TOMORROW conference, the biggest Crypto, NFT and Metaverse conference in Europe, finalized its spectacular debut edition held at Belgrade’s Belexpocentar, from the 13th till the 15th of May.

More than 21.000 people from the whole world have enjoyed the event at the venue and online. More than 50 speakers participated on seven exclusive panels, more than 50 keynotes and numerous interactive discussions and workshops from the Crypto, NFT and Metaverse spheres. Leading global experts presented the exclusive information about the blockchain, cryptocurrencies as well as about “mining” and investments. A panel in the Metaverse was held for the first time in Europe and second time in the world, while the latest trends from the NFT world were also presented, including the collecting possibilities and other benefits. The opening ceremony was organized as a futuristic spectacle, with special effects, lasers, drones and pyrotechnics, while the man in the astronaut suit welcomed the crowd. Additionally, the next edition of the TOMORROW conference is announced, scheduled for May 2023.

“I still can’t find the right words to express my excitement and gratefulness to everyone who was part of the conference, who believed in this conference held for the first time in this part of Europe. Now I can say – it was the best. Past three days we could enjoy more than 50 speakers, seven panels; 6 000 people have visited three stages while more than 15 000 people have watched the conference online”, said Zoran Tadic, TOMORROW conference program director.

Nenad Paunovic on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, has opened the conference on the first day, pointing out that Serbia is well aware of this area and it started regulating the cryptocurrency market. He invited the attendees to invest into Serbia as it’s protecting intellectual property as well. Belgian investor and blockchain expert, Bruno Ver, pointed out that cryptocurrencies and NFTs are the future as the value of money is dropping, but there is a need for clear business and tax regulations. For the first time in Europe and the second time in the world, a panel titled “Creator economies and NFTs of the future” is held in METAVERSE, moderated by Vitomir Jevremovic, CEO of All Art and SolSea. He was on stage wearing the VR headset, the panelists located around the world were shown as avatars, discussing the hot NFT topics while the audience were watching it on the LED screens in real time.

Second day of the conference included interactive panel discussions as well as the panels about the Metaverse. Joel Dietz, Frank Fitzgerald and Laura K. Inamedinova were discussing “Where is the Metaverse taking us to?” and what possibilities it opens. Further discussions included experts’ opinions on the tendencies of merging the physical world with virtual reality and what consequences it could bring to the global community. Aleksandar Matanovic, crypto pioneer in Serbia and the founder of the local bitcoin exchange ECD, pointed out that the paper money is going to history and that the reason is not only the cryptocurrencies. Panel “Impact, Opportunities and Regulatory Considerations” got many visitors involved, discussing with Joel Dietz, David Bundi and the others on how the Metaverse will affect the future generations. UNICEF launched the humanitarian action of collecting Crypto donations to support the children of Ukraine. Every donation higher than 10 USD got an NFT created by Zamurovic brothers. Separate stages held workshops about the crypto law regulations and taxes in Serbia.

At the last panel of the second day: “Can the Music Industry go to Metaverse Altogether?” Dusan Kovacevic, founder and CEO of Exit, presented the Exit NFT collection created with the DJ superstar Maceo Plex. Later that night, Maceo shaked the packed party at the Belexpo centar.

Last day of the conference saw a huge audience interest as well. Marko Suvajdzic, director assistant at the Florida University, emphasized that, exploring the blockchain as a subject, method and media, he concluded that the art world has entered the journey of the technology revolution as well. “So far, the blockchain technology has been accepted by the leaders in the finance, computer science, transport, accounting, to bring efficiency, transparency and added value to their services”, he pointed out.

Dr Goran Segedinac /Headmade/ explained to the visitors how to recognize a quality NFT project. “Maybe it is not easy to detect the authors of the currently most valuable NFTs, but you can recognize the quality by four parameters: does the collection owns its identity, does it create users experience, is the community involved in the project development, does the project team delivers the product after minting and does it use the financial resources for the further development”, advised Segedinac.

Tether cryptocurrency founder Craig Sellars closed the conference at the end of the third day with his lecture “Decentralize Yourself” about the digital identity in the future. Due to the huge interest, the organizers opened the lecture for the doubled number of audience. This blockchain philosopher, as he calls himself, is still proud of his cryptocurrency that is still stable and it shines. The human individual is still the most important in this sphere. “Value of an individual is the most important in the digital world. All other platforms want to own your data, but here that’s not the case. You own your information; and if someone asks for it, you can charge for it” – said Sellars.

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One of the provisions would make it easier to verify customer identities and transfers to private wallets by enforcing detailed record keeping and reporting, according to NBC News.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is preparing a bill to make it more difficult to use cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Warren says her new bill will “ensure crypto isn’t used by Putin and his cronies to undermine our economic sanctions,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to NBC News, which was the first to report on Warren’s proposed bill, one of its provisions would make it easier to verify customer identities and transfers to private wallets by requiring financial institutions to log detailed records and submit reports to the Treasury Department.

The chances of the bill passing are limited, however, since the Republicans control the Senate.

Warren and three other Democratic senators sent a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen asking about how the Treasury Department plans to enforce economic sanctions within the cryptocurrency industry.

“Strong enforcement of sanctions compliance in the cryptocurrency industry is critical given that digital assets, which allow entities to bypass the traditional financial system, may increasingly be used as a tool for sanctions evasion,” the senators wrote.

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In an age in which it is hard to be anonymous, the identity of the cryptocurrency’s inventor remains a mystery.

Thirteen years ago a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto released a paper describing a new software system called bitcoin. Today bitcoin is worth more than $1 trillion and has sparked a phenomenon that, its proponents believe, might rewire the entire global financial network.

There is a mystery at the heart of bitcoin, however. Who actually is Satoshi Nakamoto?

On Oct. 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto sent a nine-page paper to a group of cryptographers outlining a new form of “electronic cash” called bitcoin.

At the time nobody cared about Nakamoto’s identity. Most of the people in that group were skeptical of the bitcoin idea itself.

Cryptographers and developers such as Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, David Chaum and Wei Dai had been trying for more than a decade to develop an electronic version of cash. All of them had failed, for a variety of reasons.

On Jan. 9, 2009, Nakamoto launched the bitcoin network. Mr. Finney was one of the few who was intrigued by it, and in the early weeks the two worked remotely to get the network running. The first bitcoin transaction went from Nakamoto to Mr. Finney.

For about two years, as bitcoin slowly grew, Nakamoto wrote on message boards and privately exchanged emails with developers. In December 2010, Nakamoto stopped posting publicly, and stopped talking with developers in 2011. Nakamoto passed leadership of the project to Gavin Andresen, a software developer.

Do we know anything about Nakamoto as a person?

Not really. In public messages, and even in private messages that were later released, Nakamoto never spoke about anything personal. Nothing biographical, or about the weather, or things happening locally. Everything was about bitcoin and its code.

Nakamoto used two email addresses and one website. The identity of the person who registered them is blocked.

There is no other public information. In an age in which it is hard to be anonymous, Nakamoto remains a ghost.

But isn’t Nakamoto rich?

There are about one million bitcoins that were “mined” in bitcoin’s first year that have never been moved.

Today those bitcoins are worth about $55 billion. That would make Nakamoto one of the 30 richest people in the world, according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list.

It is assumed that those one million bitcoins are controlled by Nakamoto—and only Nakamoto. To move them one needs to have the “private key”—a long, unique string of letters and numbers that controls access.

The person moving them would have a very strong claim on being Nakamoto.

So why haven’t they been sold?

In the early years, the cryptocurrency community assumed that Nakamoto remained anonymous and left those bitcoins untouched, mainly out of fear. It didn’t seem unreasonable that the inventor of bitcoin could be arrested. In recent years, though, most governments—China being the big exception—have accepted bitcoin to varying degrees.

It has been a decade since Nakamoto disappeared. It is possible bitcoin’s creator died without giving anybody else the private keys. It is also possible that Nakamoto lost the keys and can’t move the bitcoin.

Somebody must be Nakamoto, though, right?

Yes, and over the years virtually anybody who did work even remotely similar to bitcoin—such as Mr. Finney, who died in 2014, and Mr. Andresen—has been pegged as Nakamoto. All have denied it, and there hasn’t been evidence to prove otherwise.

In 2014, a group of students and researchers at Aston University in Birmingham, England, carried out a linguistics analysis and concluded that Mr. Szabo was most likely to be Nakamoto. Others have claimed he is Nakamoto as well. Mr. Szabo has denied the claim.

Who is Craig Wright?

Mr. Wright is an Australian programmer living in London who in 2016 claimed to be Nakamoto. His claims were quickly dissected, and rejected, in the bitcoin community. He pledged to prove he was Nakamoto by moving some of those early bitcoins. To this date, he hasn’t done so.

In recent years, Mr. Wright has tried to litigate his claim. He has filed for patents on bitcoin’s software, even though it was released as an open-source project, and sued a podcast host who publicly ridiculed his claim for defamation.

Will the Florida lawsuit reveal Nakamoto’s identity?

Mr. Wright himself is being sued by the family of a deceased colleague named Dave Kleiman. The suit claims that Messrs. Wright and Kleiman developed bitcoin together as part of a business partnership and that Mr. Wright owes Mr. Kleiman’s family half of those one million bitcoins.

If a jury finds the two did create bitcoin together, Mr. Wright could be legally compelled to sell some of those bitcoins. But until he does so, most people in the bitcoin world will continue to dismiss his claims.

And until somebody moves those bitcoins, it isn’t likely that anybody will be accepted as bitcoin’s true creator.

By Paul Vigna @ wsj.com

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HUSKYX, which has a market cap of $1.8 billion, is a deflationary token which means the total supply is always decreasing, making it increasingly rare.

Little known cryptocurrencies rising and falling thousands of percentage points within hours is becoming the latest trend right now. This also points to the risks and volatility in trading based on cryptocurrencies.

Recently, Kokoswap, a not so well known cryptocurrency, went from $0.01005 to $7.22 in just 24 hours on November 10, up 71,000%. Shiba Inu, an internet celebrity, also witnessed an incredible protest.

The latest to join this trend is HUSKYX, another cryptocurrency that is little known to ordinary investors. The cryptocurrency has seen a massive 45,000% rally in just 24 hours, jumping from a low of $0.000000004089 to $0.0000001878, coin market data shows. At 5pm (IST) on Monday, the coin is currently trading at $0.00001828.

HUSKYX is a deflationary token which means the total supply is always decreasing, making it increasingly rare. Every HUSKYX transaction is taxed and a small percentage of the coins are burned, but in the end the holding is rewarded.

HUSKYX token is deployed on Binance Smart Chain, combining rebase function and dividend reward.

Rebase, also known as elastic arc, works in a way to increase or decrease the circulating supply through a function known as recovery. When a rebase occurs, the tokens may decrease but nevertheless, they will remain the same relative to the token’s market capitalization and the value of the tokens will remain constant.

Rebase will be used when there is a drop in the chart to counter any drop and keep the chart looking healthy.

HUSKYX says it aims to go above and beyond for its community, by providing investors and re-tracements alike with ample opportunities on the Binance Smart Chain.

Cryptocurrency craze among investors is increasing day by day as more and more individuals become aware of its reliability and viability.

The digital asset market, which has been around for more than a decade, has recently nearly quadrupled from its late 2020 value, as investors have become more comfortable with established tokens. Establishments like Bitcoin and networks like Ethereum and Solana continue to upgrade and attract new functions.

Recently, the overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has reached $3 trillion, with Bitcoin leading the way as the largest digital asset.

The post Why this crypto surges up-to 45,000% in just 24 hours? appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Vietnam has the second highest rate of in terms of cryptocurrency use among 74 surveyed economies, driven by remittance payments, a new report says.

The report on survey results released by Statista, a global provider of market and consumer data, says 21 percent of respondents in Vietnam said that they used or owned cryptocurrency, second after Nigeria (32 percent).

The Philippines ranked third at 20 percent, followed by Turkey and Peru, both at 16 percent, said the survey which covered 1,000-4,000 respondents per country.

The rest of the top 10 comprised Switzerland, China, the U.S., Germany and Japan.

“For Vietnam and the Philippines, remittance payments play a role in the widespread use of cryptocurrency,” the report said.

The high cost of sending money across borders in conventional ways has caused many to turn to local cryptocurrency exchanges, catering to overseas workers and their families, it added.

However, cryptocurrency has not been recognized as a legitimate means of payment in Vietnam. The State Bank of Vietnam has warned that owning, trading and using cryptocurrency was risky and not protected by laws, the Vietnam Insider reported.

Earlier reports have noted that while the Vietnamese diaspora typically sent remittances to Vietnam to support their families, there has been a shift in recent years. Now, a significant portion of remittances are used as investment for doing business in the country.

Around 580,000 Vietnamese citizens work overseas now, up from 500,000 in 2010, according to the Department of Overseas Labor under the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, according to Vietnam Insider.

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• Ethereum and Bitcoin, two of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the market, are set to at least double their price before the end of the year, according to analysts.

• The rally for Bitcoin is predicted to stem from more ETFs coming into the market, giving the cryptocurrency more legitimacy as an investment asset.

• Goldman Sachs pegs Ethereum to hit $8,000, in-line with breakeven inflation.

After hitting a new all-time high in October, analysts are betting on Ethereum and Bitcoin to double in value before the end of year.

The analyst behind Plan B, who correctly predicted the price of Bitcoin in September and came very close in October, believes that Bitcoin will reach $98,000 this month itself and go on to breach $135,000 in December.

This is in-line with other price predictions for Bitcoin that banking on the world’s oldest cryptocurrency. Standard Chartered, for instance, pegs that Bitcoin will hit $100,000 in 2021 or early 2022.

Meanwhile, global investment bank, Goldman Sachs, estimates that Ethereum’s price is set to reach $8,000 by year-end — higher than what a recent panel of 50 cryptocurrency experts, put together by Finder, predicted at $5,000.

The push for Bitcoin to double in value

After the first ever Bitcoin-based exchange traded fund (ETF) hit the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the money from institutional investors has been flooding in. According to CoinShare’s weekly report, crypto investment products saw inflows of $288 million for the week ending on October 31 — Bitcoin accounted for 93% of it at $269 million.
The cryptocurrency, which turned 13 years old on October 31, is up by 112% this year so far and hit the all-time high of $67,000 in October. Analysts expect the cryptocurrency to rise further with more ETFs coming in, giving a boost to Bitcoin’s legitimacy at least as an investment asset, not an actual medium of exchange.

Ethereum price to rise in-line with breakeven inflation

Goldman Sachs’ prediction for Ethereum to breach $8,000 is based on the second-largest cryptocurrency’s historical correlation to inflation. According to the banking behemoth, cryptocurrencies have traded in-line with inflation breaks — the difference between the yield of a nominal bond and an inflation-linked bond of the same maturity — since 2019.

“It has tracked inflation markets particularly closely, likely reflecting the pro-cyclical nature as a ‘network based’ asset. And the lastest spike in inflation breakevens suggests upside risk if the leading relationship of recent episodes was to hold (grey circles),” said the note.

According to an analysis by blockchain data firm Kaiko, Ethereum has offered higher returns than Bitcoin with respect to market risk over the past one year. As compared to this time last year, the cryptocurrency’s price is up by 1,000% — leaving not just Bitcoin, but other major cryptocurrencies, in the dust.

Ethereum’s price rally

The rally in Ethereum has been aided by the growth of decentralised finance (DeFi), which is touted for its probable disruption of the international monetary system by eliminating the need for middlemen like banks, remittance providers and other players. Moreover, the boom in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has all seen a host of new projects use ether and jump onto the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum’s protocol is currently in the midst of an upgrade from the proof-of-work (PoW) to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus method, which is expected to reduce the energy consumed for mining — validating transactions — by 99%.

Challenges that lie ahead for Ethereum

Ethereum’s growth trajectory is not without its challenges. The time taken for the community to agree on the upgrade left opportunity for other blockchains to pop up — like Cardano, Solana, Polkadot and others — each claiming to solve either for high transaction fees, energy consumption or transaction times.

Some of the participants in Finder’s panel of 50 cryptocurrency experts expect that their ‘Ethereum Killers’ could run up to win their fair share of the DeFi and NFT market from Ethereum.

Bitcoin, however, is expected to continue its reign as the biggest player of the crypto world — at least for the time being.

In view of the coming wave, banks and financial institutions in the US have been on a crypto hiring spree. Over the past three years, they have onboarded more than 1,000 crypto experts. Currently, financial institutions are offering significant bonuses to attract even more talent their way, according to Bloomberg.

Indian technology companies and crypto exchanges are also on the lookout for crypto talent. The demand for talent has jumped over the last 8-10 months with more than 12,000 job openings on the docket in October, according to a report by Bangalore-based staffing specialist Xpheno cited by the Economic Times.

Since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on cryptocurrencies in 2020, interest in blockchain technology has seeped back into the country, despite the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) attempts to dissuade investors. BrokerChooser, an investment broker comparison company, pegs that there are currently 10.07 crore crypto owners in India — reportedly higher than everywhere else in the world.

By PRABHJOTE GILL @ Insider

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You’ve likely heard some of the following terms if you’ve paid attention to the world of finance: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum. But what do they mean? And why is cryptocurrency suddenly so hot?

First, we’ll explain the blockchain basics.

As society become increasingly digital, financial services providers are looking to offer customers the same services to which they’re accustomed, but in a more efficient, secure, and cost effective way.

Enter blockchain technology.

The origins of blockchain are a bit nebulous. A person or group of people known by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakomoto invented and released the tech in 2009 as a way to digitally and anonymously send payments between two parties without needing a third party to verify the transaction. It was initially designed to facilitate, authorize, and log the transfer of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies.

How does blockchain technology work?

Blockchain tech is actually rather easy to understand at its core. Essentially, it’s a shared database populated with entries that must be confirmed and encrypted. Think of it as a kind of highly encrypted and verified shared Google Document, in which each entry in the sheet depends on a logical relationship to all its predecessors. Blockchain tech offers a way to securely and efficiently create a tamper-proof log of sensitive activity (anything from international money transfers to shareholder records).

Blockchain’s conceptual framework and underlying code is useful for a variety of financial processes because of the potential it has to give companies a secure, digital alternative to banking processes that are typically bureaucratic, time-consuming, paper-heavy, and expensive.

What are cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrencies are essentially just digital money, digital tools of exchange that use cryptography and the aforementioned blockchain technology to facilitate secure and anonymous transactions. There had been several iterations of cryptocurrency over the years, but Bitcoin truly thrust cryptocurrencies forward in the late 2000s. There are thousands of cryptocurrencies floating out on the market now, but Bitcoin is far and away the most popular.

How do you mine cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies don’t just fall out of the sky. Like any other form of money, it takes work to produce them. And that work comes in the form of mining.

But let’s take a step back. Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, ensured that there would ever only be 21 million Bitcoins in existence. He (or they) reached that figure by calculating that people would discover, or “mine,” a certain number of blocks of transactions each day.

Every four years, the number of Bitcoins released in relation to the previous cycle gets reduced by 50%, along with the reward to miners for discovering new blocks. At the moment, that reward is 12.5 Bitcoins. Therefore, the total number of Bitcoins in circulation will approach 21 million but never actually reach that figure. This means Bitcoin will never experience inflation. The downside here is that a hack or cyberattack could be a disaster because it could erase Bitcoin wallets with little hope of getting the value back.

As for mining Bitcoins, the process requires electrical energy. Miners solve complex mathematical problems, and the reward is more Bitcoins generated and awarded to them. Miners also verify transactions and prevent fraud, so more miners equals faster, more reliable, and more secure transactions.

Thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto’s designs, Bitcoin mining becomes more difficult as more miners join the fray. In 2009, a miner could mine 200 Bitcoin in a matter of days. In 2014, it would take approximately 98 years to mine just one, according to 99Bitcoins.

Super powerful computers called Application Specific Integrated Circuit, or ASIC, were developed specifically to mine Bitcoins. But because so many miners have joined in the last few years, it remains difficult to mine loads. The solution is mining pools, groups of miners who band together and are paid relative to their share of the work.

Current & future uses of blockchain technology & cryptocurrency

Since its inception, Bitcoin has been rather volatile. But based on its recent boom — and a forecast by Snapchat’s first investor, Jeremy Liew, that it would hit $500,000 by 2030 — and the prospect of grabbing a slice of the Bitcoin pie becomes far more attractive.

Bitcoin users expect 94% of all bitcoins to be released by 2024. As the number moves toward the ceiling of 21 million, many expect the profits miners once made from the creation of new blocks to become so low that they will become negligible. But as more bitcoins enter circulation, transaction fees could rise and offset this.

As for blockchain technology itself, it has numerous applications, from banking to the Internet of Things. It is expected that companies will flesh out their blockchain IoT solutions. Blockchain is a promising tool that will transform parts of the IoT and enable solutions that provide greater insight into assets, operations, and supply chains. It will also transform how health records and connected medical devices store and transmit data.

Blockchain won’t be usable everywhere, but in many cases, it will be a part of the solution that makes the best use of the tools in the IoT arsenal. Blockchain can help to address particular problems, improve workflows, and reduce costs, which are the ultimate goals of any IoT project.

The post What is the blockchain technology & cryptocurrency? appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Two meme cryptocurrencies, both inspired by shiba inu dogs, are now within the top 10 by market value.

As of Monday afternoon, dogecoin, which launched in 2013 as a joke, ranks No. 10 with a market value of over $35 billion, according to CoinGecko. It’s currently trading at around 27 cents. A token called shiba inu, which launched in 2020 to poke fun at dogecoin, ranks No. 9 with a market value of over $38 billion. Shiba inu hit an all-time high of $0.00008616 on Thursday.

Since Wednesday, both dogecoin and shiba inu have frequently swapped places in the rankings, competing in somewhat of a rivalry. In fact, the shiba inu community refers to the token as the “dogecoin killer.”

But although their supporters may not want to admit it, dogecoin and shiba inu have a key characteristic in common, Caitlin Cook, head of community at crypto asset management tech company Onramp Invest, tells CNBC Make It.

Both are largely driven by the communities behind them, Cook says. “The dogecoin community and the shiba inu community are both very, very vocal and committed,” she explains.

The strength of community

“Altcoins like [shiba inu] are primarily community-based, meaning their success is largely dependent on the success and growth of its community, instead of its utility,” Douglas Boneparth, certified financial planner and president of Bone Fide Wealth, previously told CNBC Make It. (The term “altcoins” refers to the multitude of cryptocurrencies aside from bitcoin.)

The shiba inu token creator even calls it an “experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building” in its white paper.

Both shiba inu and dogecoin’s growth can be largely attributed to supporters hyping up them up, Cook says. “It’s the power of the people who are amplifying it that kind of drives the performance a lot of the time,” she says.

That includes celebrity supporters like billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. Musk often tweets about different cryptocurrencies, and in doing so, has seemingly impacted their prices.

A few times throughout 2021, shiba inu appeared to jump after Musk repeatedly posted images of his shiba inu puppy on Twitter. But on Oct. 24, Musk clarified that he doesn’t own any shiba inu tokens and that he only owns bitcoin, ether and dogecoin.

But overall, the current surge is “so much community-driven, and any token or coin out there has the opportunity to run up like this if someone with a big microphone is amplifying it,” Cook says.

The risk factor

However, the fact that these tokens are so susceptible to price swings based on who’s talking about them is a big part of what makes investing in them risky.

Both dogecoin and shiba inu are “speculative bets,” Cook says. “They’re not long-term investments for most people, and most people probably wouldn’t have a long-term thesis behind why they would hold them for a long period either.”

That’s because they’re considered to be bets on a community rather than a technology, she says. “There’s not a viable product.”

Experts warn that any cryptocurrency investment can result in the loss of your entire investment. They generally recommend that you only invest what you can afford to lose, regardless of which cryptocurrency you choose. And altcoins may require additional caution due to their differences from something like bitcoin, including their structure, supply and utility.

Bitcoin launched in 2009 with the intent to be a peer-to-peer financial system. Its blockchain was carefully created with a well-thought-out ecosystem. Bitcoin also has a limited supply, which allows for built-in scarcity by design. Because of that, it’s seen as a store of value by its holders, who also hope it becomes a prominent decentralized digital currency.

Most altcoins lack these characteristics. Though their communities are a strength, it’s something they’re very dependent on, since many lack technological development and don’t have a supply cap.

Due to volatility and risk, “I always say that crypto isn’t a suitable investment for a lot of people,” Cook says. “When you get into more volatile altcoins, it’s an even less viable investment for a lot of people that don’t have the stomach for it.”

Of course, it’s impossible to know how things will unfold for dogecoin and shiba inu. “Who knows? Maybe one day grandma will give her grandkids some SHIB for their birthday,” Boneparth says. “The future of either depends on wide-scale adoption and use in our current financial system.”

The post Dogecoin passed by Shiba inu in the top 10 cryptocurrencies—here’s what drives the growth appeared first on Crypto Insider.

In 2014, as regulators in New York were exploring ways to control Bitcoin, executives at Wall Street’s biggest banks fretted that regulating cryptocurrencies would also legitimize them — and that could threaten the finance industry. So they tried to sow doubt.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos that year, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, called Bitcoin a “terrible” store of value that was also being used for illicit purposes. At a meeting to discuss violations of Iran sanctions, H. Rodgin Cohen, the finance industry’s pre-eminent lawyer, warned the state’s regulators that the federal government was “very worried” about Bitcoin and its use.

Those efforts failed. New York’s Department of Financial Services began issuing licenses for Bitcoin businesses in 2015. There are now more than 75 million users of Bitcoin, up from around three million seven years ago, and the number of digital currencies has exploded. Globally, 220 million people use cryptocurrencies, according to a July report by Crypto.com.

“Most people agree that in the future — it might be 10 or 20 or years or it might be sooner — effectively all assets are going to be in a digital format,” said Thomas Olsen, a partner at Bain & Company who advises financial firms on cryptocurrencies and other digital asset matters.

Now the banking industry is racing to catch up. Banks want to compete in this new world and profit from it. Their approach is two-pronged: experimenting with cryptocurrency offerings and lobbying regulators to create rules that work in the banks’ favor. Some are offering cryptocurrency investments to their wealthy clients. Others are weighing trading desks for Bitcoin. JPMorgan even started its own digital currency in 2019.

And instead of warning regulators away from cryptocurrencies, banking industry representatives now complain that regulators have not acted quickly enough and that their inaction is costing banks valuable time in their mission to compete.

But their initial skepticism has cost them time. An alternative financial world is springing up around the traditional banking industry. Cryptocurrency start-ups are beginning to offer credit cards and loans. People and businesses around the world are embracing digital currencies at a rapid pace. Even governments are getting involved. El Salvador recently said it would accept Bitcoin as legal tender. And the Federal Reserve, following in the footsteps of central banks around the world, is evaluating launching its own digital currency.

The traditional banking system held sway for centuries. Banks have long helped governments control the flow of money in their local economies by taking deposits, then lending some of that money to other customers. With the rise of secondary markets for loans, banks could lend even more against the deposits they had by selling the loans to investors after they were made and freeing space on their balance sheets to do more lending. At every step of the way, they made money.

When Congress relaxed regulations in 1999 to let commercial banks enter the fray on Wall Street, their power increased again. They could now make markets in almost anything, like oil, wheat or government bonds, aiding sales and purchases of all kinds even as they helped everyday Americans make and receive payments, buy houses and start businesses.

Digital currencies, which let individuals bypass banks in money transfers, sales and business collections by connecting people instantly without an intermediary, are threatening to take away that central role banks play.

Outwardly, top executives at the biggest U.S. banks have shown little enthusiasm for digital currencies. Mr. Dimon continued to be skeptical, calling Bitcoin a “fraud” in 2017. More recently, he declared it “worthless.” And three years ago, Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian Moynihan, barred the giant company’s wealth managers from putting any client money into cryptocurrency-related investments.

But some individual bankers were getting curious. After spending years privately ridiculing Bitcoin, Thomas Montag, Bank of America’s chief operating officer, asked a friend of his for a tutorial on cryptocurrencies and spent hours listening to lectures, reading books and meeting with executives from cryptocurrency businesses, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Last year, engineers at Bank of America filed the biggest number of patent applications in the bank’s history, including hundreds involving digital payments technologies. It’s unclear how exactly the bank plans to use its technology, but it was partly driven by the desire to keep customers within the bank’s systems rather than lose them to scrappy cryptocurrency start-ups that allow them to transfer money free.

“The bank sees potential in blockchain, and we’re currently a leading patentholder in the space with more than 160 patents,” a Bank of America spokesman, Mark Pipitone, said. “But we still haven’t found a use at scale to make the financial lives of customers and clients better.”

Other big banks are embracing more direct contact with cryptocurrencies. Bank of New York Mellon and Northern Trust are working on offering custodial services to their clients — essentially bank accounts for other banks — that would hold Bitcoin. On Oct. 5, U.S. Bank announced that it would offer cryptocurrency custody services to money managers.

Just as it does for stock and bond prices, Goldman recently began posting digital asset prices on its Marquee platform for big clients like hedge funds, preparing for a time when the bank might be able to support trading in cryptocurrencies.

In 2019, a unit of JPMorgan called Onyx introduced JPM Coin, a digital currency backed by the dollar that ran on Quorum, an internal technology that mimicked the structure of blockchain. But the bank controlled Quorum, unlike Bitcoin’s blockchain, which is decentralized. It recently spun off Quorum to a software start-up.

JPMorgan also started an all-digital system that mimics the traditional “overnight repo” market, where banks exchange short-term U.S. government debt securities for cash. These transactions used to take more than a day to complete — hence the “overnight” label — but JPMorgan’s platform does them in just 15 minutes, reducing risk. It has only three users so far, and two are JPMorgan’s own businesses. Goldman this year became its first outside participant. If more banks join, JPMorgan could end up controlling of one of the most crucial short-term funding markets in the world.

Igor Pejic, an expert on cryptocurrencies, said JPMorgan was one of a few major banks whose experimentation with blockchain — the technology underlying digital currency transactions — has made them digital pioneers poised to profit in the future from systems they’re testing now because, he said, “they are setting up an infrastructure which at the end of the day they control.”

But soon after JPM Coin went live, regulators began calling, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. They worried that the movement of the coins around the financial system could cause a buildup of risk because they were tied to the dollar, sparking a panic and leading to the 21st century version of a bank run. The bank had to cut back on the scope of JPM Coin’s use.

Now, JPM Coin cannot be used to transfer value outside JPMorgan’s internal systems. Bank customers can use it to move dollars and other assets back and forth inside the bank almost instantly, but it is meaningless in the wider world.

Regulators have also trained their sights on smaller banks trying to build cryptocurrency businesses. In 2018, the New York-based Quontic Bank, with just $1 billion in assets, asked the top U.S. banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, for feedback on its plans to launch a debit card program that gave customers rewards denominated in Bitcoin.

Quontic’s chief executive, Steven Schnall, wanted to be able to offer his customers rewards that might increase in value as Bitcoin did.

Steven Schnall, the chief executive of Quontic bank, received a volley of queries from regulators when he tried to start a debit card program that gave customers rewards in Bitcoin.Jason Binn/WireImage
Mr. Schnall said he was surprised by the intensity of the questioning he and other top executives received from regulators. The O.C.C. lawyers envisioned an almost endless list of problems. What if Quontic customers lost their Bitcoins? What if the bank account holding them was owned by a trust and not an individual person? How would they be divided if someone died? The deliberations took two years, and at the end there was no clear green light.

“They just forced us through a process to make sure that they had clearly identified all of the risks,” Mr. Schnall said. Quontic decided to go ahead with the program. It chose to rely on an outside firm to handle everything related to Bitcoin so that Quontic would not actually have to “touch” the cryptocurrency.

Regulators, who were caught off-guard by the rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies, are scrambling to write new rules governing their use. And banks see a fresh opportunity to lobby regulators on writing rules in a way that benefits them.

Bank lobbyists are pushing regulators hard for uniform rules around cryptocurrency-focused lenders and other companies that transfer money and offer services similar to banking, arguing that unless they are subjected to the same controls banks face, the newer businesses will enjoy an unfair advantage.

American banks are also taking a stand against the Federal Reserve’s exploration of its own digital currency. The American Bankers Association, which represents the largest U.S. banks, warned members of the House Financial Services Committee this past summer that the negative consequences of creating a central bank digital currency “could be severe.” The association said there did not seem to be a pressing need for one because “the dollar is largely digital today.”

Mr. Cohen, senior chairman of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, who years earlier warned New York regulators off Bitcoin, is among those pushing for greater regulation.

“We need a regulatory approach to cryptocurrency,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview with Bloomberg Television last month. Creating new rules would be “very difficult,” he said, “but that really should be a prod rather than an excuse.”

By NYTimes’s Emily Flitter. Lananh Nguyen and Kate Kelly contributed reporting.

The post Banks are slowly embracing crypto after trying to kill it but being failed appeared first on Crypto Insider.

The Bitcoin blockchain is an amalgamation of Bitcoin (BTC) and blockchain. A person or a group of people known as Satoshi Nakamoto created the Bitcoin protocol in 2008 to decentralize control of money when centralized entities had failed the world.

A publication called the Bitcoin white paper outlined a set of computational rules that determined a new type of distributed database: the blockchain. The network was launched in January 2009.

The most well-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, is the one for which blockchain technology was created. Like the United States dollar, a cryptocurrency is a digital means of exchange that uses encryption techniques to oversee the establishment of monetary units and verify financial transfers.

The Bitcoin blockchain refers to the data stored in “blocks” of information that are then linked together in a permanent “chain.” A block is a collection of Bitcoin transactions from a specific period. Stacks of blocks are stockpiled on top of each other, with each new block relying on the previous ones. As a result, a chain of blocks is formed, giving rise to the word “blockchain.”

Every time a new block is added, it makes the previous blocks unmodifiable. This ensures that each block is more secure over time, and it is an example of how Bitcoin technology is changing how banking and financial transactions are being made. 

Bitcoin blockchain, however, is much more than cryptocurrency: It is the technology that most cryptocurrencies are built on, including Bitcoin. The Bitcoin blockchain is unique because it ensures that all transactions are accurate. Every action in the blockchain is recorded and there is nothing that is left out of the network. Once an action is recorded and stored in one of the information blocks, it is time-stamped and secured, and the entire record is available to anyone in the system.

The Bitcoin blockchain is also decentralized, meaning it is not stored in one master computer or controlled by one company. It is distributed on many computers that are in the network.

In the Bitcoin blockchain, there are codes called a hash. A hash is unique to each block in the blockchain. Hashing allows every network user to identify each block and directs them to move in the chain since every block has its own hash and a previous block’s hash.

With the latter in mind, the critical parts of the blockchain include records, block, hash and chain. Block records and transactional records are the two types of records in the blockchain. A block contains the most recent Bitcoin transactions that have not yet been recorded in any previous block. Transaction records include the asset, price and ownership data that are recorded, approved and settled across all nodes in seconds. 

In essence, a hash is a fixed-length string generated after transforming any length of input data in the blockchain network, a block is similar to a page in a ledger or record book and a chain refers to blocks linked together in a network.

Short story of Bitcoin blockchain

The idea of blockchain technology was introduced in 1991 by Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta in their paper “How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document.” In this paper, they explained the use of a continuous chain of timestamps to record information securely.

Bitcoin was created largely to facilitate the exchange of Bitcoin cryptocurrency. However, early adopters and inventors rapidly discovered that it had far greater potential. With this in mind, they designed Bitcoin’s blockchain to store more than just data on the token’s movement.

Bitcoin technology uses peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, making it possible to function without any bank or third party to manage each financial movement. It allows online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through any financial institution.

The term peer-to-peer means that the computers that are part of the network are equal to each other, that there are no “special” nodes and that all nodes share the burden of providing network services. It is made up of thousands of Bitcoin nodes that run the protocol. The protocol is responsible for establishing and safeguarding the blockchain.

The formation of a peer-to-peer network is possible because users’ data is related to the person or entity they are interacting with, and they are in charge of keeping the distributed network up and running. The information regarding the individual or entity is then passed from their Bitcoin wallet to their location and IP address, which represents peer-to-peer Bitcoin interaction.

What is needed to make the Bitcoin blockchain work?

Bitcoin represents a digital, trustless form of money, alongside a movement to decentralize financial services. Before Bitcoin, there was a need for a trusted third party to keep a ledger — the record-keeping system of a company’s or person’s financial data — to record who owned how much. Everyone has a copy of this ledger with the Bitcoin network, so there is no need for third parties.

Every Bitcoin transaction happens in the Bitcoin blockchain network, which is the digital space where Bitcoin mining and hash power generation occur. Hashing power is the processing power used by your computer or hardware to perform and solve various hashing algorithms. These algorithms are used to create new cryptocurrencies and allow them to trade with one another. This process is called mining.

Usually, Bitcoin owners purchase their cryptocurrency supply through a cryptocurrency exchange, a platform that facilitates transactions of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The decentralized ledger is what makes the blockchain network. The latter shows that Bitcoin is a piece of software, a set of processes in which participants perform different tasks.

A blockchain is a digital ledger of duplicated transactions distributed across the blockchain’s network of computer systems. Each block on the chain contains several transactions, and whenever a new transaction occurs on the blockchain, a record of that transaction is added to the ledger of each participant.

This distributed database is managed by multiple participants using a technology called distributed ledger technology (DLT). Blockchain is a type of DLT in which transactions are recorded using an immutable cryptographic signature known as a hash. The transactions are then organized into blocks. Each new block includes a hash of the preceding one, effectively chaining them together, which is why distributed ledgers are commonly referred to as blockchains.

The blockchain works as a ledger, tracking every Bitcoin transaction, and is self-verifying, meaning that the entire network of nodes — different computers participating in the network — will constantly check and secure every movement. Here is where the “miners” come into the game: Their computers do the heavy lifting of maintaining the chain and thus, receive Bitcoin as a reward. These rules, collectively, are the Bitcoin protocol.

Bitcoin miners refer to the high-powered computers solving complex math problems to mint a coin. Miners are network-dedicated machines that verify all transactions and block any malicious actors. Bitcoin miners compile as many transactions as possible into a block, then verify the block and add it to the chain of previous blocks using a mathematical method. For providing their computing power to the network, miners are paid in newly minted Bitcoin.

How does the Bitcoin blockchain work?

A blockchain is a type of database which is a collection of information stored on a computer system electronically. What is kept in databases, information or data is usually structured in a table format that makes it easier to search and filter information. Databases are designed to store large amounts of information that can be accessed, filtered and edited easily and quickly by many users at any time. 

To do this, extensive databases house data on servers that are made of potent computers. Those servers can be built using hundreds and hundreds of computers. Why? To have the computational storage and power needed for many users to access the database simultaneously. This is the difference from a database too, let’s say, a storage cloud-like drive. 

Here’s how a blockchain differs from a database. The first difference is how data is structured. A database structures data into tables, while a blockchain collects information into groups, known as blocks, that hold data sets. Each block has a specific storage capacity that is chained onto the previous filled block when it gets filled, forming a chain of data. That’s why it’s called the blockchain: Millions of blocks filled with data are chained together.

This system means that every blockchain is a database that is more complex since it creates an irreversible chainline of data when implemented in a decentralized system. When one block is filled, it is unchangeable and becomes part of a timeline, and so, each block on the chain has an exact timestamp when added to the chain.

Thus, the goal of the blockchain is to allow digital information to be recorded and distributed, but not edited. That’s why it is not a database per se; no one can change it once it is filled and chained. With the appearance of Bitcoin technology, blockchain had its first actual application.

Reducing risks

Using a blockchain network comes with a lot of advantages. First, the accuracy of the chain. Transactions that are part of the blockchain have to be approved by thousands of thousands of computers. This removes all human involvement in the verification, which means there are fewer human errors, as well as a more accurate record of information.

But, what if one of the computers in the network makes a computational mistake? The error would only be in one copy of the blockchain. For it to spread, at least 51% of the network would need to have the same mistake, which is very unlikely.

Another advantage is that blockchain eliminates the need for third-party verifiers. Any member of the Bitcoin network can check and verify the blockchain at any time.

Blockchain data is decentralized, which means that it is not stored in a central location but instead copied and spread across a vast network of computers. This makes it very hard for anyone to tamper with the data since a kicker, for example, would need access to all of the networks to compromise it fully.

Finally, an instrumental part of the blockchain is that, although anyone with an internet connection can see the list of the network’s transaction history and access details about transactions, no one can access identifying information about the users that are making those transactions. Also, every time a transaction is recorded, it is verified by the network, meaning that the thousands of computers that compose it confirm if the details of the purchase are correct. 

Blockchain vs. banks

Blockchain works very differently from a traditional bank since it is 100% decentralized and it relies on thousands of computers to verify its transactions. This means it runs 24/7, every day of the year. The most significant advantage of all of the Bitcoin blockchain is its transparency because the blockchain acts as a public ledger for every transaction made in the Bitcoin network.

Other differences are that the speed of the transactions is as little as 15 minutes or as much as over an hour, depending on the network’s congestion. While card payments and check deposits can take from 24 to 72 hours.

The Bitcoin blockchain has variable fees, usually ranging from $0 to $50. While the fee is unrelated to the amount being transferred, it is determined by network circumstances at the moment and the transaction’s data size. Because a block on the Bitcoin blockchain may only hold one megabyte (MB) of data, the number of transactions included in a single block is limited. 

Another difference is in the way of making transactions. While the blockchain allows anyone with an internet connection to make a transfer, banks need you to have an account, a mobile phone, or a computer.

All of these differences make blockchain technology a great disruptor of traditional finances and the banking industry. They are tamper-proof and decentralized, set-in-stone chains that not only reduce costs but create a transparent network in which users can feel empowered and safe.

The limitations of the blockchain 

Although the blockchain comes with many benefits, like everything, it has its downsides. The first is that the blockchain can slow down when there are too many users on the network. It is also harder to scale due to its consensus method of work.

Another limitation is that data within the blockchain is immutable, you cannot go back and alter the previous block once it is written. Some may view it as an imitation that requires self-maintenance, which means that users have to maintain their own wallets or else they can lose access. 

A big limitation is that blockchain technology is still not mature. Also, it doesn´t offer interoperability with other blockchains and other financial systems, and is hard to integrate into legacy systems.

Technical advances

Lightning Network

The Lightning Network (LN) permits participants to transfer BTC between each other without any fees using their digital wallets. A second layer is added to the Bitcoin network to enable transactions between parties off of the blockchain, which is called off-chain transactions. A second layer boosts throughput without compromising any of the original blockchain’s decentralization or security features.

Lightning Network creates payment channels between two users in a distributed database so they can transact with each other, without all the other users receiving their information, defining off-chain transactions.

It is considered a game-changer in the cryptocurrency world since it has been designed to speed up transaction processing and decrease associated costs of the Bitcoin blockchain. It was conceived in 2015 and is being further developed and activated. 

However, researchers have cautioned that as the Lightning Network grows, it will become a more appealing target for attackers. Bitcoin on the developing payment network might be stolen if users aren’t careful and it may be hard to ensure the safety of assets in the future.

According to experts from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bitcoin that is currently locked in the Lightning Network payments channel, which is currently roughly $9 million in Bitcoin, might be looted by attackers. While the flaw has the potential to be serious, the researchers are optimistic that it is fixable in the long run.

SegWit

Segregated Witness, or SegWit, refers to a process change in how Bitcoin maintains transaction data in the blockchain. Segregate means to separate and witnesses are the transaction signatures. It was created to renew the way in which data is stored on Bitcoin’s blockchain. This allows the network to hold more transactions in a single block, enhancing transaction throughput. SegWit went active on Bitcoin in August 2017 after the code for the update was released in 2015.

SegWit increases the block size limit of a blockchain by removing signature data from Bitcoin transactions. When parts of a transaction are removed, space gets freed and so does capacity to add more transactions to the chain.

SegWit not only improved Bitcoin’s transaction processing speed but also solved a weakness in the protocol that allowed nodes to tamper with transaction malleability problems (TXIDs) on the network. By removing what is known as “signature data” or “the witness data” from the input field of a block, Segwit increased the number of transactions that could fit into a block and fixed the transaction malleability flaw.

On the Bitcoin network, the SegWit update was introduced as a soft fork in August 2017. A soft fork is a backward-compatible update that allows upgraded nodes to communicate with non-upgraded nodes. A soft fork usually includes a new rule that does not conflict with the existing ones. However, due to the high cost of running a node (especially in developing countries), the upgrade was put on hold on November 8, 2017.

Taproot

Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell proposed the Taproot improvement in January 2018. The 90% criterion of blocks mined with a support signal from miners was met three years later on June 12, 2021. It means that 1,815 of the 2,016 blocks mined throughout the two-week time frame had some encoded data left by miners to demonstrate their support for the upgrade. 

Taproot is a soft fork that improves Bitcoin’s scripts to enhance privacy and increase anonymity on the network. When a user does not use Taproot, anyone can detect transactions. When using Taproot, they can “cloak” their transactions. Taproot even makes it possible to hide that a Bitcoin script ran at all. As of October 2020, Taproot is merged with the Bitcoin Core library. 

One of the most significant changes to the network is the substitution of Schnorr signatures for Bitcoin’s current elliptic curve digital signature technique (ECDSA). The ECDSA technique generates public keys from randomly generated private keys, which makes it impossible to determine a private key from a Bitcoin address or public key. Moreover, the Schnorr signature will free up space and bandwidth on the Bitcoin network by making transactions faster and smaller. 

By permitting discrete log contracts (DLCs), the Schnorr signature can help simplify complex smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. The DLCs are a proposal to add a smart contract implementation to Bitcoin, allowing the establishment of simple, safe and easy-to-use blockchain oracles.

It may also aid in the scaling of layer-two payment channels such as the Lightning Network, which allows for immediate transactions on the Bitcoin network.

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