Every generation has its asset class, could Bitcoin be the one for the current age?Adulting never looked this good. (Photo by José Ignacio Pompé on Unsplash)When Julio Rodriguez was a young boy, he remembers fondly the Sunday dinners that his mother would prepare.Coming back from soccer practice on a Sunday afternoon, Rodriguez would be greeted with the familiar aroma of his mother’s asado.The son of a college professor, Rodriguez remembers growing up fairly well off, and what most would consider, decidedly middle class.But by the mid-1970s, Rodriguez, who was just starting elementary school started noticing that things in his family were changing.Instead of the prime cuts of asado that his mother would prepare on Sunday evenings, off cuts were used.Instead of a bottle of wine, his parents would now share a small carafe.And while Rodgriguez was still too young to know better, all around him, the once plentiful Argentine economy was being brought to its knees under the combined weight of excessive government spending, large wage increases and gross inefficiencies.By the 1980s, Argentine debt had risen to over three-fifths of production.And attempts by Buenos Aires to rein in inflation by artificially pegging the peso to equal the value of the dollar, not only failed but caused inflation to briefly cross 1,000% annually.Successive regimes tried to control inflation through wage and price controls, cuts in public spending and restricting the money supply.But those measures came to naught when in 1982, in an effort to distract a frustrated public, Argentina waged an expensive and ultimately ill-conceived war with the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands.And as millions of Argentinians, in particular those with fixed incomes, like Rodriguez’s father, saw the real value of their incomes plummet, the asset that many turned to was gold.The question now as central bankers, in particular the…
Archives for April 2021
Medium
Medium
Cardano Hard Fork “Alonzo” is coming at the end of April
Even after the recent hard fork “Mary,” Cardano’s development status remains “Work in Progress.” Founder Charles Hoskinson revealed details about the roadmap on his YouTube channel.Cardano is still in the middle of the large-scale Goguen rollout and has thus completed about half of its long development path. With the next hard fork Alonzo, which enables smart contract applications on Cardano, the network conquers the next major milestone on the way to a fully decentralized multi-asset environment. According to Charles Hoskinson, Cardano founder and previously co-founder of Ethereum, the developments are fully on the roadmap schedule. On his YouTube channel, Hoskinson confirmed that the hard fork could take place as early as the end of April.After the Shelley era, Goguen represents the biggest turning point in Cardano network development. With the last Goguen fork Alonzo, Cardano is finally entering the age of smart contracts: users can now set up decentralized applications (dApps) on Cardano. The aim is a user-friendly environment in which “non-programmers” can also create financial smart contracts.To this end, the developers have already uploaded the new version of the node software to Github. The version contains, therefore “significant performance improvements and numerous other minor improvements and functional enhancements.” The updates are intended in particular to reduce the CPU utilization of nodes and stake pools that process a large number of transactions. In addition, the new version would eliminate reward calculation breaks.The version is intended to prepare node operators for the next stage of development. Consequently, “the focus of current development work is on completing and integrating support for the Alonzo era.”In addition cFund, the investment arm behind Cardano, has the first investment announced. A total of 500 million US dollars has flowed to the payment service provider COTI in several financing rounds. FinTech has been working for some time…
Things you must know about USD Coin (USDC): A Cryptocurrency with a Stable Price.
USD Coin (USDC) is a stable coin that is backed by Coinbase and is one of the most trusted existing stablecoins. It is a fiat-backed Coin, and it is the most stable crypto in the market because its target value is consistently maintained. USDC is also a cryptocurrency that exists in smart contracts on the Ethereum Network.USD Coin, the well encrypted and protected cryptocurrency by the smart contracts, was launched in 2018 and is the first US Dollar on the blockchain. It means that the currency is redeemable on a 1 to 1 basis for US Dollars, and it can be used for all the possible uses because of its stable price. The donation process using USDC is transparent because the transactions can be tracked on the Ethereum Network.It is considered an alternative to the other US Dollars-backed cryptocurrencies such as TrueUSD (TUSD) and Tether (USDT). The current market price of USDC is $1.00 after a decrease of 0.01% over 24-hours.We know that virtual currencies are highly volatile. Restricting their participation as mainstream currencies mean these cannot be used for goods and services. Here, stablecoins are essential because these are common volatile cryptos. Their volatility is reduced by backing these with any stable asset. Stablecoins provide the investors with stable assets within the crypto space along with a higher transactional speed.The process using which US Dollars are turned into USD Coins is called tokenization, and it is a three-step process where a user sends US Dollars to the issuer’s bank account, then the issuer uses the smart contract to form an equal amount of USD Coins. Now, the newly formed USD Coins are delivered to the user in substitution for US Dollars.What makes USD Coin different compared to other Stablecoins?There are four kinds of Stablecoins:1. Fiat backed- All the stablecoins…
Monero: A privacy-oriented cryptocurrency. What can be expected from XMR in the future?
Monero, a cryptocurrency, was launched in 2014 to allow transactions to take place anonymously. Due to Blockchains’ transparency, it is usually effortless to track the payments back to their source. To solve this problem of privacy, Monero (XMR) was launched with the goal to obscure the senders and recipients.The current market price of XMR is $266.91 after an increase of 1.11% in 24-hours. It has a market capitalization of nearly $4.77 Billion and a trading volume of roughly $646 million over 24-hours.XMR is the most popular crypto known for its ability to provide anonymity compared to other cryptocurrencies. While undergoing any transaction with the cryptos, the recipient needs to disclose his public address to the sender that allows the sender to see the amount of that digital asset which recipient owns. It means that person can find out how exactly the other person is spending his money. That’s where anonymity and privacy are required, and Monero offers a solution.When a person sends funds using Monero, he cannot see the recipient’s holdings because the coins are routed through a random address created for that transaction only. Here, with the Monero ledger, a one-time address is recorded, and the link is not sent to the recipient or sender. They can only see other persons’ holding if the recipient or sender wants them to see by sharing his view key. Not only privacy, but Monero is also famous for its security because it uses the Ring signature as an extra layer of security. Stealth addresses are created for each of the transactions to ensure that no two transactions are linked.Besides, Monero aims to achieve the highest decentralization level where the user does not need to trust anyone else, and XMR is fungible. These specific qualities of the Monero ledger certainly have the upper…
Bitcoin Beats Bananas, But Mark Cuban Bets On Ethereum
The celebrity investor said Ethereum is “most like money” and believes in the power of NFTs and smart contracts.The ETH/USD exchange rate surged to $2,007 during the Asia-Pacific trading session Friday, bringing the Bitcoin Dominance Index to its lowest point since October 2020.The BTC supporters are legion on social media — but there is a dedicated base for Eth. This makes one ask — is it the year of Bitcoin or the year of Ethereum?We know this is comparing Apples and a decentralized platform, but a comparison is inevitable — you can support both horses and still speculate around who is going to win the race.Billionaire investor and co-owner of The Shark Tank and the Houston Mavericks, Mark Cuban recently appeared on the Delphi Podcast.Mark has revised his 2019 assessment when he stated he’d “rather have bananas” than Bitcoin. His opinion has changed on BTC — but NFTs and their smart contract capabilities really have his interest.“I was always positive on Bitcoin as a store of value,” Cuban said.“The whole banana thing was over the utility of Bitcoin — I didn’t see it as a currency. I don’t see it as a currency.”Cuban said he “hasn’t sold anything,” and he does believe in BTC as a store of value. However, he thinks we are in a new hype cycle — around NFTs and smart contract capabilities associated with Ethereum.“This is the hype cycle. We are in it right now… We already had a hype cycle for BTC and Eth in 2017… Now we have a hype cycle for smart contracts and NFTs… but it also becomes an education.”Cuban described his own attitudes on crypto as having evolved. For him, the lightbulb moment happened in January when he went to Mintable to start creating NFTs.“That’s what really got my interest and…
Medium
Medium
Big developments ahead for Crypto
In addition to large institutional investors, cryptocurrencies are also increasingly on the radar of large investment banks. Goldman Sachs CEO David Salomon talks about his assessment in an interview.For a long time, Wall Street viewed the events of the crypto sector rather skeptically or had problems taking Bitcoin & Co. seriously at all. Finally, however, more and more signs of a change in values can be seen. The most recent example is an interview that Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon gave to Canadian broadcaster CNBC. In it, he spoke of a “great development” facing the United States government with regard to the regulation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.In the interview published on Twitter, Solomon was asked about Goldman Sachs’ plans to invest in Bitcoin (BTC). The manager didn’t let himself be looked at. However, he revealed that his bank is keeping a close eye on digital currencies amid growing demand for crypto engagements from their customers.According to the current legal situation in the USA, banks are prohibited from offering direct investments in cryptocurrencies. These are considered to be volatile and risky asset classes. Due to these regulations, financial institutions can only offer exposure to crypto values in the form of custody positions for digital assets. These include, for example, securities or exchange-traded funds (ETFs). As long as the SEC is obstructing the approval of such a Bitcoin ETF, this possibility remains purely theoretical.Solomon hinted that this situation would change over time, but he didn’t want to speculate on what that actually means.I think there will be a big development. How this will develop in the coming years depends on the rules we have.P.S. You Can Support me For Free Through ALL of these Links and earn some Crypto/Money Yourself! https://allmylinks.com/zealdornDisclaimer: These lines are not a substitute for investment advice, investments…
What Made Crypto So Successful Since the Last Bull Run in 2017?
Remember the parabolic rise of bitcoin (BTC) from $1000 to $17000. For cryptocurrency stakeholders, investors, and crypto exchanges alike, 2017 was a phenomenal year because it was not just limited to bitcoin, the positive momentum replicated with Ethereum, ETH ($10 to $788), XRP ($.006 to $.257), and other cryptocurrencies. For several new cryptocurrencies like BNB, it was the debut year.sourceIt has been 4 years since then. In this period, cryptos have also braved the historic pandemic but emerged out of the worst financial scenarios with flying colors. Here is an analysis of what kept cryptos momentum on and what’s the way forward for investors and other stakeholders.Cryptos are not a safe refuge for black moneyThe popularity and acceptance of cryptocurrencies have defied the illegal tag. Much before the heydays of 2017, when bitcoin or other crypto traders were making unexpected gains and becoming prosperous, this theory was propounded as many, particularly those who abstained from investing due to fear or mistrust, were unable to digest the success of their counterparts. It was true to some extent but not the complete truth. Bitcoin has completed almost more than a decade, Ripple is also close to it, and there are many that have completed almost five years or more. In the 2017 bull run phase, the myth that cryptos are only for illegal trades got busted, and by 2021, it has become almost mainstream trading. The growing market capitalization worth and circulating supply prove the transition right.With bitcoin surpassing the value of fiat currency or even outperforming value appreciation, its use like money to buy a commodity shall not surprise. Now, the use type — legal or illegal — depends upon its owners. Fraudsters like drug traffickers were always there ever since the origin of fiat, and they exist even in this…
La La Anthony Has ‘Laser Eyes’ For Bitcoin
La La Anthony. (Photo credit: Tomas Herold)The list of celebrities getting on board with Bitcoin keeps growing, as does the tally of new retail investors. Of course, Elon Musk has by all appearances moved BTC value at least twice with his vocal support. Jack Dorsey, Richard Branson, and Mark Cuban have been cited in their support like human market indicators, but other notable entertainers and personalities have added palpably to the fervor online — Mike Tyson, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, Steven Seagal, and Maisie Williams among them.Actor, producer, New York Times best-selling author, and entrepreneur La La Anthony has teamed up with Gemini Exchange and is supporting Bitcoin, not just as a way to build her own finances, but as a way to help close the intergenerational wealth gap among Black and Latino families in the U.S.In a recent post on her Instagram (where she has almost 12 million followers), La La said, “Helping to create generational wealth among Black and Latino families like me has always been my mission. I was recently introduced to the team @Gemini and am excited to learn more about crypto and help my friends and family plan for their financial futures.”We spoke with La La to get insight into what is driving her partnership as an influencer with Gemini and why she believes in Bitcoin.La La Anthony on Gemini. (Photo credit: La La Anthony, Instagram)BZ: When did you first learn about Bitcoin?La La: “I’ve been hearing about (Bitcoin) for a while but I didn’t know if it was a fad in the industry or not. After studying the market and speaking with different investors, I decided to start investing about six months ago.”What was the lightbulb moment about Bitcoin?“My lightbulb moment was watching Bitcoin continue to grow in value and speed!”What do you see…