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ТРАГЕДИЯ 9/11: ДВАДЦАТЬ ЛЕТ СПУСТЯ…

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11 сентября американцы чтят память погибших во время трактов 2001 года. Житель Нью-Йорка Пол МакКлюр создал мемориальный сад, ставший городской достопримечательностью.

Смотрите сюжет нашего корреспондента в США.

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AMA Review- Domino’s development History & Prospects.

https://preview.redd.it/rtb4d2q3qum71.jpg?width=630&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=162d7cb90dd023a5da38e8cb6eca9de90888aee0

On September 10, 2021, Etherflyer Exchange CMO Alice with Domino Network Operations Manager Sura held an AMA event together.

Sura introduced the background, design concepts, development progress, competitive advantages, and recent market plans of Domino Network to us.

The following is a compilation of AMA text content, and the content has been edited.

​

https://preview.redd.it/m8atohm5qum71.png?width=630&format=png&auto=webp&s=ec4461a345b50442e6dbbf009cef093ccdc90646

Alice:

Hi everyone, thank you for participating in today’s AMA. I am today’s host Alice, Etherflayer CMO & co-founder.Today we are fortunate to invite Sura, Domino Operations Manager, to introduce Domino Network here.Before the AMA initialized, let me briefly introduce our ‘Etherflyer’.

Etherflyer is a decentralized exchange registered in Samoa. It is a decentralized exchange based on Ethereum, the largest decentralized exchange in the entire Asia-Pacific region. There are more than 300,000 registered users, of which more than 100,000 active users.

Etherflyer was launched in January 2018. Using hardware acceleration and high-efficiency memory matching technology, the peak order matching rate can reach 2,000,000+/sec, and the peak order processing rate can reach 1,000,000+/sec.

The platform will continue to follow up the development, and gradually realize cross-chain transactions for different types of digital currency. TCASH holders can enjoy a dividend of 50% of the platform’s revenue, as well as a gradient reduction of transaction fees.

Our international team has members who provided IT solutions for tech-nology companies, banks, or large stock exchanges for a long time.The advisory team includes celebrities from the currency circle, as well as well-known Bitcoin Chinese capital investment.

Okay, let’s invite the guests to introduce their team’s background and history.

Sura:

Hi there, It’s Sura, the operations manager of Domino team.

Mainly responsible for the formulation of various marketing activities, community plans and brand promotion in Domino’s project. Our team are composed of experienced entrepreneurs, engineers, and researchers, those who have worked in the blockchain industry, Internet companies, or university research institutes for many years.

One of the co-founders has studied in famous universities in Hong Kong and the United States with years of entrepreneurial background related to finance, securities, and technology. What’s more, he has in depth researched and rich experience in finance and technology development. After entering blockchain area, he has raised an amount of industry cognition and technology research experience. Last year, he was optimistic about the meta-universe ecology and decided to lay out interrelated ecology.

Another partner has many years of experience in traditional Internet operations and entered the blockchain field in 2017. He has accumulated years of experience in project operating as well. Many of the early blockchain projects received his fundraising and operations. The technical partner of the team participated in the ecological construction of Ethereum and Polka dot in the early stage, and is familiar to solidity & Rust development.

Alice:

Fine. Can you briefly introduce what on earth is Domino Network?

Sura:

Domino Network (Digital-reality Spatial Network) is a fast, distributed, and creator-friendly blockchain network for UGC.

It aims to build a super data application scenario for digital-reality symbiosis, (It has some similarities with meta-universe concept which is popular these years), and constructs a large-scale, sustainable and self-growing digital world based on Domino Chain standards, protocols, and modules.

Domino provides a programmable development environment and application tools (Studio, virtual machine, etc.) to link creators all over the world. All creators can freely create, explore or interact here, enjoy synchronous online games and interactive social experiences in the virtual world. BTW, all creators can participate for corresponding rewards under a fair and open economic system. Users can establish social interactions with others all over the world, break through the constraints of time and space, as well as send invitations to friends in the real world.

Through providing more comprehensive, diverse and convenient identity link services, to help massive Internet users smoothly move toward decentralization of the Internet. Inheriting the openness of the Internet, anyone can access or exit freely in the digital-reality space, we also encourage everyone to create or make social interaction in the digital-reality space. To be able to absorb technological innovation, financial innovation, business model innovation and rich content. All progress results, attribute to the sustainability of ecological prosperity.

Alice:

For now, we all know that the original intention & philosophy are significant for a project. Can you share with us the reason why Domino Network was built & what is its vision?

Sura:

Some people think that human beings continue to sought after the virtual world. The digital virtual world may be the destination of human being’s place to live. Carbon-based life will move towards silicon-based life one day. Although the ultimate form of this fantasy is still far away, it’s not hard to imagine. However, nowadays, trend shows digital virtual world is very likely to become a new computing platform or content media. Its value is immeasurable as we all know whoever takes up people’s virtual time win.

The process towards virtual world is a brain-computer link. The interactive terminals in the virtual world of the Internet will be completely different. Once the change occurred, the Internet social empire run by the Internet terminal will fall apart in a short time. Our goal is to construct a decentralized virtual world on the basis of Web3.0. To achieve cross-chain management of assets between multiple heterogeneous chains in the spatial network through cross-chain bridges, and to create a blockchain Digital value network. We are committed to building Domino into a spatial network where digital and reality coexist.

In this network ecology, DAOs (distributed autonomous organizations) in each meta-ecology can create, develop, entertain, trade, socialize or other interactive actions in the real world without centralized governance. The assets in the space network have absolute control as well.

Alice:

Okay, can you share with us what is the digital-reality space, and what is the digital-reality space in Domino network?

Sura:

Digital-reality Space is an immersive virtual world close to real existence. An open future network world. This property that spans the physical and digital world is naturally suitable for combining blockchain technology. Blockchain technology can not only be used for user data, but also digital goods, content and IP. It also allows users and companies to create content and products to make it more prosperous. Furthermore, blockchain technology can also create an integrated functioning economic system that links the real world of the digital-reality space.

Therefore, we decided to build a digital-reality space network with blockchain technology as the underlying protocol. Thus, Domino Network came into being. Domino Network is a large-scale platform that carries users’ virtual activities. From the perspective of building an ecosystem, now, our main goal is to ensure the ultimate immersive experience & hyper-converged content ecology & super-temporal social system & digital-real interaction economic system. What’s more: Anyone can create a virtual identity in the Domino digital-reality space. The owner has custom attributes and can change his face and dress arbitrarily. The system is responsible for the real data and privacy of users. They manage their own identities, completely individuals.

And, it eliminates the barriers caused by race, color, religion, class, and politics in the real world. Domino digital-reality space network is a sustainable system that can continuously provide services and content, and the ecology is constantly evolving & enriching, just like the Internet. In order to connect the reality better, huge encryption technology is propped up. Everything in the spatial network happens synchronously, without a synchrony or detention.

Characteristics such as real-time interaction or virtual identity are brought about by the high TPS and low latency of the Domino network, giving users a more immersive, sufficiently real sensory experience that surpasses the real world.

Finally, a virtual shared space beyond the real universe could be constructed.

Domino digital-reality space has built a variety of application scenarios, providing diverse gameplay, props or art materials etc.

Using the interoperability and interaction framework of multichain and cross-chain to aggregate users’ cross-chain data, Credit calculation, identity value output, etc. The ‘human life’ in virtual world can be as colorfully as in the real world.

Alice:

That’s really fascinating. So, What achievements have your team achieved so far, and what is the future plans?

Sura:

We divided into four stages, named lullaby stage, symphony stage, rhapsody stage and heartbeat stage.

Domino project was initialized in 2019, we carried out technical researching, develop preparations and market researching, that’s the lullaby stage.

Subsequently, the deployment of the DMI Ethereum contract was confirmed and a technical cooperation relationship was established.

By 2020, we have optimized the prominent variables of the Domino protocol for user storage data, transaction status and block size, created a visual PC-side storage UI interface, and reduced the block network confirmation limit, updated and iterated the node DAPP version.

Then in 2020 we submitted the audit code base to MIT and optimized the underlying architecture of DMI.

Then, in 2021, the white paper v1.1.9 was officially released, confirming the Domino Chain-based infrastructure and standard protocols. Our goal is to create a large-scale, sustainable, and self-growing digital world. At the same time, we completed Angel round financing.

We also launched Domino’s bounty network platform and participated in the programming marathon. In August of this year, the strategic round of financing was finally completed.

It is expected that the Domino test net will be launched in the fourth quarter of this year to realize main net switching, main net token mapping conversion, public pledge, validator Dashboard, etc. We decided to launch the NFT trading market at the same time as the release of the DMI Economic Blue Book in 2022, and launch the Domino full node main net.

Alice:

Could you please introduce Domino’s investment lineup and partners? How did these collaborations unfold?

Sura:

The investment institutions currently participating in the angel round of financing include Cisco Meraki, Ledger, Parafi, etc., and completed another $20 million strategic round of financing last month, including NGC, Blockchain Capital, Bitscale Capital, Incentivai, Bixin Ventures, etc. Institutions, and we are still actively communicating with top institutions around the world.

To be honest, we are surprised by the high investment enthusiasm of everyone. This is a good phenomenon, which requires us to make efforts for the long-term development of the project.

In addition, these investors from all over the world, such as the United States, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, China and the Middle East. We also plan to cooperate with more KOLs, media and communities.

Alice:

We are expecting for more surprising ‘gifts’ of your team, too. So, if Domino Network is launched in the near future, however the bear market like 2018 or 2019 comes, what kind of solutions will u implement?

Sura:

Since the beginning of our establishment, this question has actually been answered: The bull and bear market is just a process. The performance of the market may affect the progress of the project to a certain extent, but our determination and pace will be very firm. Just like the migrating wild goose, it knows its destination and what to do, so It will not be delayed or stopped due to changes in the scenery on the road.

For now, Domino Network has completed the angel round and strategic round of investment, and the funds raised are fully enough to meet the development, upgrade and operation needs of the project. We will not expand blindly because of the bull market, nor will we slow down because of the bear market. The bull market leverages development and saves resource input; The bear market is not shrinking. Compared with similar projects, it is to expand resource input and achieve overtaking in corners.

Alice:

Okay, what an impressive speech!

Thank you so much for the AMA sharing, and thank you all for watching and listening.

Let’s stay tuned & wish a bright way for Domino! See you next time!

Project Positioning

Domino is a fast, distributed, and creator-friendly Blockchain for UGC. It aims to build a super data scenario of digital-reality symbiosis, and constructs a large-scale, sustainable Sexual and self-growing digital world based on Domino Chain’s infrastructure, standards, and protocols.

Domino will provide programmable development and application tools (Studio, virtual machine, etc.) to link creators from all over the world. Create, explore, and socialize can be realized freely in it. Through “working” in the Domino World ecosystem to obtaine encouragement, form a “second life” similar to real life.

Contact us

Medium:https://medium.com/@Domino_GLOBAL

Reddit:https://www.reddit.com/user/Domino-network

Telegram：https://t.me/dominonetwork

Twitter:https://twitter.com/Domino_GLOBAL

E-mail:[dominonetwork@outlook.com](mailto:dominonetwork@outlook.com)

Cardano - A Malaysian's Deep Dive Review

What is Cardano (ADA)

Cardano is basically a 3rd generation blockchain that is backed by scientific, peer-reviewed research. Why is this important you may ask? Well, according to Peer Review in Scientific Publications: A Survival Guide, peer review serves two main purposes:

1. It ensures that only high quality research is published by determining the validity, significance and originality of the study.
2. It improves the quality of the manuscripts from providing suggestions by peer reviewers on how to improve and identify any errors that needs correcting before publcations.

This ensures that whatever upgrades or releases made in Cardano are done securely while minimizing network issues and bugs in the long run. You can check out their papers in their publication library, to which a total of 114 papers or more are already published and some of them are currently implemented in the Cardano blockchain.

If you check the publication library, you'll notice a name IOHK. Cardano is founded by the Cardano Foundation, Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) and EMURGO. Cardano Foundation is the non-profit organization which cultivates use-case opportunities and connects with policymakers, regulators and academia; IOHK is the software engineering company responsible for building Cardano; EMURGO is the technology partner for driving commercial adoption of the Cardano protocol. Each company has vital responsibilities to the growth of the Cardano ecosystem

Cardano's Development Phases can be divided into 5 phases:

1. Byron era: Initial phase of Cardano, allows user to buy and sell ADA, and the release of their native wallets named Daedalus and Yoroi. Daedalus is a full node wallet, which means it requires a complete installation of the blockchain, so it's much slower to load, but it's very reliable. Yoroi is a light wallet which is much faster and convenient for users, where you can install it as a browser extension or a mobile version. Byron phase has been successfully implemented.
2. Shelley era: Phase which introduces staking and delegation to participate in maintaining the security of the network. Users can earn an average of around 4 to 6% APY delegating their ADA to more than 2,000 stake pools to choose from. Cardano runs on an Ouroboros Proof-of-Stake Consensus to mine blocks (You can read more here about the comparison between Proof-of-Work vs Proof-of-Stake consensus.) It works something like a lucky draw competition where the more entries you buy, the higher the chances you win a prize. Similarly in Cardano, stake pools are elected by an algorithm to validate transactions, creating transaction blocks and add them to the Cardano blockchain. Investors like us can participate as delegators to delegate our ADA to them to increase the chances of being selected to validate those blocks like the lucky draw entries I mentioned. The more ADA delegated, the higher the chances. In fact, any stakepool regardless of how much ADA has been staked will have a chance to be selected, which makes the protocol more and more decentralized. To further decentralized the protocol, a maximum of 64 million ADA can only be staked by each stake pool (more than this limit will result in the loss of rewards), to whichthis limit will go lower in the future to push more delegators to support smaller pools instead of bigger pools to balance out the validation power across all stake pools. Thus, progressive decentralization is achieved. Likewise, a lot of the stakepools out there are mission-driven, either by raising funds for the charities they believed in, or are building useful DApps and rewarding delegators for their loyalty. Shelley has been successfully implemented.
3. Goguen era: This is the phase where everyone is hyping about. This era adds the ability to run smart contracts and build decentralized apps (DApps) on a solid foundation of peer-reviewed research and high-assurance development. One of the difference with Ethereum's smart contracts is the use of a smart contract development language called Plutus, which is build on the fundamentals of the Haskell programming language. The advantage of using Plutus is that smart contracts can be carefully implemented in a precise, formally verified code that offers a high level of security. This is important as we've seen stories of smart contract vulnerabilities which leads to hacks, so a formally verified smart contract will mitigate these issues. Furthermore, Marlowe programming is a one-of-a-kind, user-friendly smart contract builder where anyone can code a smart contract without the need to have deep programming skills. As of today, smart contracts will be live on the mainnet on the tentative date of 12th September 2021. This will show how a EUTXO-based smart contracts will work in comparison to the Ethereum's account based smart contract. Read more here if you're interested in the comparison between EUTXO & Account-based model, and understand how Bitcoin's UTXO model works. Basically, Cardano is using Bitcoin's UTXO model, and then add smart contracts capability to it, thus creating transactions that are scalable in different ways, but much secure.
4. Basho era: The phase that focuses on optimization, improving scalability and interoperability. Cardano is also developing sidechains, which is a layer-2 solution to offload the work from the main chain to a side chain to increase the transactions they can handle per second. With this implemented, Cardano is poised to compete with the alternative fast PoS chains such as Solana, ETH 2.0, Polygon MATIC, Elrond Gold, etc. with ultra fast transactions and negligible fees. Hydra is the name of the layer 2 solution for Cardano. Basho is still under development and they will released a demo of Hydra in one of their biggest events of the year, Cardano Summit 2021.
5. Voltaire era: The phase of community governance, which means we can be our own governments, vote for proposals & the potential DApps that will be funded by a treasury system. Imagine our election day, where we normally have to vote which parties will be elected to form our government. Cardano's governance system works differently. Investors will have to go to the Project Catalyst and register to view your favourite proposals and give kudos (similarly to upvotes in Reddit). The proposals can be categorized into DApps integrations, developer's improvement proposals, scaling up Cardano's Community Hubs, Partnerships for Global Adoption and many more. Investors will also have to hold a minimum of 500 ADA in their wallets to be able to register to vote. The more ADA you have, the more voting power you'll have on deciding which proposals deserve funding and build the future of Cardano. Once they submit their votes and the results are out, voters will be rewarded with a small amount of ADA. Read the FAQ for more info.

So now you get the idea of what Cardano is. Let's list down some of the accusations made by many crypto investors out there about Cardano.

- It's vaporware.

- It's too overvalued ($90 billion market cap as of today's writing, with no live smart contracts).

- Other PoS blockchains claim they are faster and cheaper than Cardano, and already have working smart contracts.

and so on.

However, in my opinion, there are also tons of reasons as to why Cardano's current market cap is justified. Here are points as to why you might want to invest in Cardano:

1. Team: Cardano has a very technical-minded people to build Cardano from the ground up. The most popular figure is the CEO, Charles Hoskinson, who is a former Ethereum co-founder, charismatic, smart and very well-outspoken with his many surprise AMAs that he conducted to communicate with the community. If you're follower of his channel, or you watched his AMAs, you'll either love him or hate him, but you can't deny that he truly cares, not just for Cardano and the blockchain ecosystem, but also to the issues around us, such as Covid-19 vaccines, Afghanistan wars, U.S. policies, etc. Even though he's a billionaire and drives a Lamborghini, he also plants mushrooms, meditates, does water fast and technology fasting every Sunday. Before he leaves every surprise AMA, he'll do a short session to donate/lend to other people in need using the Kiva platform. In fact, he also donated 293k worth of ETH to his secretary after he quit Ethereum. He also creates a video to give suggestions to dogecoin developers on how to improve dogecoin. In contrast, he also has his ranting moments when other people who hated him called him out, to which I feel is a bit unnecessary but I do understand the negativity that he has to face for building things slowly. Why do I even bother stating all these? This is because as investors, it's also important to see a person genuinely to evaluate how he leads a company. Charles Hoskinson may have his flaws, but you can see him as a genuine character and at least has these 10 skills that are listed here. The one thing he did right was that he create multiple AMAs to engage with the community to answer questions frequently to show transparency and this creates more trust in the community and people will be more willingly to invest in a person they trust.

Other popular names in the Cardano space are:

- Prof Anggelos Kiayias: Chief Scientist of IOHK and the man behind most of the research papers published in IOHK library.

- Prof Simon Thompson: Author of the book on Haskell, and a researcher on the functional programming language that is Plutus smart contracts.

- Lars Brunjes: Education director and a teacher of the Plutus Pioneer Program, which is a course for developers to learn how to program smart contracts in Plutus. The lectures are currently uploaded in the IOHK YouTube channel to access.

- Dor Garbash: Product manager and leader of the Project Catalyst. You'll see him in all of the Town Halls explaining Project Catalyst and Q&A.

- Tim Harrison: Market & Communications Director, and the host of the Cardano 360, which s a video series that gives monthly updates on Cardano's progress.

And many more people that you can find from the team list, whom each play a prominent role to Cardano's success.

2. Community: Cardano currently has one of the most mature communities I've seen and there's tons of engagement everywhere, from Reddit, Twitter to Youtube Channels where you can gather a lot of Cardano guides and resources to learn more and feel comfortable with. Cardano's subreddit currently has the most followers (588k as of today) compared to other standalone crypto subreddits. The community are also pretty helpful in answering your questions, even though you're new and you know nothing about Cardano. Best of all, they are also not afraid to call out scam projects whenever they see one (Check the latest on Flanoswap). An engaging community is also the key to bring more user adoption to the platform as it brings more trust and transparency to the investors, and Cardano is certainly on top with that.

If you want to start engaging with Cardano, you can start with these links:

Reddit

Twitter & Youtube account list:

Big Pey, ADAape, Rick McCracken, Kaizen Crypto, Patrick Tobler, Cardanians.io, Army of Spies, TheCryptoDrip and many more that there's too many to list down. Most of them have YouTube Channels, and I highly recommend to start from Kaizen Crypto, as he provided a lot of very good content about Cardano and how to stake ADA videos. Rick McCracken also has his channel called The Cardano Live Podcast where he interview with other developers and platform partners relating to Cardano. If you like daily, no bullshit Cardano news, Army of Spies is the way to go.

3. Staking: Cardano's staking mechanism is by far one of the best, most user-friendly and most financially free feature out there. They are one of the only PoS blockchains that enables you to delegate to a stake pool with no lockups, no need for undelegation, redelegation is super easy & the rewards are auto-compounding. The rewards are paid every epoch (which is 5 days) and you are free to deposit and withdraw as you wish. Other PoS blockchains will require your stake to be locked, and there will be an unbonding period, normally ranging from a week until a month before you'll have access to your funds. Cardano's staking system basically works like a high interest savings account that you can earn 4 to 6% APY on average and is paid every 5 days, while others work more like fixed deposits. According to Staking Rewards, Cardano has 70% of its ADA staked or delegated to pools without lockups, this shows how much investors are trusting Cardano to deliver their promises and secure the network at the same time. The staking mechanism alone can be the reason why so many people love to buy and delegate their ADA because it's pretty much risk-free and financially free way to manage wealth, thus also probably one of the reason of the high market cap you saw.

4. DApps Ecosystem: This is one of the points that I've seen many people not invested in Cardano are also bashing about. If there's no smart contracts, what DApps are even building there right? Well, check here for the full list of DApps ecosystem that are to be built on the Cardano blockchain when smart contracts are live on the 12th of September.

- World Mobile Token: World mobile is basically a telecommunications-focused platform built on Cardano with the goal to connect the unconnected and bank the unbanked. Think of Maxis, DiGi, or Celcom, but with cheaper infrastructure and more equal financial incentives to the average users. According to them, there are nearly 4 billion people whom are unconnected globally, which is currently half of the world. World Mobile wants to solve this by connecting the people who need access to decentralized financial products and services in a sustainable way. To do this, they are releasing their native token incentive structures to onboard node operators to support the network load that a traditional mobile network operating data center would (Credits to The Crypto Drip) At the moment, they have already deployed their infrastructure in Zanzibar, while they are also setting up hardware infrastructure in Tanzania so that the people in those villages will have access to cheap Internet and financial services that can empower them to spur up their economy. More rural countries will be targeted next. Imagine you can connect your Maxis, DiGi, or Celcom anywhere in Malaysia and especially in areas where you have weak reception. World Mobile's hardware infrastructure solves this with very low cost building infrastructure. This platform itself is potentially a trillion dollar company if it's successfully deployed around the world.

- SingularityNET: It's basically a decentralized AI marketplace where you can run peer-to-peer AI services, such as Machine Learning to forecast and analyze data points, text summaries, minecraftizing services, real time voice cloning and many more, all these are also secured on the blockchain. Their goal is to create a protocol that can be interoperable with any blockchain, speed up AI development on the platform, create a regulation-compliant marketplace and laying down the most robust foundation for artificial general intelligence (Again, kudos to TheCryptoDrip for the deep dive). You also pay AGIX tokens for using these AI services, while you can also stake AGIX tokens to earn rewards. SingularityNET was running on the Ethereum blockchain, but will be the first platform to migrate to the Cardano blockchain for its scientific approach to blockchain technology, utilizing the highly-securable eUTXO smart contracts, and significantly cheaper fees than Ethereum. Furthermore, there are also upcoming DApps and collaborations building on the SingularityNET platform such as SingularityDAO - AI-powered crypto ETFs, NuNet - decentralized computing, Rejuve - AI healthcare service with the goal to improve your healthspan & Hanson Robotics - a company that creates human-like robots to help enrich the quality of our lives. For a bonus round, Dominos Malaysia also partners with SingularityNET where SingularityNET will conduct feasibility studies, deliver AI-centric workshops and offer a number of algorithms to improve Domino's business operations. This is also another trillion dollar platform plan to disrupt the AI space with the help of blockchain technology.

- ErgoDEX & partnership with Ergo blockchain: A non-custodial, decentralized exchange that allows quick and secure transfer of liquidity between Ergo and Cardano blockchains. This DEX utilizes the best of both worlds with the Automated Market Maker (AMM) and Orderbook features to optimize low and high liquidities. Cardano will be able to utilize Ergo's awesome features of oracle pools, privacy features called the ErgoMixer and their stablecoin solution called SigmaUSD. Together between Cardano and Ergo, they have created the best of PoW and PoS blockchains with smart contracts capabilities and highly scalable, secure and privacy platforms. Read more about ErgoDEX in Github.

Other notable mentions are:

- DEXes such as Sundaeswap, Minswap, Maladex, Mirqur.io, etc. Each provides different unique solutions in comparison to ErgoDEX to swap and provide liquidity with your tokens.

- NFTs such as CNFT.io, Spacebudz, Artano etc. (FYI, you can already mint NFTs without smart contracts!)

- Liqwid Finance - A decentralized lending platform on the Cardano blockchain (think Compound, Aave or Venus Protocol in Cardano). They also have some unique features such as Automated Liquidity Protocol with credit scoring & utilizing decentralized identity solutions, so you can have Credit Score to lend money just like how banks did. You can also mint qADA with your ADA and then lend them to earn LQ tokens, or use them as collateral to borrow assets. Read more here.

- MELD - non-custodial, DeFi banking protocol to which you can lend and borrow both crypto and fiat currencies, while you can earn rewards by staking their tokens or delegate to their MELD stakepools.

- OccamFi - The first launchpad solution in the Cardano ecosystem. It's currently on the Ethereum blockchain, but has a bridge where you can wrap OCC tokens to the Cardano blockchain.

- Revuto - DApp that lets you control your subscriptions such as Netflix, Spotify, Apple TV & many more. You can approve and pay your subscriptions only when you decide to do so, or unsubscribe if you don't feel like continuing with the subscription.

- Cotipay - Enterprise-grade fintech platform that empowers organizations to build their own payment solution and digitize any currency. Think Lazada & Shopee where you can use your ADAs to buy anything from these online shopping platform. Note that Coti is a blockchain on its own, while it integrates a payment solution with Cardano called ADApay.

- ProjectNEWM - Empowering musicians by allowing artists to sell partial music rights to fans and music labels via NFTs. Think yourself as the Universal Music Group, or Sony Music who technically owns 100% of all the artists rights, and now these rights can be distributed peer-to-peer between artists and fans, so that we music fans can own part of their music to support these artists and earn royalties from it.

As you can see, Cardano has a lot of very rich and unique DApps that are either waiting for smart contracts to go live to release them, or still building it as they are not just releasing their DEX, lending, NFTs and gaming solutions like you see in all other PoS blockchains, their focus on providing real-world finance solutions especially with telecoms and AI for the masses is what makes Cardano the most attractive blockchain solution out there.

Oh wait..... There's more.

- ATALA Prism: A decentralized identity solution that enables people to own their personal data and interact with organizations seamlessly, privately and securely. Governments can also utilize this feature to provide efficient government services, such as tax payments and voting on local issues by issuing digital IDs that can be stored on your own wallet. On top of storing your personal data on the blockchain, other information such as education degrees, SPM results and certificates, awards, health records, job references, invoices, asset ownership, KYC compliance, boarding pass, or even COVID vaccinations can be stored there. It's basically taking our current IC system and make it even better than before by storing more data in a blockchain system that is immutable so that no one can misuse it or wipe it out from your data records. This also prevents hackers or thieves who might steal your identity to make purchases that you never made.

- ATALA Scan: Leverages blockchain technology to tackle counterfeits, such as fake medicines, luxury items, collectibles or art, by offering a tamper-proof system to ensure every product sold is certifiably authentically. This is also why NFT technology is more than just meme culture, it's also a verification proof that the product is what it say it is. In older news, Cardano teams up with New Balance to stop counterfeit sneakers and to prove that their shoes are authentic.

- ATALA Trace: In line with ATALA Scan, supply chain traceability on the blockchain is essential which allows large companies to track their supply chain, to ensure the originality location of the resources to bring transparency and trust from the point of production to the market. It's basically VeChain built into the Cardano ecosystem, with Vechain having more serious partnerships and more marketing strength. On April, Cardano Foundation has also announce partnership with Scantrust, a supply chain traceability solution which also partners with HP, Hyperledger and SAP to allow promotion of an ethical approach to consumer goods.

5. Massive partnerships with governments & institutions

One of the biggest use cases of Cardano is the fact that governments are also utilizing Cardano's blockcahin technology in their services. Ethiopia is one of the first countries in Africa that will utilize ATALA Prism by onboarding 5 million students to give them blockchain-based IDs, which allows authorities to track every student's academic performance. This will resolve the issue of fake certifications, which is a serious problem in Ethiopia. IOHK has also signed a MoU with Mongolia's Blockchain Technology & Cryptocurrency Association to implement and foster blockchain development and education in Mongolia. Georgia also signed a MoU with a university in Georgia to use Cardano and Atala to build a credential verification system for Georgia. IOHK is also mentioned in one project called Priviledge, where consortiums partner to push the limits of cryptographic protocols for privacy and security, and it's funded by the European Union. With World Mobile, Cardano is also banking the unbanked in rural, poorer countries such as Zanzibar and Tanzania to have more people easy access to financial services.

6. Interoperability

Cardano might not be a Polkadot or a Cosmos, but it's partnership with Ergo is mutually beneficial. Ergo can utilize Cardano's PoS transaction finality and DApp ecosystem for scalability, while Cardano can utilize Ergo's oracle, privacy and stablecoin solutions to make a complete blockchain ecosystem. Nervos (CKB) has also announced a cross-chain bridge to Cardano to access different types of features unique to their blockchain system to expand their dApp and user bases. Even there's also a rumor of a partnership with Solana when Charles Hoskinson tweeted to want to learn more about their system, while previously he discussed good things about Polkadot, Algorand and many others in the blockchain space. One of the news that you don't see any other blockchain are doing is Milkomeda, where you can wrap smart contracts instead of wrap tokens to use in other blockchains. This feature brings an advantage to execute smart contracts on a sidechain, without the need to move over to the blockchain itself. Think of using any Ethereum dApps running on Ethereum using Metamask, but you can execute smart contracts straight from the Cardano mainnet which is paid in wrapped ADA which is faster, cheaper and safer, then creates a block back to the Ethereum blockchain.

I can actually go on and on, but I think these information justify well enough about why Cardano is going to be one of the biggest blockchains in the crypto space. I haven't even mention the future implementations of Cardano to build the most complete blockchain ecosystem.

On the other hand, here's also some Devil Advocate's thoughts on why you might not want to invest.

1. Slow Implementation of Ideas

While I don't see this as a problem, building a completely different blockchain system especially to Ethereum's model takes time. Other blockchain ecosystems might have better ways to solve all the issues especially on scalability, sustainability, interoperability and security faster than Cardano, but so far, all blockchain systems have their pros and cons, so it always depends on which type of blockchain fits your investment criteria best. Not everyone likes to take things slow, but it's necessary to build the best blockchain out there, and Cardano is definitely showing that.

2. Transaction fees and speed

While Cardano is definitely faster, cheaper, more scalable and secure than Ethereum's and Bitcoin's current models, much has not been said in comparison with the other PoS blockchains such as Terra, Solana, Avalanche, Elrond, Harmony ONE, Fantom and many more. Most of them are either comparable in speeds and fees to Cardano, or even faster and cheaper than Cardano. The beauty of Cardano's transaction fee calculation, where it is based on a linear equation that you learnt from your high school days (which is something like y = mx+c), where c = 0.155381ADA, x = size of the transaction in bytes and m = 0.000043947 ADA/Byte. This shows a linear relationship between the transaction size and fees, where the minimum fees is at least 0.15 ADA (which is currently around $0.39 fee as of a $2.60 price), while also making fees more predictable as compared to Ethereum's unpredictable fees due to network traffic. If ADA price increases, so do the transaction fees. However, this is also considered a short term problem, as smart contracts released, so do the transaction fees revenue, and the fees can be reduced as a balance between rewards and fees. Furthermore, with Hydra's layer 2 solution of implementing sidechains to the mix, transactions can be made off-chain and will have hyper fast and super cheap fees without sacrificing network security.

Many people also might point to why their transfers take minutes in between wallets to exchanges. That's because the transaction normally has to be approved by the exchange itself before it can reflect on your wallet. So far, for transferring ADA from wallet to wallet, it only takes a settlement time of less than 10 seconds, which is decent enough to not feel slow, while the performance is optimal to prevent spam. In summary, you'll have to decide whether near instant finality settlement times with almost zero fees that you can use now matters a lot to you, because Cardano will still need some time for layer 2 solutions to be implemented.

3. A whole new challenge for developers to built on Cardano

Due to the nature of Cardano's smart contract design, developers will be advised to master the fundamentals of the Haskell programming language before learning Plutus for a better understanding of how to build DApps in Cardano. In comparison to other programming languages such as Javascript, C++, Rust and others, it's still comparatively less popular, especially to the people who are not programmers. Coupled with the recent talk about concurrency issues, this makes it more challenging for developers to build a workaround on how to build proper DApps on an eUTXO model, to which no blockchain has ever done it successfully on a large user scale. The good thing is that smart contracts will be live for developers to test the waters and it will still take time to figure out the best solutions that fits their applications. Learn about why Cardano is using Haskell here and how concurrency works.

Summary

Cardano has been the center of love and hate from every crypto investors out there. The people who love Cardano will love its scientific, peer-reviewed methods of implementing their ideas to build a blockchain, a staking mechanism that is very very low risk and earns you rewards consistently, and the DApp ecosystem that is going to be build not just making tons of money, but is also mission-driven to help communities especially in poorer countries to have access to financial services and infrastructure and beyond. The people who hate Cardano normally makes tons of baseless noise while do not provide sufficient and technical criticism to show why Cardano is as bad as they think it is as they do not understand fully how it will be successful. It's up to you to decide whether if you think Cardano is one of the best blockchain projects out there, or it's just way too overvalued or it will never succeed.

To me, it's just a very well-thought out blockchain system that so far I have the best risk-free staking experience, that is fast and cheap enough to transact currently, a lot of very exciting and interesting dApps to participate that brings social and economical benefits around the world on top of accumulating wealth. Best of all, I never had a single failed transaction that loses my money, nor is there a network issue of sorts. It's overall simple to use and worry-free. That's the key to mass user adoption. Hopefully, once smart contracts are live, developers are able to execute their applications seamlessly, even though there will be roadblocks and some minor bugs here and there with a new type of blockchain model that hasn't been tested on a large scale. Cardano will be the reason every other blockchain will elevate their own game and make the whole crypto space a much more decentralized, secure and scalable ecosystem.

That's all for this article. You'll be surprised that I only covered maybe half of what Cardano really is about because I haven't gone through the technical discussions behind how Cardano works in detail. I'll leave some useful links down below to get started on this:

Cardano Docs

IOHK Blog

dcSpark

Cardanians.io

The Crypto Drip

Plutus Documentation

Cardano StackExchange

Plutus Pioneer Program

RE or btc, that is the question

Over the last few weeks I got into discussions on real estate vs bitcoin.
I am bullish real estate. I also sold an investment property to buy bitcoin. The million sat question:

If I did NOT own a home, would I buy a home now or buy bitcoin? My answer: bitcoin. Here's why.

1. The factors that are making real estate go up are the same factors that make bitcoin go up. Bitcoin just goes up harder and faster when these factors happen.
2. Not being a jerk, and I think real estate goes much higher, but I have a lot more friends who have been saying real estate will crash over the last 5 years who then bought a house within the last 12 months.
3. The only exception to this idea-of buying real estate instead of bitcoin- is luxury real estate with at least 10 to 1 but hopefully 20 to 1 leverage. This is not possible for the majority of first time buyers.
4. Bitcoin allows an expansion of a position; Got a bonus check? into bitcoin. Yes, you could buy a reit I guess, but besides that it's hard to dca or throw extra towards real estate.
5. Bitcoin allows mobility-for many people, I think they are wildly understating how important this will be over the next decade.
6. As bitcoin matures and lending products get longer terms and higher ltv, the price of bitcoin might explode even higher. Real estate is tapped out in this respect.
7. A life changing event happens-you get sick, divorced, married, want to take time off, whatever-it's hard to do this as a landlord. Believe me. My tenants (and they aren't bad) need attention. Literally have a hard time fixing the most basic things. Don't think property management companies are turn-key.
8. Go back to #2. Add that most people own one home. People who come into bitcoin accumulate hard. The supply getting sucked up relative to real estate is on another level.
9. I know multiple people who consider themselves conservative who have 90% of their wealth in real estate. I know no one who is worth more than $500k who has more than 10% of their net worth in btc.
10. In 4-5 years I believe the majority of phones will come with digital wallets. I don't see this happening for real estate.

Money and the ascent of Bitcoin

This post aims to answer the commonly asked question of whether bitcoin is money or not? To do so, we first provide a basic understanding of money: what money is, its importance, the process by which a good becomes money, the necessary characteristics for it to do so, and the main types of money that have historically existed.

Afterwards, we briefly describe Bitcoin and proceed to answer the core question of this post on whether it can be considered money or not.

Exchange and Money

Barter

Barter is the simplest form of exchange; it refers to the transfer of a good or service for another good or service. For this reason, it is typically considered direct exchange since no third object partakes of the transaction.

Barter requires cooperation between individuals and double coincidence of wants, i.e., that both parties have and are willing to exchange the good or service that the other party desires for the good or service that the other party possesses. Therefore, this form of exchange involves high transaction costs due to the opportunity cost incurred in finding an individual with whom to make the barter.

Indirect Exchange and money

These high transaction costs involved in the bartering process led to the emergence and prevalence of indirect exchange, i.e., a type of exchange in which a good or service is exchanged for a more widely acceptable item, which can be subsequently used to exchange for the goods or services desired. Therefore, for indirect exchange to occur, acquired goods must be more marketable than those surrendered. As the greater the marketability of a good, the more it will facilitate the final objective: the acquisition of the desired good or service.

In this way, in indirect exchange systems, the most marketable goods became a media of exchange, i.e., widely accepted. At the same time, as these goods became more widely accepted they further increased their marketability, bolstering their position as a medium of exchange. And, in turn, displaced those goods with lower marketability as means of exchange. Thus, leading to an inevitable scenario in which only a single good was universally employed as a medium of exchange: money.

Functions of money and their development

Therefore, we can define money as a generally accepted medium of exchange. Nonetheless, in several definitions of money, two secondary functions are attributed to it:

1. Store of value: It allows to transmit value through time and space.
2. Unit of account: It permits the valuation of goods and services.

Notwithstanding, for a good to become money, it is not necessary that it initially fulfills all the above functions. Indeed, goods are converted into money through a process by which they usually acquire some of these functions first, and then others are subsequently developed. In addition, the acquisition of new functions establishes synergies with the previous ones, reinforcing and consolidating their position.

For example, as the practice of using a good as a medium of exchange becomes widespread, people begin to hold it in preference to others, thus developing its function as a store of value and reinforcing its function as a medium of exchange. As a result, acceptability becomes more widespread leading economic agents to set prices using this good as a reference, thereby becoming a unit of account.

On the other hand, for a good whose value is relatively stable, there will be economic agents interested in buying it not to satisfy their most direct needs, but to maintain their future purchasing power. In this way, it will be accepted by a growing number of agents and, therefore, become a medium of exchange. And, thus, economic agents begin to treat it as a unit of account.

Properties of money

Nevertheless, for money to fulfill the above functions, it must meet various characteristic requirements:

1. Portability: It must be possible to transport or accumulate a large amount of value in a small amount of space, thereby facilitating transferability and hoarding.
2. Divisibility: Money should be divisible into different units to enable precise pricing and facilitate transactions.
3. Uniformity: It must be easy to identify units of money having the same value, enabling the counterparty receiving the money to promptly discern its value. Thus, facilitating its transferability.
4. Durability: It must remain intact over time without physically degrading or disappearing, therefore favoring its hoarding.

Types of Money

This subsection is merely for informational purposes and is not relevant for the understanding of the later sections of the post. Readers who wish to do so may omit it by jumping to Cryptography as a means of privacy and the emergence of Bitcoin section.

Throughout history, money has taken many forms. Although today fiat money is the norm, commodity money characterized much of earlier history.

Commodity money

Commodity money refers to real units of a specific commodity universally accepted as a counterpart for goods and services. Accordingly, commodity money has intrinsic value. Historically, a myriad of commodities has served at one time or another as a medium of exchange: animal skins, salt, barley, tea, gold, silver, tobacco, etc.

As economies became more complex, increasing the number of payments, commodity money became cumbersome. The quality of the metals was continually tested to ensure that they had not been tampered with or that they were not of a lower grade than assumed. On the other hand, agricultural products were relatively difficult to transport compared to metals because of their lower unit value. For this reason, two alternatives emerged that sought to solve these problems: coinage and representative money.

Coinage was a revolutionary invention that changed people's way of thought. Coinage seems to have first occurred in the Kingdom of Lydia around 600 BC when the first electrum coins were minted, a natural alloy of gold and silver. (recent findings suggest that coinage may have originated in China a few years earlier, near Guanzhuang in Henan province). Consequently, metallic coins are a type of commodity money, which is highly transportable and divisible. Moreover, minted coins contained a mark that guaranteed their weight and purity, i.e., their value, thus solving the uniformity problem that untreated metals faced.

Representative money

Representative money is money whose value does not derive from the value of the material it is made of, but from what it represents, since each monetary unit is supposed to represent a fixed quantity of something that has real value.

Some scholars have suggested that this form of money pre-dates coinage. In the ancient empires of Babylon, Egypt, China, and India temples, and palaces were considered inviolable, the former due to religious reasons and the latter due to the heavy protection they possessed. Therefore, they became safe places to store precious goods. Depositors received a certificate attesting deposits, which was a claim to the deposited goods. These certificates have been associated with multiple objects which were used in international trade, such as glazed scarabs in Egypt and cylindrical seals in Babylon and India. For this reason, these certificates are believed to have been used as a means of payment. Furthermore, due to the implementation of the gold standard, representative money occupied a central role during the 20th century.

Fiat money

Fiat money refers to money that has no intrinsic value and does not represent anything of intrinsic value. Public trust in both the issuer and the money itself is what drives its value. Such trust can be attributed, in most cases, to the confidence in the future stability of money's purchasing power.

Some authors have defined state-issued fiat money more critically as credit reimbursable for the payment of future tax obligations. And, therefore, associating fiat money as a way of using a government's liabilities as a store of value.

In 1971, following the end of the Bretton Woods agreement, we find the emergence of modern fiat money. Nevertheless, in the fifth century B.C in Carthage, we already find one of the earliest known forms of widespread use of fiat money. This money was a small piece of leather sealed by the state, which enveloped a mysterious substance that nobody knew its composition except the maker. Only by breaking the seal, its composition could be known. However, in the presence of this event, this money was considered worthless.

Recent studies have speculated that the mysterious substance was, in fact, tin or a compound of copper and tin and that the wrapping of this compound was not leather, but parchment.

Cryptography as a means of privacy and the emergence of Bitcoin

In the early '90s, a movement called cypherpunk emerged. It was a libertarian-minded group that wanted to promote cryptography as a means of consolidating and increasing freedom. Cypherpunks published two documents setting forth their goals and ideals: The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto. In them, they promoted cryptography to increase privacy and anonymity and decentralized software to make their censorship more difficult.

In 1998 Nick Szabo and Wei Dai independently envisioned how these ideas could be applied to money, referring to them as b-money and Bit gold, respectively. For this purpose, they both envisioned a scheme in which balances were stored in a distributed database, and the creation of money was done through the solution of a problem, whose solution is easy to verify.

In 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper titled: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. In this paper, Nakamoto combined several previous inventions to create a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash.

At the beginning of 2009, Nakamoto started the peer-to-peer network. Moreover, he released the Bitcoin source code and compiled binaries on Sourceforge.

A concise overview of how bitcoin works

Each time a transaction occurs, the network records the Bitcoin address of the receiver and sender together with the amount transferred. This information is entered into the end of a ledger, called the blockchain. The blockchain is updated about every 10 minutes, and it is sent to every full node (computers connected to the Bitcoin network that verify all of the rules of Bitcoin).

Every transaction is encrypted with public-key cryptography and is verified by miners, computers connected to the Bitcoin network that secure the blockchain. The main objective of the miners is to fix the transaction history and prevent transaction fraud. This is done by solving a computer-intensive process by which individuals involved are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins.

Moreover, rewards given to miners are not always the same, yet they decline geometrically, with a 50% reduction every 210,000 blocks. This pattern was established because it approximates the rate at which gold is extracted.

Is Bitcoin money?

Bitcoin meets all the necessary characteristics required to fulfill the functions that we previously stated that money must accomplish. As a digital asset, it is extensively portable, being its transferability and accumulation easy. In addition, it is deeply divisible: one bitcoin can be divided into 100 million units, commonly known as satoshis. Likewise, the digital nature of bitcoins makes them uniform and durable.

However, the fact that it meets the necessary characteristics to fulfill the functions of money does not imply that it fulfills them. Consequently, before we can say whether bitcoin is money or not, we must first analyze whether it fulfills these functions: (1) generally accepted medium of exchange, (2) store of value, and (3) unit of account.

1. Generally accepted medium of exchange: As of today, Bitcoin is not a generalized medium of exchange. We cannot go to the bakery next to our house and buy bread with it, nor can we go to a car dealership and buy a car with it.
2. Store of value: Bitcoin has historically had severe price volatility, which is not favoring its function as a store of value.
3. Unit of account: The limited adoption of bitcoin as a means of payment and its price volatility do not foster its use as a unit of account.

Thus, we can say that bitcoin currently cannot be considered money. Notwithstanding this, given the attractive properties of bitcoin, we might ask ourselves a slightly more complex question: is bitcoin in the process of becoming money?

Is bitcoin in the process of becoming money?

In the beginning, Bitcoin had a highly volatile price, as it was a new, virtually unknown asset that very few people owned. Nevertheless, Bitcoin was an asset with quite appealing monetary properties, coupled with a decentralized scheme and a finite money supply.

These properties led more and more economic agents to believe that bitcoin could become a future store of value and, thus, decided to acquire and hold bitcoin. Likewise, the growing demand for bitcoin led to an increase in its popularity, which drove more economic agents to reach this reasoning, thereby generating a virtuous circle.

This process led to a decrease in the downside volatility of Bitcoin, as can be seen in Figure 1, rendering Bitcoin more attractive as a future store of value. And, thus, attracted new investors such as Tesla, which announced a $1.5 billion Bitcoin purchase in the 10K, issued on February 8, 2021.

Figure 1. Bitcoin Downside Risk

Consequently, the adoption of Bitcoin as a store of value is becoming more and more widespread. Once a store of value is well established enough, i.e., many agents understand that this asset is a good store of value, they can start to demand it against the sale of their goods.

Despite this, not many companies do offer their goods or services in exchange for Bitcoin. However, if the popularity and the trend towards increased Bitcoin price stability are not affected mid-term, an increasing number of agents will accept Bitcoin as a means of payment.

Finally, if Bitcoin's function as a medium of exchange were to develop, it would increase its popularity and at the same time solidify its position as a store of value. Enabling future economic agents to start accounting with bitcoin, i.e., opening the possibility of development to the function of unit of account.

Therefore, we cannot say that bitcoin is in the process of becoming money, but we can say that Bitcoin is currently in the process of becoming a store of value. That said, whether such a function is widely recognized depends on the maintenance of the trend in which it is now present: further decrease in its downward volatility without giving up its current popularity. Moreover, the development of other functions as a generalized medium of exchange and unit of account is still a long way off and is conditional on the soundness of the development of the store of value function. In addition, even if at some point the store of value function is fully developed, the development of other functions will still remain highly uncertain.

Figure 2 summarizes the process by which Bitcoin could obtain the functions of money and thus become money. Take into account that this figure is an abstraction and does not consider various factors that could influence this process, such as external shocks that could have adverse effects and the time that each transition could take.

Figure 2. Bitcoin Monetization Process

Recently, Taleb has argued that Bitcoin can never be a store of value, since its fundamental value is 0. In the next subsection we address this criticism.

Against Taleb's argument of Bitcoin's impossibility to become a store of value

In the summer of 2021, Nassim Taleb published a short article entitled Bitcoin, currencies, and fragility, in which one of his arguments is that the value of Bitcoin is exactly 0 and, therefore, Bitcoin cannot be a store of value.

To argue this, Taleb relies on the premise that the fundamental value of any asset is equal to the sum of the present value of its expected future cash flows together with the terminal value that the asset will have.

Therefore, as bitcoin does not generate cash flows, i.e., the mere fact of owning bitcoin as such does not result in monetary payments, meaning that the value of bitcoin only depends on its terminal value.

Additionally, according to Taleb, Bitcoin is a technology. Therefore, Bitcoin, like any other technology, will eventually be replaced by another. As a result, its terminal value will be 0. Consequently, Taleb argues that since its fundamental value is 0, Bitcoin will not become money.

Nevertheless, in this argument, Taleb avoids two important points: (1) humans are not completely rational, and (2) Bitcoin is in the process of becoming a store of value as we saw in the previous subsection. Taleb may be right, bitcoin may not yet be a store of value as such. But, this does not imply that it cannot become one, as we have seen in the previous subsection.

The reason behind this is irrationality in the early stages of Bitcoin, at that time it could be valid to say that Bitcoin had a value of 0. Nevertheless, multiple economic agents were attracted by it, which, as we have seen in the previous section, led to the start of the development of Bitcoin's store of value function. As a result, many economic agents already consider Bitcoin as a store of value, while others expect it to become one in the near future.

Such a fact is critical since assets that act as a store of value provide the holder with a service: the transfer of value in space and time. Consequently, as Bitcoin is in the process of developing its store-of-value function, this implies that the expected flows of bitcoin are no longer zero, but the implicit value of this service. Therefore, Bitcoin's fundamental value should be greater than 0.

Therefore, in the case of Bitcoin, we face an instance in which a collective irrationality has endowed this asset with a value that a priori it should not have. Nevertheless, as part of this process, the store of value property has begun to develop, which justifies that this asset has value, and, at the same time, this value allows it to act as a store of value.

Key Takeaways

• Money can be defined as a generally accepted medium of exchange.
• Ideally, money should also act as a store of value and a unit of account.
• Thus money has three main functions: (1) generally accepted medium of exchange, (2) store of value, (3) unit of account.
• A good becomes money through a process by which it usually acquires some of these functions first, and then others are subsequently developed.
• Not all goods can become money. They must meet specific characteristics to fulfill these functions: (1) Portability, (2) Divisibility, (3) Uniformity, and (4) Durability.
• Bitcoin was born in 2008 as a revolutionary means of payment since it was decentralized and pseudo-anonymous.
• Bitcoin has a known and finite monetary supply. Furthermore, it meets all the specific characteristics that money should fulfill: it is portable, divisible, uniform, and durable.
• Bitcoin does not currently serve any of the functions that money should have: it is not used as a general means of payment, price volatility does not favor it as a store of value, and because of the preceding points, it is not used as a unit of account.
• Therefore, Bitcoin cannot currently be considered money.
• Despite this, Bitcoin is in the process of becoming a store of value, due to a downward trend in its volatility that has led more and more economic agents to believe that its conversion to a store of value is possible in the near future and, in turn, has solidified its position.
• The beginning of the development of Bitcoin as a store of value arises from an irrationality of origin.
• If the current trend is not affected by external shocks, Bitcoin is likely to become a store of value in the near future.
• This would lead more economic agents to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment and thus open the way for the development of its function as a generalized means of payment.