Bitcoin Reclaims $35,000, Setting a 1.5-Year High as BlackRock’s iShares BTC Trust Lands on DTCC Website | #CryptoReport CW43 2023

In the fast-paced world of cryptocurrency, the past week has brought a series of developments that have captured the attention of seasoned investors and newcomers alike. Bitcoin has staged a triumphant comeback, surging past the $35,000 mark to reclaim a 1.5-year high, and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust’s listing on the DTCC website has set tongues wagging with rumors of imminent approval.

Stablecoins, on the other hand, have rewritten the narrative by surpassing transaction volumes of financial giants like Mastercard and PayPal, signaling a significant shift in the digital currency landscape. Amid these intriguing advancements, Mastercard’s exploration of Web3 alliances raises the question of how traditional finance adapts to this new era.

Yet, amid the excitement, regulatory challenges have also reared their head. Binance’s suspension of Visa debit card services in Europe and California’s considerations to cap crypto ATM withdrawals remind us that the crypto sphere is not without its share of hurdles.

Nonetheless, the cryptocurrency market as a whole remains resilient, with both Bitcoin and Ethereum posting substantial gains. The NFT sector is expanding, although trader activity has slightly declined. Despite the ongoing volatility, positive market sentiment prevails, indicating continued enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies.

In this week’s Executive Crypto Report, we delve into the key developments of the past week, providing insights into the crypto market’s financial landscape, regulatory environment, and an outlook on the critical U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision.

Preview of Finaconda's Executive Crypto Report Issue #8 (CW43 2023)

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Every Monday, we publish the Executive Crypto Report highlighting the latest developments, top crypto news, regulatory updates, and upcoming events (100% FREE).

Read this week's full report on our website: https://finaconda.com/finaconda-executive-crypto-report-issue-8-cw43-2023/6973/

bitcoins about to explode

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/17jksmd

He is pumping BTC

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/17jkvbt

Meet CoinCatch Exchange

Cryptocurrency derivatives have undeniably revolutionized digital asset trading, offering traders avenues for speculating on price movements, efficiently managing risks, and leveraging portfolios to maximize returns. One of the prominent entities in this dynamic landscape is CoinCatch, an exchange established in 2022, based in the British Virgin Islands under Linkbase Technology Limited. Positioning itself as a beacon of trust and reliability, CoinCatch caters to both individual and professional derivatives traders, committed to offering top-tier services and robust products that align with the ever-evolving demands of the market.

Setting itself apart as an appealing alternative, CoinCatch delivers superior features, particularly resonating with Iranian traders seeking an elevated trading experience. With a distinct focus on providing Nasdaq-grade liquidity and housing an industry-leading order-matching engine, the platform ensures a smooth and efficient trading environment. It's noteworthy that the exchange also prioritizes the provision of English language support and implements stringent authentication mechanisms, further fortifying its security measures and maintaining a safe haven for its users.

Notably, CoinCatch boasts a spectrum of notable features:

1. Sleek User Interface: CoinCatch boasts a user-centric design that fosters an intuitive Futures trading experience, enhancing usability.
2. Robust Security Measures: Employing a sophisticated technological infrastructure, CoinCatch guarantees the safety of user data and funds through stringent risk controls, ensuring a safe trading environment.
3. High-Performance Capabilities: The technical team at CoinCatch has crafted a high-performing platform capable of efficiently handling millions of transaction matches per second, ensuring reliability during high-volume trading activities.
4. Diverse Engaging Events: CoinCatch regularly organizes stimulating events and competitions, incentivizing user participation with rewards tied to activities like deposits, trading, quizzes, and check-ins, promoting an active community engagement.
5. User-Centric Approach: The platform dedicates efforts to conduct regular Q&A sessions, actively seeking user feedback to continually enhance its services and functionalities.
6. Round-the-Clock Customer Support: CoinCatch offers 24/7 online customer service, ensuring users' real-time trading concerns are addressed promptly, thereby fostering a hassle-free trading experience.

In summary, CoinCatch emerges as a preeminent choice for professional cryptocurrency derivatives trading, distinctively marked by its unwavering commitment to security, transparency, and user satisfaction. With its amalgamation of advanced technology, diverse events, and uninterrupted customer support, the platform presents an irresistible proposition for traders seeking an optimal trading experience. For a deeper exploration into the world of professional cryptocurrency derivatives trading, a visit to CoinCatch's website proves to be an enriching endeavor.

I've been hearing "what not to do" on the Internet for decades. Also, I don't trust therapists, but I trust my family even less than I trust therapists. Additionally, my family is insane.

I wanted to make one other post here for the night.

My mother has been telling me "what not to do" on the Internet for over 20 years. I'm not even talking about the weird stuff that my mother and brother pulled in 2011 when I started doing things away from my family. See, in 2011, I got to know people, and the manipulative, prying nonsense that was pulled was too much for me to bear. When I was in the hospital in 2018/2019, I expressed a lot of disdain for what was done in 2011. I was told to look at it like a mobile....You know, what babies have above their heads in their cribs. I was told that "the family structure was disrupted." One of the goals of my team in the hospital was for me not to see what my mother does as "malicious." See, "my team" wanted me to see my mother as beneficial to my life. Yeah, well, it wasn't MY fault that "the family structure was disrupted" in 2011. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about my brother on this subreddit, but it wasn't my fault that "the family structure was disrupted in 2011" when my brother was spying on my Twitter activity for no good reason and when he "asked me to become friends on Facebook" when I was most vulnerable so that he could spy.

One day around 2014, I built up the energy to get out of the house and after my day out, my mother passed the phone to me to talk to my brother. My brother asked me "what I did in the city." My mother was listening on another phone in the house. It's a team effort. Teamwork makes the dream work, and the dream is needlessly harassing and monitoring me.

I could barely speak when I was 18 years old! My father got angry and bullied me over what I had to say. My mother held it in and later shrieked her lungs out at me over what I had to say. My brother made fun of me over what I had to say. If I were to have done anything away from my family, then my family would've acted far more crazily than I could've imagined.

Anyway, as for "what not to do" on the Internet, well, my mother warned me of "the PATRIOT Act." My friend from school talked to me about "anti-Taliban humor websites," which were probably racist dribble, and my mother said "DON'T go on those websites!" I once played what I believe is the end credits song from Team America on my computer in front of my mother. My mother told me "Get this SONG OFF YOUR COMPUTER!" Then, when Wikileaks was all the news, my mother said "DON'T go to Wikileaks!" Then, when I got immersed in the brony world because I needed SOMETHING in my life, my mother told me "The FBI is looking into people who are DOING PONIES!" The brony world brought me much pain. Once I left home for the dorms, there was no need for the brony world in my life anymore. When I began looking into Bitcoin because it was something that INTERESTED me, my mother told me "Maybe, don't do that money on the net. The FBI is looking into people who are doing it! There's a lot of ILLICIT activity being done with it!" My brother tells me "You'll lose all your money!" I don't have any money to "lose," though, so he says a lot of nonsense.

Now, with the current situation in the Middle East, my mother keeps telling me "DON'T do anything stupid on the Internet! Everything is being monitored VERY CLOSELY!" She's not even telling me what not to do when saying that.

I hope I didn't say anything out of bounds with this post. This is purely about my experiences with my family. As I've said on this subreddit, it's something that continues though I don't want it to continue. I don't understand why I need to hear everything that I do that's wrong. I'm an adult. Children shouldn't be subjected to that, either, of course. My lousy psychiatrist from the past once said "She doesn't know how to stop being a mom!" regarding my mother when I had to take the bus to her office when my mother had broken her ankle. Oh, okay. I guess that's why that psychiatrist was trying to place me in a group home. That day, that psychiatrist had prescribed me anti-anxiety pills to take when I got so worked up, but that wasn't addressing the root cause of the issue. I'm talking about those family members who would leave that psychiatrist angry voicemails after my appointments. After my parents broke my door in 2015, I called the police because I didn't feel safe. The next day, I got text messages from that psychiatrist because my parents had to blame my call to the police on someone. Someone had "influenced me." What did the police say, though? "He shouldn't have had a lock on his door."

In early 2014, I called that psychiatrist when my father was following me through the house and harassing me all day. That psychiatrist said "If you call again, I'll have to increase your meds!" She was able to hear my father ranting like the freakin' lunatic that he was. So, no, I do not trust psychology and psychiatry. I know that that goes against what people feel in this subreddit. I had a psychologist bully me, harass me, and otherwise, treat me like absolute crap. She told me "Give me the money that your grandmother is giving you!" because my mother wasn't paying this psychologist with what was going on in 2011. She tried to get me to smoke marijuana. I don't care how "accepted" marijuana is. It doesn't interest me. Nonetheless, she told me "You don't want to feel more relaxed?" She tried to get me to go to this program and she told me "If you don't go to the program, you don't want to get better!" Because I was taking buses to New York City to be around events to have SOMETHING to do away from my family, I was to "take the bus" to some bus shelter so that I could go to this horrible program.

My mother thinks that "one psychologist" ruined my view of them. ONE? I've dealt with so many of those employees and they've all treated me the same way. They turn on you. AND!!!!! This is all when my family has been in control! And they've treated me like CRAP in regard to these employees that I was seeing. Also, my family members would leave these employees screaming voicemails about how terrible I was....and this psychologist used that against me in 2011. The psychologist had told me "Your mother said the police called. They said a lot of porn is being looked at at your house. That can't be you, can it?" GEE! I was so stressed! And that psychologist always waited until the end of the appointment to tell me these things. Also, I remember that psychologist's smile when I expressed my fear....My father was threatening me one day in 2011. He was in a state of psychosis. He said that I called the place where my brother had a job interview to ruin his interview and that my brother was going to beat the shit out of me. And guess what? My brother has stated that that day, he "was ready to beat the shit out of me."

My mother is still trying to get me to see a psychologist. Sorry. If someone is "young and male," it won't make a difference. The only people who I trust less than psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, and the like are my FAMILY. I had to deal with a social worker who tried to prevent me from leaving home for the dorms in 2016 and to accept a group home, by the way. That social worker worked at my community college. What business was it of hers? When I tell my mother this, she says "That's old news!"

By the way, my family is just insane enough to have a discussion about my father repeatedly telling me "I have one GOOD SON!" made sense because my grandmother had a favorite child that was not my father. Or to just watch as my father made his way upstairs to undo my Nintendo Wii and take it from me because he "heard that there might be something wrong with it" on CNN and I didn't want to hear it, and to comment on how "I was right." I had gone slapping my father's back, and he just kept at it making his way further into my room, undoing all the cables, and taking it because "my mother is just good enough to buy it for me." What he heard on CNN was the recall with the wrist straps that were too thin. Well, if I "was right," what the hell were they doing watching from the doorway? I slept on the floor out of depression for most of Christmas that year.

I've generally had to either go with my family's insanity because "going against it" would've more painful than going with it! If I said no to anything, then I would've received so much vitriol and harassment. When I spoke out against that psychiatrist for wanting to put me in a group home, I was told "You have seven classes left and you can't graduate." That didn't make any sense. Nobody around me has made sense if my family has had anything to do with them being around me. Recently, my mother agitatedly told my best friend "I treat him well!" My mother is SO concerned with how my friend perceives my mother's treatment of me.

Ten years, yes, I've now reached my 10th year in the cryptocurrency space.

The birth of this tweet was completely driven by a fleeting thought that crossed my mind just a moment ago. While typing on my keyboard, I was still pondering how to phrase the next sentence.

Ten years, yes, I've now reached my 10th year in the cryptocurrency space.

To be honest, I'm slowly growing weary of this realm. It's not because I'm repeating the same tasks every day, nor is it due to the intense market fluctuations. It's because I feel that there's a growing scarcity of innovation. People seem to be tirelessly searching for outstanding projects from years ago, making slight modifications, and packaging them as so-called new ventures. They only seem to mindlessly copy code, create their own tokens, swindle your Bitcoin while shouting, "Shitcoin to the moon!" and engage in reckless hype, speculating as they buy and sell. I'm not certain how many people are truly focused on building here anymore because I'm not sure when the term "building" turned into a punchline...

Lately, I often find myself reminiscing about the past. I remember how we used to share theoretical knowledge on Bitcointalk, how we'd get excited when we found an interesting token, how we'd use a significant amount of Bitcoin and Dogecoin as bargaining chips, and I even remember my first airdrop (NXT Coin), among other interesting things. Back then, it seemed like we joined out of a pure love for the unknown. But now, with the current prices being so far from what they used to be, everything feels different.

The current state of things seems to lack a cultural atmosphere and leans more towards commercialization. Trust is fading, and the market is filled with deceit and plagiarism.

This isn't a pessimistic view, of course; I hope for a better future.

So, now, I want to do something fun to pass the time.

I'm preparing to launch a barter exchange event. At the same time, I'll create a token, perhaps I'll name it "i Coin," and its total supply will be just one. I hope to use this to exchange for some interesting items. It could be your own NFT or cryptocurrency-related merchandise... Anything related to crypto that you can think of can be exchanged. Regardless of the price, I only hope that the things being exchanged are also fun and have a story.

When you have something suitable, you can contact me on Twitter. GNLEESANSUII

XenBlocks Whitepaper v. 0.1

XenBlocks: High performance Blockchain design with transactions at the speed of light v0.1

Legal Disclaimer: Nothing in this White Paper is an offer to sell, or solicitation of an offer to buy any tokens. Fair Crypto foundation is publishing this White Paper solely to receive feedback and comments from the community. Nothing in this document should be treated or read as a guarantee or promise of how we plan to develop or give utility or value of any tokens. This paper outlines the plan, which could change in any way at our discretion during the course of development. This paper should be read as a technical overview of XenBlocks project without any statements about any future events which may or may not occur.

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel blockchain architecture based on the hybrid merge of Proof of Work (POW) with Proof of Stake (POS). The focus is to improve the current state of the art of message overhead while improving speed of the cryptographically signed transaction confirmation times with asynchronous non-blocking state replication in Byzantine Fault Tolerant state machine. The paper proposes several algorithms leveraging the strong security of POW hash discovery to improve Sybil resistance while remaining fairly decentralized with strong immutability of transaction state. The proposed blockchain leverages Bitcoin block ordering merged with Ethereum compatible programmability through the use of Smart Contracts. Standalone tests indicate that transaction confirmation times as low as 200ms with throughput of 75,000 TPS using medium/large-grade node hardware.

1 Introduction

The state of the art blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum) often suffer from high gas feels, slow transaction confirmation times, block reorganization. While newcomers (Cosmos, Solana, Polygon) are often prioritize transaction execution time at the expense of data immutability. For example, Polygon relies on transaction settlement on the Ethereum chain, being defacto a Layer 2 solution. Solana while being extremely fast, suffers from stability issues and excessive consensus validation network chatter across their architecture. XenBlocks design introduces a concept of delegated consensus within a single blockchain layer, separating transaction confirmations (done by POS layer) from block immutability provided by the POW layer. We aim to achieve real-time (sub 200ms) transaction conformation times for the blockchain end-users, while delivering strong distributed data immutability, secured by well established mining algorithms pioneered by the POW blockchains.

2 System Design

As shown in Figure 1, the network includes generally used Proof of Work difficulty consensus, the POW group of miners is unlimited, allows anyone to join the network to participate in a race to solve a cryptographic challenge utilizing Argon2ID memory hard hashing algorithm. Participating miners help to secure the network in several ways, a). Miners jointly share the generation of the reward token - Xenium, which is used as Gas (transaction fee) which in turn reduces the likelihood of DDOS and Sybil attacks on the network. A miner, at their own discretion can stake Xenium to be elected as block proposers. The purpose of a block proposer is to package the incoming blockchain transactions into Merkle Trees, which are in turn validated (voted on) by all participating miners. Just like in Solana and EOS, the block proposer schedule is predefined with one POS node acting as a Coordinator. The Coordinator's job is to receive and sequence all incoming transaction while running as Active Coordinator. The consensus and strong data immutability is achieved by receiving a threshold amount of Votes by the miners, which examine proposed Blocks (Merkle Trees) for any errors.

In case of network partitioning the blockchain data structure is recovered by comparing the longest chains of blocks, with the longest chain winning when the network is repaired. While acting Coordinators in POS group are expected to run relatively fast hardware, the miners can be ran from home using any type of compatible hardware.

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Figure 1

3.1 Proof Of Work

Participating Miners, utilize Argon2ID, memory hard one-way hash algorithm. Argon2ID difficulty adjusts the memory requirement shared by all miners which is GPU and ASIC resistant in nature. Large memory requirements make ASIC development rather costly, while GPUs being 20-30x faster to provide a solution require relatively large VRAM allocation reducing the hash speeds as difficulty moves up. Miners are rewarded with three types of tokens, which are merged mined, XENIUM, XUNI and Superblocks (X.BLK). Tokens can appear in any produced Hash and do not require separate mining process. XENIUM is rewarded at the rate of 10 XENIUM per discovered block, while XUNI can only be mined at the top of the hour. SuperBlocks (X.BLK) are about 1000x harder to find within the generated Hash. Miners coordinate block inclusion into the blockchain using traditional sha256 hash of a hash process, where block's merkeroot is hashed with a previous block. All blocks are distributed across participating full nodes using P2P.

3.2 Transaction Ordering

Every transaction received by the Coordinator is signed by utilizing Keccak256 ethereum compatible algorithm, allowing for the use of popular wallets like Metamask, Rabby and others. Transaction ordering does not require Proof of History (in case of Solana) as generally accepted nonce counter is used as necessary part of the transaction. Nonce itself is hashed and is part of the transaction signature. The active Coordinator is able to order transactions by verifying nonce, insuring there is no front-running of double spending is possible by the user account. The Coordinator runs transaction verification by using the standard Ethereum libraries, if accepted adding transactions to the merkle tree along all other transactions. While there is no minimum block size, the Coordinator packs all transactions into the Merkle Tree data structure producing the MerkleRoot hash, which can be later verified by the other participating nodes.

3.3 Voting

While a set of coordinators propose blocks containing transactions, the voting for the block is done by all available miners at the time of hash discovery. The valid POW Hash acts like a ticket that allows the miner to vote on (and validate) the proposed block. A threshold amount of votes (10, 20, 40) is based on the current network mining difficulty is required for all blocks to be deemed valid and be accepted into the blockchain. Miners produce at least one hash solution per second and are chosen randomly by the network given the order of discovered blocks is driven the elliptic curve hashing algorithm (Argon2ID) is impossible to predict. The randomness of the solution discovery provides natural resistance to Miner/Coordinator collision. Miners are disincentivized at providing incorrect votes and are punished with Xenium reward slashing. Coordinators are disincentivized to propose incorrect blocks due to slashing of their staked Xenium. Coordinators receive rewards from transaction fees of every correctly assembled block.

3.4 Scaling

The network archives horizontal scaling due to the asynchronous nature of Miners and Coordinators. Shared network difficulty allows for unlimited number of miners to participate (just as in Bitcoin blockchain), where Coordinators are picked by the network from a group of willing miners. Coordinators do not ever have to wait for miners to include blocks in to the blockchain when confirming transactions. In the traditional blockchain designs (Bitcoin, Ethereum), transaction confirmations are produced by miners, which makes confirmations slow and transactions expensive. In the new blockchain designs (Solana) transactions, while being inexpensive cause excessive network chatter creating network instability and expensive hardware requirements for all participants. XenBlocks leverage algorithmic block voting without suffering from any of those problems.

3.5 Overhead and benchmarking

Rizen (consumer grade) CPUs are able to process up to 75,000 transactions per second without any need for specialized hardware like GPUs. Miners are often able to use cloud based GPUs with inexpensive consumer grade gear (Nvidia 3060, 3070, 3090, 4090). CPU mining is possible but slow. Block broadcasting is naturally asynchronous with P2P engines like LIBP2P gossip protocol. Coordinators at able to utilize websockets without much of the network overhead achieving near real-time network speeds using PUBSUB (Listener/Broadcaster) model.

3.6 Elections of Coordinators

Any participating miner can become a validator by staking Xenium. The POS Coordinator group consisting of 21 (or larger) of nodes minimum. The coordinator schedule is published ahead of time with active Coordinator staying in their specific epoch for at least 1,000 Blocks (16.6 minutes). Should proposed coordinators crash or otherwise disappear from the set, a new Coordinator is elected and placed in the waiting set. The schedule of Coordinators are broadcasted across the network with P2P. Any Coordinator that produces an incorrect block, either due to a bug or intentional modification of transactions is removed from the set, potentially slashed and a new Coordinator is elected.

3.7 Slashing

Any Miner or Coordinator that produced an incorrect vote or block is punished by reward reduction or stake slashing.

3.8 Finality

Transaction finality is achieved by the inclusion of the block into the blockchain becoming irreversible as more new blocks continuously added using gossip P2P protocol. The finality time is expected to be achieved within 30 to 45 seconds from the time the block is produced due to the asynchronous nature of the Gossip Protocol.

3.9 Censorship

Censorship of transactions could occur if a Block Proposer (Coordinator) is active maliciously. Given that the set of Coordinators is random, requires staking, this should rarely occur. To make the network of Coordinators harder to compromise, a random RPC node (or a set of nodes) is chosen to broadcast headers of all transactions to the network. Should the headers be inconsistent, a censoring Coordinator is removed from the set immediately and potentially slashed.

3.10 Smart Contracts

Modified version of the Ethereum client (Geth) is to be used to handle all EVM calls on the network. Transactions and smart contract state is assembled and replicated across the network with methods described in previous sections.