Let's talk about some of Nano's biggest issues. I also made a video about this topic, available here: https://youtu.be/d9yb9ifurbg.
00:12 Spam
Issues

Nano has 0 transaction fees, which could make it more vulnerable to spam.
Proof-of-Work (PoW) can be precomputed, which could allow bad actors to dump millions of blocks (transactions) on the network at once.
ASICs could be created to make precomputing PoW trivial for spam attacks.
Current node software and hardware cannot handle thousands of TPS (low-end nodes fall behind at even 50 TPS).

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Proof-of-Work is required for all transactions, which acts as a fee (costs electricity and time).
PoW takes a non-trivial amount of time, so precomputing PoW takes hours or days to generate enough traffic to actually affect the network (>150 TPS) for even a short period of time.
Nano nodes don't rebroadcast invalid transactions.
Dynamic Proof-of-Work allows legitimate users to have their transactions prioritized over spam by automatically increasing their PoW slightly if the network is congested.
As network scalability improves, more and more pre-computed PoW must be done to actually impact the network.
There is no single-blockchain that all transactions must be added to. Transactions are processed asynchronously, meaning that real user transactions can be processed separately from spam.
Creating an ASIC (none currently exist for Nano) costs millions of dollars, and is typically created to increase mining rewards (which Nano doesn't have). Why would someone make an ASIC just to attack Nano? Nano could also change the PoW algorithm to make ASICs useless. Memory-hard PoW is already being evaluated.
Remember that even just 50 TPS (which Nano can comfortably do) is over 4 million transactions per day. PayPal had almost 100 million users before it was doing ~5 million transactions per day in 2011

01:58 Privacy
Issues

Nano has no privacy. It is pseudonymous (like Bitcoin), not anonymous.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues & Outstanding Issues*

Second layer solutions like mixers can help, but some argue that isn't enough privacy.
The current protocol design + the computational overhead of privacy does not allow Nano to implement first layer privacy without compromising it's other features (fast, feeless, and scalable transactions).

02:56 Decentralization
Issues

Nano is currently not as decentralized as it could be. ~25% of the voting weight is held by Binance.
Users must choose representatives, and users don't always choose the best ones (or never choose).

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Currently 4 unrelated parties (who all have a verifiable interest in keeping the network running) would have to work together to attack the network
Unlike Bitcoin, there is no mining or fees in Nano. This means that there is not a strong incentive for emergent centralization from profit maximization and economies of scale. We've seen this firsthand, as Nano's decentralization has increased over time.
Nano representative percentages are not that far off from Bitcoin mining pool percentages.
In Nano, voting weight can be remotely re-delegated to anyone at any time. This differs from Bitcoin, where consensus is controlled by miners and requires significant hardware investment.
The cost of a 51% attack scales with the market cap of Nano.

06:49 Marketing & adoption
Issues

The best technology doesn't always win. If no one knows about or uses Nano, it will die.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

I would argue that the best technology typically does win, but it needs to be best in every way (price, speed, accessbility, etc). Nano is currently in a good place if you agree with that argument.
Bitcoin started small, and didn't spend money on marketing. It takes time to build a community.
The developers have said they will market more once the protocol is where they want it to be (v20 or v21?).
Community marketing initiatives have started to form organically (e.g. Twitter campaigns, YouTube ads, etc).
Marketing and adoption is a very difficult problem to solve, especially when you don't have first mover advantage or consistent cashflow.

08:07 Small developer fund
Issues

The developer fund only has 3 million NANO left (~$4MM), what happens after that?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

The goal for Nano is to be an Internet RFC like TCP/IP or SMTP - development naturally slows down when the protocol is in a good place.
Nano development is completely open source, so anyone can participate. Multiple developers are now familiar with the Nano protocol.
Businesses and whales that benefit from Nano (exchanges, remittances, merchant services, etc) are incentivized to keep the protocol developed and running.
The developer fund was only ~5% of the supply - compare that to some of the other major cryptocurrencies.

10:08 Node incentives
Issues

There are no transaction fees, why would people run nodes to keep the network running?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

The cost of consensus is so low in Nano that the benefits of the network itself are the incentive: decentralized money with 0 transaction fees that can be sent anywhere in the world nearly instantly. Similar to TCP/IP, email servers, and http servers. Just like Bitcoin full nodes.
Paying $50-$100 a month for a high-end node is a lot cheaper for merchants than paying 1-3% in total sales.
Businesses and whales that benefit from Nano (exchanges, remittances, merchant services, etc) are incentivized to keep the protocol developed and running.

11:58 No smart contracts
Issues

Nano doesn't support smart contracts.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Nano's sole goal is to be the most efficient peer-to-peer value transfer protocol possible. Adding smart contracts makes keeping Nano feeless, fast, and decentralized much more difficult.
Other solutions (e.g. Ethereum) exist for creating and enforcing smart contracts.
Code can still interact with Nano, but not on the first layer in a decentralized matter.
Real world smart contract adoption and usage is pretty limited at the moment, but that might not always be the case.

13:20 Price stability
Issues

Why would anyone accept or spend Nano if the price fluctuates so much?
Why wouldn't people just use a stablecoin version of Nano for sending and receiving money?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

With good fiat gateways (stable, low fees, etc), you can always buy back the fiat equivalent of what you've spent.
The hope is that with enough adoption, people and businesses will eventually skip the fiat conversion and use Nano directly.
Because Nano is so fast, volatility is less of an issue. Transactions are confirmed in <10 seconds, and prices change less in that timeframe (vs 10 minutes to hours for Bitcoin).
Stablecoins reintroduce trust. Stable against what? Who controls the supply, and how do you get people to adopt them? What happens if the assets they're stable against fail? Nano is pure supply and demand.
With worldwide adoption, the market capitalization of Nano would be in the trillions. If that happens, even millions of dollars won't move the price significantly.

15:06 Deflation
Issues

Nano's current supply == max supply. Why would people spend Nano today if it could be worth more tomorrow?
What happens to principal representatives and voting weight as private keys are lost? How do you know keys are lost?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Nano is extremely divisible. 1 NANO is 10³⁰ raw. Since there are no transaction fees, smaller and smaller amounts of Nano could be used to transact, even if the market cap reaches trillions.
People will always buy things they need (food, housing, etc).
I'm not sure what the plan is to adjust for lost keys. Probably requires more discussion.

Long-term Scalability
Issue

Current node software and hardware cannot handle thousands of TPS (low-end nodes fall behind at even 50 TPS).
The more representatives that exist, the more vote traffic is required (network bandwidth).
Low-end nodes currently slow down the network significantly. Principal representatives waste their resources constantly bootstrapping these weak nodes during network saturation.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Even as is, Nano can comfortably handle 50 TPS average - which is roughly the amount of transactions per day PayPal was doing in 2011 with nearly 100 million users.
Network bandwidth increases 50% a year.
There are some discussions of prioritizing bootstrapping by vote weight to limit the impact of weak nodes.
Since Nano uses an account balance system, pruning could drastically reduce storage requirements. You only need current state to keep the network running, not the full transaction history.
In the future, vote stapling could drastically reduce bandwidth usage by collecting all representative signatures up front and then only sharing that single aggregate signature.
Nano has no artificial protocol-based limits (e.g. block sizes or block times). It scales with hardware.

Obviously there is still a lot of work to be done in some areas, but overall I think Nano is a good place. For people that aren't Nano fans, what are your biggest concerns?

The LEDX for Level 3 med station is a little steep.

30+ Reasons Why Cryptocurrencies Are Worthless

1)It is possible to change the code through a miner vote or a fork and change the total supply or anything. DASH did it : they reduced the total supply from 84M to 18.9M a few years ago. They could also increase it to 999 Trillions if they wanted to so that millions of DASH are mined every week.

2)You can also fork bitcoin anytime , start over from 0 and claim it's the real bitcoin. (BCH , BSV , BTG , LTC , BCD etc)

3)Why would you pay $10,000 for a digital collectible unit called BTC when you can use BCH or TRX or LTC .. you name it. They work just as fine and cost less. There is no rarity like in gold.

4)Think of any amount you hold in ethereum as a gift card to use smart contracts on the ETH blockchain. Ridiculous. You’d rather hold a wal mart gift card or even simply cash.

5)Private keys may be bruteforced as we speak. Quintillions entries a second. When they’ll have enough bitcoins under control , they could move them all at once instantly.(At least 45,000 ETH have been stolen this way for now through ethereum bandit)SHA 256 is too old , bitcoin is 10 years old , it is not secure enough , quantum computing could potentially break it.

6)And that’s if people don’t find a way to create an infinite amount of coins to sell on exchanges.. it happened with monero , stellar , bitcoin , zcash , zcoin , eos , etc..

proofs :

“Bitcoin , Coindesk : “The Latest Bitcoin Bug Was So Bad, Developers Kept Its Full Details a Secret”an attacker could have actually used it to create new Bitcoin — above the 21 million hard-cap of coin creation — thereby inflating the supply and devaluing current bitcoins.”

Stellar : “Stellar Inflation: Glitch Leads to 2.25 Billion Extra XLM Printed”

Monero : “A bug in the Monero (XMR) wallet software that could enable fake deposits to exchanges has been recently brought to public attention through a Medium post”

Zcoin : Forged coins were created, but not exceeding 1% of the circulating supply. We will release further details on exact numbers when Sigma is released.

EOS : “Hackers Forge Billion EOS Coins to Steal Real Crypto From DEX “

Zcash : “Zcash Team Reveals It Fixed a Catastrophic Coin Counterfeiting Bug” etc..

7)Segwit , and especially Lightning network is a very complex technology and it will inevitably have flaws , bugs , it will be exploited and people will lose money. That alone can cause bitcoin to drop very low levels.

8)Then miners may be losing millions so they will stop mining , blocks may be so slow , almost no transaction will come though , and bitcoin may not have enough time to reach the next difficulty adjustement. This is reffered to as a death spiral. Then every crypto even those with no mining involved may crash hard.

9)Many crypto wallets are unsafe and have already caused people to lose all their investment , including the infamous “parity wallet”.

10)It is NOT trustless. you have to trust the wallet you’re using is not just generating an address controlled by the developper , you have to trust the node the wallet connects to is an honest node , you have to trust a Rogue state or organization with enough computing power will not 51% attack the network. etc..

11)Bitcoin is NOT deflationary. Bitcoins are created every blocks (roughly every 10 minutes) and you wil be dead by the time we reach the 21 million current hard cap.

12)Bitcoin price may artificially be inflated by Tether.

13)It’s an energy waste , an environmental catastrophy.

14)The only usecases are money laundering , tax evasion , gambling , buying on the dark net , evading sanctions and speculation.

15)Governments will ban it if it gets too big , and they have a big incentive to do so , not only for the obscure usecases but also because it threatens the stability of sovereign currencies. Trump could kill bitcoin with one tweet , force fiat exchanges to cease activity.

16)Most cryptos are scams , the rest are just crazy speculative casino investments.

17)It is pyramidal : early adopters intend to profit massively while last comers get crushed. That's not how money works. The overwhelming majority of crypto holders are buying it because they think they will be able to sell it to a higher price later. Money is supposed to be rather stable. That's why the best cryptocurrencies are USDT USDC etc..

18)The very few stores accepting bitcoin always have the real price in the local currency , not in bitcoin. And prices like 0.00456329 BTC are ridiculous !

19)About famous brokers listing bitcoin : they have to meet the demand in order to make money , it doesn't mean they approve it , some even short it (see interactive broker's CEO opinion on bitcoin)

20)People say cash is backed by nothing and losing value slowly , and yes it is very flawed , but there is a whole nation behind it , it's accepted everywhere , you can buy more things with it.

21)Everybody in crypto thinks that there will be a new bullrun and that then , they will sell. But because everybody thinks it will happen , it might not happen. The truth is past performance doesn’t indicate future performance and it is absolutely not guaranteed that there will ever be another bullrun. The markets are unpredictable.

22)Also BTC went from about $0.003 to the price it is today , so don’t think it’s cheap now.

23)There is no recourse if you’re scammed/hacked/made a mistake in the address etc. No chargebacks. But it might be possible to do a rollback (blockchain reorganization) to reverse some transactions. BSV did it.

24)In case of a financial crisis , the speculative assets would crash the most and bitcoin is far from being a non speculative safe heaven ; and governments might ban it to prevent fiat inflation to worsen.

25) Having to write down the private key somewhere or memorize it is a security flaw ! It’s insane to think a system like this will gain mass adoption.

26) The argument saying governments can not ban it because it is decentralized (like they banned drugs) doesn’t work for cryptos. First , drugs are much harder to find and much more expensive and unsafe because of the ban , and people are willing to take the risk because they like it. But if crypto is banned , value will drop too much , and if you can’t sell it for fiat without risking jail , goodluck to find a buyer. Fiat exchanges could close. Banks could terminate every crypto related bank account. And maybe then the mining death spiral would happen and kill all cryptos.

27) Crypto doesn’t exist. It’s like buying air. It’s just virtual collectibles generated by a code. Faguzzi, fugazzi, it’s a whazzie, it’s a whoozie.. it’s a.. fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It’s no matter, it’s not on the elemental chart. It… it’s not fucking real!

28) Most brilliant guys have come out and said Bitcoin was a scam or worthless. Including Bill Gates , Warren Buffet , The Wolf Of Wall Street…

29) Inflation is necessary for POW , BTC code will have to be changed to bypass the 21M cap or mining will die ! If BTC code is not changed to allow for miners to be paid reasonably , they will cease mining when the bitcoin block reward gets too low.Even monero understood it ,the code will have to be changed to allow for an infinite bitcoin supply (devaluating all current bitcoins) or the hash will decrease and the security of bitcoin will decrease dramatically and be 51% attacked

30) Don’t mix up blockchain and cryptos. Even blockchain is overrated. But when you hear this or that company is going blockchain , it doesn’t mean they support cryptocurrencies.

31) Craig Wright had a bitcoin mining company with Dave Kleinman (he died) and on january 1 2020 he claims he will be able to access the 1.1M BTC/BCH/BTG from the mining trust. He may or may not dump them on the market , he also said BTC had a fatal flaw and that by 2019 there will be no more BTC.

32) Hacks in cryptos are very common and usually massive. Billions of dollars in crypto have been stolen in the last 6 years. In may 2019 Binance was hacked and lost 7,000 BTC (and it’s far from being the biggest crypto hack).

33) Bitcoin was first. It's an ancient technology. Newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, distributed apps and more.Bitcoin is our future? Was the Model T the future of the automobile? (John Mc Afee)

34) IOTA investiguating stolen funds on mainnet. IOTA shuts down the whole network to deal with trinity wallet attack.

35) Compared to bitcoin other cryptos work just as fine and don't waste so much energy.

36 ) Everytime miners disagree on the updates it will create another version of bitcoin : problem of governance and legitimacy.

37) Cryptos are only legitimate if they act as a credit for a redeemable asset like USDT or gold backed coins.

While the native language of the writter is not english , I think you get the point and it doesn't make it any less relevant.

Failure, Chaos, & Bad Decisions: Why Dash's Horrible 2019 Means It Won't Survive 2020

What are Nano's biggest issues? Let's talk about it!

Let's talk about some of Nano's biggest issues. I also made a video about this topic, available here: https://youtu.be/d9yb9ifurbg.
00:12 Spam
Issues

Nano has 0 transaction fees, which could make it more vulnerable to spam.
Proof-of-Work (PoW) can be precomputed, which could allow bad actors to dump millions of blocks (transactions) on the network at once.
ASICs could be created to make precomputing PoW trivial for spam attacks.
Current node software and hardware cannot handle thousands of TPS (low-end nodes fall behind at even 50 TPS).

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Proof-of-Work is required for all transactions, which acts as a fee (costs electricity and time).
PoW takes a non-trivial amount of time, so precomputing PoW takes hours or days to generate enough traffic to actually affect the network (>50 TPS?) for a period of time.
Nano nodes don't rebroadcast invalid transactions.
Dynamic Proof-of-Work allows legitimate users to have their transactions prioritized by automatically increasing their PoW slightly over spam.
As network scalability improves, more and more pre-computed PoW must be done to actually impact the network.
There is no single-blockchain that all transactions must be added to. Transactions are processed asynchronously, meaning that real user transactions can be processed separately from spam.
Creating an ASIC (none currently exist for Nano) costs millions of dollars, and is typically created to increase mining rewards (which Nano doesn't have). Why would someone make an ASIC just to attack Nano? Nano could also change the PoW algorithm to make ASICs useless. Memory-hard PoW is already being evaluated.

01:58 Privacy
Issues

Nano has no privacy. It is pseudonymous (like Bitcoin), not anonymous.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues & Outstanding Issues*

Second layer solutions like mixers can help, but some argue that isn't enough privacy.
The current protocol design + the computational overhead of privacy does not allow Nano to implement first layer privacy without compromising it's other features (fast, feeless, and scalable transactions).

02:56 Decentralization
Issues

Nano is currently not as decentralized as it could be. ~25% of the voting weight is held by Binance.
Users must choose representatives, and users don't always choose the best ones (or never choose).

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Currently 4 unrelated parties (who all have a verifiable interest in keeping the network running) would have to work together to attack the network
Unlike Bitcoin, there is no mining or fees in Nano. This means that there is not a strong incentive for emergent centralization from profit maximization and economies of scale. We've seen this firsthand, as Nano's decentralization has increased over time.
Nano representative percentages are not that far off from Bitcoin mining pool percentages.
In Nano, voting weight can be remotely re-delegated to anyone at any time. This differs from Bitcoin, where consensus is controlled by miners and requires significant hardware investment.
The cost of a 51% attack scales with the market cap of Nano.

06:49 Marketing & adoption
Issues

The best technology doesn't always win. If no one knows about or uses Nano, it will die.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

I would argue that the best technology typically does win, but it needs to be best in every way (price, speed, accessbility, etc). Nano is currently in a good place if you agree with that argument.
Bitcoin started small, and didn't spend money on marketing. It takes time to build a community.
The developers have said they will market more once the protocol is where they want it to be (v20 or v21?).
Community marketing initiatives have started to form organically (e.g. Twitter campaigns, YouTube ads, etc).
Marketing and adoption is a very difficult problem to solve, especially when you don't have first mover advantage or consistent cashflow.

08:07 Small developer fund
Issues

The developer fund only has 3 million NANO left (~$4MM), what happens after that?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

The goal for Nano is to be an Internet RFC like TCP/IP or SMTP - development naturally slows down when the protocol is in a good place.
Nano development is completely open source, so anyone can participate. Multiple developers are now familiar with the Nano protocol.
Businesses and whales that benefit from Nano (exchanges, remittances, merchant services, etc) are incentivized to keep the protocol developed and running.
The developer fund was only ~5% of the supply - compare that to some of the other major cryptocurrencies.

10:08 Node incentives
Issues

There are no transaction fees, why would people run nodes to keep the network running?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

The cost of consensus is so low in Nano that the benefits of the network itself are the incentive: decentralized money with 0 transaction fees that can be sent anywhere in the world nearly instantly.
Paying $50-$100 a month for a high-end node is a lot cheaper for merchants than paying 1-3% in total sales.
Businesses and whales that benefit from Nano (exchanges, remittances, merchant services, etc) are incentivized to keep the protocol developed and running.

11:58 No smart contracts
Issues

Nano doesn't support smart contracts.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Nano's sole goal is to be the most efficient peer-to-peer value transfer protocol possible. Adding smart contracts makes keeping Nano feeless, fast, and decentralized much more difficult.
Other solutions (e.g. Ethereum) exist for creating and enforcing smart contracts.
Code can still interact with Nano, but not on the first layer in a decentralized matter.
Real world smart contract adoption and usage is pretty limited at the moment, but that might not always be the case.

13:20 Price stability
Issues

Why would anyone accept or spend Nano if the price fluctuates so much?
Why wouldn't people just use a stablecoin version of Nano for sending and receiving money?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

With good fiat gateways (stable, low fees, etc), you can always buy back the fiat equivalent of what you've spent.
The hope is that with enough adoption, people and businesses will eventually skip the fiat conversion and use Nano directly.
Because Nano is so fast, volatility is less of an issue. Transactions are confirmed in <10 seconds, and prices change less in that timeframe (vs 10 minutes to hours for Bitcoin).
Stablecoins reintroduce trust. Stable against what? Who controls the supply, and how do you get people to adopt them? What happens if the assets they're stable against fail? Nano is pure supply and demand.
With worldwide adoption, the market capitalization of Nano would be in the trillions. If that happens, even millions of dollars won't move the price significantly.

15:06 Deflation
Issues

Nano's current supply == max supply. Why would people spend Nano today if it could be worth more tomorrow?
What happens to principal representatives and voting weight as private keys are lost? How do you know keys are lost?

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Nano is extremely divisible. 1 NANO is 10³⁰ raw. Since there are no transaction fees, smaller and smaller amounts of Nano could be used to transact, even if the market cap reaches trillions.
People will always buy things they need (food, housing, etc).
I'm not sure what the plan is to adjust for lost keys. Probably requires more discussion.

Long-term Scalability
Issue

Current node software and hardware cannot handle thousands of TPS (low-end nodes fall behind at even 50 TPS).
The more representatives that exist, the more vote traffic is required (network bandwidth).
Low-end nodes currently slow down the network significantly. Principal representatives waste their resources constantly bootstrapping these weak nodes during network saturation.

Potential Mitigations & Outstanding Issues

Even as is, Nano can comfortably handle 50 TPS average - which is roughly the amount of transactions per day PayPal was doing in 2011 with nearly 100 million users.
Network bandwidth increases 50% a year.
There are some discussions of prioritizing bootstrapping by vote weight to limit the impact of weak nodes.
Since Nano uses an account balance system, pruning could drastically reduce storage requirements. You only need current state to keep the network running, not the full transaction history.
In the future, vote stapling could drastically reduce bandwidth usage by collecting all representative signatures up front and then only sharing that single aggregate signature.
Nano has no artificial protocol-based limits (e.g. block sizes or block times). It scales with hardware.

[TUTORIAL] -- How to SAFELY Claim New RNG Coins Using Your Private Keys

Which type of curren(t) do you want to see(cy)? A analysis of the intention behind bitcoin(s). [Part 2]

Part 1
It's been a bit of time since the first post during which I believe things have crystallised further as to the intentions of the three primary bitcoin variants. I was going to go on a long winded journey to try to weave together the various bits and pieces to let the reader discern from themselves but there's simply too much material that needs to be covered and the effort that it would require is not something that I can invest right now.
Firstly we must define what bitcoin actually is. Many people think of bitcoin as a unit of a digital currency like a dollar in your bank but without a physical substrate. That's kind of correct as a way to explain its likeness to something many people are familiar with but instead it's a bit more nuanced than that. If we look at a wallet from 2011 that has never moved any coins, we can find that there are now multiple "bitcoins" on multiple different blockchains. This post will discuss the main three variants which are Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. In this respect many people are still hotly debating which is the REAL bitcoin variant and which bitcoins you want to be "investing" in.
The genius of bitcoin was not in defining a class of non physical objects to send around. Why bitcoin was so revolutionary is that it combined cryptography, economics, law, computer science, networking, mathematics, etc. and created a protocol which was basically a rule set to be followed which creates a game of incentives that provides security to a p2p network to prevent double spends. The game theory is extremely important to understand. When a transaction is made on the bitcoin network your wallet essentially generates a string of characters which includes your public cryptographic key, a signature which is derived from the private key:pub key pair, the hash of the previous block and an address derived from a public key of the person you want to send the coins to. Because each transaction includes the hash of the previous block (a hash is something that will always generate the same 64 character string result from EXACTLY the same data inputs) the blocks are literally chained together. Bitcoin and the blockchain are thus defined in the technical white paper which accompanied the release client as a chain of digital signatures.
The miners validate transactions on the network and compete with one another to detect double spends on the network. If a miner finds the correct solution to the current block (and in doing so is the one who writes all the transactions that have elapsed since the last block was found, in to the next block) says that a transaction is confirmed but then the rest of the network disagree that the transactions occurred in the order that this miner says (for double spends), then the network will reject the version of the blockchain that that miner is working on. In that respect the miners are incentivised to check each other's work and ensure the majority are working on the correct version of the chain. The miners are thus bound by the game theoretical design of NAKAMOTO CONSENSUS and the ENFORCES of the rule set. It is important to note the term ENFORCER rather than RULE CREATOR as this is defined in the white paper which is a document copyrighted by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009.

Now if we look at the three primary variants of bitcoin understanding these important defining characteristics of what the bitcoin protocol actually is we can make an argument that the variants that changed some of these defining attributes as no longer being bitcoin rather than trying to argue based off market appraisal which is essentially defining bitcoin as a social media consensus rather than a set in stone rule set.
BITCOIN CORE: On first examination Bitcoin Core appears to be the incumbent bitcoin that many are being lead to believe is the "true" bitcoin and the others are knock off scams. The outward stated rationale behind the bitcoin core variant is that computational resources, bandwidth, storage are scarce and that before increasing the size of each block to allow for more transactions we should be increasing the efficiency with which the data being fed in to a block is stored. In order to achieve this one of the first suggested implementations was a process known as SegWit (segregating the witness data). This means that when you construct a bitcoin transaction, in the header of the tx, instead of the inputs being public key and a signature + Hash + address(to), the signature data is moved outside of header as this can save space within the header and allow more transactions to fill the block. More of the history of the proposal can be read about here (bearing in mind that article is published by the bitcoinmagazine which is founded by ethereum devs Vitalik and Mihai and can't necessarily be trusted to give an unbiased record of events). The idea of a segwit like solution was proposed as early as 2012 by the likes of Greg Maxwell and Luke Dash Jnr and Peter Todd in an apparent effort to "FIX" transaction malleability and enable side chains. Those familiar with the motto "problem reaction solution" may understand here that the problem being presented may not always be an authentic problem and it may actually just be necessary preparation for implementing a desired solution.
The real technical arguments as to whether moving signature data outside of the transaction in the header actually invalidates the definition of bitcoin as being a chain of digital signatures is outside my realm of expertise but instead we can examine the character of the individuals and groups involved in endorsing such a solution. Greg Maxwell is a hard to know individual that has been involved with bitcoin since its very early days but in some articles he portrays himself as portrays himself as one of bitcoins harshest earliest critics. Before that he worked with Mozilla and Wikipedia and a few mentions of him can be found on some old linux sites or such. He has no entry on wikipedia other than a non hyperlinked listing as the CTO of Blockstream. Blockstream was a company founded by Greg Maxwell and Adam Back, but in business registration documents only Adam Back is listed as the business contact but registered by James Murdock as the agent. They received funding from a number of VC firms but also Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman and there are suggestions that MIT media labs and the Digital Currency Initiative. For those paying attention Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman have links to Jeffrey Epstein and his offsider Ghislaine Maxwell.

Ghislaine is the daughter of publishing tycoon and fraudster Robert Maxwell (Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, a yiddish orthodox czech). It is emerging that the Maxwells are implicated with Mossad and involved in many different psyops throughout the last decades. Greg Maxwell is verified as nullc but a few months ago was outed using sock puppets as another reddit user contrarian__ who also admits to being Jewish in one of his comments as the former. Greg has had a colourful history with his roll as a bitcoin core developer successfully ousting two of the developers put there by Satoshi (Gavin Andreson and Mike Hearn) and being referred to by Andreson as a toxic troll with counterpart Samon Mow. At this point rather than crafting the narrative around Greg, I will provide a few links for the reader to assess on their own time:

Now I could just go on dumping more and more articles but that doesn't really weave it all together. Essentially it is very well possible that the 'FIX' of bitcoin proposed with SegWit was done by those who are moral reprobates who have been rubbing shoulders money launderers and human traffickers. Gregory Maxwell was removed from wikipedia, worked with Mozilla who donated a quarter of a million to MIT media labs and had relationship with Joi Ito, the company he founded received funding from people associated with Epstein who have demonstrated their poor character and dishonesty and attempted to wage toxic wars against those early bitcoin developers who wished to scale bitcoin as per the white paper and without changing consensus rules or signature structures.
The argument that BTC is bitcoin because the exchanges and the market have chosen is not necessarily a logical supposition when the vast majority of the money that has flown in to inflate the price of BTC comes from a cryptographic USD token that was created by Brock Pierce (Might Ducks child stahollywood pedo scandal Digital Entertainment Network) who attended Jeffrey Epstein's Island for conferences. The group Tether who issues the USDT has been getting nailed by the New York Attorney General office with claims of $1.4 trillion in damages from their dodgey practices. Brock Pierce has since distanced himself from Tether but Blockstream still works closely with them and they are now exploring issuing tether on the ethereum network. Tether lost it's US banking partner in early 2017 before the monstrous run up for bitcoin prices. Afterwards they alleged they had full reserves of USD however, they were never audited and were printing hundreds of millions of dollars of tether each week during peak mania which was used to buy bitcoin (which was then used as collateral to issue more tether against the bitcoin they bought at a value they inflated). Around $30m in USDT is crossing between China to Russia daily and when some of the groups also related to USDT/Tether were raided they found them in possession of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit physical US bills.
Because of all this it then becomes important to reassess the arguments that were made for the implementation of pegged sidechains, segregated witnesses and other second layer solutions. If preventing the bitcoin blockchain from bloating was the main argument for second layer solutions, what was the plan for scaling the data related to the records of transactions that occur on the second layer. You will then need to rely on less robust ways of securing the second layer than Proof Of Work but still have the same amount of data to contend with, unless there was plans all along for second layer solutions to enable records to be deleted /pruned to facilitate money laundering and violation of laws put in place to prevent banking secrecy etc.
There's much more to it as well and I encourage anyone interested to go digging on their own in to this murky cesspit. Although I know very well what sort of stuff Epstein has been up to I have been out of the loop and haven't familiarised myself with everyone involved in his network that is coming to light.
Stay tuned for part 3 which will be an analysis of the shit show that is the Bitcoin Cash variant...

[TUTORIAL] -- How to SAFELY Claim New RNG Coins Using Your LCC Private Keys

Your Guide to Monero, and Why It Has Great Potential

/////Your Guide to Monero, and Why It Has Great Potential/////

Marketing.
It's a dirty word for most members of the Monero community.
It is also one of the most divisive words in the Monero community. Yet, the lack of marketing is one of the most frustrating things for many newcomers.
This is what makes this an unusual post from a member of the Monero community.
This post is an unabashed and unsolicited analyzation of why I believe Monero to have great potential.
Below I have attempted to outline different reasons why Monero has great potential, beginning with upcoming developments and use cases, to broader economic motives, speculation, and key issues for it to overcome.
I encourage you to discuss and criticise my musings, commenting below if you feel necessary to do so.

///Upcoming Developments///

Bulletproofs - A Reduction in Transaction Sizes and Fees
Since the introduction of Ring Confidential Transactions (Ring CT), transaction amounts have been hidden in Monero, albeit at the cost of increased transaction fees and sizes. In order to mitigate this issue, Bulletproofs will soon be added to reduce both fees and transaction size by 80% to 90%. This is great news for those transacting smaller USD amounts as people commonly complained Monero's fees were too high! Not any longer though! More information can be found here. Bulletproofs are already working on the Monero testnet, and developers were aiming to introduce them in March 2018, however it could be delayed in order to ensure everything is tried and tested.
Multisig
Multisig has recently been merged! Mulitsig, also called multisignature, is the requirement for a transaction to have two or more signatures before it can be executed. Multisig transactions and addresses are indistinguishable from normal transactions and addresses in Monero, and provide more security than single-signature transactions. It is believed this will lead to additional marketplaces and exchanges to supporting Monero.
Kovri
Kovri is an implementation of the Invisible Internet Project (I2P) network. Kovri uses both garlic encryption and garlic routing to create a private, protected overlay-network across the internet. This overlay-network provides users with the ability to effectively hide their geographical location and internet IP address. The good news is Kovri is under heavy development and will be available soon. Unlike other coins' false privacy claims, Kovri is a game changer as it will further elevate Monero as the king of privacy.
Mobile Wallets
There is already a working Android Wallet called Monerujo available in the Google Play Store. X Wallet is an IOS mobile wallet. One of the X Wallet developers recently announced they are very, very close to being listed in the Apple App Store, however are having some issues with getting it approved. The official Monero IOS and Android wallets, along with the MyMonero IOS and Android wallets, are also almost ready to be released, and can be expected very soon.
Hardware Wallets
Hardware wallets are currently being developed and nearing completion. Because Monero is based on the CryptoNote protocol, it means it requires unique development in order to allow hardware wallet integration. The Ledger Nano S will be adding Monero support by the end of Q1 2018. There is a recent update here too. Even better, for the first time ever in cryptocurrency history, the Monero community banded together to fund the development of an exclusive Monero Hardware Wallet, and will be available in Q2 2018, costing only about $20! In addition, the CEO of Trezor has offered a 10BTC bounty to whoever can provide the software to allow Monero integration. Someone can be seen to already be working on that here.
TAILS Operating System Integration
Monero is in the progress of being packaged in order for it to be integrated into TAILS and ready to use upon install. TAILS is the operating system popularised by Edward Snowden and is commonly used by those requiring privacy such as journalists wanting to protect themselves and sources, human-right defenders organizing in repressive contexts, citizens facing national emergencies, domestic violence survivors escaping from their abusers, and consequently, darknet market users.
In the meantime, for those users who wish to use TAILS with Monero, u/Electric_sheep01 has provided Sheep's Noob guide to Monero GUI in Tails 3.2, which is a step-by-step guide with screenshots explaining how to setup Monero in TAILS, and is very easy to follow.
Mandatory Hardforks
Unlike other coins, Monero receives a protocol upgrade every 6 months in March and September. Think of it as a Consensus Protocol Update. Monero's hard forks ensure quality development takes place, while preventing political or ideological issues from hindering progress. When a hardfork occurs, you simply download and use the new daemon version, and your existing wallet files and copy of the blockchain remain compatible. This reddit post provides more information.
Dynamic fees
Many cryptocurrencies have an arbitrary block size limit. Although Monero has a limit, it is adaptive based on the past 100 blocks. Similarly, fees change based on transaction volume. As more transactions are processed on the Monero network, the block size limit slowly increases and the fees slowly decrease. The opposite effect also holds true. This means that the more transactions that take place, the cheaper the fees!
Tail Emission and Inflation
There will be around 18.4 million Monero mined at the end of May 2022. However, tail emission will kick in after that which is 0.6 XMR, so it has no fixed limit. Gundamlancer explains that Monero's "main emission curve will issue about 18.4 million coins to be mined in approximately 8 years. (more precisely 18.132 Million coins by ca. end of May 2022) After that, a constant "tail emission" of 0.6 XMR per 2-minutes block (modified from initially equivalent 0.3 XMR per 1-minute block) will create a sub-1% perpetual inflatio starting with 0.87% yearly inflation around May 2022) to prevent the lack of incentives for miners once a currency is not mineable anymore.
Monero Research Lab
Monero has a group of anonymous/pseudo-anonymous university academics actively researching, developing, and publishing academic papers in order to improve Monero. See here and here. The Monero Research Lab are acquainted with other members of cryptocurrency academic community to ensure when new research or technology is uncovered, it can be reviewed and decided upon whether it would be beneficial to Monero. This ensures Monero will always remain a leading cryptocurrency. A recent end of 2017 update from a MRL researcher can be found here.

///Monero's Technology - Rising Above The Rest///

Monero Has Already Proven Itself To Be Private, Secure, Untraceable, and Trustless
Monero is the only private, untraceable, trustless, secure and fungible cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are TRACEABLE through the use of blockchain analytics, and has lead to the prosecution of numerous individuals, such as the alleged Alphabay administrator Alexandre Cazes. In the Forfeiture Complaint which detailed the asset seizure of Alexandre Cazes, the anonymity capabilities of Monero were self-demonstrated by the following statement of the officials after the AlphaBay shutdown: "In total, from CAZES' wallets and computer agents took control of approximately $8,800,000 in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero and Zcash, broken down as follows: 1,605.0503851 Bitcoin, 8,309.271639 Ethereum, 3,691.98 Zcash, and an unknown amount of Monero".
Privacy CANNOT BE OPTIONAL and must be at a PROTOCOL LEVEL. With Monero, privacy is mandatory, so that everyone gets the benefits of privacy without any transactions standing out as suspicious. This is the reason Darknet Market places are moving to Monero, and will never use Verge, Zcash, Dash, Pivx, Sumo, Spectre, Hush or any other coins that lack good privacy. Peter Todd (who was involved in the Zcash trusted setup ceremony) recently reiterated his concerns of optional privacy after Jeffrey Quesnelle published his recent paper stating 31.5% of Zcash transactions may be traceable, and that only ~1% of the transactions are pure privacy transactions (i.e., z -> z transactions). When the attempted private transactions stand out like a sore thumb there is no privacy, hence why privacy cannot be optional. In addition, in order for a cryptocurrency to truly be private, it must not be controlled by a centralised body, such as a company or organisation, because it opens it up to government control and restrictions. This is no joke, but Zcash is supported by DARPA and the Israeli government!.
Monero provides a stark contrast compared to other supposed privacy coins, in that Monero does not have a rich list! With all other coins, you can view wallet balances on the blockexplorers. You can view Monero's non-existent rich list here to see for yourself.
I will reiterate here that Monero is TRUSTLESS. You don't need to rely on anyone else to protect your privacy, or worry about others colluding to learn more about you. No one can censor your transaction or decide to intervene. Monero is immutable, unlike Zcash, in which the lead developer Zooko publicly tweeted the possibility of providing a backdoor for authorities to trace transactions. To Zcash's demise, Zooko famously tweeted:

" And by the way, I think we can successfully make Zcash too traceable for criminals like WannaCry, but still completely private & fungible. …"

Ethereum's track record of immutability is also poor. Ethereum was supposed to be an immutable blockchain ledger, however after the DAO hack this proved to not be the case. A 2016 article on Saintly Law summarised the problematic nature of Ethereum's leadership and blockchain intervention:

" Many ethereum and blockchain advocates believe that the intervention was the wrong move to make in this situation. Smart contracts are meant to be self-executing, immutable and free from disturbance by organisations and intermediaries. Yet the building block of all smart contracts, the code, is inherently imperfect. This means that the technology is vulnerable to the same malicious hackers that are targeting businesses and governments. It is also clear that the large scale intervention after the DAO hack could not and would not likely be taken in smaller transactions, as they greatly undermine the viability of the cryptocurrency and the technology."

Monero provides Fungibility and Privacy in a Cashless World
As outlined on GetMonero.org, fungibility is the property of a currency whereby two units can be substituted in place of one another. Fungibility means that two units of a currency can be mutually substituted and the substituted currency is equal to another unit of the same size. For example, two $10 bills can be exchanged and they are functionally identical to any other $10 bill in circulation (although $10 bills have unique ID numbers and are therefore not completely fungible). Gold is probably a closer example of true fungibility, where any 1 oz. of gold of the same grade is worth the same as another 1 oz. of gold. Monero is fungible due to the nature of the currency which provides no way to link transactions together nor trace the history of any particular XMR. 1 XMR is functionally identical to any other 1 XMR. Fungibility is an advantage Monero has over Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency, due to the privacy inherent in the Monero blockchain and the permanently traceable nature of the Bitcoin blockchain. With Bitcoin, any BTC can be tracked by anyone back to its creation coinbase transaction. Therefore, if a coin has been used for an illegal purpose in the past, this history will be contained in the blockchain in perpetuity.
A great example of Bitcoin's lack of fungibility was reposted by u/ViolentlyPeaceful:

"Imagine you sell cupcakes and receive Bitcoin as payment. It turns out that someone who owned that Bitcoin before you was involved in criminal activity. Now you are worried that you have become a suspect in a criminal case, because the movement of funds to you is a matter of public record. You are also worried that certain Bitcoins that you thought you owned will be considered ‘tainted’ and that others will refuse to accept them as payment."

This lack of fungibility means that certain businesses will be obligated to avoid accepting BTC that have been previously used for purposes which are illegal, or simply run afoul of their Terms of Service. Currently some large Bitcoin companies are blocking, suspending, or closing accounts that have received Bitcoin used in online gambling or other purposes deemed unsavory by said companies. Monero has been built specifically to address the problem of traceability and non-fungibility inherent in other cryptocurrencies. By having completely private transactions Monero is truly fungible and there can be no blacklisting of certain XMR, while at the same time providing all the benefits of a secure, decentralized, permanent blockchain.
The world is moving cashless. Fact. The ramifications of this are enormous as we move into a cashless world in which transactions will be tracked and there is a potential for data to be used by third parties for adverse purposes. While most new cryptocurrency investors speculate upon vaporware ICO tokens in the hope of generating wealth, Monero provides salvation for those in which financial privacy is paramount. Too often people equate Monero's features with criminal endeavors. Privacy is not a crime, and is necessary for good money. Transparency in Monero is possible OFF-CHAIN, which offers greater transparency and flexibility. For example, a Monero user may share their Private View Key with their accountant for tax purposes.
Monero aims to be adopted by more than just those with nefarious use cases. For example, if you lived in an oppressive religious regime and wanted to buy a certain item, using Monero would allow you to exchange value privately and across borders if needed. Another example is that if everybody can see how much cryptocurrency you have in your wallet, then a certain service might decide to charge you more, and bad actors could even use knowledge of your wallet balance to target you for extortion purposes. For example, a Russian cryptocurrency blogger was recently beaten and robbed of $425k. This is why FUNGIBILITY IS ESSENTIAL. To summarise this in a nutshell:

"A lack of fungibility means that when sending or receiving funds, if the other person personally knows you during a transaction, or can get any sort of information on you, or if you provide a residential address for shipping etc. – you could quite potentially have them use this against you for personal gain"

For those that wish to seek more information about why Monero is a superior form of money, read The Merits of Monero: Why Monero Vs Bitcoin over on the Monero.how website.
Monero's Humble Origins
Something that still rings true today despite the great influx of money into cryptocurrencies was outlined in Nick Tomaino's early 2016 opinion piece. The author claimed that "one of the most interesting aspects of Monero is that the project has gained traction without a crowd sale pre-launch, without VC funding and any company or well-known investors and without a pre-mine. Like Bitcoin in the early days, Monero has been a purely grassroots movement that was bootstrapped by the creator and adopted organically without any institutional buy-in. The creator and most of the core developers serve the community pseudonymously and the project was launched on a message board (similar to the way Bitcoin was launched on an email newsletter)."
The Organic Growth of the Monero Community
The Monero community over at monero is exponentially growing. You can view the Monero reddit metrics here and see that the Monero subreddit currently gains more than 10,000 (yes, ten thousand!) new subscribers every 10 days! Compare this to most of the other coins out there, and it proves to be one of the only projects with real organic growth. In addition to this, the community subreddits are specifically divided to ensure the main subreddit remains unbiased, tech focused, with no shilling or hype. All trading talk is designated to xmrtrader, and all memes at moonero.
Forum Funding System
While most contributors have gratefully volunteered their time to the project, Monero also has a Forum Funding System in which money is donated by community members to ensure it attracts and retains the brightest minds and most skilled developers. Unlike ICOs and other cryptocurrencies, Monero never had a premine, and does not have a developer tax. If ANYONE requires funding for a Monero related project, then they can simply request funding from the community, and if the community sees it as beneficial, they will donate. Types of projects range from Monero funding for local meet ups, to paying developers for their work.
Monero For Goods, Services, and Market Places
There is a growing number of online goods and services that you can now pay for with Monero. Globee is a service that allows online merchants to accept payments through credit cards and a host of cryptocurrencies, while being settled in Bitcoin, Monero or fiat currency. Merchants can reach a wider variety of customers, while not needing to invest in additional hardware to run cryptocurrency wallets or accept the current instability of the cryptocurrency market. Globee uses all of the open source API's that BitPay does making integrations much easier!
Project Coral Reef is a service which allows you to shop and pay for popular music band products and services using Monero.
Linux, Veracrypt, and a whole array of VPNs now accept Monero.
There is a new Monero only marketplace called Annularis currently being developed which has been created for those who value financial privacy and economic freedom, and there are rumours Open Bazaar is likely to support Monero once Multisig is implemented.
In addition, Monero is also supported by The Living Room of Satoshi so you can pay bills or credit cards directly using Monero.
Monero can be found on a growing number of cryptocurrency exchange services such as Bittrex, Poloniex, Cryptopia, Shapeshift, Changelly, Bitfinex, Kraken, Bisq, Tux, and many others.
For those wishing to purchase Monero anonymously, there are services such as LocalMonero.co and Moneroforcash.com.
With XMR.TO you can pay Bitcoin addresses directly with Monero. There are no other fees than the miner ones. All user records are purged after 48 hours. XMR.TO has also been added as an embedded feature into the Monerujo android wallet.
Coinhive Browser-Based Mining
Unlike Bitcoin, Monero can be mined using CPUs and GPUs. Not only does this encourage decentralisation, it also opens the door to browser based mining. Enter side of stage, Coinhive browser-based mining. As described by Hon Lau on the Symnatec Blog Browser-based mining, as its name suggests, is a method of cryptocurrency mining that happens inside a browser and is implemented using Javascript. Coinhive is marketed as an alternative to browser ad revenue. The motivation behind this is simple: users pay for the content indirectly by coin mining when they visit the site and website owners don't have to bother users with sites laden with ads, trackers, and all the associated paraphern. This is great, provided that the websites are transparent with site visitors and notify users of the mining that will be taking place, or better still, offer users a way to opt in, although this hasn't always been the case thus far.
Skepticism Sunday
The main Monero subreddit has weekly Skepticism Sundays which was created with the purpose of installing "a culture of being scientific, skeptical, and rational". This is used to have open, critical discussions about monero as a technology, it's economics, and so on.

///Speculation///

Major Investors And Crypto Figureheads Are Interested
Ari Paul is the co-founder and CIO of BlockTower Capital. He was previously a portfolio manager for the University of Chicago's $8 billion endowment, and a derivatives market maker and proprietary trader for Susquehanna International Group. Paul was interviewed on CNBC on the 26th of December and when asked what was his favourite coin was, he stated "One that has real fundamental value besides from Bitcoin is Monero" and said it has "very strong engineering". In addition, when he was asked if that was the one used by criminals, he replied "Everything is used by criminals including the US dollar and the Euro". Paul later supported these claims on Twitter, recommending only Bitcoin and Monero as long-term investments.
There are reports that "Roger Ver, earlier known as 'Bitcoin Jesus' for his evangelical support of the Bitcoin during its early years, said his investment in Monero is 'substantial' and his biggest in any virtual currency since Bitcoin.
Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, has publicly stated his appreciation of Monero. In a September 2017 tweet directed to Edward Snowden explaining why Monero is superior to Zcash, Charlie Lee tweeted:

All private transactions, More tested privacy tech, No tax on miners to pay investors, No high inflation... better investment.

John McAfee, arguably cryptocurrency's most controversial character at the moment, has publicly supported Monero numerous times over the last twelve months(before he started shilling ICOs), and has even claimed it will overtake Bitcoin.
Playboy instagram celebrity Dan Bilzerian is a Monero investor, with 15% of his portfolio made up of Monero.
Finally, while he may not be considered a major investor or figurehead, Erik Finman, a young early Bitcoin investor and multimillionaire, recently appeared in a CNBC Crypto video interview, explaining why he isn't entirely sold on Bitcoin anymore, and expresses his interest in Monero, stating:

"Monero is a really good one. Monero is an incredible currency, it's completely private."

There is a common belief that most of the money in cryptocurrency is still chasing the quick pump and dumps, however as the market matures, more money will flow into legitimate projects such as Monero. Monero's organic growth in price is evidence smart money is aware of Monero and gradually filtering in.
The Bitcoin Flaw
A relatively unknown blogger named CryptoIzzy posted three poignant pieces regarding Monero and its place in the world. The Bitcoin Flaw: Monero Rising provides an intellectual comparison of Monero to other cryptocurrencies, and Valuing Cryptocurrencies: An Approach outlines methods of valuing different coins.
CryptoIzzy's most recent blog published only yesterday titled Monero Valuation - Update and Refocus is a highly recommended read. It touches on why Monero is much more than just a coin for the Darknet Markets, and provides a calculated future price of Monero.
CryptoIzzy also published The Power of Money: A Case for Bitcoin, which is an exploration of our monetary system, and the impact decentralised cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Monero will have on the world. In the epilogue the author also provides a positive and detailed future valuation based on empirical evidence. CryptoIzzy predicts Monero to easily progress well into the four figure range.
Monero Has a Relatively Small Marketcap
Recently we have witnessed many newcomers to cryptocurrency neglecting to take into account coins' marketcap and circulating supply, blindly throwing money at coins under $5 with inflated marketcaps and large circulating supplies, and then believing it's possible for them to reach $100 because someone posted about it on Facebook or Reddit.
Compared to other cryptocurrencies, Monero still has a low marketcap, which means there is great potential for the price to multiply. At the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap, Monero's marketcap is only a little over $5 billion, with a circulating supply of 15.6 million Monero, at a price of $322 per coin.
For this reason, I would argue that this is evidence Monero is grossly undervalued. Just a few billion dollars of new money invested in Monero can cause significant price increases. Monero's marketcap only needs to increase to ~$16 billion and the price will triple to over $1000. If Monero's marketcap simply reached ~$35 billion (just over half of Ripple's $55 billion marketcap), Monero's price will increase 600% to over $2000 per coin.
Another way of looking at this is Monero's marketcap only requires ~$30 billion of new investor money to see the price per Monero reach $2000, while for Ethereum to reach $2000, Ethereum's marketcap requires a whopping ~$100 billion of new investor money.
Technical Analysis
There are numerous Monero technical analysts, however none more eerily on point than the crowd-pleasing Ero23. Ero23's charts and analysis can be found on Trading View. Ero23 gained notoriety for his long-term Bitcoin bull chart published in February, which is still in play today. Head over to his Trading View page to see his chart: Monero's dwindling supply. $10k in 2019 scenario, in which Ero23 predicts Monero to reach $10,000 in 2019. There is also this chart which appears to be freakishly accurate and is tracking along perfectly today.
Coinbase Rumours
Over the past 12 months there have been ongoing rumours that Monero will be one of the next cryptocurrencies to be added to Coinbase. In January 2017, Monero Core team member Riccardo 'Fluffypony' Spagni presented a talk at Coinbase HQ. In addition, in November 2017 GDAX announced the GDAX Digit Asset Framework outlining specific parameters cryptocurrencies must meet in order to be added to the exchange. There is speculation that when Monero has numerous mobile and hardware wallets available, and multisig is working, then it will be added. This would enable public accessibility to Monero to increase dramatically as Coinbase had in excess of 13 million users as of December, and is only going to grow as demand for cryptocurrencies increases. Many users argue that due to KYC/AML regulations, Coinbase will never be able to add Monero, however the Kraken exchange already operates in the US and has XMfiat pairs, so this is unlikely to be the reason Coinbase is yet to implement XMfiat trading.
Monero Is Not an ICO Scam
It is likely most of the ICOs which newcomers invest in, hoping to get rich quick, won't even be in the Top 100 cryptocurrencies next year. A large portion are most likely to be pumps and dumps, and we have already seen numerous instances of ICO exit scams. Once an ICO raises millions of dollars, the developers or CEO of the company have little incentive to bother rolling out their product or service when they can just cash out and leave. The majority of people who create a company to provide a service or product, do so in order to generate wealth. Unless these developers and CEOs are committed and believed in their product or service, it's likely that the funds raised during the ICO will far exceed any revenue generated from real world use cases.
Monero is a Working Currency, Today
Monero is a working currency, here today.
The majority of so called cryptocurrencies that exist today are not true currencies, and do not aim to be. They are a token of exchange. They are like a share in a start-up company hoping to use blockchain technology to succeed in business. A crypto-assest is a more accurate name for coins such as Ethereum, Neo, Cardano, Vechain, etc.
Monero isn't just a vaporware ICO token that promises to provide a blockchain service in the future. It is not a platform for apps. It is not a pump and dump coin.
Monero is the only coin with all the necessary properties to be called true money.
Monero is private internet money.
Some even describe Monero as an online Swiss Bank Account or Bitcoin 2.0, and it is here to continue on from Bitcoin's legacy.
Monero is alleviating the public from the grips of banks, and protests the monetary system forced upon us.
Monero only achieved this because it is the heart and soul, and blood, sweat, and tears of the contributors to this project. Monero supporters are passionate, and Monero has gotten to where it is today thanks to its contributors and users.

///Key Issues for Monero to Overcome///

Scalability
While Bulletproofs are soon to be implemented in order to improve Monero's transaction sizes and fees, scalability is an issue for Monero that is continuously being assessed by Monero's researchers and developers to find the most appropriate solution. Ricardo 'Fluffypony' Spagni recently appeared on CNBC's Crypto Trader, and when asked whether Monero is scalable as it stands today, Spagni stated that presently, Monero's on-chain scaling is horrible and transactions are larger than Bitcoin's (because of Monero's privacy features), so side-chain scaling may be more efficient. Spagni elaborated that the Monero team is, and will always be, looking for solutions to an array of different on-chain and off-chain scaling options, such as developing a Mimblewimble side-chain, exploring the possibility of Lightning Network so atomic swaps can be performed, and Tumblebit.
In a post on the Monero subreddit from roughly a month ago, monero moderator u/dEBRUYNE_1 supports Spagni's statements. dEBRUYNE_1 clarifies the issue of scalability:

"In Bitcoin, the main chain is constrained and fees are ludicrous. This results in users being pushed to second layer stuff (e.g. sidechains, lightning network). Users do not have optionality in Bitcoin. In Monero, the goal is to make the main-chain accessible to everyone by keeping fees reasonable. We want users to have optionality, i.e., let them choose whether they'd like to use the main chain or second layer stuff. We don't want to take that optionality away from them."

When the Spagni CNBC video was recently linked to the Monero subreddit, it was met with lengthy debate and discussion from both users and developers. u/ferretinjapan summarised the issue explaining:

"Monero has all the mechanisms it needs to find the balance between transaction load, and offsetting the costs of miner infrastructure/profits, while making sure the network is useful for users. But like the interviewer said, the question is directed at "right now", and Fluffys right to a certain extent, Monero's transactions are huge, and compromises in blockchain security will help facilitate less burdensome transactional activity in the future. But to compare Monero to Bitcoin's transaction sizes is somewhat silly as Bitcoin is nowhere near as useful as monero, and utility will facilitate infrastructure building that may eventually utterly dwarf Bitcoin. And to equate scaling based on a node being run on a desktop being the only option for what classifies as "scalable" is also an incredibly narrow interpretation of the network being able to scale, or not. Given the extremely narrow definition of scaling people love to (incorrectly) use, I consider that a pretty crap question to put to Fluffy in the first place, but... ¯_(ツ)_/¯"

u/xmrusher also contributed to the discussion, comparing Bitcoin to Monero using this analogous description:

"While John is much heavier than Henry, he's still able to run faster, because, unlike Henry, he didn't chop off his own legs just so the local wheelchair manufacturer can make money. While Morono has much larger transactions then Bitcoin, it still scales better, because, unlike Bitcoin, it hasn't limited itself to a cripplingly tiny blocksize just to allow Blockstream to make money."

Setting up a wallet can still be time consuming
It's time consuming and can be somewhat difficult for new cryptocurrency users to set up their own wallet using the GUI wallet or the Command Line Wallet. In order to strengthen and further decentralize the Monero network, users are encouraged to run a full node for their wallet, however this can be an issue because it can take up to 24-48 hours for some users depending on their hard-drive and internet speeds. To mitigate this issue, users can run a remote node, meaning they can remotely connect their wallet to another node in order to perform transactions, and in the meantime continue to sync the daemon so in the future they can then use their own node.
For users that do run into wallet setup issues, or any other problems for that matter, there is an extremely helpful troubleshooting thread on the Monero subreddit which can be found here. And not only that, unlike some other cryptocurrency subreddits, if you ask a question, there is always a friendly community member who will happily assist you. Monero.how is a fantastic resource too!
Despite still being difficult to use, the user-base and price may increase dramatically once it is easier to use. In addition, others believe that when hardware wallets are available more users will shift to Monero.

///Conclusion///

I actually still feel a little shameful for promoting Monero here, but feel a sense of duty to do so.
Monero is transitioning into an unstoppable altruistic beast. This year offers the implementation of many great developments, accompanied by the likelihood of a dramatic increase in price.
I request you discuss this post, point out any errors I have made, or any information I may have neglected to include. Also, if you believe in the Monero project, I encourage you to join your local Facebook or Reddit cryptocurrency group and spread the word of Monero. You could even link this post there to bring awareness to new cryptocurrency users and investors.
I will leave you with an old on-going joke within the Monero community - Don't buy Monero - unless you have a use case for it of course :-) Just think to yourself though - Do I have a use case for Monero in our unpredictable Huxleyan society? Hint: The answer is ?
Edit: Added in the Tail Emission section, and noted Dan Bilzerian as a Monero investor. Also added information regarding the XMR.TO payment service. Added info about hardfork

Part 5. I'm writing a series about blockchain tech and possible future security risks. This is the fifth part of the series talking about an advanced vulnerability of BTC.

The previous parts will give you usefull basic blockchain knowledge and insights on quantum resistance vs blockchain that are not explained in this part.
Part 1, what makes blockchain reliable?
Part 2, The mathematical concepts Hashing and Public key cryptography.
Part 3, Quantum resistant blockchain vs Quantum computing.
Part 4A, The advantages of quantum resistance from genesis block, A
Part 4B, The advantages of quantum resistance from genesis block, A

Why BTC is vulnerable for quantum attacks sooner than you would think.
Content:
The BTC misconception: “Original public keys are not visible until you make a transaction, so BTC is quantum resistant.”
Already exposed public keys.
Hijacking transactions.
Hijacks during blocktime
Hijacks pre-blocktime.
MITM attacks

- Why BTC is vulnerable for quantum attacks sooner than you would think. -

Blockchain transactions are secured by public-private key cryptography. The keypairs used today will be at risk when quantum computers reach a certain critical level: Quantum computers can at a certain point of development, derive private keys from public keys. See for more sourced info on this subject in part 3. So if a public key can be obtained by an attacker, he can then use a quantum computer to find the private key. And as he has both the public key and the private key, he can control and send the funds to an address he owns.
Just to make sure there will be no misconceptions: When public-private key cryptography such as ECDSA and RSA can be broken by a quantum computer, this will be an issue for all blockchains who don't use quantum resistant cryptography. The reason this article is about BTC is because I take this paper as a reference point: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10377.pdf Here they calculate an estimate when BTC will be at risk while taking the BTC blocktime as the window of opportunity.
The BTC misconception: “Original public keys are not visible until you make a transaction, so BTC is quantum resistant.”
In pretty much every discussion I've read and had on the subject, I notice that people are under the impression that BTC is quantum resistant as long as you use your address only once. BTC uses a hashed version of the public key as a send-to address. So in theory, all funds are registered on the chain on hashed public keys instead of to the full, original public keys, which means that the original public key is (again in theory) not public. Even a quantum computer can't derive the original public key from a hashed public key, therefore there is no risk that a quantum computer can derive the private key from the public key. If you make a transaction, however, the public key of the address you sent your funds from will be registered in full form in the blockchain. So if you were to only send part of your funds, leaving the rest on the old address, your remaining funds would be on a published public key, and therefore vulnerable to quantum attacks. So the workaround would be to transfer the remaining funds, within the same transaction, to a new address. In that way, your funds would be once again registered on the blockchain on a hashed public key instead of a full, original public key.
If you feel lost already because you are not very familiar with the tech behind blockchain, I will try to explain the above in a more familiar way:
You control your funds through your public- private key pair. Your funds are registered on your public key. And you can create transactions, which you need to sign to be valid. You can only create a signature if you have your private key. See it as your e-mail address (public key) and your password (Private key). Many people got your email address, but only you have your password. So the analogy is, that if you got your address and your password, then you can access your mail and send emails (Transactions). If the right quantum computer would be available, people could use that to calculate your password (private key), if they have your email address (public key).
Now, because BTC doesn’t show your full public key anywhere until you make a transaction. That sounds pretty safe. It means that your public key is private until you make a transaction. The only thing related to your public key that is public is the hash of your public key. Here is a short explanation of what a hash is: a hash is an outcome of an equation. Usually one-way hash functions are used, where you can not derive the original input from the output; but every time you use the same hash function on the same original input (For example IFUHE8392ISHF), you will always get the same output (For example G). That way you can have your coins on public key "IFUHE8392ISHF", while on the chain, they are registered on "G".
So your funds are registered on the blockchain on the "Hash" of the public key. The Hash of the public key is also your "email address" in this case. So you give "G" as your address to send BTC to.
As said before: since it is, even for a quantum computer, impossible to derive a public key from the Hash of a public key, your coins are safe for quantum computers as long as the public key is only registered in hashed form. The obvious safe method would be, never to reuse an address, and always make sure that when you make a payment, you send your remaining funds to a fresh new address. (There are wallets that can do this for you.) In theory, this would make BTC quantum resistant, if used correctly. This, however, is not as simple as it seems. Even though the above is correct, there is a way to get to your funds.
Already exposed public keys.
But before we get to that, there is another point that is often overlooked: Not only is the security of your personal BTC is important, but also the security of funds of other users. If others got hacked, the news of the hack itself and the reaction of the market to that news, would influence the marketprice. Or, if a big account like the Satoshi account were to be hacked and dumped, the dump itself, combined with the news of the hack, could be even worse. An individual does not have the control of other people’s actions. So even though one might make sure his public key is only registered in hashed form, others might not do so, or might no know their public key is exposed. There are several reasons why a substantial amount of addresses actually have exposed full public keys:

Only unused addresses are quantum secure, but in reality, there are a lot of people, who reuse addresses. (To clarify: with unused I mean an address that has only been used to deposit money on, and not used to make transactions from. Because if you make a deposit, your public key stays hidden, but if you make a transaction from that address to another address, your public key will be revealed.)
Bitcoin transactions with P2PK UTXOs, so these are the addresses from the period that public keys were not hashed, but published in full. (about 1.77 million BTC fall into this category) (https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/213.pdf p. 7) This includes the Satoshi funds.
Bitcoin users publishing their public key on a Bitcoin fork, e.g. Bitcoin Cash [1] or Bitcoin Gold [2]. (https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/213.pdf p. 7)
Any other revealing of public keys, such as part of signed messages to ensure integrity, in forums, or in payment channels (e.g. Lightning Network [51]). (https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/213.pdf p. 7)

In total, about 36% of all BTC are on addresses with exposed public keys Of which about 20% is on lost addresses. and here
Hijacking transactions.
But even if you consider the above an acceptable risk, just because you yourself will make sure you never reuse an address, then still, the fact that only the hashed public key is published until you make a transaction is a false sense of security. It only works, if you never make a transaction. Why? Public keys are revealed while making a transaction, so transactions can be hijacked while being made.
Here it is important to understand two things:
1.) How is a transaction sent?
The owner has the private key and the public key and uses that to log into the secured environment, the wallet. This can be online or offline. Once he is in his wallet, he states how much he wants to send and to what address.
When he sends the transaction, it will be broadcasted to the blockchain network. But before the actual transaction will be sent, it is formed into a package, created by the wallet. This happens out of sight of the sender.
That package ends up carrying roughly the following info: the public key to point to the address where the funds will be coming from, the amount that will be transferred, the address the funds will be transferred to (depending on the blockchain this could be the hashed public key, or the original public key of the address the funds will be transferred to). This package also carries the most important thing: a signature, created by the wallet, derived from the private- public key combination. This signature proves to the miners that you are the rightful owner and you can send funds from that public key.
Then this package is sent out of the secure wallet environment to multiple nodes. The nodes don’t need to trust the sender or establish the sender’s "identity”, because the sender proofs he is the rightful owner by adding the signature that corresponds with the public key. And because the transaction is signed and contains no confidential information, private keys, or credentials, it can be publicly broadcast using any underlying network transport that is convenient. As long as the transaction can reach a node that will propagate it into the network, it doesn’t matter how it is transported to the first node.
2.) How is a transaction confirmed/ fulfilled and registered on the blockchain?
After the transaction is sent to the network, it is ready to be processed. The nodes have a bundle of transactions to verify and register on the next block. This is done during a period called the block time. In the case of BTC that is 10 minutes.
If we process the information written above, we will see that there are two moments where you can actually see the public key, while the transaction is not fulfilled and registered on the blockchain yet.
1: during the time the transaction is sent from the sender to the nodes
2: during the time the nodes verify the transaction. (The blocktime)
Hijacks during blocktime
This paper describes how you could hijack a transaction and make a new transaction of your own, using someone else’s address and send his coins to an address you own during moment 2: the time the nodes verify the transaction:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10377.pdf
"(Unprocessed transactions) After a transaction has been broadcast to the network, but before it is placed on the blockchain it is at risk from a quantum attack. If the secret key can be derived from the broadcast public key before the transaction is placed on the blockchain, then an attacker could use this secret key to broadcast a new transaction from the same address to his own address. If the attacker then ensures that this new transaction is placed on the blockchain first, then he can effectively steal all the bitcoin behind the original address." (Page 8, point 3.)
So this means that BTC obviously is not a quantum secure blockchain. Because as soon as you will touch your funds and use them for payment, or send them to another address, you will have to make a transaction and you risk a quantum attack.
Hijacks pre-blocktime.
The story doesn't end here. The paper doesn't describe the posibility of a pre-blocktime hijack.
So back to the paper: as explained, while making a transaction your public key is exposed for at least the transaction time. This transaction time is 10 minutes where your transaction is being confirmed during the 10 minute block time. That is the period where your public key is visible and where, as described in the paper, a transaction can be hijacked, and by using quantum computers, a forged transaction can be made. So the critical point is determined to be the moment where quantum computers can derive private keys from public keys within 10 minutes. Based on that 10 minute period, they calculate (estimate) how long it will take before QC's start forming a threat to BTC. (“ By our most optimistic estimates, as early as 2027 a quantum computer could exist that can break the elliptic curve signature scheme in less than 10 minutes, the block time used in Bitcoin.“ This is also shown in figure 4 on page 10 and later more in depth calculated in appendix C, where the pessimistic estimate is around 2037.) But you could extend that 10 minutes through network based attacks like DDoS, BGP routing attacks, NSA Quantum Insert, Eclipse attacks, MITM attacks or anything like that. (And I don’t mean you extend the block time by using a network based attack, but you extend the time you have access to the public key before the transaction is confirmed.) Bitcoin would be earlier at risk than calculated in this paper.
Also other Blockchains with way shorter block times imagine themselves safe for a longer period than BTC, but with this extension of the timeframe within which you can derive the private key, they too will be vulnerable way sooner.
Not so long ago an eclipse attack demonstrated it could have done the trick. and here Causing the blockchain to work over max capacity, means the transactions will be waiting to be added to a block for a longer time. This time needs to be added on the blocktime, expanding the period one would have time to derive the private key from the public key.
That seems to be fixed now, but it shows there are always new attacks possible and when the incentive is right (Like a few billion $ kind of right) these could be specifically designed for certain blockchains.
MITM attacks
An MITM attack could find the public key in the first moment the public key is exposed. (During the time the transaction is sent from the sender to the nodes) So these transactions that are sent to the network, contain public keys that you could intercept. So that means that if you intercept transactions (and with that the private keys) and simultaneously delay their arrival to the blockchain network, you create extra time to derive the private key from the public key using a quantum computer. When you done that, you send a transaction of your own before the original transaction has arrived and is confirmed and send funds from that stolen address to an address of your choosing. The result would be that you have an extra 10, 20, 30 minutes (or however long you can delay the original transactions), to derive the public key. This can be done without ever needing to mess with a blockchain network, because the attack happens outside the network. Therefore, slower quantum computers form a threat. Meaning that earlier models of quantum computers can form a threat than they assume now.
When MITM attacks and hijacking transactions will form a threat to BTC, other blockchains will be vulnerable to the same attacks, especially MITM attacks. There are ways to prevent hijacking after arrival at the nodes. I will elaborate on that in the next article. At this point of time, the pub key would be useless to an attacker due to the fact there is no quantum computer available now. Once a quantum computer of the right size is available, it becomes a problem. For quantum resistant blockchains this is differetn. MITM attacks and hijacking is useless to quantum resistant blockchains like QRL and Mochimo because these projects use quantum resistant keys.

TOP 20 Reasons Why Cryptocurrencies Are Worthless

BitMax.io & Lambda Joint AMA

George Cao :Let’s welcome lambda team . Xiaoyang and Lucy
Lambda: Hello friends from BitMax ~~ I am Lucy Wang, Co-founder and CMO of Lambda. I am very happy to e-meet with you here and thx for George's invitation. I on behalf of Lambda wish all of you a merry Christmas and prosperous new year in 2019
George Cao: Great. I am a bit surprised to see a big volume day yesterday Christmas. Seems our users didn’t take a break even on holidays :)
Lambda: I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce myself first, I have over 14 years of progressive career development with global leading enterprise software / service organizations as well as VC-backed start-up ventures, including HP, Oracle, and SAP. Before Lambda I was CMO/GM at two enterprise SaaS start ups in China backed by top VCs.
And my partner Mr. He Xiaoyang, who is the founder of Lambda, he is a well-known expert in infrastructure and open source software in China. Prior to Lambda, he was the co-founder of OneAPM, a fast-growing infrastructure software focusing on ITOM (IT operation management) in China. OneAPM is known as the “New Relic or AppDynamics of China” and the company has received strong VC backing from Matrix Partners, Chengwei Capital, and Qiming Venture. Prior to his entrepreneur experiences, Mr. HE worked at BEA as a R&D software engineer. In addition, Mr. HE is also a blogger with strong following in China and some of his articles have been published by major media such as Forbes China, 36Kr, Sina, etc.
Lambda idea was born at the end of year 2017 and the product development started from the beginning of 2018. Now let me talk about Lambda idea and what we do
Lambda, is the leading decentralized infrastructure project providing secure, reliable, and infinitely scalable decentralized storage network that enables data storage, data integrity check, security verification, and marketplace for storage-related services on the Lambda Chain Consensus Network.
In recent years, there have been frequent data leakage problems in major Internet platforms at home and abroad, and even business giants such as Facebook and Marriott have not been spared. Returning the value of data to data owners is an inevitable trend in line with human pursuit of freedom. The block-chain technology with P2P features provides an opportunity for this, and this area will be highly valued by the industry in the next few years. Lambda is the only provider of block-chain storage infrastructure projects in China. It is sometimes referred as “File-coin of China”or “File-coin 2.0”.our vision is to return the value of data to the data owner, with this vision in mind, our mission is to promote the decentralization of the Internet, with the goal of creating a storage infrastructure for the next generation of block-chain.
After the Lambda project launch in early 2018, it has received strong support by well-known strategic and financial investors including Bitmain, Viking Capital, FBG Capital, Bluehills, Zhen Fund, FunCity Capital, Ceyuan Digital Fund, BlockVC, INBlockChain, DATA Foundation, Bitcoin World, Reflextion Capital, etc. To date, Lambda has received investment funding in excess of $10M.

https://preview.redd.it/ynaos7rps2721.png?width=1267&format=png&auto=webp&s=77360b7cdf06c288e8c25675f94f5fb9d3d02137
n all the existing decentralized storage projects that are aiming to give a solution to this problem worldwide, Lambda is the first ever to announce its LPDP ( Lambda Provable Data Possession )
George Cao: I see we share several investors in common, So 2019 q1-q2 will be a big milestone for lambda
Lambda: Provable Data Possession (PDP) and Proofs of Retrievability (POR) are critical to efficient decentralized data storage and its implementation, which is the essential difference between centralized network projects and real decentralized storage. Prior to Inter-planetary
File System (IPFS), Lambda launched its minimum viable product (MVP) of core functions in the third quarter of 2018, and has been continuously upgrading and optimizing this in block-chains in a multi-role environment.
File-coin is our main competitor, here is a chart shows the progress comparison FYI

https://preview.redd.it/ewmyh9tqs2721.png?width=1267&format=png&auto=webp&s=cddc52a6d613196f6c0cbf870da42a5b82a8aaa6
For those who have interest to know more about Lambda's technical innovations, they can be find in our keep updating FAQ document posted on Medium, and I copied her FYI
1.Innovatively designed the Validator role which provides verification service for storage proof and the Validator replaces storage miner as the full-time storage proof result verifier, this greatly improves the performance of the storage and retrieval system.
2.In response to the limitations of the PDP algorithm, Lambda innovatively created a consensus network on the block-chain and used the validators role to replace the "TPA" in the PDP algorithm.
3.Innovatively modified the PDP algorithm from synchronous to asynchronous communication, which greatly reduces the communication traffic for Challenge in the system. Use of chain data as a random seed for storage miners to issue Challenge themselves addresses the randomness of TPA challenges.
4.Innovatively upgraded the PDP algorithm from periodic verification to a verification set generated by the miners to submit the verification result at one time, and fully realize the Proof-Of-Space-Time verification.
on top of all the technical, Lambda creates a consensus network where data can be stored, storage space can be rented on the basis of a marketplace built on block-chain.
In the Marketplace, the transaction process is: storage miners pledge hard disk sectors to the consensus network, and place orders and sell their own storage space in the Marketplace; storage users initiate purchase requests, complete the matching of storage requests through the Marketplace, and store data in the space of the storage miners.
Different from other block-chain applications, Lambda is a storage mining project, we have miners mine on Lambda network. Earn LAMB tokens by contributing on the network, and users who have data storing requirements pay Lamb tokens to purchase services accordingly.
The price of Lamb token not only rely on the exchanges but also supported by our miners who are doing works on the network.
There are four roles in the Lambda mining network: storage miners (providers of storage space), verification miners (ensuring the integrity and security of data and packaging transactions), retrieval miners (providing download bandwidth), and users (storage buyers). 1024 verification miners promoted from storage miners constitute the Lambda-chain consensus network. So you will see three types of miners serve our users from all over the world.
The key milestones we are looking at is the launch of test-net, where miners can start mining and earn testing Lamb tokens, the date will be around end of Jan. 2019 and main network will go live in Q2, 2019, most likely in Apr.
Regarding our partnership, In the academic field, we have established a strategic partnership with Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT), which is well known in China for its engineering and computer science research programs, to conduct research into centralized storage.
In the commercial field, Lambda has established a strategic collaboration with IOST, a well-known public blockchain project, and Perlin, a super computing platform, and started to conduct pilot projects for decentralized application (DAPP) companies such as DATA and BCV. Lambda also has close ties to many leading Internet data centers (IDCs) in China. They join the Lambda network as miners and take advantage of their surplus server capacity to engage in the Lambda network ecology.
Q: Will the rest of the code be open sourced? If so when ?
Lambda: we have released the codes of core function module, the test net codes will be released gradually in Jan. pls stay tuned with our official github
Q: What can Lamb tokens be used for?
Lambda: Lambs are tokens in the Lambda ecosystem, which are mainly used in the following scenarios:
A. Users of services in the Lambda ecosystem have to pay with Lambda tokens.
B. Providers of storage services in the system have to pledge a certain number of tokens.
C. Verification nodes in the system have to pledge a certain number of tokens.
D. Verification nodes can obtain a certain number of tokens as accounting rewards.
E. Storage nodes get a certain number of tokens based on their storage capacity and their service level agreements (SLAs).
F. Other roles in the Lambda ecosystem can also obtain a certain number of tokens based on their contributions.
Q: What more incentives does miner gets to mine or rent storage on Lambda?
Lambda: every miner stars from storage miner on Lambda network, they get paid by providing storage space, when their business getting bigger, system will select the top 1024 storage miners and promote them to validator, who will get block generation rewards from system.
Q: how are the 1024 miners selected? Doesn't this become more centralised?
Lambda: we did a survey to the Chinese miners, they mainly fall into two groups, either are waiting FileCoin to go live with purchased mining machine idle at home or they are doing hard drive or graphic cards mining, which has a high requirement to the hardware standard. To mine on Lambda, you need a mining machine ( computer ) that has big storage space ( because the bigger the higher probability you'll be promoted to be a validator ) and the connection to the internet
Q: How much is initial supply?
Lambda: Lambda did two rounds of fund raising, private investors have a lock up terms of 2+4+4 meaning the first 20% of tokens will only be released 2 months listing on exchange. so on the day one listing till 2 months there will be only around 0.5% initial circulation, and after 2 months, 5% in total. in addition to that, as we are recruiting miners to join our network, actually ppl have been in a situation where they can't wait to mine on our testnet. with the mining mechanism we have, miners need to buy Lamb token to get their mining work started, because a certain amount of pledge need to be made
Q: What partnership will lambda and bitmax have in the future?
Lambda: We value the way BitMax doing things and care about projects, we feel like we found the right exchange to be listed, in particular an initial listing. we will work with BitMax and do some joint campaigns to boost the community
George: We have great chemistry with lambda team.
Q: And are you still primary list in there, I heard the list was delay? Is it related to Huobi?
Lambda: you are right, it is related to Huobi, but one thing you can be assured of is that our initial listing on BitMax wont change, but most likely a joint listing with Huobi.
Q: what about the time of primary list?
Lambda: we will primarily list very soon, we are targeting end of this week, now we are in the middle of some technical integration with Huobi
George: We can assure everyone that our team will do our best to protect our investors and serve our listing projects. The promise does not change whether or not if we co-list with huobi.
Q: We get reward to mine ? Any incentive? For testnet
Lambda: Yes, you have two ways obtain Lamb tokens, buy from exchange and earn more from mining, but firstly you have to buy Lamb on BitMax haha. Are you asking the reward from testnet by mining on it? yes, you will get test Lamb token, and they can be redeemed to Lamb token with a ratio that will be specified shortly. on Lambda official website www.lambda.im, we have whitepaper, besides that we also have economic whitepaper to explain how the lambda economic system runs, on Dec. 28 we will launch our yellow paper where we will demonstrate the detailed technical realization and all the parameter setting for mining on Lambda
Q: What are the implications if a miners rig goes offline or they decide to stop?
Lambda: If miners rig goes off, they will not get the reward from the corresponding generated block, if they do cheating there will be punishment from the system, and if they decide to quit, the pledge will be returned
Q: Lambda planning to have own FS?
Lambda: Yes, FS and consensus network is separate. validators and marketplace are on the consensus network, while Files are in the File System.
Q: Is Lambda GDPR friendly?
Lambda: yes, we are
Q: Hi can u explain what’s the requirements of decentralized data . Do You think big companies will like to use lambda services .... or it’s for medium level enterprises as big companies will go for their in house system with their reliable nodes ...
Lambda: this is a good question, from I seeing it, ppl call out the protection of privacy, it is a trend and it takes steps. Lambda has two big groups of prospects users, one is DAPPs, another is the general industries such as big data, AI, IoT, Games, Financial, etc, as long as they need massive data storage demand, Lambda has the opportunity, data storage is expensive, especially when we are talking about big data, a lot of companies will value the cost in this area very much. currently we have lighthouse customer like DATA, BCV, VVshare, in the very near future, a game that is developed by Lambda team will also go live on Lambda network. from the BD perspective, Lambda will create a satellite network ( you can take it as channel network ) to bring us customers, we have a few reaching out to us already
Q: Why suddenly launched on Huobi
George Cao: I believe lambda team has its own consideration. Projects esp in bear market are facing pressures from different parties. Investors users exchanges. Not everything is under projects control. What we can do as an exchange is to stand by our partners and fully support them down the road
Lambda: thx for the answer
Q: I think you have made a great choice working with bitmax. Bitmax have really helped push new
coins and their site in general with good PR, marketing and reward/airdrop promotions
Lambda: strongly agree with you
Q: GDPR has taken over the EU and the UK so that is very important
Lambda: you are right, so we see to be GDPR friendly, which is one of our differentiator from FileCoin
Q: Being GDPR friendly , European market is a go for lambda
Lambda: I have this plan to develop European market by having a Raspberry program, it is still in planning.
George Cao: Let’s take a last question and move to lambda community:) And as usual we will pick 3 best questions. We will send out 1000 800 and 500 btmx. @lambda do you want to pick 3 questions ?
Q: Recent partnerships are interesting , can you tell us about coming q1 2019 both in terms of technical and marketing developments ?
Lambda: from Marketing side, we are focusing on Chinese miners community and potential European market ( like I said still in construction ) Korean market is another, and US market to go along our compliance path, Lambda has been strictly abide by the regulations. from technical side, the most important task we are targeting is the main network launch as planned
George Cao: Thanks everyone for your time. It’s a great ama as usual. We do have the best community. We will pick 3 winners and we will announce here after we finish ama in lambda community
Lambda: thank you all for your time to participate the AMA, I had a great time with you, see you friends and have a nice day.
George Cao: Hello everyone, Merry Christmas:)
Lambda: Hello Lambdos. Today we have George, the founder of BitMax to join us for the AMA. Let's give him a warm welcome to do a introduction of BitMax
George Cao: I am George Cao, founder of bitmax. I am happy to take the opportunity to talk to everyone here. Thanks to the lambda team. Let me start with a brief introduction about us.
Bitmax.io (btmx.io) is an exchange founded by a group of Wall Street veterans. Unlike most projects, we are kinda of old :) core team are in their 30ish - 50ish. The 10 founding member have combined of 150 years of Wall st experience. I have 10+ yrs of high frequency trading experience therefore I know the trading system well. That’s why our match engine can handle 400k tps per second vs huobi 1000 tps. We want to build an exchange that is transparent, robust, and efficient. While our system is the best in class, we offer the lowest trading fees. We believe the current high commission will not sustain and we will see consolidating of the exchanges with better depth and liquidity and lower commission. We are happy to partner with lambda, one of the best projects in 2018. We are committed to serve the project and the community. Alright, I am ready to take questions. Anything you can ask, as tough as you want :)
Q: Haha nice platform.
George Cao: Thanks. We are young as a platform but we are working to deliver the best
Q: I see reverse mining is new , I used many other mining exchange but all have normal mining . How does reverse mining works?
George Cao: Reverse mining is an innovative approach that helps the exchange and the project in several ways. 1) the concept of reverse mining is by providing liquidity to the exchange, you get a rebate and deduct out tokens from your account of the same valued. You can think of a otc sell our. 2) the benefit is it removes lots of sell pressure from the secondary market. And provides a strong support for the token price. 3) it introduces lots of liquidity to the exchange and benefits all traders
Q: The BTMX used in reverse mining are locked forever?
George Cao: Yes so the total number of tokens are always reducing your
Q: I've really been enjoying using the bitmax exchange so far especially with the low fees and data usage rewards. Does the exchange plan to bring in a shorting function in the near future?
George Cao: Yes we will have margin and futures trading
Q: It was supposed to December right ?
George Cao: We postponed our margin to Jan. The reason is we want to be more careful on protecting margin call protections.
Q: Margin trading and futures is important for BTMX price to drive up
George Cao: Totally agree
Q: Does BitMax have any activities on New Year's Day?
George: We do have multiple promotional events. Including but not limited to airdrops. Please visit our website and stay tuned
Q: I saw the whitepaper of bitmax, can you talk more about your dividends the formula is really hard for me ?
George Cao: Sure 80% of our commission goes to our fee pool. 1/180 of the total pool will be distributed daily. As long as you are a token holder, the current rate we pay is over 100% annually
Q: Oh I see, so the dividends will be smooth, great idea.
George Cao: Yes unlike other mining exchanges have huge volatility on div we smooth our curve
Q: I've also heard there is a mobile app in the works, is this likely to be released in the near future?
George Cao: Almost done. Beta version is in testing
Q: What about the north American, will it be available in the future?
George Cao: We more cleared our legal path for fiat trading in us. Q1 2019 we will launch in the us
Q: Great news I think this will bring a big volume.
George Cao: Yes agree. Our team is excited as well
Q: With promotional Airdrops that require a certain amount of the BTMX token to be held such as The lamb one that has taken place on the exchange this week. Are tokens that are locked for data usage or in cards taken into account when balance screenshots are taken?
George Cao: Yes we will take that into account
Q: When will be the private sale tokens be released ?
George Cao: As soon as we mined 90m we will start to release
Q: So let me get this right .. you give us FREE BTC and ltc and even Lambda EVERYDAY if we hold BTMX and agree to share our data
George Cao: Free usdt btc eth
Q: Wow. In a bear market, Free btc is the best thing ever
George Cao: We share revenue with our users, 90% is usdt. Not sure if you like it:)
Q: also consider adding coins like ADA and few from top 30. People need more coins
George Cao: We are adding stellar and zcash soon
Q: I heard they are insured Unless we give password to someone hehe
George Cao: Yes we are using custodian service
Q: George are our funds SAFU with you? Exchange insurance? I would say it is With the industry giants backing this exchange
George Cao: Sequoia matrix bitmain fbg dhvc are our equity investors
Q: What’s to stop People dumping BTMX token after free btc Or stop capital investor dumping on retailer
George Cao: They get it every day. Why would they dump? All equity investors can not sell on secondary market. They can only to reverse mining
Q: Will margin allow reverse mining instead of normal mining?
George Cao: Not initially
Q: People do irrational things when btc moves Or whales dumping, I heard there was a lock up token or something. To stop this
George Cao: We required lock our tokens to get rewards. You can request to unlock at anytime but it takes 24 hours to process
Q: Binance is developing DEX any plans for BitMax ?
George Cao: Not anytime soon we have a looong to do:)
Q: It's good you have dex in mind , with improved scalability in future maybe bitmax can build good dex
George Cao: Agree
Q: Retail investors are important , George knows it haha
George Cao: We care most of retails
Q: It would help if they also burned or locked tokens up
George Cao: Yes we permanently locked
Q: Seems you have everything thought of.. but how about moving to Malta?
George Cao: We priority US. Once us is clear pretty much everywhere is clear
Q: Doesn’t any exchange cover US right now?
George Cao: Coinbase but they have 0 international coverage and 0 client service
Q: What sort of systems are in place for abnormal/suspicious activity on the exchange?
George Cao: We prohibit self trading. For unusual trading behavior we ban the account and as for explain in the first violation. For continued violations we permanently ban the account
Q: can we get a glimpse of mobile application ?
George Cao: There is a beta version you can use but we are keep improving
Q: What are the precautions taken to prevent wash trading ?
George Cao: We have pre trade and post trade checksums. E.g we don’t just scan one account. We check or related account
Q: Will market orders and stop-loss orders be available in the future?
George Cao: Yes we are working on it
Q: what do you think of lambda project and community
George Cao: Lambda is definitely one of the best projects this year. We have been working with lambda for months and have lots of respect ion for the team. Community is also great very well organized. I didn’t talk much but I joined lambda tele group for a while. Great interaction
Q: So the trading starts at 8 pm ETC?
George Cao: It’s postponed. Please stay tuned for announcements
Lambda: We will make announcement giving out time and new date.
Q: when please? It's also more professional to be able to give dates and respect them
Lambda Cao: we are working hard and aiming the date of Dec. 29, pls stay tuned, thank you
George: Unfortunately bitmax and lambda don’t have 100% control of the date and time. Huobi is holding the ball
Lambda: The listing dates have been postponed and we don't want to give out a random date. I request you to have patience and wait for official announcement
Lambda: we will try everything to protect retails interest
Q: Can’t let houbi just arrive late to the party?
Lambda: in the long run we may need Huobi to help us better protect us all
George Cao: We trust lambda team can make the best decision for all investors
Q: Have you been busy with listing recently? Anything else？
George Cao: We have been working 24 hours a day including Chris eve :) Listing and app and margin and lots of new improvements
Q: Why would we need huobi with bitmax on our side.
George Cao: Trust me we are as upset. However as an exchange our mission is to serve projects and investors. Please join us in fully supporting any decision lambda team made. We have 100% confidence in lambda
Q: Are you familiar with the REKTbot and SYSTEM OVERLOAD problems at bitmex
George Cao: Yes but still bitmex is the best place to trade future compare with okex
Q: Slap that Hayes fool when bitmax start margin and futures..
George Cao: Haha i don’t want to declare war with them. Let’s be a bit patient :)
Q: Could bitmax handle That volume and not system overload
George Cao: We are 100% confident
George Cao: Alright i have to run for another meeting. It’s been a great ama. Thanks everyone. For any trading related questions please contact our client support. We promise to get in touch in 5 mins 7/24. Thank you all!
Lambda: thank you for participation, have a nice day!

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