Bitcoin Miners Sell Stockpiles of BTC

Bitcoin miners are selling off stockpiles of coins. This comes as the granddaddy of all cryptocurrencies sees its biggest drop in four weeks.

Morgan Stanley says Ethereum’s dominance could dwindle as more competition emerges.

As the Securities and Exchange Commission begins its investigation into Binance, the popular crypto exchange has suspended operations in Israel. The country’s financial regulator had been asking questions about Binance’s business practices.

Crypto app downloads increased by 279 percent following Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad.

Circle doubles valuation to $9 billion. The company is aiming to go public.

The U.S. Justice Department is creating its first ever director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team position. It will be filled by Eun Young Choi.

The FBI is creating a Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit to address crimes related to digital assets.

Melania Trump may have secretly purchased her own NFT.

Whelp! They did it. Canada has asked crypto exchanges to freeze 34 accounts connected to truckers involved in the protest convoy.

Ukraine has legalized cryptocurrency.

What to do with your crypto before you die to ensure your heirs receive it.

Venture capital group Sequoia Capital has earmarked $500 million for investments into crypto firms.

Can smart contracts eliminate logins?

Long-time investor Charlie Munger compares cryptocurrencies to a venereal disease.

How to make $100 a day in passive crypto income.

How Blockchains Can Fix the Centralization Problem

Jack Dorsey, the CEO and founder of Twitter, believes he shouldn’t have the power to banish people from his platform, even though he used that power against a sitting president. He said such bans could “erode a free and open global internet.”

Dorsey is also the CEO and founder of payments company Square and an investor in bitcoin. Decentralization is clearly on his radar.

In 2019, Twitter announced that it was funding research into a decentralized social network called Bluesky. What makes the announcement so interesting is that one of the largest centralized social networks is experimenting with decentralization. That not only says a lot about Twitter, but it says a lot about the current state of the internet. It has become a collage of walled gardens.

The conversation on decentralizing the Web has much to do with the difference between protocols and platforms. TCP/IP is a protocol. No one owns it. No one controls it. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, are platforms and we all know who controls them.

Blockchains also have protocols. Some of the popular blockchain protocols include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, EOS, Litecoin, and Polkadot.

A blockchain is a secure method for storing data. A protocol is a set of rules or guidelines that govern how that data is communicated. If no one owns it and no one controls it, then no one can stop anyone else from building on top of it. Once an application has been built, no one can take it down. This is the concept behind Unstoppable Domains, a company that sells blockchain domain names that allow people to synchronize all of their crypto wallets into a single address that bears the owner’s name. Each domain name is a private key. As long as that private key is secure, whoever controls it controls the domain name and no one can unpublish it, delete it, remove it, ban it, confiscate it, or hide it. Of course, browsers can always stop people from seeing a website or domain name, but since end users can choose which browser they use, that should not be a problem for anyone ready for a decentralized internet.

Whoever controls the platform controls the content. Facebook controls everything within its domain through algorithms and human editors. Twitter controls all the content within its domain. Google controls which websites rise to the top of its search queries and which ads are displayed. Amazon essentially controls the online retail industry.

Legacy social media will always be beholden to advertisers. Anything deemed a threat to advertiser interest is subject to editing, blocking, deletion, and deplatforming. People can lose their means of income just by running afoul of policies they didn't agree to when they joined a platform.

Blockchain technology threatens to turn this reality on its head by reverting the internet back to its decentralized nature through the implementation of competing and cooperating protocols. And social media can be a part of that.

An excerpt from my forthcoming book Cryptosocial: How Cryptocurrencies Are Changing Social Media, to be published by Business Expert Press in March 2022. Want to read it? Join my launch team for more information.

Cryptocracy is a decentralized newsletter published 4 times a week. I curate the latest news and crypto analysis from some of the brightest minds in crypto, and sometimes offer a little insightful and snarky commentary. Always fresh, always interesting, and always crypto.

First published at Cryptocracy. None of this is financial advice. Do your own research and consult a financial advisor before investing in any crypto.

Image credit: TechCrunch