In this article, we are going to talk about the challenges blockchain is facing in scaling its network and then look at the list of its potential solutions. Let’s start with our guide about blockchain scalability issues right away.....Read more ๐๐ปhttps://bit.ly/3eo3PJQ
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Bitcoin Price Caught Between Key Support Levels as Bearish Sentiment Grows (current BTC/USD price is $8,854.72)
Latest Bitcoin News:
Bitcoin Price Caught Between Key Support Levels as Bearish Sentiment Grows
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.
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[Daily Discussion] Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Thread topics include, but are not limited to:
- General discussion related to the day's events
- Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
- Quick questions that do not warrant a separate post
Thread guidelines:
- Be excellent to each other.
- Do not make posts outside of the daily thread for the topics mentioned above.
Other ways to interact:
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- Weekly threads: Newbie Mondays and Fundamentals Fridays
- Altcoins Discussion: Altcoin Discussion
[Altcoin Discussion] Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Thread topics include, but are not limited to:
- Discussion related to recent events
- Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
- General questions about altcoins
Thread guidelines:
- Be excellent to each other.
- All regular rules for this subreddit apply, except for number 2. This, and only this, thread is exempt from the requirement that all discussion must relate to bitcoin trading.
- This is for high quality discussion of altcoins. All shilling or obvious pumping/dumping behavior will result in an immediate one day ban. This is your only warning.
- No discussion about specific ICOs. Established coins only.
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Other ways to interact:
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Bitcoin Could ROCKET After Tomorrow's Goldman Event | Craig Wright & Justin Sun Embarrass Themselves (x-post from /r/Cryptocurrency)
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/grb3vl/bitcoin_could_rocket_after_tomorrows_goldman/
Bitcoin Could ROCKET After Tomorrow's Goldman Event | Craig Wright & Justin Sun Embarrass Themselves (x-post from /r/Bitcoin)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/grb403/bitcoin_could_rocket_after_tomorrows_goldman/
Crypt0 - Bitcoin Could ROCKET After Tomorrow's Goldman Event | Craig Wright & Justin Sun Embarrass Themselves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm5z-Y3feko&feature=youtu.be
Bitcoin Could ROCKET After Tomorrow's Goldman Event | Craig Wright & Justin Sun Embarrass Themselves
https://youtu.be/gm5z-Y3feko
Bitcoin Could ROCKET After Tomorrow's Goldman Event | Craig Wright & Justin Sun Embarrass Themselves
https://youtu.be/gm5z-Y3feko
Bitcoin Could ROCKET After Tomorrow's Goldman Event | Craig Wright & Justin Sun Embarrass Themselves
https://youtu.be/gm5z-Y3feko
FANG Stalls Trannys Surge
For Trading MAY 27TH
ALL 11 S&P Sectors Higher
Today’s market was up after 2 days of strength in the futures markets, including Monday night while we were closed. There was also move vaccine news out of NVAX, which was +11 to $56.50 but could only manage a close of +2.06 (4.47%). The DJIA was dragged higher by the financials as rates rose. After opening +550 or so the DJIA rallied to +710 before a last hour slide back to +529.95 (2.17%), NASDAQ +150 at the open but slide down to barely higher at +15.63 (.47%), S&P 500 opened +65 but could only manage +36.32 (1.23%) while the Russell was +37.54 (2.77%) and the biggest winner was the Transports +425.52 (5.02%). Market internals were strong on the NYSE at 5:1 while the NASDAQ was just 2.2:1 and volume was just average. The DJIA was 24 up / 6 down and the upside was led by financial with GS +110 DPs and BA and JPM +49 AND 43 respectively while the only double-digit losers was AAPL -15 DPs. Also, a major new piece from Mr. Trump’s very great personal friend with whom he has a perfect relationship Premier Xi, was quoted as saying that “China is going to increase preparation for military combat in Hong Kong. I’m fairly sure with all the good will, like Phase one of the Trade infamous trade agreement under which NO SALE of our agricultural goods have actually been consummated, that Mr. Trump will have no problem sending us another few dozen positive tweets from his perfect, most favorite, great friend President Xi. Asia was +1.5% and Europe was up .7% -1.5% on the news that Germany is relaxing it eurozone travel ban. Consumer confidence came out at 10:00 and was a disappointing 86.6 vs. 88.5% expected.
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/fkb7EemPHI0
SECTORS: The news couldn’t have been either more positive or well timed. MRK with 2 announcements on a COVID-19 corroboration and another anti-viral project and opened +2.40, but finished +.89 (1%), NVAX $56 +989 (19%) but closed only +2.06, and JPM was lauded by it’s CEO at a conference about their fortress balance sheet and their ability to make money regardless of conditions. Airlines were higher and commodities were mixed with the oil hitting a new recovery high at $34.81, while the gold got slammed -$30. And the Bonds were down 1¼.
FOOD SUPPLY: was HIGHER with TSN +2.68, BGS +.55, FLO -.12, CAG +.61, MDLZ +.10, KHC +.42, CALM +.43, JJSF +4.79, SAFM +3.57, LANC +5.51, GO -.54 and PBJ $30.75 +.15 (.49%).
BIOPHARMA was LOWER with BIIB -7.53, ABBV -1.17, REGN -31.90, ISRG -1.71, GILD -.29, MYL +.41 TEVA + .44, VRTX -14.96, BHC +.39, INCY -.59, ICPT -3.16, LABU -3.70 and IBB $131.02 -2.32 (1.74%).
CANNABIS: This group was HIGHER with TLRY +.58, CGC +.67, CRON -.05, GWPH +4.23, ACB -.39, PYX +.13, NBEV -.06, CURLF +.14, KERN +1.20 and MJ $14.38 +.35 (2.49%).
DEFENSE: was HIGHER with LMT +6.38, GD +2.01, TXT +.14, NOC +5.70, BWXT +.15, TDY +6.22, RTX +2.30, and ITA $153.34 +3.27 (2.18%).
RETAIL was HIGHER with M + .96, JWN +1.10, KSS +1.98, DDS +3.00, WMT -.29, TGT -2.34, TJX +1.89, RL +8.66 (11.89%), UAA +.56 (6.71%), LULU +5.27, TPR +.70, CPRI +2.07 (14.28%) and XRT $40.36 +1.18 (3.01%).
FAANG and Big Cap: were LOWER after being much higher with GOOGL +10.02, AMZN -16.67, AAPL -1.99, FB -2.51, NFLX -15.32, NVDA -11.82, TSLA +2.82, BABA +2.26, BIDU +4.96, CMG -35.88, CAT +5.53, BA +7.24, DIS +3.32, and XLK $97.00 +.51 (.53%).
FINANCIALS were HIGHER with the creep up in interest rates with GS +16.37, JPM +6.53, BAC +1.63, MS +3.68, C +4.20, PNC +5.19, AIG +2.26, AXP +5.07, V +2.68, and XLF $23.14 +1.22 (5.57%).
OIL, $34.35 +1.10. Oil was higher today with the close mid-range. I thought that the most recent downside break occurred from just under $29.00 and may stop this move too, but as we saw, it went right through that level. On the rally we bought the US0 6/5 25 puts @ $ .91 and closed them out at $1.29 for a 40%+ gain. The stocks on my list were mostly lower with XLE $39.65 +1.12 (2.91%).%).
METALS, GOLD: $1,705.60 -29.90. After trying to break to new highs Gold failed to follow-thru and opened slightly lower and fell all the way back to trade $1,700. There is good support from here to $1,685 and I’d expect a renewed move higher.
BITCOIN: closed $8785 -390. After breaking down from just over 10,000 and trading 8,220 we started back up and traded all the way back, it failed to make a new recovery high. We broke all the way back to trade 8815 today but managed a move to close just over $9000. We added 350 shares of GBTC last Wednesday @ $10.02 to our position of 400 @ $8.06, bringing our average price to $8.97. GBTC closed $10.18 -.48 today.
Tomorrow is another day.
CAM
FAANG Stalls Trannies Surge
For Trading MAY 27TH
ALL 11 S&P Sectors Higher
Today’s market was up after 2 days of strength in the futures markets, including Monday night while we were closed. There was also move vaccine news out of NVAX, which was +11 to $56.50 but could only manage a close of +2.06 (4.47%). The DJIA was dragged higher by the financials as rates rose. After opening +550 or so the DJIA rallied to +710 before a last hour slide back to +529.95 (2.17%), NASDAQ +150 at the open but slide down to barely higher at +15.63 (.47%), S&P 500 opened +65 but could only manage +36.32 (1.23%) while the Russell was +37.54 (2.77%) and the biggest winner was the Transports +425.52 (5.02%). Market internals were strong on the NYSE at 5:1 while the NASDAQ was just 2.2:1 and volume was just average. The DJIA was 24 up / 6 down and the upside was led by financial with GS +110 DPs and BA and JPM +49 AND 43 respectively while the only double-digit losers was AAPL -15 DPs. Also, a major new piece from Mr. Trump’s very great personal friend with whom he has a perfect relationship Premier Xi, was quoted as saying that “China is going to increase preparation for military combat in Hong Kong. I’m fairly sure with all the good will, like Phase one of the Trade infamous trade agreement under which NO SALE of our agricultural goods have actually been consummated, that Mr. Trump will have no problem sending us another few dozen positive tweets from his perfect, most favorite, great friend President Xi. Asia was +1.5% and Europe was up .7% -1.5% on the news that Germany is relaxing it eurozone travel ban. Consumer confidence came out at 10:00 and was a disappointing 86.6 vs. 88.5% expected.
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/fkb7EemPHI0
SECTORS: The news couldn’t have been either more positive or well timed. MRK with 2 announcements on a COVID-19 corroboration and another anti-viral project and opened +2.40, but finished +.89 (1%), NVAX $56 +989 (19%) but closed only +2.06, and JPM was lauded by it’s CEO at a conference about their fortress balance sheet and their ability to make money regardless of conditions. Airlines were higher and commodities were mixed with the oil hitting a new recovery high at $34.81, while the gold got slammed -$30. And the Bonds were down 1¼.
FOOD SUPPLY: was HIGHER with TSN +2.68, BGS +.55, FLO -.12, CAG +.61, MDLZ +.10, KHC +.42, CALM +.43, JJSF +4.79, SAFM +3.57, LANC +5.51, GO -.54 and PBJ $30.75 +.15 (.49%).
BIOPHARMA was LOWER with BIIB -7.53, ABBV -1.17, REGN -31.90, ISRG -1.71, GILD -.29, MYL +.41 TEVA + .44, VRTX -14.96, BHC +.39, INCY -.59, ICPT -3.16, LABU -3.70 and IBB $131.02 -2.32 (1.74%).
CANNABIS: This group was HIGHER with TLRY +.58, CGC +.67, CRON -.05, GWPH +4.23, ACB -.39, PYX +.13, NBEV -.06, CURLF +.14, KERN +1.20 and MJ $14.38 +.35 (2.49%).
DEFENSE: was HIGHER with LMT +6.38, GD +2.01, TXT +.14, NOC +5.70, BWXT +.15, TDY +6.22, RTX +2.30, and ITA $153.34 +3.27 (2.18%).
RETAIL was HIGHER with M + .96, JWN +1.10, KSS +1.98, DDS +3.00, WMT -.29, TGT -2.34, TJX +1.89, RL +8.66 (11.89%), UAA +.56 (6.71%), LULU +5.27, TPR +.70, CPRI +2.07 (14.28%) and XRT $40.36 +1.18 (3.01%).
FAANG and Big Cap: were LOWER after being much higher with GOOGL +10.02, AMZN -16.67, AAPL -1.99, FB -2.51, NFLX -15.32, NVDA -11.82, TSLA +2.82, BABA +2.26, BIDU +4.96, CMG -35.88, CAT +5.53, BA +7.24, DIS +3.32, and XLK $97.00 +.51 (.53%).
FINANCIALS were HIGHER with the creep up in interest rates with GS +16.37, JPM +6.53, BAC +1.63, MS +3.68, C +4.20, PNC +5.19, AIG +2.26, AXP +5.07, V +2.68, and XLF $23.14 +1.22 (5.57%).
OIL, $34.35 +1.10. Oil was higher today with the close mid-range. I thought that the most recent downside break occurred from just under $29.00 and may stop this move too, but as we saw, it went right through that level. On the rally we bought the US0 6/5 25 puts @ $ .91 and closed them out at $1.29 for a 40%+ gain. The stocks on my list were mostly lower with XLE $39.65 +1.12 (2.91%).%).
METALS, GOLD: $1,705.60 -29.90. After trying to break to new highs Gold failed to follow-thru and opened slightly lower and fell all the way back to trade $1,700. There is good support from here to $1,685 and I’d expect a renewed move higher.
BITCOIN: closed $8785 -390. After breaking down from just over 10,000 and trading 8,220 we started back up and traded all the way back, it failed to make a new recovery high. We broke all the way back to trade 8815 today but managed a move to close just over $9000. We added 350 shares of GBTC last Wednesday @ $10.02 to our position of 400 @ $8.06, bringing our average price to $8.97. GBTC closed $10.18 -.48 today.
Tomorrow is another day.
CAM
Russia Proposes Jail Sentences for Buying Bitcoin with Cash (current BTC/USD price is $8,849.77)
Latest Bitcoin News:
Russia Proposes Jail Sentences for Buying Bitcoin with Cash
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.
[uncensored-r/BitcoinMarkets] [Altcoin Discussion] Tuesday, May 26, 2020
The following post by AutoModerator is being replicated because some comments within the post(but not the post itself) have been silently removed.
The original post can be found(in censored form) at this link:
np.reddit.com/r/ BitcoinMarkets/comments/gqpx4d
The original post's content was as follows:
Thread topics include, but are not limited to:
- Discussion related to recent events
- Technical analysis, trading ideas & strategies
- General questions about altcoins
Thread guidelines:
- Be excellent to each other.
- All regular rules for this subreddit apply, except for number 2. This, and only this, thread is exempt from the requirement that all discussion must relate to bitcoin trading.
- This is for high quality discussion of altcoins. All shilling or obvious pumping/dumping behavior will result in an immediate one day ban. This is your only warning.
- No discussion about specific ICOs. Established coins only.
If you're not sure what kind of discussion belongs in this thread, here are some example posts. News, TA, and sentiment analysis are great, too.
Other ways to interact:
- Get an invite to live chat on our Slack group and check out the #altcoins channel
- Daily Discussion for bitcoin only: Daily Discussion
- Prior Altcoin Discussion: Altcoin Discussion
Guys how do i implement the use of Escrow?
A Market i'm buying something off uses Bitcoin Escrow?
I normally just transfer coin from Coinbase to Electrum and send it directly to the sellers
Is Escrow something different?
Do I need to make an account with escrow etc
I'd be so greatful if you could guide me through the additional steps I'd need to take after transferring to electrum
I'm very new at this
Thanks!
Coinbase Support Number +๐ท๐พ๐น๐น-๐ฟ๐ธ๐ธ-๐ท๐ฟ๐ฟ๐ผ coinbase support number 【+】【1】【8】【3】【3】【-】【9】【2】【2】【-】【1】【9】【9】【6】 COINBASE SUPPORT NUMBER 『+』『1』『8』『3』『3』『-』『9』『2』『2』『-』『1』『9』『9』『6』 cOINBASE sUPPORT nUMBER ≋+≋1≋8≋3≋3≋-≋9≋2≋2≋-≋1≋9≋9≋6≋
Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao really doesn't want to tell you where his firm's headquarters is located.
To kick off ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit on Thursday, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin held a cozy fireside chat with Zhao who, to mark the occasion, was wearing a personalized football shirt emblazoned with the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 brand.
Scheduled for 45 minutes, Zhao spent most of it explaining how libra and China's digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors to existing stablecoin providers; how Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996's smart chain wouldn't tread on Ethereum's toes – "that depends on the definition of competing," he said – and how Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 had an incentive to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent from the exchange.
There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.
Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996's headquarters?
This seemingly simple question is actually more complex. Until February, Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 was considered to be based in Malta. That changed when the island European nation announced that, no, Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 is not under its jurisdiction. Since then Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has not said just where, exactly, it is now headquartered.
Little wonder that when asked Zhao reddened; he stammered. He looked off-camera, possibly to an aide. "Well, I think what this is is the beauty of the blockchain, right, so you don't have to ... like where's the Bitcoin office, because Bitcoin doesn't have an office," he said.
The line trailed off, then inspiration hit. "What kind of horse is a car?" Zhao asked. Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has loads of offices, he continued, with staff in 50 countries. It was a new type of organization that doesn't need registered bank accounts and postal addresses.
"Wherever I sit, is going to be the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 office. Wherever I need somebody, is going to be the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 office," he said.
Zhao may have been hoping the host would move onto something easier. But Shin wasn't finished: "But even to do things like to handle, you know, taxes for your employees, like, I think you need a registered business entity, so like why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open about it like, you know, the headquarters is registered in this place, why not just say that?"
Zhao glanced away again, possibly at the person behind the camera. Their program had less than two minutes remaining. "It's not that we don't want to admit it, it's not that we want to obfuscate it or we want to kind of hide it. We're not hiding, we're in the open," he said.
Shin interjected: "What are you saying that you're already some kind of DAO [decentralized autonomous organization]? I mean what are you saying? Because it's not the old way [having a headquarters], it's actually the current way ... I actually don't know what you are or what you're claiming to be."
Zhao said Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 isn't a traditional company, more a large team of people "that works together for a common goal." He added: "To be honest, if we classified as a DAO, then there's going to be a lot of debate about why we're not a DAO. So I don't want to go there, either."
"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.
Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.
"I'm in Asia," Zhao said. The blank white wall behind him didn't provide any clues about where in Asia he might be. Shin asked if he could say which country – after all, it's the Earth's largest continent.
"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.
It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.
In the opening session of Consensus: Distributed this week, Lawrence Summers was asked by my co-host Naomi Brockwell about protecting people’s privacy once currencies go digital. His answer: “I think the problems we have now with money involve too much privacy.”
President Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, now President Emeritus at Harvard, referenced the 500-euro note, which bore the nickname “The Bin Laden,” to argue the un-traceability of cash empowers wealthy criminals to finance themselves. “Of all the important freedoms,” he continued, “the ability to possess, transfer and do business with multi-million dollar sums of money anonymously seems to me to be one of the least important.” Summers ended the segment by saying that “if I have provoked others, I will have served my purpose.”
You’re reading Money Reimagined, a weekly look at the technological, economic and social events and trends that are redefining our relationship with money and transforming the global financial system. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.
That he did. Among the more than 20,000 registered for the weeklong virtual experience was a large contingent of libertarian-minded folks who see state-backed monitoring of their money as an affront to their property rights.
But with due respect to a man who has had prodigious influence on international economic policymaking, it’s not wealthy bitcoiners for whom privacy matters. It matters for all humanity and, most importantly, for the poor.
Now, as the world grapples with how to collect and disseminate public health information in a way that both saves lives and preserves civil liberties, the principle of privacy deserves to be elevated in importance.
Just this week, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the 9/11-era Patriot Act and failed to pass a proposed amendment to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from monitoring our online browsing without a warrant. Meanwhile, our heightened dependence on online social connections during COVID-19 isolation has further empowered a handful of internet platforms that are incorporating troves of our personal data into sophisticated predictive behavior models. This process of hidden control is happening right now, not in some future "Westworld"-like existence.
Digital currencies will only worsen this situation. If they are added to this comprehensive surveillance infrastructure, it could well spell the end of the civil liberties that underpin Western civilization.
Yes, freedom matters
Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”
Money is just the instrument here. What matters is whether our transactions, our exchanges of goods and services and the source of our economic and social value, should be monitored and manipulated by government and corporate owners of centralized databases. It’s why critics of China’s digital currency plans rightly worry about a “panopticon” and why, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there was an initial backlash against Facebook launching its libra currency.
Writers such as Shoshana Zuboff and Jared Lanier have passionately argued that our subservience to the hidden algorithms of what I like to call “GoogAzonBook” is diminishing our free will. Resisting that is important, not just to preserve the ideal of “the self” but also to protect the very functioning of society.
Markets, for one, are pointless without free will. In optimizing resource allocation, they presume autonomy among those who make up the market. Free will, which I’ll define as the ability to lawfully transact on my own terms without knowingly or unknowingly acting in someone else’s interests to my detriment, is a bedrock of market democracies. Without a sufficient right to privacy, it disintegrates – and in the digital age, that can happen very rapidly.
Also, as I’ve argued elsewhere, losing privacy undermines the fungibility of money. Each digital dollar should be substitutable for another. If our transactions carry a history and authorities can target specific notes or tokens for seizure because of their past involvement in illicit activity, then some dollars become less valuable than other dollars.
The excluded
But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.
An estimated 1.7 billion adults are denied a bank account because they can’t furnish the information that banks’ anti-money laundering (AML) officers need, either because their government’s identity infrastructure is untrusted or because of the danger to them of furnishing such information to kleptocratic regimes. Unable to let banks monitor them, they’re excluded from the global economy’s dominant payment and savings system – victims of a system that prioritizes surveillance over privacy.
Misplaced priorities also contribute to the “derisking” problem faced by Caribbean and Latin American countries, where investment inflows have slowed and financial costs have risen in the past decade. America’s gatekeeping correspondent banks, fearful of heavy fines like the one imposed on HSBC for its involvement in a money laundering scandal, have raised the bar on the kind of personal information that regional banks must obtain from their local clients.
And where’s the payoff? Despite this surveillance system, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion, or 2%-5% of global gross domestic product, is laundered annually worldwide. The Panama Papers case shows how the rich and powerful easily use lawyers, shell companies, tax havens and transaction obfuscation to get around surveillance. The poor are just excluded from the system.
Caring about privacy
Solutions are coming that wouldn’t require abandoning law enforcement efforts. Self-sovereign identity models and zero-knowledge proofs, for example, grant control over data to the individuals who generate it, allowing them to provide sufficient proof of a clean record without revealing sensitive personal information. But such innovations aren’t getting nearly enough attention.
Few officials inside developed country regulatory agencies seem to acknowledge the cost of cutting off 1.7 billion poor from the financial system. Yet, their actions foster poverty and create fertile conditions for terrorism and drug-running, the very crimes they seek to contain. The reaction to evidence of persistent money laundering is nearly always to make bank secrecy laws even more demanding. Exhibit A: Europe’s new AML 5 directive.
To be sure, in the Consensus discussion that followed the Summers interview, it was pleasing to hear another former U.S. official take a more accommodative view of privacy. Former Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo said that “getting the privacy balance right” is a “design imperative” for the digital dollar concept he is actively promoting.
But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.
Let’s talk about this, people.
A missing asterisk
Control for all variables. At the end of the day, the dollar’s standing as the world’s reserve currency ultimately comes down to how much the rest of the world trusts the United States to continue its de facto leadership of the world economy. In the past, that assessment was based on how well the U.S. militarily or otherwise dealt with human- and state-led threats to international commerce such as Soviet expansionism or terrorism. But in the COVID-19 era only one thing matters: how well it is leading the fight against the pandemic.
So if you’ve already seen the charts below and you’re wondering what they’re doing in a newsletter about the battle for the future of money, that’s why. They were inspired by a staged White House lawn photo-op Tuesday, where President Trump was flanked by a huge banner that dealt quite literally with a question of American leadership. It read, “America Leads the World in Testing.” That’s a claim that’s technically correct, but one that surely demands a big red asterisk. When you’re the third-largest country by population – not to mention the richest – having the highest number of tests is not itself much of an achievement. The claim demands a per capita adjustment. Here’s how things look, first in absolute terms, then adjusted for tests per million inhabitants.
Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has frozen funds linked to Upbit’s prior $50 million data breach after the hackers tried to liquidate a part of the gains. In a recent tweet, Whale Alert warned Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 that a transaction of 137 ETH (about $28,000) had moved from an address linked to the Upbit hacker group to its wallets.
Less than an hour after the transaction was flagged, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996, announced that the exchange had frozen the funds. He also added that Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 is getting in touch with Upbit to investigate the transaction. In November 2019, Upbit suffered an attack in which hackers stole 342,000 ETH, accounting for approximately $50 million. The hackers managed to take the funds by transferring the ETH from Upbit’s hot wallet to an anonymous crypto address.
CoinDCX Raises $2.5 Million, Furthering Bitcoin Growth in India (current BTC/USD price is $8,870.41)
Latest Bitcoin News:
CoinDCX Raises $2.5 Million, Furthering Bitcoin Growth in India
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.
Coinbase Support Number ☎ +๐ฃ๐ช๐ฅ๐ฅ-๐ซ๐ค๐ค-๐ฃ๐ซ๐ซ๐จ Coinbase continues to explore support
Coinbase Support Number ☎ +๐ฃ๐ช๐ฅ๐ฅ-๐ซ๐ค๐ค-๐ฃ๐ซ๐ซ๐จ
Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao really doesn't want to tell you where his firm's headquarters is located.
To kick off ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit on Thursday, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin held a cozy fireside chat with Zhao who, to mark the occasion, was wearing a personalized football shirt emblazoned with the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 brand.
Scheduled for 45 minutes, Zhao spent most of it explaining how libra and China's digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors to existing stablecoin providers; how Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996's smart chain wouldn't tread on Ethereum's toes – "that depends on the definition of competing," he said – and how Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 had an incentive to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent from the exchange.
There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.
Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996's headquarters?
This seemingly simple question is actually more complex. Until February, Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 was considered to be based in Malta. That changed when the island European nation announced that, no, Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 is not under its jurisdiction. Since then Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has not said just where, exactly, it is now headquartered.
Little wonder that when asked Zhao reddened; he stammered. He looked off-camera, possibly to an aide. "Well, I think what this is is the beauty of the blockchain, right, so you don't have to ... like where's the Bitcoin office, because Bitcoin doesn't have an office," he said.
The line trailed off, then inspiration hit. "What kind of horse is a car?" Zhao asked. Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has loads of offices, he continued, with staff in 50 countries. It was a new type of organization that doesn't need registered bank accounts and postal addresses.
"Wherever I sit, is going to be the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 office. Wherever I need somebody, is going to be the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 office," he said.
Zhao may have been hoping the host would move onto something easier. But Shin wasn't finished: "But even to do things like to handle, you know, taxes for your employees, like, I think you need a registered business entity, so like why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open about it like, you know, the headquarters is registered in this place, why not just say that?"
Zhao glanced away again, possibly at the person behind the camera. Their program had less than two minutes remaining. "It's not that we don't want to admit it, it's not that we want to obfuscate it or we want to kind of hide it. We're not hiding, we're in the open," he said.
Shin interjected: "What are you saying that you're already some kind of DAO [decentralized autonomous organization]? I mean what are you saying? Because it's not the old way [having a headquarters], it's actually the current way ... I actually don't know what you are or what you're claiming to be."
Zhao said Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 isn't a traditional company, more a large team of people "that works together for a common goal." He added: "To be honest, if we classified as a DAO, then there's going to be a lot of debate about why we're not a DAO. So I don't want to go there, either."
"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.
Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.
"I'm in Asia," Zhao said. The blank white wall behind him didn't provide any clues about where in Asia he might be. Shin asked if he could say which country – after all, it's the Earth's largest continent.
"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.
It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.
In the opening session of Consensus: Distributed this week, Lawrence Summers was asked by my co-host Naomi Brockwell about protecting people’s privacy once currencies go digital. His answer: “I think the problems we have now with money involve too much privacy.”
President Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, now President Emeritus at Harvard, referenced the 500-euro note, which bore the nickname “The Bin Laden,” to argue the un-traceability of cash empowers wealthy criminals to finance themselves. “Of all the important freedoms,” he continued, “the ability to possess, transfer and do business with multi-million dollar sums of money anonymously seems to me to be one of the least important.” Summers ended the segment by saying that “if I have provoked others, I will have served my purpose.”
You’re reading Money Reimagined, a weekly look at the technological, economic and social events and trends that are redefining our relationship with money and transforming the global financial system. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.
That he did. Among the more than 20,000 registered for the weeklong virtual experience was a large contingent of libertarian-minded folks who see state-backed monitoring of their money as an affront to their property rights.
But with due respect to a man who has had prodigious influence on international economic policymaking, it’s not wealthy bitcoiners for whom privacy matters. It matters for all humanity and, most importantly, for the poor.
Now, as the world grapples with how to collect and disseminate public health information in a way that both saves lives and preserves civil liberties, the principle of privacy deserves to be elevated in importance.
Just this week, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the 9/11-era Patriot Act and failed to pass a proposed amendment to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from monitoring our online browsing without a warrant. Meanwhile, our heightened dependence on online social connections during COVID-19 isolation has further empowered a handful of internet platforms that are incorporating troves of our personal data into sophisticated predictive behavior models. This process of hidden control is happening right now, not in some future "Westworld"-like existence.
Digital currencies will only worsen this situation. If they are added to this comprehensive surveillance infrastructure, it could well spell the end of the civil liberties that underpin Western civilization.
Yes, freedom matters
Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”
Money is just the instrument here. What matters is whether our transactions, our exchanges of goods and services and the source of our economic and social value, should be monitored and manipulated by government and corporate owners of centralized databases. It’s why critics of China’s digital currency plans rightly worry about a “panopticon” and why, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there was an initial backlash against Facebook launching its libra currency.
Writers such as Shoshana Zuboff and Jared Lanier have passionately argued that our subservience to the hidden algorithms of what I like to call “GoogAzonBook” is diminishing our free will. Resisting that is important, not just to preserve the ideal of “the self” but also to protect the very functioning of society.
Markets, for one, are pointless without free will. In optimizing resource allocation, they presume autonomy among those who make up the market. Free will, which I’ll define as the ability to lawfully transact on my own terms without knowingly or unknowingly acting in someone else’s interests to my detriment, is a bedrock of market democracies. Without a sufficient right to privacy, it disintegrates – and in the digital age, that can happen very rapidly.
Also, as I’ve argued elsewhere, losing privacy undermines the fungibility of money. Each digital dollar should be substitutable for another. If our transactions carry a history and authorities can target specific notes or tokens for seizure because of their past involvement in illicit activity, then some dollars become less valuable than other dollars.
The excluded
But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.
An estimated 1.7 billion adults are denied a bank account because they can’t furnish the information that banks’ anti-money laundering (AML) officers need, either because their government’s identity infrastructure is untrusted or because of the danger to them of furnishing such information to kleptocratic regimes. Unable to let banks monitor them, they’re excluded from the global economy’s dominant payment and savings system – victims of a system that prioritizes surveillance over privacy.
Misplaced priorities also contribute to the “derisking” problem faced by Caribbean and Latin American countries, where investment inflows have slowed and financial costs have risen in the past decade. America’s gatekeeping correspondent banks, fearful of heavy fines like the one imposed on HSBC for its involvement in a money laundering scandal, have raised the bar on the kind of personal information that regional banks must obtain from their local clients.
And where’s the payoff? Despite this surveillance system, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion, or 2%-5% of global gross domestic product, is laundered annually worldwide. The Panama Papers case shows how the rich and powerful easily use lawyers, shell companies, tax havens and transaction obfuscation to get around surveillance. The poor are just excluded from the system.
Caring about privacy
Solutions are coming that wouldn’t require abandoning law enforcement efforts. Self-sovereign identity models and zero-knowledge proofs, for example, grant control over data to the individuals who generate it, allowing them to provide sufficient proof of a clean record without revealing sensitive personal information. But such innovations aren’t getting nearly enough attention.
Few officials inside developed country regulatory agencies seem to acknowledge the cost of cutting off 1.7 billion poor from the financial system. Yet, their actions foster poverty and create fertile conditions for terrorism and drug-running, the very crimes they seek to contain. The reaction to evidence of persistent money laundering is nearly always to make bank secrecy laws even more demanding. Exhibit A: Europe’s new AML 5 directive.
To be sure, in the Consensus discussion that followed the Summers interview, it was pleasing to hear another former U.S. official take a more accommodative view of privacy. Former Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo said that “getting the privacy balance right” is a “design imperative” for the digital dollar concept he is actively promoting.
But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.
Let’s talk about this, people.
A missing asterisk
Control for all variables. At the end of the day, the dollar’s standing as the world’s reserve currency ultimately comes down to how much the rest of the world trusts the United States to continue its de facto leadership of the world economy. In the past, that assessment was based on how well the U.S. militarily or otherwise dealt with human- and state-led threats to international commerce such as Soviet expansionism or terrorism. But in the COVID-19 era only one thing matters: how well it is leading the fight against the pandemic.
So if you’ve already seen the charts below and you’re wondering what they’re doing in a newsletter about the battle for the future of money, that’s why. They were inspired by a staged White House lawn photo-op Tuesday, where President Trump was flanked by a huge banner that dealt quite literally with a question of American leadership. It read, “America Leads the World in Testing.” That’s a claim that’s technically correct, but one that surely demands a big red asterisk. When you’re the third-largest country by population – not to mention the richest – having the highest number of tests is not itself much of an achievement. The claim demands a per capita adjustment. Here’s how things look, first in absolute terms, then adjusted for tests per million inhabitants.
Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has frozen funds linked to Upbit’s prior $50 million data breach after the hackers tried to liquidate a part of the gains. In a recent tweet, Whale Alert warned Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 that a transaction of 137 ETH (about $28,000) had moved from an address linked to the Upbit hacker group to its wallets.
Less than an hour after the transaction was flagged, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996, announced that the exchange had frozen the funds. He also added that Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 is getting in touch with Upbit to investigate the transaction. In November 2019, Upbit suffered an attack in which hackers stole 342,000 ETH, accounting for approximately $50 million. The hackers managed to take the funds by transferring the ETH from Upbit’s hot wallet to an anonymous crypto address.
Bitcoin (BTC)A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
- Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange that is independent of any central authority. BTC can be transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
- Launched in 2009, BTC is the first virtual currency to solve the double-spending issue by timestamping transactions before broadcasting them to all of the nodes in the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin Protocol offered a solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem with a blockchain network structure, a notion first created by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991.
- Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published pseudonymously in 2008 by an individual, or a group, with the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”, whose underlying identity has still not been verified.
- The Bitcoin protocol uses an SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to reach network consensus. Its network has a target block time of 10 minutes and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens, with a decaying token emission rate. To prevent fluctuation of the block time, the network’s block difficulty is re-adjusted through an algorithm based on the past 2016 block times.
- With a block size limit capped at 1 megabyte, the Bitcoin Protocol has supported both the Lightning Network, a second-layer infrastructure for payment channels, and Segregated Witness, a soft-fork to increase the number of transactions on a block, as solutions to network scalability.
1. What is Bitcoin (BTC)?
- Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange and is independent of any central authority. Bitcoins are transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
- Network validators, whom are often referred to as miners, participate in the SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to determine the next global state of the blockchain.
- The Bitcoin protocol has a target block time of 10 minutes, and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens. The only way new bitcoins can be produced is when a block producer generates a new valid block.
- The protocol has a token emission rate that halves every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every 4 years.
- Unlike public blockchain infrastructures supporting the development of decentralized applications (Ethereum), the Bitcoin protocol is primarily used only for payments, and has only very limited support for smart contract-like functionalities (Bitcoin “Script” is mostly used to create certain conditions before bitcoins are used to be spent).
2. Bitcoin’s core features
For a more beginner’s introduction to Bitcoin, please visit Binance Academy’s guide to Bitcoin.
Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model
A UTXO transaction works like cash payment between two parties: Alice gives money to Bob and receives change (i.e., unspent amount). In comparison, blockchains like Ethereum rely on the account model.
Nakamoto consensus
In the Bitcoin network, anyone can join the network and become a bookkeeping service provider i.e., a validator. All validators are allowed in the race to become the block producer for the next block, yet only the first to complete a computationally heavy task will win. This feature is called Proof of Work (PoW).
The probability of any single validator to finish the task first is equal to the percentage of the total network computation power, or hash power, the validator has. For instance, a validator with 5% of the total network computation power will have a 5% chance of completing the task first, and therefore becoming the next block producer.
Since anyone can join the race, competition is prone to increase. In the early days, Bitcoin mining was mostly done by personal computer CPUs.
As of today, Bitcoin validators, or miners, have opted for dedicated and more powerful devices such as machines based on Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (“ASIC”).
Proof of Work secures the network as block producers must have spent resources external to the network (i.e., money to pay electricity), and can provide proof to other participants that they did so.
With various miners competing for block rewards, it becomes difficult for one single malicious party to gain network majority (defined as more than 51% of the network’s hash power in the Nakamoto consensus mechanism). The ability to rearrange transactions via 51% attacks indicates another feature of the Nakamoto consensus: the finality of transactions is only probabilistic.
Once a block is produced, it is then propagated by the block producer to all other validators to check on the validity of all transactions in that block. The block producer will receive rewards in the network’s native currency (i.e., bitcoin) as all validators approve the block and update their ledgers.
The blockchain
Block production
The Bitcoin protocol utilizes the Merkle tree data structure in order to organize hashes of numerous individual transactions into each block. This concept is named after Ralph Merkle, who patented it in 1979.
With the use of a Merkle tree, though each block might contain thousands of transactions, it will have the ability to combine all of their hashes and condense them into one, allowing efficient and secure verification of this group of transactions. This single hash called is a Merkle root, which is stored in the Block Header of a block. The Block Header also stores other meta information of a block, such as a hash of the previous Block Header, which enables blocks to be associated in a chain-like structure (hence the name “blockchain”).
An illustration of block production in the Bitcoin Protocol is demonstrated below.
Block time and mining difficulty
Block time is the period required to create the next block in a network. As mentioned above, the node who solves the computationally intensive task will be allowed to produce the next block. Therefore, block time is directly correlated to the amount of time it takes for a node to find a solution to the task. The Bitcoin protocol sets a target block time of 10 minutes, and attempts to achieve this by introducing a variable named mining difficulty.
Mining difficulty refers to how difficult it is for the node to solve the computationally intensive task. If the network sets a high difficulty for the task, while miners have low computational power, which is often referred to as “hashrate”, it would statistically take longer for the nodes to get an answer for the task. If the difficulty is low, but miners have rather strong computational power, statistically, some nodes will be able to solve the task quickly.
Therefore, the 10 minute target block time is achieved by constantly and automatically adjusting the mining difficulty according to how much computational power there is amongst the nodes. The average block time of the network is evaluated after a certain number of blocks, and if it is greater than the expected block time, the difficulty level will decrease; if it is less than the expected block time, the difficulty level will increase.
What are orphan blocks?
In a PoW blockchain network, if the block time is too low, it would increase the likelihood of nodes producingorphan blocks, for which they would receive no reward. Orphan blocks are produced by nodes who solved the task but did not broadcast their results to the whole network the quickest due to network latency.
It takes time for a message to travel through a network, and it is entirely possible for 2 nodes to complete the task and start to broadcast their results to the network at roughly the same time, while one’s messages are received by all other nodes earlier as the node has low latency.
Imagine there is a network latency of 1 minute and a target block time of 2 minutes. A node could solve the task in around 1 minute but his message would take 1 minute to reach the rest of the nodes that are still working on the solution. While his message travels through the network, all the work done by all other nodes during that 1 minute, even if these nodes also complete the task, would go to waste. In this case, 50% of the computational power contributed to the network is wasted.
The percentage of wasted computational power would proportionally decrease if the mining difficulty were higher, as it would statistically take longer for miners to complete the task. In other words, if the mining difficulty, and therefore targeted block time is low, miners with powerful and often centralized mining facilities would get a higher chance of becoming the block producer, while the participation of weaker miners would become in vain. This introduces possible centralization and weakens the overall security of the network.
However, given a limited amount of transactions that can be stored in a block, making the block time too longwould decrease the number of transactions the network can process per second, negatively affecting network scalability.
3. Bitcoin’s additional features
Segregated Witness (SegWit)
Segregated Witness, often abbreviated as SegWit, is a protocol upgrade proposal that went live in August 2017.
SegWit separates witness signatures from transaction-related data. Witness signatures in legacy Bitcoin blocks often take more than 50% of the block size. By removing witness signatures from the transaction block, this protocol upgrade effectively increases the number of transactions that can be stored in a single block, enabling the network to handle more transactions per second. As a result, SegWit increases the scalability of Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Litecoin.
SegWit also makes transactions cheaper. Since transaction fees are derived from how much data is being processed by the block producer, the more transactions that can be stored in a 1MB block, the cheaper individual transactions become.
The legacy Bitcoin block has a block size limit of 1 megabyte, and any change on the block size would require a network hard-fork. On August 1st 2017, the first hard-fork occurred, leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (“BCH”), which introduced an 8 megabyte block size limit.
Conversely, Segregated Witness was a soft-fork: it never changed the transaction block size limit of the network. Instead, it added an extended block with an upper limit of 3 megabytes, which contains solely witness signatures, to the 1 megabyte block that contains only transaction data. This new block type can be processed even by nodes that have not completed the SegWit protocol upgrade.
Furthermore, the separation of witness signatures from transaction data solves the malleability issue with the original Bitcoin protocol. Without Segregated Witness, these signatures could be altered before the block is validated by miners. Indeed, alterations can be done in such a way that if the system does a mathematical check, the signature would still be valid. However, since the values in the signature are changed, the two signatures would create vastly different hash values.
For instance, if a witness signature states “6,” it has a mathematical value of 6, and would create a hash value of 12345. However, if the witness signature were changed to “06”, it would maintain a mathematical value of 6 while creating a (faulty) hash value of 67890.
Since the mathematical values are the same, the altered signature remains a valid signature. This would create a bookkeeping issue, as transactions in Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks are documented with these hash values, or transaction IDs. Effectively, one can alter a transaction ID to a new one, and the new ID can still be valid.
This can create many issues, as illustrated in the below example:
- Alice sends Bob 1 BTC, and Bob sends Merchant Carol this 1 BTC for some goods.
- Bob sends Carols this 1 BTC, while the transaction from Alice to Bob is not yet validated. Carol sees this incoming transaction of 1 BTC to him, and immediately ships goods to B.
- At the moment, the transaction from Alice to Bob is still not confirmed by the network, and Bob can change the witness signature, therefore changing this transaction ID from 12345 to 67890.
- Now Carol will not receive his 1 BTC, as the network looks for transaction 12345 to ensure that Bob’s wallet balance is valid.
- As this particular transaction ID changed from 12345 to 67890, the transaction from Bob to Carol will fail, and Bob will get his goods while still holding his BTC.
With the Segregated Witness upgrade, such instances can not happen again. This is because the witness signatures are moved outside of the transaction block into an extended block, and altering the witness signature won’t affect the transaction ID.
Since the transaction malleability issue is fixed, Segregated Witness also enables the proper functioning of second-layer scalability solutions on the Bitcoin protocol, such as the Lightning Network.
Lightning Network
Lightning Network is a second-layer micropayment solution for scalability.
Specifically, Lightning Network aims to enable near-instant and low-cost payments between merchants and customers that wish to use bitcoins.
Lightning Network was conceptualized in a whitepaper by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015. Since then, it has been implemented by multiple companies. The most prominent of them include Blockstream, Lightning Labs, and ACINQ.
A list of curated resources relevant to Lightning Network can be found here.
In the Lightning Network, if a customer wishes to transact with a merchant, both of them need to open a payment channel, which operates off the Bitcoin blockchain (i.e., off-chain vs. on-chain). None of the transaction details from this payment channel are recorded on the blockchain, and only when the channel is closed will the end result of both party’s wallet balances be updated to the blockchain. The blockchain only serves as a settlement layer for Lightning transactions.
Since all transactions done via the payment channel are conducted independently of the Nakamoto consensus, both parties involved in transactions do not need to wait for network confirmation on transactions. Instead, transacting parties would pay transaction fees to Bitcoin miners only when they decide to close the channel.
One limitation to the Lightning Network is that it requires a person to be online to receive transactions attributing towards him. Another limitation in user experience could be that one needs to lock up some funds every time he wishes to open a payment channel, and is only able to use that fund within the channel.
However, this does not mean he needs to create new channels every time he wishes to transact with a different person on the Lightning Network. If Alice wants to send money to Carol, but they do not have a payment channel open, they can ask Bob, who has payment channels open to both Alice and Carol, to help make that transaction. Alice will be able to send funds to Bob, and Bob to Carol. Hence, the number of “payment hubs” (i.e., Bob in the previous example) correlates with both the convenience and the usability of the Lightning Network for real-world applications.
Schnorr Signature upgrade proposal
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (“ECDSA”) signatures are used to sign transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
However, many developers now advocate for replacing ECDSA with Schnorr Signature. Once Schnorr Signatures are implemented, multiple parties can collaborate in producing a signature that is valid for the sum of their public keys.
This would primarily be beneficial for network scalability. When multiple addresses were to conduct transactions to a single address, each transaction would require their own signature. With Schnorr Signature, all these signatures would be combined into one. As a result, the network would be able to store more transactions in a single block.
The reduced size in signatures implies a reduced cost on transaction fees. The group of senders can split the transaction fees for that one group signature, instead of paying for one personal signature individually.
Schnorr Signature also improves network privacy and token fungibility. A third-party observer will not be able to detect if a user is sending a multi-signature transaction, since the signature will be in the same format as a single-signature transaction.
4. Economics and supply distribution
The Bitcoin protocol utilizes the Nakamoto consensus, and nodes validate blocks via Proof-of-Work mining. The bitcoin token was not pre-mined, and has a maximum supply of 21 million. The initial reward for a block was 50 BTC per block. Block mining rewards halve every 210,000 blocks. Since the average time for block production on the blockchain is 10 minutes, it implies that the block reward halving events will approximately take place every 4 years.
As of May 12th 2020, the block mining rewards are 6.25 BTC per block. Transaction fees also represent a minor revenue stream for miners.
Bitcoin (BTC)A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
- Bitcoin (BTC) is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange that is independent of any central authority. BTC can be transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
- Launched in 2009, BTC is the first virtual currency to solve the double-spending issue by timestamping transactions before broadcasting them to all of the nodes in the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin Protocol offered a solution to the Byzantine Generals’ Problem with a blockchain network structure, a notion first created by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in 1991.
- Bitcoin’s whitepaper was published pseudonymously in 2008 by an individual, or a group, with the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto”, whose underlying identity has still not been verified.
- The Bitcoin protocol uses an SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm to reach network consensus. Its network has a target block time of 10 minutes and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens, with a decaying token emission rate. To prevent fluctuation of the block time, the network’s block difficulty is re-adjusted through an algorithm based on the past 2016 block times.
- With a block size limit capped at 1 megabyte, the Bitcoin Protocol has supported both the Lightning Network, a second-layer infrastructure for payment channels, and Segregated Witness, a soft-fork to increase the number of transactions on a block, as solutions to network scalability.
1. What is Bitcoin (BTC)?
- Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to function as a means of exchange and is independent of any central authority. Bitcoins are transferred electronically in a secure, verifiable, and immutable way.
- Network validators, whom are often referred to as miners, participate in the SHA-256d-based Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism to determine the next global state of the blockchain.
- The Bitcoin protocol has a target block time of 10 minutes, and a maximum supply of 21 million tokens. The only way new bitcoins can be produced is when a block producer generates a new valid block.
- The protocol has a token emission rate that halves every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every 4 years.
- Unlike public blockchain infrastructures supporting the development of decentralized applications (Ethereum), the Bitcoin protocol is primarily used only for payments, and has only very limited support for smart contract-like functionalities (Bitcoin “Script” is mostly used to create certain conditions before bitcoins are used to be spent).
2. Bitcoin’s core features
For a more beginner’s introduction to Bitcoin, please visit Binance Academy’s guide to Bitcoin.
Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) model
A UTXO transaction works like cash payment between two parties: Alice gives money to Bob and receives change (i.e., unspent amount). In comparison, blockchains like Ethereum rely on the account model.
Nakamoto consensus
In the Bitcoin network, anyone can join the network and become a bookkeeping service provider i.e., a validator. All validators are allowed in the race to become the block producer for the next block, yet only the first to complete a computationally heavy task will win. This feature is called Proof of Work (PoW).
The probability of any single validator to finish the task first is equal to the percentage of the total network computation power, or hash power, the validator has. For instance, a validator with 5% of the total network computation power will have a 5% chance of completing the task first, and therefore becoming the next block producer.
Since anyone can join the race, competition is prone to increase. In the early days, Bitcoin mining was mostly done by personal computer CPUs.
As of today, Bitcoin validators, or miners, have opted for dedicated and more powerful devices such as machines based on Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (“ASIC”).
Proof of Work secures the network as block producers must have spent resources external to the network (i.e., money to pay electricity), and can provide proof to other participants that they did so.
With various miners competing for block rewards, it becomes difficult for one single malicious party to gain network majority (defined as more than 51% of the network’s hash power in the Nakamoto consensus mechanism). The ability to rearrange transactions via 51% attacks indicates another feature of the Nakamoto consensus: the finality of transactions is only probabilistic.
Once a block is produced, it is then propagated by the block producer to all other validators to check on the validity of all transactions in that block. The block producer will receive rewards in the network’s native currency (i.e., bitcoin) as all validators approve the block and update their ledgers.
The blockchain
Block production
The Bitcoin protocol utilizes the Merkle tree data structure in order to organize hashes of numerous individual transactions into each block. This concept is named after Ralph Merkle, who patented it in 1979.
With the use of a Merkle tree, though each block might contain thousands of transactions, it will have the ability to combine all of their hashes and condense them into one, allowing efficient and secure verification of this group of transactions. This single hash called is a Merkle root, which is stored in the Block Header of a block. The Block Header also stores other meta information of a block, such as a hash of the previous Block Header, which enables blocks to be associated in a chain-like structure (hence the name “blockchain”).
An illustration of block production in the Bitcoin Protocol is demonstrated below.
Block time and mining difficulty
Block time is the period required to create the next block in a network. As mentioned above, the node who solves the computationally intensive task will be allowed to produce the next block. Therefore, block time is directly correlated to the amount of time it takes for a node to find a solution to the task. The Bitcoin protocol sets a target block time of 10 minutes, and attempts to achieve this by introducing a variable named mining difficulty.
Mining difficulty refers to how difficult it is for the node to solve the computationally intensive task. If the network sets a high difficulty for the task, while miners have low computational power, which is often referred to as “hashrate”, it would statistically take longer for the nodes to get an answer for the task. If the difficulty is low, but miners have rather strong computational power, statistically, some nodes will be able to solve the task quickly.
Therefore, the 10 minute target block time is achieved by constantly and automatically adjusting the mining difficulty according to how much computational power there is amongst the nodes. The average block time of the network is evaluated after a certain number of blocks, and if it is greater than the expected block time, the difficulty level will decrease; if it is less than the expected block time, the difficulty level will increase.
What are orphan blocks?
In a PoW blockchain network, if the block time is too low, it would increase the likelihood of nodes producingorphan blocks, for which they would receive no reward. Orphan blocks are produced by nodes who solved the task but did not broadcast their results to the whole network the quickest due to network latency.
It takes time for a message to travel through a network, and it is entirely possible for 2 nodes to complete the task and start to broadcast their results to the network at roughly the same time, while one’s messages are received by all other nodes earlier as the node has low latency.
Imagine there is a network latency of 1 minute and a target block time of 2 minutes. A node could solve the task in around 1 minute but his message would take 1 minute to reach the rest of the nodes that are still working on the solution. While his message travels through the network, all the work done by all other nodes during that 1 minute, even if these nodes also complete the task, would go to waste. In this case, 50% of the computational power contributed to the network is wasted.
The percentage of wasted computational power would proportionally decrease if the mining difficulty were higher, as it would statistically take longer for miners to complete the task. In other words, if the mining difficulty, and therefore targeted block time is low, miners with powerful and often centralized mining facilities would get a higher chance of becoming the block producer, while the participation of weaker miners would become in vain. This introduces possible centralization and weakens the overall security of the network.
However, given a limited amount of transactions that can be stored in a block, making the block time too longwould decrease the number of transactions the network can process per second, negatively affecting network scalability.
3. Bitcoin’s additional features
Segregated Witness (SegWit)
Segregated Witness, often abbreviated as SegWit, is a protocol upgrade proposal that went live in August 2017.
SegWit separates witness signatures from transaction-related data. Witness signatures in legacy Bitcoin blocks often take more than 50% of the block size. By removing witness signatures from the transaction block, this protocol upgrade effectively increases the number of transactions that can be stored in a single block, enabling the network to handle more transactions per second. As a result, SegWit increases the scalability of Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Litecoin.
SegWit also makes transactions cheaper. Since transaction fees are derived from how much data is being processed by the block producer, the more transactions that can be stored in a 1MB block, the cheaper individual transactions become.
The legacy Bitcoin block has a block size limit of 1 megabyte, and any change on the block size would require a network hard-fork. On August 1st 2017, the first hard-fork occurred, leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (“BCH”), which introduced an 8 megabyte block size limit.
Conversely, Segregated Witness was a soft-fork: it never changed the transaction block size limit of the network. Instead, it added an extended block with an upper limit of 3 megabytes, which contains solely witness signatures, to the 1 megabyte block that contains only transaction data. This new block type can be processed even by nodes that have not completed the SegWit protocol upgrade.
Furthermore, the separation of witness signatures from transaction data solves the malleability issue with the original Bitcoin protocol. Without Segregated Witness, these signatures could be altered before the block is validated by miners. Indeed, alterations can be done in such a way that if the system does a mathematical check, the signature would still be valid. However, since the values in the signature are changed, the two signatures would create vastly different hash values.
For instance, if a witness signature states “6,” it has a mathematical value of 6, and would create a hash value of 12345. However, if the witness signature were changed to “06”, it would maintain a mathematical value of 6 while creating a (faulty) hash value of 67890.
Since the mathematical values are the same, the altered signature remains a valid signature. This would create a bookkeeping issue, as transactions in Nakamoto consensus-based blockchain networks are documented with these hash values, or transaction IDs. Effectively, one can alter a transaction ID to a new one, and the new ID can still be valid.
This can create many issues, as illustrated in the below example:
- Alice sends Bob 1 BTC, and Bob sends Merchant Carol this 1 BTC for some goods.
- Bob sends Carols this 1 BTC, while the transaction from Alice to Bob is not yet validated. Carol sees this incoming transaction of 1 BTC to him, and immediately ships goods to B.
- At the moment, the transaction from Alice to Bob is still not confirmed by the network, and Bob can change the witness signature, therefore changing this transaction ID from 12345 to 67890.
- Now Carol will not receive his 1 BTC, as the network looks for transaction 12345 to ensure that Bob’s wallet balance is valid.
- As this particular transaction ID changed from 12345 to 67890, the transaction from Bob to Carol will fail, and Bob will get his goods while still holding his BTC.
With the Segregated Witness upgrade, such instances can not happen again. This is because the witness signatures are moved outside of the transaction block into an extended block, and altering the witness signature won’t affect the transaction ID.
Since the transaction malleability issue is fixed, Segregated Witness also enables the proper functioning of second-layer scalability solutions on the Bitcoin protocol, such as the Lightning Network.
Lightning Network
Lightning Network is a second-layer micropayment solution for scalability.
Specifically, Lightning Network aims to enable near-instant and low-cost payments between merchants and customers that wish to use bitcoins.
Lightning Network was conceptualized in a whitepaper by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015. Since then, it has been implemented by multiple companies. The most prominent of them include Blockstream, Lightning Labs, and ACINQ.
A list of curated resources relevant to Lightning Network can be found here.
In the Lightning Network, if a customer wishes to transact with a merchant, both of them need to open a payment channel, which operates off the Bitcoin blockchain (i.e., off-chain vs. on-chain). None of the transaction details from this payment channel are recorded on the blockchain, and only when the channel is closed will the end result of both party’s wallet balances be updated to the blockchain. The blockchain only serves as a settlement layer for Lightning transactions.
Since all transactions done via the payment channel are conducted independently of the Nakamoto consensus, both parties involved in transactions do not need to wait for network confirmation on transactions. Instead, transacting parties would pay transaction fees to Bitcoin miners only when they decide to close the channel.
One limitation to the Lightning Network is that it requires a person to be online to receive transactions attributing towards him. Another limitation in user experience could be that one needs to lock up some funds every time he wishes to open a payment channel, and is only able to use that fund within the channel.
However, this does not mean he needs to create new channels every time he wishes to transact with a different person on the Lightning Network. If Alice wants to send money to Carol, but they do not have a payment channel open, they can ask Bob, who has payment channels open to both Alice and Carol, to help make that transaction. Alice will be able to send funds to Bob, and Bob to Carol. Hence, the number of “payment hubs” (i.e., Bob in the previous example) correlates with both the convenience and the usability of the Lightning Network for real-world applications.
Schnorr Signature upgrade proposal
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (“ECDSA”) signatures are used to sign transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
However, many developers now advocate for replacing ECDSA with Schnorr Signature. Once Schnorr Signatures are implemented, multiple parties can collaborate in producing a signature that is valid for the sum of their public keys.
This would primarily be beneficial for network scalability. When multiple addresses were to conduct transactions to a single address, each transaction would require their own signature. With Schnorr Signature, all these signatures would be combined into one. As a result, the network would be able to store more transactions in a single block.
The reduced size in signatures implies a reduced cost on transaction fees. The group of senders can split the transaction fees for that one group signature, instead of paying for one personal signature individually.
Schnorr Signature also improves network privacy and token fungibility. A third-party observer will not be able to detect if a user is sending a multi-signature transaction, since the signature will be in the same format as a single-signature transaction.
4. Economics and supply distribution
The Bitcoin protocol utilizes the Nakamoto consensus, and nodes validate blocks via Proof-of-Work mining. The bitcoin token was not pre-mined, and has a maximum supply of 21 million. The initial reward for a block was 50 BTC per block. Block mining rewards halve every 210,000 blocks. Since the average time for block production on the blockchain is 10 minutes, it implies that the block reward halving events will approximately take place every 4 years.
As of May 12th 2020, the block mining rewards are 6.25 BTC per block. Transaction fees also represent a minor revenue stream for miners.
Coinbase Support Number +๐๐๐๐-๐๐๐-๐๐๐๐ What Do I Do If My Coinbase Account Is Disabled
Coinbase Support Number +๐๐๐๐-๐๐๐-๐๐๐๐
Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao really doesn't want to tell you where his firm's headquarters is located.
To kick off ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit on Thursday, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin held a cozy fireside chat with Zhao who, to mark the occasion, was wearing a personalized football shirt emblazoned with the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 brand.
Scheduled for 45 minutes, Zhao spent most of it explaining how libra and China's digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors to existing stablecoin providers; how Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996's smart chain wouldn't tread on Ethereum's toes – "that depends on the definition of competing," he said – and how Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 had an incentive to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent from the exchange.
There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.
Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996's headquarters?
This seemingly simple question is actually more complex. Until February, Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 was considered to be based in Malta. That changed when the island European nation announced that, no, Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 is not under its jurisdiction. Since then Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has not said just where, exactly, it is now headquartered.
Little wonder that when asked Zhao reddened; he stammered. He looked off-camera, possibly to an aide. "Well, I think what this is is the beauty of the blockchain, right, so you don't have to ... like where's the Bitcoin office, because Bitcoin doesn't have an office," he said.
The line trailed off, then inspiration hit. "What kind of horse is a car?" Zhao asked. Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has loads of offices, he continued, with staff in 50 countries. It was a new type of organization that doesn't need registered bank accounts and postal addresses.
"Wherever I sit, is going to be the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 office. Wherever I need somebody, is going to be the Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 office," he said.
Zhao may have been hoping the host would move onto something easier. But Shin wasn't finished: "But even to do things like to handle, you know, taxes for your employees, like, I think you need a registered business entity, so like why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open about it like, you know, the headquarters is registered in this place, why not just say that?"
Zhao glanced away again, possibly at the person behind the camera. Their program had less than two minutes remaining. "It's not that we don't want to admit it, it's not that we want to obfuscate it or we want to kind of hide it. We're not hiding, we're in the open," he said.
Shin interjected: "What are you saying that you're already some kind of DAO [decentralized autonomous organization]? I mean what are you saying? Because it's not the old way [having a headquarters], it's actually the current way ... I actually don't know what you are or what you're claiming to be."
Zhao said Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 isn't a traditional company, more a large team of people "that works together for a common goal." He added: "To be honest, if we classified as a DAO, then there's going to be a lot of debate about why we're not a DAO. So I don't want to go there, either."
"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.
Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.
"I'm in Asia," Zhao said. The blank white wall behind him didn't provide any clues about where in Asia he might be. Shin asked if he could say which country – after all, it's the Earth's largest continent.
"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.
It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.
In the opening session of Consensus: Distributed this week, Lawrence Summers was asked by my co-host Naomi Brockwell about protecting people’s privacy once currencies go digital. His answer: “I think the problems we have now with money involve too much privacy.”
President Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, now President Emeritus at Harvard, referenced the 500-euro note, which bore the nickname “The Bin Laden,” to argue the un-traceability of cash empowers wealthy criminals to finance themselves. “Of all the important freedoms,” he continued, “the ability to possess, transfer and do business with multi-million dollar sums of money anonymously seems to me to be one of the least important.” Summers ended the segment by saying that “if I have provoked others, I will have served my purpose.”
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That he did. Among the more than 20,000 registered for the weeklong virtual experience was a large contingent of libertarian-minded folks who see state-backed monitoring of their money as an affront to their property rights.
But with due respect to a man who has had prodigious influence on international economic policymaking, it’s not wealthy bitcoiners for whom privacy matters. It matters for all humanity and, most importantly, for the poor.
Now, as the world grapples with how to collect and disseminate public health information in a way that both saves lives and preserves civil liberties, the principle of privacy deserves to be elevated in importance.
Just this week, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the 9/11-era Patriot Act and failed to pass a proposed amendment to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from monitoring our online browsing without a warrant. Meanwhile, our heightened dependence on online social connections during COVID-19 isolation has further empowered a handful of internet platforms that are incorporating troves of our personal data into sophisticated predictive behavior models. This process of hidden control is happening right now, not in some future "Westworld"-like existence.
Digital currencies will only worsen this situation. If they are added to this comprehensive surveillance infrastructure, it could well spell the end of the civil liberties that underpin Western civilization.
Yes, freedom matters
Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”
Money is just the instrument here. What matters is whether our transactions, our exchanges of goods and services and the source of our economic and social value, should be monitored and manipulated by government and corporate owners of centralized databases. It’s why critics of China’s digital currency plans rightly worry about a “panopticon” and why, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there was an initial backlash against Facebook launching its libra currency.
Writers such as Shoshana Zuboff and Jared Lanier have passionately argued that our subservience to the hidden algorithms of what I like to call “GoogAzonBook” is diminishing our free will. Resisting that is important, not just to preserve the ideal of “the self” but also to protect the very functioning of society.
Markets, for one, are pointless without free will. In optimizing resource allocation, they presume autonomy among those who make up the market. Free will, which I’ll define as the ability to lawfully transact on my own terms without knowingly or unknowingly acting in someone else’s interests to my detriment, is a bedrock of market democracies. Without a sufficient right to privacy, it disintegrates – and in the digital age, that can happen very rapidly.
Also, as I’ve argued elsewhere, losing privacy undermines the fungibility of money. Each digital dollar should be substitutable for another. If our transactions carry a history and authorities can target specific notes or tokens for seizure because of their past involvement in illicit activity, then some dollars become less valuable than other dollars.
The excluded
But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.
An estimated 1.7 billion adults are denied a bank account because they can’t furnish the information that banks’ anti-money laundering (AML) officers need, either because their government’s identity infrastructure is untrusted or because of the danger to them of furnishing such information to kleptocratic regimes. Unable to let banks monitor them, they’re excluded from the global economy’s dominant payment and savings system – victims of a system that prioritizes surveillance over privacy.
Misplaced priorities also contribute to the “derisking” problem faced by Caribbean and Latin American countries, where investment inflows have slowed and financial costs have risen in the past decade. America’s gatekeeping correspondent banks, fearful of heavy fines like the one imposed on HSBC for its involvement in a money laundering scandal, have raised the bar on the kind of personal information that regional banks must obtain from their local clients.
And where’s the payoff? Despite this surveillance system, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion, or 2%-5% of global gross domestic product, is laundered annually worldwide. The Panama Papers case shows how the rich and powerful easily use lawyers, shell companies, tax havens and transaction obfuscation to get around surveillance. The poor are just excluded from the system.
Caring about privacy
Solutions are coming that wouldn’t require abandoning law enforcement efforts. Self-sovereign identity models and zero-knowledge proofs, for example, grant control over data to the individuals who generate it, allowing them to provide sufficient proof of a clean record without revealing sensitive personal information. But such innovations aren’t getting nearly enough attention.
Few officials inside developed country regulatory agencies seem to acknowledge the cost of cutting off 1.7 billion poor from the financial system. Yet, their actions foster poverty and create fertile conditions for terrorism and drug-running, the very crimes they seek to contain. The reaction to evidence of persistent money laundering is nearly always to make bank secrecy laws even more demanding. Exhibit A: Europe’s new AML 5 directive.
To be sure, in the Consensus discussion that followed the Summers interview, it was pleasing to hear another former U.S. official take a more accommodative view of privacy. Former Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo said that “getting the privacy balance right” is a “design imperative” for the digital dollar concept he is actively promoting.
But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.
Let’s talk about this, people.
A missing asterisk
Control for all variables. At the end of the day, the dollar’s standing as the world’s reserve currency ultimately comes down to how much the rest of the world trusts the United States to continue its de facto leadership of the world economy. In the past, that assessment was based on how well the U.S. militarily or otherwise dealt with human- and state-led threats to international commerce such as Soviet expansionism or terrorism. But in the COVID-19 era only one thing matters: how well it is leading the fight against the pandemic.
So if you’ve already seen the charts below and you’re wondering what they’re doing in a newsletter about the battle for the future of money, that’s why. They were inspired by a staged White House lawn photo-op Tuesday, where President Trump was flanked by a huge banner that dealt quite literally with a question of American leadership. It read, “America Leads the World in Testing.” That’s a claim that’s technically correct, but one that surely demands a big red asterisk. When you’re the third-largest country by population – not to mention the richest – having the highest number of tests is not itself much of an achievement. The claim demands a per capita adjustment. Here’s how things look, first in absolute terms, then adjusted for tests per million inhabitants.
Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 has frozen funds linked to Upbit’s prior $50 million data breach after the hackers tried to liquidate a part of the gains. In a recent tweet, Whale Alert warned Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 that a transaction of 137 ETH (about $28,000) had moved from an address linked to the Upbit hacker group to its wallets.
Less than an hour after the transaction was flagged, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996, announced that the exchange had frozen the funds. He also added that Coinbase support number 1833-922-1996 is getting in touch with Upbit to investigate the transaction. In November 2019, Upbit suffered an attack in which hackers stole 342,000 ETH, accounting for approximately $50 million. The hackers managed to take the funds by transferring the ETH from Upbit’s hot wallet to an anonymous crypto address.
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