Category: #Fear

Running bitcoin – Hal Finney

Wonder In Peace Bright Mind

Join Honorary Chair Fran Finney and the Running Bitcoin Challenge Committee as we honor legendary cypher punk, Hal Finney.

This is THE EVENT that combines Hal Finney’s love of running and Bitcoin and is raising funds and awareness to help defeat ALS, which ultimately claimed his life in 2014.

You are challenged to run (or walk, roll, or hike) the equivalent of a half marathon — cumulatively or all at once — by the end of January 10, 2023.

From wherever you are, spread the word about Bitcoin, participate in a healthy activity, feel good about doing your part to defeat ALS, and start the year off right

Hal Finney, one of the earliest bitcoin contributors, died eight years ago from complications of nervous system disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

His spouse, Fran Finney, is now organizing a half marathon to raise funds for ALS research via bitcoin.

The “Running Bitcoin Challenge” is set to take place between Jan. 1 and Jan. 10. The timing of the occasion leads up to the anniversary of Hal Finney’s “Running bitcoin” tweet, in which Finney famously disclosed he was deploying a Bitcoin node.

There is no set location — participants can choose to join anywhere they wish. Players are encouraged to either run, walk, roll or hike the equivalent of a half marathon (Hal’s favorite distance) either in one go or over the entire 10-day period.

Donors contributing at least $100 will receive an official shirt with the half marathon’s logo, while the event’s top 25 fundraisers will get a Hal Finney collectible signed by his wife.

As of Wednesday morning, the event has already managed to secure nearly $10,000 in bitcoin donations.

An advocate of cryptography and digital privacy, Finney was the recipient of the first-ever bitcoin transfer from the network’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

The bitcoin community often suspected Finney was Nakamoto, a claim he consistently denied. He reportedly found out about his condition in 2009 and decided to move away from the project.

Hal’s name is high in the Bitcoin pantheon as one of the first people to voice support for Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention and for being the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi.

He was, for a time, considered one of the top contenders on the list of potential Satoshis himself (many in blockchain who reject Dr. Craig Wright’s statements still falsely believe Finney to be Bitcoin’s real creator).

Hal, who referred to himself as a “cypherpunk,” was a cryptographic activist who went from developing video games to working on the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) project in the 1990s. He described his PGP work as “dedicated to the goal of making Big Brother obsolete.”

PGP creator Phil Zimmerman hired Hal as his first employee when PGP became PGP Corporation in the early 2000s. He described Hal as a “gregarious man” who loved skiing and long-distance running.

Despite gradual paralysis that eventually forced him to stop working, Hal continued to code software and follow the Bitcoin project.

Almost as famous as his 2009 tweet is his “Bitcoin and me” post on BitcoinTalk.org in March 2013, the last he’d ever make.

It’s a long post, and Hal was “essentially paralyzed” at the time, using an eye tracker to type. Forum stats show the post has been read over 278,000 times.

“When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away,” he wrote. “I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.

I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.”

Hal himself always denied being Satoshi Nakamoto, adding later that he’d sold most of the Bitcoins he mined (at pre-2014 prices) to pay for his treatments. He also mentioned putting some in a safe deposit box for his children.

“And, of course, the price gyrations of bitcoins are entertaining to me.

I have skin in the game.

But I came by my bitcoins through luck, with little credit to me.

I lived through the crash of 2011.

So I’ve seen it before.

Easy come, easy go.”

Hal Finney
www.runningbitcoin.us
Admiration and great Respect
With 🧡

Bitcoin WhitePaper Day

Bitcoin – A Peer-to-Peer
Electronic Cash System

It’s bitcoin White Paper Day.

The mailing list was hosted by Metzdow and run by a group of cypherpunks who shared ideas on creating a kind of digital currency and payment system. Satoshi shared the whitepaper in a message that read, “Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper,” which outlined the main properties of the system.

“Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper
Satoshi Nakamoto satoshi at vistomail.com
Fri Oct 31 14:10:00 EDT 2008
Previous message: Fw: SHA-3 lounge
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully
peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.

The paper is available at:
http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The main properties:
Double-spending is prevented with a peer-to-peer network.
No mint or other trusted parties.
Participants can be anonymous.
New coins are made from Hashcash style proof-of-work.
The proof-of-work for new coin generation also powers the
network to prevent double-spending.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would
allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another
without the burdens of going through a financial institution.
Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main
benefits are lost if a trusted party is still required to prevent
double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending
problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps
transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based
proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without
redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as
proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came
from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as honest nodes control
the most CPU power on the network, they can generate the longest
chain and outpace any attackers. The network itself requires
minimal structure. Messages are broadcasted on a best effort basis,
and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the
longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they
were gone.

Full paper at:
http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Satoshi Nakamoto

———————————————————————
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending “unsubscribe cryptography” to majordomo at metzdowd.com”

Source:
https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-October/014810.html

The pseudonymous Bitcoin creator disclosed that they had been working on a new electronic cash system that uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm that required no trusted third party. Although the document met mixed reactions, it was the beginning of what is known today as blockchain technology.

A couple of months after the release, the Bitcoin network was launched, with the first block mined on January 3, 2009. About eight days later, Hal Finney received the first transaction of 10 BTC from Nakamoto, after which he posted a legendary tweet that read:

In the 14 years since that day, bitcoin’s value rose from zero to a peak of $68,990 last November and was hovering above $20,000 on Monday, according to CoinDesk data. The cryptocurrency currently has a market capitalization of over $390 billion. It also inspired the creation of more than 20,000 different cryptocurrencies currently in circulation, while bitcoin remains the largest by market cap.

Over the years, several people have been rumored to be Nakamoto, including early bitcoin contributor Hal Finney, cryptographer Nick Szabo, physicist Dorian Nakamoto and even Tesla’s chief executive Elon Musk, who all denied the claims.

Satoshi’s identity is still a mystery, but Finney was well-known for his contribution to the creation of Bitcoin. He worked hand-in-hand with Nakamoto to find and fix bugs in Bitcoin’s underlying infrastructure. Before his death in 2014, Finney shared a detailed story about his journey with Bitcoin

About a year after the launch of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency went on to record its first real-world commercial use case when a Florida man spent 10,000 BTC to purchase two large Papa John’s pizzas on May 22, 2010.

Although the coins were worth $41 at prices back then, at today’s price, the transaction is worth more than $200 million. To commemorate the event, the Bitcoin community celebrates Bitcoin Pizza Day every year on May 22.

Bitcoin / bitcoin / blockchain

Edward Snowden on Privacy

“If you think privacy is unimportant for you because you have nothing to hide, you might as well say free speech is unimportant for you because you have nothing useful to say.”

Edward Snowden

Bitcoin’s Store of Value

To any intelligent observer, it has been apparent that bitcoin’s primary use has emerged to be store of value/investment.

Yes, bitcoin’s decentralized/permissionless solution to creating an immutable cryptographically secured database brings a vast array of different potential revolutionary applications not seen since the advent of the internet but again, the primary use has emerged to be store of value/investment.

bitcoin has been so good at this store of value thing that it has become detrimentally  successful – enter the (well-funded) hacks and puppets…attacks from the outside and from within – some of which via spread of (FUD) tangent ideas with coders, media, investors, and within bitcoin community to maybe start an idea of even ‘slight’ change.

First, please realize no other tool in modern-day finance has been so successful at being an effective savings mechanism which unlike traditional ‘savings accounts’ this bitcoin actually keeps up in value for you to be able to afford higher cost of rent, education, healthcare, vacations, etc. (due to its beautiful combination of scarcity, a ceiling of 21mill coins, immutable, permissionless->not controlled/influenced, secure, and being established/developed).

This effective savings tool of bitcoin is made accessible to the 99% of us and cuts to the core of exposing the flaw of the central bank fiat system with its funny-money creation out of thin air paper/credit-currencies benefiting the privileged institutions and then last to benefit would be the rest of us.

It can also expose flaws of fraudulent funneling of extra paper-currencies created by central banks…now think, even those privy to any fraudulent funneling of funny-money will see what’s going on and understand something like bitcoin as an alternative being effectively immune to these games that even these bad-actors themselves would buy bitcoin! Bitcoin changes the paradigm of central-bank funny-money (Bitcoin is the anti-funny-money warrior: open & mechanism)….and it has taken off….and will catch the attention of the central banks who by definition, have nearly unlimited systemic resources and influence (think governments, telecoms ISP providers, hardware/chip manufacturers, software developers, search engines, exchange conartists).

Even if a hard-fork doesn’t happen anytime in the next couple of years, it’s the threat that an attack on this pure beautiful store of value system to something even slightly different that can actually gain a noticeable percentage raises the question…is it possible that someday that the groups influencing bitcoin (those controlling mining or those involved with coding development, or the rest buy/transacting in bitcoin) would (either out of ignorance/misunderstanding or out of vested-interest to undermine bitcoin) start demanding (even slight) changes that may contradict the store-of-value that bitcoin is???

That is the big question that if the answer starts looking like yes…then value would plummet as bitcoin no longer be seen as a store of value but would eventually turn into another app coin (i.e. Ethereum) that can do many amazing things but not the one store-value amazing thing that it has done these past few years. the price would be zero-bound (compared to what we’ve been accustomed to with bitcoin today).

If the answer to that question is no (that you reading this, this community, software coders, mining operators, investors, everyday folk, work to stay educated on the above and act to keep the integrity of this bitcoin system)…then even a $50 billion market cap would still be seen as trivial in the financial assets arena where one bitcoin can easily go above $5,000 USD. But really, as the years pack on and integrity remains intact, the price would be infinity-bound. 

Beware of Scams !!!

Beware !!!

Just as the crypto industry is expanding and getting local adoption from individuals, co-operations, organisations and few countries  the same rate at which we have crypto enthusiast increasing in number which i see so worrisome and also a call for major concern.

Reason been that as more people get involved in the crypto business the more scammers are likely to increase their technique and the more scammers get recruited.

To avoid walking on scammers path, requires to be well informed of every new technique they can ever deploy against their potential victim.

To stay off scammers path users must:

  • Avoid phishing links.
  • Make sure to pay attention to the spelling of the website, as well as their URL as this can reveal whether it is a phishing site or not.
  • Never invest in a project without a well structured community
  • Pay close attention to the engagement within the community for suspicious activities
  • Ensure you assets are off CEX
  • Be more smart and less greedy
  • Don’t jump into a project/coin only based on the hype from advertisers (especially twitter)
  • Avoid any “too good to be true” investment
  • Avoid send me 1$ and I’ll send back 2$ scams, no matter how reputable is the account calling for that
  • Protect your coins (keep your coins on your wallet, use hardware wallet where possible, never give out wallet’s seed, keep backup seed offline)
  • Don’t be greedy and/or illiterate.
  • Be sure to feed yourself with necessary knowledge, if you want to invest.
  • Knowledge from experience is good but you can also take legitimate one from other people.
  • Not everything that is being offered to you is true. Do not be deceived.
  • Be careful who you are trusting.
  • Always be skeptical !!!
  • Enable Two-factor authentication for all your accounts.
  • Using of firewalls.
  • Installing an up to date anti virus software.
  • Use strong passwords and yet easily accessible ones for your convenience.
  • Stay away from malicious links or attachments you come across on the web.
  • Make sure your private keys are well stored and in hard wallet
  • Make sure your passwords are not vulnerable online to attacks i.e don’t store passwords online or any website
  • Whenever a stranger message you first for a business or an investment, it is a Red flag.
  • Someone who doesn’t know you would want you to make big money, another Red flag.
  • Whenever they introduce a” business opportunity” to you and then hasten you in order make you take a hasty decision it’s not  genuine, they are trying their best to make you take a fast decision without telling your loved ones and friends who will discourage you.
  • It is safer to  assume anyone you don’t know, communicating with you is a scammer until it is proven otherwise.
  • Read the whitepaper and research well of the company where you are going to invest because many scams are done by this method.
  • Check whether it is genuine or fake.
  • Scammers are constantly upgrading their scam methods and anyone can be the next target.
  • Loss doesn’t just happen due to an internal or intentional mistake, and when it does happen everyone has a similar sense of remorse and risks that are absolute consequences.
  • You’ll be fooled many times by those scammers that have maintained a well structured fake community.
  • They can hire those PRs and people talking inside their community to make it look like they’re a legit community.
  • As for their workers, they’ll just tell that they need engagement but the purpose of it, they’re not talking about it because that’s what the main purpose it.
  • And that’s to make it look genuine that they have real people inside the community. But in reality, it’s all fake people that they’ve hired just to make discussions all over their place.
  • It’s safe to say as well that it’s not just the crypto industry that is not safe for newbies, everything that talks about money is not safe for everyone.
  • Crypto is the latest thing and in the last 5 years it become so successful that scammers make this as their paradise as there are a lot of naive investors in the market.
  • Do your investigations, and don’t listen to influencers and believe them.
  • Think that this is your hard earn money so you need to be careful where you are going to invest it.
  • Don’t be Greedy.
  • Don’t jump on it like a hungry cow.
  • Don’t trust the sweet words they offer you. Most of them are too good to be true but they will always sound inviting to invest with.
  • Make a wall to not fully support them unless they have proven themselves worthy of that kind of respect.
  • Always be in doubt. That will be the shield that will protect you from being scammed.
  • Must simply assume that our coins are never really safe despite our best efforts, so it is important to always be on alert and protect our coins to the best of our ability.
  • Improve the security of your coins by an important margin by buying a hardware wallet, since they are very secure devices and they are relatively cheap, instead of risking storing our coins in our computers or at an exchange.
  • Always good to know how to make technical and fundamental analysis so that you can get specific information what is the situation of the projects you want to invest
  • Many projects are delivering a good testament, but they always ended into a scam , so we need to be smart enough and have a lot of preparation before investing or trading

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.

Controlled Supply

Bitcoin

“A fixed money supply, or a supply altered only in accord with objective and calculable criteria, is a necessary condition to a meaningful just price of money.”

Fr. Bernard W. Dempsey, S.J. (1903-1960)

In a centralized economy, currency is issued by a central bank at a rate that is supposed to match the growth of the amount of goods that are exchanged so that these goods can be traded with stable prices. The monetary base is controlled by a central bank. In the United States, the Fed increases the monetary base by issuing currency, increasing the amount banks have on reserve or by a process called Quantitative Easing.

In a fully decentralized monetary system, there is no central authority that regulates the monetary base. Instead, currency is created by the nodes of a peer-to-peer network.

The Bitcoin generation algorithm defines, in advance, how currency will be created and at what rate. Any currency that is generated by a malicious user that does not follow the rules will be rejected by the network and thus is worthless.

Currency with Finite Supply

Block reward halving
Controlled supply

Bitcoins are created each time a user discovers a new block. The rate of block creation is adjusted every 2016 blocks to aim for a constant two week adjustment period (equivalent to 6 per hour.)

The number of bitcoins generated per block is set to decrease geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 210,000 blocks, or approximately four years. The result is that the number of bitcoins in existence will not exceed slightly less than 21 million.

Speculated justifications for the unintuitive value “21 million” are that it matches a 4-year reward halving schedule; or the ultimate total number of Satoshis that will be mined is close to the maximum capacity of a 64-bit floating point number. Satoshi has never really justified or explained many of these constants.

Cumulated bitcoin supply

This decreasing-supply algorithm was chosen because it approximates the rate at which commodities like gold are mined. Users who use their computers to perform calculations to try and discover a block are thus called Miners.

21M or Death

21 Million or Death
Arise…

The supply of Bitcoin is fixed at 21 million BTC, and as a hard coded monetary policy of the protocol, the fixed supply of the dominant cryptocurrency cannot be altered.

Former Google Product Director Steve Lee stated that only 1 percent of the world’s population can own more than 0.28 BTC, due to the fixed supply of Bitcoin.

In late 2017, Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics company that monitors and investigates cryptocurrency transactions, revealed in a research paper that up to four million BTC are permanently lost on the blockchain as a result of theft, loss of wallets and private keys, and the dormant wallet of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, which experts have said is no longer accessible.

Kim Grauer, Senior Economist at Chainalysis, said at the time, that the lost supply of BTC is not taken into consideration by the market cap.That means, the real price of BTC could be substantially higher, as 4 to 6 million BTC are estimated to be lost.

Based on the estimate that the supply of Bitcoin is around 17 million, only 0.8 percent of the world population can own more than 0.28 BTC and less than 0.2 of the world population can own more than 1 BTC.

The 0.28 BTC figure introduced by Lee assumes the supply of Bitcoin to be 21 million, as it divides 21 million by 0.28 and divides the outcome of that by the world population that is 7.442 billion. If the research of Chainalysis is accurate and that 4 to 6 million BTC are lost on the blockchain, the supply of Bitcoin should be closer to around 16 to 17 million

The fact that any investor in the global market can be within the 1 percent of the world population with a $1,830 investment demonstrates that the cryptocurrency market is still at its early phase, and in terms of adoption, market development, infrastructure, and regulation, the sector can still grow significantly in the mid to long-term.

Hal Finney
There is no “Whole Coin”

Truth Quotes

In Roman mythology, Veritas, meaning Truth, is the goddess of Truth, a daughter of Chronos, the God of Time.

For my dearest copăcel Emily,

Wish that you’ll find a drop of wisdom in an ocean of words!

Because never forget Papi, the ocean was formed drop by drop 🙂🥰🙃

“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage.

Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.

Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.

Sapere aude!

‘Have courage to use your own reason!’- that is the motto of enlightenment.”

Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

Thomas Jefferson

“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it.

I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against.

I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

Malcolm X

“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.”

George Carlin

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest”

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved.

So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind.

Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”

John Lennon

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Aldous Huxley

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Socrates

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.

Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Oscar Wilde

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed.

If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.”

William Faulkner

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.

You trade in your reality for a role.

You trade in your sense for an act.

You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.

There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level.

It’s got to happen inside first.”

Jim MORRISON

“There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

Benjamin Disraeli

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.

Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

Marcus Aurelius , “Meditations”

“Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States.

Ask any Indian.”

Robert Orben

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something.

Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

Leo Tolstoy, “A Confession”

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”

Carl Sagan

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”

George Washington

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

Carl Sagan

“There are two ways to be fooled.

One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

Soren Kierkegaard

“1492.

As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America.

Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that.

1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.”

Kurt Vonnegut

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

George Orwell, “1984”

“If the road is easy, you’re likely going the wrong way.”

Terry Goodkind

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed.

It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”

Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”

“Believe those who are seeking the truth.

Doubt those who find it.”

Andre Gide

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

C.S. Lewis

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.

I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

Henry David Thoreau

“The truth is always an abyss.

One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.”

Franz Kafka

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Belief can be manipulated.

Only knowledge is dangerous.”

Frank Herbert

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

Carl Sagan

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

C.S. Lewis

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

Leo Tolstoy, “A Confession”

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”

George Orwell

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”

Albert Camus

C”herish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

Voltaire

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

Niels Bohr

“You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying. To the best you can do everyday.”

Jason Mraz

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

René Descartes

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.”

Robert M. Pirsig, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values” (Phaedrus, #1)

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.

But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Steve Jobs

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

Niels Bohr

“It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti, “The First and Last Freedom”

“Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.”

Jean Paul Sarte

“I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.

It is the source of all true art and all science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein

“Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.”

Osho

“Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.”

Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion”

“You should not honor men more than truth.”

Plato

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines that everybody else is saying,… [o]r else you say something which in fact is true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”

Noam Chomsky, “Propaganda and the Public Mind”

“The truth may be puzzling.

It may take some work to grapple with.

It may be counterintuitive.

It may contradict deeply held prejudices.

It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true.

But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”

Carl Sagan

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”

Arthur Conan Doyle

“We all know that Art is not truth.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand.

The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”

Pablo Picasso

“Honest is how I want to look.

The truth doesn’t glitter and shine.”

Chuck Palahniuk, “Survivor”

“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”

Benjamin Disraeli

“Above all, do not lie to yourself.

A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.

Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself.

A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it?

And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea–he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility…”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”

Nietzsche

“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”

Victor Hugo

“I always tell the truth.

Even when I lie.”

Al Pacino

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives.”

John Lennon

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”

Blaise Pascal

“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

Isaac Newton

“When everything gets answered, it’s fake.”

Sean Penn

“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”

John Locke

“Beware:
Ignorance
Protects itself.
Ignorance
Promotes suspicion.
Suspicion
Engenders fear.
Fear quails,
Irrational and blind,
Or fear looms,
Defiant and closed.
Blind, closed,
Suspicious, afraid,
Ignorance
Protects itself,
And protected,
Ignorance grows.”

Octavia E. Butler, “Parable of the Talents”

“The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust.

The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him.

Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time.

We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.”

Albert Einstein

“Knowledge is a destination.

Truth, the journey.”

Terry Goodkind

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?

It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”

Edmund Burke

“Love speaks in flowers.

Truth requires thorns.”

Leigh Bardugo, “The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic”

“We are what we believe we are!”

C.S. Lewis

“If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change.

I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one’s own self-deception and ignorance.”

Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”

“People who fit don’t seek.

The seekers are those that don’t fit.”

Shannon L. Alder

“It is man’s natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.”

Blaise Pascal

“Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they’re ratified into law.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, “Brushstrokes of a Gadfly”

“Every beginning has an end and every end is a new beginning.”

Santosh Kalwar

Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”

Jules Verne, “Journey to the Center of the Earth”

“At times to be silent is to lie.

You will win because you have enough brute force.

But you will not convince.

For to convince you need to persuade.

And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right.”

Miguel de Unamuno

…something to strive for.
…leave a trail.
Sapere Aude

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.