fund each year, and twenty per cent of the ultimate profits. (The top firms, including a16z, charge thirty per cent.) L.P.s expect returns equal to at least those theyd get in the stock market, plus an additional five per cent for the illiquidity of the investment. For top firms, the dream is 5x to 10x.At the moment, venture funding accounts for less than 0.3 per cent of the U.S.s G.D.P. Venture is often called a rounding error in the economy, Herbert Allen III, the head of the investment bank Allen & Company, said. But the bang for the buck is huge. And venture is a major source of the optimism that underlies the American myth. Venture speeds the cycle of American impatience: what exists is bad and what replaces it is gooduntil the new thing itself must be supplanted.Corporate culture, civic responsibility, becoming a pillar of societythese are not ventures concerns. Andy Weissman, a partner at New Yorks Union Square Ventures, noted that venture in the Valley is a perfect embodiment of the capitalist dynamic that the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction. Weissman said, Silicon Valley V.C.s are all techno-optimists. They have the arrogant belief that you can take a geography and remove all obstructions and have nothing but a free flow of capital and ideas, and that its good, its very good, to creatively destroy everything that has gone before. Some Silicon Valley V.C.s believe that these values would have greater sway if their community left America behind: Andreessens nerd nation with a charter and a geographic locale. Peter Thiel favors seasteading, establishing floating cities in the middle of the ocean. Balaji Srinivasan, until recently a general partner at a16z and now the chairman of one of its Bitcoin companies, has called for the ultimate exit. Arguing that the United States is as fossilized as Microsoft, and that the Valley has become stronger than Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., combined, Srinivasan believes that its denizens should build an opt-in society, ultimately outside the U.S., run by technology.The game in Silicon Valley, while it remains part of California, is not ferocious intelligence or a contrarian investment thesis: everyone has that. Its not even wealth: anyone can become a billionaire just by rooming with Mark Zuckerberg. Its prescience. And then its removing every obstacle to the ferocious clarity of your vision: incumbents, regulations, folkways, people. Can you not just see the future but summon it?Marc Andreessen mentions Thomas Edison often, his family never. When he was growing up, outside the no-stoplight town of New Lisbon, Wisconsin, his father, Lowell, was a sales manager for a seed company called Pioneer Hi-Bred International, and his mother, Pat, worked in customer service at Lands Endbut I didnt get that information from him. A friend who knows Andreessen well told me, Weve never had a conversation about his parents or his brotherall he said was They didnt like me, and I didnt like them all that much, either.The few details Andreessen let slip to me suggested a climate of antiquity, superstition, frustration, and penury. The natural state of human beings is to be subsistence farmers, and that was my expectation, he said, adding that his world was Scandinavian, hard-core, very self-denying people who go through life never expecting to be happy. The family telephone was a party line, and the bathroom at his relatives farm was an outhouse. Everyone believed in dowsing and the weather reports in the Farmers Almanac. One winter, with money tight, his father decided to stop paying for gas heat, and we spent a great deal of time chopping fucking wood. The local movie theatre, one town over, was an unheated room that doubled as a fertilizer-storage depot; Andreessen wore a puffy Pioneer Hi-Bred coat to watch Star Wars while sitting on the makings of a huge bomb. He had to drive an hour to find a Waldenbooks, in La Crosse; it was all cookbooks and cat calendars. So he later saw Amazon as a heroic disseminator of knowledge and progress. Screw the independent bookstores, he told me. There werent any near where I grew up. There were only ones in college towns. The rest of us could go pound sand.Andreessens vision of the future, and of his escape route, came from television. He told me, KITT, the car in Knight Rider, was a computer that could analyze a poison-gas attack. The car was magicbut now you can actually do all those things. A new car isnt KITT, but it does have all the maps and all the music in the world, and it talks to you. Even the transporter beam in Star Trek basically makes sense if you understand quantum entanglement. People are composed of quantum elements, so there is a path!Something of the transporter beam clings to Andreessen, a sense that he just rematerialized from a city on the edge of forever. Hes not great at the basics of daily life: directions confound him, because roadways arent logical, and hes so absent-minded about sunglasses that he keeps a reload station with nine pairs on his hall table. Perhaps Edison haunts his conversation because Andreessen is a fellow-tinkerer, except that his gadgets are systems and platforms, and his workshop is his own mind. He regularly reprograms his appearance and deportmenthis user interfaceto suit his present role, and friends refer to chapters in his life as versions of an operating system: Marc 1.0, Marc 2.0, and so on. A charismatic introvert, Andreessen draws people in but doesnt really want them around. Though he has a crisp sense of humor, its rarely deployed at his own expense. He hates being complimented, looked at, or embraced, and has toyed with the idea of wearing a T-shirt that says No hugging, no touching. He doesnt grasp the protocols of social chitchat, and prefers getting a memo to which he can e-mail a response, typing at a hundred and forty words a minute. He didnt attend Netscapes twentieth