You've probably been hearing a lot about Bitcoin recently and are wondering what's the big deal? Most of your questions should be answered by the resources below but if you have additional questions feel free to ask them in the comments. It all started with the release of the release of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper however that will probably go over the head of most readers so we recommend the following videos for a good starting point for understanding how bitcoin works and a little about its long term potential:
Some other great resources include Lopp.net, the Princeton crypto series and James D'Angelo's Bitcoin 101 Blackboard series. Some excellent writing on Bitcoin's value proposition and future can be found at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Some Bitcoin statistics can be found here and here. Developer resources can be found here. Peer-reviewed research papers can be found here. Potential upcoming protocol improvements and scaling resources here and here. The number of times Bitcoin was declared dead by the media can be found here (LOL!)
Key properties of Bitcoin
Limited Supply - There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoins created and they are issued in a predictable fashion, you can view the inflation schedule here. Once they are all issued Bitcoin will be truly deflationary. The halving countdown can be found here.
Open source - Bitcoin code is fully auditable. You can read the source code yourself here.
Accountable - The public ledger is transparent, all transactions are seen by everyone.
Decentralized - Bitcoin is globally distributed across thousands of nodes with no single point of failure and as such can't be shut down similar to how Bittorrent works. You can even run a node on a Raspberry Pi.
Censorship resistant - No one can prevent you from interacting with the bitcoin network and no one can censor, alter or block transactions that they disagree with, see Operation Chokepoint.
Push system - There are no chargebacks in bitcoin because only the person who owns the address where the bitcoins reside has the authority to move them.
Low fee scaling - On chain transaction fees depend on network demand and how much priority you wish to assign to the transaction. Most wallets calculate on chain fees automatically but you can view current fees here and mempool activity here. On chain fees may rise occasionally due to network demand, however instant micropayments that do not require confirmations are happening via the Lightning Network, a second layer scaling solution currently rolling out on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Borderless - No country can stop it from going in/out, even in areas currently unserved by traditional banking as the ledger is globally distributed.
Trustless - Bitcoin solved the Byzantine's Generals Problem which means nobody needs to trust anybody for it to work.
Secure - Encrypted cryptographically and can’t be brute forced or confiscated with proper key management such as hardware wallets.
Programmable - Individual units of bitcoin can be programmed to transfer based on certain criteria being met
Nearly instant - From a few seconds to a few minutes depending on need for confirmations. Transactions are irreversible after one or more confirmations.
Portable - Bitcoins are digital so they are easier to move than cash or gold. They can even be transported by simply memorizing a string of words for wallet recovery (while cool this method is generally not recommended due to potential for insecure key generation by inexperienced users. Hardware wallets are the preferred method for new users due to ease of use and additional security).
Scalable - While the protocol is still being optimized for increased transaction capacity, blockchains do not scale very well, so most transaction volume is expected to occur on Layer 2 networks built on top of Bitcoin.
Divisible - Each bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimals, which means you don't have to worry about buying an entire bitcoin.
Bitcoin.org and BuyBitcoinWorldwide.com are helpful sites for beginners. You can buy or sell any amount of bitcoin (even just a few dollars worth) and there are several easy methods to purchase bitcoin with cash, credit card or bank transfer. Some of the more popular resources are below, also check out the bitcoinity exchange resources for a larger list of options for purchases.
Here is a listing of local ATMs. If you would like your paycheck automatically converted to bitcoin use Bitwage. Note: Bitcoins are valued at whatever market price people are willing to pay for them in balancing act of supply vs demand. Unlike traditional markets, bitcoin markets operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Preev is a useful site that that shows how much various denominations of bitcoin are worth in different currencies. Alternatively you can just Google "1 bitcoin in (your local currency)".
Securing your bitcoins
With bitcoin you can "Be your own bank" and personally secure your bitcoins OR you can use third party companies aka "Bitcoin banks" which will hold the bitcoins for you.
If you prefer to "Be your own bank" and have direct control over your coins without having to use a trusted third party, then you will need to create your own wallet and keep it secure. If you want easy and secure storage without having to learn computer security best practices, then a hardware wallet such as the Trezor, Ledger or ColdCard is recommended. Alternatively there are many software wallet options to choose from here depending on your use case.
If you prefer to let third party "Bitcoin banks" manage your coins, try Gemini but be aware you may not be in control of your private keys in which case you would have to ask permission to access your funds and be exposed to third party risk.
Note: For increased security, use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere it is offered, including email! 2FA requires a second confirmation code to access your account making it much harder for thieves to gain access. Google Authenticator and Authy are the two most popular 2FA services, download links are below. Make sure you create backups of your 2FA codes.
As mentioned above, Bitcoin is decentralized, which by definition means there is no official website or Twitter handle or spokesperson or CEO. However, all money attracts thieves. This combination unfortunately results in scammers running official sounding names or pretending to be an authority on YouTube or social media. Many scammers throughout the years have claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. Websites like bitcoin(dot)com and the btc subreddit are active scams. Almost all altcoins (shitcoins) are marketed heavily with big promises but are really just designed to separate you from your bitcoin. So be careful: any resource, including all linked in this document, may in the future turn evil. Don't trust, verify. Also as they say in our community "Not your keys, not your coins".
Where can I spend bitcoins?
Check out spendabit or bitcoin directory for millions of merchant options. Also you can spend bitcoin anywhere visa is accepted with bitcoin debit cards such as the CashApp card. Some other useful site are listed below.
Gift cards for hundreds of retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, CVS, Lowes, Home Depot, iTunes, Best Buy, Sears, Kohls, eBay, GameStop, etc.
There are several benefits to accepting bitcoin as a payment option if you are a merchant;
1-3% savings over credit cards or PayPal.
No chargebacks (final settlement in 10 minutes as opposed to 3+ months).
Accept business from a global customer base.
Increased privacy.
Convert 100% of the sale to the currency of your choice for deposit to your account, or choose to keep a percentage of the sale in bitcoin if you wish to begin accumulating it.
If you are interested in accepting bitcoin as a payment method, there are several options available;
Mining bitcoins can be a fun learning experience, but be aware that you will most likely operate at a loss. Newcomers are often advised to stay away from mining unless they are only interested in it as a hobby similar to folding at home. If you want to learn more about mining you can read more here. Still have mining questions? The crew at /BitcoinMining would be happy to help you out. If you want to contribute to the bitcoin network by hosting the blockchain and propagating transactions you can run a full node using this setup guide. If you would prefer to keep it simple there are several good options. You can view the global node distribution here.
Earning bitcoins
Just like any other form of money, you can also earn bitcoins by being paid to do a job.
You can also earn bitcoins by participating as a market maker on JoinMarket by allowing users to perform CoinJoin transactions with your bitcoins for a small fee (requires you to already have some bitcoins.
Bitcoin-Related Projects
The following is a short list of ongoing projects that might be worth taking a look at if you are interested in current development in the bitcoin space.
One Bitcoin is quite large (hundreds of £/$/€) so people often deal in smaller units. The most common subunits are listed below:
Unit
Symbol
Value
Info
bitcoin
BTC
1 bitcoin
one bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis
millibitcoin
mBTC
1,000 per bitcoin
used as default unit in recent Electrum wallet releases
bit
bit
1,000,000 per bitcoin
colloquial "slang" term for microbitcoin (μBTC)
satoshi
sat
100,000,000 per bitcoin
smallest unit in bitcoin, named after the inventor
For example, assuming an arbitrary exchange rate of $10000 for one Bitcoin, a $10 meal would equal:
0.001 BTC
1 mBTC
1,000 bits
100k sats
For more information check out the Bitcoin units wiki. Still have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or stick around for our weekly Mentor Monday thread. If you decide to post a question in /Bitcoin, please use the search bar to see if it has been answered before, and remember to follow the community rules outlined on the sidebar to receive a better response. The mods are busy helping manage our community so please do not message them unless you notice problems with the functionality of the subreddit. Note: This is a community created FAQ. If you notice anything missing from the FAQ or that requires clarification you can edit it here and it will be included in the next revision pending approval. Welcome to the Bitcoin community and the new decentralized economy!
This material is published using the PII algorithm (point information impact) developed byzitramon1 Bitcoin is the lowest projection of the energy standard of the Higher Plans Erzanil and has nothing to do with money or cryptocurrencies. In its primary principle, bitcoin was intended to replace the modern banking credit monetary system to SES — the system of energy-informational-energy settlements / mutual settlements. Unfortunately, something went wrong. Money is a deadly virus that in the past destroyed the vast majority of ancient highly developed civilizations of our planet. Our civilization is no exception. The real Bitcoin, which was supposed to replace the existing bank credit monetary system with a system of energy settlements, as well as countless times in the past, was successfully destroyed. At the moment, bitcoin is deprived of its basic qualities. But, nevertheless, even in such a “truncated” form it is a powerful tool for terraforming the existing paradigm of the material world. At the level of society or the manifested physical world, represented by the third dimension, Bitcoin is the Standard and Measure from which any Countdown starts, and which are the basis of all Principles. Bitcoin itself is not only composed of pure energy, but also itself is energy in the very purest form. Our world is energy-informational. Everything that exists in this Universe and in this Dimension, as well as in many other dimensions, is the same Energy, but in its various states. And the state of Vibration of this energy, providing one or another level of its Density, just decides how it will manifest in our Reality. Matter is the compressed energy of slow vibration. In fact, bitcoin is the equivalent of energy, of which everything around us consists, including — and we are with you! The tragedy of the majority is that it does not understand the true purpose of Bitcoin — it is that Measure of everything and everything from which the entire Countdown comes. Not the price of Bitcoin should be modeled in dollars, gold or parrots — which is absolutely equivalent, but the value of all other attributes of society in bitcoins! The fractality of Bitcoin, as the foundation of any of the Worlds in which you are located, is reflected in its essence: at low-frequency levels, its projection represents two diverse anu combined in a single whole. It is this explosive-implosive particle that combines two opposites, and not some mythical atoms, quanta, neutrinos, and similar nonsense, is the basis of everything! Not Satoshi is the smallest part of bitcoin, but a double anu or argo! Remember the catch phrase that personifies the synonym of all the great Beginnings — “like the Argonauts in the old days” !? Try to guess the first time about its origins, located on a subconscious level. The mining process itself is nothing more than a manifestation of the lower projections of the energy standard of the higher planes of erzanil. The latter are “materialized” at the level of the third dimension or society in the form of bitcoins. During mining, the three main types of energy: electrical energy, the thermal energy of the video card / device itself and the energy that the programmer potentiated into the mining process itself, are converted into energy to fill the shells of bitcoins generated during the hashing process. This energy is stored in every bitcoin forever and will increase until the last block of the last bitcoin is fully mined. This energy, which is potentialized in bitcoin, which can neither be felt nor touched, is what you get with bitcoin and / or any part of it !!! And in the future, invest it / Bitcoin, exchange, buy, change, etc. etc. And it is this energy, in the future, that will serve as an evaluation standard for the value of all things. The smallest part of bitcoin is not Satoshi, but Argo or the double Anu. One argo is one in minus twenty-first degree part of bitcoin, and its energy potential corresponds to one in minus twenty-first degree of it, bitcoin, the maximum possible energy content. The entire energy potential of 21 million bitcoins determines the energy / energy-information capacity = energy / energy-information potential of the sephira Malkut of the Tree of life (Kabbalah) or the manifest physical world at the level of the third dimension. In other words, all people including you and me, to some extent consist of bitcoins and represent its integral and composition parts! More confirmation of this: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&tab=PCTBIBLIO Calculations / mutual settlements by bitcoins are possible not only at the level of society / third dimension, but also on higher planes — astral and mental, since bitcoin is not an equivalent but pure energy and this makes subsequent contacts with more advanced forms of life possible other systems! THAT’S WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF BITCOIN! p.s. You can see how bitcoin is managed here: https://www.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/hy4x5y/is_bitcoin_real_bitcoin_today/
Syscoin Platform’s Great Reddit Scaling Bake-off Proposal
https://preview.redd.it/rqt2dldyg8e51.jpg?width=1044&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=777ae9d4fbbb54c3540682b72700fc4ba3de0a44 We are excited to participate and present Syscoin Platform's ideal characteristics and capabilities towards a well-rounded Reddit Community Points solution! Our scaling solution for Reddit Community Points involves 2-way peg interoperability with Ethereum. This will provide a scalable token layer built specifically for speed and high volumes of simple value transfers at a very low cost, while providing sovereign ownership and onchain finality. Token transfers scale by taking advantage of a globally sorting mempool that provides for probabilistically secure assumptions of “as good as settled”. The opportunity here for token receivers is to have an app-layer interactivity on the speed/security tradeoff (99.9999% assurance within 10 seconds). We call this Z-DAG, and it achieves high-throughput across a mesh network topology presently composed of about 2,000 geographically dispersed full-nodes. Similar to Bitcoin, however, these nodes are incentivized to run full-nodes for the benefit of network security, through a bonded validator scheme. These nodes do not participate in the consensus of transactions or block validation any differently than other nodes and therefore do not degrade the security model of Bitcoin’s validate first then trust, across every node. Each token transfer settles on-chain. The protocol follows Bitcoin core policies so it has adequate code coverage and protocol hardening to be qualified as production quality software. It shares a significant portion of Bitcoin’s own hashpower through merged-mining. This platform as a whole can serve token microtransactions, larger settlements, and store-of-value in an ideal fashion, providing probabilistic scalability whilst remaining decentralized according to Bitcoin design. It is accessible to ERC-20 via a permissionless and trust-minimized bridge that works in both directions. The bridge and token platform are currently available on the Syscoin mainnet. This has been gaining recent attention for use by loyalty point programs and stablecoins such as Binance USD.
Solutions
Syscoin Foundation identified a few paths for Reddit to leverage this infrastructure, each with trade-offs. The first provides the most cost-savings and scaling benefits at some sacrifice of token autonomy. The second offers more preservation of autonomy with a more narrow scope of cost savings than the first option, but savings even so. The third introduces more complexity than the previous two yet provides the most overall benefits. We consider the third as most viable as it enables Reddit to benefit even while retaining existing smart contract functionality. We will focus on the third option, and include the first two for good measure.
Distribution, burns and user-to-user transfers of Reddit Points are entirely carried out on the Syscoin network. This full-on approach to utilizing the Syscoin network provides the most scalability and transaction cost benefits of these scenarios. The tradeoff here is distribution and subscription handling likely migrating away from smart contracts into the application layer.
The Reddit Community Points ecosystem can continue to use existing smart contracts as they are used today on the Ethereum mainchain. Users migrate a portion of their tokens to Syscoin, the scaling network, to gain much lower fees, scalability, and a proven base layer, without sacrificing sovereign ownership. They would use Syscoin for user-to-user transfers. Tips redeemable in ten seconds or less, a high-throughput relay network, and onchain settlement at a block target of 60 seconds.
Integration between Matic Network and Syscoin Platform - similar to Syscoin’s current integration with Ethereum - will provide Reddit Community Points with EVM scalability (including the Memberships ERC777 operator) on the Matic side, and performant simple value transfers, robust decentralized security, and sovereign store-of-value on the Syscoin side. It’s “the best of both worlds”. The trade-off is more complex interoperability.
Syscoin + Matic Integration
Matic and Blockchain Foundry Inc, the public company formed by the founders of Syscoin, recently entered a partnership for joint research and business development initiatives. This is ideal for all parties as Matic Network and Syscoin Platform provide complementary utility. Syscoin offers characteristics for sovereign ownership and security based on Bitcoin’s time-tested model, and shares a significant portion of Bitcoin’s own hashpower. Syscoin’s focus is on secure and scalable simple value transfers, trust-minimized interoperability, and opt-in regulatory compliance for tokenized assets rather than scalability for smart contract execution. On the other hand, Matic Network can provide scalable EVM for smart contract execution. Reddit Community Points can benefit from both. Syscoin + Matic integration is actively being explored by both teams, as it is helpful to Reddit, Ethereum, and the industry as a whole.
Total cost for these 100k transactions: $0.63 USD See the live fee comparison for savings estimation between transactions on Ethereum and Syscoin. Below is a snapshot at time of writing: ETH price: $318.55 ETH gas price: 55.00 Gwei ($0.37) Syscoin price: $0.11 Snapshot of live fee comparison chart Z-DAG provides a more efficient fee-market. A typical Z-DAG transaction costs 0.0000582 SYS. Tokens can be safely redeemed/re-spent within seconds or allowed to settle on-chain beforehand. The costs should remain about this low for microtransactions. Syscoin will achieve further reduction of fees and even greater scalability with offchain payment channels for assets, with Z-DAG as a resilience fallback. New payment channel technology is one of the topics under research by the Syscoin development team with our academic partners at TU Delft. In line with the calculation in the Lightning Networks white paper, payment channels using assets with Syscoin Core will bring theoretical capacity for each person on Earth (7.8 billion) to have five on-chain transactions per year, per person, without requiring anyone to enter a fee market (aka “wait for a block”). This exceeds the minimum LN expectation of two transactions per person, per year; one to exist on-chain and one to settle aggregated value.
Sysethereum Dapp: UI Dapp for reference implementation. The Sysethereum-Dapp automates the process flows depicted in “Syscoin Bridge & How it Works” within a native ReactJS application for convenience. An active implementation using the Syscoin Platform Mainnet can be used atbridge.syscoin.org.
API
Tools to simplify using Syscoin Bridge as a service with dapps and wallets will be released some time after implementation of Syscoin Core 4.2. These will be based upon the same processes which are automated in the current live Sysethereum Dapp that is functioning with the Syscoin mainnet.
The Syscoin Ethereum Bridge is secured by Agent nodes participating in a decentralized and incentivized model that involves roles of Superblock challengers and submitters. This model is open to participation. The benefits here are trust-minimization, permissionless-ness, and potentially less legal/regulatory red-tape than interop mechanisms that involve liquidity providers and/or trading mechanisms. The trade-off is that due to the decentralized nature there are cross-chain settlement times of one hour to cross from Ethereum to Syscoin, and three hours to cross from Syscoin to Ethereum. We are exploring ways to reduce this time while maintaining decentralization via zkp. Even so, an “instant bridge” experience could be provided by means of a third-party liquidity mechanism. That option exists but is not required for bridge functionality today. Typically bridges are used with batch value, not with high frequencies of smaller values, and generally it is advantageous to keep some value on both chains for maximum availability of utility. Even so, the cross-chain settlement time is good to mention here.
Cost
Ethereum -> Syscoin: Matic or Ethereum transaction fee for bridge contract interaction, negligible Syscoin transaction fee for minting tokens Syscoin -> Ethereum: Negligible Syscoin transaction fee for burning tokens, 0.01% transaction fee paid to Bridge Agent in the form of the ERC-20, Matic or Ethereum transaction fee for contract interaction.
Z-DAG
Zero-Confirmation Directed Acyclic Graph is an instant settlement protocol that is used as a complementary system to proof-of-work (PoW) in the confirmation of Syscoin service transactions. In essence, a Z-DAG is simply a directed acyclic graph (DAG) where validating nodes verify the sequential ordering of transactions that are received in their memory pools. Z-DAG is used by the validating nodes across the network to ensure that there is absolute consensus on the ordering of transactions and no balances are overflowed (no double-spends).
Benefits
Unique fee-market that is more efficient for microtransaction redemption and settlement
Uses decentralized means to enable tokens with value transfer scalability that is comparable or exceeds that of credit card networks
Provides high throughput and secure fulfillment even if blocks are full
Probabilistic and interactive
99.9999% security assurance within 10 seconds
Can serve payment channels as a resilience fallback that is faster and lower-cost than falling-back directly to a blockchain
Each Z-DAG transaction also settles onchain through Syscoin Core at 60-second block target using SHA-256 Proof of Work consensus
Z-DAG enables the ideal speed/security tradeoff to be determined per use-case in the application layer. It minimizes the sacrifice required to accept and redeem fast transfers/payments while providing more-than-ample security for microtransactions. This is supported on the premise that a Reddit user receiving points does need security yet generally doesn’t want nor need to wait for the same level of security as a nation-state settling an international trade debt. In any case, each Z-DAG transaction settles onchain at a block target of 60 seconds.
Syscoin Specs
Syscoin 3.0 White Paper (4.0 white paper is pending. For improved scalability and less blockchain bloat, some features of v3 no longer exist in current v4: Specifically Marketplace Offers, Aliases, Escrow, Certificates, Pruning, Encrypted Messaging)
16MB block bandwidth per minute assuming segwit witness carrying transactions, and transactions ~200 bytes on average
SHA256 merge mined with Bitcoin
UTXO asset layer, with base Syscoin layer sharing identical security policies as Bitcoin Core
Z-DAG on asset layer, bridge to Ethereum on asset layer
On-chain scaling with prospect of enabling enterprise grade reliable trustless payment processing with on/offchain hybrid solution
Focus only on Simple Value Transfers. MVP of blockchain consensus footprint is balances and ownership of them. Everything else can reduce data availability in exchange for scale (Ethereum 2.0 model). We leave that to other designs, we focus on transfers.
Future integrations of MAST/Taproot to get more complex value transfers without trading off trustlessness or decentralization.
Zero-knowledge Proofs are a cryptographic new frontier. We are dabbling here to generalize the concept of bridging and also verify the state of a chain efficiently. We also apply it in our Digital Identity projects at Blockchain Foundry (a publicly traded company which develops Syscoin softwares for clients). We are also looking to integrate privacy preserving payment channels for off-chain payments through zkSNARK hub & spoke design which does not suffer from the HTLC attack vectors evident on LN. Much of the issues plaguing Lightning Network can be resolved using a zkSNARK design whilst also providing the ability to do a multi-asset payment channel system. Currently we found a showstopper attack (American Call Option) on LN if we were to use multiple-assets. This would not exist in a system such as this.
Wallets
Web3 and mobile wallets are under active development by Blockchain Foundry Inc as WebAssembly applications and expected for release not long after mainnet deployment of Syscoin Core 4.2. Both of these will be multi-coin wallets that support Syscoin, SPTs, Ethereum, and ERC-20 tokens. The Web3 wallet will provide functionality similar to Metamask. Syscoin Platform and tokens are already integrated with Blockbook. Custom hardware wallet support currently exists via ElectrumSys. First-class HW wallet integration through apps such as Ledger Live will exist after 4.2. Current supported wallets Syscoin Spark Desktop Syscoin-Qt
Thank you for close consideration of our proposal. We look forward to feedback, and to working with the Reddit community to implement an ideal solution using Syscoin Platform!
Thank you for being a part of the ColossusXT Q2 2020 AMA! Below we will summarize the questions and answers. The team responded to 46 questions! If your question was not included, it may have been answered in a previous question or AMA. The ColossusXT team will do a Reddit AMA at the end of every quarter. The winner of the AMA contest is: ookhimself Congratulations. I will send you a DM on Reddit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Why does your blockchain exist and what makes it unique? A: ColossusXT exists to provide an energy-efficient method of supercomputing. ColossusXT is unique in many ways. Some coins have 1 layer of privacy. ColossusXT and the Colossus Grid will utilize 2 layers of privacy through Obfuscation Zerocoin Protocol, and I2P and these will protect users of the Colossus Grid as they utilize the grid resources. There are also Masternodes and Proof of Stake which both can contribute to reducing 51% attacks, along with instant transactions and zero-fee transactions. This protection is paramount as ColossusXT evolves into the Colossus Grid. Grid Computing will have a pivotal role throughout the world, and what this means is that users will begin to experience the Internet as a seamless computational universe. Software applications, databases, sensors, video, and audio streams-all will be reborn as services that live in cyberspace, assembling, and reassembling themselves on the fly to meet the tasks at hand. Once plugged into the grid, a desktop machine will draw computational horsepower from all the other computers on the grid. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What is the Colossus Grid? A: ColossusXT is an anonymous blockchain through obfuscation, along with utilization of I2P (Armis). These features will protect end-user privacy as ColossusXT evolves into the Colossus Grid. The Colossus Grid will connect devices in a peer-to-peer network enabling users and applications to rent the cycles and storage of other users’ machines. This marketplace of computing power and storage will exclusively run on COLX currency. These resources will be used to complete tasks requiring any amount of computation time and capacity, or allow end-users to store data anonymously across the COLX decentralized network. Today, such resources are supplied by entities such as centralized cloud providers which are constrained by closed networks, proprietary payment systems, and hard-coded provisioning operations. Any user ranging from a single PC owner to a large data center can share resources through Colossus Grid and get paid in COLX for their contributions. Renters of computing power or storage space, on the other hand, may do so at low prices compared to the usual market prices because they are only using resources that already exist. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:Is there any estimated date for the grid? What will set you apart from the opposition? A: We are hoping to have something released for the community in Q4 this year. The difference between other competitors is that ColossusXT is putting consumer privacy first and we’re actively in the process of working with federal and state agencies in the United States. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How do you plan to get people to implement the technology? At your current rate of development, when do you foresee a minimum viable product being available? A: We have been strategically networking with businesses, and we are currently undergoing the verification process in the United States to make bids on federal and state projects. We are working on an MVP and our goal is to have at least a portion of the Colossus Grid ready by Q4 2020. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: When we can expect any use-case for COLX? A company or service that uses COLX for its activities/tasks. A: We’re aiming for Q4 of this year to have an MVP, throughout 2021 we will be strategically making bids on federal and state contracts in the United States with a goal to expand operations exponentially. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Are there any plans to be listed on the more prominent exchanges e.g binance, kraken? A: Yes, we have applied to some of these exchanges that are considered Tier 1 or Tier 2 exchanges. Many of them upfront will tell you there are no fees associated with the listing, that is not entirely true most of the time. Regardless, have applied and are awaiting more responses as we move forward. Listing on these exchanges often requires that we cannot announce this information until ColossusXT is live on its platform. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Partnerships are the norm these days in crypto world. Which partnership would you consider feasible, if any, in order to grow the Colossus Grid project? A: The Colossus Grid is a huge undertaking both in development and business partnerships. We are moving in both these directions strategically. One of the most important partnerships is not really a partnership but approval to bid on state and federal contracts. Working with the governments around the world will be a big part of the Colossus Grid use-case. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: If the ability to annonymise coins is turned off, can CLX still be marketed as a privacy coin? Do we have a date we can start using this feature again? A: Yes and No. It’s frustrating right now having a lack of privacy for consumers as we don’t see privacy as a feature but a right. EVERY platform online should have some levels of privacy for their consumers, especially as technology continues to evolve and bad actors continue to use your personal information for their own nefarious purposes. Obfuscation will be implemented in the coming weeks, and Armis will follow suit shortly thereafter. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: When can we expect the grid to come out? A: We are looking at releasing an MVP towards the end of the year. Stay tuned during Q3 and Q4 as we ramp on technical and business developments. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Can you tell the current budget for development work? A: Much of the development work budget comes from Core team member's disposable income, we also use the self-funding treasury that Masternode owners vote on each month. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Will cold staking be implemented somedays? I like the model of Cardano. Hope you will implement kind of Cardano staking in our wallet. I would love the easiness. A: ColossusXT staking has been enabled since 2017. We have calculators on the website that will estimate your average staking returns and you can join numerous pools to increase your staking power within the pools. Cold staking is on our radar and will make it into the roadmap when our budget allows us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Which part of grid technology are you planning first to go live? Storage/RAM/CPU/GPU/all at once? Separately? A: We will be rolling the Colossus Grid out in two phases. The first phase will be storage, and then we will roll out computing power (RAM/CPU/GPU). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Is Armis I2P technology in development testphase I mean, I have read something like that… If Armis goes live, will there be some kind of option in deskopt wallet to transfer anonymous or will every transaction be fully anonymous like e.g. monero? A: We recently had a testing phase with the community earlier this year, there will be another test phase with community participants who sign up. If you’re interested in this stay tuned on our socials and apply when the next testing phase happens All transactions will be fully anonymous behind Armis. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What programming languate is being used for developing COLX? How well this programming language do you think is more suitable for developing crypto, in comparison with other programing languages? A: C++ is what we’re using at ColossusXT. Each crypto project is different but with what we're developing at ColossusXT. We are best suited to utilize C++. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What is the second biggest milestone other than launching the grid network for the team. What do you think of your competition like Golem network? A: Armis will be a big milestone, and I don’t think we go back to our Polis partnership which allows users in Europe and Mexico (they do plan to expand to the US and other countries) the ability to spend their ColossusXT (COLX) wherever Mastercard is accepted. I don’t think the Golem network is taking consumer privacy far enough, in the blockchain industry I also see a lack of drive to push adoption within the United States. This is likely due to unclear regulations right now. ColossusXT is at the forefront of these issues and we intend to lead blockchain through these somewhat murky waters. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I don’t have a lot of knowledge about crypto-technology… but are there any risks of sensitive data-hijacks through Colx infrastructure? Will the Colx-grid be available for individuals or only larger corporations, and how would one get access to the computing power? A: There are always risks with technology. We are doing extensive testing and more testing prior to releasing anything. Consumer privacy is apart of the foundation of what we’re building at ColossusXT and we want to ensure any and all of your personal information is secure and private. As technology evolves, we will be right here evolving with it to ensure that consumer privacy protections are always in place. The Colossus Grid will be available to anyone with a computer. You will access it through the desktop wallet. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Do you have any new exchange listings planned in the near future? A: Yes, but unfortunately with these things, every day it’s not something we can often say before the exchange makes their own announcements. If you have certain exchanges that you prefer, do not be shy and tag us on Twitter letting us and the exchange know. You can also reach us everyday at all hours of the day and night on Discord and Telegram. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Given that Colx had no ICO, are we able to ramp development efforts in case we have potential partnership deal on the table? A: It really depends. We strategically spend every dime we spend on development. We do not like even a single penny to be waisted, so we don’t move as fast as the projects that raised millions of dollars, but we continue moving none the less. Ramping up our development is something we are working on by securing additional funding and we’re currently working on securing funding. 😊 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How is the project development advancing? What are your plans for the next 5 years and what more can we expect from ColossusXT? A: Our development is continuing on at a steady pace, we’re looking to ramp this up over the next year as the Colossus Grid will take much of our time but we’re excited. Over the next 5 years, you can expect the Colossus Grid to be live in all forms (storage and computing power), Armis will be released and we will share many technical details on how this consumer privacy protection rivals some of the other privacy protections in the blockchain industry. We expect to be verified and approved to work with the agencies in the United States long before then as well and will be aggressively pursuing federal contracts to utilize the computing power of the Colossus Grid. In 5 years, we plan to be a key player not just in the blockchain industry, but throughout the world. If you do not know ColossusXT now, expect to in 5 years or less. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Users often care less about technology, but rather the value of the token. How do you manage to strike a balance between developing the technology and also improving the value of COLX?There are so many privacy coins now, all of them claiming to have better features that ColossusXT. Moving forward, what do the next 10 years look like for ColossusXT in navigating the wave of privacy projects coming. How can ColossusXT continue to shine in the midst of seemingly legit projects that have come to challenge ColossusXT like mimblewimble projects and Monero, Zcoin, ect.? A: The Colossus Grid and Masternodes will have a strong relationship with each other. When the Colossus Grid goes live we expect the masternode demand to continue to rise. Masternodes are a great incentive mechanism to increase network strength and will play an important role within the Colossus Grid. The more masternodes online, the less available coins in the circulating supply; which we expect will eventually reflect ColossusXT (COLX) coin value. Over the next 10 years, ColossusXT (COLX) will solidify itself as a key player in the blockchain industry, and outside the blockchain industry. Following our strategic business plans, we intend to be one of the first, if not the first to truly bring government and other businesses into the blockchain industry through the Colossus Grid. Armis will be our defining privacy feature, which we expect in time will begin to be adopted by other projects. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How have the number of Masternodes (MNs) increased/decreased over time/in the past few years? What proportion (%) of MNs actively take part in Governance? How do you see the number of MNs increasing/decreasing in the next couple of years? Is there a trend upwards or downwards? Is there a specific number (or range) of MNs the team would like to attain ideally? Is it better to have as many MNs as possible or is there a point at which too many MNs start to have an adverse effect on the performance of the blockchain? Hope this wasn’t too many questions in one :), Ahmed A: The number of masternodes in the active network is more or less the same, fluctuating around 200-220. About 40% - 50% of masternodes participate actively in governance (see https://governance.colossusxt.io). We expect a number of masternodes to grow as they will have additional benefits with Colossus Grid (see business plan: http://bit.ly/COLXBPLive). As the team had no premines, only the dev fund can be used for masternodes which is hard to maintain due to actual budget flow. It’s better to have as many masternodes as possible for the network, there is no adverse effect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Of all the milestones that $COLX has achieved since your humble beginnings, which do you consider to be the best of it all? What achievements do you feel proud most? A: It’s often not mentioned but I’m very proud of our partnership with PolisPay, which allows ColossusXT community members to purchase Amazon, Spotify, and other gift cards with ColossusXT (COLX) through the Polis platform. You are also able to spend your COLX anywhere Mastercard is accepted, the card is available only for EU citizens right now and the Polis team hopes to bring in other countries in the future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:There are problems that can slow down the course of a project such as the emergence of globalization, given the tighter budget, shorter implementation time requirements. My question is, How does $COLX resolve the issue? A: Given the current situations around the world the Colossus Grid has more value than it ever has, and that value will continue to grow once we have released the Colossus Grid for consumers to share and utilize resources. You can already see from the [email protected] initiative that people are eager to share their computing resources to help researchers simulate different COVID19 simulations. We’ve always worked on a very small budget at ColossusXT starting with 0$ in funding and no pre-mine or ICO/IEO. This project was built for the community by the community, and as of lately we’ve actually been ramping up our business strategies and developments. Since we have all already worked remotely before the COVID19 pandemic, it interestingly allowed us more time to focus and achieve these goals as our day jobs allowed us to spend more time on ColossusXT. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:How will you fight with regulators who are trying to stop privacy coins? A: We have an amazing legal team at ColossusXT, and they are on top of any new law or regulation that comes out. We’re not afraid of regulators and our legal team makes sure that everything we do for ColossusXT is law-abiding. It's time the world stops looking at privacy as a feature and as a right, especially when you read about different applications and platforms using your personal DATA for their benefit. ColossusXT will continue to push this, and we're prepared to lobby this to lawmakers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What type of utilities can $COLX give to users over its competitors like GOLM (computation) or STORJ (Data)? A: The Colossus Grid has some major differences between Golem and Storj. One we’re a privacy-focused project. If you take a look at many of these applications and platforms today, in some way or another you’re giving up personal information, and/or geographic information. ColossusXT is focused on protecting consumer information, we do not look at privacy as a feature, we see privacy as a right, especially in the tech world today. The second part of this question is that we’re currently in the verification process of registering with the United States federal and state governments so that we can legally bid on federal and state projects and work with different agencies. This will ensure that as the community members are sharing their idle resources, large corporations and businesses are using it. I’m not aware of the mentioned projects being registered in the United States or taking steps to work with the United States government. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How will computing power and storage sharing look like, for an average user (marketplace, program download)? What are you currently working on, when can we expect MVP? TY A: The marketplace and Colossus Grid will be inside the ColossusXT desktop wallet that you currently have now. The UI/UX will change some to allow the additional settings and tabs that will become available and we’re preparing an MVP right now and we hope to share those details with you over the next few months, ask us again in the Q3 AMA if you haven’t seen anything yet :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What would you say is the $COLX killer feature that sets it apart from the rest of the competition. A: We believe that Armis is our killer feature. We recently had a beta this year with the community and will be moving forward later this year with Armis. ColossusXT consumers will have their geographic location and IP fully hidden behind the Armis layer for further security and anonymity for the transactions which will also take place in the Colossus Grid resource marketplace in the future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:I have been a silent follower of $COLX and I must say that I'm truly impressed with how the team has been diligently working on the project. It'd be nice to have the community be part of something like a bounty or a social awareness contest. As this will not only attract more users to the platform but would also strengthen the bond within the community. When can we possibly expect a community project of this level? #spreadthegrid A: We currently have a Gleam competition ongoing for social awareness, and we just hired a community manager to spread more community awareness and will be rolling on competitions more regularly. Every quarter we have an AMA on Reddit for the community to ask questions, or just gripe at us, and one person each quarter is awarded 100,000 COLX for participating in the AMA. As we deliver our targets and grow, we will shift more funds from development funds to marketing funds to raise further awareness. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: "Our main competitor is crypto adoption. We are all here to make it happen together.", this is quoted from a founder of a known crypto wallet. Do you see competition as something that strengthens the project as a whole or as a possible distraction due to pressure to be at the top of the crypto ecosystem? A: This is a two scenario situation. Competition is good for ColossusXT, and we look at our main competitor in blockchain as Golem (GNT), having said that though too much competition or sometimes maximalist behavior isn’t good for crypto, many of these projects should be coming together to lobby lawmakers for laws and regulations that are good for the blockchain industry, as this is still an emerging market and the laws and regulations aren’t exactly in place at this time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: "For people to believe in crypto, they need to understand the tangible benefits it offers to our society.", a remark made by a crypto project in the past. What exactly would be $COLX real life global benefits? And how do you plan on achieving this? A: ColossusXT vision will be achievable when the Colossus Grid is released. We are currently in the process of registering with state and federal agencies in the United States, once we are registered to work with these agencies we will pursue contracts with the government, cybersecurity firms and colleges all around the United States, and the world to utilize the resources on the Colossus Grid. We’ve already started building business relationships for this very purpose. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: According to you how much time will it take for $COLX to get into mainstream adoption and execute all the plans set for this project? A: It’s almost impossible to set a timeline on when the world/people will begin to adopt ColossusXT (COLX) and the Colossus Grid. We don’t believe that adoption for ColossusXT will happen before the Colossus Grid is live, and if I gave you an exact timeline for when or how long it will take you for the Colossus Grid to be adopted I would be lying to you, but we are already forming business relationships and making strategic moves to be able to bid, and work with state and federal agencies in the United States. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Does Tokens.net plan any kind of staking ($COLX or other coins)? A: We will reach out to the tokens.net team and see if they have any plans to allow staking. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:How will you try to boost adoption of #COLX, how do you think you will motivate programmers to join opensource project? A: The Colossus Grid will be available for anyone to use, or share their idle resources for other consumers to use. We will be focusing on providing these resources to state and federal governments, cybersecurity firms, and researchers all across the world. Certainly, we expect some community members to use these resources to mine different PoW cryptocurrencies, but the team at ColossusXT will be focused on bringing in large colleges and universities as well as big cybersecurity businesses that may need supercomputing power at 1/10th of the current prices. Our programmers are our only paid team members, and we pay them at a competitive rate. We’re looking to bring in some more programmers later this year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:Do you have any special development funds for programmers? A: Sometimes we pay our programmers out of our own pocket, sometimes we pay them in ColossusXT. It really depends on what kind of agreements have been made. We have been aggressively pursuing different funding opportunities throughout 2020 so that we can expand our development team and in the future, we may have incentives to drive programmers into joining our team. Right now we just stick to a competitive pay scale within the industry. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Why Android Wallet Revision hasn't been done? Any problems? A: The Android wallet revision took some time to be approved in the Google Playstore, but it has been released and live since June 15, 2020. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:Whats the second biggest milestone other than the grid network for COLX team? A: Armis is likely to be considered our second biggest milestone this year, although as I mentioned above this can easily be overshadowed by our Polis partnership which allows you to spend ColossusXT (COLX) anywhere Mastercard is accepted. Although the epay debit card ownership is currently restricted to certain countries (EU zone only), these restrictions will lift in time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: How is COLX team going to contribute to crypto adoption, other than building a robust network? A: We’re already in the process of verification to work with state and federal agencies. Adoption for blockchain projects isn’t going to move fast. I read a report just a few days ago about how scammers in the crypto industry stole over 2 million dollars worth of crypto just from the “Elon Musk” impersonations on Twitter. We will continue to build our network, and seek out state and federal agencies as well as private cybersecurity firms that can utilize the Colossus Grid, we’re not just focused on making noise on social media, we intend to make noise throughout the entire world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:Are their industry partners to COLX that are awaiting your network to go live? A: Yes, although I hesitate to go into too much detail here. We are talking with business leaders. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:The ongoing crisis affected the market badly, making many projects far from their targets. What is $COLX strategy in order to survive and pass through this crisis? A: I agree it affected the market badly, especially the projects that raised hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto and held it through the entire market correction. ColossusXT strategy is different from those affected, we’ve always had a smaller budget than these large projects. We spend the money we have available very wisely, and we’re not in a hurry to grab something that sounds good without doing our due diligence. We make our moves very strategically. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: I gotta ask, what made $COLX decide to get listed on Tokens.net? What beneficial advantage does $COLX get in doing so? How about Tokens.net? A: Tokens.Net is one of the best exchanges ColossusXT is listed at the moment in comparison to others in terms of volume.
Tokens.net is one of the most secure and transparent exchanges out there, registered in the UK.
The team behind the exchange has deep roots in the crypto/blockchain space, it was co-founded by Damian Merlak, a crypto-pioneer and co-founder of Bitstamp.
Tokens.net provides free auto-trading tool / Market Making Bot. Their Dynamic Trading Rights concept adds transparency to trading volumes.
They allow the community voting option of only truly decentralized projects after a thorough screening.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:Hey everyone! What is the main purpose of the coin $COLX, does it have its own chain or is it some sort of an ERC-20 token? Thank you for the answers. A: ColossusXT has never been an ERC-20 coin. We have been operating on our own mainnet since 2017. The purpose of ColossusXT (COLX) is to be the native currency of the Colossus Grid. This will allow users to share their idle resources on their computers, and consumers will rent/buy those resources to complete whatever they intend to use them for, from processing large DATA to running scientific simulations, to even mining PoW cryptocurrencies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: When we can expect any usecase for COLX? A company or service that uses colx for its activities / tasks. A: There are currently use cases now if your location allows you to utilize the Polis Pay app, or if you have a Polis Pay card you can buy things with ColossusXT (COLX). I myself have tested the card buying gas at a gas station. These are not ColossusXT’s primary focus though and much of our use case will not start until the Colossus Grid is live. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What pairs will colx have to trade with on tokens.net // Will you connect #COLX with USDT EURS or BTC? A: ColossusXT will be initially paired with Bitcoin (BTC). If the community would like different pairs, they can certainly request them and we will reach out to tokens.net and work to facilitate requests. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Will you try to convince users to trade on tokens.net if so how will you do it? A: There is currently a gleam competition for users to sign up and trade on tokens.net. We “shill” tokens.net accordingly through social media to the ColossusXT community, but can’t really convince anyone to use a certain exchange, although we will try to push as many members to tokens.net as we can. We have many masternode holders who reside in the United States and they are not yet allowed to trade on tokens.net. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:How will you try to create liquidity for your pairs? A: We would like to increase the adoption rate with real-world partnerships such as our partnership with PolisPay for the use of gift/debit cards. As the liquidity is linked with the use cases, supply/demand mechanics, we are also preparing to provide additional use cases of COLX for the crypto world in an innovative & pioneering way; for the time being, we can hint this as a side business till we deliver fully operational Colossus Grid. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:How big is a development team of #COLX? A: The ColossusXT team is probably bigger than some people realize, partly because many of the team members are very private. We have 9 core members, 2 in-house developers, 3 Colossus Grid architects, and 2 Colossus Grid developers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q:Do you have some security guys in the team? A: Yes, although I’m hesitant to share too many personal details about team members. We have core team members who have been working in different fields of IT security for several years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Since #COLX is planning on having some sort of a marketplace where you can take advantage of computing resources and the blockchain as well, are there any plans on introducing smart contracts? Will it help the grid? Is there a place for it? A: This has been mentioned a few times in the past so it’s something on our radar, it’s currently not in the development timeline as the Colossus Grid is a massive amount of work. There may be a place for it as the blockchain industry evolves, and I can certainly see some cases where a smart contract can add some value to the Colossus Grid. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Information: Website Whitepaper Roadmap Business Plan Wiki Governance Partners GitHub What is ColossusXT? (YouTube) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow ColossusXT on: Twitter Facebook Telegram Discord Forums --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AMA History: 2018 Q12018 Q22018 Q32018 Q4 2019 Q12019 Q22019 Q32019 Q4 2020 Q1
We've already received over 300 developer signups from over 40 countries for the Chainlink Hackathon. Get ready to join one of the biggest blockchain developer events of the year and build the next top DeFi dApp with support from our world-class mentors and a chance to win over $40K prizes.
@synthetix_io is now fully #PoweredByChainlink, switching all its cryptocurrency and index synths to Chainlink's Price Reference Data due to its high-quality data, decentralization, & ability to scale the platform to secure more value.
Bitcoin smart contract platform @RSKsmart has successfully integrated Chainlink oracles via its @rif_os technology. This allows RSK developers to build smart contract applications connected to real-world data that are secured by the Bitcoin blockchain.
@01node is a new node operator supporting Chainlink's live Price Reference Contracts. As operators experienced in securing millions of USD for PoS chains, they bring added decentralization by running their own physical servers that further minimize cloud dependencies.
Decentralized lending protocol @useteller is live on testnet consuming Chainlink's Price Reference Data for ETH/USD, BTC/USD & LINK/USD. These price feeds help Teller ensure that all APR calculations for unsecured loans reflect real market conditions.
Telecommunications blockchain @QLCchain is integrating Chainlink to make its aggregated data available to smart contracts. This data can power new DeFi applications like automating payments between telco providers, tokenizing telco infrastructure & more.
Social reputation score provider @DecentrNet is integrating Chainlink to allow users to share their data in #DeFi dApps to obtain better interest & collateralization rates. Chainlink also helps Decentr make this key data available across any blockchain.
@opium_network is using Chainlink's USDT/USD Price Reference Data live on mainnet to launch the first credit default swap on a centralized stablecoin—USDT. This is another example of how Chainlink oracles are powering innovative DeFi products.
Blockchain card game @EtherLegends will use Chainlink VRF to power their random distribution of NFT-backed end-of-season rewards. These rare items will be awarded to top players at the end of the ongoing season with verifiable proof of fair distribution.
DeFi is disrupting finance and crypto by moving beyond tokens and wallets into sophisticated smart contract applications that allow p2p lending, liquidity mining, synthetic assets, derivatives, and more. DeFi pioneers Sergey Nazarov (Chainlink), Andre Cronje (yEarn), Stani Kulechoiv (Aave), and Kain Warwick (Synthetix) come together to explain DeFi’s remarkable growth on Ethereum, expansion into new markets, and the impact of live infrastructure, especially decentralized oracles, on DeFi protocols.
Chainlink Labs Chief Scientist Dr. Ari Jules gives a #SmartCon Keynote explaining how DECO helps Chainlink oracles liberate more web data for smart contracts, including identity records, financial data, accredited investor confirmation, supply chain logistics, and more. Using DECO to make this data available on-chain allows blockchains to enhance many enterprise use cases today while still retaining the key property of data confidentiality.
Chainlink-powered decentralized oracles provide smart contracts with definitive truth about the validity of real-world data. In this Keynote, Sergey Nazarov explains how Chainlink is using its secure and reliable oracles to expand the addressable market of smart contract applications into the trillions, thanks to opening up blockchain applications in DeFi, CeFi, Fintech, Web 2.0, and enterprise systems. He also discusses Chainlink’s new DECO acquisition and how it opens up access to web data for smart contracts while preserving data security and confidentiality. Other SmartCon talks now posted include:
Are you interested in hosting your own meetup? Apply to become a Chainlink Community Advocate today: https://events.chain.link/advocate
Chainlink Labs is hiring to build Chainlink’s network: Check out these open roles 👩💼
View all open roles at https://careers.smartcontract.com Are there other community content and celebrations that we missed? Post them in the comments below! ⤵️
First update to the guide "Building a 6Gpu Mining Rig for Ethereum" - Let's talk about Claymore. This update supplements and does not replace the Guide to Build a 6GPU Mining Rig for Ethereum published on our site. The substantial differences are due to the installation of the latest version of the Windows 10 Operating System, the mining on the Ethermine pool (in our opinion simpler than Dwarfpool) and the use of the XFX RX 580 8gb GPUs. The first variant is found in Part 4 of the guide: the environment variables are not to be entered as they will be integrated directly into the bat file to start mining. The second variant is found in Part 7 of the guide and leads us to "mine" on a different pool using the Claymore software. Download the latest version at the following link: https://github.com/Claymore-Dual/Claymore-Dual-Miner Once downloaded, unzip everything on a folder on your desktop and open the start.bat file with notepad. Clear the contents and copy the following command: start config.dll -epool eu1.ethermine.org:14444 -ewal "your ETH wallet address" -epsw x -worker "worker" EthDcrMiner64.exe Where instead of "your wallet address" you will have to put your Ethererum wallet - obviously without the quotes - and instead of worker you will put an identification number in case you build more RIGs (such as RIG1, RIG2, etc ...). We opted for the eu1 pool even if some on the discussion forums believe that the us1 is more profitable. At the following link, many other useful commands for your Rig: https://github.com/Claymore-Dual/Claymore-Dual-Miner The Ethermine pool offers a very well crafted and descriptive interface. In the Payouts section, after only 5 minutes of mining, you can decide the minimum amount of Ether to be transferred to your wallet by simply entering the IP address of the RIG. We have decided to mine directly on the Ethereum address of our Exodus wallet. It is not recommended to mine directly on Coinbase, as reported on the site itself. Sin. Nothing should be left to chance when you decide to build a mining rig for Ethereum. The third variant is the most difficult of all. Once you have reached Part 5 of the guide, you can decide whether to continue or follow this update / variant. If you are here it is probably because you have run into some problem that the guide does not allow you to solve. With the latest version of Windows 10, you may run into a kernel conflict between the operating system and AMD's Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute drivers. This conflict will prevent you from using Atiflash after installing the drivers. Important: Before making any changes to the BIOS, please backup each GPU. Important: first of all flash the GPUs with the original bios if for any reason you are forced to reinstall the operating system. Still on Atiflash. The advice would therefore be to flash the GPUs and then install the AMD drivers. Let's say it would be because you may run into another problem this time related to the GPUs themselves. Since each video card is different from any other, the bios mod of the GPU could crash the operating system showing the classic blue screen and displaying an error related to the Atimkdag.sys file. This could be due to the fact that some GPUs have significantly higher performance in the calculation phase than others. We could call it a factory overclock but not using them for gaming we cannot say it with absolute certainty. Having assessed these two drawbacks, the only safe solution is to flash all the GPUs, disconnect them except for the first one, install the Blockchain drivers (plus Atimkdag patch) and launch the mining command verifying that the operating system does not go into crash in the next 5 minutes. Turn off the rig again and connect the second GPU so on up to the sixth. In the event that one or more video cards should crash the system, disconnect them. After that, it uses DDU from the provisional mode and flashes these GPUs with their original bios. At this point, connect them again, reinstall the Blockcain drivers (plus Atimkdag patch) and start mining definitively. All the operations related to the use of Atiflash, DDU and driver installation are reported in Part 5 and Part 6 of our guide. A little bit of Overclocking. You will certainly find significant differences in performance between the GPUs. At this point all that remains is to "operate" with an overclocking software. We opt for OverdriveNtool. Our constantly updated guide is available at the following link: https://www.cryptoall.it/2019/10/12/complete-guide-to-overdriventool/ Link to the official YouTube channel for verification: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdE9TTHAOtyKxy59rALSprA GPUs with modified bios will not leave much room for modification. You will have to proceed with the most extreme overclocking on those that mount the original bios; obviously always in small steps by saving the profile for each GPU. Our guide explains in detail how to do it. Hoping to have been of help, we give everyone an appointment for the second part of the update on how to build an Ethereum mining rig in which we will explain in detail the dual mining on the Ethermine pool. See you soon. If you liked this article and would like to contribute with a donation: Bitcoin: 1Ld9b165ZYHZcY9eUQmL9UjwzcphRE5S8Z Ethereum: 0x8D7E456A11f4D9bB9e6683A5ac52e7DB79DBbEE7 Litecoin: LamSRc1jmwgx5xwDgzZNoXYd6ENczUZViK Stellar: GBLDIRIQWRZCN5IXPIKYFQOE46OG2SI7AFVWFSLAHK52MVYDGVJ6IXGI Ripple: rUb8v4wbGWYrtXzUpj7TxCFfUWgfvym9xf By: cryptoall.it Telegram Channel: t.me/giulo75 Netbox Browser: https://netbox.global/PZn5A
Hello. 👋🏻 Today we will tell you about ACIS-mining and its 3 best algorithms. 📌 With the advent of ASICs for mining, it became possible to mine Bitcoin in much larger quantities than using video cards. ASIC is an integrated circuit specialized to solve a specific problem, in our case, only for bitcoin mining. These schemes are many times more profitable than video cards, because with more power (hash calculation speed) they consume much less energy. This served as a good reason to create a cryptocurrency mining business. 📌 In bitcoin and other blockchain systems, the complexity of mining depends on how quickly the miners find the block. Compared with the GPU and CPU, specialized #ASIC miners solve #PoW puzzles better and are therefore able to quickly find new blocks. 📌 Since PoW is still the preferred mining consensus mechanism, we propose to take a multiple algorithm approach. Instead of trying to use algorithms which are ASIC resistant, we propose to use algorithms which have had ASIC miners for quite some time. These are: #SHA256, #Scrypt, and #X11. 🔹 The SHA-256 algorithm has a number of advantages over other information protection technologies. Over the years of use in the cryptocurrency industry, he has shown his resistance to various hacking attempts. 🔹 Scrypt is a cryptocurrency mining algorithm that was previously interesting to many single miners in view of its resistance to the so-called “hardware attack”. The speed of creating blocks in a Scrypt-based blockchain is about 30 seconds. The hashrate, like Ethash, is measured in Megahash per second. Scrypt, first of all, became popular due to its use in Litecoin #cryptocurrency. 🔹 X11 is an encryption algorithm in which eleven are used instead of one function. This means that this technology can provide a high degree of security, because in order to harm the system, an attacker will have to crack all 11 functions, which is very unlikely, because the changes made will be visible after breaking the first function, and developers will have a lot of time to protect the system before the hacker reaches the eleventh function. Since these miners are already in wide use, the distribution of mining should be fair and even. Furthermore, the use of three different algorithms results in a far less chance of any single person gaining a majority hash rate share. Lastly, we use the Multishield difficulty adjustment algorithm to prevent difficulty spike issues resulting from burst mining. Read more about PYRK mining solutions here: https://www.pyrk.org Read our Whitepaper to know more about the project: https://www.pyrk.org/Pyrk-Whitepaper.pdf https://preview.redd.it/rxmlr7wt1k251.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=162f9ddaacb3cf3e137638464a208bdf25e50a21
Weekly Update: The Parachute culture, $COTI on Gate.io, Pynk crowdfunding campaign live, Voyager + Sterling Trading Tech…– 22 May - 28 May'20
Heyo! Continuing with our six-part catch up series to get up to date on the May and June news from Parachute and partners, here’s Part II of VI (22 May - 28 May'20): If you're in crypto, there's often the random pump/moon/wenBinance talk that props up from time to time in groups. Especially, when someone new joins a project and is unfamiliar with the community culture. At Parachute, we have always made it a point to have more meaningful discussions than price. Cap shared some of his thoughts on this as well. For the #culturalweekend prompt this week, Jason got Parachuters to share about “something weird your family does that is a tradition for them but not a traditional tradition”. Peace Love’s Big Trivia in TTR was quite fun as always. The beta testing group for ParJar swaps was set up this week. Also, Chris organised something amazing this week which will possibly remain a secret amongst Parachute admins (and Doc Vic 😊 ). But if word of it ever goes out, you’ll realise why Parachute is the most wholesome project in all of crypto. Chris also gave out some cool $PAR to folks in the Parachute channel to talk about "something that you didn't spend much money on that had a big impact on your quality of life". This week's Two-for-Tuesday featured music from "female artists, including bands with at least one female member". Click here for the playlist. Thanks Sebastian! Some good cheer from Alexis all the way from Germany aXpire’s May recap video covers product updates from Bilr, PayBX etc. To track this week’s 20k $AXPR burn, click here. The team also shared success strategies for law firms. 2gether co-founder Salvador Casquero wrote about best security practices in finance. A new update was pushed to Wednesday Coin’s dApp, WednesdayClub. In this week’s XIO discussions, Citizens talked about ideal time allocation strategies for research and execution. Top Citizens on the Leaderboard stand a chance to win some cool merch. Also, watch out for pesky scams. Voyager announced a partnership with Sterling Trading Tech to launch a crypto trading widget. Proactive Investors covered Voyager in its latest piece chronicling their growing user base. As mentioned in a previous update, CEO Stephen Ehrlich’s crypto investment webinar happened this week. Switch crew did a community AMA just before the $GHOST airdrop snapshot. The team expanded with new dev hires. In preparation for the $GHOST airdrop, ProBit completed its $VSF:$ESH swap and Stex announced support for $ESH/$GHOST airdrop. $ESH was listed on HitBTC and Changelly. Folks who guessed these exchanges correctly won some tokens as well. Founder Josh Case sat down with Mr. Backwards for an interview. Among several updates to the Ghost website, a staking calculator was added. Click here to read the latest technical update from Fantom. $FTM was in the running to be added as a collateral for DAI. Congratulations to Uptrennd for becoming the highest ranked blockchain-based social media platform as per Alexa. They started a SmartLink campaign with 2key Network. The first Uptrennd halvening went live this week. The team is reachable on Discord from now as well. District0x’s latest District Weekly and Dev Updates can be read here and here respectively. Hydro team shared their thoughts on how virtual cards for independent contractors (otherwise referred to as 1099 employees) could improve reimbursement practices. Entries for their Decentralization Ambassador program were opened this week. These look great, XIO team This is what is planned for the GHOST ecosystem currently SelfKey compiled a master list of crypto lending platforms. The Loans Marketplace will feature many of these. Full transcript of the May 12th AMA was released. SelfKey advisor Edmund Lowell spoke at the BlockConf DIGITAL conference this week. Mongolian exchange AIS-X joined the Exchange Marketplace. Pynk’s crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs went live this week. Check out their campaign video here. Amazing production! Plus, this cool feature in City A.M. was the perfect way to close off the week. Wibson hosted a meetup (online of course!) for its Spanish speaking community this week. The crew also introduced the app at an Ethereum event in Buenos Aires. Harmony burned all mainnet tokens mined before Open Staking going public. The latest staking stats and validator data can be seen here and here respectively. That’s right, 3B+ $ONE is already staked. Woohoo! With its latest CoinDCX listing, $ONE got its first INR trading pair. Saweet! The major improvement proposals that were discussed with the community this week were making Open Staking more decentralized and creating a more liquid staking market. This led to the first release after Open Staking. The winners of the effective-median-stake contest were announced. Hope you got a chance to take part in the Flash Quiz. Do you know about all the projects that have been built in the Harmony ecosystem? Here’s a rundown. The team hosted an AMA as well. BitMax changed some of its rules for $ONE staking. Check out COTI’s latest network growth stats here. And super congratulations on winning the Gate.io listing vote! $COTI was also added to Binance’s Locked Savings staking program. Broking platform Troy Trade partnered with COTI to improve its scalability. DoYourTip’s $DYT now has 2500+ HODLers. Neat! Mycro was invited to join BitForex’s app platform CAPP Town. GET Protocol’s GUTS Tickets was covered in Cryptogeeks’ latest blogpost on blockchain-based ticketing. And with that, it’s a wrap for this week in Parachute and partners! See you again with another update. Cheerio!
19 GPU Build with ASUS B250 Mining Expert - 470MH/s
Its my dream to achieve and build a mining rig of this extent. Allow me to describe this journey of mine to the GPU mining community. Kudos to all! Feel free to ask me questions and I would love to help you out.
2017 - Bull Market - Dipped my toes into the GPU mining market. Spent nearly 3k USD, 6x GTX 1060 3GB & 2x GTX 1070ti.
I exited this market back at the very end of the bull run and never touched Bitcoin until 2019. I began to plan my future, created an investment portfolio where I finally included Bitcoin back into my high risk asset class. The resurgence of Bitcoin mining begans :)
2019 - Sold my Ryzen 7 1700 & MB for ASUS B250 Mining Expert with 19 GPU build in mind
Mining is one of the key concepts in the crypto world. Everyone who comes into contact with this sphere somehow wonders about the mining of coins. How profitable is mining in 2020, and what are the current trends? by StealthEX Crypto mining is a process during which a computer solves mathematical problems, resulting in the release of new blocks of information. This gives its owners a certain amount of coins, which is deposited in the total pot and registered in the public “ledger”, so-called blockchain. Machines in the network are also checking transactions with existing coins, adding this information to the blockchain as well. As for the issue itself, the most well-known algorithm of mining is Proof-of-Work (PoW), used in the networks of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and many others. During the mining process, the latest transactions are verified and compiled into blocks. It is usually a series of calculations with an iteration of parameters to find a hash with the specified properties. The node which first solves this problem receives a reward. This approach was specifically designed to encourage those who provide the computing power of their mining machines to maintain the network and mine new coins. It is usually no need for a newcomer to know and understand all the complicated details of the mining process, just how much they can earn with certain equipment and electricity costs. Everything is designed in such a way that the complexity of calculations is steadily increasing, which then requires a constant increase in the computing power of the network. In 2009-2010, for mining bitcoin, miners only had to download and run the software on their personal computers, but very soon the network became so complicated that even with best PCs with a powerful processor, mining became unprofitable. That’s why miners started to use more effective video cards (graphics processing units or GPUs) and join them in so-called “farms”. In most systems, the number of coins is determined in advance. Also, many networks are gradually reducing rewards for miners. Such emission restrictions were built into the algorithm to prevent inflation. Thus, the cost of mining for smaller participants no longer pays off, which makes them turn off their hardware or switch to another coin where they can still make their profit. In particular, on the evening of May 11, 2020, a halving took place in the bitcoin network, the reward for mining was halved, from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC. In June, the revenue of bitcoin miners decreased by 23%, to the lowest since March 2019. However, in mid-June, the difficulty of bitcoin mining showed a record growth over the past 2.5 years. Mining the first cryptocurrency has become 15% more difficult. Although, by the beginning of July, the complexity had stabilized. The growing difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency indicates that new miners have joined its network. Previously, some of them turned off the equipment, as it became less profitable to mine the coin due to a decrease in its cost and halving. Now the absolute majority of new coins are generated by industrial mining. This is done by large data centers equipped with specialized computers based on the ASIC architecture. ASICs are integrated circuits that were initially optimized for a specific task, namely the mining of cryptocurrencies. They are much more productive than CPUs and video cards, and at the same time consume much less electricity. ASIC computers are the main type of equipment for the industrial production of crypto. So now, after the halving, BTC coin mining has become even less profitable. For beginners, mining the first cryptocurrency is unlikely to be suitable. It is more often earned by large companies that have all the necessary equipment, access to cheap rental conditions, electricity and maintenance. Hence newbies are better off starting with mining altcoins. It is even more profitable to work in a pool, that is, together with other miners. This can help to place farms in one place and negotiate a favourable price for electricity, so you can get a small but stable income dux to the total capacity of the pool. Therefore, it has become much more difficult for regular users who have only non-specialized equipment at their disposal to generate virtual money. However, GPU developers have significantly increased the performance of their devices in recent years, so mining on a video card is still common. Another important event that changes the situation in the mining sphere will be the hardfork of the Ethereum network with the turn to the Proof-of-Stake algorithm. For now, Ethereum is the most popular altcoin for GPU mining, but Ethereum 2.0 will not require using such powerful equipment, so then it switches to PoS, GPU owners will have to look for alternative coins to mine. At the moment the most popular altcoins for mining on GPUs are Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Grin (GRIN), Zcoin (XZC), Dogecoin and Ravencoin (RVN). There are actually a lot of mining programs that automatically determine which coin is more profitable to mine at the moment. In the coming years, the market is waiting for a race of technologies. Manufacturers are investing in finding ways to increase hashing speed and reduce power consumption. Mining pools will play an increasing role. The market will also be affected by applications for mining cryptocurrencies on smartphones that require low computing power, such as Dash or Litecoin. And remember StealthEX supports more than 250 coins and constantly updating the list, so you can easily swap your crypto haul to more popular altcoins. Our service does not require registration and allows you to remain anonymous. Why don’t you check it out? Just go to StealthEX and follow these easy steps: ✔ Choose the pair and the amount for your exchange. For example ETH to BTC. ✔ Press the “Start exchange” button. ✔ Provide the recipient address to which the coins will be transferred. ✔ Move your cryptocurrency for the exchange. ✔ Receive your coins. Follow us on Medium, Twitter, and Reddit to get StealthEX.io updates and the latest news about the crypto world. For all requests message us via [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. Original article was posted onhttps://stealthex.io/blog/2020/07/28/mining-today/
This sub is a mess and needs to get out of the anger stage: How to move forward from the crash if you're a bagholder
Back in December 2017 I did a valuation attempt of Bitcoin on this sub and got around 5K with some grossly optimistic assumptions. Its taken a long time but finally gone down below that. You've probably heard many people tell you it would eventually happen back in December 2017 and to reduce expose to crypto (including me), but when you're hyped up on 20% gains every week its hard to be cautious or engage in defensive measures. To many the last quarter of 2017 and into early 2018 was like a beach party with coke and Victoria Secret models. Who wants to listen to someone tell you about how you're gonna crash hard with a headache the next morning? With this latest crash, Bitcoin's price is back to roughly mid October 2017, which is roughly when the mainstream mania started. Many on this sub entered after October 2017 and hence are now left holding heavy bags. Many are down 80% or even 90%. Here is the current losses from ATH for the top cryptos:
Asset
Loss from ATH
BTC
-77%
XRP
- 88%
ETH
-90%
BCH
-95%
XLM
-79%
EOS
-83%
LTC
-91%
ADA
-96%
XMR
-85%
TRN
-96%
Who do we blame?
At a time like this its easy to get angry, to look at someone to blame. Whether Roger Ver and the hash wars, whether BAAKT delay, whether whales or SEC or institutions, everyone has their favorite boogeyman. No one thing is the reason why the market is down 80%. The reality is that Bitcoin (and all other crypto by extension) was ovevalued even by grossly overoptimistic measures. Its not BAKKT or the whales trying to get your coins for cheap. The same people who were buying at near peak bubble thinking they were getting into the chance of a lifetime are prone to look for someone to blame for their losses, when it was actually their fault for buying near the end of a mania. Nobody wants to admit that it was their own greed, lack of research and irrational behavior that lead to the gross overvaluation of all cryptocurrency.
Is it over yet?
The $6K consolidation was likely a result of the market coiling tighter and tighter around the mining breakeven point for some of the smaller miners. The big firms in China are profitable mining below 6K, but many smaller ones in the US and Europe aren't. You can actually see the total hash rate going down. Once it broke it was a big fall straight down. Bitcoin is mined at 12.5 BTC. per block at 10 minute blocks, which comes out to around 1800 BTC every day. This 1800 BTC has to be absorbed by every day, which means the following at different price levels:
Price Level
Daily net buying needed to absorb mined coins
6000
$10.8 million/day
4500
$8.1 million/day
3000
$5.4 million/day
At the current price, at least theoretically $8.4 million in demand is needed to cover the mining output. Of course the miners don't immediately dump it all, but it shows why miners have an incentive to keep the price high and try to incite FOMO with a BGD. I can also see that after this latest drop, the "buy the dip" sentiment had substantially gone down, at least compared to the other fast drops in price. This is especially discouraging those who were waiting for the "November bull run", which never came. Its clear to more people now that this probably isn't just downward correction that will reverse, but a multiyear bear market. This is why the bounce has been so weak compared to earlier in the year. Compare that to the last two big 2 day drops:
March 29 - April 1st (drop from 8K to 6K): Within 2 days it bounced back up to 7.5K
June 22-24 (drop from 6.8K to 5.8K): Within 2 days it bounced back to 6.3K
The weakness of this current bounce says it all, people are no longer optimistic that BAKKT or ETF or any other catalyst will lead to a bull run that they can cash out quick. It may be a period of stagnation followed by further drops as big holders take profits. I also think that the FED tightening with rate hikes is leading to a lot more volatility not only in stocks, but crypto as well. Right now asset deflation seems to be a global macro risk as cheap credit dries up, and Bitcoin surely isn't immune from this. My personal view is that at this point we may see further declines, but calling what's going to happen next is always dangerous. A whale (especially a big mining operation) with a series of large orders to clear out the order book on Bitfinex could give us a BGD out of nowhere at any time and take us back to 6K, it would be interesting to see how the market reacts to something like that. But I'm not betting on it leading to any sustained rally past 10K. Quite the opposite. So what's a crypto shrimp to do? I'll split my thoughts into two, for those who are still in the green and those in the loss.
If you're still in the green
If you're still in profit, this is a great time to consider how much more downward selling you can take and also how you can hedge downward risk. If you're someone who purchased when Bitcoin was below $1000, you should calculate your compounded annual ROI and decide if that return is good enough for you. For equities, the long term average is about 10% per year, 20-30% in a good bull market. Its your decision, but taking out profits that exceed principal and reinvesting the principal is not at all a bad idea. For those who invested before Bitcoin reached $1K (April 2017) the current price is still an insane return that no other asset class can match. Another important thing is to think about how you can hedge the risk of downward movement. This is where derivative exchanges are very useful, although you do need to do some research on how derivatives work and how to not get liquidated. If you have substantial holdings, the effort to learn this is worth it. The basic idea is that you can buy short contracts that increase in value as Bitcoin goes down, proportional to the amount of leverage you put to finance the contract. If managed correctly, you can protect your entire stack with a portion as leverage. Its something commonly done by miners, who short Bitcoin with derivatives to hedge their holdings.
If you're in the loss
The untold reality is that HODL is a meme told to newbies to prevent panic selling during a downturn while the smart money cashes out in a more orderly fashion. But does that mean you shouldn't hold if you're already down massively? Well that depends on your own life situation, how much you've invested, and if you don't need the money for the next few years. Mathematically, whether it drops to 4.5K or 3K from the reference of 6K is highly meaningful, its a drop of 25% or 50%. But if your reference starting point is much higher, then it really doesn't matter all that much. A drop from 17K to 4.5K is a 74% loss while down to 3K it would be 82%, massive losses either way. In that sense if this is money you don't need, it makes sense to simply have it stored in a wallet and forget about it for a few years. Who cares if it drops further after a certain point if you don't plan to take it out for a while? Its like in equities markets where people with massive losses don't sell, but instead move the loss position into their retirement fund where they don't plan to take it out for a long time and thus are giving it time to rebound back. But what if its money you need? What if like many out there you took out loans hoping to catch a run to 50K? If you have high interest debt (credit cards...etc), focus on paying that down first. Credit cards generally have high interest and many compound daily, so pay down the debt first rather than trying to pay your debts off with a crypto bull run that may take years to materialize. This is also a good learning opportunity. It is worrying how few people who hold crypto have a clue what any of this even is or how it works. I've always recommended this video to explain how Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) actually work. A good thing to do during catastrophic losses is to honestly access why you got suckered into buying high in the first place. Most people here are young, and this is a valuable lesson in why you shouldn't follow the herd. Everyone is a genius in a bull market, everyone is chasing the next hype. Crypto tends to attract people looking for a get-rich-quick-without-effort crowd, but it takes some mental effort to understand this beyond the buzzwords. Take the time to understand the fundamental reasons why an asset has value and what factors would drive its rise once the hype dies down. What makes Bitcoin valuable, what makes some of the other cryptoassets valuable? If those fundamentals in some way changes, so should your opinion. Its also a great opportunity to help in its adoption by using it. The irony of it all is that people demand that they get rich because of the hard work of buying a bunch of crypto in an exchange and transferring it to their wallet, without any understanding what they're buying into. Also don't be angry. Don't look to blame. Look to learn and improve next time you invest.
Well, it’s supposed to be an optimistic article about most promising mining cryptos, but then something happened. No one was too naive to believe that the events unfolded around the COVID-19 pandemic will not affect global markets, but the turbulence that occurred was very significant and, what is most sad, it is still very difficult to say how soon the situation will stabilize. https://preview.redd.it/9xxheofluzp41.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd8ca033faddf57ea041e82ceadee1037b8587f1 Many people were already bothered that crypto mining is becoming less profitable in 2020 and will be meaningless very soon, but even though big companies having bigger resources took over most of the industry, cryptocurrency mining using video cards remains available to common users and still has potential. Despite, the volatility of the cryptocurrency market hashrate of the Bitcoin blockchain network yet remains almost at the same level and that is a quite positive sign. At the moment, the most reliable option seems to be to leave mining to large ASIC-farms and return when the stock panic subsides and the prospects will be clearer. Although Bitcoin is still the most popular cryptocurrency on the market, every year the complexity of operations necessary for its production increases, and rewards fall (after halving in May 2020, we will talk about 6.25 BTC per block). For mining many altcoins, the threshold for entry is much lower, therefore it makes sense to look for a more profitable option among them. But first, let’s try to understand a little what conditions we need for profitable mining. There are several crucial aspects that determine how profitable mining will be. These are such obvious things as the price of the currency or the amount of reward for the generated block. And this is the reason it is now very difficult to calculate the possible income. One way or another, the market price of altcoins depends on the position of bitcoin, which is experiencing bad times. For several months, the world of crypto mining has been preparing for the May halving, because the reduced supply led to a significant increase in prices. This time should not have been an exception, but now when bitcoin does not rise above $5500 and risks falling below $3500, we can only make vague guesses about its potential price in May. Many analysts tend to believe that closer to the middle of April, the negative effect of the crisis should be reduced, and positive expectations from halving and a large amount of cash from investors should have a positive impact on the price of bitcoin. Altcoins, as a rule, repeat the dynamics of the first cryptocurrency and will also continue their growth to historical highs in the year’s future. Next, you should also pay attention to the complexity of mining because it affects the time and energy spent on generating the block. Do not forget about the cost of electricity in your region, as one extra-large bill can negate all your efforts to earn money on currency mining. Do not forget about expenses on a mining rig and it’s amortisation. In addition to the above, you should find out how practical the chosen currency is: whether it can be exchanged for fiat or more popular coins, what fees are charged by exchanges that work with it, and what reputation it has in general. In order to avoid unpleasant mistakes, it is easier and more reliable to check the possible profit in one of the many calculators.
Best altcoins to mine in 2020
Monero is the currency with the highest anonymity rates, which stays attractive to many users and remains one of the strongest altcoins. The specific proof-of-work hashing algorithm does not allow ASIC-miners, so it is relatively easy to mine using personal computer’s processors and graphics cards. AMD graphic cards are preferable for this task, but NVidia suits as well. The current block reward is 2.47 XMR. Litecoin is one of the oldest Bitcoin forks, but unlike it uses a different “Script” PoW algorithm which allows less powerful GPUs to mine coins. Litecoin is on the most popular, and successful Bitcoin forks and considered one of the most stable cryptocurrencies. Block mining reward is 12.5 LTC. Ravencoin is another Bitcoin hardfork, and like Monero’s its X16R algorithm is practically unavailable for ASIC machines. Raven keeps gaining popularity for many reasons – it has faster block time, higher mining reward (5,000 RVN at the moment) and secure messaging system. Dogecoin is not a joke anymore. Hard to believe, but this currency once made for fun, became one of the most valuable ones. Like Litecoin it uses Scrypt algorithm and great for mining with GPUs. One more Bitcoin fork Bitcoin Gold was made specifically to kick out ASICs and clear the road for GPUs. It may not be the fastest-growing currency, but it is definitely one of the most stable. That’s all for today. Stay safe, cause health is our most important asset. Follow us onMedium,Twitter,Facebook, andRedditto getStealthEX.ioupdates and the latest news about the crypto world. For all requests message us via [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
Idle-Empire - Earn PayPal, Gift Cards & More | An extensive overview
Introduction
This is a full overview about Idle-Empire, a GPT (Get-Paid-To) site that's been around since 2015. Idle-Empire is primarily targeted towards gamers, but they also have payouts through PayPal, Gift Cards, Cryptocurrencies, and Perfect Money - so I think it's a good fit for beermoney too! Idle-Empire has a lot of different earning and payout methods, some that you won't find on regular GPT sites. I'll go over every earning and payout method in this post.
Links
You get 500 Points ($0.05) for free when you sign up through my referral link, and of course, you support me too. I'll also include a clean link for people who prefer not to use my referral link:
As far as I'm aware, there are no country restrictions on Idle-Empire. Everyone can sign up. There are some earning methods where your country does not matter, for others it does matter. People from all countries are able to idle, mine, complete promotions, and collect referrals. The availability of surveys, offers, and videos depend on your country.
Currency Value
Idle-Empire uses the term "Points" for their virtual currency. 10,000 Points are worth $1.00.
The minimum payout amount is $0.10 for most payout methods. Some payout methods like gift cards ($1.00 - $10.00) or PayPal ($2.50) have a higher minimum payout amount. You'll need to verify your account before you can make your first payout. You can verify your account with your mobile phone number, a verification code will be sent to your phone number.
Earning Methods
In this section, I'll describe all available earning methods and add my personal opinion and experience about every method.
Surveys & Offers
I guess everybody here is familiar with the concept of surveys and offers. They are tasks that involve answering questions, downloading programs and mobile apps, registering on platforms, and much more. It's a grind but it can pay off since there are some offers that pay good money. Idle-Empire has a number of different offerwalls, here's a full list:
AdgateRewards
AdscendMedia
TrialPay
OfferToro
AyetStudios
PeanutLabs
SuperRewards
KiwiWall
Personaly
Wannads
AdWorkMedia
OfferDaddy
RevenueUniverse
MoreTvTime
MinuteStaff
Personally, I like doing surveys and offers because they pay well. But it's also more work than other earning methods. No pain, no gain.
Videos
Idle-Empire has videos from EngageMe.TV, Smores.TV, and Hideout.TV. I believe many of you guys are familiar with those 3 providers, they are all owned by AdscendMedia. All you have to do is watch videos and sometimes there's gonna be an advertisement in between videos, and after every 3 ads, you get paid 50 Points. I liked to do videos in the past because it was easy and fast. Now I do it less, I feel that it became slower because I get fewer ads than before.
Game Servers
You have to join the Team Fortress 2 game servers of Idle-Empire and every minute you receive 1 Point. That's 1440 Points per day, which is $0.144 per day or $4.32 per month. It's not much but you don't have to do anything for it except being on the server. This process is called "idling" because you don't do anything. Idle-Empire shows video ads on the servers, so I guess that's how they can afford to pay people for being on the servers. Team Fortress 2 is free-to-play on Steam, so everyone can just install it. Idle-Empire also has an Autojoin tool which makes sure you automatically get reconnect to the server in case of a disconnected (can happen if your internet is down for a moment). I'm usually on the game servers 24/7 because it's free money for me - my computer is always running anyways and having the game run in the background doesn't bother me since it's not slowing down my computer.
Mining
Most people will have noticed the cryptocurrency craze during 2017 and 2018, where mining also played an important role. Idle-Empire has its own cryptocurrency miner and you get paid for running it on your computer. The average hashrate is currently 261 hashes per second. There's a calculator on the Idle-Empire website and it says that you earn 32,451 Points per month with that hashrate - that's $3.24. Note that this is just the current average, you might earn less or more depending on the GPU and CPU you have. The issue with mining is that it takes your computer a lot of its CPU/GPU power, so you won't be able to use it for other stuff in the meantime. Your computer will also consume more electricity. I believe mining isn't worth it for most people anymore unless you don't pay for electricity. I've used mining about 10 months ago or so and it was much more profitable at the time, I was making $0.80 - $0.90 per day. Haven't done it since the profitability went down, I think for most people it's only worth it now if you have free electricity.
Referrals
Idle-Empire has a simple referral system - you earn 20% of what your referrals earn through surveys/offers, servers, and mining. Here are the terms:
The referred user must be new to Idle-Empire
You earn 20% of all Points that the referred user earns through surveys/offers, servers, and mining
You earn 50 Points for every new referred user
The referred user earns 500 Points when signing up through your referral link
20% is pretty nice and I believe it can be a good passive income if you get active referrals.
Promotions
Promotions are basically offers from Idle-Empire. Most promotions are simple to complete. There are some promotions that you can do on a daily basis just by pressing a button, that's pretty good. Also, I think it's worth to complete all the tasks that just require a few button clicks like verifying your email or following them on social media. Here's a full list of all promotions:
Basic
Verify your email address (50 Points)
Connect a social media account to your Idle-Empire account (50 Points per account)
Follow Social Media
Join the Idle-Empire Steam group (100 Points)
Follow Idle-Empire on Twitter (100 Points)
Join the Idle-Empire Discord server (100 Points)
Daily Tasks
Include Idle-Empire in your Steam name (50 Points per day)
Change your Steam avatar to the Idle-Empire avatar (50 Points per day)
Roll a daily dice on the Idle-Empire Discord server (10 to 1,000 Points per day)
Invite Friends
Invite people to the Idle-Empire Steam group (10 Points per user)
Invite people to the Idle-Empire Discord server (30 Points per user)
Create Content
Create a YouTube video about Idle-Empire (5,000 Points)
Create a forum post about Idle-Empire (2,000 Points)
Create a blog post about Idle-Empire (10,000 Points)
Payout Methods
In this section, I'll quickly summarize the available payout methods.
PayPal
I'm sure everyone is familiar with PayPal. Idle-Empire sends USD to your PayPal account. There's a fee of $0.30 + 2.9%.
Gift Cards
They currently offer gift cards for the following platforms:
Amazon
Paysafecard
Google Play
iTunes
Netflix
Steam
XBox
Playstation
Nintendo
G2A
Kinguin
Rixty
League of Legends
Cryptocurrencies
Idle-Empire has cryptocurrency payouts through Coinbase. The coins will be sent to your Coinbase account with zero fees. These currencies are supported:
Bitcoin
Bitcoin Cash
Ethereum
Litecoin
Perfect Money
Perfect Money might be an alternative to PayPal for some people, especially when PayPal isn't available in your country. Perfect Money funds can be converted to Bitcoin, Skrill, Neteller, Payeer, Payoneer, and many others. Idle-Empire sends USD to your Perfect Money account.
BitSkins
BitSkins is a marketplace for Steam items, mainly for CS:GO and TF2 skins but many other games are supported too. Idle-Empire sends USD balance to your BitSkins account.
OPSkins
OPSkins is a marketplace for virtual and physical items. Idle-Empire sends Operation Points to your OPSkins account.
CSGOShop
CSGOShop is a marketplace similar to BitSkins but apparently, it has fewer users and supports fewer games. Idle-Empire sends USD balance to your CSGOShop account.
KeyJoker
KeyJoker seems to be a website where you can buy cheap indie Steam games. Idle-Empire sends credits to your KeyJoker account.
Boosters
Idle-Empire has "Boosters" that are randomly created on weekends (Saturday and Sunday). Boosters temporarily increase the earnings for one earning method, the boost can range from 1% to 100% and lasts a few hours. I've seen boosters for surveys/offers, videos, mining, and the game servers.
Conclusion
Idle-Empire can be a good alternative to traditional GPT sites for many users, especially since it doesn't have any country restrictions. It has some unconventional earning methods like idling, mining, and some promotions but you'll also find the usual surveys, offers, and videos. Idle-Empire has many different offer walls, so that's nice if you like to grind. The payout methods are primarily targeted towards gamers but they also have payouts through PayPal, Gift Cards, Cryptocurrencies, and Perfect Money. So I guess there's something for everybody. The boosters on weekends are a good opportunity to complete some high paying offers and get a nice bonus on top. Coupons are also regularly posted on Twitter and the other social media channels and they can be redeemed in just a few seconds, so that's fast and easy. I hope this extensive overview was helpful to some people! :)
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