Sunday, June 6, 2021

Jack Dorsey and Michael Saylor headlined the sold-out Bitcoin 2021 Miami conference. Here are their 12 best quotes from the event.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/bitcoin-2021-jack-dorsey-michael-saylor-best-quotes-miami-crypto-2021-6-1030497497

Jack Dorsey and Michael Saylor headlined the sold-out Bitcoin 2021 Miami conference. Here are their 12 best quotes from the event. (x-post from /r/Cryptocurrency)

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/nu1tzi/jack_dorsey_and_michael_saylor_headlined_the/

Bitcoin's biggest threat is it's culture

I've been a believer in and a holder of bitcoin for a few years now. I enjoyed taking the time to read and learn about the technology behind it. Setting up wallets and discovering new ways to use it. I invested some money in it and watched with glee as the price went up and up and up. However, this weekend's event in Miami has revealed a major flaw that has snapped me back to my senses. The culture.

Previously, when I would read people criticizing bitcoin outside of crypto subs, I would usually think to myself, "This idiot just doesn't get it yet. They haven't taken the time to learn and they will regret it later. Have fun staying poor" etc. Now I'm starting to realize, I'm the one who didn't get it.

FOMO

Among the many brilliant minds speaking at the bitcoin conference, we have Dan Held, Director of Growth Marketing at Kraken.

Bitcoin has something called "Number go up^tm technology"

People will buy in anticipation of the price continuing to climb. This is called FOMO.

FOMO is an emotion that's frequently mentioned on this sub and those that have been around for a while often try to coach newbies on how to avoid falling victim to it. And here we have someone responsible for leading crypto marketing strategies, explaining how this fear of missing out is THE path to mass adoption. This is the public strategy and this is the lens that the mainstream world sees bitcoin through. Here is a guy who bought in for 10 dollars, and is openly admitting he will exploit my emotions to get me to pay $35,000 (and much, much more) for it. And why should I buy it? Because price goes up forever.

That's it. That's the utility being sold. But who benefits the most from this number go up^tm technology? The new guy who bought .5 BTC at $35k or the guy who bought thousands at $10? Even if new adopters end up loosing most of their money, those that got in years ago still won big. The more they can stoke this fear, the bigger they win.

Toxic Maximalism

If you’re against Bitcoin toxicity, you’re against Bitcoin. And if you’re against Bitcoin, you’re against freedom.

What a complete load of nonsense. I was already well aware of Bitcoin's toxic culture, but I always assumed this would fade away out of necessity of the bigger goal of mass adoption. Instead I see it's being embraced and encouraged. A toxic culture is completely antithetical to freedom. Any discussions of other cryptocurrencies in a positive way is not a topic allowed for discussion on their sub or at this weekend's event. I would argue that this toxicity leads to a very centralized point of view that is controlled by those with the most influence in the culture. I thought that a culture that constantly espouses decentralization would encourage the free expression of ideas. I was wrong. Even Erik Voorhees was booed for calling this out as bullshit.

Add to this the many other widely circulated clips that make me cringe with embarrassment, and I now understand why those that don't get sucked in by the technology or by FOMO just see bitcoin as a bunch of charlatans peddling snake oil. This felt more like watching a tent revival than a celebration of a new technology that could revolutionize our financial system.

This isn't just the opinions of a handful of zealots who are not representative of the culture. These are influential voices that were given a spotlight and widely applauded. These ideas are widely shared and have found strong consensus on social media.

I know, I know. Bitcoin doesn't care what I think. Bitcoin has El Salvador now and the number goes up technology works just fine without me. But if Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is going to truly succeed, it's not just the technology that needs to be able to scale. The culture has to be able to scale as well.

[META] It's a little sad to see this community shitting on the BTC Conference after seeing a few clips go viral. This community avidly defended crypto FUD last month but seem to be falling for it this month

I'm sure many of you have seen the clips that have gone viral from BTC's Miami Conference.

Max Keiser tearing up $10 bills, baptizing people and screaming on stage like a lunatic
The disgusting "BTC Toxic Maximalism is freedom" garbage
The kid that jumped on stage to scream "DOGE to the moon!"
Floyd Mayfeather attempting to say another coin may pass BTC and getting booed for it

The thing I want to point out that should be obvious, is that the BTC Conference was a multi-day event with dozens of speakers. There was 8 hours of live streamed content every day. People discussed topics like

Macro economics
Mining and green mining
Market structure and how to invest safely
Morality of Crypto and driving sentiment
Growth and Adoption
On chain analytics
BTC for billions, NOT billionaires
How to build a BTC bank
Banking the unbanked
History of money
How to profitably mine at home
Fiat Fascism VS Bitcoin Sovereignism
What to do if your country bans BTC
What happened in 1971
How to avoid excess taxes on BTC
How to make Texas BTC friendly
BTC ETFs
Lightening network and instant settlement

On top of all this we heard very inspiring stories about how BTC is changing lives around the world. Scott Harrison's clean water for Africa charity using BTC.

Jack Mallers was so emotional talking about El Salvador and how he believes switching to sound and hard money will help empower the underprivileged. It was inspiring to see how much he truly cares. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_59hrgTiRJU

There was SO MUCH good and quality stuff that came from this conference yet the r/cryptocurrency community is treating it like it's the enemy and not an ally bc some maxis pissed them off.

The lesson here is to not fall for headlines. Similar to how you all looked passed the mass media FUD last month, I encourage you to look passed it again and see what really took place in Miami.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BitcoinMagazine/videos

Above is the channel that posted each panel as a separate video so they're easier to find. I suggest some of you watch them and see how calm, educational, rational and interesting many of the panels were.

Last thing- I can't find the clip (someone help) but the toxic maxi crowd was ridiculed by the panel that followed them and that got cheers from the crowd. Something that obviously won't go viral bc vitriol and mockery is entertaining, but truth isn't.

To secure the ARTH GMU Peg, MahaDAO is integrating Chainlink Price Feeds.

https://preview.redd.it/bhqve4xtop371.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=8cf78d043ae387d7734835b6fd706012db7165b0

MahaDAO is ecstatic to announce that Chainlink Pricing Feeds will be used to produce a bespoke GMU price in support of the launch of the ARTH 2.0 valuecoin.

MahaDAO will ensure that the ARTH valuecoin remains stable by integrating Chainlink’s market-leading decentralized oracle network, which will be based on the most precise and up-to-date market price of the Global Measurement Unit (GMU) — a weighted index of multiple different fiat currencies, Gold, and Bitcoin. Chainlink Price Feeds obtain price data from high-quality data sources with extensive market coverage and a track record of uptime, even during periods of extreme market volatility and network congestion.

ARTH GMU and Price Oracles

ARTH, the world’s first valuecoin, will be released in v2 by MahaDAO shortly. Unlike other stablecoins, ARTH is tied to the Global Measurement Unit (GMU). The GMU is a monetary unit whose value is determined by global buying power. To compute the GMU, ARTH creates a basket of assets and utilizes a unique composition. As a result, ARTH’s pegged price is based on the whole value of the assets in the basket rather than 1 US Dollar.

80% — World Fiat Currencies (this includes USD, GBP, INR, JPY, CNY, CHF, CAD)
15% — Gold (often considered a safe-haven asset)
5% — Bitcoin (also shown properties of being a safe haven asset as of recently)

Why was Chainlink Price Feeds selected?

Because ARTH is linked to so many different assets, it is critical to obtain correct worldwide values for each asset and guarantee that the data sourcing and distribution on-chain is secure and accessible. Then there’s Chainlink.
Chainlink Price Feeds are extensively utilized throughout DeFi because they meet the highest industry standards for data quality, secure infrastructure, network dependability, and on-chain performance transparency. The following are some of the important aspects of Chainlink Price Feeds that influenced our choice to incorporate them:

High-Quality Data — Chainlink Price Feeds gather data from a variety of premium data aggregators, including BraveNewCoin and Kaiko, resulting in price data gathered from hundreds of exchanges, weighted by volume, and free of outliers and wash trading. This produces accurate worldwide market values that are immune to API outages, flash crash outliers, and data manipulation attempts such as flash loans.
Secure Node Operators — Independent, security-reviewed, and Sybil-resistant oracle nodes operated by premier blockchain DevOps teams, data suppliers, and traditional organizations protect Chainlink Price Feeds. Even with high gas prices and infrastructural failures, Chainlink nodes have a proven track record of reliability (e.g., Infura).
Decentralized Network — At the data source, oracle node, and oracle network levels, Chainlink Price Feeds are decentralized, resulting in robust defenses against outages and tampering by either the data provider or the oracle network.

Importantly, Chainlink will be able to publish two additional Price Feeds that are presently unavailable in order to complement our weighted basket, allowing for the creation of a comprehensive GMU Price Feed for MahaDAO.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universally connected smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains as well as real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink is introducing a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others.

Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.

About MahaDAO

MahaDAO is a community-powered, decentralized autonomous organization on a mission to empower billions to preserve their purchasing power through the world’s first valuecoin, ARTH.

MahaDAO Official Links

What does Miami Bitcoin Conference mean to Crypto Newbies and their Investment? History Revisited and Lessons Learnt..!!

Being a academician, I happened to stumble upon a Publication "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) in early 2009 while I was peer-reviewing a fellow Scientist's work submitted for publication in a High-impact factor scientific journal. The central idea of the Bitcoin Whitepaper was fascinating at that time, especially after the "Financial crisis of 2007–2008", But I never took the publication and the concept of Peer-Peer electronic cash system seriously for Two Simple (Stupid) reasons:

It was NOT PUBLISHED on a High-impact factor Journal (which is what decorated academicians have been brain-washed to aim for)
When the almighty $USD had crashed that year I was having a tunnel vision, and never thought that an Alternate Electronic Cashless system could even exist, let alone thrive.

Boy, was I so wrong. Fast-forward 7 years the Crypto market-cap was still under $10 Billion dollars, but Bitcoin being the Flag-bearer of Blockchain, was slowly but steadily metamorphosing into a Movement and I revisited the Crypto space again, but this time I took a plunge. Since then I have become a Blockchain avid, Educationist, Investor and Advisory in that order and all I can say is BITCOIN IS HERE TO STAY AND SO DOES YOUR INVESTMENT, if you know what NOT TO DO (more than WHAT U DO) with your Investment.

Having seen first-hand the Low Lows and High Highs of BTC over the past decade and it's meteoric rise in the past six months, it has proven it's worth time and again, despite being written-off by almost every other country's centralized bandwagon. Coming to present day, Miami is Hosting the LARGEST BITCOIN EVENT IN HISTORY, despite the entire world reeling or recovering from the Global Pandemic. The Hope and Euphoria this conference has reinstilled amongst tens of thousands of attendees and the millions around the world catching up is palpable. The conference is going to get Bigger and Better next year, and years to come and so does the value and benefits of Bitcoin and Blockchain to our lives, as Bitcoin adoption increases exponentially.

In short, if you're a Newbie to Crypto how does this Conference impact your Investment and What could you DO to GROW (and NOT LOSE) your Investment. The pointers might sound Super simple, but doesn't mean they're EASY to Follow, especially when you hear/see every other Telegram channel and Reddit post Pumping Memecoins claiming to 10x-10,000X in 1-10 days. It's Natural as a Newbie you tend to FOMO into these Memecoins given that Musk's and Cuban's keep shilling these Memecoins incessantly, but understand that trading Altcoins (most, if not all) including Memecoins is a ZERO-SUM GAME (one party's win, is other party's Loss) unlike BITCOIN and a handful of other Altcoins that have Extreme Utility tied to the token (for eg: ETH, Exchange Tokens to name a few) irrespective of the BULL/BEAR market. So here goes the pointers for all the newbs out there:

BITCOIN is HERE TO STAY for decades to come, despite all the Propaganda and chatter going around the globe. So, if you want a Hands-free Investment approach, yet a safer bet to grow your Investment Long-term (and Not Lose Your Investment), then BTC is the Way to Go. Volatility is the nature of Crypto beast, but if you do the HODL game, you'll come out whole and some More, Long-term.
DIVERSIFY- Don't put all your Eggs in one Basket. What I mean by this is, don't Park all your Investment money only in Crypto. As always, invest ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE.
MANAGE YOUR RISK- IF you're Diversifying, Take Your Capital Out at the Earliest and Let the House Money Compound. As Simple as it sounds, most Newbs (me included, when I was new) Never follow this Step, since Human Greed always Obscures the "Red Sea" hidden behind the Parabolic Growth- aka. Green Candles.
THINK FUTURE- As a Newbie, it is the Last thing you wanna do, but for a moment I want you to Think/Imagine how the world will Evolve and Operate in 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. Which Crypto Investment could wither the Storm and still stand Tall and grow stronger? BTC is the Only Crypto asset that has a Decade Plus track record and could prevail as a Digital Gold for Years to Come. For sure, there might be a Few Altcoins trying to Emulate Bitcoin, but as a Newbie I'd rather play Safe (BTC) than betting on Dark Horses, if I have limited investment funds.
ACT NOW-The Decentralized economy designed for average citizens is slowly, yet steadily being taken over by Corporates with their massive investments as part of their portfolio diversification. So NOW is the time, to jump in to the Crytomarket and be part of history, than to sit on the sidelines to watch history unfold.

As always DYOR, and play by the rule books of your jurisdiction with your Taxman.
Feel Free to add your thoughts, perspective and Tips that I might not have addressed to help out Fellow newbs, since I feel Crypto is Not an Industry but a Movement.

What would you call an event where dogecoin flips bitcoin?

No text found

What does Miami Bitcoin Conference mean to Crypto Newbies and their Investment? History Revisited and Lessons Learnt..!!

It was NOT PUBLISHED on a High-impact factor Journal (which is what decorated academicians have been brain-washed to aim for)
When the almighty $USD had crashed that year I was having a tunnel vision, and never thought that an Alternate Electronic Cashless system could even exist, let alone thrive.

BITCOIN is HERE TO STAY for decades to come, despite all the Propaganda and chatter going around the globe. So, if you want a Hands-free Investment approach, yet a safer bet to grow your Investment Long-term (and Not Lose Your Investment), then BTC is the Way to Go. Volatility is the nature of Crypto beast, but if you do the HODL game, you'll come out whole and some More, Long-term.
DIVERSIFY- Don't put all your Eggs in one Basket. What I mean by this is, don't Park all your Investment money only in Crypto. As always, invest ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE.
MANAGE YOUR RISK- IF you're Diversifying, Take Your Capital Out at the Earliest and Let the House Money Compound. As Simple as it sounds, most Newbs (me included, when I was new) Never follow this Step, since Human Greed always Obscures the "Red Sea" hidden behind the Parabolic Growth- aka. Green Candles.
THINK FUTURE- As a Newbie, it is the Last thing you wanna do, but for a moment I want you to Think/Imagine how the world will Evolve and Operate in 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. Which Crypto Investment could wither the Storm and still stand Tall and grow stronger? BTC is the Only Crypto asset that has a Decade Plus track record and could prevail as a Digital Gold for Years to Come. For sure, there might be a Few Altcoins trying to Emulate Bitcoin, but as a Newbie I'd rather play Safe (BTC) than betting on Dark Horses, if I have limited investment funds.
ACT NOW-The Decentralized economy designed for average citizens is slowly, yet steadily being taken over by Corporates with their massive investments as part of their portfolio diversification. So NOW is the time, to jump in to the Crytomarket and be part of history, than to sit on the sidelines to watch history unfold.

Cardano Rumor Rundown JUN 06 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

Binance has 63 stakepools charging 6%. Please stop paying so much for the right to stake your ADA. You don’t have to pay that much. You have a huge number of better options. You are literally giving away your ADA rewards to a large corporation. It’s easy: just download the Yoroi Chrome extension, send your ADA there, and pick from the 2k+ available stakepools right inside Yoroi. https://twitter.com/BraveHeartStak3/status/1401204563189940231 https://adapools.org/groups/binance-20 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emurgo&hl=en_US&gl=US
Nigeria Bans Twitter after Twitter censors Tweet from Nigerian President. This emphasizes the need for decentralized social media. A decentralized solution running on Cardano could fix this. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/04/africa/nigeria-suspends-twitter-operations-intl/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JilEb42q-CI

Previously Covered but still interesting:

The Essential Cardano List is published by IOHK. (credit to /u/cascading_disruption for pointing this out) https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1390728385945550848
Cryptodoggies.org NFTs are now available. The website says 50% will go to a community voted animal charity. https://www.cryptodoggies.org/
For those learning Haskell, Check out this new video on Type Theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7blCeETJo8
Also, Lars puts out a new Plutus Pioneers video on Native tokens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VbhY162GQA
ADA is the most crypto of all cryptos. George of CryptosRUs pointed out in a recent video that he couldn’t find any trace of a VC firm owning Cardano in its portfolio in his search of the categories section on CMC. This makes sense if you know Cardano. Would freedom and decentralization loving Satoshi not throw up a little in his mouth to find out that VC ownership of cryptos was a metric people would care about in 2021? The lack of VC stake in the very decentralized and freedom loving Cardano only adds to our already iron-clad claim on the mantle of the most crypto of all crypto projects. Our ecosystem never sought to attract VC money that would only centralize ownership in a smaller number of hands. This doesn’t even address the current extreme centralization of block validation in BTC and ETH. https://coinmarketcap.com/cryptocurrency-category/ https://etherscan.io/stat/miner?range=7&blocktype=blocks https://www.blockchain.com/charts/pools
IOHK has dropped a new article on the status of KEVM and IELE. Grigori Rosu of Runtime Verification says a proof-of-concept of IELE should be ready in six months. This is a key component in how we get to the ocean of all developers as we grow beyond the pond. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/05/10/runtime-verification-iele-from-interoperability-to-universality/
Cardano saw a new challenger enter the scene with Internet Computer (ICP) debuting very high on the CoinMarketCap charts. However, a look into ICP makes one question whether they are really in the Gen. 3 Blockchain race at all given that available information indicates the blockchain runs via datacenters hosting standardized hardware and that those datacenters can only join the network with the permission of the “Network Nervous System”. You could say that the winner of the Gen. 3 Blockchain race needs to solve the blockchain trilemma of decentralization, security, and scalability. If that’s true, then it’s arguable that ICP is not even competing in the decentralization leg of the race. https://youtu.be/zHl-oVPoX88?t=97
The new venture of Sebastien, Nico, and Robert Kornacki is announced: https://twitter.com/dcspark_io. That’s a hell of a team!!!!
The Cardano Subreddit hit 400k users! https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
Alonzo Testnet Updates. https://cardanoupdates.com/ https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1392457888636022789
IOHK drops a blog entry on the strategic partners in the Plutus rollout! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/05/12/developers-add-muscle-to-plutus-smart-contracts-on-cardano-for-defi/
Does Elon’s move away from BTC (ostensibly for environmental reasons) hold promise for ADA? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203
The case for Cardano to replace BTC with Tesla and beyond is building. https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung/status/1392806669810339851 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392950720979030019
Charles makes the case for collaboration with Starlink in Africa. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1392916783854616577
People are starting to realize what the real value of NFTs will be. It’s not in collectibles. https://twitter.com/RaoulGMI/status/1392939118355783682
The Cardano Development Update for this week is out. https://roadmap.cardano.org/en/status-updates/update/2021-05-14/
The Cardano 360 team also dropped a video with specific mid-month Alonzo testnet updates. At the timestamp in the link below the vid lays out the various test groups and when they will participate. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1393258090703826944 https://youtu.be/5mPC4uLMdEw?t=532
We are seeing some small pools retiring. We’ll obviously see more and more of this as time marches on. But, here’s a salute to the small pools that gave it a go! This SPO also brought us poolpeek.com which we have covered here before. https://twitter.com/CardanoBudz/status/1393252321845465088 www.poolpeek.com
John O’Connor on CNBCAfrica! He gave a really good explanation of how Africa with it’s already very high adoption of mobile payment wallets can leapfrog the legacy payment systems currently in use in more developed countries. He also reiterated that Cardano will expand to five countries this year and 20 next year! https://youtu.be/RET8hIQQLUA
This tweet by u/TheADAApe pretty much sums it all up. When people ask me how I knew, I’m going to point them to this post. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1393606491110662146
To hear about something truly good happening in the Cardano ecosystem check out this interview with Mickey Watkins, CEO of World Mobile, on the Hotel Cardano podcast. Really good details on World Mobile's connecting the unconnected in sub-Saharan Africa! https://youtu.be/L15bn_b2moA
What if these two got to talking about what Atala Prism could bring to the table for students in the city of Miami? https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1393574632305868805
The saga of BTC maximalists being angry at Elon continues with Elon implying that Tesla could sell its BTC while Cardano continues just doing its thing like normal. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies
Likewise, Marc Cuban tried to FUD real world use of Cardano only to be confronted with a giant infographic of use cases and partnerships along with an explanatory video just for him. https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1393646131708665858 https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1393689887648272384
Initial Stakepool Offerings (“ISOs”) are here. Crypto is no stranger to novel means of capital formation and now the Cardano ecosystem is getting in on the action. Here is SundaeSwap’s explanation of how ISOs will work. https://sundaeswap-finance.medium.com/iso-sundae-with-the-works-c5c335101ef5
ICYMI, Manuel Chakravarty reminds us all that his Cardano Summit 2020 talk is publicly available for questions on native assets. Really interesting discussion of the asset identifier just being a hash of the policy script and how that helps create a super lightweight easy to use system. https://twitter.com/TacticalGrace/status/1394263629088923649
Elon confirms that Tesla has not sold any BTC. https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1394051036462071808
Charles makes a whole video about how to fix Doge. https://youtu.be/iQd9XjEm8EE
The Ecosystem is getting even bigger every day we inch closer to Alonzo! https://twitter.com/TyIsDigital/status/1394345977952284676
The Cardano Foundation is out to do something incredible with supply chains as described in the fireside chat! In his previous Cardano Live appearance, Frederik Gregaard, CF CEO, also expressed a very healthy and sustainable perspective on what DeFi should become. He compared the current state of DeFi to just moving funds from your left pocket to your right pocket and taking profit. https://youtu.be/d8uPMZplfeM https://youtu.be/xbMSQUA1lss
The ISO model entering the capital formation toolbox in Cardano is going to make the stake pool game extremely interesting with SPOs scrambling to find the right balance between rewarding ADA and giving their delegators other things like tokens. Some stake pools could even become like portfolio funds with relationships with many different projects the tokens of which are given to delegators. Babel Fees could also play a role here for smart SPOs as they may allow access to a wide variety of tokens in the ecosystem that could be used to reward delegators with a sort of index fund exposure to a wide variety of Cardano projects.
May Cardano 360 coming one week from today (always the last Thursday of the month). https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1395117067960045569
New delegations from IOHK are out. Congrats to the selected SPOs. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1395087751746310156
The Cardano Foundation has released the full video of the Fireside Chat with Eva and Fred. Lots of questions answered on a variety of fronts. Very interesting remarks including that in discussions with financial institutions, Fred has found they are interested in exposure to the alpha provided by the asset class in general, tokenization of assets, and the yield provided by staking rewards. Fred counters that they SHOULD be far more interested in the Cardano standard including the concepts of reference accounts, programmability of money, and transaction metadata. https://youtu.be/JW6s9Jkyazg
In a video press release yesterday, the Fed finally admitted that it’s moving toward a central bank digital currency (just like every other central bank). This will eventually be impactful on Cardano and every other crypto ecosystem. https://youtu.be/WOAQxpG79Ag
The Treasury is trying to figure out how to get cryptocurrency regulation in a headlock. This will probably go hand-in-hand with the Fed’s March toward a CBDC. Afterall, what good is all the tracking and monitoring afforded by a CBDC if it’s easier for everyone to just use a non-central bank digital currency? Tax evasion in crypto is also obviously a target problem since we know only about 800 people a year paid taxes on crypto in 2013-2015. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/us-treasury-calls-for-stricter-cryptocurrency-compliance-with-irs.html https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-taxes-overview
The Cardano Foundation has released the full video of the Fireside Chat with Eva and Fred. Lots of questions answered on a variety of fronts. Very interesting remarks including that in discussions with financial institutions, Fred has found they are interested in exposure to the alpha provided by the asset class in general, tokenization of assets, and the yield provided by staking rewards. Fred counters that they SHOULD be far more interested in the Cardano standard including the concepts of reference accounts, programmability of money, and transaction metadata. https://youtu.be/JW6s9Jkyazg
In a video press release yesterday, the Fed finally admitted that it’s moving toward a central bank digital currency (just like every other central bank). This will eventually be impactful on Cardano and every other crypto ecosystem. https://youtu.be/WOAQxpG79Ag
The Treasury is trying to figure out how to get cryptocurrency regulation in a headlock. This will probably go hand-in-hand with the Fed’s March toward a CBDC. Afterall, what good is all the tracking and monitoring afforded by a CBDC if it’s easier for everyone to just use a non-central bank digital currency? Tax evasion in crypto is also obviously a target problem since we know only about 800 people a year paid taxes on crypto in 2013-2015. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/20/us-treasury-calls-for-stricter-cryptocurrency-compliance-with-irs.html https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf https://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-taxes-overview
Charles has now added the Jack Dorsey edition to his series of “Let’s Educate Crypto Adjacent Celebrities” videos. https://youtu.be/lMZ1xQzWtl4
...and still...KINGS OF THE GITHUB! May our reign never end. https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1395771379929255945
Some banks still won’t allow customers to buy crypto with their accounts. In 2021, this is still a thing. https://twitter.com/CryptoCardano_/status/1395933037192437763
Even the Pope is condemning Proof-of-Work? At least, that’s how the crypto community took a recent tweet. https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/1394993742226939905
Apparently, you can now have your own Stakepool run for you for $122/month in a Stakepool-as-a-Service arrangement. https://twitter.com/ChrisGraff/status/1396169061487333380
If you want to see how the Cardano NFT space has been heating up, you can check out CNFT resale listings at Lovelace Marketplace. https://lovelacemarketplace.io/all-categories/
Ethiopia awards new Telecom license as promised. The winner, a consortium including Vodafone, Safaricom, and Sumitomo; will invest $8 billion in their network in Ethiopia in the next 10 years and will cover the country in 4G. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-22/ethiopia-awards-new-telecoms-license-to-vodafone-consortium https://twitter.com/AbiyAhmedAli/status/1396060475184533505
Check out this new infographic explaining how World Mobile Works! https://blog.worldmobile.io/post/how-world-mobile-is-connecting-the-unconnected-infographic/
Cardano hits 1MM wallets! https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1396331888093061121
Set your calendars! The May Cardano 360 is this Thursday! https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1396331908632653830
Charles releases a 90 Day Countdown to Alonzo video. https://youtu.be/u6negi1yAQQ
Institutional inflows into Cardano get some coverage by the crypto press. https://cointelegraph.com/news/cardano-sees-largest-weekly-inflows-from-institutional-managers-coinshares
Charles and Kim Dotcom have a conversation about PoW miners possibly fleeing China with all of their hardware. https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1396964996693708801
Cardano gets a little coverage on NBC for it’s energy efficiency. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cryptocurrency-goes-green-proof-stake-offer-solution-energy-concerns-rcna1030
Plutus Pioneers Lecture #7 is out. https://youtu.be/_EDJt55vOB0
Yesterday was ADA Payday with the end of Epoch 267. I hope everyone made lots of sweet delicious staking rewards! https://adapools.org/epochs
Paypal moving away from the “walled garden” model. This is decentralization teaching the legacy institutions a lesson. https://www.coindesk.com/paypal-will-let-customers-withdraw-crypto-exec-says
Charles is interviewed on Yahoo Finance where he explained: 1) how the lack of an obvious decentralized governance system in ETH and BTC will cripple their efforts as they attempt to scale and the founders/core developers start losing prominence, 2) the ADA EUTXO system is vastly more scaleable with it’s local state being so much more amenable to sharding than ETH’s global state system, 3) Cardano has a high willingness to bring on users in hypergrowth areas like Africa where ETH seems to have little interest, and 4) ETH does not seem to be as highly concerned with interoperability which might become highly valuable in the future. https://twitter.com/YahooFinance/status/1397593275826151424
Cardano 360 is tomorrow. Don’t miss it if you want to hear about all the awesome things happening with Alonzo (smart contracts), Hydra (scalability), and everything else! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1397549347592675338
The May Cardano 360 was yesterday and we had lots of updates including the Color Coding for the different stages of the testnet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS33gRj9JYE
Alonzo “Blue” Era Testnet (through mid June; <50 user cohort) will include the basic functionality of the system for testing basic contracts . Initially the SPOs will be included, then some of the Plutus Pioneers will be allowed in, then a few of the outside development firms (Plutus Partners). The Plutus Partners will be working on specific areas including oracles, DEXs, stablecoins, NFTs, and DeFi. This will produce code and documentation that will be publicly available.
Alonzo “White” Era Testnet (mid June to mid July; <500 user cohort) will add more Plutus Pioneers and more functionality. They will develop various dApps and there will be interaction on the user side of these dApps. They will do some benchmarking at this stage.
The Alonzo Hard Fork Combinator Event requires a lot of different pieces come together at the same time. But, this is not their first rodeo and they have a lot of experience with this from the ITN, Shelley, and etc.
Alonzo “Purple” Era Tesnet (mid July to mid August; fully public) will involve a full public network with all of the Plutus pioneers, the Rosetta Api to the exchanges, Daedalus, hardware wallets, graphQL, and full functionality. The purpose of this phase will be optimization.
Alonzo “Red” Era Tesnet (August; a very short phase) will involve a new network where they can test scalability and stability.
Alonzo “Black” Era Tesnet (August; a very short phase) will be the final public testnet where they will ensure they have their candidate mainnet releases ready to launch on the mainnet.
They are committed to making sure there is a very large group of people who are familiar with using the Alonzo testnet by the time the mainnet launches.
Alonzo Mainnet (August-September). It’s looking like Alonzo mainnet launch was positioned in very late August through September in the infographics. That makes me assume there is a chance of August, much better chance of September, and also some chance of October or later. This is blockchain development after all. Also, we’ve waited years. Why care about a few weeks?
There will be another Plutus Pioneers Cohort later this summer.
Marlowe Run will be a browser product that can run on mobile or desktop. It can be linked to your wallet and be used to run Cardano smart contracts simultaneously on a distributed basis across multiple user browsers. The user interface is light years ahead of anything we saw in Marlowe Meadow or the Marlowe Playground simulations. It will include a library of off-the-shelf contracts.
There will be a Marlowe Webinar on June 3. Register here: https://webinar.marlowe-finance.io/
The ERC-20 converter was looking very intuitive and seamless in the new demo. It should be on the testnet in June.
Manuel Chakravarty gave a big update on Hydra (layer 2 scaling). Hydra will not require that the base layer be modified since it will be implemented via Plutus smart contracts. Hydra is actually a collection of protocols including Hydra Head and Hydra Tail. Hydra Head is a symmetric protocol where multiple participants will be online simultaneously for the whole period of the head exchanging messages. Hydra Tail is an asymmetric protocol involving a high performance server and many clients that may be mobile and could be offline for large portions of the tail’s existence. There will also be “inter head & tail networking” which will allow for a network of heads and tails. They have a published research paper on Hydra Head. They are currently writing the Hydra Tail paper.
Hydra is distinguished from other layer 2 protocols by its isomorphic properties. This means you will be able to run any smart contract that works on the base layer in a Hydra Head! This is very special. We won’t need special purpose contracts built out just for layer 2. There are some big implications to this. Since a Hydra Head is essentially just a Plutus smart contract, this means you can run a Hydra Head inside another Hydra Head. It’s turtles all the way down, guys. It sounds like they can do this iteratively as much as they want.
Aggelos also gave a good presentation on the importance of “skin in the game” in resource based consensus protocols (both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake) and its effect on promotion or discouragement of centralization. He explained how Ouroboros has built-in safeguards to prevent centralization including the K parameter (currently at 500) which caps total rewards per pool and the alpha parameter (currently at 0.3) which splits rewards into a 77% piece and a 23% piece. A pool can take its share of the 77% piece based on the pool’s total stake and its share of the 23% piece based on the pledge of the SPO. A higher alpha parameter makes it less attractive for individual SPOs to proliferate multiple pools since they can’t be as leveraged on their available pledge and still get as big a share of the 23% piece. This also discourages Sybil Attacks. As Cardano on-chain governance progresses, these parameters will be controlled by the community.
There will be a Cardano Goguen Summit in September. It will be hybrid digital/in-person.
Charles is helping to bring the cryptographer who broke SHA-1 to the University of Wyoming. The Cardano funded blockchain lab there could be on the road to be a powerhouse. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1398290866419105802 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiqun_Lisa_Yin
We don’t often get to hear from the engineers behind Yoroi over at Emurgo. But, here’s a podcast with Vicente Almonacid from Emurgo. Check out 12:50 where he mentions the dApp Connector (Cardano’s Metamask Equivalent). https://twitter.com/vacuumlabs/status/1397847633696280576
Check out this great article from Cardanians.io on the work being done at the University of Wyoming on a physical chip for transfer of private keys in day-to-day cashlike transactions. https://cardanians.io/en/cardano-can-give-crypto-a-cash-like-experience-58
Professor Aggelos Kiayias recently dropped a video explaining exactly how Mithril (apparently neckbeard dungeon master talk for elf armor) is going to allow for Perfect Cardano (ADA) wallets that combine the ease of use and convenience of light wallets with the trustlessness of full node wallets. We also learned exactly how Mithril is going to work. https://youtu.be/LhepJFCyWRk
In proof-of-work, bootstrapping can be done with blockheaders. This won’t do in proof-of-stake since we need information about stakeholder distribution to confirm block validity.
Mithril fixes this by being a cryptographic construction that enables a population of stakeholders to issue a signature consistent with certain constraints.
For Mithril to work in proof-of-stake, it needs three crucial properties: 1) it needs to enforce a threshold ratio of stakeholders before the signature is issued; 2) the pre-signature fragments must be independently verified and subject to public aggregation; and 3) it must be efficient in the sense that the final signature is of constant size and is logarithmically dependent on the # of stakeholders.
Stakeholders will issue special Mithril keys along with the normal cryptographic key material. Then at regular intervals, full nodes will test whether they can produce a pre-signature fragment. Only a random subset of stakeholders will be eligible to produce a pre-signature fragment. When a sufficient # of pre-signature fragments have been issued by eligible stakeholders then it will be possible to aggregate the fragments into a final signature.
This will be a checkpoint that will be verifiable with respect to previous check points all the way back to the genesis block. Such checkpoints will be cryptographic commitments of the relevant UTXOs.
Since the checkpoints will be trustless, a light client (i.e. wallet) will only need to verify the sequence of checkpoints up to the current time to trustlessly bootstrap.
The ecosystem is growing so fast, it’s hard to keep up with all the projects without these infographics at this point. https://twitter.com/Dr_shwetaPHD/status/1398783893638103040
The Cardano subreddit is at 487k users. Half a million isn’t far away. https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
Epoch 268 is a wrap as of yesterday with 22.83 billion ADA staked. https://adapools.org/epochs
Check out the telegram AMA tomorrow with the CEO of World Mobile! https://twitter.com/ZwijBerg/status/1399377659105320962
A very interesting stat on Cardano user growth. https://twitter.com/cex_io/status/1398959088684445699
Don’t forget, the Marlowe webinar is this Thursday! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1399444331556225027
More and more people in the youtube sphere are jumping on the Cardano train. https://twitter.com/techleadhd/status/1399398373384351744
Reuters reports on an EU digital identity wallet project. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/eu-step-up-digital-push-with-digital-identity-wallet-2021-06-01/?taid=60b6e171efd84f0001b64ae1&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
The U.S. Currently has Issued Sanctions on Ethiopia, but they are not all-encompassing economic sanctions as with rogue nations, they have just barred entry into the U.S. for certain government personnel. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/world/africa/ethiopia-us-sanctions-tigray.html
Vitalik is saying it’s highly unlikely we see ETH 2.0 before late 2022. I’m guessing that means mid 2023 which will be after two years of Cardano slaughtering the entire ETH user base. Things are looking so bad that Vitalik says he doesn’t even like using the ETH 2.0 label anymore since he knows the changes will be more incremental. This is what early capitulation sounds like guys. https://cointelegraph.com/news/even-vitalik-buterin-is-surprised-at-just-how-long-eth2-is-taking
Cardano-Nervos cross-chain bridge to be built. This would be at least the second cross-chain bridge after the Cardano-AGI bridge. https://www.coindesk.com/cardano-nervos-force-bridge-network-first
Sundaeswap ISO delayed due to regulatory concerns. This brings up interesting questions for the whole space about requesting regulatory permission vs. possibly being forced to ask for forgiveness. https://www.sundaeswap.finance/posts/iso-update
Tim Harrison has announced that the transition to Alonzo Blue was successful. https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1400481879883649034
Finally, 500k users in the Cardano Subreddit! https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/
We got a nice update on the first week of Alonzo Blue. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1400876181122174977
And….still! Kings of the github! https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1400744567956180993
Epoch 269 is in the bag with active stake of 22.77 Billion. Hope everyone made lots of delicious staking rewards! https://adapools.org/epochs

~Army of Spies

Conference bitcoin is a bearish event (x-post from /r/Bitcoin)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/ntv7x3/conference_bitcoin_is_a_bearish_event/

Miami, looking to be next crypto hotspot, hosts Bitcoin event

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/cryptocurrency/miami-looking-to-be-next-crypto-hotspot-hosts-bitcoin-event/articleshow/83278443.cms