Category: #Industrial Mining Plan

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

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.

First Time/Small Miner

First time/Small miner reference
for getting started.

If you want to start mining here is what you need… and what you need to know.

This is written for home miners/small farms, but can be used as a guideline for most operations. Use this as a reference for what you need to research, or what questions you need to ask before jumping in.

What you need to mine can be broken down into the following categories:

  • Hardware
  • Electricity
  • Location
  • Internet connection
  • Information

Mining BITCOIN is done exclusively with dedicated BITCOIN mining hardware based on ASICs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit .

You CAN NOT meaningfully mine bitcoin today with CPU, GPU or even FPGAs. Bitcoin difficulty adapts to match the amount of mining done on the network and has reached levels trillions of times too high to mine meaningfully with PCs, laptops, tablets, phones, webpages, javascript, GPUs, and even generalised SHA hardware.

Even if you combined all the computers in the world, including all known supercomputer, you would not even approach 0.1% of the bitcoin hashrate today.

There isn’t any point attempting to mine bitcoin with CPU or GPU even in the interests of learning as it shares almost nothing with how bitcoin is mined with ASICs and will not teach you anything.

Hardware

Asic Miner:

Here is a list of the companies currently manufacturing Miners for public purchase.

Each one has their Pro’s and Con’s it is up to you to do your research and decide what is best for you.

A few points to consider while researching are :

  • efficiency
  • reliability
  • warranty period/policy
  • power draw

Each company has a different way of handling warranty repairs, depending on your situation and the policy repairs can become cost prohibitive. I will touch more on efficiency and power draw in the electricity section.

• Current list of competitive hardware

Power supply: You will need to purchase a power supply to run your miners. You will find ATX and Server grade PSU’s, the latter being preferred for mining BTC. 

When it comes to selecting a PSU purchase something with a capacity 25% higher than your miner is rated to draw. This will have you operating within the 80% rule.(explained further in the electricity section)

EX. Miner draws 1000 PSU should be able to provide 1250W.

** Many current generation miners are now being manufactured with Integrated PSU. Again do your research to see if your unit comes with or without. Generally you will still need to source a power cable.**

Auxilliaries – Avalon miners require an external controller, 1 per 20 miners. You may have to run additional fans for intake and exhaust depending on your location.

PSU’s can be purchased large enough to run 2 Miners; or the opposite 1 Miner fed by 2 PSU’s. Ensure the PSU you have selected will have the correct amount of PCI-E connectors required to operate your miner(s)

You can also find a large supply of used miners and PSU’s. Again it’s up to you to do your research as these often are a no return transaction.

Electricity

Follow all local codes and regulations

This is the number 1 factor in whether mining is right for you. As discussed with Miners being a 24/7 machine drawing power those costs will make it cost prohibitive for some people to mine. You need to be aware of what your costs/kWh are and run the numbers.

This will be done in a profitability calculator. This is just an example of 1 there are many out there.

( Miner usage in kW ) * ( Hours run per day ) 24 * ( Cost/kWh ) = Cost per Day to Operate

( Ideally less than the FIAT value of BTC mined )

The second part to the electrical requirements of mining is the available service; written for North America.

You will need to figure out the amperage you can spare, what circuits and receptacles you have in place, are you setting up on 220V or 110V. You will need to make sure that you have the right cord end for your PSU to match the receptacle, picking the wrong one can cost you a few days of mining if it has to be shipped.

If you can try and set up on a 220V circuit for 2 reasons :

– You will pull half the amps, and it is more efficient.

– Doing so requires 2 breaker spaces in your panel. Breaker sizing will depend on how many miners you plan to run. Here is the formula for calculating amps.

Watts / Voltage = Amps

Here is where you will bring the 80% rule back into play by sizing the continuous miner load to 80% of the breaker rating. 12 Amps on a 15 Amp breaker, 16 Amps max on a 20 Amp breaker, 24 Amps on a 30 amp breaker.

If/when you increase the amount of miners you are running you may want to look into PDU’s, as opposed to more receptacles. 

Location

This is something that is often overlooked to the headache and frustration of many would be miners. These machines are loud and hot .
You essentially have an electric heater that also uses an industrial fan to keep it from melting itself. This space will need to have the electrical requirements as discussed previously.

So make sure you have a space that is well ventilated with a plan to exhaust heat, and bring in fresh dust free air. I say this as using AC to cool the room will eat into your profits and may even make mining unprofitable.

The noise issue is a consideration you can sort out depending on whats available. (garage, basement, remote building)

Both of these issues can be handled with hosting, which is further explained in the information section.

Internet connection

Some miner setups have the option to use wifi. It is advisable to use a wired connection where available. This will provide a more stable connection and ensure you are submitting the expected amount of shares which is directly related to your payouts.

Please note that mining uses a negligible amount of bandwidth, and will not affect your other internet usage.

Information

You can use this information in this post as a good baseline to get you going. In addition to this you will want to research network difficulty; this readjusts every 2016 blocks to maintain a 10 minute block time on average. While this can go down it generally increases.

Solo or Pool?

You can solo mine but this is essentially a lottery even as a large scale miner. Should you chose this you can check this out as a starting point.

solo.ckpool.org 1% fee solo mining USA/DE 250 blocks solved!

Odds are most of you will join a pool. I will only say that it is in your best interest to mine at a pool that pays transaction fees (miner rewards). Then you will want to consider the fees associated with the pool.

When it comes to these pools you want them to be large enough that they are getting at least 1 block every Difficulty adjustment period. Larger pools will offer smaller rewards paid out more frequently, and vice versa.

Need help for better content !!!

Q & A

Hy there to all of you out there, white, black, yellow and avatar 😋🤣 people around the WordPress world !

Hope you are all well and safe in these troubled times we live on this beautiful planet of ours !

I come before you, to ask for your opinion and what you would like to see explained in my posts !?! Just let me know and I will try my best to accomodate your requests !

Thank you for your time !

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/

With 💚

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.

With 💚

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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Bitcoin surges after accidentally released Treasury statement

Bitcoin surges after accidentally released Treasury statement

Prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have soared following the apparent accidental release of a U.S. Treasury statement on Biden’s expected executive order on digital assets.

The premature statement by Treasury Secretary Yellen, which was dated March 9, has since been removed.

“President Biden’s historic executive order calls for a coordinated and comprehensive approach to digital asset policy.  This approach will support responsible innovation that could result in substantial benefits for the nation, consumers, and businesses. 

It will also address risks related to illicit finance, protecting consumers and investors, and preventing threats to the financial system and broader economy.”

Quote from the now deleted statement

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is up nearly 8% in the last 24 hours.

Biden’s executive order aims to regulate the crypto market while also reaping the benefits of digital currencies.

So far, like most countries in the world, the US has tended to react to developments and has limited itself to pointing to a political-economic approach that is yet to be developed.

Statement by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen on President Biden’s Executive Order on Digital Assets

March 9, 2022

WASHINGTON –  U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen released the following statement on President Biden’s executive order on digital assets. 

“President Biden’s historic executive order calls for a coordinated and comprehensive approach to digital asset policy.  This approach will support responsible innovation that could result in substantial benefits for the nation, consumers, and businesses.  It will also address risks related to illicit finance, protecting consumers and investors, and preventing threats to the financial system and broader economy.

Under the executive order, Treasury will partner with interagency colleagues to produce a report on the future of money and payment systems. We’ll also convene the Financial Stability Oversight Council to evaluate the potential financial stability risks of digital assets and assess whether appropriate safeguards are in place. And, because the questions raised by digital assets often have important cross-border dimensions, we’ll work with our international partners to promote robust standards and a level playing field.

This work will complement ongoing efforts by Treasury. Already, the Department has worked with the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the FDIC, and OCC to study one particular kind of digital asset – stablecoins– and to make recommendations. Under the executive order, Treasury and interagency partners will build upon the recently published National Risk Assessments, which identify key illicit financing risks associated with digital assets. 

As we take on this important work, we’ll be guided by consumer and investor protection groups, market participants, and other leading experts.  Treasury will work to promote a fairer, more inclusive, and more efficient financial system, while building on our ongoing work to counter illicit finance, and prevent risks to financial stability and national security.”

Sources:

https://forbes.com/

https://disclose.tv/

https://bloomberg.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20220309014601/https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0643

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