BCH in the real world
A few days ago, I needed to send money to a friend who lives in Poland. It wasn’t a huge amount of money – just about $404 (Rs. 30,000). A transaction like this should be super easy to execute – there’s nothing physical that has to be moved from one bank vault in India to another vault in Poland. Nothing has to be manually checked or counted. It’s just data that has to be transferred from one bank to the other. In a world where we are all connected by the internet, you’d think that this would not be too hard to achieve right?
My bank – State bank of India
Well, here’s the thing. My bank in India has a super long process for me to add new international beneficiaries under the tab that says international transfers. I have made international transfers from my account in the past, but on this occasion, the bank website simply didn’t want to accept the IBAN codes that I was entering. I tried another international account, and this also failed. There are only 7 international currencies that I can send money in and Polish Zlotys were not one of them.
This process with the bank took almost 5 hours and I simply couldn’t figure it out. The bank fee for sending Rs.30,000 is Rs.2450 which works out to about 8.1%. This is super ridiculous. They want to charge me a huge amount of money for a service and make things complicated at the same time! The website wouldn’t tell me what the exact issue was but I’m guessing that it was a mismatch of the currencies that they allowed conversion into and the Polish bank’s IBAN, but I can’t know for sure.
Wise – formerly known as Transferwise
Transferwise is a service that I have also used multiple times. I used it for the first time in Denmark about 7 or 8 years ago. It has worked seamlessly in the past and I have used it a few times to send money back to India or to send money to friends in different parts of Europe.
On this occasion, Transferwise also didn’t want to process my transaction either. They stated that the government of India has started collecting a new tax on remittances which they are not able to collect at this point and for this reason Wise could not send the money on my behalf. The fees on Transferwise was only Rs 629/- but that is still 2% of the $404 that I wanted to send.
This was a big disappointment as I was hoping that at least they would be able to get the job done.
BCH – Bitcoin Cash
We finally landed on Bitcoin Cash as the best way to make international money transfers from India. The reason I did not consider using Bitcoin cash till now was because I did not want to inconvenience the person at the other end. It’s a bit of a steep learning curve in the beginning and all I wanted was to drop the money in their bank account without instructing them to do anything.
Bitcoin cash is of course the fastest and cheapest option, but the only downside is that the money reaches in BCH instead of Polish Zloty. We eventually enlisted the help of another friend living in Poland to receive the BCH and send money in the local currency to our other friend’s bank account. It was straightforward but did require some trust and communication. The value of the money that reached was exactly what we sent.
I’ve heard that Western Union money transfer charges 10% of the transferred amount for small amounts like this. I am waiting for the day when the whole world switches to BCH and experiences seamless and instantaneous transactions like this.
My conclusion
I have been in the BCH world for a few months now but have never had the chance to use it in a real-world situation like this one. Here is an instance in which your money is literally locked within your bank account, and you are not allowed to transfer it to a particular place or person. These clauses and stipulations change from country to country and depend on the prevailing political situation, embargoes etc. This basically means that the money that you hold in your account was never yours to begin with. The fiat currency of a nation is a way for the government to exert pressure on its citizens and make them behave in a way that they deem fit. It can be used to preserve the status quo and maintain the dominance of developed nations over developing ones.
I’m not really sure what the issue was in not allowing me to transfer these $404 to a person who needed it. I’m not even going to ask why. But the truth is that this shows us how the financial system works to oppress us. I see the crack appearing everywhere.
Bitcoin Cash is a peer-to-peer electronic currency. It allows us to transfer money to any person, in any part of the world in an instant. It has ultra-low transaction fees and the payment that I sent to Poland only cost me Rs 0.09 which in USD is $0.0012. That’s less than a cent paid in transaction fees for money that has travelled halfway across the world.
Bitcoin cash is permission less. This means that I don’t need the approval of any bank or payment processor to move my money around. The BCH blockchain serves as a bank account and allows me to have access to my money directly. It is un-censorable which means that no entity can block a person from having access to his or her money.
It’s time for the world to make the shift towards a better form of currency – one that reflects the needs of the globalized world that we live in.
The Power of Community
If there is one thing we’ve learnt from the pandemic, it’s the power of community. It’s so beautiful to see how human beings can come together in times of need - helping one another despite their personal hardships. We live in Bangalore, India and if it wasn’t for the kindness of others, many of us wouldn’t have made it through this ordeal. We are talking about people who cooked food for hundreds of others who were stuck in hospital, those who donated rations to the poor, delivery personnel who stayed out delivering food when everyone else was locked at home and animal lovers who made sure that not a single stray dog went a day without food. It’s heartening to see that even when the world is turned upside down, people still come together to help one another.
Collective goodness
It’s lovely to be around other people especially if they share a similar set of values. As humans, we are designed to form these highly complex social machines that come together to solve problems. Communities that care about the environment for example, can show the world different possibilities to reduce waste, save water and protect more trees. By working together we can develop good ideas and put them into practice. This is the only way we can find out if they would work in the real world. This iterative process is essential to finding the best systems.
If you think about it, we didn’t have access to even half the materials that exist today a century ago. LED lights, carbon fibre and modern concrete construction techniques are all relatively new and yet have transformed our world in ways that are unimaginable!
Stronger together
We are stronger together than we are alone. A community that works towards any common goal is like a well-oiled machine with everyone contributing what they are best at. This means that progress can be achieved much faster working as a group than those same people chipping away at a task individually.
People who have largely been ignored by society, like within the LGBTQ+ spectrum, have found huge benefit in coming together and advocating for their rights. We see more portrayals of gay and lesbian people in popular TV shows and although their fight is far from finished, a great deal of progress has been made since the days when being gay was treated a mental illness.
Share resources and contacts
When we work together, we can grow faster. The vegan movement in Bangalore is miniscule compared to what we see in Israel, UK, USA, Sweden and a few other western countries. India has a long tradition of vegetarian food and about 37% of people are vegetarians as of this day. Most of this food is predominantly vegan and there has been no real need to highlight vegan options until this point. Veganism is an ethical movement that involves abstaining from food or products derived from animals as a way to not cause unnecessary suffering to other sentient beings. Our societies have deemed some animals to be more worthy of love than others and this is why we see someone who kills a dog or a cat as a psychopath and someone who kills a pig, cow, chicken or fish as normal. Our organization has been working for the last few years to bring this information and understanding to the public.
There are quite a few sustainable businesses in the city that work with vegan products. The owners of these businesses are not necessarily vegan themselves but are doing their best to create products that benefit the community and are good for the planet. Within this group there is a greater sense of collaboration rather than competition. Businesses help one another and share contacts of vendors, printers, and potential customers. People are doing this because their values align and they see a greater purpose to their own journey. This kind of cooperation is what helps the whole ecosystem thrive and a sense of purpose is integral to our own happiness and fulfilment in life.
If you want to learn more about our non-profit and what we do then head over to – www.beanimaljourney.com
Use our own currency
One of the ways in which governments exert pressure on the public is though their control of the currency and financial institutions. A large enough group of like-minded people could move away from the government issued currency and start to use their own decentralized currency. This is what we see happening within the crypto community. These decentralized currencies are not affected by external manipulation – they protect your privacy, are permissionless and they allow you to access your money anywhere at anytime without dealing with any intermediaries. This means that you can basically become your own bank and have full control over your money. Bitcoin Cash is an amazing cryptocurrency and has a growing ecosystem of merchants and users all over the world. You can find out more about BCH here - https://whybitcoincash.com/
Fund projects that matter to you
Communities can use their collective resources to fund projects that matter to them. This means that resources can be allocated according to how important a project is. Funding small businesses, education, healthcare projects, new transportation, construction, or the arts in essential for any community to stay relevant. It takes money that is dormant and turns it into something that benefits the community at large.
We recently launched our own croudfunding campaign on Flipstarter in order to grow the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem in Bangalore, India. We have been learning about Bitcoin Cash and other cryptocurrencies for some time now and we understand the struggles that the local people here have with understanding how this new money works. Our task is to help people understand how BCH can help them in their daily lives. We will reach out to these people through our gourmet food business and provide them with offers and discounts if they decide to pay in Bitcoin Cash.
You can find the link to our successful campaign here –https://flipstarter.beanimaljourney.com/
We could have never done this without the help of the amazing BCH community, and this really helps us take our business and outreach to a whole new level! This shows us the power of community and it’s one of the reasons I’m writing this article!
Support local businesses
The strength of any community depends on the small businesses that operate within it. Having a strong network of businesses keeps money circulating within the local economy and provides employment opportunities to a lot of people. This makes a community more self-reliant and less dependant on things brought from outside. Businesses help pull money into a community and successful ones can help elevate lives of many.
Buying products that are local is better for the environment since those products don’t need to be shipped from anywhere. It also encourages innovation and fosters a greater diversity of products and services that are better suited to the people living in that area. Small businesses also provide for more fair wages and better working conditions than large corporations do.
Build spaces for the community
Construction is one of those activities that is made to seem complicated because we don’t learn enough about it. Shelter is a basic human necessity that has become increasingly expensive in recent years. In some places, you’d need to take out a 50-year loan just to pay off a single flat. The price of housing shoots up in places where the government puts a cap on the number of new constructions that are allowed to be built. This greatly increases demand within big cities and land prices skyrocket. There are also a number of highly paid professionals who work on a building project, each one takes a cut on the work that they have done and finally a contractor and architect take a cut on the whole thing.
If you have a piece of land, some free time and bit of money, you should be able to construct a decent home for you and your family. Certain materials last a lot longer than concrete and you could possibly build a home that would last your family several generations. With a larger group of people you can build many houses that can be rented out and serve as a source of income for your community. You can also build libraries, workshops, theatres, and other community spaces. Building plans and construction details can be a made a common resource that anyone can use. This process will also provide the opportunity to learn new skills and help the community be more self-sufficient.
Educate kids collectively
A community of like-minded individuals could easily choose to educate their children together. The way education is structured in schools leaves little room for free thinking. Schools mostly serve to teach kids how to follow orders, how to memorize things and how to follow a schedule. Students are rarely encouraged to question things and, in a sense, never learn how to think for themselves. This leaves them ill-equipped to handle the challenges of the 21st century – when technology and society itself is developing so rapidly.
Home-schooling is made easy when there are a few kids going through the programme together. Adults and older children can pitch in and make sure that everyone ‘learns how to learn’. This means that a child learns how to acquire new information and is able to feel confident in any situation.
In a collective home-schooling setup, all the students benefit from the collective wisdom of a wide pool of teachers who have their best interests at heart. It normalizes home-schooling as a process and kids don’t feel lonely or isolated.
Our Flipstarter got funded!
Hello everyone! I just wanted to inform you all that our https://flipstarter.beanimaljourney.com/ got funded! We are super thrilled and excited to be part of this revolution. We have a big challenge ahead of us – our goal is to promote Bitcoin Cash in India through our network of sustainable businesses.
A few years ago, we started a non-profit by the name of BeAnimal to help promote environmental education in India. We travelled to many different parts of the country and taught at many schools. Our mission was to give these kids a more holistic idea of the world than what textbooks could provide. We also conducted beach clean-ups and other campaigns along the way. Our plan was to fund our teaching and activities through our budget-friendly tours in which we would bring European college students to India. These trips were great, and we ran 5 of them from mid-2018 to 2019. In 2020 we opened up a backpacker hostel in Bangalore to help build our network and connect to more travellers. Our lives were super amazing and we had huge plans for the future.
And, then the pandemic hit in April 2020. All our plans lay in pieces. What’s worse was that it was impossible to plan anything since no one knew how the situation was going to go. This was confusing and infuriating all at the same time. Bangalore is the third biggest city in India and has a population of around 12 million people. It’s known as the silicon valley of India because of the huge tech industry here. The property that we had rented for our hostel is in a beautiful area called Koramangala – which is also one of the most expensive in the city. We had a difficult decision to make – give up the property, lose our business and take away one of the most unique community spaces the city has to offer or pull through this madness and come out the other end. We decided to stay and miraculously managed to keep everything running for the last 16 months. We started 2 new food businesses that would cater to the local market – switching our focus away from foreign travellers. We started Pudducakes which is Bangalore’s healthiest dessert brand and BeAnimal Gourmet which is a platform on which small businesses can come together.
A chance visit by @RadicalRomit to the hostel to charge his electric scooter rekindled the BCH spark. I had held a small amount of BCH from early 2018 onwards but I didn’t fully understand the technology and the way in which it works. Our hostel morphed into a place where the BCH community gathered and several projects took flight. It’s amazing what people can do when they are brought together by a common goal. That’s when we heard about Flipstarter for the first time and decided to present a project for the community to consider. Flipstarter is a beautiful model and hope we will see more projects of all kinds being run on this platform. In total, we raised 15 BCH for our project in 29 days! We are so happy and thankful to everyone in the BCH community for putting their trust in us. We super motivated to show you great results from this campaign. https://twitter.com/RadicalRomit
In the coming months, we are going to be adding about 3000 new customers to BeAnimal Gourmet. (We currently have about 700 regulars) Our mission is to send them a 15% cashback on their order in BCH if they download the Zapit app and send us their Username on Instagram. In this way, we can encourage a lot more people to explore the world of Bitcoin Cash while reducing the pain of adoption to almost zero. They can use the BCH in their wallet to purchase more stuff from us or spend it at any one of the other merchant locations in the city or the world.
We will also have a page on our website with more detailed information with a lot of illustrations about BCH so that they can go through it and understand it for themselves. Our goal is to show them the value that this cryptocurrency can bring into their lives. We need to do all this without scaring them off or overloading them with information. It’s a fine balance that we have to maintain and I think we have a good strategy! We are excited for this new phase in our lives and although the pandemic is not over the funds raised through the Flipstarter are allowing us to continue our work in peace. It’s such a relief not to panic for money at the end of each month. The peace of mind that you guys have given us is invaluable! We can’t thank you enough!
If you want to launch a Flipstarter of your own – you can find details here
· https://flipstarter.cash/
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K29WNcJDFb4&ab_channel=DavidBond
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GskPpBOAvI&ab_channel=MarcFalzon
An especially big thanks to everyone who contributed to our campaign. I hope you can visit us in India once travel opens up again!
@MarcDeMesel https://twitter.com/MarcDeMesel
@btcfork https://twitter.com/btcfork
@readcashblog https://twitter.com/readcashblog
@EmergentReasons https://twitter.com/EmergentReasons
@mryaoofficiel1 https://twitter.com/mryaoofficiel1
@SatoshiAngels https://twitter.com/SatoshiAngels
@CheapLightning https://twitter.com/CheapLightning
@omar4freedom https://twitter.com/omar4freedom
@remora101 https://twitter.com/remora101
@blancomorao https://twitter.com/blancomorao
And so many others! Thanks for your love and support!
If you'd like to visit us or know more about our projects please get in touch with us at www.beanimaljourney.com
Why we use Bitcoin Cash to run our business
In the years before the pandemic, our business was to bring groups of students from Europe and other parts of the world to India. The purpose of these tours was to show them a part of the world that they had never seen before and to bring them closer to nature and themselves.
We run a backpacker hostel, a tour company, a cake brand, and an artisanal gourmet market called BeAnimal Gourmet in the city of Bangalore, India. We are also a non-profit working towards improving the quality of environmental education that people receive. Bangalore is a huge city of almost 11 million people. Many people here work in the tech industry and the city is generally quite affluent by Indian standards. Our job is to inform people about the utility of Bitcoin Cash and provide them with products and services that they can receive in exchange for it. This is something that I feel has been missed by the global crypto movement. We’ve focussed too much on speculation and too little on application and education.
The benefits of using Bitcoin cash to run a business of any size are immense. You can send money to anyone, in any part of the world, instantly and pay only a tiny fraction of the fees it would normally cost. You have the benefit of being your own bank and managing your funds in the way that you want. There are no withdrawal limits or transaction limits to deal with – no bureaucracy means less time wasted and more time to get things done. This means that you can operate your business on a global scale without worrying about the red tape.
The most important thing is that your money is secure and available on the blockchain at any point of time. Bitcoin cash is decentralized – this means that no one can prevent you from having access to your funds. Your account can’t get blocked and no one can place restrictions on your ability to send or receive money freely. Freedom is a big part of the reason why BCH is a game changer. As the fiat currency system begins to crumble, governments around the world will crack down on the rights of common people and force them to pay more and more to keep a sinking system afloat. While fiat currencies are marred by inflation, the value of your Bitcoin Cash will remain steady and will tend to grow relative to fiat currencies. This is because the supply of Bitcoin Cash is limited to 21 million coins – 89% of which have already been minted.
We have seen the benefit that Bitcoin Cash has brought to our business and we want to help other businesses do the same. This is why we launched a Flipstarter less than a month ago. A Flipstarter is a decentralized fundraising platform that is censorship free. Anyone can donate to a Flipstarter by using Bitcoin Cash. Our Flipstarter has 3 days left to be completed and we are so close to our goal. We only have 1.73 BCH left to raise from a total of 15 BCH. These funds come at a time when businesses have been devastated by the pandemic and lockdown measures. Our goal is to help connect small food businesses with more customers and grow the bitcoin cash ecosystem in India. If you’d like to help us on our mission, please click here –
https://flipstarter.beanimaljourney.com/
This where we come in. With our growing customer base in the city, we can nudge people towards using bitcoin cash to avail discounts on products and cashbacks. This means that our marketing efforts can serve more than one purpose – we can promote Bitcoin Cash and grow our BeAnimal Gourmet customer base at the same time. We need to think about a smart way in which we can get people to start using BCH without overloading them with information. Most people have never thought twice about how currency works or how central banks and governments operate. They know that government officials are corrupt and that’s pretty much the extent of their knowledge. These are people who never question the status quo and probably never will.
I see our role as an intermediary between these two worlds. The group that knows a lot and believes that things can change for the better isn’t always the best to convey these messages to the public. Many times, people just shut off when we start talking about how cryptocurrencies work. I think we need to bridge this information divide in a smart and sustainable way. Bring people into the fold and get them to start interacting with Bitcoin Cash directly. We can then incentivize them to learn more about this system by giving them discounts and other benefits.
Another thing we need to look into is making the conversion from fiat to crypto as smooth as possible. The government here regulates these types of financial transactions quite strictly and it’s hard to find banks that agree to play ball. They also have high processing fees and sometimes require users to identify themselves while transacting larger amounts. These roadblocks slow down crypto adoption and make it trickier to get people on board.
People also have this idea that using crypto might land them in jail. There has been so much spoken about banning cryptocurrencies lately that people just don’t know what to believe anymore. On one end, there’s this frenzied gold rush and on the other people are weary that cryptocurrencies are a scam or even worse are exclusively used by criminals and fraudsters. The fact of the matter is that unless they dive deep and understand how this system works, they will never find out what’s going on for themselves.
I know that we have a long way to go – but we know our goal and what it takes to get there. We believe that empowering small businesses to make a huge difference to all of us. BCH is a tool that gives back control to the common man and that’s what makes it special. Let me know in the comments how BCH can help your business grow!
You can find out more about us at - www.beanimaljourney.com
(We are working on some exiting new updates for our website! Should be done in a few days)
5 ways in which Bitcoin Cash promotes freedom
When we think about freedom, a lot of things come to mind – freedom of belief, of speech, expression and freedom to do what we want, with whom we want as long as we are not hurting someone else in the process. This is mostly experienced as a sense of being your own master- having a great degree of autonomy over your life and decisions.
Over time, human society has evolved into what you see today. In most cases, the people who envisioned these societies all those years ago would be terribly disappointed if they were alive to see what has become of them today. The truth is that their radical ideas would probably land them in a prison cell! So, we all need to ask ourselves, what went wrong and how do we fix it?
We all live within societies and have an obligation towards the people living around us. It makes sense for the members of a society to treat each other with respect. This builds trust between people and lays down the stability on which any great society is built. If we were all constantly at war with one another then we would have no time to innovate and build interesting things. We would not be able to raise our children well because we would be constantly running from external threats.
It was with this stability in mind that we elected governments to help keep the system running along smoothly – make sure new cities are planned well, that everyone has access to clean drinking water, make sure everyone gets a good education, ensure that people have access to a doctor in case they need one etc. We have also codified various offences and created a system to penalize those who break the social contract. This is how jails, police and court houses came to be.
In a highly functioning society, each person is a specialist within their own domain – some people are experts at building solar farms, others are expert farmers, carpenters, game designers etc. We have applied this same reasoning to governments and entrusted them with looking after the public good. Over time, this system has changed – the mechanisms that were put in place to protect people are now the ones that are killing them.
Education systems that were intended to uplift and upskill people are now the same creations that are keeping people in the dark. A media that was intended to inform people about the important events going on all over the world now seeks to manipulate them and maintain the status quo. I’m sure we have all experienced this crumbling of society in our own way and have tried to make sense of it. These are the systems that keep us in poverty – living paycheck to paycheck in a constant cycle that keeps us working for the profits of others. We have also learnt about how inflation works as a tax on our savings – eroding the value of the long hours of work we had put in. The insane speed at which central banks all around the world have been printing notes have stunned most of us, yet the people in charge tell us not to worry about rising prices while the rich head out to buy all the available housing and farmland with this freshly minted money.
When you wake up to see the system for what it is, you will realize that it is a massive scam hidden behind a thin veil of numbers. A system in which a few people control most of the world’s resources and power. Now getting to the point – we need a tool that can help democratize power and help people regain the freedoms that they have lost. I’m not saying that we fix this system overnight. But, I am saying that we can stop making the same mistakes that were made in the past.
I would recommend that you listen to this talk by Ross Ulbricht if you want to understand a few more things about freedom and how governments deal with people that they do not like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHMVyr5NjEY
5 ways in which Bitcoin cash promotes freedom –
1. It’s decentralized – Bitcoin cash is peer to peer electronic cash. This means that people can trade BCH with each other without having to involve a third party like a bank or payment processor. You hold funds in your private wallet vs the conventional system of holding currency in a bank. This means that you have access to your funds wherever you are. Nobody can block your account or seize your assets.
2. It’s permissionless – You do not need anyone’s authorization or permission to hold or send BCH. You are the master of your funds, and you can do whatever you like with the money you possess. This means that BCH is open to everyone, everywhere in the world.
3. It protects your privacy – Currently banks and payment processors share a lot of our personal and financial data with governments and other organizations. This is what helps them to provide us their services for free. But what we don’t understand is that we are actually the commodity that is up for sale. We have no control over how the data we generate is being used and this makes us easy targets for manipulation.
4. It has limited supply - The Bitcoin Cash protocol ensures there will never be more than 21 million coins in existence. Governments constantly print money out of thin air, endlessly inflating the supply and devaluing everyone’s savings. This is what is leading to high inflation rates in many parts of the world. Hyperinflation starts off slow but spins out of control really fast – you’ll need to look very closely to see the cracks forming. Bitcoin Cash has a fixed supply and therefore represents sound money.
5. It has low transaction fees – Bitcoin Cash has one of the lowest transaction fees among all the cryptocurrencies out there. You can send money to anyone, anywhere in the world for just a few satoshis. It works 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with no delays. This transaction fee goes to ensure that people are paid for verifying transactions and keeping the network secure. This means that everyone is incentivized to keep the Bitcoin cash system running smoothly.
As adoption of Bitcoin Cash increases, more merchants will be willing to accept BCH and more people will have BCH to spend. We will be able to give the world a money that is much more stable and robust that the fiat currencies that we use today. There are countless possibilities, and we are just at the beginning of a new wave of technological innovations within the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
This technology has allowed us to experiment with the ideals of democracy in a new way. In the future, we can hope to create a more just society where all people are treated with dignity and where people who hold seats of power can be held accountable for their actions. Let’s work to make this change possible one step at a time. The first step is switching away from the currencies of oppression. Encourage local businesses and the people around you to make the switch to BCH. In time, the old systems will crumble and a new one will be ready to take its place.
The difference between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake
Sustainable energy has been a passion of mine since as far back as I can remember. This prompted me to do a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and learn a lot more about the world that we live in. The world is a complicated place and I don’t want to oversimplify it. Humans are complicated creatures too and sometimes we choose to do things in a way that makes little sense if you look at it from a macro perspective. Yet, this is how societies evolve, people make mistakes and learn from them! (if they survive)
I am most interested in how humans find a balance with nature and live more fulfilling lives without making things worse for anyone else. This is in essence why ‘sustainability’ is called sustainability – it means that you can repeat these actions again and again, for every person on earth until the end of time and still not deplete the pool of resources that you originally started out with. This is obviously not true for a great majority of the activities that we label as sustainable. We see that conditions have changed drastically from the time of our parents to what we are experiencing now. There are fewer fish in the sea, giant lakes have dried up, glaciers are melting ever faster, and forest fire seasons are getting longer and more unpredictable. It is due to this that insurance companies are changing their policies and deciding not to provide protection for certain types of events anymore. It just does not make financial sense for them anymore. Behaving in a way that adversely affect our future is not in our best interest as well, but that’s what governments around the world continue to advocate. No country or government anywhere seems to be treating the current situation with the seriousness that it deserves. But their purpose is not to change things for the better – it is to preserve the status quo and the interests of the people who have donated to have them elected.
Looking at the same issue in another angle, it’s unwise for any of us to wait for someone else to come along and help fix society or any of the environmental problems that we are facing today. It is for us to innovate and devise solutions that can continue to provide for people on this planet for many hundreds of years to come.
This is why it is important to investigate the various systems through with we can distribute the resources of our planet in a fair and just way. In the current system, a small minority of people have basically all the power and complete monopoly of the system. Let’s look at some ways in which blockchain technology can help us solve these issues.
Proof of work vs. Proof of stake
Bitcoin has come under a lot of heat recently after people started talking about how much energy is used in the process of mining. A lot has been lost in translation and people forget how this system came to be. I have spoken about mining in my previous article – you can take a look at it **here**. https://read.cash/@beanimal/bitcoin-cash-mining-explained-cc09a0f0
Let’s cover the main differences between Proof of work (PoW) and Proof of stake (PoS) before we continue –
Both Proof of work and Proof of Stake are what’s known as a consensus mechanism. These consensus mechanisms help people within these networks add new blocks to the blockchain and update the ledger. This facilitates transactions and helps people to conduct business in a decentralized manner.
The proof of stake system has attracted a lot of attention in recent days, with Ethereum switching over to this system from the proof of work system. Proof of stake is an alternative process for transaction verification on a blockchain. It is increasing in popularity and being adopted by several cryptocurrencies. To understand proof of stake, it is important to have a basic idea of proof of work.
**Proof of work**
Proof of work is a mining process in which a user (miner) installs a powerful computer or mining rig to solve complex mathematical puzzles (known as proof of work problems). Once several calculations are successfully performed for various transactions, the verified transactions are bundled together and stored on a new ‘block’ on a distributed ledger or public blockchain. Mining verifies the legitimacy of a transaction and creates new currency units.
The work must be moderately difficult for the miner to perform, but easy for the network to check. Multiple miners on the network attempt to be the first to find a solution for the mathematical problem concerning the candidate block. The first miner to solve the problem announces their solution simultaneously to the entire network, in turn receiving the newly created cryptocurrency unit provided by the protocol as a reward.
As more computing power is added to the network and more coins are mined, the average number of calculations required to create a new block increases, thereby increasing the difficulty level for the miner to win a reward. In proof of work currencies, miners need to recover hardware and electricity costs. This creates downward pressure on the price of the cryptocurrency from newly generated coins, thus encouraging miners to keep improving the efficiency of their mining rigs and find cheaper sources of electricity. This is where the Proof of work concept ties into renewable energy and utilizing resources that would otherwise go to waste.
Our society is by no means efficient, and we do not consume energy at constant rate either. Wind power, solar power, biogas, geothermal, tidal energy, wave energy and hydroelectricity are just a few of the renewable sources of energy that we have at our disposal. If we could only tap into these nearly endless resources then we would have no need for banks and other centralized financial institutions to help us transact with one another.
Bitcoin Cash is an example of a cryptocurrency that uses the proof of work system.
**Proof of Stake**
Unlike the proof of work system, in which the user validates transactions and creates new blocks by performing a certain amount of computational work, a proof of stake system requires the user to show ownership of a certain number of cryptocurrency units.
The creator of a new block is chosen in a pseudo-random way, depending on the user’s wealth, also defined as ‘stake’. In the proof of stake system, blocks are said to be ‘forged’ or ‘minted’, not mined. Users who validate transactions and create new blocks in this system are referred to as forgers.
In most proof of stake cases, digital currency units are created at the launch of the currency and their number is fixed. Therefore, rather than using cryptocurrency units as reward, the forgers receive transaction fees as rewards. In a few cases, new currency units can be created by inflating the coin supply, and forgers can be rewarded with new currency units created as rewards, rather than transaction fees.
To validate transactions and create blocks, a forger must first put their own coins at ‘stake’. Think of this as their holdings being held in an escrow account: if they validate a fraudulent transaction, they lose their holdings, as well as their rights to participate as a forger in the future. Once the forger puts their stake up, they can partake in the forging process, and because they have staked their own money, they are in theory now incentivized to validate the right transactions. This means that people who already hold a large number of coins are rewarded for being rich.
This is quite different to the Proof of work model which is more similar to running a successful business. You need to be efficient and smart to make a profit. Which also means that people are less likely to sabotage something they have worked very hard for.
This system does not provide a way to handle the initial distribution of coins at the founding phase of the cryptocurrency, so cryptocurrencies which use this system either begin with an ICO and sell their pre-mined coins, or begin with the proof of work system, and switch over to the proof of stake system later.
Some of the major differences are -
Proof of Work (PoW)
The probability of mining a block is determined by how much computational work is done by miner.
A reward is given to first miner to solve cryptographic puzzle of each block.
To add each block to chain, miners must compete to solve difficult puzzles using their computer process power
Hackers would need to have 51% of computation power to add malicious block. This would only be possible if the 3 biggest mining pools -consisting of thousands of miners- all went rogue together.
Proof of work systems are less energy efficient and are less costly but more proven.
Specialized equipment to optimize processing power.
Initial investment to buy hardware
Proof of Stake (PoS)
The probability of validating a new block is determined by how large of a stake a person holds (how many coins they possess).
The validator does not receive a block reward instead they collect network fee as their reward.
There is no competition as block creator is chosen by an algorithm based on user stake.
Hackers would need to own 51% of all currency on network, which is practically impossible.
Proof of Stake systems are much more cost and energy efficient than POW systems but less proven.
Standard server grade unit is more than enough.
Initial investment to buy stake and build reputation.
Some of cryptocurrencies that use different variants of proof-of-stake consensus are: EOS (EOS), Tezos (XTZ), Cardano (ADA), Cosmos (ATOM), Lisk (LSK).
Bitcoin is most well known crypto with a Proof-of-Work consensus building algorithm which uses most well known proof-of-work function is called SHA256.
The purpose of this article is to give you an understanding of the two methods and how they differ. If the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blocks is fully used for payments,
the energy cost per transaction gets as low as $0.01. Optimal energy efficiency is still far from ideal and needs to be improved significantly – but it just goes to show that the proof of work model can also be run efficiently in the future.
I feel that it is important to tie the value of any currency to real world assets such as time, energy and investment in hardware. This means that a person has to invest their time and effort into something - which in turn gives that something value. It allows for more equitable distribution of the new coins mined and provides a more secure network overall. We will discuss this further in another article. It appears that there is a clear trade-off that must be made between the cost of mining and the level of trust required of other participants in the blockchain.
Bitcoin Cash mining explained
I think we’ve gone over how the fiat currency system works in some of our previous articles. Today, let’s focus on mining. What is its purpose? What do miners do and why does mining consume so much energy?
I think it’s beautiful and important for us to have a somewhat clear understanding of the mechanics behind the things we are working with. You surely don’t need to know everything about how bitcoin cash mining works, but I think a good overview of the topic is somewhat essential. I think if we understand this, it will clear a lot of the mystery and ambiguity that surrounds bitcoin cash and other popular cryptocurrencies. It will help us understand the market better and what this new and very promising asset class can do for our financial future.
**What is bitcoin cash mining?**
The Bitcoin Cash protocol keeps a ledger of all transactions within the network in a series of blocks, with each block recording a collection of transactions. These transactions can contain more than just money moving from place to place – it can also contain data of different types that help us build decentralized systems within many domains. For example, you could create a decentralized ride hailing or food ordering app. You could also hold fool proof elections and let citizens vote directly on a variety of issues.
Since the bitcoin cash system doesn’t have a central authority to declare which blocks are valid and which ones aren’t, it runs a type of lottery instead. This lottery ensures that miners have accurately listed all the transactions in the block and have successfully solved an extremely complex cryptographic calculation. The person or group who solves this puzzle first gets to add their block to blockchain and gets rewarded for it. This process repeats roughly every 10 minutes.
As there is no central authority to control the distribution of money, mining was chosen to be the way for money to be created and transferred. The cryptographic problem that is being solved with each new block is a proof that someone went through the effort of mining that block. The process of legitimately creating Bitcoin cash takes both time and computing power and counterfeiting Bitcoin Cash takes roughly the same amount of work, encouraging people to be fair.
**The purpose of mining**
Bitcoin Cash mining is often thought of as the way to create new BCH. But that's just a by-product of the primary reason why mining is so important. Mining helps to secure a global currency. This is not just the national fiat currency of one country – it is a currency that can be used by anyone in any part of the world. It is the world’s first permissionless and censorship resistant money. The supply of bitcoin cash is designed to decrease over time, thus making it deflationary – as time goes by, the supply of new coins to miners decreases. Using currencies like Bitcoin cash, you can send money to any part of the world for an incredibly low fee.
Because Bitcoin cash is a decentralized peer-to-peer system, there is no central database, authority or office that keeps track of who owns BCH. Instead, the log of all transactions is distributed across the network. Without mining we would either need a central authority to manage the amount of created BCH and how they are transferred (which defeats the purpose of a decentralised cryptocurrency), or we would be stuck with worthless bits that anyone could make in any amount.
The main problem with a distributed transaction log is how to avoid inconsistencies that could allow someone to spend the same bitcoins twice. This is similar to the purpose of banks in our current financial system – they make sure that we don’t spend money that we don’t have. The solution in Bitcoin Cash is to mine the outstanding transactions into a block of transactions approximately every 10 minutes, which makes them official. Conflicting or invalid transactions aren't allowed into a block, so the double spend problem is avoided.
Although mining transactions into blocks avoid double-spending, it raises new problems: What stops people from randomly mining blocks? How do you decide who gets to mine a block? How does the network agree on which blocks are valid?
Solving those problems is the key innovation of Bitcoin: mining is made exceedingly difficult by a technique called proof-of-work. This means that it takes an insanely huge amount of computational effort to mine a block, but it is easy for peers on the network to verify that a block has been successfully mined. This keeps single entities like governments or corporations from controlling a majority stake of the global mining operations. Miners can block any transaction they wish. They can also create empty blocks with no transactions at all. If an entity controlled more than 51% of the global mining operation then they could potentially render the whole system unusable. This is why the proof of work method uses so much energy and hardware. It would be financially stupid to mine without the chance of receiving the block reward.
Each mined block references the previous block, forming an unbroken chain back to the first Bitcoin block. This blockchain ensures that everyone agrees on the transaction record. It also ensures that nobody can tamper with blocks in the chain since re-mining all the following blocks would be computationally infeasible. If nobody has more than half the computational resources, mining remains competitive, and nobody can control the blockchain.
The creator of Bitcoin realized that there would have to be some way to get Bitcoins into circulation. Since it is decentralized, he did not want to issue coins from a central authority. So, he enticed others to "mine" for Bitcoins by exchanging computation power for Bitcoins. The mining process is quite similar to a lottery, where you buy "tickets" by computing hashes; the more hashes you compute, the more likely you are to win 6.25 Bitcoins.
This scheme has the economic benefit that value is not created out of thin air - Bitcoin Cash miners must trade one valuable resource (their computing time and energy), in exchange for another (BCH). This helps establish a correlation between a "real world" value, and the value of a Bitcoin Cash.
It just so happens that mining also is used to establish a well-defined ordering of Bitcoin Cash transactions; so we kill two birds with one stone, and provide incentives for people to contribute resources to keep the Bitcoin Cash network operating.
As a side-effect, mining adds new BCH to the system. For each block mined, miners currently get 6.25 new BCH (currently worth about $ 3764), which encourages miners to do the hard work of mining blocks. Nowadays, it’s not common to mine alone. Miners organize themselves in pools to increase the chance that a particular pool may find the next block. These mining pools can predict their estimated earning by looking at what percentage of the total mining market they hold. The money earned by the mining pool is divided amongst all its members. This money helps individual miners pay for their hardware and the electricity used for mining and cooling their equipment. Mining is funded mostly by the block reward of 6.25 BCH per block, and slightly by the transaction fees (about 0.1 BCH per block).
**Block reward Halving**
After every 210,000 blocks mined, or roughly every four years, the block reward given to bitcoin Cash miners for processing transactions is cut in half. This cuts in half the rate at which new bitcoin Cash is released into circulation. This is bitcoin Cash's way of using a synthetic form of inflation that halves every four years until all bitcoin cash is released and is in circulation.
This system will continue until around the year 2140. At that point, miners will be rewarded with fees for processing transactions that network users will pay. These fees ensure that miners still have the incentive to mine and keep the network going. The idea is that competition for these fees will cause the network fees to remain low after all the 21 million blocks have been mined. 89% of all BCH have already been mined.
In 2009, the reward for each block in the chain mined was 50 bitcoins. After the first halving it was 25, then 12.5, and it became 6.25 bitcoins per block as of May 11th, 2020. The next halving will occur in 2024.
**Equipment used to mine**
Originally, Bitcoin’s creator intended for Bitcoin to be mined on CPUs (your laptop or desktop computer). However, Bitcoin miners discovered they could get more hashing power from graphic cards. Graphic cards were then surpassed by ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits). You can think of a Bitcoin ASIC as specialized Bitcoin mining computers.
Nowadays all serious Bitcoin mining is performed on dedicated Bitcoin mining hardware ASICs, usually in thermally regulated data-centres with low-cost electricity.
Mining is ridiculously difficult
The difficulty of mining a block is astounding. Finding a successful hash is harder than finding a particular grain of sand from all the grains of sand on Earth. To find a hash every ten minutes, the Bitcoin hash rate needs to be insanely large. Currently, the miners on the Bitcoin network are doing about 154.75 million Terahashes per second.
Miners are incentivized to use the cheapest form of electricity they can find which naturally pushes them towards renewables. We will talk more about energy in our next article.
8 ways to keep your seed phrase safe
What happens to my money when I lose the password to my wallet?
This is an interesting question that comes up a lot when people are new to the crypto world – and it’s all down to the fact that you and only you are responsible for what happens to your money.
The seed phrase is a set of 12 or 24 words that you receive once you create a new wallet. With these words in your possession, you become the absolute owner of the funds in that wallet.
If you lose the seed phrase you lose access to your funds and that is why it is so important to know how to keep them safe.
We are used to a world where things function slightly differently – even as adults, we aren’t considered smart enough to make decisions for ourselves. This is why governments all over the world have become larger and more oppressive over the last couple of years.
It is within this larger paradigm that people take almost no responsibility for their actions. Passwords to websites and bank accounts can be easily reset once lost but we also allow large corporations to snoop around our most intimate data. They use this data to create a comprehensive profile of us – how likely we are to spend on a house, a car, or on an insurance policy for example. They categorize our spending habits and sell this data to the highest bidder. In the past, we believed that our data online was completely safe but now on the contrary we know that the sale of our data is integral to the business model of these corporations. This data is not only sold to advertisers but also governments and political campaigns. They can swing the results of an election just by nudging the right group of people online. This online influence is invisible, and it circumvents all the checks that we would normally have if this was done in the real world.
This rabbit hole goes deep – very deep – but it all starts with a preference not to be responsible for our privacy online. We have traded privacy for convenience. But, at what cost? I was talking to my mum about Bitcoin Cash and other cryptos the other day. I was telling her that it’s a good way for her to protect her savings from being eroded by inflation. She was very disappointed to hear that she needs to pay a fee to convert her rupees into BCH, pay a small fee to transfer funds, and pay to have her money converted back to fiat. She was questioning why BCH had so many fees when her bank had none. This sentiment is fully understandable and the explanation for this will be found in a future article. We are so used to getting things for free that we have forgotten that it costs money for people to do these tasks for us. I prefer if this money came directly from us then from the sale of my data. But this alas is a personal choice. This information however should reach everyone’s ears. It is impossible to have a free society without people being properly educated regarding how these systems function.
Now, back to the original topic of this article. Losing the 12-word backup phrase to your non-custodial crypto wallet is the same as throwing your physical wallet in a fireplace. Even leaving your wallet at a bus stop wouldn’t be a correct analogy because there is a hope of you finding your wallet again – your city might have a lost and found room or a person who finds it might contact you. If you truly have lost your backup phrase, then I’m afraid that the money in your wallet is also gone forever. About 20% of currently minted BTC has been lost forever – that is 3.7 million bitcoins with a worth of about 135,150,862,000 USD! Try to wrap your head around that!
Every time coins get lost like this; they are dormant in their wallets. They don’t enter circulation and hence add value to the remainder of the currency that is in circulation. In some cases, bitcoin wallets have been lost in old computer hard drives, in other cases, the owners of the currencies have died without passing on their recovery phrase or private key to anyone.
Tips to keep your seed phrase safe -
1- Do not write down your seed phrase digitally. This is the most common mistake that people make. Google keep, dropbox, word documents, etc are simply not secure enough for you to store the key to your fortune there. It is particularly important not to write down your seed key digitally because if your device (mobile, computer) is infected, a hacker could gain access to your funds. Your account could also be deleted by the company itself or blocked by the government. We know that cryptos are going to become an especially contentious issue in the future and it's good to be prepared.
It is preferable to write down your seed phrase in a physical way. It can be a piece of paper, a metal plate, or whatever will help you in the task of preserving those words over time without suffering wear and tear or danger of accidents.
2. Make Multiple copies
Most people choose to write them down on a piece of paper. It is advisable in such cases to make several copies of your seed phrase and stash them in discreet locations. Avoid notebooks or other books that might be easily discarded by either you or another person. Make sure you keep a list of the places where you have hidden them or you might just forget.
3. Write a short story using the words from your seed phrase
Another idea is to write a short story or poem using the words in your seed phrase. Make sure that you have a strategy to remember which words are part of the seed phrase and which are not. If it is discreet then you can upload your story anywhere and mix it in with hundreds of other articles.
4- Keep words away from the cameras
It is of vital importance to keep your seed phrase away from any type of camera that can read them. Computers can decipher any kind of handwriting and can easily convert what you have written back into digital format. It is a good idea to hide your seed phrase from cameras when you write it down for the first time and when you use it to backup your wallet.
5- Do not read your seed phrase aloud.
This tip is based on the same premise as the previous tip and is just as important. Do not give malicious actors opportunities to steal our seed and take our cryptocurrencies. No matter what the current value of your cryptos are its better not to allow people the opportunity to steal it.
Microphones on electronic devices can be an attack vector that bad guys often exploit, which is why it’s critical not to say your seed phrase out loud. Never.
6- Be the only one with access to them (or only share them with people you trust a lot).
Remember that these magic words are the key to your funds and, as with the keys to your home, it is best to share them as little as possible.
I am not going to tell who you should or shouldn't share your seed phrase with, but in my opinion, I recommend doing it only with people you trust a lot and who are unconditional. Be especially careful in sharing it with partners or people who today may be part of your life, but it is not certain that they will be in the future.
7- Create a plan in case of accidents
Accidents can happen at any time, and it is best to be prepared in case that happens. Create a plan in case of unforeseen events so that your trusted people can access the funds even if they do not understand much about the world of cryptocurrencies. It will be enough to share with your trusted people where the seed phrase that grants access to the funds is located.
8. It is important to be incredibly careful when choosing the right wallet for your funds. Do your research and study the companies and the team behind each wallet.
4 reasons why the prices of cryptocurrencies fluctuate so much
The volatility of cryptocurrencies is sometimes shocking when you first encounter it. How could the price of anything possibly sway so much? It brings up feelings of fear and astonishment. But the truth is that for most currencies, it’s nothing more than the aggregate of individual investors making decisions in their own self-interest. For the purpose of this article, I will be referring only to currencies that have a limited supply.
This ties in with the way cryptos are often portrayed in the mainstream media – unreliable bubbles that will most certainly lead to disappointment. But cryptocurrencies are so much more. It’s a new way for the whole world to do business on a level playing field. The systems in place to keep your money secure also do the same for everyone else. You can transact in complete privacy without the fear of your data being mined. It’s a permissionless, decentralized system that gives you complete access to your funds at any time.
This is not stuff that you would hear very often on the news and not all currencies are at the same level of reliability. There are of course scams in the crypto world as well and that’s why its important to do our own research before we get into anything. We will cover things to look out for while researching crypto investments in a future article.
Coming back to our original topic – why do the prices of various cryptocurrencies fluctuate so much?
· A globally traded asset
The price of cryptocurrencies swings widely because for the first time in history we have an asset that can be traded anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day, with absolutely no restrictions of any sort. If the shares of a company were traded in a similar way, we would probably see similar price fluctuations as well.
· No centralized control
We see a great deal of control being asserted to ensure that the fiat currencies that we use today generally hold their price. Banks today use a system called fractional reserve banking – banks work on the expectation that only a proportion (or 'fraction') of depositors will seek to withdraw funds at the same time, keep only a fraction of their liabilities as reserves. This means that they don’t have all the money that has been deposited with them – in fact, they have probably loaned out several times more money than was ever deposited in the bank in the first place. This can only occur within the fiat system – would be impossible with cryptocurrencies that are limited in supply.
Fractional reserve banking is possible within custodial crypto services like exchanges. The information in this article pertains to non-custodial, decentralized services.
The world of crypto trading is a free market with people bidding either higher or lower for various currencies. The price changes are completely determined by the people holding those coins and there is no central authority determining what coin should be sold at what price.
· Small Market Cap
The world of cryptocurrencies is still in its infancy and the overall market cap of cryptos is still small compared to that of mainstream currencies and other assets. This means that the actions of a few big investors can have a massive ripple effect on the whole market. Once more people start to hold cryptos, things will definitely change, and we will see fewer and fewer big changes in price.
Cryptocurrencies have been making waves lately after surging past a combined $2 trillion market cap. Crypto is still at a nascent stage and is much smaller than other asset classes despite seeing huge growth in the past 10 years.
Market information 2021
Total Market Cap
**Crypto**
$2 trillion
**Stocks**
$89 trillion
**Money Supply**
$90 trillion
**Bonds**
$253 trillion
**Real Estate**
$280 trillion
· Pump and Dump schemes
A pump and dump scheme is one wherein a group of people boost a company’s stock price by sharing positive, but fake, information. The people behind these schemes buy up the shares cheap in advance of spreading information that in turn drives the stock price higher and higher and encourages other investors to get in on the supposed windfall. When the stock hits a high point, the scammers dump their shares, leaving unsuspecting investors holding an empty bag.
This happened with the shares of the company GameStop in early 2021 -
*” After the meteoric rise of GameStop stock, from about $4 a share six months ago to $483 a share on Thursday morning, Robinhood and other trading platforms restricted trades on certain securities, including GameStop and AMC.*
*“Amid this week’s extraordinary circumstances in the market, we made a tough decision today to temporarily limit buying for certain securities. As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements,” Robinhood said in a statement. “These requirements exist to protect investors and the markets and we take our responsibilities to comply with them seriously, including through the measures we have taken today.”*
This is a common occurrence in the world of cryptocurrencies as well and unfortunately this part of human behaviour isn’t going anywhere. In a decentralized system, there is no person or committee that can place restrictions on others. People need to take ownership for their own actions and behave in a way that is responsible. In time, when more people have access to cryptos, and people start to use them for conducting day to day transactions then pump and dump schemes will fade away.
Is it possible for governments to ban crypto? What would the outcome be?
There is a lot of talk about governments all over the world moving to ban cryptocurrencies. The claim is usually that these anonymous currencies aid in money laundering and the purchase of illegal items like weapons and drugs as well as for other illicit activities like terrorism and human trafficking. The truth of the matter is that the government is more worried about not having control over the money supply. In a world where cryptos are the dominant mode of transaction, people in power can no longer print money out of thin air to enrich themselves and their friends. All the illegal items mentioned above can very easily be paid for with fiat currency as well – just as it has been for so many years in the past.
We thought it would be good to discuss how exactly a government would go about pulling down a cryptocurrencies and what the repercussions would be.
The short answer is, no, governments cannot technically ban a cryptocurrency because the protocols on which they are based are decentralized - with miners all over the world verifying transactions and adding blocks to the blockchain.
Even if a particular county’s government banned mining the system would still be completely unaffected. This is not to say that if a government really wanted, they couldn’t make life difficult for crypto users and slow down the rate of crypto adoption in their country - The government could attack the development teams of these cryptos, block transactions from exchanges, issue statements making trading/owning cryptos illegal as well as penalize businesses that accept crypto. They could also confuse people by issuing their own digital currencies and spread false information about cryptos through reputed investors in the business world. This could potentially keep people from understanding how this technology works and make it hard for them to access it.
Luckily, peer to peer payments using crypto currencies like BCH are permissionless and only need the two parties involved to agree on the terms of the deal. No government, bank or other institution can block such a transaction from taking place. This is the beauty of cryptocurrencies and this is why people love them so much. If a large enough percentage of the population owned cryptos then the government would have no way to prevent people from exchanging it between each other. They surely would not have enough space in their jails to lock up 10 million people (that’s only 0.7% of India’s population!)
This is why decentralization is so integral to the success of any cryptocurrency. There is no doubt that governments will try to hold on to control by any means necessary. They need people to quietly abide by their laws and pay their taxes on time. With cryptos, it’s harder to coerce people into doing something that they don’t want to do – like paying for a corrupt and inefficient police system.
Once way a government could control a particular cryptocurrency is to fill up more than 51% of the mining share. In this way, they could theoretically mine empty blocks and ban all transactions. This is why the ‘proof of work’ aspect of cryptocurrencies is so integral. It would take a ridiculous amount of hardware, energy, and time to organize an operation that would mine more than 51% of all new blocks coming into existence. The current system is decentralized - with miners all over the world working together to secure this new global currency. It would be very hard for a single entity to mount a larger operation than the one that currently exists simply for the purpose of sabotaging it.
We will undoubtedly see a lot of scare tactics in the coming months and years – which administrations around the world getting more and more worried that their scam will be exposed. Let’s work towards a future where we can store the fruits of our effort in a reliable way, move away from fraudulent systems and make sure that we are not the ones funding our own oppression!
**Possible Outcomes**
· **Would** **make people more curious**
Government intervention could inadvertently further emphasize the role that cryptos play in a free society. This would make more people curious, and adoption would grow.
· **Rise in Protest**
People could rise in protest. In 2011, the Egyptian Government ordered internet service providers to turn off the country’s internet. This caused widespread outrage and ended with that government being overthrown.
· **Exodus of companies and HNIs**
Wealthy people and companies tend to leave countries where high taxes are levied on their earnings. A government crackdown on cryptocurrencies could see a lot of economic activity leaving their shores.
· **Exodus of smart people**
Some of the smartest and most influential people in the world value freedom over anything else. A ban on cryptos is basically a ban on freedom. The will also force many of a country’s greatest assets to leave.
What is money anyway?
A fundamental question to get out of the way before we start is – What is money anyway? Money controls every aspect of our lives in some sense and the amount of money we have determines what we can and cannot have. It can be a marker of our social status, influence our health and happiness and be a deciding factor in our ability to get things done in the world.
Currency
What we usually refer to as money is currency – fiat currency to be precise. Currency is a piece of paper that is printed by a central bank and is put into circulation within the borders of a particular country. Most of the time it appears as a number in your bank account. The purchasing power of this currency in most cases is constantly declining so in reality the numbers in your bank account should always be ticking down. But that’s not what we see when we open our bank accounts. What we observe is that, If untouched, the value of currency remains constant or increases a little due to the interest added by the bank. This leads us to the false perception that the value of our money is growing – which diverts our focus away from the money printing and mismanagement of our collective efforts.
The value of this piece of paper is backed by the government of that country. People have a need to keep accounts and use currency to determine the value of various goods and services. For example, it would be quite difficult to trade a used electric scooter for groceries, an online course, movie tickets and a day at the spa without the help of currency. We assign prices to things based on what people are willing to pay for those things. In our modern society, many people confuse price with value but in reality, these are two separate things. If people aren’t willing to pay a certain price for a product or service, then the price drops or the product goes out of production. On the other hand, if there is scarcity of products that people want, then people will be willing to pay higher prices for those things. This is how demand and supply affect the availability and price of the goods and services in the world around us.
Most people believe that the paper notes they carry around in their wallet or purse is real money. Money is the value of the human labour, it exists only in our heads, it's imaginary. Money is an intangible asset, which means it cannot be touched, it cannot be smelled; however, it can be expressed in terms of numbers. Money does have a few properties such as it must be a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value and occasionally in the past, a standard of deferred payment. This means that money is a way to value a debt, thereby allowing goods and services to be acquired now and paid for in the future.
Currency is simply paper. Fiat currency is any currency in the world that is not backed by gold or silver. This paper money is a tool for trading your time for other things. Currency has no intrinsic value. Since it is issued by a central authority, they have full control over the supply of it.
In the United States, for example, the dollar was backed by gold until the early seventies when the country’s 37th President Richard Nixon “suspended” the convertibility of the US dollar into gold. President Nixon’s decision began the age of ‘Fiat’ currency printing. This is the reason why prices continue to rise. Currency is losing its value against gold. Great Britain had already moved away from the gold standard in 1971, two years before the US did.
One of the biggest problems with currency is that the governments can print more of it whenever they want or need to. Historically, there have been hundreds of fiat currencies have all eventually seen their prices fall to 0! That’s a 100% failure rate!
Money
Money is a store of value and maintains its purchasing power over a long period of time. Silver and gold are the optimum form of money because of their properties. You can store a large amount of value in a ridiculously small volume. Gold is so dense that one ton of it can be packed into a cubic foot. Gold and silver are the only objects that have maintained their purchasing power over the last 5000 years! This is because they are naturally quite rare as there is only a finite amount of silver and gold on planet earth!
The price of gold and silver is also manipulated by governments to hide their true value. Its extremely hard to move gold and silver in between countries and it usually taxed very heavily. There are also cases in the past where people’s gold has been forcibly seized by the government.
Some of the other properties of money are –
Durability
Portability
Divisibility
Uniformity
Limited supply
Acceptability
The first step to securing our financial future is to understand how these systems work. Educating ourselves is the best way to combat propaganda and misinformation. We all need to introspect on all the things in our life that money cannot buy – health, happiness and the respect and love of the people around us. For most people, these things are more valuable than anything money could buy – but they don’t provide them enough time and energy to let them develop properly. I firmly believe that our place in this world is far greater than just being a consumer or another cog in a giant global economy. Our purpose is to experience all the beauty that life has to offer and make the best use of our time here.
Of course, material possession like access to a wide variety of food, motorbikes, cars, houses, and land can make our lives more fun but we should never let our possession take control over us. Make a list of the things you would need to enrich your life and take some time to think about each one. Will these things bring you joy? If so, think about how your life would improve by getting them and make plans for acquiring them.
Everything you need to know about Crypto - Launching new series
Hi! My name is Lakshman and I’m super new to the world of crypto. I’m starting this series to explore some of the things that I find fascinating about this space. I’ve been learning a lot from my friends over the last few years and will be getting their help to consult the content and to check for any errors. The aim of this series is to help people understand the full potential of this technology and encourage them to actively participate in the crypto revolution.
I’m an architect and environmental scientist by education and I run a non-profit in Bangalore, India along with my girlfriend Vanessa. The last few years have been a huge learning experience for the both of us. We have pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone and try to accept things as they come.
I grew up in a middle-class family and was raised by my mother and my grandma. The goal of pretty much everybody in our family was to get a high paying job as an engineer, doctor, or any other respectable profession – even better if that job was outside India. Sacrificing everything just to earn a higher salary was considered normal and running a business was looked down on. The family budget was tight, and everything was looked at in terms of scarcity – the perception that we didn’t have as much as other people. In truth, our family was better of that probably 80% of families in the country.
My mom had earned a commerce degree from university but didn’t pursue work in that field. Instead, she worked in a now almost extinct profession called medical transcription – which basically involved people in India typing down an American/British doctor’s notes following a consultation with a patient. This is mostly done for legal reasons as well as helping the hospital manage their records. The job didn’t pay particularly well and required long hours of intense work. My mom worked in this field for about 9 years and burnt out by the time I was in 10th grade.
The consensus in my family is that banks pay them interest for keeping their saving with the bank. They’ve been using the money the bank pays as interest to handle their monthly expenses and this is defined as smart and safe financial management by them. My mum is weary of investing in stocks, shares and mutual funds and feels that they are risky and a source of endless stress. Everyone knows that prices of everyday items in shops go up from year to year, but they don’t understand the concept of inflation. My family strongly believes that the government is on their side and don’t understand how the financial system works or how money comes into existence.
As kids, we feel like the adults around us know everything. Now I understand that they haven’t even scratched the surface. The innate curiosity to question the world around us has been bashed out of them by the education system and an all-pervasive media keeps their minds focussed on other things. This is a world where questioning the status quo makes you an outcast.
We learn our food habits from our parents, and we also learn our relationship to money from them. In my case, I started of at a severe disadvantage. The belief that all rich people are dishonest is a toxic one because it implies that you can’t get rich without being a crook.
I’ve been working on improving my relationship with money over the last few years and I think I’ve started to gain some insight into how the system works and this is what I will be sharing in this series.
Some of the articles in this series are –
· What is money?
· What are cryptocurrencies? What are the benefits?
· Is it possible for governments to ban crypto? What would the outcome be?
· Why does the price of cryptocurrencies fluctuate so much?
· What happens to my money when I lose the password to my wallet?
· How much energy is used to mine BCH?
· Why do forks in currencies occur? How did BCH separate from Bitcoin?
· What do miners actually do?
. What are SLP tokens? How do I create one?
· What are NFTs? How do I turn my artwork into an NFT?
· Top 15 cryptocurrencies explained
· Where do BCH transaction fees go?
· Txstreet - What's the difference between Bitcoin and BCH
· How do I spend my BCH?
· What is the difference between proof of work and proof of stake?
· What are BCH smart contracts? How do they work?
Have an amazing day! I hope you all enjoy it, and I would love to hear your feedback. Please let me know if there if any topic you’d like to learn more about. I’d be happy to work on an article about it!
If you like what we do, please follow us for new articles, leave a comment and consider supporting our Flipstarter campaign!
https://flipstarter.beanimaljourney.com/
Flipstarter Alert - Help grow BCH adoption in India
5 days ago, we launched our very first Flipstarter campaign. Our project aims to help small businesses in Bangalore survive the pandemic and grow the Bitcoin cash ecosystem in India. My name is Lakshman and I run a non-profit called BeAnimal along with my partner Vanessa. Our previous work has mostly been in the field of sustainability and environmental education. We were drawn towards the world of cryptos in 2018 and have been encouraging people to make the switch ever since.
The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the Indian economy and average household incomes have plummeted. It is estimated that some 230 million people have been pushed into poverty due to the pandemic and government-imposed lockdowns. The long-lasting impact on the overall economy is still unknown and can only be assessed once things start to open up again. The damage caused so far has completely wiped out several generation’s worth of progress, leaving people in a far worse condition than before.
Bitcoin cash is a tool that can protect people’s savings from being eroded by inflation. It has incredibly low transaction fees and truly is a currency of the people. It is decentralized which means that you are the only person who has control over the money in your wallet. No bank, government, or person can come in the way of you accessing your funds. Money can be sent instantly to anyone – anywhere in the world.
Our plan to increase the adoptions of Bitcoin cash in India is to leverage the network of small businesses, suppliers, and customers that we have already built a rapport with. BeAnimal Gourmet is a network of small businesses operating out of Bangalore, India that are trying to make the world a better place. These are people who really care about their customers and the planet. They have been struggling since the first wave of lockdowns and many have taken on additional jobs just to make ends meet. We want to help them out by collectivizing our activities and growing our customer base. This means that we have the potential of nudging thousands of people to make the switch to BCH in the coming year. We will offer discounts and freebies as an incentive to those paying with BCH. We will be able to send out flyers with BCH related information and answer questions that our customers may have.
If you are reading this in May-June 2021 then please consider supporting our Flipstarter. Any amount would go a long way. We have a chance to help people protect the things that they have worked their whole lives for.
https://flipstarter.beanimaljourney.com/
5 Reasons why we need to grow the BCH ecosystem in India
We first heard about Bitcoin Cash from our friend Vishnu at the beginning of 2018. We ended up staying at his house for a few months to fully soak in everything that he was telling us. He explained to us about the way the economy works and told us how the central banks manipulate the money supply. It’s funny how these things can be hidden right in plain sight, but once you’ve seen it you can never go back.
He helped us create a BCH wallet and soon after we made our first transaction. We have never looked back since. We accept BCH as a payment mode for all our businesses - the hostel, Pudducakes, brunches as well as BeAnimal Gourmet. Our goal is to empower small businesses and give power back to the people. Power to look after their wellbeing and that of their families. The current system has taken so much from everyone and has given nothing back.
We believe that a growing BCH ecosystem In India would help the common people greatly. The sense of being scammed by the government is very real and almost every aspect of public life is rife with corruption. The disparity between the rich and poor is enormous.
Just for reference - The average salary in the city where we stay is 18,000 rupees (247USD) with many unskilled workers earning much less that this. The cost of a 2-bedroom flat in a middle-class neighbourhood in Bangalore could easily range between 15000 and 25000 rupees per month. This means that the opportunities for growth are highly limited and the chance of improving one’s standing in society remains pitifully low.
Some of the other issues that people face are -
**Censorship** - There is news that the government is threatening to ban Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram from 26th May onwards if they don't comply with their new regulations. This is mostly about managing dissent on social media as well as targeting people who oppose the ruling party.
**Privacy issues** - India has been pushing to make the country cashless. Cashless payments are quite common in the city that we live in and the pandemic has accelerated this shift. This has led to large corporations having access to all this payment data.
**Freedom of press** – India ranks 142/180 on the 2021 world press freedom index. This means that the press is highly manipulated and there is no way of telling if the information you receive from your newspaper or television is the truth or not. All this while claiming to be the world’s largest democracy.
**Demonetization** - In Nov 2016 the government declared the Rs.500 bill and Rs.1000 bill invalid. This meant that people had only a few days to deposit all their cash in the bank and people who deposited large amounts of cash would be questioned as to how they got it. This also sets precedent for the government to demonetize further at their whim and fancy.
**Inflation** - The Indian rupee is one of the worst performing currencies in Asia. The prices of cooking oil and other everyday goods have almost doubled within the last 2 years. This has made it difficult for people to manage their day to day expenses.
There is no system of social security here and people's savings and gold/silver jewellery is really the only thing they have. Most people have sold/pawned their gold to be able to survive the first lockdown in 2020. We don't know how they will manage this time around. We feel that BCH will help level the playing field. A lot of people do not support funding an unjust, corrupt, and incompetent government but must do so anyway.
**The Flipstarter**
We have launched a Flipstarter campaign to create a snowball effect – it’s our way of helping small businesses and grow the BCH ecosystem in India at the same time. If you are reading this in May-June 2021 then you still have a chance to help us on this journey. Please consider donating as it would help a lot of people protect the fruit of their hard work. https://flipstarter.beanimaljourney.com
A little bit about us
Hi, we are Lakshman and Vanessa from BeAnimal. We are both young entrepreneurs working in the field of sustainable food and hospitality. We started our company BeAnimal in 2018 to improve people’s understanding of themselves and the world around them. We have worked with school and college students in India as well as young professionals from Europe.
We planned to sustain our education efforts through the profits generated by our tour company – planting trees and providing education to the underprivileged. We tested this model out in 2019 and it was a grand success.
In January 2020, we started the BeAnimal Hostel in Bangalore, India. The hostel was to serve as our base for the tours as well as a home away from home for weary travellers. In April 2020, the pandemic hit India and many of our foreign guests were asked to head home by their governments. India entered a lockdown for many months during which many small and medium scale businesses went bankrupt.
We adapted to the new situation by creating a dessert brand called Pudducakes that makes the healthiest and tastiest cakes in the whole town. Another project of ours is called the ‘Vegan Brunch Club’ – it’s a weekly social event that brings people from all walks of life together to indulge in some of the best food they have ever eaten. And finally, our latest project – BeAnimal Gourmet – is a platform to promote sustainable food businesses started in April 2021.
Our projects:
BeAnimal Journey Foundation – It’s a registered non-profit that aims to provide people of all ages with holistic environmental education.
Tours (2018) – We organize tours of India for college students and young professionals. These tours focus on yoga, meditation, self-work, experiencing a new culture, and trying amazing food.
The Hostel (Jan 2020) – Our hostel in Bangalore provides travellers with a home away from home. We have 30 beds, 2 lovely terraces, co-working spaces, a library, and an in-house café.
BeAnimal Explains (June 2020) – It’s an encyclopedia of sustainability and modern life – something of a roadmap to make sense of all the knowledge that makes up the world that we live in. The first book covers food, nutrition, mental health, and physical wellbeing.
Pudducakes (Aug 2020) – It’s an artisanal dessert brand that we started in 2020. Our best-selling flavours are dark chocolate with salted caramel & pecan nut, rose and pistachio, and strawberry cheesecake!
Vegan brunch Club (Oct 2020) – The vegan brunch club is in its 25th iteration. It’s a community event that happens at the hostel every Sunday.
BeAnimal Gourmet (Apr 2021) – We are currently a collection of 10 brands working together to help the customer have easier access to our products. We sell everything from kombucha to vegan cheese!
You can find out more on our website:
www.beanimaljourney.com
India’s first vegan hostel now accepts Bitcoin Cash
Freedom has always been a big part of why we do what we do. In the world that we live in, you have a lot of people who talk about freedom but very few who know where the issue lies and how we can create a more free and loving society.
The concept of sustainability helps us understand which systems take more from the planet than what they give back. As we learned more about the world that we live in, we also came across many ideas on better ways to organize society and create a fair and sustainable economic system. Blockchain technology and bitcoin cash seem to hold the key to the future of the economic system. We would like to do our bit and be a part of this transition.
Our story starts here -
Our journey to create India’s first vegan hostel started in 2017 with the launch of our non-profit BeAnimal. We started BeAnimal to create awareness in society about the challenges that await us from an environmental and societal point of view. We felt that the education system did very little to discuss these issues and that information was purposely suppressed to maintain the status quo – which is basically that human beings are superior to all other beings on the planet and follow a system of thinking that promotes short term profit over the health of the planet.
We have little to no control over the decisions that other people make but we feel that we must share the information that we have with the world. We are currently working on a series called BeAnimal Explains which is an encyclopedia of sustainability and modern life. The first volume focuses on mental & physical health, food, nutrition, and happiness.
My girlfriend, Vanessa, and I had just moved to India from Europe after completing our architecture degrees. We had never planned to start a hostel at this point or even work in the tourism industry.
At first, we were doing projects related to environmental education – traveling and teaching as much as we could. Later this morphed into us bringing groups of college students and young working professionals from Europe and all over the world to India as part of our BeAnimal Tours. Our goal was to help them get in touch with themselves and the planet that we are a part of. Then in early 2020, we started the BeAnimal Hostel in Bangalore. It’s the first vegan hostel in India. The atmosphere within the hostel is light, vibrant, and filled with energy, yet peaceful and calm at the same time. Bangalore is a huge metropolis of over 11 million people. Our goal was to create a space where the environmental and vegan communities from all over the world can come together and share ideas. Our hostel has been open for a little over a year now and we have hosted some amazing people from all over the world.
Most of our 2020 were spent in lockdown just like many other parts of the world and even when we felt like giving up we just kept going. Introducing Bitcoin cash and other cryptos as a mode of payment will greatly help us navigate through whatever economic challenges await us in the future. We are excited for this new step towards freedom, privacy, and the future of money.
@beanimal
