1984 is at your doorstep. Will zcash survive future mass surveillance?

Apple just announced that they will scan their users’ files and photos on iCloud for any evidence of child abuse and they will report their users to the police if they find one. That means they will indiscriminately scan your photos and other people’s photos even if there’s no reasonable suspicion to believe that a crime was committed.

The western governments now have the ability to indiscriminately spy on private citizens with their phones, computers, cameras in every corner, and more. They can turn on your phone’s mic and camera even if you are not using it.

Social media websites such as Facebook have your private life details and Google knows your search habits. Microsoft knows what you are doing if you are on Windows like 90 percent of computers users in the world.

Now the world is coming to accept a new form of currency that can forever track your financial activity with a blockchain technology. You know which coin I am talking about.

I know it all looks irrelevant but I think these events are all connected for a higher purpose. Private citizens are losing their fundamental human rights to privacy day by day because of new regulations and technologies.

Do you think that zcash can survive future of mass surveillance? Do you agree that bitcoin can be used to spy on private citizens if it becomes mass adopted? Do you think this conspiracy theory is far fetched?

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index is now "greedy" for nearly the first time since the crash down to $28k. Lets take a look at how the index performed vs the price, and think about what happens when the "Greed" index takes prominence.

So three months ago when the markets collapsed, I posted some commentary on the fear and greed index, and I looked back to see how prices had performed on similar times that the fear index more or less hit rock bottom. The title of my post was: " The Crypto Fear and Greed index is now at 12 (extreme fear). It has only dropped to this level five times in the past this cycle. So lets look at those dates, and look at the bitcoin price at that point and see whether each time presented a good buying opportunity. "

For those who don't know, the fear and greed index measures a range of factors to determine what state the market is in, and then each day measures the sentiment of the market from 0 to 100 - from extreme fear to extreme greed. Note that this covers not just bitcoin but also the major cryptos as as well (not that is really matters when the markets follow bitcoin anyway!)

https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/

From that study, there were five previous times (since the start of 2018) at least where the "Fear" rating had been at a similar level - between 5 and 16. Generally it was a good time to buy on these events, twice it happened to be the cycle price bottom. In fact, if you only had ever bought on those five days, your average buy would have basically been the average price of the entire last cycle (about $6,500).

So on my last post the fear and greed marker was at "12" (extreme fear) with a price of $37,500 or so. I suggested this might potentially indicate a good buying time, and of course when the price fell further there were a lot of "this post aged badly" type comments.

But remember that it isn't like we were in "Fear" territory for a single day. In fact, the "extreme fear" indicator continued from 13 May to 27 July (we actually went to neutral, then back into fear again, and now we have just popped up to greedy - hence I used the words "nearly the first time" in my title).

In fact, that length of extreme fear is the longest stretch of fear in history (again, post 2017. I'm sure the Mt Gox collapse probably triggered a longer period !) So if you made it this far, and you still have your fingernails intact then well done. If you kept buying and held your resolve, well done even more!

And further, looking at that stretch of extreme fear we had FIVE more times when the FEAR rating went below 12! As low as 10 in fact (which is probably "spare underpants time" on the fear scale). So let's look at THOSE times and see what the prices looked like:

20 May - FEAR rating 11: BTC price = $38,000

24 May - FEAR rating 10: BTC price = $33,700

30 May - FEAR rating 10: BTC price = $34,400

22 June - Fear rating 10: BTC price = $31,700

21 July - Fear rating 10: BTC price = $31,400

The average fear rating through entire bear range was actually about 20 - just your regular state of panic and dismay. So these were definitely extreme moments of fear, at least as measured by this range.

So for your interest, had you bought on the five days of most extreme fear in that range, your average purchase price would be a very mild $33,840. Around 15% up from the bottom at $29k or so. That is also below roughly the median price over the last three months, which I would guess is around $35k.

So now what do we do that the market is greedy again? Well here is the good news. When I wrote my first post I did the same research on what happens when the market gets to "Extreme greed". And it turns out, that when looking at those days, and asking "was this a good day to sell?", I could not draw any strong conclusion either way. For example, there was extreme greed when we approached $10k, before we blasted through on the road to $65k. So it turns out that given bitcoin's prospensity to generally increase and have bull cycles, it makes sense that the market can remain greedy without a price collapse for too long.

So remember this the next time (hopefully a while away) that the market goes back to extreme fear and everybody is calling for a $20k bitcoin again!!!

July 2021 Highlights!

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https://preview.redd.it/dgarni2iwuf71.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae186b53d44f2057527b300bc025bbfdd7b87c0b

July was yet another month full of exciting events for Tokenomy. Read on to find out what has been going on!

1.New Academy Videos

In episode 48, we learned about Bitcoin mining and the miner’s role. Watch the video here!

In episode 49, we learned about digital wallets which allow you to save your crypto assets. Watch the video here!

2.Tokenomy Earn Festival II is still ongoing!

You can still collect points from Tokenomy Earn Festival II! This event will take place from 8 July – 31 August 2021. We are giving away an iPad Pro 2020 as the Grand Prize and an iPad 8 2020, Apple Watch, and Apple Airpods as our Lucky Draw prizes. Read more on how to join this event here.

3.More benefits with the TEN Loyalty Program!

With our TEN Loyalty Program, TEN holders can now enjoy special privileges and benefits such as preferential interest rates on Tokenomy EARN! Click the link here for more details.

4.TEASER: New Way to Earn Crypto Yield!

In the near future, we are going to release a new crypto investment product for all crypto enthusiasts and investors! Stay tuned to our social media and subscribe to our newsletter, and be the first to know!

Thanks for tuning in to Tokenomy’s July 2021 Event Highlights. Keep a lookout for more exciting events we have upcoming in August! Stay healthy, and stay tuned to our social media for the latest updates.

Thank you,

Tokenomy Team

What Is the London Hard Fork and What Does it Mean for Ethereum?

EXPLAINERs

What Is the London Hard Fork and What Does it Mean for Ethereum?

3 days ago



Ethereum is upgrading soon, and this is one of the most anticipated events in the crypto space this year.

And for a valid reason.

Expected to take place at block height 12,965,000 on August 5 11:55 (UTC), the Ethereum London hard fork will drastically change how transaction fees are paid in the smart contract blockchain’s network.

At the same time, the upgrade will introduce a deflationary mechanism to combat ETH’s inflation and make the cryptocurrency more attractive to investors.

In addition to the above, some minor yet important changes will be implemented with the London upgrade.

In this article, we will explore what the London hard fork is, why Ethereum needs it, and how it will impact the smart contract blockchain’s network and participants.

Let’s dive in!

Why Does Ethereum Need the London Upgrade?

Before we take a closer look at the actual changes the London upgrade is expected to introduce, it’s important to discuss why the smart contract blockchain needs to upgrade in the first place.

As you may know, Ethereum is the leading smart contract platform in the cryptocurrency space that has been serving as the ultimate hub for decentralized applications (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions, and the non-fungible token (NFT) boom.

For that reason, it’s among the most active blockchains out there. However, increased popularity also comes with certain downsides. The massive user activity on the platform has placed quite some stress on the network, which has been infamous for its limited scalability.

As a result, network congestions have become the standard way to operate for Ethereum, leading to excessively high gas fees and slower processing times. While the London hard fork won’t fix this issue – as it doesn’t focus on improving the network’s capacity –, it offers a way for individuals and enterprises to estimate the costs of their transactions more precisely.

It’s safe to say that the Ethereum fee market has been rather chaotic lately. The current auction-style process to determine transaction costs requires users to set bids for their transfers, in which miners pick up the ones with the highest prices to include in a block. If the cost is too low, it can lead to senders waiting several hours (or even days) to get their transactions processed by validators.

The current upgrade seeks to fix this by eliminating this fee market uncertainty, which helps facilitate developer, end-user, and enterprise adoption of applications within the ecosystem.

And this is an important area for Ethereum to focus on. Unlike Bitcoin that is favored by institutionals due to its excellent store of value qualities, ETH is mainly utilized to deploy, run, and use decentralized applications and other solutions on top of the blockchain. Due to its massive ecosystem and extensive network functionality, Ethereum has experienced quite some adoption from enterprises and governments to date.

For example, while the Canadian government has been running a pilot on top of the smart contract blockchain to increase the transparency of research grants and funding information, the European Investment Bank (EIB) issued digital bonds on Ethereum. At the same time, the central banks of Israel and Thailand have both utilized the chain to test their central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

In addition to its blockchain network and dApps, it seems like Ethereum is trying to make its cryptocurrency more attractive to investors by aiming to fix its inflationary nature.

Unlike Bitcoin that features a maximum cap of 21 million BTC, ETH’s supply growth is basically unlimited. As new coins are mined with each block, the lack of a decent mechanism to control the supply’s extension leads to inflation and a depreciation of purchasing power.

The inflationary nature of ETH has been long criticized by members of the crypto community, and that’s why developers are rolling out a deflationary mechanism to attract investors by facilitating a price appreciation for the cryptocurrency in the long term.

In addition to the above, Ethereum developers have discovered a network function that users have abused. Besides fixing that, the project is also rolling out some changes in the London hard fork to get the smart contract blockchain ready for its transition to Ethereum 2.0.

It’s a long-waited upgrade that will introduce sharding and a shift from the current, energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to enhance the network’s scalability and throughput.

What Is the Ethereum London Hard Fork About?

The Ethereum London upgrade is a hard fork – a network change incompatible with previous versions of the software – that includes five different Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).

In the following sections, we will take a look at each of the EIPs and the related changes they introduce to Ethereum and its users.

EIP-1559

EIP-1559 is the most crucial, controversial, and anticipated upgrade of the London hard fork. And this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

EIP-1559 is the proposal that seeks to drastically change how the smart contract blockchain’s fee market works. At the same time, it will have a significant influence on ETH’s price dynamics and supply.

So, let’s see what all this buzz is about.

Base Fee

Earlier on, we have discussed how Ethereum utilizes an auction-like process to determine the prices users have to pay for initiating transactions on top of the smart contract blockchain.

Now, EIP-1559 will almost entirely eliminate this process and replace users’ bids with a base fee. Everyone within the network has to pay this base fee – which costs the same for all market participants – that serves as the minimum for executing a transfer on Ethereum.

According to the developers, this base fee will be automatically calculated based on the network’s current activity. Considering Ethereum’s current scalability and throughput, the ideal capacity for each block is a maximum of 15 million gas.

While EIP-1559 allows blocks to expand to a maximum of 30 million gas, the network will automatically increase the base fee by 12.5% with every block that is bigger than the ideal 15 million gas size.

On the other hand, when activity within the network decreases and a block contains less than 15 million gas, the base fee will automatically decrease by 12.5% with every block until it reaches almost zero.

As you can see, this change will offer a much more easier way for users to estimate the costs of their transactions as they don’t have to outbid others to get their transfers processed faster.

Although, it’s important to note that users can optionally pay an inclusion fee, which serves as an incentive for miners to prioritize certain transactions over others. That said, covering the base fee alone will be expected to offer normal transfer processing times for senders in most cases.

Interestingly, while EIP-1559 won’t improve Ethereum’s scalability, the enhanced accuracy in terms of fee estimations will prevent users from overpaying for their transactions. For that reason, the smart contract blockchain’s developers expect the London upgrade to introduce an around 20% gas cost reduction for ETH transfers.

Burning Transaction Fees

Maybe the most controversial part of EIP-1559 is how it plans to control the ETH supply.

As you may already know – just like in the case of Bitcoin –, Ethereum miners generate revenue in two ways: by receiving rewards from mining new blocks and fees for processing transactions.

However, after EIP-1559 goes live, miners will only get block rewards but not the base fees of transactions. Instead, the network will automatically burn all ETH spent on covering base fees without the option to distribute the coins to validators (miners will only receive the inclusion fees).

While this deprives miners of a vital revenue stream, burning the ETH users pay on base transaction fees ties the value of the cryptocurrency directly to the usage of the network. When more people utilize Ethereum dApps, the more users will pay for transfers, and the more coins will get burned (and vice versa).

In a bit similar way to Bitcoin’s halving that reduces the growth of the new supply by 50% roughly every four years, this is a deflationary mechanism that allows Ethereum to combat its native cryptocurrency’s inflation and facilitate a long-term price increase.

This is definitely good news for investors as they will be able to hold a coin with a projected annual issuance rate that is either zero or negative (instead of the current 4%).

On the other hand, it is possible that miners won’t be so happy about this upgrade. As they operate expensive hardware to maintain the network by solving complex mathematical puzzles, some will need the extra revenue from transaction fees to stay in business. While they will still earn inclusion fees, it won’t be nearly as much as what they would normally generate with auction-style bids.

For that reason, EIP-1559 is expected to drive away a portion of miners from the smart contract blockchain to another (more profitable) network, which can come in handy for Ethereum’s competitors. As miners cease their activities, it will reduce the blockchain’s hash power, which makes the network less secure against attacks if that rate falls below a certain level (although it has to decrease significantly to affect the safety of users).

That said, if EIP-1559 comes with major bullish movements for ETH due to the decrease of the supply, the increased profits from mining ETH will likely encourage miners to stay in the network.

EIP-3198

As the sister proposal of EIP-1559, EIP-3198 will extend the changes introduced to transfers in the prior upgrade to smart contracts.

Based on the changes introduced by EIP-3198, the BASEFEE opcode will return the value of the base fee of the current block it is executing in. In other terms, it means that the base fee structure is rolled out for smart contract-powered transactions as well.

EIP-3529

While it may seem a small change compared to EIP-1559, EIP-3529 is an essential proposal that fixes a functionality that users have exploited for a long time.

Until the London upgrade, Ethereum featured a mechanism that incentivizes developers to free up block space by removing smart contracts and data they no longer need. In exchange for doing so, devs can get a small gas refund.

If everyone utilized gas refunds in the way they were meant to be used, it wouldn’t make any sense to modify this functionality as it would provide value to developers and the network itself. However, that’s not the case here.

Instead, many users and developers filled the network with “junk” data at times when gas fees were low. After that, they waited until Ethereum experienced high usage and gas prices have skyrocketed to claim their refunds.

This led to the creation of gas tokens that have basically automatized this process and allowed developers to access low transaction fees even in times of extremely high network usage.

Since saving block space is crucial for Ethereum, EIP-3529 eliminates gas refunds for certain operations and reduces the sum developers can claim back to prevent participants from exploiting the mechanism and avoid clogging up the network with junk data.

While this is expected to make Ethereum more stable, it will very likely render most gas tokens useless as holders won’t be able to utilize them to access cheap gas prices anymore.

EIP-3541

Unlike the previous three proposals, EIP-3541 won’t significantly affect Ethereum after it gets implemented by developers. Instead, it is designed to get the blockchain ready for the transition to Ethereum 2.0.

EIP-3541 will automatically reject the deployment of new smart contracts starting with the “0xEF” byte while keeping the existing ones untouched. Simply put, changes introduced in EIP-3541 allow developers to integrate a new format of smart contracts (EIP-3540) more seamlessly at a later date.

Expected to be introduced with the upcoming Shanghai hard fork (projected to take place around October 2021), EIP-3540 rolls out a new format called EVM Object Format (EOF) for smart contracts that offers developers a way to validate code during the contract creation process along with other benefits.

EIP-3554

EIP-3554 is the last proposal included in the London upgrade that delays Ethereum’s difficulty bomb until December 2021.

Simply put, when the difficulty bomb “blows up,” it makes it much harder for miners to validate blocks and earn rewards by using their computational power and hardware equipment via the PoW algorithm. As Ethereum still uses this form of block validation to secure the ecosystem, implementing the difficulty bomb now would cripple the network.

However, since the current Ethereum blockchain and the new Ethereum 2.0 chains are expected to merge before December 2021, the difficulty bomb will incentivize miners to shift from PoW mining to staking ETH via the PoS algorithm to validate blocks.

Ethereum Gets Ready for ETH 2.0 With an Important Upgrade

It seems Ethereum developers are laser-focused on transitioning the smart contract blockchain to Ethereum 2.0.

What proves this best is the number of major upgrades rolled out for the network in the past few months. In addition to launching the PoS-based Beacon Chain for Ethereum 2.0 last December, devs implemented the Berlin hard fork in April that introduced optimized gas costs and support for multiple transaction types.

And now, the London upgrade is launching soon, which will enhance the tokenomics of ETH via a deflationary mechanism, change how fees are paid for transactions to offer more accurate estimates for users, fix an exploit regarding gas refunds, and get the chain ready for the Ethereum 2.0 merge.

At the same time, the Altair hard fork – the first major upgrade for the Beacon Chain is in progress to improve the efficiency of the PoS-based blockchain – is in progress and is expected to get implemented soon.

Next on, the smart contract blockchain will roll out the Shanghai upgrade in October 2021. Whether at this or a later date, the current Ethereum chain will then merge with the Beacon Chain, which will start the network’s transition to Ethereum 2.0.

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If you don't mind, a brief word on taxation.

What most voters don't realize about high tax rates is that the rich (and wealthy) don't pay them. When a rate gets high enough, they simply arrange their financial affairs as circumstances demand or, they simply leave. Therefore, high tax rates are SYMBOLIC, not real, for both individuals and businesses. They're designed to win votes and affect progressive imagery. If you have a problem visualizing this, then think about the various assault weapons bans we've had in America since the 90s and how utterly useless they've been. Imagery. Symbolism. And it's not just the Left that's guilty.

Tax havens and shelters should really be used by more Americans, but many mistakenly believe these to be illegal, or they think of them as exclusive tools for the rich and wealthy, or they simply have never put in the time to understand them. Well, they should, and something interesting is happening in the major tax havens. You see, with the rise of Decentralized Finance and the event horizon of interoperability encroaching, many of these tax havens have realized the enormous threat posed to their business model by crypto. As such, they've quickly enacted incentivizing (dare I say enticing) cryptocurrency legislation. And it's working. They've wisely done the opposite of trying to fight crypto with [failed] drug war tactics. Take the country of Singapore for example (population half that of NYC), and look at the number of Ethereum validator nodes operating there. It's staggering, and many of these nodes belong to centralized exchanges as well as individuals. Even Vitalik Buterin spends an enormous amount of time there. If Singapore had the cheap energy of say a Kazakhstan, Bitcoin mining would be raging in Singapore after the Xingjiang province crackdown in China. With the staking rewards tax legislation likely to pass here in the United States in September when congress is back in session, expect this to augment.

The Singapore of the US are the Cayman Islands, and the Singapore of Europe is Luxembourg, Switzerland, and oddly Ireland (not Northern Ireland, that's part of the UK). But several unexpected Latin American countries are wising to the benefits too. I was in Mexico recently (fuck I love that country I don't care what anyone says, I'll probably retire there) and was somewhat shocked by how many businesses accepted Bitcoin. Then doubly shocked by the Bitcoin mining growth. I was biking in the mountains east of Puerto Vallarta and suddenly there was this huge solar farm which I assumed powered the costal city. Later I found out it was "Jalisco cartel" property. For the "Beetcoin." A bit of business which apparently has helped see a large decrease in violence. There were others though, and one in this small town was really cool: so everyone in the town bought into it and owned a small share and were paid every evening on their phones. I don't know, I just wasn't expecting to see infrastructure like this in Mexico just yet.

So the whole purpose of this writeup was to ask the thread if they'd be interested in a small user's manual on cryptocurrency tax strategies (for educational purposes only) which will include DeFi techniques and simple offshore procedures. It would be geared towards Americans (sorry everyone else, I don't know your tax laws) and focus on the close proximity opportunities in Latin America and Grand Cayman. I'll collaborate with a tax attorney on this as well. I hope to make everything extremely accessible and relevant for anyone owning ~5 or more ETH. One caveat however, will be that the techniques will require users to mostly leave CEX's (centralized exchanges) behind, which I imagine many are not comfortable doing just yet. Anyway, I'd like to post it here next week, and I'll get my account/wallet linked to accept 🍩 too.

Lastly and unrelated, I hope many of you are following the major points of the SmartCon Summit that started yesterday. Some absolutely mind-blowing things being talked about there with regard to the EVM's top dapps. G'day.

My fantasy if I won $10,000 dollars

First few months I would find nice girls at the local soup kitchen and have sex with them. I will also be providing and using a vape pen during these meet ups. Quick fuck nothing less. After, I would leave in a Uber car and get food at restaurants like chili’s, Applebee’s etc.

After a couple months of homeless single moms and vaping I would buy myself a new PC and a couple hotdogs. I would play videos games during the day along with eating hotdogs. During the evening I would be sitting on my couch watching NBA games, and even buying pay-per-view of sporting events. I will also watch MTV too. Then I would buy a 05’ Honda and drink some V8. Also a sub woofer in the trunk. After that I would get a new toothbrush and start flossing, with some fly ass cubic zirconium chains and earings.

Next, I wanna go on cruises for 3-5 days with the all inclusive + liquor package add ons. I would just get drunk and eat at the buffet and go to shows onboard the ship. Also I would blow a couple hundred in the casino on the cruise .

After I get back from the cruise. I will travel the internet for a couple years. But before traveling I want to invest a couple hundred into stocks and Bitcoin .after that is all done and I am back from traveling I want to go see Disney+ shows every week and enjoy my time. After that I’ma just chill at home and go for walks and eat good food.