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Month: November 2017

The Next Frontier in Blockchain Technology: Scaling and Commercial Optimization

The Next Frontier in Blockchain Technology:
Scaling and Commercial Optimization

Every successful startup at one point or another faces a turning point

in its history. This turning point, whether a challenge, conflict, or opportunity, oftentimes becomes the defining moment for the startup’s leadership team. How will they respond? What steps need to be taken? What is the game plan to get from point A to point B? These questions are vital, and investors and board members demand answers. Blockchain technology, though not a startup in the traditional sense, is at its turning point. Prices are at or near all time highs, trading volumes are soaring, and the number of cryptocurrency users is growing at a tremendous rate. But these statistics don’t tell the full story.

With cryptocurrency prices rising and transaction volumes hitting peaks, the Achilles’ heel of Blockchains, scalability, is back with a vengeance. The problem essentially boils down to block size–blocks that are too big are automatically rejected by the network. As a result, transactions per second are limited to single digit numbers, or double digit numbers if the Blockchain is really fast. The problem is that this pales in comparison with traditional payment methods like Visa cards. If cryptocurrencies want to compete in the transaction world in a substantive way, something needs to be done.

Sensing this need, some companies are working on customizable operating systems that will establish commercial-scale platforms. The goal is to meet growing business demand through Blockchain technology, as well as provide a central hub for all Blockchains. The hope is that platform operating systems will lay groundwork for the development of new, scalable applications, and organizations like EOS, Grid, DASH, and Waves are aiming to do just that.

How Blockchain operating systems can address the scalability problem

By creating a multi-chain parallel processing infrastructure that fulfills certain requirements, companies could pave the way for greater Blockchain commercialization. The operating systems they are working on are comprised of a main chain and an indefinite number of side chains, allowing a platform to fulfil multiple goals while reducing data redundancy.

The architecture of the operating systems establishes a well organized “Central Business District.” In this business district each industry has its own dedicated side chain–a one to one scenario where specific issues and problems receive direct attention via the corresponding chain. The highly customizable platforms consist of one main chain, or kernel, that forms the minimum viable Blockchain. As the backbone of the operating system this main chain is used as the core from which custom operating systems can be developed. Developers can use the operating system to create specific configurations, providing adaptability that has so far eluded certain Blockchain projects.

So how does this all impact scalability? In essence, a Blockchain-based operating system creates different streams (side chains) which handle very specific tasks. As a result, the main chain isn’t bogged down by having to process transactions it isn’t built to handle. The abundance of chains means that the platform can process independent transactions at one time.

The operating system creates a scenario similar to adding four additional lanes on a one way highway. Drivers can accomplish the same end goal, arriving at their destination, but take a variety of lanes to get there. Traffic bottlenecks are less likely on a five lane highway than a one line highway In the same way, a Blockchain can accomplish its goal but take a variety of chains to do so. Side chains enable the main chain to operate as intended while also getting specialized tasks done.

Blockchain solutions for everyday life

The end goal for Blockchain-powered operating systems is to provide real world commercial solutions. In order to cope with increased transaction volumes, Blockchain companies are building infrastructures that allow companies to create scalable platforms. By allowing a Blockchain to have connected yet independent side chains, companies will find that they can create customizable solutions to meet their business demands.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Tezos, a cryptocurrency that raised $232 million in July, is in crisis

Tezos, a cryptocurrency that raised $232 million in July, is in crisis

One of the biggest cryptocurrency crowdsales
hasn’t lived up to the hype.

Tezos, a blockchain technology project that made headlines

in July by raising $232 million, has been hit with its second class-action lawsuit in less than a month. It's the latest blow for the project's founders, husband-and-wife team Arthur and Kathleen Breitman. The Breitmans promised to build a blockchain with a revolutionary new governance model that would avoid the kind of strife that has plagued the Bitcoin world over the last few years. Instead, Tezos itself has been engulfed in controversy since its fundraiser ended. The couple is locked in a bitter conflict with Johann Gevers, the man they picked to lead the Tezos Foundation.

The big question hanging over the Tezos project is whether its so-called initial coin offering violated US securities laws. Those laws require companies to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before they can offer securities to the public. The lawsuits argue that, legally speaking, the Tezos crowdfunding campaign was a sale of securities, and so the Breitmans broke the law by ignoring SEC rules. Of course, there would have been little reason to file lawsuits if the Tezos project were a smashing success. But the launch of the Tezos network is now months overdue. Anxious investors are starting to wonder if anything will come of their investment.

Tezos sold tokens on a network that didn’t exist

The Tezos project has lofty goals. In a 2014 white paper, Tezos founder Arthur Breitman argued that Bitcoin had a poor governance model. The network depends on everyone following the same set of rules, and those rules aren't easy to change—a problem that has become increasingly obvious over the last three years. Breitman wanted to solve this problem by developing a blockchain protocol capable of modifying its own rules. The Tezos protocol has multiple layers, with a low-level "network shell" providing generic blockchain functionality but leaving most of the important decisions to higher levels of the stack.

Tezos is supposed to have built-in mechanisms for modifying the rules of these higher-level functions. A Tezos user can propose a modification to the rules, which can be accepted or rejected by other users. In theory, this should make the network much more flexible than conventional blockchain networks. The big problem is that the Tezos network doesn't exist yet. People who bought into the July presale were buying the right to receive units of the Tezos currency once the network became operational.

And the lawsuits charge that the Breitmans misled investors about how long that would be. In a May blog post, Arthur Breitman wrote that "all of the functionality described in the whitepaper has been implemented to this date, except for gas metering." The big remaining tasks, he said, were "finishing a security addition," "optimizing smart-contract storage," and "testing our network on a large scale and performing external security audits."

In his May post, Breitman predicted the Tezos network would be up and running "in a three- to four-month period." He said it might take as long as six months to finish, though he added that "Based on my assessment of the remaining development that does not seem likely, but it's not impossible."

That was written almost six months ago. The Breitmans now say that they expect to launch the network next February, and they acknowledge that it could take even longer. The Tezos organization itself has been plagued with infighting. The Breitmans chose to conduct their fundraising through the Tezos Foundation, a non-profit entity that they helped to set up in Switzerland. (As Kathleen Breitman put it, Switzerland has "a regulatory authority that had a sufficient amount of oversight but not like anything too crazy.")

Legally speaking, a Swiss non-profit organization is supposed to be independent from commercial interests, so the Breitmans tapped Gevers, a Swiss engineer, to run the Tezos Foundation. Meanwhile, the Breitmans have no formal role in the foundation's management, but they've been able to exert plenty of informal pressure. Gevers says the couple hasn't relinquished control over the group's tezos.ch domain name. The Breitmans have accused Gevers of self-dealing and have attempted to oust him in a boardroom coup. They've encouraged other board members to re-organize the foundation and delegate key functions to a subsidiary that would be under the Breitmans' control.

But Gevers is having none of it. He insists that he has an obligation to maintain the foundation's independence and safeguard the hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency entrusted to him by Tezos users. (We've asked both Breitmans and the Tezos Foundation for comment and will update if we hear back.) For now, investors' money—which has swelled in value as the value of bitcoin and ether has continued to rise—is managed by the foundation. The plan is for the foundation to acquire the Breitmans' for-profit company after the company develops and launches the Tezos network. Only then will users get their allocations of Tezos cryptocurrency—something that might not happen for months, even after the network is officially launched.

Tezos claimed investments were really donations

People who bought into the Tezos presale were buying the right to acquire Tezos currency in the future, once the network became operational. Plaintiffs say this is evidence that the pre-sale was really a stock offering, little different from a corporate IPO. US law requires anyone who offers stock to the public to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Breitmans didn't do that.

Instead, they tried to skirt those requirements by describing investors' purchases as donations to the Tezos Foundation. But the lawsuit argues that this was a sham. Even the Breitmans themselves didn't really seem to believe it. "What we're going to do is allow as many people who want to buy into the crowdsale over a two-week period," Kathleen Breitman told Reuters in May. When Reuters asked Tim Draper, one of the biggest early investors in Tezos, how much he "donated" in the fundraiser, he responded, "You mean how much I bought? A lot."

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is charged with enforcing securities laws. So far, the agency has enforced the rules with a light hand. In July, days after the Tezos fundraiser had ended, the SEC ruled that a 2015 fundraising effort called the DAO had violated securities laws. But the SEC decided not to press charges in that case, merely warning that future crowdsales could get their organizers in legal hot water. But disgruntled Tezos investors aren't waiting for the SEC to crack down on Tezos. They're filing their own lawsuits based on the project's alleged violation of securities laws. Both lawsuits against Tezos point to SEC statements warning that unregistered ICOs could run afoul of securities laws.

"If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck," this week's lawsuit argues.

The stakes are high for the Breitmans. If they lose the lawsuit, they could be forced to return the money they raised in the crowdsale, and they could face further action from the Securities and Exchange Commission. But the case could also have broader significance for the cryptocurrency world. Tezos was one of the most successful coin offerings conducted in 2017, but there have been many others like it. Most of them have not registered with the SEC, and others have offered the public tokens on networks that haven't been created yet.

If the courts decide that Tezos violated securities laws, it could put many of this year's other ICOs in legal jeopardy. The SEC hasn't begun prosecuting anyone in the cryptocurrency world for violating securities laws, but it could start doing that at any time. And a court ruling against Tezos could put pressure on the SEC to act.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

I’m Really Into Blockchain. I Blockchain Everything!

I'm Really Into Blockchain.
I Blockchain Everything!

In this opinion piece, part of a weekly series of columns, Casey grapples with the inconsistencies of language in the world of blockchains and cryptocurrencies and tries to find a way to live with it all.

You can measure how long someone has been into cryptocurrencies
by how they use the word "blockchain."

My initiation came in the fall of 2013, when there was only one cryptocurrency worth talking about, which meant there was really only one blockchain. So, for me, the word had to come with the definite article: the blockchain. This was about a year and a half before "blockchain" became a generic reference carrying an indefinite article – a blockchain – and two years before it morphed into an uncountable noun: "blockchain" as a concept.  (Imagine someone saying "I'm interested in ledger" and you'll understand why this drives some of us nuts. A blockchain is a tangible thing, not a practice, a process or a field of interest.)

But thinking about the etymology of these words is more than just an academic exercise. It helps us understand the motives and interests that fuel subtle but important changes in meaning. For example, recognizing that detaching the word "bitcoin" from "blockchain" works to neuter the former helps us see how those most threatened by cryptocurrency are trying to shape the debate. By the same token (no pun intended), if you don't understand why "blockchain," expressed as an uncountable noun, means something different from "a blockchain" or "the [bitcoin] blockchain," you could fall into a trap. It means you probably don't understand the technology you're dealing with and that someone could take advantage of you.

So, when Christian Smith, a colleague from the MIT Media Lab, gave an impassioned speech last week condemning the widespread use of "the blockchain," it irked me. Not only did he dis the definite-article form on which I'd cut my cryptocurrency teeth, he happily used the uncountable noun form. To be fair, he was speaking at the MIT Legal Forum on AI & Blockchain. Perhaps I have to accept this increasingly ubiquitous usage as an unavoidable fact of life? Like taxes.

Still, Smith raised some good points. He rightly observed that there is now a plethora of distributed ledgers carrying the label "blockchain," and thus that there is no monolithic single chain to which we all must adhere. And I fully share the disdain he expressed for that aggravating phrase, "just hash it and put it on the blockchain." But to banish the definite article seemed to me to deny the word's roots. I tend to view "the blockchain" as a nod to bitcoin's catalytic role in fostering wider interest in "blockchain technology." (Pro tip: if you want to talk about "blockchain" as a field of interest, use it as a modifier to a word like "technology"; it can also modify other words, like "pedant.") We still say "the wheel" to talk about other the starting point of that world-changing invention, don't we?

Origin of 'blockchain'

Hardcore bitcoin enthusiasts, those who have been in the space from the beginning, sometimes scoff at the newfound ubiquity of the word "blockchain." Back in the day, no one really thought of the blockchain as being especially significant, other than that it described the particular transaction recording system that bitcoin used, one that happened to be arranged into a cryptographically linked chain of blocks. "Blockchain" didn’t appear in Satoshi Nakamoto's initial white paper. It has been suggested the first usage came from Satoshi's early collaborator, Hal Finney, and even then in a less iconic, two-word construction – "block chain" – which Satoshi and others later picked up and used.

Once blockchain explorers were created, allowing people to more easily search the ledger, the single word started to gain significance. No doubt, its growing popularity was helped by the fact that the most popular of those software tools belonged to the startup named Blockchain – typically expressed with its URL extension ".info" to distinguish it from the bitcoin ledger.  (One mark of the confusion around all this is now found in how Blockchain.info's original logo is frequently used in slide decks by speakers seeking to illustrate a generic technology they call "blockchain.")

Dedicated bitcoin developers still don't really talk about the blockchain as an isolated thing of any great importance. They view bitcoin as an all-encompassing technology, within which the chain-of-blocks ledger is just one part.  I personally think the blockchain deserves to be recognized on its own. It's what gives bitcoin its immutable time-stamping capacity, allowing tricks like Julian Assange's "proof of life" and it lets us forecast when each halving will occur.

It also encapsulates the principle of the "longest chain" – contested as it may be – and, when the community is divided over a contentious hard fork proposal, as it was until recently, it's the blockchain that literally manifests that division. Still, core devs have a point: it's not entirely accurate to describe the blockchain, as many do, as the "technology underpinning bitcoin." Things got confusing when Wall Street banks got interested in distributed ledgers.

They used the phrase "blockchain without bitcoin," which misleadingly suggested that blockchains were not only important but more important than cryptocurrencies – even though, without the latter, it was impossible to have the groundbreaking permissionless, fully censorship-resistant, record of transactions that bitcoin introduced. This new usage had a purpose, of course. It allowed the newcomers in suits to strip the technology of its most disruptive characteristic – the fact that no one could control it – and impose their own control over it. It was a subtle but powerful act of appropriation.

What to do about it

Should we care about this? Well, yes, and no.

As anyone with teenagers knows, language, especially English, is always evolving. And it needs to. Language imposes rules on social interaction. It constrains what we can and can't do with expression. This helps us make sense of each other, but if the rules are overly inflexible, they limit our imagination and our capacity for innovation.

There is a cultural zeitgeist underway in the "blockchain space," a Cambrian explosion of ideas. We can do our part to try to steer the evolution of the language associated with that, but preventing change and new forms of expression is as difficult as stopping biological evolution. What we must demand is awareness of why we use the words we use and why others choose theirs. (I'll begrudgingly accept "blockchain" as an uncountable noun if others will understand why my co-author Paul Vigna and I put "The Blockchain" into the title of our new book to acknowledge the technology's bitcoin-rooted history.)

With awareness hopefully comes consistency of usage. That's vital if we are to develop this technology and its applications.  We need precision in communication if we are to come together and collaborate on the same ideas. If we are at least thinking, reading and educating ourselves about such matters, we can be more accepting of the fluidity of word usages. That way, we avoid the harmful, confining effects of political correctness for blockchain. (See what I just did there.) I only have one demand: don't, whatever you do, start using "blockchain" as a verb.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

MasterCard has filed a patent on its own blockchain-based money transfer solution

MasterCard has filed a patent
on its own blockchain-based money transfer solution

In about 2014, most bitcoin companies quickly pivoted

to the “next big thing”: blockchain. Among them were the financial and fintech houses that were eager to avoid SEC scrutiny of their cryptocurrency holdings but were happy to use blockchain technology to speed up transaction times. Many of those early efforts are now apparently bearing fruit. MasterCard, for example, has just filed a patent for a “Method and System For Instantaneous Payment Using Recorded Guarantees.” This is, in short, a patent for a blockchain-like system that offers instant payment. It is not a clone, per se, but a patent that assumes that a blockchain-like ledger will be available to store and manage international transactions instantly.

The patent describes:

A method for processing a guaranteed electronic transaction, includes: storing account profile, each include an account number and balance; receiving a transaction message from an acquiring financial institution via a payment network, the message including a specific account number, transaction amount, and payment guarantee data; identifying a specific account profile that includes the specific account number; deducting the transaction amount from the account balance in the specific account profile; generating a record of payment guarantee that includes the transaction amount and data associated with the payment guarantee data; generating a return message including a response code indicating transaction approval and data associated with the generated record; transmitting the generated record to a computing system via a communication network; and transmitting the generated return message to the acquiring financial institution via the payment network.

While the abstract itself doesn’t mention blockchain, MasterCard intends to use the technology in the process, describing a step in which “the payment guarantee data stored in the third data element included in the received transaction message includes at least a blockchain network identifier and (i) a public key or (ii) a destination address, the record of payment guarantee is a blockchain transaction for payment of the transaction amount stored in the second data element included in the received transaction message to (i) the destination address or (ii) a destination address associated with the public key.

The computing system is a node in a blockchain network corresponding to the blockchain network identifier.” That’s definitely a mouthful, but it basically means they’ll store a record of the transaction in some immutable form. MasterCard has explored blockchain tech before even as its CEO attacked bitcoin publicly. This tendency to cut the cryptocurrency out of a blockchain discussion is not new and it’s not stopping any time soon. Whether it works, however, is a different question.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

CoinHive Cryptocurrency Miner Is 6th Most Common Malware, Says Report

CoinHive Cryptocurrency Miner Is 6th Most Common Malware, Says Report

Cyber-security solutions provider Check Point Software

has said that the threat from cryptocurrency mining malware is rapidly growing. According to the company's latest Global Threat Impact Index report, the CoinHive variant became the sixth most-used malware in October. CoinHive – a JavaScript program that lurks unseen on websites – works by tapping the processing power of visitors' computers to mine monero.

Maya Horowitz, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point, said in a press release that the emergence of mining malware like CoinHive highlights the "need for advanced threat prevention technologies" to curb such practices and protect networks from cyber-criminals.

Horowitz added:

"Crypto mining is a new, silent, yet significant actor in the threat landscape, allowing threat actors to make significant revenues while victims' endpoints and networks suffer from latency and decreased performance."

According to the report, malware variant RoughTed (adware) topped the index, followed by Locky (ransomware) and Seamless (traffic redirection). Recently, internet domain provider Cloudflare suspended websites that ran hidden cryptocurrency miners, including that of the operator of torrent site ProxyBunker. This site was said to be running the Coinhive miner for four days prior to the suspension.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Dash Cryptocurrency Builds Base After Setting Record Above $500

Dash Cryptocurrency Builds Base After Setting Record Above $500

Dash is seeking direction after hitting new highs.

After setting a new record above $500 on Sunday, the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell back to near $350 today before regaining poise above the $400 mark. As of writing, the dash-U.S. dollar (DASH/USD) exchange rate is $403. As per CoinMarketCap, the cryptocurrency is up 4.58 percent over the last 24 hours, and 48 percent in the last month.

The record rally seen over the weekend is reportedly due to the flow of money out of bitcoin and into alternative cryptocurrencies triggered by last week's suspension of the Segwit2x hard fork. Following the last-minute move to halt a controversial bitcoin upgrade, the markets saw a broad rally in the tokens of competing blockchains such as dash, bitcoin cash and others.

Also possibly driving price gains, the dash core team has announced the latest release of its software, a major upgrade that would bring a 2 MB block size and lower and transaction fees. The move may further strengthen the appeal of dash as a payment network, especially among those who believe that on-blockchain scaling will ultimately boost performance. The price chart analysis suggests the base has shifted higher to around $380 levels and that prices could revisit record highs sooner rather than later.

A Dash chart shows:

  • Prices spiked after spending a better part of the last month defending the support level of $250.
  • The 5-day MA and 10-day MA signal a strong bullish bias (slope upwards), thus dips are likely to be short-lived.
  • The rising trendline (red) is seen offering support around $325 levels and the descending trendline is likely to act as a support around $306 levels.
  • Yesterday's close was above the critical resistance of $414.

Thus, the stars seem nicely aligned in favor of the bulls. However, the relative strength index is overbought. Furthermore, the 1-hour chart below does show scope for a pullback to $350 levels.

A chart shows:

  • Bearish price RSI divergence led to a strong pullback.
  • The RSI favors further losses.
  • However, the 50-MA and 100-MA are sloping upwards, so any dips to $350 levels are likely to be short-lived.

View

  • A potential technical correction $350 cannot be ruled out but could be quickly reversed.
  • Given the upward sloping nature of the key moving averages, the base appears to have shifted higher to around $380 levels.
  • A nice consolidation around $380–$400 could yield a fresh rally to record highs above $500.

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Warning Signs That You’re About to Make a Big Business Mistake

Warning Signs That You’re About to Make a Big Business Mistake

‘honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.’

James Altucher says, ‘honesty is the fastest way

to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.’ Well, I’ll be honest with you, mistakes hurt. Mistakes—whether yours or someone else’s—bruise your ego and stir all sorts of fears and worries within you. You start to question yourself. You wonder what will happen next and what the worst case scenario may look like.

Mistakes suck, but mistakes also play an imperative role in your growth and success. For as Einstein said, ‘A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.’ Assuming you don’t wish to play it safe your entire life, you must accept that mistakes happen. After interviewing 163 experts, thought leaders, and all-round inspiring folk for my book, The Successful Mistake, I appreciate this more than most.

Some mistakes are unavoidable.

They are there to test and teach us. But what if I told you many of your mistakes were avoidable, and by looking in the right places, you could spot them before they happen? If I promised you such a good time, would you continue to read?

 

3 Warning Signs That Prevent Mistakes from Happening

Most mistakes begin small. They’re tiny little things that would barely register in your day. But because you pretend they don’t happen, disregard them, or make poor decisions on the back of them, these little mistakes grow into big mistakes, which in turn develop into life-altering failure. Certain mistakes are thrust upon you, and you cannot do much to avoid them. Yet many begin slowly, and by keeping your eyes open you can spot them before they spark to life. So if you notice any of the following, take note, for a mistake may be near.

 

1. You Get Complacent!

One of the biggest warning signs of all is when you grow complacent. We may enjoy the idea of an easy life, but the truth is, you need a challenge. When it comes to growing a successful business and life, this is never more true. You need to remain motivated. You need to keep pushing. Like a shark, if you’re not moving, you die. Such complacency lead to Thomas Frank’s biggest mistake of all. As he built College Info Geek while still at university, he was a busy boy indeed. Between studying, blogging, and marketing, he had little time to spare.

So as his site grew, he decided to cut back on his studies and take fewer classes. It made sense, after all, as more time spent on his business meant more chance of success. Yet with this extra unstructured time on his hands, Thomas grew complacent. Instead of growing, his business plateaued. He didn’t feel as motivated, and it wasn’t until he got this motivation back that College Info Geek continued its rise to fame.

2. You Get Stuck in your Own Head!

Although you may surround yourself with people at all times, this entrepreneurial roller coaster can be a lonely ride. It’s easy to get stuck in your own head, as you work on your ideas, your plans, and your growth. You become so fixated on your work that you shut yourself off to the rest of the world. You become blind to opportunity, mistakes, and everything else. You simply get lost in your own head, which is a dangerous place to lose yourself in.

Take John Corcoran, the co-founder of Rise 25, and a man who has built his career as a master connector. Today, John rubs shoulders with the best of the best, and has an enviable black book of contacts that most people would die for. Yet rewind to when he first started his business, and his days told a different picture. You see, despite building a successful career in politics, entertainment, and the tech scene, John desired more.

So, he started his own practice and got to work.

And work he did, so hard that he went months without networking. All those relationships he had built during his successful career slipped by the wayside. He condemned himself to a lonely entrepreneurial existence and had little to show for it. He was busy, sure, but did he grow? Was he happy? No. John got stuck in his own head, and it lead to what he described as his biggest business mistake of all. This entrepreneurial roller coaster is lonely enough as it is, so don’t make matters worse by keeping yourself to yourself.

3. Everyone Around You Says ‘Yes’

Yes is a dangerous word. If all you say is yes, you’re sure to drown under work, responsibility, and commitment. Yes doesn’t provide freedom; it offers nothing but imprisonment. Yet it isn’t only when you say yes that issues arise, When you’re surrounded by a bunch of yes men, mistakes are close by. Scott Oldford experienced this as he became a well known “web guy” at a very young age. During a period when most of us plucked up the courage to ask that girl or guy to the dance, Scott made large sums of money, won prestigious awards, and built an ever-growing business.

He had everything a teenager could desire, including a group of people who told him what he wanted to hear. One yes followed after another, and soon Scott began to believe the hype—creating Scott Oldford The Monster, as he described it. Scott soon lost everything he built. He had to start from scratch. He had to figure out who Scott Oldford was. I’m happy to say he’s doing just fine today, but only after he lost track of what truly matters.

That’s what happens when you surround yourself with ‘Yes.’

So if all you hear is that simple three-letter word—either from your own mouth, or from those around you—take note, a mistake may be near. Of course, warning signs like these won’t vanquish mistakes from your life. Some are unavoidable. Some provide invaluable lessons you need to experience. But the sooner you nip these mistakes in the bud, the eaier you’ll find your road to success. I learned this from speaking to those who have been there and done it—successful folk who are at the top of their game. I encourage you not to wait until you make your own mistakes. Instead, learn from others so you can fast-track your way to the finish line (today).

Chuck Reynolds


Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Taming the Power-Hungry Blockchain Beast with Decentralized, Clean Energy

Taming the Power-Hungry Blockchain Beast with Decentralized,
Clean Energy

Throughout history, every great breakthrough often came with negative consequences

and side effects. Think about Marie Curie. Her research on radioactivity is what makes X-rays possible today. Unfortunately, her discoveries and remarkable research are also what killed her. What about the Internet? It’s the most revolutionary invention for generations and holds countless opportunities that benefit billions of people around the world. However, cybercrime has never been higher and expected to reach $2 tln by 2019. It’s the same story with Blockchain. The technology has the potential to revolutionize every industry it comes into contact with. However, its biggest application remains in the cryptocurrency industry. And with the current excitement surrounding this industry, it’s easy to overlook the side effects that come with such a disruptive breakthrough.

Energy-craving Blockchain can have devastating consequences for the environment

Mining popular cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, requires extremely powerful computer hardware that can solve complex mathematical equations. To run these computers burns up a lot of energy, mostly from non-renewable fossil fuels. And as the price of the digital coin sores so too does the number of people looking to get in on the action. Each and every Bitcoin transaction requires around 215 KWh (kilowatt-hours) to process. In comparison, the average American household uses 900 KWh every month. So around 30 KWh per day.

That means a single Bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of power as seven homes do in an entire day. What’s even more shocking is that a single Bitcoin mine relies on fossil fuels, like coal, can produce as much as 13,000 kg of CO2 emissions per Bitcoin mined. With 300,000 transactions per day, it’s easy to see what a significant impact the process has on the environment. And this is just from one cryptocurrency. Although Ethereum is less energy reliant, a single transaction on this network still requires the same amount of power as nearly two homes. In total, the network is equivalent in power consumption as the whole of Cyprus.

Centralized mining on a decentralized network

On a platform that is inherently decentralized, centralized mining operations seem counterintuitive. However, mining operations gravitate towards countries with cheap electricity. For example, China does over 80 percent of Bitcoin mining due to the country’s cheap supply of electricity. Unfortunately, the power supply comes mostly from dirty, non-renewable sources like coal. The country gets more than 70 percent of their electricity from coal.  In fact, a few years ago, it was reported that China burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined.

Burning coal releases large amounts of CO2 which is one of the biggest causes of the greenhouse effect and global warming. Apart from having a detrimental impact on the environment, large pools of concentrated mining pools spurred on by cheap electricity, have too much influence over the network. Look what happened to the price of Bitcoin when China announced their ban on ICO’s? The price becomes too reliant on single entities. This in stark contrast to the underlying concept of cryptocurrencies and Blockchain as a whole, which adds value exactly because of its dependency on a majority consensus to verify and approve transactions.

However, people and big corporations are becoming more aware of their social responsibilities and the size of the footprint that they leave on this earth. Development and adoption of renewable energy sources have seen a dramatic increase in the last few years, including solar, wind and hydropower. So much so that in many locations, there is an excess supply of electricity from renewable sources, that simply goes to waste. This is in great part due to the fact that the cost of building large-scale solar farms has dropped by as much as 50 percent in five years.

A three-fold solution

Envion is hoping to make cryptocurrency mining cheaper, cleaner and decentralized with their mobile data-centers. They’ve developed automatized mining units which are installed inside shipping containers. These containers can be relocated around the world with relative ease, reducing the dependency on single governments, economies or infrastructures.

The mining units, which exclusively consume power from reusable, green sources, are placed near energy supply points, such as solar plants and wind farms, reducing the cost of “transporting” electricity and enabling them to easily tap into excess energy production. In addition, the company developed a new, self-regulating cooling system, specifically for Blockchain mining, which is up to forty-times more energy-efficient and cost-effective than conventional, AC cooling units.

Envion further promotes environmental friendliness by recycling the energy produced from mining with the strategic placement of the mining units, close to objects and buildings that need heating, including warehouses and greenhouses. This enables them to reduce their energy costs even further. The end result is a mining solution that is more profitable due to lower energy costs, more secure due to mobile mining that puts less reliance on single entities, and more eco-friendly due to the usage of renewable, green power.

An ICO for the environment

Many of the ICO’s we see these days are largely based on Speculation. The EVN token is however fully backed by the hardware that it represents which is already operating successfully. The EVN token will be on sale for 31 days from Dec. 1, 2017, with a max cap of 150 mln. Once invested, token holders will have the right to dividends from the mining operations including 100 percent from proprietary mining operations (75 percent immediately and 25 percent reinvested to boost future payouts) and 35 percent from non-proprietary operations. Finally, token holders will also get a say in company strategy by voting on decisions.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

‘I Accidentally Killed It’: Parity Wallet Bug Locks $150 Million in Ether

‘I Accidentally Killed It’:
Parity Wallet Bug Locks $150 Million in Ether

The Ethereum ecosystem encountered another black swan

event this week with the activation of a bug in the multi-signature wallet software released by Parity Technologies. The bug resulted in multi-sig wallet users permanently losing access to an estimated $150 million in funds. Leading some people to compare the significance of the event to the infamous collapse of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.

Parity’s $150 Million Wallet Bug

“I accidentally killed it.”

With those words and a link to an ethereum contract address on Etherscan, Github user “devops199” revealed that he or she had inadvertently exploited a bug in the Parity Wallet library contract. Apparently, the user had turned the library contract into an ordinary multi-sig wallet and had become the owner of that wallet. Recognizing what had happened, the user attempted to delete the code that had transferred the wallet ownership. However, because the wallet contained library contract code — and all Parity multi-sig wallets rely on that code for their internal logic — the deletion of the code permanently froze the approximately $150 million in funds stored in Parity multi-sig wallets.

Fix Requires Hard Fork

Developers are currently exploring potential solutions to recover access to the funds, but early reports indicate that the funds would only be recoverable through a hard fork to the Ethereum platform.“One of the biggest cybersecurity challenges with smart contracts is that they’re made up of code, just like any other application. This is prone to human error,” said Leigh-Anne Galloway, cyber resilience lead at Positive.com, which protects ICOs from cyberattack.  “It’s also quite hard to make changes to the contract once it goes live, which is why we’ve seen that the funds have been frozen with Parity. This scenario is evidence that it’s extremely important to review the code before a contract goes live to avoid these vulnerabilities.”

The greatest fear associated with a hard fork is that some users will refuse to upgrade to the new software, causing the Ethereum blockchain to split into two. This worst-case scenario happened following the hard fork that recovered funds stolen in the $50 million DAO hack last year, resulting in the creation of Ethereum Classic by users who did not believe a hard fork should be used to edit transaction history — no matter the consequences.

‘Hacker Paradise’

This is not the first time a bug in Parity’s multi-sig wallet code has caused users to lose funds. Earlier this year, an attacker exploited the multi-sig code to steal more than $30 million worth of ether and could have made off with more money if white hat hackers had not drained affected accounts and returned funds to users. At the time, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee said that the breach confirmed that the complexity of Solidity, the native programming language of Ethereum, makes the platform a “hacker paradise”. However, the exploit could have ramifications for the entire crypto ecosystem. BlockTower Capital CIO Air Paul, for instance, predicted that the fallout from the bug will have negative impacts on all cryptocurrencies — not just ethereum. “A flaw in an ethereum multisig wallet leads both retail and institutional investors to question the security of all wallets,” he concluded.

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

IMF Head Foresees the End of Banking and the Triumph of Cryptocurrency

IMF Head Foresees the End of Banking and the Triumph of Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin "puts a question mark on the fractional banking model we know today."

In a remarkably frank talk at a Bank of England conference,

the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund has speculated that Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have as much of a future as the Internet itself. It could displace central banks, conventional banking, and challenge the monopoly of national monies.  Christine Lagarde–a Paris native who has held her position at the IMF since 2011–says the only substantial problems with existing cryptocurrency are fixable over time.

In the long run, the technology itself can replace national monies, conventional financial intermediation, and even "puts a question mark on the fractional banking model we know today." In a lecture that chastised her colleagues for failing to embrace the future, she warned that "Not so long ago, some experts argued that personal computers would never be adopted, and that tablets would only be used as expensive coffee trays. So I think it may not be wise to dismiss virtual currencies."

Here are the relevant parts of her paper:

Let us start with virtual currencies. To be clear, this is not about digital payments in existing currencies—through Paypal and other “e-money” providers such as Alipay in China, or M-Pesa in Kenya. Virtual currencies are in a different category, because they provide their own unit of account and payment systems. These systems allow for peer-to-peer transactions without central clearinghouses, without central banks.

For now, virtual currencies such as Bitcoin pose little or no challenge to the existing order of fiat currencies and central banks. Why? Because they are too volatile, too risky, too energy intensive, and because the underlying technologies are not yet scalable. Many are too opaque for regulators; and some have been hacked.

But many of these are technological challenges that could be addressed over time. Not so long ago, some experts argued that personal computers would never be adopted, and that tablets would only be used as expensive coffee trays. So I think it may not be wise to dismiss virtual currencies.

Better value for money?

For instance, think of countries with weak institutions and unstable national currencies. Instead of adopting the currency of another country—such as the U.S. dollar—some of these economies might see a growing use of virtual currencies. Call it dollarization 2.0. IMF experience shows that there is a tipping point beyond which coordination around a new currency is exponential. In the Seychelles, for example, dollarization jumped from 20 percent in 2006 to 60 percent in 2008.

And yet, why might citizens hold virtual currencies rather than physical dollars, euros, or sterling? Because it may one day be easier and safer than obtaining paper bills, especially in remote regions. And because virtual currencies could actually become more stable. For instance, they could be issued one-for-one for dollars, or a stable basket of currencies. Issuance could be fully transparent, governed by a credible, pre-defined rule, an algorithm that can be monitored…or even a “smart rule” that might reflect changing macroeconomic circumstances.

So in many ways, virtual currencies might just give existing currencies and monetary policy a run for their money. The best response by central bankers is to continue running effective monetary policy, while being open to fresh ideas and new demands, as economies evolve.

Better payment services?

For example, consider the growing demand for new payment services in countries where the shared, decentralized service economy is taking off.  This is an economy rooted in peer-to-peer transactions, in frequent, small-value payments, often across borders.

Four dollars for gardening tips from a lady in New Zealand, three euros for an expert translation of a Japanese poem, and 80 pence for a virtual rendering of historic Fleet Street: these payments can be made with credit cards and other forms of e-money. But the charges are relatively high for small-value transactions, especially across borders.

Instead, citizens may one day prefer virtual currencies, since they potentially offer the same cost and convenience as cash—no settlement risks, no clearing delays, no central registration, no intermediary to check accounts and identities. If privately issued virtual currencies remain risky and unstable, citizens may even call on central banks to provide digital forms of legal tender. So, when the new service economy comes knocking on the Bank of England’s door, will you welcome it inside? Offer it tea—and financial liquidity?

New models of financial intermediation

This brings us to the second leg of our pod journey—new models of financial intermediation. One possibility is the break-up, or unbundling, of banking services. In the future, we might keep minimal balances for payment services on electronic wallets. The remaining balances may be kept in mutual funds, or invested in peer-to-peer lending platforms with an edge in big data and artificial intelligence for automatic credit scoring.

This is a world of six-month product development cycles and constant updates, primarily of software, with a huge premium on simple user-interfaces and trusted security. A world where data is king. A world of many new players without imposing branch offices. Some would argue that this puts a question mark on the fractional banking model we know today, if there are fewer bank deposits and money flows into the economy through new channels.

How would monetary policy be set in this context?

Today’s central banks typically affect asset prices through primary dealers, or big banks, to which they provide liquidity at fixed prices—so-called open-market operations. But if these banks were to become less relevant in the new financial world, and demand for central bank balances were to diminish, could monetary policy transmission remain as effective?

Chuck Reynolds

Marketing Dept
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about -Bitcoin.
Interested or have Questions. Call me 559-474-4614

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden