Thursday, September 23, 2021

How nonfungible tokens work and where they get their value – a cryptocurrency expert explains NFTs

Nonfungible tokens prove ownership of a digital item – image, sound file, or text – in the same way, that people own crypto coins.

Unlike crypto coins, which are identical and worth the same, NFTs are unique.

An NFT is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which can be a lot if the NFT is made by a famous artist and the buyer is a wealthy collector.

An attorney friend recently asked me out of the blue about nonfungible tokens or NFTs. What prompted his interest was the sale of a collage composed of 5,000 digital pieces, auctioned by Christie’s on March 11, 2021, for a remarkable US$69 million. Mike Winkelmann, an artist known as Beeple, created this piece of digital art, made an NFT of it, and offered it for sale. The bidding started at $100, and the rest of the auctioning process transformed it into a historical event.

Similarly, it was hard to miss the news about the iconic GIF Nyan Cat being sold as a piece of art, Twitter’s founder transforming the first tweet into an NFT and putting it up for sale, or an NFT of a New York Times column earning half a million dollars for charity.

My friend’s questions were an attempt to understand where the underlying value of an NFT comes from. The issue is that perceptions of what the buyer is paying for are not easily framed in legal terms. NFT marketplaces do not always accurately describe the value proposition of the goods they are selling. The truth is that the value of any NFT is speculative. Its value is determined by what someone else is willing to pay for it and nothing else.

Turning something as ephemeral as a tweet into an item that can be sold requires two things: making it unique and proving ownership. The process is the same for cryptocurrencies, which turn strings of bits into virtual coins that have real-world value. It boils down to cryptography.

Keys and blocks

Cryptography is the technique used to protect the privacy of a message by transforming it into a form that can be understood only by the intended recipients. Everyone else will see it as only an unintelligible sequence of random characters. This message manipulation is enabled by a pair of keys, public and private keys: You share your public key with your friend, who uses it to transform his message to you into an unintelligible sequence of random characters. You then use your private key to put it back into its original form.

The special mathematical properties of these two crypto keys are widely used to provide secrecy and integrity. Two crypto keys play the role of digital signatures and are commonly used in blockchain to enable both authentication and anonymity for transactions.

Blockchain is a crucial technology for creating NFTs. It uses cryptography to chain blocks into a growing list of records. Each block is locked by a cryptographic hash, or string of characters that uniquely identifies a set of data, to the previous block. The transaction records of a chain of blocks are stored in a data structure called a Merkle tree. This allows for fast retrieval of past records. To be a party in blockchain-based transactions, each user needs to create a pair of keys: a public key and a private key. This design makes it very difficult to alter transaction data stored in blockchain.

Although blockchain was initially devised to support fungible assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it has evolved to enable users to create a special kind of crypto asset, one that is nonfungible, meaning provably unique. Ethereum blockchain is the basis for most of the currently offered NFTs because it supports the ERC-721 token standard, enabling NFT creators to capture information of relevance to their digital artifacts and store it as tokens on the blockchain.

When you pay for an NFT, what you get is the right to transfer the token to your digital wallet. The token proves that your copy of a digital file is the original, like owning an original painting. And just as masterpiece paintings can be copied and distributed as inexpensive posters, anyone can have a digital copy of your NFT.

Your private crypto key is proof of ownership of the original. The content creator’s public crypto key serves as a certificate of authenticity for that particular digital artifact. This pair of the creator’s public key and the owner’s private key is primarily what determines the value of any NFT token.

The very short history of NFTs

The development of NFTs came to prominence in 2017 with a game called CryptoKitties, which enables players to buy and “breed” limited-edition virtual cats. From there, game developers adopted NFTs in a big way to allow gamers to win in-game items such as digital shields, swords or similar prizes, and other game collectibles. Tokenization of game assets is a real game-changer since it enables transferring tokens between different games or to another player via NFT specialized blockchain marketplaces.

Besides gaming, NFTs are frequently used to sell a wide range of virtual collectibles, including NBA virtual trading cards, music, digital images, video clips, and even virtual real estate in Decentraland, a virtual world.

NonFungible.com, a website that tracks NFT projects and marketplaces, puts the value of the total NFT market at $250 million, a negligible fraction of the total crypto coin market but still highly attractive to content creators. The contract behind the token, based on the ERC-721 standard for creating NFTs, can be set to let content creators continue to earn a percentage from all subsequent sales.

The NFT market is likely to grow further because any piece of digital information can easily be “minted” into an NFT, a highly efficient way of managing and securing digital assets.

Blockchain’s carbon footprint

For all the excitement, there are also concerns that NFTs are not eco-friendly because they are built on the same blockchain technology used by some energy-hungry cryptocurrencies. For example, each NFT transaction on the Ethereum network consumes the equivalent of daily energy used by two American households.

Security for most of today’s blockchain networks is based on special computers called “miners” competing to solve complex math puzzles. This is the proof-of-work principle, which keeps people from gaming the system and provides the incentive for building and maintaining it. The miner who solves the math problem first gets awarded with a prize paid in virtual coins. Mining requires a lot of computational power, which drives electricity consumption.

Ethereum blockchain technology is evolving and moving toward a less computationally intensive design. There are also emerging blockchain technologies like Cardano, which was designed from the outset to have a small carbon footprint and has recently launched its own fast-growing NFT platform called Cardano Kidz.

The speed of transformation of blockchain technology into a newer, more eco-friendly variant might well decide the future of the NFT market in the short term. Some artists who feel strongly about global warming trends are opposed to NFTs because of the perceived ecological impact.

The coming crypto-economy

Whether or not the current NFT craze can keep its momentum going, NFTs development has already accelerated a larger trend of digital economic innovation. NFTs have confirmed that the public is feeling increasingly favorable toward a crypto-economy and is embracing short-term risks in return for creating new business possibilities.

NFTs have already made significant inroads into the luxury and gaming industries, and have plenty of room to grow beyond these initial applications. The art sector will continue to be an important segment of the overall NFT market and is likely to gradually reach maturity over the next couple of years, although it is likely to be surpassed by other digital certificate applications like trademarks and patents, training and upskilling certificates.

How nonfungible tokens work and where they get their value – a cryptocurrency expert explains NFTs

Nonfungible tokens prove ownership of a digital item – image, sound file, or text – in the same way, that people own crypto coins.

Unlike crypto coins, which are identical and worth the same, NFTs are unique.

An NFT is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which can be a lot if the NFT is made by a famous artist and the buyer is a wealthy collector.

Keys and blocks

The very short history of NFTs

The NFT market is likely to grow further because any piece of digital information can easily be “minted” into an NFT, a highly efficient way of managing and securing digital assets.

Blockchain’s carbon footprint

The coming crypto-economy

How nonfungible tokens work and where they get their value – a cryptocurrency expert explains NFTs

Nonfungible tokens prove ownership of a digital item – image, sound file, or text – in the same way, that people own crypto coins.

Unlike crypto coins, which are identical and worth the same, NFTs are unique.

An NFT is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which can be a lot if the NFT is made by a famous artist and the buyer is a wealthy collector.

Keys and blocks

The very short history of NFTs

The NFT market is likely to grow further because any piece of digital information can easily be “minted” into an NFT, a highly efficient way of managing and securing digital assets.

Blockchain’s carbon footprint

The coming crypto-economy

How nonfungible tokens work and where they get their value – a cryptocurrency expert explains NFTs

Nonfungible tokens prove ownership of a digital item – image, sound file, or text – in the same way, that people own crypto coins.

Unlike crypto coins, which are identical and worth the same, NFTs are unique.

An NFT is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, which can be a lot if the NFT is made by a famous artist and the buyer is a wealthy collector.

Keys and blocks

The very short history of NFTs

The NFT market is likely to grow further because any piece of digital information can easily be “minted” into an NFT, a highly efficient way of managing and securing digital assets.

Blockchain’s carbon footprint

The coming crypto-economy

I am open sourcing my letter to our representatives.

In the interest of spreading awareness and not letting our government (at least in the United States) carelessly regulate crypto assets and do more harm than good in the process, I am making available a letter I wrote. Anybody reading this has my permission to use, alter, send or publish the following letter. I know not everyone here has time to make their thoughts known and educate our ruling class, so I hope this streamlines the work for many of you and allows a high volume of potent rhetoric representing our interests.

I can only hope my and my fellow citizens' thoughts are actually read in these emails. I think it's worth addressing some of your concerns which are often repeated by folks in Washington from the perspective of someone with competency around the subject. With respect, it is obvious from the perspective of a technically literate non-billionaire that the current rhetoric you and most others in your position have taken on crypto currencies must come largely from an ignorance on how most of them operate.

"Whereas traditional currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, are overseen by central banks and regulatory agencies with legal obligations to work for the public interest, cryptocurrencies by design lack centralized oversight. Historically, gaps in oversight and regulation of the financial system have contributed to financial instability, consumer protection problems, and increased criminal activity."

The first mistake here is to take literally the term "crypto currency." While catchy and alliterative, that does not mean you as 'the government' now have ten thousand potential unregulated overthrowers of our national currency. How people should be referring to these technologies by default is with the term "crypto assets." I believe if you begin your journey of understanding with this fundamental (and accurate) shift in perspective much of the panic will seem misplaced. The reason these technologies are more like assets rather than currencies is precisely because they are not centrally controlled, and therefore cannot be altered from the top down in swift response to events in the kinetic world like The Federal Reserve is known to do. Crypto Assets are far more stable in their parameters - despite the common monicour of "currencies," these assets if they are to be considered "decentralized" (the primal qualification of legitimacy in the space, meaning their function is crystal clear and a change in its function is difficult, slow, and predictable) then by definition they will be unable to fulfill the fluid requirements of a national currency and therefore do not attempt to, or are a threat to the United States Dollar.

While that reasoning applies to all crypto assets, it's worth noting that many of these assets stray even further from the idea of a currency - meaning their value does not come from being an effective means of exchange, it actually comes from that crypto asset's ability to perform a useful function. When you hear about "Ethereum," or more broadly "smart contracts" what is really being discussed most of the time are tokens that can be redeemed for smart contract operations which perform a service. Currently the big one I'm sure you've heard of is "DeFi" (decentralized finance), but as the technology improves these contracts will be able to interact with data from traditional markets and businesses in a decentralized manner. As a huge enthusiast I could go on, but the point is that tokens redeemable for these use cases are not, nor do they pose as "currencies" in the sense of your concern. These tokens are instead a digital analogue of material goods.

Another concern anybody with an understanding of crypto-technologies and crypto-assets has when reading your generic response is the moral panic around a lack of centralized oversight. Perhaps if in your perception crypto assets are attempting to be and pose a threat to a national currency then this makes sense, but as laid out above this view is not justified. Taking the most basic example: Bitcoin, and comparing it to gold - gold has no central oversight, really. The financial sector cannot control the supply of gold, nor is it in the interest of a free market society to control the sale of such a basic, fundamental asset. Since Bitcoin does not, and cannot, serve the interest of a select few (it cannot even serve the interest of its largest holders), concern about consumer protection from lack of oversight is, as are many concerns from Washington on crypto assets, misplaced. The Bitcoin protocol is laid out clearly (please research the significance of "open source" in regards to technology before even considering forming any regulations ((as a famous podcaster once said: "If you can't code a "Hello World" program, you should not be allowed to rule in a modern society))); this clear dictation of Bitcoin's rules of operations in its code are extremely difficult and slow to alter - there is always a huge warning to make even the most minute of changes.

Bitcoin is impossible to change in the following ways:

In a way that is not in the interest of most of its holders, whether those holders hold very little or a huge amount.

In a way that is unexpected or abrupt.

In a way dictated by a set of technologically gifted but malicious actors.

And it is extremely unlikely that:

Bitcoin will ever change its protocol in any significant way from what it is now.

With these things in mind consumer protections and additional regulations (it's already taxed just like property and gold are taxed) is the governmental equivalent of helicopter parenting. A protocol which is as predictable and slow to change as Bitcoin serves no deed of tricking those who interact with it.

Of course the more logical concern now is the myriad of other crypto assets which are not Bitcoin. Most of these good features of Bitcoin apply to most of the other crypto assets - a select few only present the veneer of true decentralization as a faux selling point. These faux crypto assets are not crypto at all - if the ability to alter these coins or tokens exists for the interest of the select few they are by definition not a crypto technology. If the government fails to make this distinction then they will be making the same error in perception as all the people tricked by these faux crypto assets, and be firing a shotgun to kill a tick on a horse - if you regulate based on the fear of a few bad eggs, and do not do so predicated on an intricate understanding of the underlying technology, the amount of damage you will be doing will be murky to you, but crystal clear to people like me who understand this technology, and the younger generation who probably became technologically superior to yours before they graduated highschool.

I hope it's clear that your generic email was an insult to the intelligence of those who know the basics of crypto technology, and that any mis-steps in setting regulation will not soon be forgotten by interested voters in the coming elections. At least Ted Cruz takes a quizative view of that which he does not understand when it comes to crypto assets - I would hope the politicians representing our best open minded and forward thinking citizens would be careful not to end up as effective luddites.

Gamestop is giving us hints to the Easter Egg in this epic battle between Hedgies and APES....Ready Player One?

if you like this shit DD, please crosspost for visibility...SS banned me for no reason.

It is apparent that Gamestop is leaving us hints to find the Easter Egg in this jacked up battle between APES and Hedgies...and I think I found the first key to unlock the easter egg....

...Just like in the movie "Ready Player One"....

Power to the Players

If you haven't seen this movie, I would suggest you do so...soon. Ready Player One is LOADED with Pop Culture. The movie itself is LITERALLY the same battle going on between APES and the Hedgies. Except in the movie it is a different industry enslaving the population...gaming. The population was so addicted to this one virtual reality video game called The Oasis, that gaming WAS the market. People would enslave themselves for new gaming gear....and I could kind of see why. The real world they were living in was a hellhole...and the Oasis provided a world where you could be who you wanted, without having to live up to societies standards. In the movie, the inventor of this game is named Halliday. Halliday was a good dude...a misunderstood dude...an autistic dude. Halliday created The Oasis to escape society. For context, the Oasis is in many ways like Fortnite or Minecraft....but in Virtual Reality.

When Halliday died, in his will, he left his gaming company to whoever would find the Easter Egg that he hid in the game. He did this because he knew whoever found it would have such a love of video games and pop culture, that they wouldn't even think about selling their control of the company for money. So this started an all out race between APES and corporate conglomerates to FIND THE EASTER EGG.

Why is this movie relevant to our current situation? Because I believe RC and company is telling us that we must find the easter egg hidden in our "game" before the market crash, or the market makers will build a new system to suit them.

RC and Company have been giving us clues to something...all of these clues add up...but I do not know what it adds up to. The biggest and best clue is right out in the open....in GME's twitter bio... this clue led me to figuring out where we should look next.

↑↑↓↓←→←→B A START

UP UP, DOWN DOWN, LEFT RIGHT, LEFT RIGHT, B A START ....

...otherwise known as the Konami Code. It is a built in cheat code for the Konami video games. This reminds me of the movie, "Wreck It Ralph"...for a couple of reasons. (another one you need to watch)

Wreck It Ralph is also loaded with Pop Culture
In the movie, King Candy uses the Konami code to overwrite the video game so he can rule over a video game because he destroyed his own game based off greed and jealousy...this in turn creates a "glitch" in the game. It replaces Penelope (main character of game) with King Candy so he can rule over Princess Penelope's Kingdom...without her knowing what happened. She just thought she was a mistake in the game. https://youtu.be/TNjAZZ3vQ8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-yFRjqn9Tc (clips of Wreck it Ralph)

The reason this seems to be relevant is because of the theory that has been tossed around that retail is not seeing the real price of the stocks. We are seeing some sort of scaled down version of the price action. Only the Shitidel and friends know the truth...like King Candy and his Devildogs knows the truth about his place in the game.

Speaking of pop culture...King Candy is guarded by OREO's. This is a red flag to me. Remember u/LehmanParty and his post about how the Double Stuffed Oreo is some kind of bat signal..or warning to the elite that the market is overinflated and will crash??? Well why are Oreos guarding King Candy?....the one who is running an evil scheme?

Glad you asked...

One thing u/LehmanParty didn't mention is that when Jewish people migrated to America, the illiterate would sign their name with an X to resemble Jesus Christ. But there was a group of illiterate Jewish people who hated Jesus Christ and would sign their name with an O. If you look on the oreo cookie, you will see an O with an antenna on it.

If you follow the history of the federal reserve, market crashes and the world wars, it lines up with the rollout of the Oreo cookie. Even during the America Civil War the flags were X's and O's...the confederate flag bared an X...the Continental Flag bared an O. But Lincoln (who was treated like Trump) screwed things up for the O's, so they assassinated him.

The reason for the X is because after Christ was crucified, Judaism fell. Then Christianity came along and it co-opted the “x.” In Christian texts, one abbreviation of the Greek word Christos (meaning messiah) used the first two Greek letters of Christos, chi (X) and rho (P), combined into one shape. So both orientations of crossed lines—X shape and the more-or-less lower case T shape—took on religious significance among Christians.

No one knows exactly how this happened: One story is that in 312 CE the Roman Emperor Constantine saw the chi-rho in a dream in which God told him “in this sign you will conquer.” Constantine went on to legalize Christianity, which later became the official religion of Rome. Once it was a sacred symbol, the “x” came to mean “faith and fidelity,”.

Anyways...moving on....

The elite also use gematria to decode messages on covers of magazines and websites. They communicate in plain sight.

Take todays twitter post by Gamestop for example... OAAOOAPA

This decodes into several things...but one phrase it decodes to is, "Moon Baby". Interesting, huh?

https://preview.redd.it/8mkjodyoicp71.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5e8e85c43cd4e1285f27055457554e48ed275a63

There are hidden messages in the Bible using Gematria. Revelations 13:18... "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."

This suggest 666 is a person. In gematria, that translates to Nero Ceasar. If you do your research on that guy....you will understand more about what is happening and why America is what it is. Nero Ceasar was the nephew of Caligula....his mother was insane and when she got Nero into power (at age 16), she had him kill all the Christians in Rome. So that dubbed him the AntiChrist.

Is the 5 ringed insignia, used to symbolize the Olympics, starting to make since?

Where do we look next?

In the movie Ready Player One, Wade (the main Character) goes to an in game library that has all of Hallidays memories and moments on file....and this is where he finds information on finding the 2nd key to the Easter Egg.

I recently saw where a company created an uncensored library in the game Minecraft.

In a virtual library found in Minecraft, a game where users can build virtual worlds out of blocks and create their own storylines... users can access the work of journalists who have been killed, jailed or exiled by governments, including articles by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The project, launched by Reporters Without Borders, design collective Blockworks, advertising agency DDB Germany and production company MediaMonks, gives users access to articles banned in five countries that rank poorly on the nongovernmental organization’s World Press Freedom Index: Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam … Work by Javier Valdez — a Mexican journalist who founded the Riodoce newspaper dedicated to crime and corruption and was killed by gunmen in 2017 — can also be read in the library, which creators call “a loophole to overcome censorship.”

Texts by exiled Vietnamese human rights lawyer and blogger Nguyen Van Dai are also showcased, as well as articles from Russia’s blocked grani.ru website and Egypt’s blocked Mada Masr portal.

https://preview.redd.it/e8nw2wfbkcp71.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=003c5b8fcc11290eb593a17b9f3ae17ab492cc44

This is where we look...there has to be something in here that will shed light on where we need to go and what we need to learn.

IMO...

...Citidel was created to manipulate the internet boom and to cause the bubble to pop so that evil may rule the internet. But the good guys (the ones that built the internet) saw this coming and created blockchain.

Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta envisioned what many people have come to know as blockchain, in 1991. Their first work involved working on a cryptographically secured chain of blocks whereby no one could tamper with timestamps of documents (emails).

In 1992, they upgraded their system to incorporate Merkle trees that enhanced efficiency thereby enabling the collection of more documents on a single block. However, it is in 2008 that Blockchain History starts to gain relevance, thanks to the work one person or group by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

Satoshi Nakamoto is accredited as the brains behind blockchain technology. Very little is known about Nakamoto as people believe he could be a person or a group of people that worked on Bitcoin, the first application of the digital ledger technology.

Nakamoto conceptualized the first blockchain in 2008 from where the technology has evolved and found its way into many applications beyond cryptocurrencies. Satoshi Nakamoto released the first whitepaper about the technology in 2009. In the whitepaper, he provided details of how the technology was well equipped to enhance digital trust given the decentralization aspect that meant nobody would ever be in control of anything.

Ever since Satoshi Nakamoto exited the scene and handed over Bitcoin development to other core developers, the digital ledger technology has evolved resulting in new applications that make up the blockchain History.

A very common question, when was blockchain invented? We see can say Blockchain was invented in 1991.

These technological pioneers invented blockchain to make it much more difficult to alter emails. They made a system where you could build off of it. Making things more and more secure as time went on. Building off that code, Bitcoin was created.

Satoshi Nakamoto became associated with Bitcoin in 2008, when a paper titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was published under the name. The paper laid the groundwork for cryptocurrency, detailing the bare bones of how the digital currency would come to function.

The history of Bitcoin and its' creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, is very mysterious. Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin up until December 2010. Many people have claimed, or have been claimed, to be Nakamoto. Truth is, no one knows who Nakamoto is.

Let us look at how Bitcoin can help us get away from the old system.

Bitcoin runs off a Proof-of-Work system. Proof of work (PoW) describes a system that requires a not insignificant but feasible amount of effort in order to deter frivolous or malicious uses of computing power, such as sending spam emails or launching denial of service attacks. The concept was subsequently adapted to securing digital money by Hal Finney in 2004 through the idea of "reusable proof of work" using the SHA-256 hashing algorithm.

War is the globally adopted Proof-of-Work (does POW make more sense now?) social consensus protocol that nodes (countries) use to validate the legitimate state of property and its chain of custody. Militaries project force across time (i.e., energy) in a fundamental game of probability to trigger a capitulation event. This is functionally identical to Bitcoin PoW miners projecting energy to probabilistically trigger the end of each block.

The reward for militaries that succeed in probabilistically triggering capitulation, is that participating nodes (countries) will grant consensus to the military host’s claim over what the legitimate state of property is. Thus, the history of warfare, and its corresponding chain of custody, is literally just a PoW backed blockchain. Ever notice how the reserve currency (i.e., the globally legitimized state of property) belongs to the country with the most powerful military? That isn’t a coincidence. Society instinctively values PoW as the ‘fair” consensus.

What we know about Citidel is the started in 1990...around the same time naked shorting started to appear in the market.

Citadel LLC is an American multinational hedge fund and financial services company. Founded in 1990 by Kenneth Griffin, the company operates two primary businesses: Citadel, one of the world's largest alternative asset managers with more than US$35 billion in assets under management; and Citadel Securities, one of the leading market makers in the world, whose trading products include equities, equity options, and interest rate swaps for retail and institutional clients

Also, around the same time, Clinton gave China exclusive manufacturing rights on our computer chips.

And now we know Jeff Bezos was a Quant for Hedgies in the 90s and then he started Amazon to monopolize retail.

There is no doubt in my mind that Citadel was created to strongarm the internet boom for their clients.

NFT's can save the day...

The sky is the limit with NFTs. NFTs act as a bodyguard for a securities, commodities and individual assets.

In the Private Sector

They can provide secure ownership that NOBODY CAN TAKE FROM YOU!
They can provide privacy so NOBODY KNOWS HOW MUCH TAXES YOU SHOULD PAY!
You can bundle multiple assets into one and then sell it...without the need for an underwriter.
You can put your mortgage into one and sell it without the need for a bank to do the paperwork.
You can put royalty agreements into something you sell so your family will continue to make money off of it every time it is bought/sold.

In the Public Sector

They can secure a financial pool, like Social Security, from greedy Politicians robbing Peter to pay Paul.
They can have secret beacons that alarm the Public of illegal activity.
You can display Identification of a public figure to monitor their finances in real time.

My idea is to make it to where politicians and governments must ID themselves in all of their digital transactions and anyone who pays them or takes payment must ID themselves and their transaction history.... media too.

Literally, the sky is the limit.... Anything you can think of, it can do.

This is the opportunity for accountably and transparency to prosper for the Public Sector....and for Privacy to prosper for every Human on Earth.

WE MUST OVERSEE THIS FORECOMING ECONOMIC CHANGE OR THE GOVERNMENT WILL USE THIS OPPURTUNITY TO USE NFT’s TO LEVERAGE OUR ASSETS AGAINST US!!!

How Elrond Solves Blockchain’s Classic Trilemma by HeliosStaking

One of the most pervasive issues with decentralized networks is what is today known as the scalability trilemma. The modern version of this trilemma evolved from the 1980s CAP Theorem, which stated that decentralized data stores (which blockchains are an iteration of) must sacrifice one of the following: consistency, availability, or partition tolerance. The modern take on this for the modern decentralized network says that only two out of three can be solved: decentralization, scalability, and security.

How Elrond Solves Blockchain's Classic Trilemma

With the breakthrough design of the Secure Proof of Stake (sPoS) consensus algorithm, however, all three benefits of distributed networks can be met. Elrond combines a special type of sharding with a randomized, meritocratic approach to node selection that accounts for validator ratings. Elrond is a carbon-negative blockchain that offers up to 15,000 transactions per second.

Helios Staking has been a part of the Elrond ecosystem serving as a validator since the very beginning. To find out how you can stake $EGLD with us, visit the Helios Staking website today.

This article discusses the following:

What is the blockchain trilemma?
How Elrond solves the blockchain trilemma

What is the Blockchain Trilemma?

Design flaws in the architecture of new blockchains seem to fall into a pattern. The conundrum goes like this: blockchains can only meet two out of three of the following benefits — scalability, decentralization, and security. While a blockchain can successfully meet two out of three of these elements, all three elements have been difficult (if not impossible) to fulfill.

As stated in the introduction, the modern day blockchain trilemma has its roots in the early days of decentralized systems ranging back to the 1980s.

Despite the term “blockchain” not being mentioned in the Bitcoin whitepaper, Satoshi addressed the age-old paradigm with a more modern trilemma:

Decentralization: P2P networks, consensus in globally distributed systems
Security: Public-key cryptography
Scalability: P2P networks

Over the next decade, tens of thousands of different cryptocurrencies were released with thousands of different blockchain models vying to improve upon Bitcoin’s Proof of Work design. Although many have tried, very few blockchains have come close to solving this modern trilemma. This is the case with some of the world’s largest blockchains like Ethereum and Ripple.

For example, as is the case with Ripple (Figure A), transactions are fast and inexpensive, but the platform is highly centralized and doesn’t allow for the creation of customizable tokens.

(Figure A Source: Elrond Warriors Twitter)

The above figure further illustrates how Bitcoin has the benefit of scarcity, but how it comes at the cost of slow and expensive transactions (as well as high pollution).

That graphic further demonstrates that while Ethereum is highly programmable (think of all the ERC-20 tokens and NFTs), the transactions, similar to Bitcoin, are slow and expensive. Furthermore, there is still an unlimited amount of Ethereum since the rate of new tokens being produced exceeds the total being burned.

These are just a few examples of how one of the trilemma’s principles is typically compromised. Elrond has addressed each pain point of the trilemma by developing a fast, secure and highly scalable blockchain that meets industry demands.

How Elrond Solves Blockchain’s Trilemma

The Elrond blockchain is inherently built to scale through a meritocratic network of nodes that is secure and decentralized. Elrond’s Secure Proof of Stake eliminates computational waste and uses a hybrid combination of node rating and staking to make the ideal validator selection process. Security is maintained through randomized node reshuffling and randomized consensus group sampling.

Scalability

One of the ways that the trilemma can be solved is through what is known as sharding. Sharding partitions data and breaks it down over different servers (nodes) in order to limit any individual server’s computational workload or influence. Sharding distributes data to make it less centralized in one location.

Elrond employs a certain type of sharding known as “Adaptive State Sharding.” This type of sharding combines three types of sharding into one. Adaptive State Sharding is able to achieve parallel processing which increases performance and improves the communication inside of shards. That translates to faster transaction times, increased decentralization, and lighter loads that don’t overwhelm the servers. On each shard, there is only a fractional portion of transactions and just a small component of the entire state of the blockchain.

In total, Elrond is capable of 15,000 transactions per second but scalable up to 100,000 tx/s. The required energy for transaction processing is also 6 million times lower.

Even more impressive, Elrond has accomplished this feat while being recently crowned the “First Carbon Negative Blockchain in Europe.”

“By offsetting more CO2 that our blockchain is responsible for, we can stay ahead of ecosystem growth and make Elrond into a fertile ground for this generation of innovators to seed the foundations of a digital network of trust for the generations to come,” (Benjamin Mincu AP News)

All of this translates to more transactions being verified, validated, and processed at the same time. More information about sharding can be found on this thread in the r/Elrondnetwork subreddit.

Decentralization

Elrond’s built-in randomness ensures decentralization because nodes are redistributed across shards in a way that is uniformed and non-deterministic. Also, the rating of nodes in addition to other factors ensures randomness in the validator selection process. Democratic governance is further introduced in the validator groups through the block’s signature requirement of ⅔ +1 signature.

Additionally, Elrond is enhancing its DeFi capabilities with the launch of the Maiar App. The Chrome and Brave Browser web extension will help usher in a more decentralized way of accessing dApps built on the Elrond network. Soon after the Maiar App is launched, the Maiar Exchange will follow. Read more about Elrond’s latest announcements on Investing.com.

Security

Elrond’s focus on security is implied throughout the project from the technical design of Elrond’s blockchain all the way through to the name of the consensus algorithm, Secured Proof of Stake. Building upon the foundation of Proof of Stake, sPoS offers further assurance of randomization for node selection compared to any blockchain that precedes it.

More specifically, Elrond’s sPoS reduces node latency which is made possible through the design of the block signature. Elrond’s block signature is used as a randomization factor. This reduces the time that Elrond would have to spend on selecting a block committee, which takes other blockchains (e.g., Algorand) up to 12 seconds to complete.

Elrond introduces a concept known as rating, which turns block selection into a meritocracy that has to be earned by prior performance. These added design elements promote fairness, good behavior, and efficiency compared to Elrond’s counterparts.

To enhance the custodial security services for $EGLD, Elrond recently partnered with Copper. The company’s multi-award winning custody solution uses multi-party computation security. Copper’s technology is used by 300 institutional asset managers, 250 assets, and 40 exchanges.

In Conclusion

The scalability trilemma faced by many of the ecosystems in the industry today is nothing new. It is a concept that was derived from decentralized systems of the 1980s. However, the decentralized networks of today just modernized the problem. Bitcoin’s white paper reintroduced a modern spin on each element of the classic CPA theorem, replacing consistency, partition tolerance, and availability with security, decentralized, and scalability.

Elrond touches upon the design elements of the modern decentralized network without sacrificing one component in lieu of the other two. The community and developers have made Elrond into a meritocratic system where validation is a process based on past performance as well as staking.

As Elrond reaches new highs on the heels of announcing US-token availability through Moonpay, a KuCoin listing, and new partnerships, the decentralized blockchain is positioned to grow sustainably and securely.

To read more about how Elrond solves the blockchain scalability trilemma, visit the Elrond website today for more information.

About Helios Staking

Helios Staking is a Staking-as-a-Service company that is focused on the expansion of Proof of Stake (PoS) networks. Helios is one of the Elrond Network’s chosen and trusted Genesis Launch partners, and also works closely with Injective Protocol with whom they’ve won several awards for community, content, and validation.

Source: Medium HeliosStaking / how-elrond-solves-blockchains-classic-trilemma

Twitter @HeliosStaking

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Friend lost trade in mediation

I've been a long time Bisq user. I've done over a hundred trades and tens of thousands of dollars in volume and I've never had any problems with a trade going bad or even making it to mediation. I've recommended Bisq to many of my friends and I just had a friend who has been using it lately tell me that they were just scammed on Bisq. He was selling bitcoin on Bisq and his trade partner wasn't responding to messages at all. He was waiting for payment to come to him via Zelle, but it never came. It then went to mediation and the mediator said that the buyer had a Zelle receipt that showed he paid. My friend said he showed his bank account and that no payment was made. The trade dispute was awarded to the buyer and my friend lost his bitcoin. He contacted his bank and they said no Zelle transaction came over and that it was likely a fake receipt that he had.

My question is, since I've never had to go through mediation, how thorough are the mediators? How can a fake receipt be passed off as real so easily? Has anyone else experienced anything like this? If it is an email confirmation receipt, do mediators check email headers and such or other things that are slightly harder to forge than say just a screenshot?

My friend is very disheartened over this event and is likely not going to be using Bisq any more because of it. I feel bad because I recommended Bisq to him.

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⚠️This is not financial advice , Please Do Your Own Research.

Cardano Rumor Rundown September 23, 2021

Hey Everyone!

Let's go...

Newly covered today:

dcSpark is launching a new wallet called Flint that will be able to interact with Cardano dApps. https://youtu.be/dDwuwVR75HU https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1440659191731945482
The AWS Exec has clarified his tweet about the Cardano Summit to express that people shouldn’t read too much into it. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1440662585309745152
There’s a fresh blog and video on the Cardano Smart Contract Certification standards and new Plutus dApp Store. https://twitter.com/timbharrison/status/1440799199684022283

Previously Covered but still interesting:

Looks like 40% of crypto holders in Singapore have Cardano according to the Gemini 2021 Crypto in Singapore report. https://www.gemini.com/state-of-sg-crypto
The Wyoming Blockchain Stampede will be going on at the same time as the Cardano Summit and in the preceding days. If you’re going to Wyoming, you may consider attending both. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1427316556476866561
Apparently a “huge increase in user base” is responsible for the Yoroi downtime. That doesn’t sound all bad! https://twitter.com/YoroiWallet/status/1427283658432417794
The Plutus Mainnet Candidate has been released to the Node Team. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427359174220996612
Weiss Crypto really loves the Cardano consensus protocol. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1427646299936014337
Applications are now open to be a local Cardano Meet-Up host for the Cardano Summit 2020. https://twitter.com/Cardano/status/1427309534226300928
Anticipation for Cardano smart contracts keeps growing stronger as more and more ETH users are publicly venting frustration over fees and throwing their support behind Cardano. https://twitter.com/RandCorp_/status/1427473742742052865
CNFT.io is back in action after a brief period of absence! https://twitter.com/CNFT_IO/status/142808300944668262
The Djed Stablecoin paper and an explanatory article are now out. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1427933093210607619
In larger nation-state crypto adoption news (an area that is very relevant to Cardano), it looks like the Salvadorean Finance Minister is now saying that Bitcoin acceptance by merchants in El Salvador will actually be optional despite the language in the law. https://www.coindesk.com/el-salvador-bitcoin-not-mandatory-businesses
Various rankings websites are called out for what seems to be an unbelievable number of errors that imply an anti-Cardano bias. https://twitter.com/TheADAApe/status/1428312666569904129
Coinbase is going to invest $500M into crypto and 10% of all profit going forward (probably increasing with time) according to Brian Armstrong. Since Cardano is listed on Coinbase and it’s a good guess they will invest in the coins they list, this is probably very relevant for Cardano. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1428489591665856512
If Google translate is correct, it looks like Bitpoint (a Japanese exchange) will begin its listing of ADA on August 25th. https://www.bitpoint.co.jp/news/info/info-2021081801/
It never ends. We are the Perma-Techno-Kings of the Github Commit! https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1428748675032010758
It’s looking like the Cardano Summit is going to be huge. https://twitter.com/I_Am_DTaylor/status/1428791321440002054
The Essential Cardano List has grown even larger! https://github.com/input-output-hk/essential-cardano/blob/main/essential-cardano-list.md
Cardano is still crushing everyone else in terms of dollars staked. https://twitter.com/CryptoDiffer/status/1428368524745973773
The August Cardano 360 will be this Thursday August 26th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1428756331423571972
There is now an Eastern Hemisphere Catalyst Town Hall every Thursday with Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Indonesian language hosts. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1428649776111886336
We generally think of Cardano competitors being other blockchains or big tech. In one part of the world, the advent of CBDCs might make it “tokenless blockchains”. https://twitter.com/sinoglobalcap/status/1429430262102822920
If Web 3 will really be a building of new economies out of online communities and the units of value of those economies will be tokens and NFTs, it seems like a blockchain like Cardano that can generate those assets natively without smart contracts is going to be a central player. https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1429585831899983876
The ADA treasury is worth $1.6 Billion right now?????? https://twitter.com/nierop_pieter/status/1429656224732225536
There will be a crypto regulatory conference on the 23rd of September in Wyoming as part of the Wyohackathon just before the Cardano Summit. https://twitter.com/wyohackathon/status/1428718655362281479
Neel Kashkari of the Fed posts an anti-crypto tweet and gets heavily outliked by more than one pro-crypto response including a retweet from Charles. https://twitter.com/neelkashkari/status/1429886278942736385 https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1429947349103742978
Forbes runs an article about how various cryptos including ADA could replace fiat according to a Deloitte survey of bank execs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2021/08/23/bankers-issue-seismic-warning-bitcoin-ethereum-bnb-cardano-and-xrp-could-replace-the-dollar-in-just-five-years-as-crypto-market-price-adds-1-trillion/
ADA is officially on Bitpoint Exchange in Japan! https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1430317131699163140
Charles gave us a brief update on Aug 24. Sounds like everything is right on schedule for smart contract launch on September 12. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1430230604071636994
Messari is reporting that Cardano moved more transaction volume over the last 24 hours than ETH. The amazing part was how much cheaper those transactions were on Cardano. https://twitter.com/TheADAApe/status/1430128107332280321
dcSpark is unveiling a sidechain project called Milkomeda that will use wrapped ADA and so-called “wrapped smart contracts”. The first sidechain, M1, will be an Ethereum Virtual Machine sidechain. This means Solidity devs can deploy their current smart contract code in M1 and those smart contracts will be accessible to Cardano users. This is “the pond”. This will be HUGE! Good work dcSpark! You guys are killing it! https://medium.com/dcspark/dcspark-announces-development-of-new-sidechain-protocol-milkomeda-cc28ed764a89
IOHK partners with European Business University of Luxembourg to offer scholarships including instruction in Haskell and Plutus to students across 25 countries in Africa. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/08/24/making-education-in-africa-more-accessible-affordable-and-equitable/
It’s interesting to note that (as pointed out by @Rob98550139) on June 23rd, EBU of Luxembourg also offered 5,000 scholarship’s in “Plutus Blockchain programming for Cardano Blockchain” to Nayib Bukele for El Salvador. Something unannounced going on there? https://twitter.com/EBULuxembourg/status/1407594850199953410
The August Cardano 360 is out! Another great job by Tim Harrison and company! https://youtu.be/baS9efSa2F8
The Cardano Foundation is reporting they have now received 440 applications to host local Cardano Summit meetups and that applications are now closed. Registration for the local meetups will come out soon. https://twitter.com/CardanoStiftung/status/1430954186607415310
The “Buy Cardano” keyword hits a three month high on Google. https://twitter.com/OldPaSink/status/1430946116359516160
Cardano competitor Ethereum suffered a consensus bug today (Aug 27) that impacted 54% of nodes. Apparently they were able to upgrade the version of Geth being run by a majority of the pools in time to head off a majority supported fork to the bad chain. But, the go ethereum developer in the link described it as “a really close shave”. https://twitter.com/mhswende/status/1431259601530458112 https://twitter.com/TimBeiko/status/1431278258222338056
IOHK has initiated the testnet fork (Aug 27)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1431286232278085634
The “go/no-go” meeting was today (Aug 27) on initiating the Alonzo hardfork combinator event for the 12th. The result was a “go”! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1431286232278085634
Here’s a good side-by-side of the size of the ecosystem in the past and now. https://twitter.com/CardanoRise/status/1431703062486392837
Fortune ran a very positive piece on Cardano today (Aug. 20). https://fortune.com/2021/08/20/cardano-ath-price-biggest-cryptos/
It looks like the details of the extremely mysterious “Cardano City” project should come to light today. https://twitter.com/CardanoCity/status/1431338443381092355
The Wall Street Journal runs a Cardano article. https://www.wsj.com/articles/cardanos-ada-is-the-latest-cryptocurrency-to-surge-heres-what-you-need-to-know-11630143002
The COTI/Wolfram/IOHK project to build an NFT Auction Site is now live. https://twitter.com/COTInetwork/status/1431971503093002243
CNBC runs an article on the effect the grassroots effort to the fix the crypto tax provisions has had on policy makers in Washington, D.C. These policies will affect Cardano and every other crypto. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/28/tax-reporting-proposal-creates-defining-moment-for-crypto-industry-.html
Beware of FlanoWallet and Flano Swap!!!!!!!! They are accused of malicious code that harvests your recovery phrase. https://twitter.com/bigpeyYT/status/1432450913487183874
Sebastien confirms that dcSpark is getting a ton of interest from developers wanting to work in Cardano. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1432416579107495942
Charles talks about Cardano compliance functionality and confirms that he perceives heavy regulation coming for DeFi in the next 24 months based on EU and US Treasury comments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ESn46Hj9Y4
A new John O’Connor interview is scheduled for today (Aug 31). You may want to tune in to get the latest on Cardano’s Africa Operations from the man himself. https://twitter.com/jjtoconnor/status/1432395067185106951
The Public Testnet will be forked to Alonzo today (Sept 1)! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1432769865958531080
Some future Cardano dApps have so many followers on twitter that ETH maximalists are publicly expressing their disbelief. https://twitter.com/Southrye/status/1432515727433601024
Even prior to the launch of smart contracts, Cardano is generating quite an impressive amount of transaction fees. https://twitter.com/DCdoso/status/1432761425089470469
The Cardano Testnet has now officially forked to Alonzo allowing Plutus smart contracts. We are on track for the mainnet hardfork combinator event on Sept 12th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1433166757620064260
IOHK is changing their delegation process. They will be taking applications from SPOs and asking that they recommend two other pools based on contributions in terms of building, creating, or educating. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1433104060647985157
Another signpost for Cardano DeFi projects. Gary Gensler (SEC Head) tells the Financial Times that in his view DeFi platforms have “a fair amount of centralisation” and “[i]t’s a misnomer to say they are just software they put out in the web...” https://www.ft.com/content/fb126d79-2e60-4002-8aba-b08887fca609
Cardano gets positive coverage on French Television for being “ecological”. https://twitter.com/YoadaStakepool/status/1433127940334792708
Charles is on CNBC talking about how crypto could be used to resist the Taliban in Afghanistan. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/09/01/cryptos-will-play-larger-role-in-afghanistan-after-us-exit-ethereum.html
The first solution for custom Cardano wallet addresses seems to be picking up steam. https://twitter.com/adahandle
One of Cardano’s competitors continued to have additional “performance degradation” and “instability” issues on it’s mainnet today (Sept 2). https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1433438629020454917 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1433429598230876173 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1367189272797798404
The SEC is investigating Uniswap. This is a very big deal! https://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-investigate-crypto-exchange-developer-uniswap-labs-11630666800
Another Japanese exchange appears to be adding ADA on the 7th. https://twitter.com/sentosumosaba/status/1433714023468437508
We are always the github champions (again as of Sept 3). https://twitter.com/ProofofGitHub/status/1433822104634408966
Yet another Cardano project drops their account of how they’ve already handled concurrency. https://twitter.com/SundaeSwap/status/1434304535061729281
Here are two other Cardano projects explaining that they’ve already handled concurrency. https://cointelegraph.com/press-releases/cardano-decentralized-exchange-occamx-reaches-key-technical-milestone https://twitter.com/CardanoMaladex/status/1434115402725052418
Only one more week until smart contracts on mainnet (as of Aug 5)! Get your whiskey ready!
IOHK releases a detailed thread on concurrency and upcoming documentation to help quell some of the misinformation currently circulating on this topic. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1434518391465943048
Only 5 more days to Alonzo (as of Sept. 7)!
Despite all the negative posting about Cardano smart contracts on eUTxO, it ironically looks like some in the ETH community are actually trying to build ETH L2 on UTXO. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1434570158853529606
Here’s a great article on Cardano’s Determinism by IOG’s Polina Vinogradova. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/06/no-surprises-transaction-validation-on-cardano/
World Mobile has released a new video of towers going up in Zanzibar! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoGx_hwupsc
Charles releases a new video on the Alonzo Update Proposal (on Aug. 7) being submitted so that we can go live on the 12th. He also gives some hints as to his thoughts on the short-term planning of some “flavor of the week” blockchains vs. the long term planning of Cardano. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhujKbMpTEA
Weiss Crypto lays down yet another very positive thread about Cardano. They acknowledge that they can’t see the future of Cardano, but they vehemently reject a lot of the anti-hype. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1435261343456768005
Coinbase reveals they received a Wells Notice from the SEC on their crypto loan product. This is relevant for Cardano loan projects. A low professor subsequently posted a takedown of the Coinbase Chief Legal Officer’s view on the SEC notice. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1435439291715358721 https://twitter.com/AdamLevitin/status/1435650584271589376
We just saw a record number of daily transactions on Cardano (Sept 7)! https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1435559731133825031
Messari has updated its “Initial Token Distribution” chart to include a previously missing project and Cardano is still among the very best in the Gen 3 space in terms of broad public coin ownership. https://twitter.com/CryptoIRELAND1/status/1435708439951552513
After lots of criticism of Cardano layer 2 possibilities by ETH maximalists, Vitalik has ironically announced that ETH NFTs need to be moved to layer 2. https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1435413681588736007
We seem to already have at least five projects who have worked out their approach to eUTxO concurrency. https://twitter.com/SmaugPool/status/1435928968423673859 https://www.yahoo.com/now/cardano-decentralized-exchange-occamx-reaches-163000898.html
Here’s the tweet with the link for the Alonzo smart contract launch watch party tomorrow (Sept 12) at 21:30 UTC. This is going to be fun! Enjoy it, guys! https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1436325831199141888
A Weiss Crypto analyst calls the smart contract launch an alleged event and also doesn’t realize we already have NFTS. The Cardano community was quick to correct the analyst. Weiss was then also quick to apologize. https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1436369016545857566 https://twitter.com/WeissCrypto/status/1436402039085576193
There is still the mystery of the lobster. Will it end up being connected to a fun smart contract to be launched tomorrow by IOHK? https://twitter.com/crypto_reflect/status/1435738017608740866
Over 100 smart contracts are already running on Cardano Mainnet! https://twitter.com/IOHKMedia/status/1437821632307994628
One of Cardano’s biggest competitors is once again suffering network problems. This time it started out as just being characterized as (more) “instability”, then they started saying that something had caused the blockchain to “start forking”. This followed their September 2 “instability” and “performance degradation” event. It’ll be interesting to see how well their community tolerates this in the future if it’s happening with their planned slashing model in effect. https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1437856638279487493 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1437757547235131396 https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1433429598230876173
The Cardano Foundation subtly hints (okay just straight up says) it has some mindblowing partnerships to announce at the Cardano Summit. https://twitter.com/SidneyVollmer/status/1437855888237338627
Gary Gensler says that there are probably many tokens traded on Coinbase that are securities. https://youtu.be/XLc4c7vL3rM
Looks like Cardano Summit segments are being recorded and completed. https://twitter.com/ch1bo_/status/1437803839319691271
In macro news that could impact Cardano & all of crypto, it has been announced that China’s Evergrande Group will not be able to make interest payments on its loans in a few days. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1438143063306690560 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-15/evergrande-gives-china-an-impossible-equation-to-solve-with-its-liquidity-crunch
It looks like we’ll get some news about further collaboration with Baia’s Wine of Georgia at the Cardano Summit. https://twitter.com/ThornhillPublic/status/1438157239982956545
Now one of Cardano’s most highly visible critics is implying that the Cardano community has something in common with anti-vaxxers. Unfortunately for him, it was one of his pet blockchains that was down a few days ago while Cardano just kept healthily trucking right along. https://twitter.com/spudiot1/status/1438402783040790532
Cardano is still crushing it in terms of daily transaction volume. https://twitter.com/Eilert/status/1438521555638644746
We might have gotten a peek at the virtual world that will be part of the Cardano Summit this month. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1438668061813342209/photo/1
Smaug gives us a rundown of how many actual Plutus scripts (19)are running on mainnet vs. timelock scripts (21k) as of Sept 17 and explains simple definitions for both. But, he also mentions down below how many Plutus scripts (213) are reportedly running on “the main testnet” not counting “other Alonzo testnets”. https://twitter.com/SmaugPool/status/1438816898234343432
The weekly IOHK development update is out for Sept 17. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1438921968590499843
Now the TX and NJ state securities regulators are after Celsius for crypto loans (BlockFi already got this treatment). Cardano loan projects should probably take note. https://www.njoag.gov/new-jersey-bureau-of-securities-orders-cryptocurrency-firm-celsius-to-halt-the-offer-and-sale-of-unregistered-interest-bearing-investments/ https://www.ssb.texas.gov/sites/default/files/2021-09/20210917_FINAL_Celsius_NOH_js_signed.pdf
After the Senate hearing on Tuesday September 14th, Gary Gensler (SEC Chairman) gave a quote to a crypto publication indicating that custodial lending and possibly even staking platforms might be considered securities. This is very relevant for Cardano since it has non-custodial staking whereas many of its competitors have the kind of custodial staking that Gensler may have been contemplating. https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/117675/crypto-lending-staking-custody-gensler-sec
New IOHK blog entry on Hydra (Sept 17)! https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2021/09/17/hydra-cardano-s-solution-for-ultimate-scalability/
It looks like we may get an announcement of a new Cardano/COTI product at the Summit. https://twitter.com/theCOTIinvestor/status/1439551052764925957
We’re inching closer to the 500 votes required to name the lobster. https://twitter.com/Ada4Soil/status/1439745733079355394
Here’s a great description from Sebastien on where ADA staking rewards come from. https://twitter.com/SebastienGllmt/status/1439542246764793857
Apparently the SEC is now serving crypto people at crypto conferences. Gensler is getting serious. https://twitter.com/gogoSlava/status/1439972015910408195 https://mainnet.events/agenda-2021/
Accusations of wash trading surface in the Cardano NFT scene. https://twitter.com/mintaCNFT/status/1439752114276904960
Christine Lagarde (European Central Bank President) goes on the offensive and tries to tell the world that cryptocurrencies are not currencies. https://twitter.com/BloombergTV/status/1438498107965288449
DIGI tweets out a great infographic explaining how Hydra layer two solution works. https://twitter.com/DIGI_StakePool/status/1440322046869737482
Senators Lummis & Sinema are planning to introduce a bill for responsible innovation in crypto. Caitlin Long says it will focus on (1) definitions to clarify regulatory jurisdiction, (2) consumer protection, (3) digital asset custody requirements https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1440327869293465600
The Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics has been established at Carnegie Mellon. Given the blockchain activity at the university it seems like the Cardano founder having ties there can’t really hurt us. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1440443081183019017

~Army of Spies