Illuvium Trailer - New P2E Hype!
In case you didn’t notice, you will read it in this article. Last Saturday Illuvium dropped its gameplay trailer and it is amazing. For everybody out there who doesn’t know, Illuvium is supposed to be the first AAA crypto game that will come out and its release date is something around Q1 in 2022. In this article we will break down what this trailer included and what this means for the game.
Overview
Let’s start of with a view facts about Illuvium for those who don’t know what this game is about. It is a game based on the Ethereum blockchain and it is supposed to be the first AAA crypto game that comes out. I must say that the graphics are truly amazing as you can see from the linked trailer.
The game by itself is easily explained. In the world of Illuvium exists different Illuvials. Each Illuvials has three evolution forms and for each evolution you need three Illuvials of the same kind. These Illuvials are treated as NFTs and you can use them to participate in fights or catch more Illuvials. Each Illuvial has a certain type, like water or fire, and a certain trait, like Slayer or Rogue. Additionallyto that, this game will have recources, weapons and armor which can be also bought and sold on the in game market place and which are supposed to be treated as NFTs as well.
There are 6 tiers of Illuvials, zero to five, where Tier 0 Illuvials will be a Free To play experience. This is done for people who want to learn the game without spending any money first. It is also in discussion whether it is possible to grind the way up by farming Tier 0 Illuvials to then proceed to the next Tier. In order to catch higher Tier Illuvials, players will have to play a certain amount of ETH to travel into another environment. There the player will have a certain amount of energy which he can use to gather resources or catch Illuvials. Obviously, this game is much deeper and will have a lot more mechanics than I just described but I think for a overall overview this should be enough.
Trailer
After describing the game, lets break down the gameplay trailer which you can watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzT88eN4gts
I want to point out some things that came to my eye. First the intro in this trailer is amazing. Although I don’t think that this will be the graphics, I am most certainly sure that the following picture will be in the game. It shows the battlefield if you are battling another player and I think this looks more than cool! As you can see, there are different types of Illuvials and it will be crucial to select the ones that are most fitting for this match up. The selection will be the most important part before a battle because this game will be an auto-battler. This means that there will be almost no chances to change anything during the battle.
Besides some cool animations and battle sequences I want to point out another cool screenshot. Here, we are seeing how the world will look like if you are not on the battlefield. As I interpret it this would be an area that you would have to travel to firstly find any Illuvials. You will find them if you are exploring the area. Furthermore, it will be possible to collect resources what we can see in the third picture.
Conclusion
I am very excited for this game to come out and dive into this game heals overhead. I really think that it has the most potential due to the fact that it is called the next gen Pokemon. The best part is that every Illuvial that you catch is a NFT so you will have ownership over your Illuvials. The only thing that I am afraid of is that the entrance prizes for the Tier 1 Illuvials and higher will sky rocket relatively quickly especially with the current ETH gas prizes.
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 3rd November 2021
Sources:
https://www.illuvium.io/
Attention! - Upcoming Crypto Events To Look Out For
In this article we will cover some good and some bad news for crypto. The latter being the infrastructure bill that is going to be released soon. The good news would be about Tesla and some more institutional investors! At the end we will take a look what this news could mean for us as investors.
Tesla and BTC
A recently uncovered SEC filing made by Tesla in September suggests that the Electric Vehicle Manufacturer could soon begin accepting Bitcoin payments again. This is because the SEC filing specifies that “we may in the future restart the practice of transacting in cryptocurrencies”. For context, Tesla briefly accepted BTC payments earlier this year before it dropped them in mid-May because of environmental concerns. This was one of the many catalysts for the crypto market crash back in May. Elon Musk has said that Tesla will accept Bitcoin payments again once most of the energy regarding Bitcoin mining is coming from renewables. As mentioned in previous articles, this threshold is about to be cracked which would lead for Tesla to accept Bitcoin payments again. This could imply that other companies would follow soon leading to a Bull-Run on BTC, especially if the Tesla stock continues to perform the way it has.
Banks and Crypto Custody
The lack of regulations seems to be a major concern for institutions that are looking to get into crypto. Oddly enough the banks are craving crypto the most. This is because they can see all the billions flowing out of their client accounts into crypto exchanges like Coinbase. The only way that banks could compete is by offering services in-house. The crypto services that banks are the most desperate to set up relate to custody. For example, Spanish banks are looking to get clarification from the Spanish Central Bank, and it looks like they got this clarification. U.S. regulators recently noted that they will be aiming to clarify custody regulations in the coming months. This could lead to a physically backed BTC ETF which would be great news for the crypto community.
Infrastructure Bills
With this being said, lets also take a look on some not so great events that will soon happen. In the next days two bills are about to be passed. The first one being the infrastructure-bill and the second being the human-infrastructure bill. The first one totals around one trillion dollars, and it contains two clauses that could be problematic for crypto. The first one would be the vague definition what a cryptocurrency broker is which could force certain individuals and institutions in crypto to collect KYC information about individuals and institutions for tax purposes. The second is the requirement to collect KYC information about any counter party in a crypto transaction worth more than ten thousand dollars which is impossible to do for things like DeFi protocols.
The second bill totals two trillion dollars. This bill has only one effect on the crypto space. This involves tax loopholes involving complex derivative trades. With that being said, apparently the U.S. treasury was trying to add additional tax reporting rules for cryptocurrencies to this bill and it is unclear if they succeeded.
Conclusion
Due to the reason that the last event was not that bullish, we could see a market correction over the next few days. But with all the great news in the tube, I think that this will cause a bounce back to new all-time highs. As for me, I am very excited for the next weeks to come. What about you guys, what is your strategy moving into the last two months of the year?
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 2nd November 2021
Sources:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/telsa-hints-it-may-soon-resume-support-for-crypto-payments
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-regulators-are-exploring-policy-for-banks-to-handle-crypto-says-fdic-chair
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/579250-democrats-could-pass-infrastructure-spending-bills-by-tuesday
Brace Yourself - Potential BTC Risk Coming!
With all the good news going around the world about Bitcoin, there is a massive risk going on right now. A risk that not many people are fully aware of. This risk could not only impact on the network’s security and scalability but also further enrage regulators and the general public. In this article we will take a look at what possibly could bring BTC into this position and whether this really could happen.
The Problem and What Caused It
Starting off, lets look at the current problem. When was the last time you looked at your electricity bill? Depending on where you are in the world right now, but it is very likely to have shot up tremendously. It seems like the whole world is going through a massive energy crisis which the world did not see in decades.
This crisis is hitting particular countries more than others. Where I currently live the problem is very acute. The gas prices on the continent have shot up over 400% over the year. What comes with that is that a lot of electricity companies goes bankrupt which causes the supply of electricity go down which also makes the price of electricity rise.
It seems like while everybody was focused on the China-Evergrande story the energy crisis sneaked up and hit us from the back. Staying in China, this led to necessity of rationalize the energy between different provinces and industries. Apparently, workers were ordered to take the stairs and manufacturers were forced to cut the production drastically in the lead up to Christmas. This left some households for days without power. To wrap up the problem: The world is facing a massive energy crisis and the winter in the northern hemisphere is around the corner.
Now that we understand the problem, the next interesting questions would be: How did we get here? There are several reasons why this problem occurred. Some of them are structural whereas others are driven by the severe impact that the COVID pandemic has had on the global markets. If we take a closer look at the latter one it becomes clear why we are facing this energy crisis.
When it comes to power companies, they have to invest in order to meet the potential demand that they foresee in the future for them to generate a return on their investment. During the pandemic lockdown last year, the economic activity fell drastically. Therefore, the demand for power also fell dramatically. Many of these power companies assumed that this low demand would be a sustained one as economies struggled to recover from the COVID hit. As a result of this, there was very little investment into sustainable energy sources. With banks not willing to invest more money in such activities this lead to a downwards spiral. This brought us into the situation where power generation capacity was at very low levels coming out of the lockdowns.
However, when the world came out of the lockdowns, the demand for energy shot up to the moon. The situation was as follows: increasing demand with very reduced supplies which is the perfect situation for the increasing prices we are currently experiencing. Unfortunately, the power crisis goes way deeper than that. This can be tracked back to some of the policy decisions made over the past decade by many countries facing this crisis. A good example is Europe where they are trying to eliminate perfectly good and green nuclear energy as a result of the Fukushima incident. While it is very dangerous to have these nuclear power plants around in areas with high risk of earthquakes and tsunamis, Europe is not known for such incidents. Chernobyl being the big exception, but this accident happened because of human failure in nuclear plant which didn’t meet the safety standard of today’s time. Nevertheless, by eliminating these kind of energy sources and not adding additional energy sources, this lead to a over reliance on gas which is now short of supply.
Bitcoin Mining
Now that I outlined the current global problems, we have to ask ourselves: What does it have to do with our precious Bitcoin? As most of you probably know, Bitcoin is mined in BTC rigs which are basically a lot of computers. These computers are obviously run with electricity, a lot of electricity. In fact the power needed to mine Bitcoin in a year is more than the demand of numerous countries.
Upon recently this mining used to take place predominantly in China. This was because the coal power that was generated in China was incredibly cheap. This changed last summer when China cracked down on almost all of crypto activity in its country. This has lead to a massive exodus of these miners away from China. These miners are now moving towards Texas into the United States. This obviously has lead to an increase of the Bitcoin production since the miners now have to compete for resources with other industries. So what we have now is that these mining companies have a increasing cost of production. These reduce the profitability of the miners and make it less appealing to run these machines. If there is a point where mining BTC starts getting unprofitable, the marginal miners will switch off their machines. This means fewer miners are securing the network and the hash rate would fall.
Energy Ratios
However, it is not the increasing costs that the miners and BTC holders should worry about. The more dangerous scenario is to be completely shut out of the energy grid. No society wants to see people suffering or even dying because of a lack of power to heat their homes. This means, that if we get into a situation in which energy becomes incredibly scarce, governments won’t just allow prices to rise in response. They will begin to ration the power, and this will mean that those industries that are not seen as critical will get excluded. Unfortunately, in the list of essential industries, BTC mining is probably found somewhere around the bottom.
In fact, if we look at the past months we can see just how bad the perception is by politicians and the general public about wasteful cryptocurrency mining. Of course, some of these news are incredibly wrong, because these miners tend to use the cheapest energy to mine to increase their profits. In fact, the cheapest energy around is renewable energy as can be seen by the example of El Salvador which are using volcanoes to mine BTC. Nevertheless, Bitcoin has a hard standing with those kind of facts which does not make the situation better for Bitcoin.
So how likely is it that we might experience the described situation? It all depends how cold the winter is going to be that we will face. It is very hard to tell at the moment. However, it is anywhere near as cold as last year, we could be in trouble. Lets assume this case would happen: we have an energy crisis and the power is rationed. Bitcoin miners are forced to shut down their operations or at least operate at staged intervals. What would the impact be?
The immediate impact would be a drastic fall in hash rate. This means that there is less mining power available in order to propagate blocks. Generally, when there is a fall in hash rate, the difficulty to mine falls as well. This would allow more marginal miners to join as the profitability increases. However, this can not happen if they are not allowed to switch on their machines. When the hash rate stays low for a longer period of time this could bring the network to a crawl and would sky rocket the transaction costs. These events could seriously affect Bitcoin’s ability to be used as a medium of exchange. Furthermore, hash rate is essential to keep the network secure. The lower the hash rate the less secure the network is from a minor take over. All of the mentioned points could be the end for the crypto cull market that we are experiencing right now.
Inflation Hedge
Or could it? Lets stop for a minute with all of these negative thoughts and take a look on the positive side of things. Now while this crisis is very concerning there is a silver lining here. This is why one of the biggest impact this energy crisis could have is even more inflation. This is caused by the easy-money-printing by the governments. It looks like we will experience a long and persistent inflation over the next years. To make things worse is that the growth of the industries and economies around the world seem to stagnate. This leads us in the situation with hot inflation and limited growth. This is some bad news for the overall economy, but we will look at it from the crypto perspective.
In this environment of high inflation, people are searching for stores of value and hedges. While many think that this would be the role that gold would fulfill, crypto seems to be on the rise. This means that if we could see the catastrophe playing out as I described it above this could lead to a massive run on BTC which would sky rocket the price of Bitcoin.
Conclusion
A few closing thoughts on this article. I really hope that we will not experience such a scenario where the power has to be rationed. I think that the negatives will severely outweigh the positives of such a scenario. While it would slow down the mass adoption of crypto, I do not think that it would cause a destruction or even elimination of crypto. If the prices would suddenly drop this would only mean one thing: Buy the dip. Since more and more institutions see BTC as an inflation hedge this could be a good time to stack for the next bull market.
What do you guys think? Is this scenario realistic? And what is your approach towards these times?
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 1st November 2021
Sources:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-27/europe-s-energy-crisis-is-about-to-go-global-as-gas-prices-soar
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-07-13/bitcoin-miners-building-rigs-must-navigate-world-of-crypto-power-hunting
https://www.axios.com/energy-prices-rising-crisis-fd8ce2f0-53d6-43b9-8ff8-93107e109722.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opinion/energy-climate-iran-nuclear.html
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-digs-coal-oil-gains-energy-crisis-deepens-2021-10-08/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/10/19/energy-crisis-2021-how-bad-is-it-and-how-long-will-it-last/?sh=d0e3a2f4c630
https://cbeci.org/index
Splinterlands - My First Rewards & Strategy Going Forward
After my first season in Splinterlands, I wanted to share my experience in this article. We will start off with my rewards and then I will try to outline my strategy for the further weeks. I am still trying to find a decent strategy to push for the higher leagues, but I think I am starting to understand this game more each day I am playing it.
Rewards
As expected, my rewards in Bronze 3 were not that amazing. I knew that I would get only five loot chests and that my rewards would not be the rarest items in the game. On the other hand, I am still a little disappointed because in my rewards chest and in my daily quests so far, I was not able to get a single reward card. Maybe it is bad luck but maybe the developers deactivated the reward cards for Bronze 3 as well. Maybe some of you can tell me if my assumption is correct.
Nevertheless, I am starting to understand the game more and the one thing that I learned already is that tanks in the first position are one of the most important units that you should have. That is why my number one look out will be for price efficient tanks that could help me to get to Bronze 2. Another thing that I learned is that magic is very powerful. This is the reason why I am very tending towards magic cards right now. With this being said, I know that in higher division there could be a possibility of not having a match that allows magic. Due to this I have to have back up plans as well.
Next Steps Moving Forward
As mentioned above I will try to put a strategy together to get out of Bronze 3. I read and heard that the main aim should be to reach Silver 3 since there are some nice rewards to get. But for me I think I should try and focus to reach Bronze 2 first. This requires me to have 1000 CP. My question now is: How do I manage my resources to get to Bronze 2? The first thing that comes to my mind was to load up some money and try to find some cheap cards. On a second look this strategy looks VERY expensive and I am not ready to spend this amount of money into a game that I just started playing.
The second thing that a lot of people recommend is the renting system. It seems like it is very doable to acquire 1000 CP for about 2 to 3 DEC a day. With this strategy I could just get one legendary card and be done with the CP. But I don’t think that this will help me succeed in the Bronze 2 divison. That is why I am trying to spread the CP a little bit up into 2-3 splinters that I will be mainly using plus the neutral splinter. This way I hope to get some useful cards that will help me win games moving forward as well as keep the 1000 CP to stay in Bronze 2. I roughly tried to calculate how this would look like:
Given the fact that I will be paying 3 DEC a day and assuming that I will get about 0.2 DEC per win, I would need 15 wins a day to come out even. If I have about 25-30 games to play a day, I think that this rate is doable. This of course only works if I get the cards that will help me win and proceed. To make this more profitable I would need to find cards that are cheaper. But this I will have to find out by myself. For those who don’t know, the website PeakMonsters is providing very useful information and you are also able to rent your cards there. But most of the readers probably know that already.
Conclusion
I am very excited to track my progress in this game and I am thinking about posting about it every once in a while. I also saw some weekly challenges to post about, so I will try to write about them as well. In the meantime, if you guys have some advice for me on which monsters, I should rent, I am always very thankful for any help!
If you haven’t joined this game yet, feel free to join it with my affiliate link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 31st October 2021
Sources:
https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle_history
https://peakmonsters.com/rentals
My Crypto Mistakes - Avoid Them!
The recent BTC rally made the crypto market hot again. This means that mistakes are easy to make. There is a reason why buying the top and selling the dip is a meme. When the gains are big enough, even the most hardcore hodlers start to feel the pressure. Is it a pump and dump or a ticket to financial freedom? Figuring this stuff out is very hard, I would even say it is almost impossible to hit the golden ticket. But there are some things that us “mortal people” can do to protect ourselves. One of these things is to recognize what we can do wrong. And in this article, we will take a look at some mistakes that I am pretty certain everybody has done already, especially in the crypto markets.
Trading Strategy
The first thing I want to mention is a pretty obvious one. But when I started putting my money into things, I did this mistake. You should never start investing or trading without an actual plan. Before you deposit even a single penny into a cryptocurrency you have to ask yourself if you are playing the long game or just gambling short term. For me long term means that we are hodling the coin for months or even years. This means that you believe in the project and will hold it even though it dropped by 90%. On the other hand, short term means that we are just holding the asset for days or weeks and hoping to sell the investment with a good amount of profit.
If you decide to take the long-term path, the best way to maximize your gains is the DCA-method (Dollar Cost Average). That means that you should buy the asset in periodic intervals, no matter what the price is. Multiple studies have compared the DCA method with people who waited to buy the dip. The result was that DCA is more profitable in almost every case than waiting and buying the dip. This is of course due to the reason that we can not look into the future and possibly know where the dip would be.
If you want to play the short term, be prepared for some sleepless nights because the crypto market never sleeps, and neither will you. I also experienced this path, and I wouldn’t do that again. In my opinion the long-term solution is much more beneficial towards your life balance and will make you happier over the long run. Of course, you could miss out on some 10x gains but at the moment they are very hard to find. But if you know an easy and stressless way on finding them, let me know :P.
Exit Strategy
This brings me to the next mistake I did early on: It is not having an Exit strategy. One of the meanings of this is that this is the point where you convert your crypto gains into fiat money. For other people that are more crypto lovers it is converting your crypto gains from your Altcoins into Bitcoin. For me it is very obvious that I want to convert my gains into BTC purely because of the trading strategy I mentioned before. For me BTC is just at the beginning, and it might be one of the most valuable assets in the future. That is why most of the crypto gains I make are going into Bitcoin. On the other hand, it is not a crime to admit that currently the world runs with fiat money and BTC will most likely not bring any food to the table (except you are living in El Savador). This means that there is also no shame to convert your gains into fiat money.
With this being said, there are two strategies on how to do that. All it once or small parts over time. The advantage of the first one is that it will make your tax return information much easier to manage and you don’t have to care about what to do next. You can lay back and plan your next master plan for the next gains to make. The disadvantage of course is that there is no way of knowing where the top is, so you could be at risk of missing out on some more gains. This could lead to FOMO and trust me this happened to me more often than I would have wished for. The second way that I mentioned is to take profits at fixed intervals. It is like the reverse DCA method but now you are selling your gains. This requires a little bit more work from your side but is probably a better way of keeping you away from the FOMO.
Regardless of which strategy you choose it is important to stick to it. This also happened to me. I had a well thought trough exit strategy. Mid way trough I changed my strategy, and this bit me in my butt later on. Not only do you have the stress of quickly coming up with a new strategy, but you are also more likely to do a silly mistake that would cost you your well-deserved gains.
Indicator Metrics
The last thing I want to mention are some indicators that people should pay attention to if they are buying into a crypto currency. One of these things is the order book depth. This is a representation of the buy and sell orders for this crypto pair on that exchange. I learned that when the sell wave is larger than the buy wave, it means that there is not much demand for this asset. The steps that can be often seen in these charts are called sell walls. These walls mark a price where a lot of people will be selling. The higher the wall the harder it will be to push past this point. The previous points are also valid for the buy wave, just reversely.
Some other macro metrics like trading volume and circulating supply are also very important to look at. Here, we are talking about the trading volume that you would see on sites like CoinmarketCap. These gives you a good overview over the trading volume across all exchanges. A good cryptocurrency should have an ample trading volume relative to its market cap and ideally that trading volume should be high on more than one exchange. This means that if you find a token that is traded on just one DEX, give it a little bit more time and research it properly before investing into it. It might be a scam.
When it comes to circulating supply, this can also be easily be checked on CoinmarketCap by the grey bar next to the trading volume. If there is no grey bar, either the entire supply is in circulation, or the website does not have access to this data. This macro metric is important because a low circulating supply relative to the total, means that there is a risk to be dumped on by early investors or the team behind the project. This is the reason to check upcoming vesting schedules of coins and tokens allocated to the team and early investors and any other parties that could start selling.
The last indicator I want to mention is the total market cap. The larger the market cap of a crypto currency the more money it will take to push its price up. Therefore, people should look at coins with a lower market cap if they want to find a gem that could pull a 10x gain. On the other side, it also takes much less capital to push down the price. Like always in live, you don’t get anything for free so if something tends to pay out a higher reward it also has a higher risk.
Conclusion
To end this article, I wanted to say that I made all the above mistakes and ignored some of the macro metrics that I introduced. And in every case, I fell on my face with these investments. That’s why I wanted to share my experience with all of you so maybe you can avoid these mistakes. Furthermore, I wanted to mention that I never tried to do leverage trading. In my opinion people should only invest the money that they have and never put them into a more vulnerable position. With this being said, I hope you enjoyed the article and can avoid some of these mistakes during current and future times!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 30th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.dreamstime.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/de/
https://medium.com/hackernoon/depth-chart-and-its-significance-in-trading-bdbfbbd23d33
https://www.alignedholistics.com/blog/why-not-making-mistakes-is-the-biggest-mistake
My First Steps in Splinterlands
The past month I was constantly seeing some articles about this card game Splinterlands. Since I am a strategy game and collection card game lover, I decided to give it a go. In this article I wanted to share my experiences with this game and what my next steps would be.
Beginning
Like I mentioned in the intro, I like to play strategy games. If they are combined with collectibles that is even greater! In my childhood I used to play the Trading Card Game Yu-Gi-Oh. These were some amazing times (God, how I hated Jinzo!) and about 3 years ago I started playing Hearthstone. The idea of having a card collection and playing it wherever you want, was amazing. The only problem with that was that the cards were never mine. That’s why I was totally thrilled when I got to know about Splinterlands. It combines both of the advantages of the games that I mentioned before. You can play on your PC and basically everywhere you want, and you have total ownership over the cards you have in the game because they are treated as NFTs.
First Steps
After acknowledging this game, I did what a true gamer does first: Watching some YouTubers and reading some articles! It didn’t take long for me to want to play the game. I am the kind of person that likes to grind my way up, but this was one of the first things I had to learn. The players are only eglible to get the rewards if they pay an initial 10$ for the Spellbook. I don’t think this is a big deal since all of us gamers would pay some money at some point. I don’t want to get started on how much money I already spent for in game items that are not mine, so I thought this could be a good initial investment to have fun and grind my way up.
When you start playing you don’t own any cards. Fortunately, the game gives you shadow cards to start playing and I think that in the lower leagues it is totally enough to win some games and get to learn the game more. After a few battles I got the hang of it and proceeded very quickly into Bronze 3. With each battle won I also got some DEC (Dark Energy Cristals) which are one currency in this game. With these DEC you would be able to purchase or rent some cards. With this being said, I quickly realized that to proceed into higher Division I needed some Card Power. Players would get Card Power by owning Cards or having rented cards in their account. Furthermore, the higher your Division the higher rewards you get. While in Bronze 3 you only get 5 Loot Chests, in Gold 1 you would get six times as many! Additionally to that, there is a daily quest which requires you to win battles with a certain condition which rewards you with an additional Loot Chest.
Crushed Dreams and Next Steps
With all of these information I was pretty excited about this game and ready to start my grind! Unfortunately, the first problems were straight around the corner. First thing I learned is that you can not play an infinite amount of games. If you still want to earn some DEC per win then you have to keep an eye on your ECR (Energy Capture Rate). The lower it gets the less DEC you get per win. I told to myself: No problem, it could take you a little bit longer but with daily quests and DEC rewards you should be able to grind your way up.
But then the update hit! After this update, DEC rewards were disabled for players in Bronze 3. That was like a hit in the face for me. This means that I have to get out of Bronze 3 to get DEC rewards. But to get out of Bronze 3 I need at least 1000 Card Power. This means that I either have to purchase or rent cards to accumulate this much CP. At this point this is not possible without putting in some money. Furthermore, I noticed that about a month ago the cards’ values weren’t as much as they are now. I guess because the game gained a lot of popularity the prices of the cards are rising as more and more people are staring out with this game.
I think my next steps would still be to stay in Bronze 3 first and try my luck with the rewards I am getting there. I still have a chance of getting card rewards in the Loot Chests so I hope that I could accumulate some CP by doing daily quests and finishing the season. For the long run I am definitely planning on monitoring the market a little bit more so that I could understand what prices are good for which card and maybe then start putting some money into the game. Furthermore it is important to notice that an update is right around the corner. A new set of cards will be realesed some time in November which would put more cars onto the market which would then lower the prices of cards. This would be an additional motivation for me.
Conclusion
To summarize it all, I am very excited to play this game for the long run. The different cards and abilities of these makes it a very interesting and very fun experience if you are a card game lover. I didn’t go into detail in many parts of the game. Like how there are different boundaries for each battle and which splinter is good against which splinter but I think I am not experienced enough to cover these topics in detail. Nevertheless, I will try to keep you guys updated on my journey throughout this game. If you have any tips on how to approach this game I am always more than happy to read your feedback or receive any message!
If you haven’t joined this game yet, feel free to join it with my affiliate link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 29th October 2021
Sources:
https://splinterlands.com/?p=faq
Cosmos - The Internet of Blockchains
In this article I want to take a look at the future of cryptocurrency. It looks like the future will have several cryptocurrencies working together to host the global needs. By the looks of things there will be no one single cryptocurrency dominating the world. The only way that cryptocurrency will reach global adoption is interoperability. A future where each coin or blockchain does what it does best while interacting with the others. This brings us to today’s topic: Cosmos. This project tries to make the above-mentioned dream happen. We will take a look at the basic of Cosmos, the planned roadmap as well as possible concerns of this project.
Basics of Cosmos and Atom
The main technology of this project is the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC). The IBS basically makes it possible for just about every cryptocurrency blockchain to interact with each other via one or more hubs. By connecting to hubs it becomes possible to trade and transfer tokens between blockchains in a completely frictionless manner the same way you do on a centralized crypto exchange. You can compare this to the basic bridges between blockchains which make it possible to move tokens between more than two chains at a time and incur massive costs if Ethereum is involved.
Any crypto project that was build using the cosmos software developer kit (SDK) can be an IBC-hub. Furthermore, the Cosmos SDK makes it possible to create new cryptocurrencies from scratch. Cosmos-based blockchains all use the tendermint consensus mechanism which is one of the most secure proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms in crypto so far. Additionally, it is one of the most scalable ones. The trade off for these advantages is unfortunately centralization. These blockchains are inherently limited to about 130 validators. That is the reason why you should always choose one of the top 130 validators if you choose to delegate your ATOM-Tokens if you decide to stake them. Even so, some of the largest and most popular cryptocurrencies so far were built using the cosmos SDK including the Binance Chain or Terra.
The strategy of the developers is to make the some of the most advanced and decentralized applications ever seen so that the cosmos blockchain will be the go-to hub in the future. Some of the recent event were: the launching of “Gravity” a decentralized exchange. Like Uniswap, Gravity is an automated market maker. The difference is that Gravity allows you to trade any tokens belonging to the blockchains that are connected to the Cosmos-hub. Furthermore, the Gravity’s transaction batching technology makes front running impossible. If you want to try it out, the main platform leveraging Gravity right now is Emeris.
Roadmap
With this being said, we have to take a look at the planned roadmap. According to the roadmap Cosmos will soon be rolling out its interchain staking feature. This will make it possible for Cosmos validators to secure more than one blockchain. Furthermore, the Cosmos Team is looking to bring Bitcoin to Cosmos by the end of this year. Another feature, Cosmos is also looking to introduce is its chain name service. This will make it possible for Cosmos wallet addresses to display a human readable name instead of a random string of letters and numbers. Some of the most interesting features are planned to be released somewhere around 2022 with them being NFTs, Tokenization and Staking Derivatives.
Concerns
This all sounds incredible on paper but it looks like there might be some issues putting these plans into practice. Some issues could be tracked back due to tensions in the different developer teams. This is because each company working on Cosmos has a slightly different perspective on the project and what it should look like in the future but these kind of things are to be expected. Energy is created by friction as optimists would say. What is concerning though is that Cosmos’s core developers seem to be splintering off to start their own crypto projects.
Another hindering factor of the growth of Cosmos is the commitment of the developers to the core values of cryptocurrency. At the first glance that would be very honorable and good but focusing on things like privacy and pure decentralization is going to limit the amount of capital that can flow into a crypto project. On the other hand this could be considered a good thing since this makes Cosmos immune against the coming regulations. This could be the only way DeFi and other projects would survive in the future.
Conclusion
In my opinion a cryptocurrency interoperability is very important for the future of the crypto space. This makes Cosmos one of the most important projects for the future. Additionally, the progress that the developers are making seems to become greater every month. As centralized crypto exchanges gets regulated and have to de-list coins, Cosmos could be the place where the crypto holders could turn to. I am very curious how this project will develop and even more curious of what you guys think about this project!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 28th October 2021
Sources:
https://docs.cosmos.network/master/ibc/overview.html
https://www.gravitybridge.net/post/the-gravity-bridge-blockchain
https://medium.com/the-spartan-group/demystifying-cosmos-atomic-swaps-ethereum-polkadot-and-the-path-to-blockchain-interoperability-d1a2d75c20d6
https://www.crypto-news-flash.com/de/was-ist-das-cosmos-netzwerk-und-welchen-nutzen-hat-der-atom-token-guide/
https://emeris.com/
BTC Adoption - FOMO by Institutions?
In this article we will look at some more bullish crypto news that were announced in the previous weeks. We will look at Walmart and some more institutional adoption news. Furthermore, we will take a look at the new partnership that Facebook did with Coinbase. Some of these news made me very happy, so it might be worth reading!
Walmart’s BTC ATMs
Besides Bitcoin’s ETF listing, another bullish announcement that happened last week was Walmart’s plans to install 8000 Bitcoin ATMs as part of a pro crypto pilot program. The first of these Bitcoin ATMs were installed over the past weekend as reported by coindesk. Instead of bringing new hardware, Walmart is leveraging existing hardware available to its customers. These are specifically coinstar machines that let you trade coins for bills or gift cards. Here, the company behind coinstar is working on making it possible to buy BTC using cash at its machines. There is a big but. If you want to do this, it requires KYC.
This announcement caught many people by surprise although it was kind of expected given the fact that Walmart was looking to hire crypto product lead back in August. This pilot project also underscores just how high retail demand for crypto is in the United States.
Institutions Don’t Have Enough
But there is even more FOMO happening at the institutional level. On the same day BTC hit ints all time high. PIMCO announced that it was looking to increase its exposure to the crypto space. PIMCO is one of the biggest asset managers in the world with over two trillion dollars’ worth of assets under management. They are especially looking into the DeFi space of crypto and looking to invest more in the future.
Meanwhile in Spain, private banks are waiting for clarification from the Spanish central bank on what information they need to provide to offer crypto custody to their clients. Earlier this year, the Spanish Central Bank said that it would create a registration form for any banks that are ready to invest in crypto but the registration portal has yet to open. Apparently, now some of the big banks are done with waiting and are pushing their compliance departments to find a way for them to offer crypto services in a compliant manner.
Facebook’s Partnership
If you want some more evidence how intense the Crypto-FOMO is at the institutional level, look no further than Facebook’s recent partnership with Coinbase. For those of you who don’t know: Facebook has been trying to get its own crypto project of the ground for years. They tried to rebrand their original Coin “Libra” as Diem after getting put into place by regulators. That is what turned their plans into developing a digital dollar in the United States. In this regard Diem is struggling too and this is why Facebook is trying to take an alternative root with its crypto strategy. Facebook’s crypto wallet is called Novi. This wallet is technically the entity that has partnered with Coinbase to pilot crypto payments. This news lead many Senators in the U.S. to pressure Facebook to pull the plug on the partnership immediately.
I don’t think that this will change anything that Facebook is planning currently. Not only is Facebook intensifying to hire more people to create a virtual world and with it their own metaverse. They are also planning on changing their name which they will reveal on Thursday.
Conclusion
These developments are truly bullish for crypto. Given the fact that most of the institutions are still sidelined when it comes to the crypto market it is very likely that soon the barriers will break. When we see this mass adoption happening it is only a matter of time when crypto will become main stream. Personally, I can not wait to see this happening. What about you, do you think we will see a crypto mass adoption soon?
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 27th October 2021
Sources:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/200-bitcoin-atms-installed-at-walmart-with-plans-for-8000-in-total
https://www.blocktrainer.de/institutionelle-investoren-und-bitcoin-pimco-steigt-ein/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-2-2t-asset-manager-pimco-plans-to-buy-more-crypto
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/10/22/spanish-banks-are-preparing-to-offer-crypto-services-report/
https://cointelegraph.com/news/facebook-pilots-novi-crypto-wallet-with-coinbase-paxos
https://cointelegraph.com/news/senators-pressure-facebook-to-immediately-discontinue-novi-wallet-pilot
ETH Upgrade - Altair
Have you heard of Altair? No I am not speaking about our beloved assassin from the first Assasin’s Creed game. I am talking about the next upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain. In this article we will take a look at this upgrade and talk about what this could mean for the future and ETH 2.0.
ETH-Upgrade: Altair
In a few days Ethereum is going to get its next upgrade called Altair. In contrast to previous ETH upgrades, Altair will not make any changes to the Ethereum blockchain that we are using today. This upgrade is the first main net for the beacon chain. This is the proof of stake blockchain which is the core of ETH 2.0 architecture. According to ETH developer Tim Baco Altair will do three things:
· Introduction of Light Clients to the beacon chain to facilitate validator operations
· Increasing slashing penalties for validator misbehavior or inactivity
· Preparation for the long awaited “Merge”
The Merge is when ETH’s current blockchain plugs into the beacon chain for consensus. This will transform Ethereum from a proof of work blockchain to a proof of stake blockchain. This event has been scheduled for early 2022 but it is also worth pointing out that it was originally scheduled for the end of 2021.
This delay might be due to the issues that Ethereum experienced after the August hard fork which introduced partial fee burns to the Ethereum blockchain. This deflationary pressure on supply combined with a low balance of ETH on exchanges means that the hype around this Altair upgrade produced an ETH pump. This pump is also caused by the BTC pump, but parts of it is for sure due to this upgrade.
Conclusion
It is very exciting to see this project’s development. In my opinion ETH will be worth a decent amount more when ETH 2.0 comes around. Additionally, I hope that the fees will lower down by an extreme amount so that “normal-day users” of this blockchain can finally participate in it too. All in all, these are some big news for ETH!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 26th October 2021
Sources:
https://decrypt.co/84176/ethereum-altair-upgrade-next-week-heres-whats-in-it
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/10/23525488/heres-what-to-expect-from-ethereums-altair-upgrade-taking-place-this-week
https://dercryptoanalyst.de/was-ist-ether-2-0/
Last Bitcoin Mined - What Will Happen?
Bitcoin hits all time high! How far can BTC go? And how quickly will we see another BTC-Rally? All these questions are floating through the minds of BTC investors. But in this article, we want to cover another question. What will happen when the last Bitcoin is mined? Like we all know BTC has a maximum supply of 21 million and I will try to outline the possibilities that could occur when the last one is mined.
When will it happen and what happens then?
Like we all know, BTC is given as a reward to miners for processing transaction on the Bitcoin Blockchain. New BTC are issued every time a new Bitcoin block is mined, and the Bitcoin code ensures that this happens roughly every ten minutes by adjusting the mining difficulty depending on how many miners there are. Furthermore, the Bitcoins halving are reducing the block reward by 50%. Such a halving happens every 210k blocks. These halvings are significant because the sudden reduction in new BTC supply cause an eventual spike in the price of BTC assuming demand for BTC stays the same or even increases after the halving happened.
Anyways, these halvings can not keep happening for ever because like I mentioned in the introduction, the maximum amount of BTC is 21 million and this limit is built into Bitcoin’s code. Which brings us to the question: When will the last BTC be mined? If you google the answer, then google will tell you it will happen in the year 2140. For this calculation it is assumed that each BTC halving is happening every four years. If you would look closer at the dates you would recognize that these halvings are not exactly four years apart but only three years and nine months. So if you would assume the 3.75 years as the time span for the halvenings then you would get the year 2078 for the last BTC to be mined.
When there is no more BTC to mine there will be no more economic incentives for miners and the Bitcoin network will die. Due to the fact that the entire cryptocurrency market is dependent on Bitcoin every cryptocurrency will go to zero. Just joking! I got you there, you can admit it! Lets brake this down: First off, Bitcoin dominance has been dropping over the past years which suggests that BTC will not be the largest cryptocurrency by market cap in 2078. That means that the rest of the crypto market will not be as depended on it anymore. Also, besides what the BTC miners get from each new Bitcoin block they also earn fees as compensation for processing transactions. It can be found that miners are earning something between 0.5 and 1 BTC per block on transaction fees alone. Many people are thinking that by the time the BTC supply runs out that these transaction fees will be enough to sustain the network. There is just one problem with this hypothesis. Given that Bitcoin can only process seven transactions per second it is very unlikely that is going to become the payment network that is used for microtransactions.
Possible Solutions
One of the solutions could be a layer 2 solution like the Lightning Network, which I described in another article of mine (Article). The main problem for the above explained scenario would be that those layer 2 solutions would reduce the number of transactions and hence reduce the transaction fees for the miner. With this being said, it is pretty clear that the idea of Bitcoin is now as a store of value and not as a payment solution. This means that the BTC network has to survive without the transaction fees. This could be included in the next solutions. https://read.cash/@ga38jem/the-lightning-network-will-it-push-btc-to-100k-and-beyond-ea56b9d1
Sustaining a proof of work network like Bitcoin’s requires a lot of computing power and a lot of electricity. These make up the bulk of the operating expenses of crypto miners around the world. This is also why most of the mining farms go to countries and regions with cheap energy. Even though we just mentioned that the bitcoin blockchain can not survive on transaction fees alone, it is under the assumption that the cost for mining will be the same when we run out of BTC to mine. However, it is very likely that energy will become cheaper and technology will become more efficient in the coming decades. You just have to take a look at El Savador that is now using Volcanoes to mine BTC.
Economic incentives are not the only thing that could keep the BTC network afloat either. With the ongoing cryptocurrency adoption, big banks and even the public sector like governments will have all the incentive in the world to make sure the Bitcoin network remains secure and operational. If public institutions hold BTC after the last one is mined and they find out that the miners are about to shut off their mining rigs because they are not making profits, they would not hesitate to pump some money into these mining rigs to keep the whole thing going. Another way could be that they will start their own mining operation to sustain the Bitcoin network.
The next possibility would be to migrate BTC onto a smart contract blockchain like Ethereum. This would be possible with the Wrapped BTC Token that are available as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. This locks the coin on its native blockchain to mint an equivalent number of ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.
One last solution could be to increase the maximum amount of BTC. Technologically it would be possible to do this as long as there is a consensus from the economic majority. That includes all economic participants holding or mining BTC as well as developers and users.
Conclusion
As we have seen in this article, BTC has more than one way of surviving the day those BTC mining rewards run out. I doubt very much that this will happen in my lifetime but if it will I have no fear of this happening. I think the ongoing adoption shows that crypto is here to stay and it will not go without a fight and not because of a technical issue. What do you think, which solution would be the best or do you have a different solution to this problem?
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 25th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.cmcmarkets.com/en/learn-cryptocurrencies/bitcoin-halving
https://decrypt.co/34876/why-is-bitcoins-supply-limit-set-to-21-million
Stock Market Outlook - Bulls vs Bears
Looking at the stock market the past week was very interesting. It was very impressive to see the fight between the bulls and the bears. And it was even more impressive to see that the bulls did not let the bears take over. In this article we will take a look at the past week and will look at the stuff that is ahead of us.
In general, the report season is going very well. Almost 80% of the companies in the S&P 500 overshot the expectation of the analysts. In average it was an overflow of 13%! The problems that we are seeing are coming from the NASDAQ. Almost all of the technology companies are not doing great so far. That is also can be seen if you compare the S&P growth against the S&P value ETF as can be seen in the graphic below.
Although this fight between the bulls and bears is somewhat concerning, there are still a lot of good points that are worth mentioning. To start things of, it can be seen that stocks of companies that have real problems with their supplier network, due to COIVD, are doing better than the analysts expected. This could be interpreted that the fear of these supplier problems is already calculated into the analysts forecast and that is why the companies were able to outperform this forecast. Secondly, there are the companies where we see a lot of margin pressure. These are companies like airlines.
Outlook
So what will happen over the next few days? Imagine you are a fund manager. If you are lucky and the rest of the result season come in positive there will a slightly positive reaction and if you are unlucky you are literally sitting on a minefield and the whole yearly performance of the fund is exploding into the shadow realm. That means that the risk reward ratio for institutional investors is not very favorable if you want to take more stocks into your portfolio. As a private investor you are very flexible, people can go very fast in and out but institutional investors are not that quick on their feet. Like I said before, the real problem is that if the rest of the season will be not as expected the whole stock market could become a mine field for the portfolio. Especially if we look at the supply situation of the technology companies like Intel (shortage of chips!).
Conclusion
Looking forward into the next weeks, it is pretty hard to predict who comes out on top. I think it will al depend on the upcoming reports by Facebook, Alphabet and similar big NASDAQ companies. It is pretty clear that the S&P 500 consists of a big chunk of these companies and these companies are supposed to be overvalued. That means that if these companies happen to report not so exciting results over the course of the next week, we could see a massive drop in the S&P 500 and with that probably in the whole stock market. Only time will tell if this will happen. On the other side it is also important to mention that the demand is still not low and the main problem is the supply. That means that with lower COVID restrictions there will be soon more supply again and with that a relief in the markets.
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 24th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.finanzen.net/etf/ishares-core-sp-us-growth-etf-us4642876712
https://www.finanzen.net/etf/ishares-core-sp-us-value-etf-us4642876639
https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/03/12/stock-market-today-stitch-fix-soars-on-stellar-ear.aspx
The Lightning Network - Will It Push BTC to 100k and Beyond?
So with the recent Bitcoin explosion I wanted to write an article about the lightning network. It is well known that the Bitcoin blockchain lacks scalability and that is what the lightning network wants to address. In this article we will take a look at the functionality of this network, how it could adopt and what potential issues could be.
What is the Problem?
In order to understand the functionality of the lightning network, we have to understand some Bitcoin basics first. I am pretty sure that most of you are familiar with them but for the articles sake I will reiterate them real quick. Like I mentioned in the introduction the main issue with the Bitcoin blockchain is that its speed or scalability is not very high, allowing only around seven transactions per minute. This is due to the average block size and block time. The Bitcoin network is a blockchain which is a distributed record of transactions that is shared by all computers connected to the network. These transactions are batched into blocks. Each block is only one megabyte large this means that around 2700 transactions can fit in each block.
Because of this limited space, there are transaction fees to incentivize the computers verifying the transactions. You already now it, they are called miners. When you divide the block creation time of about 10 minutes you would get about seven transactions per second.
Now given these facts, a simple solution could be to increase the block size or increase the block time or even both. This is what many Bitcoin forks have done. The problem with this solution is that it compromises the security of the network. If the block size is too large, only a handful of computers would be able to store the full history of the BTC transactions. If the block time is too fast it limits the number of computers that can verify transactions on time. There would be another solution, and this would be to process the transactions somehow outside of the bitcoin network. And this is exactly where the lightning network comes in.
Functionality of the Solution
So this is probably the part that you all came for so let’s look at the functionality of this lightning network. Unlike most layer 2 networks this network is not a blockchain. Instead it consists of a series of interconnected payment channels created by two parties on the bitcoin network. This can be explained in more detail by an example.
Let’s assume you have a store that you are going every day. Because you visit the store every day the owner of this store does not always make you pay at the end of every shopping. The owner keeps a record of how much money you owe him. Additionally, you are helping out in this store part time. This would keep the owner also on his record. At the end of each month he asks you to pay the difference of what you still owe him minus the benefits you got through helping out in the shop. This payment record with the owner would not be all that different from the payment channels that we would find on the lightning network.
This would mean that the owner and you have agreed on settle the difference by paying it out in BTC an you both agree that you will use the lightning network. This would result in the creation of a payment channel on the Bitcoin Blockchain. This involves something called a multi signature wallet. This would work like follows. First, both of you have to deposit a BTC amount into this multi-signature wallet. This amount must be worth the same or more than you expect to transact next month. This transaction then creates a payment channel which allows you to transact the BTC between each other instantly as many times as desired for next to nothing.
The reason for the low transaction fees is that the transacted currency is not the real BTC but a digital “IOU” (I owe you) of payments like the physical “IOU” record when you use regular money. Putting it a different way: We are just adjusting the end amount of BTC that both of the transactors would get when the payment channel is closed at the end of the month. It might help to think of it as sort of receipt. And because we are only passing around digital data the real limiting factor to this are the computer hardware and the internet speed. This would make transactions on the lightning network very fast. When the month is over the BTC in the multi-signature wallet is sent back to each of your own BTC wallet addresses based on the balance of the final digital “IOU”. This would result in two Bitcoin transactions on the Bitcoin Blockchain. The initial deposit at the beginning of the month and the payout which I mentioned right now. This would also result in the closure of the payment channel. Note that these payment channels could also be kept open as long as you want and can be closed by both or just one party.
The interconnections of this network make the lightning network a global network and not just a two-way street between two people. Let’s assume there is another regular costumer of this store. This other customer has a BTC payment channel open with the store owner as well. Furthermore, he has a payment channel open with your local barber. Let’s also assume that you would like to try out this barber but you don’t want to open up another BTC payment channel with him. Here, the abilities of the lightning network come in handy! Instead of figuring out a way to open up a payment channel with the barber your BTC payment for the hair cut can make it to the barber via the payment channels that connect you both together. In this case: You -> Store Owner -> other customer -> Barber. This payment would find the quickest way of reaching its target, like a real lightning within the atmosphere.
Furthermore, the payment channels are secured by a technology called hashed time locks. Without getting too technical this involves exchanging a secret code with the end recipient first before nay BTC is sent. Once that password is successfully exchanged the corresponding amount of BTC is transferred. The more payment channels there are the faster and more far-reaching the lightning network is. This connectivity means it is possible for the whole planet to use BTC as digital cash.
Growth & Adoption
With all theses features, it is no surprise that this network has grown exponentially over the past months. This pace of adoption picked up when the wallet developer “ZAP” released the now famous strike app. Zap is the company that helped the government of El Savador make BTC legal tender. This could also be seen in the graphics below. The BTC adoption in El Savador started in September and there you can see an exponential rise of the toral value locked in the network because of the rising transactions.
With this being said the adoption since the beginning of the year has picked up pace due to several big companies and exchanges adopting this network to their payment channels. One of these exchanges is Kraken.
Potential Issues
Now all of this sounds too good to be true. And the thing that I learned so far is that nothing good comes without a drawback. The lightning network has had its fair share of issues and not all of these have been resolved. More than a handful code vulnerabilities have been spotted since the network launched. That said, the biggest problems are not technical. Unfortunately, they are structural. For starters: Depositing BTC into a multi-signature wallet to create a payment channel makes that BTC much harder to sell since it often needs to be transferred to the Bitcoin blockchain first before it can be exchanged for fiat. This will become less of an issue over time as more fiat pathways like exchanges integrate the lightning network. Further on this note, if the price off BTC suddenly pumps or dumps very extremely it could be a possibility that a lot of payment channels could be closed because the participants would sell their BTC because of profit or panic. Another problem is that the amount of the BTC on the node has to be equal or larger than the BTC amount being send. This makes it very hard to send a big amount of BTC.
When you combine these problems with the cost of opening and closing payment channels you end up with a lightning network that is remarkably centralized with most traffic taking place through custodial intermediaries that are not that much different from banks. This has historically been one of the biggest criticisms of the lightning network. But this has also been improving as time goes on.
This brings up the question. If it is not very beneficial to have these payment channels open, what brings the individuals and institutions to provide this service? When a product is for free, the users are the product. In the case of the lightning network it is likely that most of the companies operating custodial lightning wallets and services are closely tracking their users transactions which is probably happening on the lightning network itself through so called “watchtower nodes”. The thing with these nodes is that they can only track the transactions going in and out of this particular node which , in my eyes, makes the tracking very much senseless.
Conclusion
To conclude this article, I want to say that I tried my best to keep everything as short as possible. I really hope it was more or less understandable. With this being said I really think that we are on the edge of the next step in the technological evolution, and it excites me to be part of this evolution. Like always, feedback is very much appreciated and welcome!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 23rd October 2021
Sources:
https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-block-size
https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/history-lightning-brainstorm-beta
https://bdtechtalks.com/2019/09/16/blockchain-scaling-on-chain-vs-off-chain/
https://chidi0048.medium.com/on-chain-versus-off-chain-consensus-6e164534e68e
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/11/10/multisignature-wallets-can-keep-your-coins-safer-if-you-use-them-right/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nodes-bitcoin-lightning-network-double-213744044.html#:~:text=Since%20then%2C%20network%20capacity%20has,time%20from%205%2C000%20to%2010%2C000.
Cryptoblades - The New Crypto Diablo?
During my search for a interesting game to play I found the following P2E game. If RPGs like Diablo or DnD are games that you are into then I have exactly the right game for you. The game we are going to talk about in this article is Cryptoblades.
Basic Description
In this game, there are four elements: fire, earth, lightning and water. All characters, weapons and enemies are assigned to one of these attributes. Like in every game, each element trumps another one. Before getting started you have to know that new players have to mint their character. Right now a character is around 4.6 SKILL and the game runs on the Binance Smart Chain. We will talk about the P2E aspect a little bit later though.
With creating your character the player is also getting a weapon which suits the style of the character. Furthermore, each character has 200 stamina to begin with and with each battle he is loosing 40. After a battle the character can regain one stamina per every five minutes. The fights are pretty straight forward and if you played an RPG game before then you should not have any problems with that.
P2E Aspect & Requirements
Like I said before, to get started new players need to have a MetaMask wallet connected. This wallet should also be connected to the Binance Smart Chain since this is where the game is running on. The next step would be to load up your wallet with some SKILL Tokens to be able to mint a character. This brings me to the first P2E aspect in this game, and this is that your character could now be treated as a NFT. This means that the stronger he gets and the more time you put into the character the more valuable it will be when you sell him.
Within the game you can win some rewards in the form of weapons and armor. These are also treated as NFTs and can bought and sold on the market. Furthermore, a player is allowed to have up to 4 characters which he can rotate between.
Conclusion
Like I said in the beginning, if you are a real RPG fan you have to try out this P2E game. Of course it will not make you rich over night but if you are into RPGs anyways why not get something back for playing it, right? By the time of writing 1 SKILL is worth about 12 USD. That means that a crafting of a character means that you are basically buying a game. With this being said, I think my previous argument is still valid. Instead of buying an PRG where you don’t own anything why not buy yourself into a crypto game where your time playing it is actually worth something. I hope, I could give some of you a new game to play or explore at least. I am also very glad to hear any feedback from you in the comments!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 22nd October 2021
Sources:
https://www.cryptoblades.io/
https://www.cryptoblades.io/CryptoBlades_Whitepaper.pdf
The Great Reset - Have Nothing and be Happy?
With the recent Bitcoin pump going on I really didn’t want to write this article, because it would bring some negative vibes into the current euphoria. I still think this topic is worth talking about even during such good times like these, so I decided to write this article anyways. We will talk about the Great Reset. Apparently, this is what the global elite like the European Central Bank is planning.
What is the Great Reset?
To start this article of, let’s talk about what the Great Reset is supposed to be. It can be described as the vision how the world could be which is put down by the world economic forum. This forum is basically a super private non-governmental group of the global elite. The head of this organization is Klaus Schwab and he stated that the global pandemic was or is a great opportunity for this Reset we are going to talk about.
According to Klaus there are three main components to his reset idea. The first is all about steering the market towards fairer outcomes and creating a stakeholder economy. He also acknowledges that governments incentive to do that due to a high level of public debt. He suggests that this idea can all be done by wealth taxes, encouraging green energy and disrupting things like trade and competition. To compress it all in one sentence: He wants wealth distribution through taxation and regulation.
His second key component is all about how large spending programs by governments provide excellent opportunities for progress. However, instead of putting this money in the old system the governments should break the system by creating a new system which is more equitable und sustainable in the long run. He basically tells us that environmental, social and governments metrics should be prioritized. On the first look this sounds very nice, but looking in more detail into it, this proposal is only achieved with total control which is not quite the outcome people would want.
The last component of the Great Reset proposition is essentially about levering technology to further public good. This can be seen in China, where a social penalizing system is in place. If you ask me, all of these propositions sound like a new system of control for a global elite.
In general, it would be very difficult to just put a system such as this into place. For this it needs a global crisis that would put the old system into bad light. Oh wait! Don’t we have a global crisis right now? Or did everybody already forget about COVID-19? This comes pretty conveniently for the Central Banks around the world since they are planning their Central Bank Digital Currencies. This form of currency would be the perfect method for an entirely upgraded dorm of financial control. (If you want to learn more about a recent CBDC report check out this article: CBDC-Report) https://read.cash/@ga38jem/latest-cbdc-report-you-have-to-read-it-4a2404cc
At the end of the report there is a figure which shows seven key points that go into the Great Reset. Most of these just sound like buzzwords. All of these could be interpreted in very different ways. He proceeds to mention the designing of social contracts, skills and jobs. I think the key take away from this is that Klaus and his Forum are looking to move towards an equality of outcomes. This is pretty alarming when they also tweet predictions for 2030 where everybody will own nothing and be happy.
Economic of the Reset
So, how does their plan look like to make this an economic reality? The problem with such top-down designed directives is that it causes side effects that could be harmful and probably would have been avoided if the change occurred organically. The problem right now is that the governments are trying to hold on to the old system as hard as they can, especially with those stimulus checks. This pays the rent and keeps zombie companies alive which would not be around if it wasn’t for these checks. This brings exactly the problem I mentioned: This is not very “organic” and the stimulus checks can not stay in place forever. Otherwise we would get severe side effects like pervasive inflation (which it looks like we are about to head into).
So what is the driving force for such a reset? The financial state of governments right now is associated with record high national debts which are obviously caused by the COVID pandemic. This is a big pain for politicians. The good thing for them is that they are very good friends with Klaus which would bring us to cronyism.
Behind the Scenes
Like I mentioned several times before, this reset seems to be a blueprint for more control trough increased taxation, regulation and power to the global elite. So how are the doing this? Firstly, taxation has already been increasing around the world. Furthermore, it seems like the government changed the way to report inflation. They wanted to make inflation look low. Furthermore, by adopting the CBDCs I was talking earlier the digital way of paying could make it very easy for the governments to collect taxes. They could even go as far as taxate every financial transaction and just ban cash payments. The cherry on the icecake is that due to the big national debts governments are heading towards a problem that they can easily solve through CBDCs.
Conclusion
To close this article, I have a few final thoughts. I really hope that what I have written does not scare people away from the future. In fact, I really hope that people will now look more skeptical at what the global elite is doing because if such a thing would be going through it could be one of the biggest attacks on human’s freedom. However, there is a way to protect yourself against such things and this is by holding crypto! With the decentralized properties and the further development of new projects it looks like the crypto space could outpace the global elite before they push their horrific plan through. I would like to read your thoughts on this! Do you think such a scenario of a Great Reset is possible?
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 21st October 2021
(no financial advice but only for entertainment purposes)
Sources:
https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/
https://web.archive.org/web/20201101022307/https://twitter.com/wef/status/799632174043561984?lang=en
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
Bank of America Crypto Report
Maybe I am a little late with this news but did you read about this Bank of America report? In this article we will try to cover some of the most interesting points made in this report. In my opinion this report indicates very bullish signs for the future of crypto and will help us understand how the banks are viewing crypto currencies. With this being said, please keep in mind that this article is no financial advice.
About this Report & Overview
With this report one of the largest banks in America shows indication of crypto adoption. Unfortunately, this was not always the case in the past. One of Bank of America’s senior analysts described the crypto space as “the mother of all bubbles” at some point. Another report by this bank described Bitcoin as too volatile, too slow, and as too energy inefficient.
However, this regard on things seems to have changed in April when JP Morgan introduced a Bitcoin fund for its high-end investors. With this happening it was only a matter of time that Bank of America tips their toes into the crypto world. This happened soon with Bank of America joining several crypto projects, with one of them being the exchange FTX. Furthermore, they created a crypto research team which probably brought us this particular report we will talk about now. The report focuses on the following four topics: the market cap of digital asset, tokenization, dApps & NFTs and last but not least Crypto Regulation.
Analysis and General Information
The analysis of this report starts of with the acknowledgment that BTC is volatile but its volatility has gone down with a broader adoption. As for the rising prices of Bitcoin the authors identify regulatory clarity as the biggest driver. They continue by saying that only institutions have the kind of power and amount of money to push Bitcoin to a potential trillion dollar market cap. Furthermore, the authors are hinting further reports on the largest Altcoins like Ethereum. They describe it as the digital oil and I personally can not wait to see this report getting released. After presenting some major numbers about the higher getting money amounts which are invested in DeFi and NFTs the authors take a quick look at the CBDC situation. It is mentioned that other than Chinas digital currency (which is supposed to be fully operative in 2022) the big nations are lacking behind with the development of these digital currencies.
Trading Stats & Valuing BTC
Continuing with this report the authors go into the topic of institutional crypto trading. A very interesting statistic here is that by the end of 2020 only 1% of Coinbase users were institutional ones. But held 50% of platform assets and contributed to 64% of platform trading volume. Keep in mind that the number of institutional investors has likely grown over the past year. This only means that the share of institutional investors will continue rising and with that the crypto share of the whole financial sector.
After that, the report tries to give an outline about the value of Bitcoin. It says that bitcoins price is depended on the supply and demand, like the price of any asset would do. Demand in this context is very closely linked with adoption. Here, the main drivers for adoption are described as the rising institutional investment, the decreasing barriers to entry the crypto space and the growing acceptance of BTC as a store of value. This brings up the question of whether bitcoin and the rest of the crypto space is in a bubble, like I mentioned before. The authors try to address this possibility by following graph. It looks like most of the institutional investors are changing their mind. But if we compare the price of Bitcoin in May to now, there is not a big difference. To add to this: In recent times this analysis could be true for any kind of asset, because thanks to the government money printing every asset class is in a undefined state.
Altcoins and Stablecoins
This reports also covers Altcoins which is also very interesting to say the least. After giving a long list of Altcoins and briefly describing them the authors continue talking about Stablecoins. Before we continue talking about them, I want to mention that people should watch this list of Altcoins very carefully over the next few months. The main question here is: Are these the coins that are going to pump in recent times because of bigger adoption or a those the coins that the government will take a closer look at to provide harsher regulations? Going back to Stablecoins. The report says that stablecoins could be easily described as securities just because they are mainly backed by government bonds. This makes stablecoins derivatives of these bonds which would make them also securities.
Conclusion
Seeing this news makes me feel good about the crypto future. Not only does it show that big banks are slowly getting interested in the crypto space, it also shows how much potential there still is. In my opinion the future stands and falls with the regulations that will be put in place. If they will be too harsh we could see another dry period in the crypto space. But this is not set in stone either. What do you think about this report? Are we in for another bullish 2022? I am also always glad to receive any feedback so don’t hesitate to give me any advice!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 20th October 2021
Sources:
https://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/content/newsroom/press-releases/2021/10/bofa-global-research-launches-coverage-of-digital-assets.html
https://www.reuters.com/business/bank-america-launches-research-coverage-digital-assets-2021-10-04/
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/04/bank-of-america-launches-research-for-too-large-to-ignore-digital-assets/
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2021/01/08/surging-bitcoin-is-mother-of-all-bubbles-bank-of-america-strategist-warns/
Can This Start The Next Insane Rally?
In this article we will talk about a potential release of the long-awaited Bitcoin ETF. We will look at how it is composed and why people should keep an eye on it. Keep in mind that this article is no financial advice and for entertainment purposes only. With this being said, lets jump into the article an see if this could be the start of an upcoming madness (in a positive way)!
Amazing News
Earlier in the week Bitcoin rallied up to almost its ATH on the news that the SEC is considering to finally allow the first BTC futures ETF. If this happens, I believe that this would be a huge moment for the entire crypto currency market in terms of brighter and wider acceptance throughout different sectors. This all started about a week ago when a Bloomberg article claimed that the SEC is about to allow the first US Bitcoin traded fund to begin trading for people who are familiar with the matter.
So why is this such big new? Well, not only would this allow a new way of investing into crypto but also because throughout the last five years every single request to allow a cryptocurrency related fund that would trade openly in the market for everyone to buy and sell has been denied without exception. But now, FINALLY, in the next few days the first BTC ETF could begin trading. I assume that is what investors are banking on which pushes the price of BTC to higher levels.
Bitcoin ETF
When it comes to this news, it is very important to clarify that this will be not your normal ETF. Instead, it is going to be a futures contract which is slightly different, and I will try to explain the difference. In the case of a “normal” Bitcoin ETF people/ investors would buy into a fund that directly owns Bitcoin and in return the investors receive shares of BTC on the open market. On the other hand, the futures contract ETF works like follows. Instead of buying into a fund that directly goes and buys BTC, the investors are buying into a contract to buy BTC at a certain price in the future. This means that this fund does not own any BTC at the moment, but this fund has a contract to buy it in the future. This contract will then change according to the price of Bitcoin.
This would be the first step for a broader range of institutional investors to discover the crypto space even more than they are doing now. After they find out that it is not that scary as everybody says, the next step could be the allowance of a traditional BTC ETF where the fund is actually backed by Bitcoin.
Conclusion
To finalize this article, there are still a few other thoughts. There is always a chance of the SEC to prevent this from happening in the last minute. In my opinion the chance is relatively low since like I mentioned before, the pressure on the SEC for allowing such an ETF raises tremendously. Some analysts even predict that a price for BTV of 100k USD is conservative and all in all it seems like more investors are trying to move their money from traditional investments into the crypto space. Personally, I can not wait to see how the markets will react. What about you? What do you think will happen?
I am always happy for feedback, so let me know what I can do better!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 19th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/15/the-sec-is-poised-to-allow-the-first-bitcoin-futures-etfs.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-100000-may-be-conservative-analyst-says-172716528.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-15/bitcoin-futures-etf-said-not-to-face-sec-opposition-at-deadline
https://deep-resonance.org/2021/10/18/grayscale-will-bitcoin-trust-in-btc-etf-umwandeln/
Worst Case Scenarios For Crypto
In this article we will discuss the potential risks for crypto in the future. We will look at the Privacy Sector as well as the DeFi Sector. Furthermore, there are some risks to Stablecoins and the custody of crypto in general. Before we start with this article keep in mind that this is no financial advice but for entertainment purposes only.
Potential Future Problems for Crypto
Lets start with one of the most controversial things in life: Privacy. Controlling your assets is not enough because even if you are in control of them institutions can control them indirectly through sanctions. Most of the crypto transaction you are doing are publicly viewable. That means that all an institution has to do is to monitor where from and where to these transactions are going. After finding out the information they need, the government could apply pressures to vulnerable points like exchanges or individuals whose identities have been linked to their crypto address. This would discourage further users to interact with these exchanges. The perfect counter to this topic are privacy coins. That is why privacy coins seem to be the public enemy number one to regulators. With this being said, it is undeniable that coins like these will be used to finance immoral activities. On the other hand, even with the normal fiat regulations against such activities these immoral acts could not be stopped. The main reason for that is that human corruption can not be regulated.
These arguments are enough for regulators to force pressure on exchanges. If exchanges want to be publicly listed, they just have to remove Coins like Monero. This is the kind of indirect control that we were talking about before.
The next crypto sector that will be attacked by regulators is the DeFi sector. This is because this sector allows you to participate in money activities without a bank. Due to the fact that the current financial system consists of banks that would be bad news for them. The adoption of DeFi is becoming more and more and it seems like this development brings pressure towards the current financial system. It seems like only a matter of time when the replacement will take place. These institutions wont go down without a fight which can be seen in further regulations. Since not all regulations will be effective with every DeFi protocol this could lead to a more destructive path. The regulatory bodies could go to the companies like UniSwap and force them to integrate a KYC. Another way to regulate the crypto space, especially the Proof of Stake Space, would be to buy up enough voting power and demand a KYC or even worse measures.
Another possible way of the governments to fight crypto is to fight Stablecoins. Most of the crypto trading volume is happening against USDT and USDC. This concern is present in many countries for months. This is because these Stablecoins are linked to the U.S. Dollar. This would mean that further adoption of these Stablecoins in countries where the U.S. Dollar is not the primary currency would lead to a dependence of the economy to the U.S. dollar and with it to the U.S. economy. It is understandable that a lot of countries would want that to happen. The midterm solutions for this is that the governments wants to bring these Stablecoin issuers under its control. This would secure the midterm future. This would be done just to secure the roll out of their own digital currency: CBDC. This is why decentralized Stablecoin alternatives could be interesting in the future.
All of these counter measures seem to be not so bad. This would be great wouldn’t the government also targeting the crypto custody. This is one of the reasons why should always withdraw your crypto from centralized exchanges to your own wallet. If the government wants to ban your exchange you will no longer have the ability to reach your crypto and this is why all of your funds will be lost. Furthermore, there are custodial plans that will not allow you to withdraw your crypto anymore. This would mean that the governments would have more power over the proof of stake coins which would allow them to control it more. Because of these factors, regulators can make a similar order that they made a few years ago when they prevented people of holding gold to secure the stability of the economy. If this would happen to crypto it would be pretty easy to enforce since all of the crypto trading is transparent.
Conclusion
It is a real possibility that such things could happen. However, I don’t see things like these happen in the foreseeable future. Especially not if the crypto adoption will continue to rise. The main point here is that if enough people are using crypto and believe in the projects such regulations could be met by a great resistance. What do you think? Will the crypto space fight all of these regulations? With this being said, I am always happy about feedback!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 18th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-does-increased-government-regulation-mean-privacyfocused-coins/
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/anti-money-laundering-has-less-than-1-impact-on-crime-at-what-cost/
https://www.sygna.io/blog/sec-investigates-uniswap-whats-next-for-defi-regulation/
https://de.cointelegraph.com/news/us-sec-chairman-btc-wont-be-on-major-exchanges-until-more-regulated
https://www.btc-echo.de/news/defi-hype-polkadot-und-elrond-profitieren-von-problemen-bei-ethereum-111529/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gold/comments/nkrtkl/fdr_executive_order_6102_of_1933_the_gold_reserve/
New Era of Innovations in Front of Us?
Recently, I finished a very interesting book “The Bitcoin Standard”. In this article I wanted to talk about one aspect of this book. The author, Saifedean Ammous, compares Bitcoin to gold and describes it as digital gold. In one of the chapter he talks about how a certain standard could lead to technological improvement and how this already happened in time. Like always, this article is not financial advice and for entertainment purposes only. With this being said, lets take a look why BTC can push us into new technological dimensions.
Gold-Standard: A Golden Era?
Before we look into the technological improvements we have to define the term of sound money. In a nutshell, sound money is currency that is neither depreciating nor appreciating all of a sudden. Its purchasing power stays relatively constant over the long term which is aided by mechanisms in a free market. The main properties of sound money are scarcity, divisibility paired with a good stock to flow model. Currently, the governments of the world can print their own money like they want. Unfortunately, this is not sound money because it is not fulfilling the scarcity property. In times like these the store of value is not given and people have to search for other investments. This was not always the case.
Earlier in time (before 1914) the worlds economic system operated on the Gold Standard. The thing with gold is that this precious medal can be taken as sound money. It fulfills all of the properties. It is scarce because you have to mine it and therefore put some effort in and it can be divided so that you have a different payment options. Furthermore, its stake to flow model looks very promising since you can not “create” gold out of nothing like it is possible with paper money by money printing. In these times the impact of sound money on society and development could be seen in more than just the level of savings, but also in the kind of projects that were invested in.
Due to the fact that gold can be seen as a storage of value people were more likely to think long-term. If you would know that your money is today worth as much as in a year you would do the same. This is why people in this time were investing in projects that require a long time pay off. As a result of this behavior some of the most important innovations in human history happened in the end of the nineteenth century.
Zero to One vs One to Many
The book emphasizes that our modern world was invented in the gold standard years prior to World War I. If you think about it, the twentieth century was the century that refined and improved all of the ideas that were made in this golden era. It is very easily forgotten that the step from nothing to something is much harder than the step from something to a lot. A good example would be the financial sector. How many millionaires are saying that the first million is the hardest? Another example would be the usage of theorems in mathematics or science. Somebody has to discover the theorem first (Zero to One) so that other scientist can prove some more exciting methods that they started working on after the theorem was discovered (One to Many). To put it in a more general perspective: the first step is always the hardest one and requires a lot of energy and patience. The second step is always a question of scaling, marketing and optimization.
Lets look at some examples that the book gives us. The first example would be something that the majority of people in the developed countries are using every day. Hot and cold running water, toilets and central heating. These inventions were the main factor in the elimination of across the globe and allowed the growth of the urban areas. Another example is electricity, internal combustion or the mass production. Our modern society was build around the utilization of energy. All of these methods were invented in the nineteenth century. The transportation system like automobiles or airplanes were also discovered in this golden era as well as the electric elevator. And lets not forget one of the most important inventions at that time: the telephone. It could be argued that our century is the era of mass communication. But if you take a step back and look at the roots of this it is clear that everything our society is build on including computers and the Internet is all thanks to the inventions of the nineteenth century.
New Era with the Bitcoin Standard?
So what happened? Why did the governments abandon this gold standard? One of the most important reasons was the spending during the wars. Because governments couldn’t pay their military at some point they had to change the economical payment system which resulted in the paper money that we have today. Of course this is described very shortly and there are more steps in between like the backing of the dollar with gold and so on but this should not be the main topic of this article. The main point is that we are living now in a time without sound money.
With the 2008 financial crisis a small light at the end of the tunnel raised. Bitcoin was invented and with it the hope for a more stable financial system. With the growing adoption of Bitcoin the main advantages of Bitcoin are becoming clear. BTC is the perfect sound money! It is scarce (maximum amount is 21 million) and is dividable into very small portions. Its stock to flow model is not changeable due to the fact that is hard implemented and cannot be changed. This leads to the question: Could Bitcoin be the next sound money? And could this lead to a new era of innovation?
Some could argue that we are already seeing innovations in the financial sector. The whole DeFi space is getting more and more adoption and slowly putting the governments and their Central Banks under pressure. Furthermore, BTC is giving back the freedom to people. But this is a topic for itself. A good example will be El Salvador. It looks like the adoption of Bitcoin is going very well and could lead this country out of its poverty. Of course this is mainly speculative and we would see results in some years. But it is very exciting to be around in such times. Another big innovation that could be coming towards us is the Metaverse. More and more developers are innovating this space and developing applications that are interesting. This topic could also be covered by its own article which I am currently working on.
Conclusion
To summarize this article, I want to mention that I got this idea from the mentioned book that I am reading. I am very curious to see the development in the next few years. In my opinion the regulations will slow the process down but it will never stop. At some point there will be a flip between the generations that are currently living and cryptocurrency will get its adoption. Of course crypto needs some regulations. The best example seems to be Tether but this is also very speculative. I really hope you enjoyed this article and would be very happy for any kind of feedback or your thoughts on this topic!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 16th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Saifedean-Ammous/dp/1119473861
https://www.soundmoneydefense.org/sound-money-explained
https://bit4coin.net/bitcoin-photo-contest/photos/197?sort=likes
Latest CBDC Report - You Have to Read It!
The adoption of crypto has produced a lot of pressure on governments around the world. Now, they are trying everything in their power to design their own central digital currency before they lose their power. In this article we will take a look at a recent report that outlines some plans for CBDC. Keep in mind that this article is not financial advice but only for entertainment purposes. With this being said, let’s look at the propositions this article is making and how this is one of the dumbest articles you will ever read.
Background of the Report
Before we deep into the report a few background information. The report was made by the BIS (Bank of International Settlements). This can be described as the bank for Central Banks and has several members like the European or the United States Central Bank. Over the last few years, the SIC was trying to make a plan for Central Bank Digital currencies (CBDCs). A little disclaimer in this regard. CBDCs should not be regarded as a cryptocurrency! The obvious reason why are as follows. CBDC are centralized, offer no privacy and are permissioned. In other words: it is everything what I as a crypto fanatic don’t want in the first place (with some exceptions of course). The report we will be talking about is describing how this CBDC should look like and is divided into the following parts (also linked in the sources):
· Design and Interoperability
· User Needs and Adoption
· Financial Stability Implications
CBDC Design
One of the most important information that this report covers is that this CBDC will be used by the retail and private sector. This implies that the people in power will be using a complete different CBDC as us normal people. This should be the first red flag.
Continuing with this report, the CBDC is supposed to be issued and being controlled only by the central entities which are in power. While the Central Banks want even more control over all of the transactions, they are not planning to cut out service providers like Visa just because they haven’t got the infrastructure. The following picture should help to illustrate how the future ecosystem with a CBDC is supposed to look like:
Given that private institutions are supposed to be a part of this ecosystem means that CBDCs have to be interoperable not only internationally but also domestic. This would lead to a lot of technical issues and that’s why the report suggest limiting the amount of the private intermediaries who are then selected by the Central Banks. Red Flag number two and if you ask me a big attack on the liberty of the free market.
With this being said let’s jump onto the next red flag that is waiting right around the corner to stab us in the back. According to this report “full anonymity is not plausible”. Thankfully the provided data would be safe with the explanation that the Central banks would have no commercial use for this kind of data. Furthermore, every transaction amount above a certain threshold will be tracked.
Adoption Plans and Potential Effects
This brings us to the next part of this report which explains how the Central Banks plans to adopt their CBDCs. The context of this adoption would be very hilarious. The main reason why the Central Banks are doing all of this is because of the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and they are worried that users may adopt “other, less safe instruments, potentially leading to economic and consumer harm”. Right! In my opinion somebody is afraid to land on the substitute bench. Reading further, this report admits that due to technological advancement payment methods are getting cheaper, safer, and faster. But instead of letting these innovations to continue the BIS thinks it is better done in a completely different way. The report then goes to show how this CBDC adoption could be achieved. The points are:
· Fulfilling User Needs
· Achieving Network Effects
· Keeping the Usage Device of the User
With these in mind, the main arguments that the CBDS has are security, high liquidity, low costs, and privacy. So, everything that we already getting with cryptocurrencies? I lost count with the red flags, but this seems like the twentieth one!
As the report goes on the main adoption techniques are revealed. It looks like the BIS is planning to “incentivize consumer use of CDBC by disturbing social benefits and transfers to individuals in CDBC”. Pretty manipulative if you ask me.
Financial Stability Implications
This brings us to the third part of this report, and this is the financial stability implications and its effects on the economy. One of their main arguments towards a CBDC is that Stablecoins are not that long in development and need to satisfy the regulators. The truth cannot be further away: Stablecoins are already around for years, and users slowly know which Stablecoins to trust and which not. Additionally, the report claims that Stablecoin issuers are not designing their product to be interoperable with other forms of money. By this point you should be rolling on the floor and laughing your tears out but if you are still here the report continues. The report shows a little bit of its real intention with the following quote: “Significant Stablecoin adoption and […] could result in excessive market power and […] described as a risk for CBDC issuance”. This statement confirms that Stablecoins are being seen as a big risk and my guess is that this is the reason why so many regulations are on their way.
The next part of this report describes the risks that the CBDC could implement on the banks. In times of crisis the CBDC could be seen as a good investment. This would mean that people would move their money out of the banking system and into CBDC. Inevitably, this leads to a collapse of the banking system. Even without the crisis there would be a big risk on maintaining the private bank sector. This is why the report suggests some measures to maintain it. Some of these are:
· Reduction in assets/ deleveraging
· Increased lending rates
· Switching to alternative market-based funding sources which could be more expensive and, in some cases, less stable
These suggestions would lead to unaffordable loans or even the forbidding on taking loans which seems very laughable to me. But at this point of this report everything seems to be possible. Even the forbidding of buying CBDC during time of crisis seems to be possible.
Conclusion
In my opinion this report shows one thing. It will be very difficult to roll out and adopt such a project. Not only do people right now have better alternatives like crypto, they also feel more freedom with these. With the adoption of such a CBDC I only see the power shifting to banks even further and this has to be prevented at some point if this world should not be ruled by corrupt institutions. To calm all of you down I have to add that CBDC is long time from happening and that only time will tell if this could be successful. In the mean time I am very curious how the crypto space will develop and what new amazing projects are around the corner!
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 15th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp42_system_design.pdf
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp42_user_needs.pdf
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp42_fin_stab.pdf
https://www.bis.org/publ/othp42.pdf
A Partnership that Could Change Everything
There are some more great news for crypto enthusiast coming every day. One of these news is that MoneyGram, an international finance-oriented company from Texas, is going to partner up with the Stellar foundation which is responsible for XLM. In this article we will take a look at this headline. Like always, this article is not financial advice and only for entertainment purposes.
MoneyGram’s partnership with the Stellar foundation
Last week MoneyGram announced their partnership with the Stellar Foundation that brings USDC on Stellar. On the backend this partnership this means that payments will be settled instantly with the help of the United Texas Bank. On the front end this partnership means that people will be able to convert cash to USDC and vise versa at all MoneyGram’s locations regardless of the fiat currency being converted. This partnership will go live by the end of the year and there are also plans to roll this out internationally in the period of the next year.
Furthermore, earlier this year MoneyGram already announced that people are able to buy Bitcoin at their physical locations in the United States. This was also around the time when Stellar was looking to buy MoneyGram with the help of a private equity firm.
With this being said, Ripple used to hold a significant stake of MoneyGram and on the other side MoneyGram used Ripple net. Although now, MoneyGram claims that it never used Ripple in their retail operations. What is very interesting about it is that Stellar was founded by the Co-Founder of Ripple. Due to this fact Ripple and Stellar share some significant similarities. The fact that Stellar now seems to be succeeding where Ripple failed suggests that XLM could be on its way to overtake XRP as the preferred payment oriented crypto currency. This could be a real possibility since MoneyGram is actually using the Stellar blockchain to move USDC around. This could increase demand in XLM which would pump the price.
Conclusion
Now these are some amazing news if you ask me. More and more institutional entities are betting on the crypto horse and all of these partnerships are just the beginning. If somebody will say that crypto is not on the jump to the mainstream usage, then I don’t know what else they need to see. With the recent inflation news this news can bring some light to the end of the investment tunnel.
Published by ga38jem on
Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
On 14th October 2021
https://cointelegraph.com/news/moneygram-launches-usdc-settlement-using-the-stellar-blockchain
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/05/12/moneygram-to-allow-bitcoin-buying-and-selling-across-retail-network/
Is a Crypto Supercycle coming?
In this article we will look at the latest institutional adoption of crypto currency. The following news could lead to a massive movement in the crypto world but is this the reality or are we just blinded by other components? In this article we will take a look at this question. With this being said, this article is no financial advice and for entertainment purposes only.
Start of a Super Cycle?
The exponential growth of the crypto space is why institutional investors continue to invest more money into it. According to a survey of over 500 financial advisors for institutional investors 15% of these advisors suggesting to invest into Bticoin to their clients. This is due to the fact that any losses on crypto currency can be deducted from their taxes and any profits that they are gaining can be count as profits.
The real selling point is that Bitcoin can be used as an inflation hedge. This is what mega banks like JPMorgan believe. Especially in the current situation where the unexpected inflation is rising very quickly this should be a good way to save your fortunes.
Furthermore, on of the largest banks in the United States has partnered with NYDIG to provide crypto currency custody to its clients. The expansion of crypto custody is exactly what institutions need when it comes to the crypto space. Talking about this topic, MetaMask partnered with three major custodians (BitGo, Qredo and Cactus). This means that the already high institutional demand for DeFi will only continue to grow.
Conclusion
News like these add to an argument towards a crypto currency super cycle. This seems too good to be true. On the one hand, it is not to be denied that the DeFi adoption is continuing and more and more people are getting into the crypto space. On the other hand, there is the happening inflation which just brings the price of everything up. This means that we should not be celebrating to early. But people also should not be to pessimistic about that. In my opinion people should hold their crypto if they believe in it.
Published by ga38jem
on Publish0x|LeoFinance|Steemit|read.cash
on 13th October 2021
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/financial-advisers-pitch-bitcoin-to-investors-to-offset-portfolio-losses-11633347001
https://fortune.com/2021/10/08/bitcoin-not-gold-is-the-new-inflation-hedge-says-jp-morgan/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/bitcoin-custody-us-bank-launches-service-as-institutions-race-to-cater-to-crypto-demand.html
https://forkast.news/headlines/metamask-partners-bitgo-qredo-cactus-custody/
@ga38jem
