Hi Guys!
I'm new to the blockchain industry. I want to purchase bitcoins. But I'm not getting which platform is good to buy bitcoins because there is hundreds of platform available and I can't trust all of them for an expensive coin.
Please, guys, guide me if you can.
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Due to unexpected events I have to sell my silver rounds and coins. Looking to sell as a lot. $19/oz 2 10oz silvertowne bars, 20 bitcoin rounds, and 20 2020 silver kangaroos. PayPal preferred. New to selling here so PayPal goods and services is an option or pickup if local. Madison Wi. Buyer covers shipping.
For Trading April 22nd
OIL GOES LOWER, AGAIN!
Stock Pullback Continues
Several Solid Earnings Surprises
It’s impossible to start this with anything other than the fact that Oil futures for May, expired today @ 2:30, and the new month, June continued to fall anyway. This put the current delivery as low as $6.50 then doubling to move back and closing $11.57 -8.86. The oil market seems to be the “tail wagging the dog” these days putting the financials back on their heels. DJIA -631.56 (2.67%), NASDAQ -297.50 (3.48%), S&P 500 -86.60 (3.07%), the Russell -28.26 (2.33%) and the DJ Transports -125 36 (1.57%). Market internals were weak with NYSE A/D 4:1 and NASDAQ 3:1 lower and the volume was a bit light. DJIA was 29 down and TRV unchanged after being lower last night on earnings. Strength was only relative with energy, utilities, and real estate down the least and information technology the weakest. The weakest stocks were AAPL -58 DPs, UNH -54, MSFT -49, GS -45, HD -37, CAT -31 and MRK -30 DPs. All 11 S&P sectors were lower.
Our “open forum” on Discord, which allows me to interact with subscribers and others to allow direct questions and chart opinions on just about any stock, continues to grow with more participants every day. It is informative and allows me to share insights as the market is open and moving. The link is: https://discord.gg/ATvC7YZ and I will be there and active from before the open and all day. It’s a great place to share ideas and gain some insights, and we’ve grown to almost 1900 members. I also did this video titled “How to survive being an options trader and not blow up your account,” over the long weekend. I think it’s very informative as a guide to stock selection and option choices. The link is https://youtu.be/Y7H9RpWfLlo Enjoy!!
Tonight’s closing comment video https://youtu.be/a66NiMbuZkw
SECTORS: Earnings hit the tape after the close with NFLX the first, showing a jump in new subscribers up almost double the expectation. The stock rallied up to $485 but fell back and is currently about unchanged @ $433. Next was TXN with beats both top and bottom lines and after closing 106.84 -4.69 (4.2%) it rallied to $112.23 and is $109 now. SNAP was a surprise with a slight beat on revenues and a small miss (.08) vs (.07) expected, but the average daily users beat by 5 million and the stock jumped from a $12.44 close to trade $15.12 and is $14.86 +2.42 (20%). Chipotle: CMG reported a beat @$3.08 vs. 2.90 expected with a minor revenue miss, but strong growth in digital business. As anecdotal evidence, we are eating it more often, ordering it online and using “contactless delivery. It closed $786.69 -22.04 (2.73%) and after trading $843.37 it is currently $834 + 47.32 (6%).
BIOPHARMA: was LOWER with BIIB – 8.41, ABBV -3.15, REGN -23.53, ISRG -21.70, GILD -2.61, MYL -.73, TEVA -.49, VRTX -10.46, BHC -.99, INCY -2.05, ICPT -1.80, LABU -3.14 and IBB $122.39 -3.86 (3.06%).
CANNABIS: This group was MIXED with TLRY +.06, CGC -.11, CRON -.15, GWPH -32, ACB +.001, PYX -.10, NBEV -.06, CURLF +.05, KERN +.44 and MJ $11.51 -.04 (.35%).
DEFENSE: was LOWER with LMT -6.21, RTX -2.08, GD -2.28, TXT +1.22, NOC -4.68, BWXT -1.42, TDY -11.69, and ITA $148.00 -4.68 (3.07%).
RETAIL: was LOWER with the exception of DDS +1.33 (5.43%). M -.11, JWN -.38, KSS -.53, JCP +.01, WMT -.15, TGT -1.73, TJX -1.69, RL -.58, UAA -.10, LULU -11.86 (5.43%), TPR -.46, CPRI -.70 and XRT $33.08 -.90 (2.65%).
FAANG and Big Cap: were LOWER with GOOGL -25.36, AMZN -46.61, AAPL -7.22, FB -3.04, NFLX -3.28, NVDA -17 (5.92%), TSLA -47.88 (6.41%), BABA -4.43, BIDU -2.98, BA -6.21, CAT -4.11, DIS -1.10 and XLK $84.80 -3.03 (3.45%).
FINANCIALS were LOWER with GS -5.65, JPM -2.15, BAC -.75, MS -1.16, C -2.19, AIG -1.40, TRV -.78, AXP -1.77, V -2.72 and XLF $21.40 -.60 (2.73%).
OIL, $11.57 -8.86. Oil was the BIGGEST STORY of the day again with the May expiring this afternoon, almost $50 over yesterday’s low. June is the new forward month and it followed the May contract down, trading as low as $6.50 but bouncing back and it is trading about $13.50 in tonight’s session. Oil stocks were mostly lower but not even close to the oils fall. XLE was $32.31 -.58 (1.76%).
METALS, GOLD: $1,687.80 -23.40. After the recent gains, Gold broke solidly above $1,700 and traded as high as $1788 last Wednesday. Last night it fell and today it hit $1,666 before coming back up $20. Tonight, it has traded back up to $1,705 and is up $17.00.
BITCOIN: closed $6890 +95. After we traded in the uptrend, I mentioned this weekend that I felt we’d have to test 6750 and today we hit 6465 before turning back up. Today was a very short range and quiet day. While I want to add the 350, I still want to wait and see some stabilization. We still own 400 GBTC with an average of $8.06. GBTC closed $7.44 + .14 today.
Tomorrow is another day.
CAM
For Trading April 22nd
OIL GOES LOWER, AGAIN!
Stock Pullback Continues
Several Solid Earnings Surprises
It’s impossible to start this with anything other than the fact that Oil futures for May, expired today @ 2:30, and the new month, June continued to fall anyway. This put the current delivery as low as $6.50 then doubling to move back and closing $11.57 -8.86. The oil market seems to be the “tail wagging the dog” these days putting the financials back on their heels. DJIA -631.56 (2.67%), NASDAQ -297.50 (3.48%), S&P 500 -86.60 (3.07%), the Russell -28.26 (2.33%) and the DJ Transports -125 36 (1.57%). Market internals were weak with NYSE A/D 4:1 and NASDAQ 3:1 lower and the volume was a bit light. DJIA was 29 down and TRV unchanged after being lower last night on earnings. Strength was only relative with energy, utilities, and real estate down the least and information technology the weakest. The weakest stocks were AAPL -58 DPs, UNH -54, MSFT -49, GS -45, HD -37, CAT -31 and MRK -30 DPs. All 11 S&P sectors were lower.
Our “open forum” on Discord, which allows me to interact with subscribers and others to allow direct questions and chart opinions on just about any stock, continues to grow with more participants every day. It is informative and allows me to share insights as the market is open and moving. The link is: https://discord.gg/ATvC7YZ and I will be there and active from before the open and all day. It’s a great place to share ideas and gain some insights, and we’ve grown to almost 1900 members. I also did this video titled “How to survive being an options trader and not blow up your account,” over the long weekend. I think it’s very informative as a guide to stock selection and option choices. The link is https://youtu.be/Y7H9RpWfLlo Enjoy!!
Tonight’s closing comment video https://youtu.be/a66NiMbuZkw
SECTORS: Earnings hit the tape after the close with NFLX the first, showing a jump in new subscribers up almost double the expectation. The stock rallied up to $485 but fell back and is currently about unchanged @ $433. Next was TXN with beats both top and bottom lines and after closing 106.84 -4.69 (4.2%) it rallied to $112.23 and is $109 now. SNAP was a surprise with a slight beat on revenues and a small miss (.08) vs (.07) expected, but the average daily users beat by 5 million and the stock jumped from a $12.44 close to trade $15.12 and is $14.86 +2.42 (20%). Chipotle: CMG reported a beat @$3.08 vs. 2.90 expected with a minor revenue miss, but strong growth in digital business. As anecdotal evidence, we are eating it more often, ordering it online and using “contactless delivery. It closed $786.69 -22.04 (2.73%) and after trading $843.37 it is currently $834 + 47.32 (6%).
BIOPHARMA: was LOWER with BIIB – 8.41, ABBV -3.15, REGN -23.53, ISRG -21.70, GILD -2.61, MYL -.73, TEVA -.49, VRTX -10.46, BHC -.99, INCY -2.05, ICPT -1.80, LABU -3.14 and IBB $122.39 -3.86 (3.06%).
CANNABIS: This group was MIXED with TLRY +.06, CGC -.11, CRON -.15, GWPH -32, ACB +.001, PYX -.10, NBEV -.06, CURLF +.05, KERN +.44 and MJ $11.51 -.04 (.35%).
DEFENSE: was LOWER with LMT -6.21, RTX -2.08, GD -2.28, TXT +1.22, NOC -4.68, BWXT -1.42, TDY -11.69, and ITA $148.00 -4.68 (3.07%).
RETAIL: was LOWER with the exception of DDS +1.33 (5.43%). M -.11, JWN -.38, KSS -.53, JCP +.01, WMT -.15, TGT -1.73, TJX -1.69, RL -.58, UAA -.10, LULU -11.86 (5.43%), TPR -.46, CPRI -.70 and XRT $33.08 -.90 (2.65%).
FAANG and Big Cap: were LOWER with GOOGL -25.36, AMZN -46.61, AAPL -7.22, FB -3.04, NFLX -3.28, NVDA -17 (5.92%), TSLA -47.88 (6.41%), BABA -4.43, BIDU -2.98, BA -6.21, CAT -4.11, DIS -1.10 and XLK $84.80 -3.03 (3.45%).
FINANCIALS were LOWER with GS -5.65, JPM -2.15, BAC -.75, MS -1.16, C -2.19, AIG -1.40, TRV -.78, AXP -1.77, V -2.72 and XLF $21.40 -.60 (2.73%).
OIL, $11.57 -8.86. Oil was the BIGGEST STORY of the day again with the May expiring this afternoon, almost $50 over yesterday’s low. June is the new forward month and it followed the May contract down, trading as low as $6.50 but bouncing back and it is trading about $13.50 in tonight’s session. Oil stocks were mostly lower but not even close to the oils fall. XLE was $32.31 -.58 (1.76%).
METALS, GOLD: $1,687.80 -23.40. After the recent gains, Gold broke solidly above $1,700 and traded as high as $1788 last Wednesday. Last night it fell and today it hit $1,666 before coming back up $20. Tonight, it has traded back up to $1,705 and is up $17.00.
BITCOIN: closed $6890 +95. After we traded in the uptrend, I mentioned this weekend that I felt we’d have to test 6750 and today we hit 6465 before turning back up. Today was a very short range and quiet day. While I want to add the 350, I still want to wait and see some stabilization. We still own 400 GBTC with an average of $8.06. GBTC closed $7.44 + .14 today.
Tomorrow is another day.
CAM
Latest Bitcoin News:
What Is Bitcoins Stock-to-Flow?
Other Related Bitcoin Topics:
Bitcoin Price | Bitcoin Mining | Blockchain
The latest Bitcoin news has been sourced from the CoinSalad.com Bitcoin Price and News Events page. CoinSalad is a web service that provides real-time Bitcoin market info, charts, data and tools. Follow us on Twitter @CoinSalad.
When the price of bitcoin takes a dive the first thing to remember is that this is normal. Investing in a cryptocurrency isn't like buying a government bond. There are no guarantees and no regulations. The price moves all over the place--and just as it can drop like a rock, it can also rise like a rocket. And often in quick succession.
The second thing to do is to look for the reason for this movement. The fall in mid-November came after a specific event. A group of developers and miners called off a plan to hard-fork the currency again. Segwit2x would have created a new form of bitcoin that allowed for larger blocks. In effect, it would have created faster and cheaper transactions. When the plan failed, some people moved their money into Bitcoin Cash, a faster form of bitcoin created from a previous fork. The coin shot past Ethereum to hit a market capitalization of $30 billion. The value of Bitcoin Cash doubled in 24 hours.
That's a good reason for a decline. Bitcoin Cash has some advantages that bitcoin lacks. Some investors would have been holding out for the fork so when it went through they bought what was available. Analysts expected the price of bitcoin to flatten out at around $5,000.
There's no way to know whether they're right, of course. No one can predict which way the market will go--no matter how well-versed they are on cryptocurrencies--so you just have to make your own predictions. Deciding whether to stick or bail, or even buy and hope that the market rises again is always going to be something of an intelligent gamble. Once you've found the reason for a sudden price drop, you'll have to decide whether you think that reason has a price floor or whether it's fatal enough to send the price even lower.
There are no easy answers when investing in bitcoin. Just understand that the ride is always going to have some scary moments, and when those moments strike, ask yourself whether a ride this rough is really for you. If you're prepared to hold on through those dips, and if you can afford to lose your investment, then don't sweat the falls any more than you should get too excited about the sudden rises. But if you do need that cash, you might want to look at those dips as a warning to find somewhere more stable to keep your savings.
Whalepool has created and released an open-source tool for analysing volume on exchanges and to sniff out fake volume. See:
From the GitHub repository:
Theory
Every trade execution by law of Central Limit Order Book logic has both a "maker" and a "taker" side from orders created.
Every "maker" order has an event pushed to the "OrderBook" websocket stream.
The API documentation in all cases of exchanges used indicates real-time pushing of updated data (we did not use streams where there was indication of 1000ms or so delays).
So the methodology used throughout is to programmatically watch:
- The order book best bid/offer
- The raw trade feedThen look for trades which occur inbetween the bid/ask.
This would indicate a trade took place which no one else was able to execute because the trade never appeared on the order book for anyone to be able to see, to then take.
It is known that some exchanges are just not good at reporting the orderbook data and trade data in synch, or they do not provide detailed enough information of event timestamp/id to be able to resolve suspicious data.
The scripts here compute both Fake Trades Count vs Legit Trades Count, as well as Fake Volume vs. Legit Volume.
Feel free to request an exchange you use to be analysed using our methodology and we'll be happy to post it along with results.
Some results (also from the GitHub repository):
| Exchange | Volume executed between the spread (_o_) ? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Binance | 30% | Approx 30% of volume executes between the spread |
| Coinbase | 2-3% | Approx 2-3% of volume executes between the spread |
| Bitstamp | <1% | Tested over a 12h period |
| FTX | <1% | within margin of error for latency issues |
| Kraken | 0% | PERFECT - Tested and no fake volume identified |
| Bitfinex | - | Exchange has hidden orders so test is non applicable |
| "Bilaxy" | YES | Totally fake. See video |
https://www.hussmanfunds.com/comment/mc200420/ BITCOIN This is an explanation why the Feds recent actions are illegal. Its from John Hussman's new post which also talks about the spread of SARS-COV-2 and stock market valuations and internals.
Both the Federal Reserve Act and the recent CARES Act places very clear restrictions on the types of assets that the Federal Reserve can purchase, and the conditions that must be satisfied in order to purchase them. Congress went so far as to include a section in CARES to emphasize these requirements “for the avoidance of doubt.”
Put simply, Fed purchases under the Federal Reserve Act are restricted to assets that are explicitly guaranteed as to interest and principal by the U.S. government, or that has a claim to sufficient collateral to avoid losses to the public.
The securities that the Federal Reserve is legally allowed to purchase are:
a) Section 14 open market purchases of securities that are fully guaranteed as to interest and principal by the U.S. government or a foreign government;
b) Section 14 purchases of “commercial bills of exchange” arising out of commercial transactions. What are those? See the definition in Section 13(2), which defines commercial bills of exchange exactly as they’re commonly understood: arising out of commercial transactions, secured by agricultural products, goods, or merchandise, with a maturity of less than 90 days, and specifically prohibited from “covering merely investments, or issued or drawn for the purpose of carrying or trading stocks, bonds, or other investment securities, except bonds and notes of the government of the United States.”
c) Section 13(2) discounting (i.e. prepayment) of commercial, agricultural, and industrial paper (again, bills of exchange);
d) Section 13(3) emergency lending to individuals, partnerships, and corporations, restricted to discounting notes, drafts and bills of exchange, and contingent on collateral (“security”). Section 13(3) also requires that these activities must be for “the purpose of providing liquidity to the financial system, and not to aid a failing financial company, and that the security for emergency loans is sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses.”
e) Section 13(4) and 13(6) lending for payment of sight drafts for agricultural transactions, and bankers acceptances which typically arise out of merchandise transactions.
That’s it. The menu is very specific: either government securities, or those that are backed by a pledge of collateral “sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses.” This principle is consistent with the U.S. Constitution: only Congress has fiscal authority. The Federal Reserve does not. If this is not taken seriously, the Fed could purchase whatever security it wished, at whatever valuation it might choose, and the American public would be on the hook for any losses.
On April 9, the Federal Reserve announced the creation of the “Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility” (SMCCF), that would leverage $75 billion of CARES funding from the U.S. Treasury to buy as much as $750 billion of corporate debt and ETFs.
The initial allocation from the Treasury covers $50 billion for “primary” lending (directly to companies), and $25 billion for “secondary market purchases” of outstanding corporate bonds from investors. That Treasury funding is fine. Congress allocated the $75 billion in Treasury funds as part of the CARES Act. Every dollar provided by the Treasury acts as a Federal guarantee for the equivalent amount of corporate obligations that the Federal Reserve purchases.
The problem is that the Fed intends to leverage these funds 10-to-1 without taking actual collateral pledges from the underlying companies. This exposes the public to outright losses in the event that declining market prices or corporate defaults reduce the value of these bonds by even 10%.
As a result, the newly created SMCCF is either a Ponzi scheme at public expense (if the Fed plans to allow portfolio losses to exceed 10%) or a 1987-style portfolio insurance scheme (if the Fed plans to liquidate securities into a falling market in order to cap its losses at 10%). Section 13(3) requires updates every 30 days on the “value of collateral” – that’s going to be an interesting dance if we break the March lows. In any event, even here, the SMCCF is already illegal.
Uncollateralized junk bonds are being treated as their own collateral.
What makes this so brazen is that when Congress approved the CARES Act, it wrote the terms and conditions section like a children’s book, “for the avoidance of doubt” – to prevent exactly this sort of abuse of public funds. Specifically, here is section 4003(c)(3)(B), which limits how the $500 billion of 4003(b)(4) funding provided for businesses, states, and municipalities may be used:
4003(c)(3)(B) FEDERAL RESERVE ACT TAXPAYER PROTECTIONS AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS APPLY. – For the avoidance of doubt, any applicable requirements under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, including requirements relating to loan collateralization, taxpayer protection, and borrower solvency, shall apply with respect to any program or facility described in subsection (b)(4).
CARES Act Section 4003 and Federal Reserve restrictions (violated)
Has the Federal Reserve taken collateral pledges from the companies underlying these “loans”? Has the Federal Reserve ensured that “the security for emergency loans is sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses”? Nope.
Instead, what’s going on here is that the Fed is treating the SMCCF as if it is a “business” in itself. It is then treating the corporate bonds and ETFs purchased by that vehicle as if those unsecured bonds are the “collateral.”
Yes, that’s right. Uncollateralized junk bonds are being treated as their own collateral.
Of course, that’s also why Section 13(2) of the Federal Reserve Act was written to prevent this sort of thing, prohibiting discounting of corporate securities “covering merely investments, or issued or drawn for the purpose of carrying or trading stocks, bonds, or other investment securities, except bonds and notes of the government of the United States.”
The whole operation is a hand-waving attempt to the purchase of assets that are wholly rejected by the provisions of 13(3), and may ultimately be impossible to close without a loss to the Fed, which is a loss to the public, which is fiscal policy, which belongs to Congress, not the Fed.
Again, it’s fine for the Federal Reserve to use the $75 billion of Treasury funding as “collateral“ that confers a federal guarantee on $75 billion of corporate loans and security purchases. Those funds are part of the amount that Congress, in its singular constitutional role, has allocated for public support for corporate lending.
In contrast, additional purchases to “leverage” that funding are neither secured by non-financial collateral, nor have security sufficient to protect taxpayers from losses. They are illegal, both under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, and under Section 4003(c)(3)(B) of the CARES act, which “for the avoidance of doubt” specifically invokes 13(3) “requirements relating to loan collateralization, taxpayer protection, and borrower solvency.”
The newly created SMCCF is either a Ponzi scheme at public expense (if the Fed plans to allow potential portfolio losses to exceed 10%) or a 1987-style portfolio insurance scheme (if the Fed plans to liquidate securities into a falling market in order to cap its losses at 10%).
The nature of Bitcoin makes it an outlier in comparison to other asset classes or currencies. There is no central bank or governing body to influence its valuation. News events can have unpredictable impacts, and other financial instruments exhibit sporadic correlations. In fact, Bitcoin pricing models are largely speculative, ignoring a great deal of traditional financial theory.
Understanding the basics of technical analysis is an absolute must before entering the Bitcoin markets. In many ways, price itself provides the only dependable clues pertaining to Bitcoin’s future value. The lack of relevant market fundamentals places an impetus upon analyzing pricing charts, applying indicators, and reading price action.
Trading is a marathon, not a sprint. One of the most important tasks facing Bitcoin market participants is establishing a schedule that is sustainable over the long haul. Putting in extraordinarily long hours on a daily basis leads to burnout and subpar performance.
Bitcoin is unique in that typical news items do not have a predictable impact upon the markets. There are no scheduled GDP releases, WASDE or EIA inventory reports to boost participation and skew pricing.
Consistent volatility is an attribute of Bitcoin markets that is particularly attractive to active traders and investors. Valuations regularly fluctuate between 5 percent and 10 percent daily , creating opportunities for traders with an appetite for risk.
No matter if a trader is engaging the cash, CFD, or Bitcoin futures markets, using stop losses is a must when trading Bitcoin. The wide swings in pricing are certainly ripe for profit, but the potential for catastrophe does exist.
It’s absolutely imperative that you use a stop loss somewhere in the market — the exact placement will vary — to protect any open position.
It’s a cliché, but leverage is truly a double-edged sword: It boosts gains but magnifies losses. Too much leverage promotes reckless money management and will lead to blowing out your trading account. Too little can hinder performance because premium trades may not perform up to their capabilities. Ultimately, effectively managing leverage is a balancing act that a Bitcoin trader must conduct.
Bitcoin futures products may help you manage leverage because they place an extra emphasis on proper leveraging. The offerings of the CME Group and Chicago Futures Exchange (CFE) are priced at $25 and $10 per tick, respectively. To say the least, it can be capitally intensive to take multicontract positions.
A simple way to define position sizing is the 3 percent rule. Under its parameters, a maximum of 3 percent of the trading account may be assigned to a single trade. This ensures the proper alignment of risk to reward with respect to position sizing and stop loss location.
For Taaki, what became a lifelong dedication to building technology free from authoritarian intervention started with an interest in what draws many people to Bitcoin: the promise of open-source development for breaking from authority.
“I happened to be 16 when I discovered the open-source movement, which, for me, was absolutely incredible that there are people around the world who build this technology … which plays a foundational role in our infrastructure and our internet,” Taaki told Bitcoin Magazine. “I kind of decided, I’m going to devote my life to make this dream happen. And it was something that captured my mind for the next decade.”
From his open-source involvement, Taaki found other technologists who were deeply concerned with politics. Of the many ideologies he was exposed to, he found anarchy especially interesting. It led him to ask questions about the nature of society and hierarchy and how a richer and more sophisticated society could be created. He saw Bitcoin as an unstoppable force to this end.
“[At] my first talk about Bitcoin in Amsterdam, it was the EPCA conference … I said, look guys, this is a radical technology. Now we’re here, you can’t stop us,” Taaki recalled. “This is what we’re going to do for you.”
Sometimes, his strong anti-middleman stance put him in direct conflict with other early Bitcoin developers — another group he saw as a roadblock to free and open development as he defined it.
“Gavin Andressen reached out to me and said, ‘I didn’t really like how you were talking at the conference. I think you should stop talking about Bitcoin publicly,’” Taaki said. “Gavin preceded to put up roadblocks for me to participate in developing Bitcoin — to sideline me from Bitcoin. Every time I tried to commit code to the Bitcoin Core project, it was blocked and I realized it was impossible for me to work with those people. That’s why I started working on Libbitcoin, to rewrite Bitcoin source code to have alternative implementation.”
Taaki’s work on the BIP review system was originally intended to establish some standardization for implementations and public review of changes to the code. But he now sees the system as a hindrance on development in Bitcoin that favors the status quo over technological progress.
“The problem is that the culture we initiated in those early days has completely overtaken the mindspace of Bitcoin,” explained Taaki. “That was not the original intent. Originally, the intent was to have Bitcoin be a conservative against changes. But it wasn’t to stop any kind of progress from happening inside of Bitcoin. It’s very poorly engineered. It’s very inefficient. The developments in cryptography that are happening now are going to lead to a system that’s eventually going to supersede Bitcoin.”
Looking back at the Bitcoin community he had been a part of in the early 2010s, Taaki sees distance between the philosophies that first drew him to the technology and the philosophical camps that have been established today.
“What we’ve seen happen since then is that those simplistic ideologies, which initially converged around Bitcoin, haven’t really been able to guide us,” he said. “And so we’ve seen a diversification from these ideologies … There’s this weird, regressive or reactionary Bitcoin culture ... and it’s opposed to any kind of change or progress or development or advancement.”
Taaki also noted concerns about the cryptocurrency space he had been a part of years ago now being “co-opted” by outsiders — business- or authority-focused groups who want to take technology out of the hands of the idealistic cypherpunks who worked with Satoshi to usher in the era.
“We’re in this very strange place inside of crypto culture where we’re facing significant challenges to the technology, of it being co-opted by external actors, by actors who don’t necessarily have a philosophical vision or goal we originally had in mind,” he said. “Maybe I’m talking about people like ConsenSys, or maybe I’m talking about central bank digital currencies or Facebook … Bottom line: The only way that we’re going to overcome these challenges is by having coherent analysis, a system of organization and some kind of narrative so that we can develop something that’s coordinated.”
Latest Bitcoin News:
Bitcoin demand sees crypto ATMs grow by 70%
Other Related Bitcoin Topics:
Bitcoin Price | Bitcoin Mining | Blockchain
The latest Bitcoin news has been sourced from the CoinSalad.com Bitcoin Price and News Events page. CoinSalad is a web service that provides real-time Bitcoin market info, charts, data and tools. Follow us on Twitter @CoinSalad.
Halving on the way: the cost of bitcoin in May
• An expert is sure that bitcoin price will not change after halving
• Any forecasts are an attempt to speculate on the market.
• After halving, bitcoin volatility will increase sharply
The next halving of Bitcoin will occur approximately on May 12-14, as a result of which the reward for one mined block will be reduced by exactly half and will be $6.25. Along with this, the number of coins issued in 10 minutes of time on the Bitcoin blockchain will decrease. The questions of how will these events affect the value of the main cryptocurrency and is it true that bitcoin can return to January highs of $ 10,000, were answered by a crypto enthusiast and host of the “Let's Talk About Bitcoins” podcast Andreas M. Antonopoulos.
According to the expert, no one in the world can say exactly how much bitcoin will cost. The dynamics of the cryptocurrency market is so ambiguous and depends on many factors, that predicting the price of bitcoin or other coins is equal to “fortune telling on the coffee grounds” or “making astroprognosis”. According to Antonopoulos, all the forecasts on the Internet are made, most likely, by speculators who only stir up panic around the cryptocurrency.
According to Antonopoulos himself, most likely, after halving, the price of bitcoin will not change in any way. Reducing the number of coins issued and rewards for them are more likely to contribute to the growth of volatility, since neither the holders of the coins, nor investors, nor the exchanges themselves will know how the coin will behave after division in two. Therefore, in the first few weeks there will be a jump in volatility. The same thing happens on the market today after carrying out a halving of VSN coins. Most likely, some holders will prefer to sell their coins, fearing a possible price reduction. Others, on the contrary, in anticipation of rapid growth will buy up cheap bitcoin.
The coin value is influenced not only by internal technical factors, but also by the mood of the market as a whole. Therefore, you should not base your forecasts solely on the influence of halving, Antonopoulos is sure.
So up or down?
If crypto enthusiast Antonopoulos is not ready to make forecasts, then domestic experts are much more open and share their assumptions. So, according to trader Kir Kelevra, the cost of bitcoin will definitely increase in anticipation of halving and immediately after it. This will be facilitated by increased demand for cryptocurrencies from holders and investors.
American investor and crypto enthusiast Tim Draper believes in the growth of bitcoin and considers the coin to be the main investment asset of the future. According to him, for the past three years, the BTC could rise in price up to $250,000. Several factors will contribute to this at once: the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies among millennials and generation Z, the collapse of the global banking system, which remains quite closed and static.
At the same time, crypto enthusiast Tony Weiss predicts that the price of bitcoin could fall to a minimum of $ 1,000 by the end of the year.
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This is going to be a simple guide to help any R1 owner upgrade and optimize their Alpha.
Upgradable Parts (In order of importance)
Storage Unit:
HDD OUT
SSD IN
This is by far the easiest upgrade to make and the most effective.
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100011693%20600038463
Any of those will work, just needs to be 2.5 Inch SATA.
WIFI Card:
This is like a 5-15$ upgrade. Go find any Intel 7265ngw off eBay and replace it with your current WIFI card. If you don’t want to buy used then here.
RAM:
Ram prices have tanked because of bitcoin mining, so this has become quite a cheap upgrade as well. I’d recommend 16GB just because why not, but if your tight on cash 8GB is fine.
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007609%20601190332%20601342186%20600000401&Order=BESTMATCH
CPU:
This required the most research. I’d recommend you look through this first. The wattage of the processor slot only ranges from 35w-50w according to a developer of the Alpha (Source). The socket type is LGA 1150.
If you’re going cheap, the i5-4950t (35w) and i5-4690s (65w) are both great options.
The i5-4690t (45w) is also great but is hard to find from a trustworthy source for a reasonable price.
If your willing to spend $100+ then easily the i7-4790t (45w). That is probably the best processor to put in the Alpha. All 45w will be used giving you 3.9 GHz Turbo. The T series apparently runs the best on the R1 according to This Reddit post.
Optimizing the Alpha R1
Q1: What is Handshake? What is HNS?
Eric：Handshake is a way to fairly assign and record the ownership of top-level domains (like .com, .org etc), without giving any centralized party control over the assignment process, or the ability to unfairly alter records of ownership.
At a technical level, Handshake is a new blockchain based root zone for new TLDs, designed to be able to coexist peacefully alongside the existing root zone which serves TLDs like com, and org, or even eventually absorb it entirely. If this sentence didn’t make sense to you, just keep reading.
Q2:How is HNS different from Bitcoin?
Matthew： Handhsake is based on Bitcoin. it's a UTXO based model. What Hadnshake adds is COVENANTS to transactions
these limit how TXs can be spent and also control the auction (name-bidding) process.
Q3: Why is Handshake useful?
Eric：The use case is pretty simple, Handshake allows you to truly own a TLD.
In the same way that Bitcoin allows you to truly own money.
Bitcoin is to fiat as handshake is to an ICANN domain.
Q4: how is HNS different from DNS?
Matthew： So HNS extends the current DNS root zone, and that's all...
Q5:What makes Handshake domain names valuable?
Eric：A combination of usefulness and scarcity to elaboarte a bit here.
Verisign which runs.com currently makes about 1 billion dollars,from selling subdomains annually,also renewals, etc.
The company is valued at around 20 BTC.
So its fairly straightforward that domains in general have value.
A thing that's kind of unique and interesting about domains is that they're one of VERY few digital assets that are naturally scarce.
i.e. only one person can have the name "hotbit" on handshake.
So there's a natural sort of value that comes with that scarcity, which is cool.
Handshake domains are worth LESS than icann/traditional domains because less people can use them (so far, though we're just getting started).
But they're also maybe worth more, because you can truly own one as discussed in the previous example.
Q6:how do i acquire a name on the HNS blockchain?
Matthew： So there is an on-chain auction process run by transaction covenants.
First any use can OPEN a name, this broadcasts a name and its hash to the network
About 36 blocks later, the BIDDING phase begins. ANyone can placea bid on a name. Bids are BLINDED with a high value and another hash, so NO ONE KNOWS what you are bidding.
After 5 days is the REVEAL phase, when bids MUST be revealed (or you lose your coins forever!)
After 10 more days the auction is closed.
Whoever placed the highest bid wins the name and only pays the value of the SECOND HIGHEST BID.
This is called a "vickrey" auction.
There are diagrams in my slides from a recent talk: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1E2UFrxfCWAHiDNbO-zbICAC28quobn7gfSiat7\_EDJc/
Q7: What makes the HNS coin valuable, and what factors might affect its price?
Eric：The first thing that drives HNS value is the burn mechanism: HNS coins are burned every time an auction with more than two bids concludes. This has resulted in about 1% of the circulating supply being burned in only two months. Comparing this to other tokens with burn mechanisms is pretty pointless given all of the differences in situation, mechanism, etc but however you look at it this is a remarkable level of activity from a network in its infancy: it took MKR/DAI over a year to have burned as much USD value as HNS has done in 8 weeks.
While comparing value burned is in my opinion not especially useful, I do think it's interesting to compare the amount of risk involved in various token-driven networks. Handshake looks very good in this department—it has the same highly effective burn dynamics that traders love in exchange platform tokens like BNB or Bitfinex's LEO, but has none of the counterparty risk that the exchange will simply stop honoring the token burn policy, alter it unilaterally, go out of business, etc. It also isn't subject to anything analogous to the risk that MKR holders got a tough demonstration of recently—that a big price crash in ETH caused enough MKR to be printed that not only was all of the previously burned MKR restored, the system is actually currently inflated by a little under 6000 MKR or 2 million dollars.
Q8: can i bid multilpe times on a name?
Matthew： Yes you can bid as many times as you want on any name. But the winning bid still pays the second-highest bid price, so you may end up raising your own price!
Q9:What factors will accelerate adoption of Handshake names?
Eric： More browsers, more domain name resolution services, more wallets to support! At present, nextdns has started to support it, and Brave Browser is also doing support work!
Q10:what happens if there is only one bid on a name?
Matthew：Then you win the name and you still pay the "second highest price" which is null ... or 0 HNS!
Lots of names are being aquired for free right now.
There is no marketing development plan. Handshake can not focus on anything because Handshake is a blockchain, not a person. Would you like to promote HNS in Vietnam? I would be happy to provide you with resources to do so
Q11:Specifically what kind of domains are likely to be valuable?
Eric：The answer to this question depends on how people end up using names. Here are a few use patterns I’ve been thinking of:
Bare names as TLDs/web addresses (TLDs as URLS)
People may use Handshake names as bare TLDs. At first it feels kind of weird to type a word in the URL bar and not have a “dot” something suffix, but you get used to it, and I could see this catching on especially for single-purpose sites where it makes them feel almost like UNIX commands. For example ‘amipwnd/’ is a site for checking whether your commonly used passwords are in any leaks, downforeveryoneorjustme/ (or its lithe cousin dfeojm/) check whether a site is actually down or something’s just wrong with your internet, and whatsmyip/, well, I’ll let you figure that one out.
Interestingly this not only is theoretically supported by the DNS specs, but is currently being used. The owner of the .ai TLD, a venerable cypherpunk named Vincent Aron Cate, who also happens to be one of the founders of the well known Financial Cryptography conference series, has a website hosted on the ai TLD itself! Apparently it doesn't work in 100% of browsers, but for most people, if you just copy-paste "http://ai/" into your browser, you can see a very awesome 90s style page for the ai registry. That this basically works "out of the box" is good news for HNS name compatibility.
Bare names as crypto addresses
Another reason that people may value names that work well as single words is that they make cool crypto addresses. There’s a simple trick to allow wallets to use HNS names as addresses for literally any cryptocurrency (just add a TXT record with the relevant addresses in some standard format the wallet providers agree to — if you read the previous section, getting this done is definitely one of the most important “bridges” we can build early on).
So instead of having to do that stressful thing where Satoshi tells Alice his address is 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa, and Alice sends him 0.000001 BTC as a test, but she misheard the G as a J and has to start over, Satoshi can just tell Alice “send to satoshi please” and when Alice enters “satoshi” in her wallet, it does a quick DNS lookup to check Satoshi’s BTC address and then sends the coin. Having your own name, or some other cool word as your crypto address is likely to become a thing, like vanity plates, HK millionaires paying for phone numbers with lots of 8s in them, etc etc. I think it’s silly, but I also really, really want to get my name as my address, so there it is.
Names that are well suited for issuing SLDs
Other names that may be valuable are those which work well for issuing SLDs. For example, common last names (joe.smith, alice.yang etc) or suffixes which are good for domain hacks like how del.icio.us worked back in the day, or things like ".coin" for SLDs like bit.coin, privacy.coin etc.
Q12:why does HNS need its own blockchain instead of using bitcoin or ethereum?
Matthew：Handshake has been deesigned to be limited. Do one thing, and do it well. This way it can stay very streamlined and is more likely to be integrated into existing software like operating systems and web browsers. We don't have to worry about fee pressure or mining irregularlites from other networks or censorhip from sub-communities.
Q13:why is hsd written in nodejs instead of c++ like most other bitcoin-based chains?
Matthew： hsd, the full node implementation, was based off of bcoin, an alternative implementaiton of Bitcoin written in Javascript for nodejs.
developers all have different opinions on programming languages (linux torvalds hates C++ for example)
and a lot of people really hate JS, but there's no reason to. Great code can be written in JS and this library is an exceptional piece of excellent work by a few of the best developers in the spave (JJ and Indutny)
JS was built for async activity, and a full node has tons of events like this, so JS is uniquely constructed for this kind of thing.
its not as fast as compiled native code, but as far as scripting languages go, it is pretty damn fast.
Hopefully if HNS gets popular we will see implementations written in Go Rust and C++
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