Category: # BlockChain

Bitcoin is Freedom…

Bitcoin can serve as a first line of defense for freedom — a nonviolent tool which can disincentivize violence and control.

It is not only a hedge against currency devaluation, but a hedge against tyranny as well.

FREEDOM AS RESPONSIBILITY AND A MORAL IMPERATIVE

Owning bitcoin allows you to be your own bank, and much like maintaining freedom, it’s a hefty responsibility.

While it may be far too easy to leave your coins on an exchange, if you simply buy bitcoin but never take custody, you are leaving yourself open to a multitude of attacks. One of the most insidious, is the potential for a self-custody ban or some sort of regulatory capture of the exchanges, effectively turning bitcoin into another meme stock that must be held by a third-party custodian.

In the process, the peer-to-peer decentralized nature of the network gets degraded for millions of potential users across the country, if not the whole world.

When you have your money in banks and investment accounts, it’s not really yours. It belongs to the banks — the custodians — and it’s granted access to you at the behest of them and the government.

To these custodians, granting you access to your money is an inconvenient privilege that can be rescinded at a moment’s notice.

It’s a testament to how powerful western nations have become and a cautionary tale for what could happen if you ever see yourself in the outgroup in the event of a heated disagreement.

Anarcho-capitalists to Communists alike, whatever your views, whatever your political proclivities, Bitcoin has your back.

It is a completely voluntary system of censorship-resistant, peer-to-peer, electronic money. It is a digital bearer instrument if you use it correctly.

It is simply a tool; a tool that does not discriminate and does not care who you are or what you believe.

Bitcoin is a tool that just is; a tool that just does.

It exists everywhere and nowhere, simultaneously.

All you need to do is learn.

It is perhaps the largest peaceful protest in the history of mankind, and it is your best way to preserve freedom.

Loss of freedoms typically require violence to reinstate; opt in to peace through buying and holding bitcoin.

Every purchase you make is a vote for the future that you want. Through buying and holding bitcoin, holding your keys and taking back your self-sovereignty, you move the country back toward a sound money standard that can do much to fix our divisive problems.

Furthermore, you are making it harder for tyranny and government overreach to take hold. You are sowing the seeds for a better tomorrow

Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com

Best Pool Rules

Best Pool Rules

In my opinion, more or less in order:

1)  Lowest fees

1a)  Shares transaction fees

1b)  Any pool that does NOT share transaction fees should be rejected from consideration (which, unfortunately, is most, if not all, Chinese based pools)

2)  Reasonable variance – You need to get paid often enough to be happy. This is a tough one.

Variance is the close cousin to “Luck”.

The luckier a pool is, the more blocks it finds relative to its hashing speed, and the less variance it will have.  But its not a real thing!  “Luck” could change any microsecond.
 “Luck” is just mathematical statistics – over a long enough time period, all pools will average out to 100% luck.

Luck Statistik for 14 Blocks

You need to understand Variance:

A big pool finds more blocks, but distributes the earnings out to more miners.  

A small pool is just the reverse:  it finds fewer blocks, but pays those earnings to fewer people. Over the long run, Rule #1, well, rules.

3)  Wind-up/Wind-down time – Most pools use some leveling algorithm.

4)  User Interface – That doesn’t matter much if you have a few miners.  If you have hundreds, the difference can be thousands of dollars a Year.

Notes:

A) In the long run #2 & #3 really don’t matter much.  Both pools show your hashing rate in minutes, payouts just lag on Kano compared to Slushpool, but would continue longer if you changed in the future

B) Bigger is not better.  Sure Antpool is #1 in size, in no small part to Bitmain using their own pool (no fees for them!).   Your profit will be determined mostly by rule #1 – lower fees mean more profit.

C) More, smaller, pools is healthier for the blockchain.  If you can live with the variance, support the pool with the longest average payout you are happy with.

D) For pools with long ramp up times that are relatively small, like Kano, you MIGHT suffer due to difficulty changes while you ramp up.

For smaller pools, make sure you understand what happens to your efforts (based on their scoring system) when a difficulty change occurs.

Bitcoin – Happy Pizza Day

Pizza Day is a day of regret.

We all know the story. Laszlo Hanyecz buys two Papa John’s pizzas and some lucky guy got 10,000 BTC on this day 12 years ago. The story is like that of Peter Minuit buying Manhattan Island for $24. We can hardly believe that such a thing was possible given its value today.

The story has a lot of interesting angles.

It was the first real-world good or service purchased with bitcoin.

It established bitcoin’s price, since the two pizzas cost about $41, one BTC was about $0.0041.

There’s also Laszlo, a guy whose innovation was mining bitcoin using GPUs (graphics processing units). He acted like a drunken sailor spending 100,000 BTC on pizzas, as he did the same deal several more times that month.

RENT-SEEKING DAYDREAMS

The part that everyone fantasizes about is being that guy that bought the 10,000 BTC for $41.

We don’t fantasize about being Laszlo because we aren’t GPU programming experts. We can, however, imagine being the guy on the bitcointalk forums offering to buy bitcoin for a couple of pizzas.

Pizza Day brings out that daydream of being a bitcoin billionaire from having made a single brilliant trade. We all hate the actual guy that made this trade because we want to be him. We see the guy as lucky, as having won the lottery and we are envious.

This fantasy is borne of a fiat mentality.

This hierarchy of values comes from fiat money. The desire is to be lucky instead of good. We would rather do no work and make money rather than provide goods and services and get paid.

It’s telling that the regret is about missed-out luck rather than missed-out innovation.

It’s easier in a fiat world to dream about being the guy that sold pizza than being the guy who had the foresight to mine with GPUs.

This is fiat accomplishment, getting lucky with money, versus real accomplishment which is earning the money by providing goods and services to the market.

Most people would rather get lucky being associated with an innovator than be the innovator themselves !!!

The Laws are Unjust

As we’ve seen over the many years that this rag has been written (and beyond) companies who are able to fund whole teams dedicated to data security have been wholly ineffective at storing that data safely.

With the passage of this new law EU officials are actively putting citizens in harm’s way by irresponsibly trying to force bitcoin users to collect and store each other’s data. This is if you believe that is the actual intention behind this move.

In reality, this move likely serves as a pure intimidation tactic to coerce people to use trusted third parties when transacting with bitcoin.

A heavy handed shove into easily controlled vectors. If too many users are in control of their own private keys, run their own nodes, and are up to date on best privacy practices when transacting it is much harder to stop bitcoin.

And make no mistake, these people want to stop bitcoin at all costs.

They do not want you to be free.

They are quickly losing their grasp of control on the populace and they are moving as quickly as possible to clamp down in an attempt to retain control.

You are not meant to have privacy in their eyes. You are inherently a criminal in their eyes. These people think you are disgusting cattle who needs to be led at every turn.

It does not have to be this way. You do not have to succumb to the madness of these people. All it takes are a few decisions.

Speak up!

Act!

Disobey!

There is a silent majority out there who knows this type of attempted control is inherently wrong.

It is anti-human!

It is evil!

This silent majority needs to begin developing the courage to speak up.

Call out the abject insanity of allowing unelected institutions like the Financial Action Task Force write freedom restricting guidelines that get adopted by governments like the EU.

Learn how to run your own node, how to produce your own private/public key pairs, and how to destroy chain analysis heuristics with privacy best practices.

Make the tyrant’s job as hard as possible!

Disobey!

Stand up and defend freedom in the Digital Age by actively defying their unjust laws.

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he obligated to do so.”

It is your duty as an individual to disobey these incredibly invasive and tyrannical “laws”.

If you don’t disobey your progeny may not have the opportunity to. The time to counter punch is right now. Get on it.

Source: https://tftc.io/

Seven common mistakes crypto investors and traders make?

Cryptocurrency markets are volatile enough without making simple, easily avoidable mistakes.

Investing in cryptocurrencies and digital assets is now easier than ever before. Online brokers, centralized exchanges and even decentralized exchanges give investors the flexibility to buy and sell tokens without going through a traditional financial institution and the hefty fees and commissions that come along with them.

Cryptocurrencies were designed to operate in a decentralized manner. This means that while they’re an innovative avenue for global peer-to-peer value transfers, there are no trusted authorities involved that can guarantee the security of your assets. Your losses are your responsibility once you take your digital assets into custody.

Here we’ll explore some of the more common mistakes that cryptocurrency investors and traders make and how you can protect yourself from unnecessary losses.

Losing your keys

Cryptocurrencies are built on blockchain technology, a form of distributed ledger technology that offers high levels of security for digital assets without the need for a centralized custodian. However, this puts the onus of protection on asset holders, and storing the cryptographic keys to your digital asset wallet safely is an integral part of this.

On the blockchain, digital transactions are created and signed using private keys, which act as a unique identifier to prevent unauthorized access to your cryptocurrency wallet. Unlike a password or a PIN, you cannot reset or recover your keys if you lose them. This makes it extremely important to keep your keys safe and secure, as losing them would mean losing access to all digital assets stored in that wallet.

Lost keys are among the most common mistakes that crypto investors make. According to a report from Chainalysis, of the 18.5 million Bitcoin (BTC) mined so far, over 20% has been lost to forgotten or misplaced keys.

Storing coins in online wallets

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges are probably the easiest way for investors to get their hands on some cryptocurrencies. However, these exchanges do not give you access to the wallets holding the tokens, instead offering you a service similar to banks. While the user technically owns the coins stored on the platform, they are still held by the exchange, leaving them vulnerable to attacks on the platform and putting them at risk.

There have been many documented attacks on high-profile cryptocurrency exchanges that have led to millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency stolen from these platforms. The most secure option to protect your assets against such risk is to store your cryptocurrencies offline, withdrawing assets to either a software or hardware wallet after purchase.

Not keeping a hard copy of your seed phrase

To generate a private key for your crypto wallet, you will be prompted to write down a seed phrase consisting of up to 24 randomly generated words in a specific order. If you ever lose access to your wallet, this seed phrase can be used to generate your private keys and access your cryptocurrencies.

Keeping a hard copy record, such as a printed document or a piece of paper with the seed phrase written on it, can help prevent needless losses from damaged hardware wallets, faulty digital storage systems, and more. Just like losing your private keys, traders have lost many a coin to crashed computers and corrupted hard drives.

Fat-finger error

A fat-finger error is when an investor accidentally enters a trade order that isn’t what they intended. One misplaced zero can lead to significant losses, and mistyping even a single decimal place can have considerable ramifications.

One instance of this fat-finger error was when the DeversiFi platform erroneously paid out a $24-million fee. Another unforgettable tale was when a highly sought-after Bored Ape nonfungible token was accidentally sold for $3,000 instead of $300,000.

Sending to the wrong address

Investors should take extreme care while sending digital assets to another person or wallet, as there is no way to retrieve them if they are sent to the wrong address. This mistake often happens when the sender isn’t paying attention while entering the wallet address. Transactions on the blockchain are irreversible, and unlike a bank, there are no customer support lines to help with the situation.

This kind of error can be fatal to an investment portfolio. Still, in a positive turn of events, Tether, the firm behind the world’s most popular stablecoin, recovered and returned $1 million worth of Tether (USDT) to a group of crypto traders who sent the funds to the wrong decentralized finance platform in 2020. However, this story is a drop in the ocean of examples where things don’t work out so well. Hodlers should be careful while dealing with digital asset transactions and take time to enter the details. Once you make a mistake, there’s no going back.

Over diversification

Diversification is crucial to building a resilient cryptocurrency portfolio, especially with the high volatility levels in the space. However, with the sheer number of options out there and the predominant thirst for outsized gains, cryptocurrency investors often end up over-diversifying their portfolios, which can have immense consequences.

Over-diversification can lead to an investor holding a large number of heavily underperforming assets, leading to significant losses. It’s vital to only diversify into cryptocurrencies where the fundamental value is clear and to have a strong understanding of the different types of assets and how they will likely perform in various market conditions.

Not setting up a stop-loss arrangement

A stop-loss is an order type that enables investors to sell a security only when the market reaches a specific price. Investors use this to prevent losing more money than they are willing to, ensuring they at least make back their initial investment.

In several cases, investors have experienced huge losses because of incorrectly setting up their stop losses before asset prices dropped. However, it’s also important to remember that stop-loss orders aren’t perfect and can sometimes fail to trigger a sale in the event of a large, sudden crash.

That being said, the importance of setting up stop losses to protect investments cannot be understated and can significantly help mitigate losses during a market downturn.

Crypto investing and trading is a risky business with no guarantees of success. Like any other form of trading, patience, caution and understanding can go a long way. Blockchain places the responsibility on the investor, so it’s crucial to take the time to figure out the various aspects of the market and learn from past mistakes before putting your money at risk.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/

Seven common mistakes crypto investors and traders make?

Cryptocurrency markets are volatile enough without making simple, easily avoidable mistakes.

Investing in cryptocurrencies and digital assets is now easier than ever before. Online brokers, centralized exchanges and even decentralized exchanges give investors the flexibility to buy and sell tokens without going through a traditional financial institution and the hefty fees and commissions that come along with them.

Cryptocurrencies were designed to operate in a decentralized manner. This means that while they’re an innovative avenue for global peer-to-peer value transfers, there are no trusted authorities involved that can guarantee the security of your assets. Your losses are your responsibility once you take your digital assets into custody.

Here we’ll explore some of the more common mistakes that cryptocurrency investors and traders make and how you can protect yourself from unnecessary losses.

Losing your keys

Cryptocurrencies are built on blockchain technology, a form of distributed ledger technology that offers high levels of security for digital assets without the need for a centralized custodian. However, this puts the onus of protection on asset holders, and storing the cryptographic keys to your digital asset wallet safely is an integral part of this.

On the blockchain, digital transactions are created and signed using private keys, which act as a unique identifier to prevent unauthorized access to your cryptocurrency wallet. Unlike a password or a PIN, you cannot reset or recover your keys if you lose them. This makes it extremely important to keep your keys safe and secure, as losing them would mean losing access to all digital assets stored in that wallet.

Lost keys are among the most common mistakes that crypto investors make. According to a report from Chainalysis, of the 18.5 million Bitcoin (BTC) mined so far, over 20% has been lost to forgotten or misplaced keys.

Storing coins in online wallets

Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges are probably the easiest way for investors to get their hands on some cryptocurrencies. However, these exchanges do not give you access to the wallets holding the tokens, instead offering you a service similar to banks. While the user technically owns the coins stored on the platform, they are still held by the exchange, leaving them vulnerable to attacks on the platform and putting them at risk.

There have been many documented attacks on high-profile cryptocurrency exchanges that have led to millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency stolen from these platforms. The most secure option to protect your assets against such risk is to store your cryptocurrencies offline, withdrawing assets to either a software or hardware wallet after purchase.

Not keeping a hard copy of your seed phrase

To generate a private key for your crypto wallet, you will be prompted to write down a seed phrase consisting of up to 24 randomly generated words in a specific order. If you ever lose access to your wallet, this seed phrase can be used to generate your private keys and access your cryptocurrencies.

Keeping a hard copy record, such as a printed document or a piece of paper with the seed phrase written on it, can help prevent needless losses from damaged hardware wallets, faulty digital storage systems, and more. Just like losing your private keys, traders have lost many a coin to crashed computers and corrupted hard drives.

Fat-finger error

A fat-finger error is when an investor accidentally enters a trade order that isn’t what they intended. One misplaced zero can lead to significant losses, and mistyping even a single decimal place can have considerable ramifications.

One instance of this fat-finger error was when the DeversiFi platform erroneously paid out a $24-million fee. Another unforgettable tale was when a highly sought-after Bored Ape nonfungible token was accidentally sold for $3,000 instead of $300,000.

Sending to the wrong address

Investors should take extreme care while sending digital assets to another person or wallet, as there is no way to retrieve them if they are sent to the wrong address. This mistake often happens when the sender isn’t paying attention while entering the wallet address. Transactions on the blockchain are irreversible, and unlike a bank, there are no customer support lines to help with the situation.

This kind of error can be fatal to an investment portfolio. Still, in a positive turn of events, Tether, the firm behind the world’s most popular stablecoin, recovered and returned $1 million worth of Tether (USDT) to a group of crypto traders who sent the funds to the wrong decentralized finance platform in 2020. However, this story is a drop in the ocean of examples where things don’t work out so well. Hodlers should be careful while dealing with digital asset transactions and take time to enter the details. Once you make a mistake, there’s no going back.

Over diversification

Diversification is crucial to building a resilient cryptocurrency portfolio, especially with the high volatility levels in the space. However, with the sheer number of options out there and the predominant thirst for outsized gains, cryptocurrency investors often end up over-diversifying their portfolios, which can have immense consequences.

Over-diversification can lead to an investor holding a large number of heavily underperforming assets, leading to significant losses. It’s vital to only diversify into cryptocurrencies where the fundamental value is clear and to have a strong understanding of the different types of assets and how they will likely perform in various market conditions.

Not setting up a stop-loss arrangement

A stop-loss is an order type that enables investors to sell a security only when the market reaches a specific price. Investors use this to prevent losing more money than they are willing to, ensuring they at least make back their initial investment.

In several cases, investors have experienced huge losses because of incorrectly setting up their stop losses before asset prices dropped. However, it’s also important to remember that stop-loss orders aren’t perfect and can sometimes fail to trigger a sale in the event of a large, sudden crash.

That being said, the importance of setting up stop losses to protect investments cannot be understated and can significantly help mitigate losses during a market downturn.

Crypto investing and trading is a risky business with no guarantees of success. Like any other form of trading, patience, caution and understanding can go a long way. Blockchain places the responsibility on the investor, so it’s crucial to take the time to figure out the various aspects of the market and learn from past mistakes before putting your money at risk.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/

19 Million bitcoin in Circulation

Source: https://coinpayments.com/

Blockchain Spectrum

The Blockchain Spectrum

Now, even if someone does not have the drawbacks of decades-long experience and mental models with a specific asset class, it is still very hard to understand Bitcoin.

Why? Because Bitcoin is the intersection of many, many different fields.

To truly understand Bitcoin, there is no other way than being a polymath.

Even if one has made it as far to (a) realize Bitcoin is something completely new and solely using existing heuristics and mental models will not work and (b) with Bitcoin, more than anything else, we do not know what we do not know — understanding still requires a very broad set of competences.

The correct approach to understand when one starts going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole is therefore to assume one knows nothing and any experience and insight one has from previous aspects of life brings
very little to the table.

First principles thinking is required.
We can, however, try to define a little deeper what Bitcoin is. Below is listed some different ways of wrapping one’s head around Bitcoin.

Not an exhaustive list.

A living organism

Bitcoin is Free and Open Source software. It is not a piece of IP owned by a centralized joint-stock company that needs to optimize for the bottom line of the next quarter and is incapable of cannibalizing itself. Since the Bitcoin whitepaper was released and the
genesis block was mined, we have seen an explosion of experiments, ideas and creative geniuses get involved in Bitcoin and crypto as a whole. To think of Bitcoin as a living, technological organism that adjusts, develops and constantly changes to survive can be useful.

A religion

Money, as many have learned and realized in recent decade, is just a social
construction we are all part of. The value therefore comes from the amount of true believers.

Continuing this line of thinking, one could describe the religion as consisting of:

  • Prophet: Satoshi. No longer present. Impossible to ask questions.
  • Convictions: Decentralization.
  • Rituals: Running nodes. Mining. Hodling.
  • Holy scriptures: Bitcoin whitepaper. As with all holy scriptures, people interpret them in their own way.
  • Sacred objects: Genesis block, lowercase bitcoin
  • Sects: Different interpretations resulting in different factions/sects: small blockers, big blockers, etc.

An emerging economy

  • The consensus protocol can be thought of as the constitution
  • The society as the constituency (users on the demand-side; miners on the supply-side)
  • Core developers as the executive department who write the code and execute on the strategy, but amendments to the protocol (i.e., constitution) require approval from the constituency)
  • The native token is the internal currency
  • The investors underwrite the currency

Additionally, many one-liners and memes exist to describe Bitcoin. Not an exhaustive list.

  • Sound money
  • Digital gold
  • “An insurance policy against an Orwellian future”
  • “A tool for freeing humanity from oligarchs and tyrants, dressed up as a get-rich-quick scheme”
  • Censorship- judgment & seizure-resistant money
  • Peer to peer digital cash
  • Swiss Bank account in your pocket
  • Unstoppable and uncensorable hard money

Source: https://backed.ai/

The monetary properties of Bitcoin

bitcoin vs gold
bitcoin vs fiat

Bitcoin is a monetary good — a new form of money. As Bitcoin is a money, it must be compared to other monies to consider the comparative advantages of Bitcoin and from that consider further the probabilities of Bitcoin winning ground or not in the competition between monies.

Brief summarization of the monetary properties

Summarization of the monetary properties of Bitcoin compared to precious metals and fiat currencies

As the exhibit above showcases, Bitcoin offers many different distinct and compelling competitive advantages to the alternatives.

These include, but are not limited to:

1. Bitcoin is the first asset in the human history to provide any holder a very sure case of unseizability and censorship- and judgment-resistance for their funds.

◦ Unseizability: With precious metals and fiat currencies, the custodianship is mostly in the hands of trusted custodians that is subject to any intervention by a government or authority.

Bitcoin, with self-custody being orders of magnitude easier than with precious metals and fiat currencies, and access to the corresponding private key of funds being the sole way to access and move funds, no one can seize your bitcoins.

◦ Censorship- and judgment resistance: With precious metals and fiat currencies, the payment clearing for small value transactions can with not much hassle be somewhat censorship resistant if the involved parties are willing to transact in the physical units of precious metals and fiat currencies and to self-custody the funds going forward.

However, with non-small value transactions it is exceedingly inconvenient and costly for transactions of precious metals and fiat currencies to happen in the offline, with physical units and self-custody going forward, leaving the centralized intermediaries as the only option and these are subject to any intervention by a government or authority.

Bitcoin, with the payment clearing involving no centralized intermediaries but instead a decentralized and distributed setup requiring no AML/KYC, the result is that of a the payment clearing process being permissionless, allowing anyone with cryptographic access to funds to move them at their will.

2. Bitcoin provides an inherently apolitical global monetary unit. It is truly border-less, with no recognition of any jurisdictional rules and laws, allowing the jurisdiction of a counterpart in any transaction to be of no relevance.

◦ Fiat currencies are highly political and precious metals are less political than fiat currencies, but still much more political than Bitcoin.

◦ Bitcoin is truly border-less: any bitcoin funds can be accessed anywhere on the planet by having access to information that can even be stored inside a human brain and reliably retrieved at small effort — and, crucially, with no intermediary and no permission required the bitcoin funds can be moved to anywhere in the world with final settlement in the next block.

3. Bitcoin provides scarcity and salability through time characteristics vastly superior to any other monetary options, including fiat currencies and precious metals.

◦ The non-discretionary monetary policy of the bitcoin networking allowing for the asymptotic money supply* of 21 million BTC is built into the literal definition of the protocol. This is a drastic contrast to the arbitrary scarcity of fiat currencies governed by politics.

The scarcity of precious metals is much better than fiat currencies, but Bitcoin with the strictly fixed money supply outperforms any precious metal.

Bitcoin provides any holder a reassurance stronger than any other asset in the world that their ownership stake in the total quantity of Bitcoin on the market will never diluted.

One BTC of 21 million will always be one BTC of 21 million.

◦ Bitcoins are infinitely durable, impossible to counterfeit or dilute, can be stored at no cost and at no degradation.

* By inventing Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto created the first example of a digital good (in this case, monetary good) that is impossible to reproduce ad infinitum, thereby creating the first instance of human history of digital scarcity.

Less talked about it, but perhaps more important, Satoshi Nakamoto with Bitcoin also created the first example of a good being absolute scarce.

Previously, any consideration of scarcity of a good was relative. Any physical good is never absolutely scarce, onlyrelatively scarce when compared to other goods — simply because any limit on a physical goods is a function of the time and human effort put towards producing the good.

Bitcoin, with the asymptotic monetary supply built into the protocol, is therefore the first example of absolute scarcity in a liquid commodity and good that cannot have its fixed quantity of supply increased.

People’s Money
Power to the People
The seed has been planted …
Make it Thrive !!!
Choose
Veritas non Auctoritas …
Choose Wisely

Knowledge is…

Knowledge is Power !!!

WRONG !!!
Knowledge is Power …
When Applied !!!

Apollo BTC – A Bitcoin ASIC Miner and Desktop Class Computer running a Full Node

Introducing the FutureBit Apollo BTC

Six CPU Cores. 44 ASIC Cores. 1TB NVMe Based SSD Drive. Quiet. Less than 200 Watts of Power. Made in the USA. This is what the Future of Bitcoin looks like. 

FutureBit Apollo BTC is the world’s first vertically integrated platform bringing the full power of Bitcoin and it’s mining infrastructure in a small, quiet, easy to use desktop device designed for everyday people. 

We have iterated and learned much from our first Apollo product. We realized early on that we focused too much on the mining aspect, and not enough on the software, applications, and services that run Bitcoin. Too many of these services have moved to online centralized websites, and many users have given up on running the core software that powers Bitcoin. 

This must change, as Bitcoin will not continue to be the free, un-censorable, decentralized system it is today if only a few control the mining that powers it, and the nodes that control it. 

At the heart of the new Apollo BTC product is a revamped SBC (Single Board Computer), that is as powerful as any consumer grade desktop system and can run almost any Bitcoin Application natively on the device 24/7. Take it out of the Box, plug it in, power it on, and you are already running a full Bitcoin node without needing to do anything.

Install a wallet of your choice, use any hardware wallet, run BTCPayServer, run a block explorer, run a Lightning Node. All of this is possible with our six core ARM based CPU with 4GB of RAM, and a 1TB NVMe drive that can easily store a FULL non pruned Bitcoin Node. It can power through a Full Node Sync in under 48 hours, which is a record for a device of its class! This is almost an order of magnitude faster than any Raspberry Pi 4 based Node. 

On top of this we have taken our 6 years of experience building ASIC mining devices, and engineered the only American Made TeraHash range Bitcoin mining device that can be silent on your desk, mine Bitcoin in the background 24/7, and only use the power of one light bulb to do it. 

We did this with our optimized PCB design that has carefully placed all 44 hash cores underneath our custom cold-forged aluminum induction heatsink, which draws up to 200 Watts of heat away from the device with our new nearly silent 25mm fan. This results in the Apollo BTC in Turbo Mode being just as quiet as the Apollo LTC in Eco Mode!

Like our previous products, we are super proud that we can continue manufacturing the Apollo BTC in the USA, and are now the only USA based company that delivers Bitcoin ASIC products with a supply chain whole owned in the western hemisphere (no more reliance on Chinese based ASICS, and their willingness to only sell to large farms and the highest bidder). 

OPTIONS

Full Apollo Package: This is our Full Package option that comes with everything you need in the box. The Apollo BTC Unit with our latest controller built in, and our 200W Power supply with power cable. 

Full Apollo Package NO Power Supply: We are also offering the Full Package with no power supply for people that want the plug-n-play experience but have spare 12v ATX power supply. 

Standard: This option is ONLY the Apollo ASIC Miner, with no controller or power supply. Our new hashboard has a micro USB port, and can be used as a USB device. The Full Apollo Node can control multiple standard units through its USB ports. We wanted to give our customers an option to expand their hash power in a cost effective way. If you already have a Raspberry Pi, or Linux/Windows Desktop Computer and a power supply with two PCIE power ports you can also control our Standard unit in this way with our stand alone miner software (please note this setup will be for more advanced users, and the software will be command line based on launch). 

Standard + Power Supply: Same as our Standard unit above, but comes with our 200W Power supply. This is a plug and play solution if you already have a Full Apollo Package. Take it out of the box, plug in the power supply, plug in the micro USB cable to the back of your Full Apollo BTC and it will automatically recognize the second hashboard and start mining! 

  • Compact All-In-One Desktop Bitcoin System (4x6x4in) that mines Bitcoin and any SHA256 based crypto (Bitcoin Cash etc). 
  • Powerful 6 ARM Core CPU with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 1TB NVMe SSD (NOT included in the Standard or Standard + package). 
  • Comes Pre-Installed with a Bitcoin node, and you can install almost any Bitcoin Application
  • Very wide range of operation modes with preset ECO (quiet) mode, BALANCED, and TURBO mode. 
  • 2-3.8 TH/s of SHA256 performance per miner (+/- 5%)
  • 125 Watts in ECO mode, and 200 Watts in TURBO * +/- 10%
  • Can be used as a full Desktop computer with a monitor keyboard and mouse (not included), or through our Web UI
  • Connect almost any peripheral with our USB 3.0 ports, USB C port, HDMI, AC Wifi, and Bluetooth 
  • Clocks and Power is fully customizable by user with easy to use interface
  • Hashboard now monitors both voltage and power draw for accurate measurements*
  • Custom designed cold forged hexagonal pin heatsink with leading thermal performance for the quietest ASIC miner in operation!
  • 1k-5k RPM Quiet Dual Ball Bearing Fan with automatic thermal management with onboard temperature sensor
  • Controlled via local connection on a web browser similar to antminers. You can simply set it up via smartphone browser. No crazy driver installs, hard to use miner software or scripts needed.
  • Two Six Pin PCIE power connectors for wide-range of power draw
  • Custom Designed all Aluminum case
  • Ships with our own custom built 200W 94% efficient PSU and is ready to run out of the box! (Does NOT come with Standard package). 

 Requirements:

  • Router with an Ethernet cable for initial setup OR Monitor with keyboard and mouse
  • At least a 250 watt 12v power supply with two 6 Pin PCIE connector is required (unless you order our packages that come with our power supply). This is the same connector used by all modern GPUs. Please note even standard units NEED a power supply, they cant be powered through the USB port on the full package unit. 

As I am the owner of two of these beauties, that I have on my office as you saw in the photo above, I took the liberty to make Free-Publicity for the FutureBit Apollo Btc Miner.

Kudos to jstefanop

Source:

https://www.futurebit.io/

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Trilemma of International Finance

Trilemma of International Finance

The relative value of any two curren-
cies—the exchange rate—is determined
through their sale and purchase on the global foreign exchange market. If government policy interferes with this market by changing the relative supply or demand of currencies, the exchange rate is managed.

The trilemma of international finance, is a restriction on government policy that follows immediately from the interaction of exchange rates, monetary policy and international capital flows.

Trilemma of International Finance

The trilemma states that any country can have only two of the following:

  • (1) Unrestricted international capital markets.
  • (2) A managed exchange rate.
  • (3) An independent monetary policy.

If the government wants a managed exchange rate but does not want to interfere
with international capital flows, it must use
monetary policy to accommodate changes
in the demand for its currency in order to
stabilize the exchange rate.

In the extreme, this would take the form of a currency board arrangement, where the domestic currency is fully backed by a foreign currency (as in the case of Hong Kong).

In such a situation, monetary policy can no longer be used for domestic purposes (it is no longer independent).

If a country wishes to maintain control over monetary policy to reduce domestic unemployment or inflation, for example, it must limit trades of its currency in the international capital market (it no longer has free international capital markets).

A country that chooses to have both unrestricted inter-national capital flows and an independent monetary policy can no longer influence its exchange rate and, therefore, cannot have a managed exchange rate.

Pieters and Vivanco (2016), government
attempts to regulate the globally accessible
bitcoin markets are generally unsuccessful,
and, as shown in Pieters (2016), bitcoin exchange rates tend to reflect the
market, not official exchange rates.

Should the flows allowed by bitcoin become big enough, all countries will have, by default, unrestricted international capital markets.

Thus, with bitcoin, (1) unrestricted
international capital markets is chosen by
default.

Therefore, the only remaining policy choice is between (2) managed exchange rates or (3) independent monetary policy.

If the country chooses (1) and (2), it must use reactive monetary policy to achieve the managed exchange rate.

If the country chooses (1) and (3), it must have a floating exchange rate because it has no remaining tools with which to maintain a managed exchange rate.

Ali et al. (2014), the European Central
Bank (2015) and the Bank for International
Settlements (2015) all concur that cryptocur-
rencies may eventually undermine monetary policy.

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Convergence of blockchain with AI and IOT

IoT and AI are growing exponentially

Internet of Things – IoT

A future of transacting intelligent machines

• Individually, each of these technologies deserves all the attention they’re getting as enablers and disruptors

• But, taken together?

• Their transformative effect becomes multiplicative

• A future driven by machine connectivity, data exchange and commercial services:

  • IoT connects billions of machines and sensors generate unprecedented quantities of real-time data
  • AI enables the machines to act on data and trigger services
  • Blockchain functions are the transaction layer where data and service contracts are securely stored and payments for services are settled

How does blockchain support intelligent connected machines?

• Smart Contracts enable self-executing and self-enforcing contractual states

  • Custom financial instruments (tokens), records of ownership of an underlying physical asset (smart property), any
  • complex business logic that can be programmable
  • Can such applications be ideal for intelligent (AI) and connected (IoT) machines?
  • These machines are intelligent enough to negotiate contracts, but need a technology allowing them to securely sign and enforce them

• Digital currencies create new forms of money

  • Programmable and active
  • Will such money be ideal for intelligent (AI) and connected (IoT) machines?
  • These machines will need digital currency to pay for services assigned through the smart contracts

How will the three technologies work together?

IoT – Internet of Things

  • Sensors allow us to cost-effectively gather tremendous amounts of data.
  • Connectivity allows us to transmit/broadcast these data.
  • But, there is a missing element: intelligence to process these data.

AI – Artificial Intelligence

  • Intelligence at the very edges of the network (mini-brains).
  • Combine with IoT and you have the ability to recognize meaningful patterns buried in mountains of data in ways that would be impossible for most humans, or even non-AI algorithms, to do.
  • But, there is a missing element: a secure storage layer for data and a transaction layer for services

DLT (blockchain) – Distributed Ledger Technology

  • Decentralized governance, coupled with no single point of failure, disintermediation, unalterable and searchable records of events.
  • Digital currencies and tokenized custom financial instruments.
  • Combine with AI and IoT and you have a new world of autonomous systems interacting with each other, procuring services from each other and settling transactions.

The technology stack of the future

Technology Stack of the Future

Toward a world of machine commerce

A world of Machine Commerce

M2M will need SSI (self-sovereign identities) – for objects!

Human Identities types

Object identities can be SSI by default

  • Multi-source, multi-verifier
  • Digitally signed, verifiable credentials that can prove issuer, holder and status
  • Secure peer-to-peer connections (permanent or session-based)
  • Exchange full credentials, partial credentials or ZKPs derived from credentials

Next milestone: Decentralized Organizations (DOs)

DOs are good at:

  • Coordinating resources that do not know/trust each other (including hybrid
  • H/M)
  • Governing in a geography-agnostic, censorship-resistant manner
  • Enabling short-term or informal organizational structures  (networks/communities)
  • Tracking and rewarding contribution

Challenges

  • Jurisdictional issues
  • Legislating new types of work for humans and work rules for machines
  • Governance modalities, including external supervision

Challenges

New/upgraded system architectures

• From legacy to blockchain/AI/IoT-native systems
• Integration, interoperability, backward compatibility
• ROI obvious ex post, difficult ex ante – Bootstrapping

Advanced analytics capabilities

• As devices at the edge become smarter, the smart contracts enabled by blockchain platforms will require more advanced data analytics capabilities and gateways to the physical world.

New Business Models

  • Disruptive innovation will dominate – but not without boom-and-bust cycles and big failures along the way.
  • Winners will NOT be the ones focusing on efficiency gains, but on disruptive models.

Key takeaways

• IoT, AI and DLT (blockchain) are foundational and exponentially growing technologies

  • When combined, they will create a new internet of connected, intelligent and commercially transacting machines
  • An era machine-to-machine (M2M) and human-to-machine (H2M) commerce is likely to emerge, with profound consequences on social and economic dynamics
  • New forms of corporations or organizational formats (code-only, autonomous) will emerge

• There are numerous challenges that must be overcome

  • IoT has outpaced the human internet, but is still a largely passive, insecure and privacy-vulnerable network
  • AI has made huge leaps, but still requires immense computational resources and is largely incompatible with edge computing
  • DLT is a new technology, largely untested at scale; both smart contracts and digital assets lack the regulatory clarity required for mass adoption

This work is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives license
© University of Nicosia,
Institute for the Future, unic.ac.cy/blockchain

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Au – 💲 – ₿

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from Latin: aurum) and atomic number 79, making it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally.

It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in a pure form.

Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions.

Gold often occurs in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element  silver (as electrum), naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium, and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite.

Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides).

A relatively rare element, gold is a precious metal that has been used for coinage,  jewelry, and other arts throughout recorded history.

In the past, a gold standard was often implemented as a monetary policy.

Still, gold coins ceased to be minted as a circulating currency in the 1930s, and the world gold standard was abandoned for a fiat currency system after 1971.

As of 2017, the world’s largest gold producer by far was China, with 440 tonnes per year.

A total of around 201,296 tonnes of gold exists above ground, as of 2020. This is equal to a cube with each side measuring roughly 21.7 meters (71 ft).

Gold’s high malleability, ductility, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, and conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion-resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices (its chief industrial use).

The world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments and 10% in industry.

Gold is also used in infrared shielding,  colored-glass production, gold leafing, and tooth restoration. Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine.

F I A T

Fiat money (from Latin: fiat, “let it be done”) is a type of money that is not backed by any commodity such as gold or silver, and typically declared by a decree from the government to be legal tender.

Throughout history, fiat money was sometimes issued by local banks and other institutions. In modern times, fiat money is generally established by government regulation.

Yuan dynasty banknotes are a
medieval form of fiat money

Fiat money does not have intrinsic value  and does not have use value. It has value only because the people who use it as a medium of exchange agree on its value. They trust that it will be accepted by merchants and other people.

Fiat money is an alternative to commodity money, which is a currency that has intrinsic value because it contains a precious metal such as gold or silver which is embedded in the coin.

Fiat also differs from representative money, which is money that has intrinsic value because it is backed by and can be converted into a precious metal or another commodity.

Fiat money can look similar to representative money (such as paper bills), but the former has no backing, while the latter represents a claim on a commodity (which can be redeemed to a greater or lesser extent).

Government-issued fiat money  banknotes  were used first during the 11th century in China.

Fiat money started to predominate during the 20th century.

Since President Richard Nixon‘s decision to default on the US dollar convertibility to gold in 1971, a system of national fiat currencies has been used globally.

Fiat money can be:

  • Any money that is not backed by a commodity.
  • Money declared by a person, institution or government to be legal tender, meaning that it must be accepted in payment of a debt in specific circumstances.
  • State-issued money which is neither convertible through a central bank to anything else nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.
  • Money used because of government decree.
  • An otherwise non-valuable object that serves as a medium of exchange (also known as fiduciary money.)

The term fiat derives from the Latin word  fiat, meaning “let it be done” used in the sense of an order, decree or resolution.

Bitcoin – Digital Gold

The most common, and best, ways to think about bitcoin is as “digital gold”.

Like gold, bitcoin doesn’t rely on a central issuer, can’t have its supply manipulated by any authority, and has fundamental properties long considered important for a monetary good and store of value.

Unlike gold, bitcoin is extremely easy and cheap to “transport”, and trivial to verify its authenticity.

Bitcoin is also “programmable”. This means custody of bitcoin can be extremely flexible. It can be split amongst a set of people (“key holders”), backed up and encrypted, or even frozen-in-place until a certain date in the future. This is all done without a central authority managing the process.

You can walk across a national border with bitcoin “stored” in your head by memorizing a key.

The similarities to gold, plus the unique features possible because bitcoin is purely digital, give it the “digital gold” moniker.

Sharing fundamental properties with gold means it shares use-cases with gold, such as hedging inflation and political uncertainty.

But being digital, bitcoin adds capabilities that are especially relevant in our modern electronic times.

The world does indeed need a digital version of gold.

People’s Money
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