You must not understand the value of open source.
The code is open source to make it as good as can be. From there drawing it in and closing it up is a non issue.
Controlling other contenders is trivial when you own the system.
Just use a different cryptocurrency. There are several that are more decentralized than bitcoin just by measuring Nakamoto coefficient (or also called Minimum Attack Vector) alone.
If validators aren't your problem and instead it's the amount owned by elites, then look at cryptocurrencies with little VC backing that is still bought into that crypto.
If you think the system is rigged and you have a better way, fork another project like bitcoin/ethereum/cardano/etc and make your own blockchain with the new implementation that makes it better. Costs very little to do that but you'll only convince people to invest if you actually bring something new to the table that people find valuable and worthy.
Apologies for the late reply, I wrote a post earlier and something happened with the internet connection and everything was lost before being posted. I became depressed and made me some eggs.
What other metrics or indicators would you look at when assessing a given blockchain?
There are several metrics other than price to look at both for long term investors and short term day traders who may look at metrics like the Relative Strength Index. For me when looking at a layer 1 blockchain, I like to look at long term metrics like how much development activity is happening on the core code (Github commits to measure) and # of (useful) projects that are developing on the blockchain. No matter what if the price is up or down, if there is no one developing on it then it is essentially a dead project that'll go to zero at some point. What gives real value is the number of people using that blockchain for real life improvements. In lower market cap projects I would also look at development activity (Github commits & # of projects developing) in ratio to number of devs on their team.
Other good indicators is to look at 30 day transaction volume (coinmarketcap and coingecko should take care of this), 30 day NFT Volume (if they're active in that space), total value locked in DeFi (there was a great etc.
EDIT:
Mentions of Terra Luna in Messari’s “crypto theses for 2022” report: 55
Mentions of Cardano in Messari’s “crypto theses for 2022” report: 2
Be aware of extreme bias in the crypto community even in metrics websites and especially in journalistic/media sites. I am pretty biased to Cardano but I just see so many strengths there that are either not being reported or covered up with lies. I did my research, looked at all the top projects and this is my choice for the strongest project. People are waiting for the DeFi projects to roll out on Cardano, that is where I think it's going to get real good.
Given that, Messari and DefiLlama are other crypto metric sites many people use.
https://cryptoslam.io/ is a great website to look at NFT sales volume but they are very obviously missing Cardano NFT sales volume which would be #3 if included in their 30 day charts. If you notice, it is also only -20% in 30 day NFT sales volume compared to top 3 on Cryptoslam.io: Ethereum (-74%), Solana (-71%), BSC (-79%).
Another important indicator for me is how transparent that blockchain is in terms of development, roadmap, and projects developing. Can they give short and simple explanations as well as long and thought out explanations on the same topic? How big of a community of communicators do they have? Is their code open source? Is code being audited?
Red flags for me are projects that don't meet their roadmap goals after given ample amount of time. Here is a video with Vitalik Buterin announcing that by 2016 ETH 2.0 will be running proof of stake.
6 years later Ethereum is still working on moving to proof of stake and they just suffered a 7 block reorg in their inital testnet for the merge. A block reorg is when the blocks in the blockchain get out of time alignment meaning the ledger is giving faulty information about when a transaction was made (definitely not good)
Ethereum Beacon Chain Suffers Longest Blockchain 'Reorg' in Years
Decentralization is absolutely worth pursuing because it takes much more entropy and time to destroy it. Take a look at this genius episode from a kids show from over 20 years ago to see what happens to an asset when it becomes completely centralized in hands of a few compared to the many. When an asset is completely controlled by a few people and everyone else sees it, the masses begin to reject that asset.
Solana is one of those projects that is more centralized and the devs shut down their blockchain every other week to make "fixes" on it. This means they shut down all transaction activity on the blockchain and they ultimately control your ability to make transactions. That is a HUGE deal and imo nobody should ever have that kind of power. They also magically made Solana appear on the blockchain about a year ago on their first blockchain shutdown, idk why people forgot that. All it takes is one of the devs to go rogue and things could get really bad for Solana holders. Not to mention the recent DAO vote on their Solend project to take control and liquidate a wallet that was about to sell $180 million of Solana which would dump Solana price. The deciding vote was a wallet of $700k and took 80% of the vote. See how important decentralization is? The next day after the results were announced the devs held another "vote" to undo the previous vote of taking over the wallet and undid the previous voters. Pretty hypocritical if you ask me and not a safe place to invest.
Also, what are your thoughts on stablecoins? Algorithmic vs fiat pegs etc.
Tether is going to lose its market cap, USDC will eventually take its place as the top stablecoin. The question is how fast will Tether lose its market cap? Also how much market cap is lost in the crypto community if Tether runs out of "dollar equivalent assets" before its actual market cap goes to $0.
The problem with this $13B liquidation though, originates at the source of this report published by Tether, stating that only 2.94% of its reserves are in cash. The pie chart in that document is a bit misleading -- it says 3.87%, but it is 3.87% of the 75.85% category of "Cash & Cash Equivalents & Other Short Term Deposits & Commercial Paper."
That report was published on March 31, 2021. At that time, the market cap of Tether was ~$62B (see chart below). 2.94% of that is $1.8B. We can also play out a second scenario: assume the cash reserves grew in tandem with the market cap. If that's the case, then at $83B, $2.4B would be in cash reserve.
Tether Claims 'Coordinated' Conspiracy Is Trying to Take It Down
USD Coin (USDC) is a digital stablecoin that is pegged to the United States dollar. USD Coin is managed by a consortium called Centre,[1] which was founded by Circle and includes members from the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase [2] and Bitcoin mining company Bitmain,[3] an investor in Circle.[4] USDC is issued by a private entity and should not be confused with a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
I still need to do more research into them and how things can be affected if say Coinbase flops and/or the price of Bitcoin drops further pushing Bitmain out of business as well. These entities "manage" USDC but to what extent can they control my USDC and transactions?
As far as algorithmic stablecoins go, I would look into AgeUSD protocol (this is a stablecoin design but not an actual stablecoin) and specifically look at SigmaUSD stablecoin that is using the AgeUSD protocol.
It is complicated but once you understand it, it's not that bad and it seems to be built much sturdier than the other algorithmic stablecoins that have failed recently like Luna (I remember somebody trying to get me into it and I kept asking what that 20% APY was backed by).
SigmaUSD is an algorithmic stablecoin project on a smaller market cap blockchain called Ergo that has never depegged throughout this bull and bear market even with Ergo taking big dips. The stable coin is over-collateralized by the underlying asset (ERG on SigmaUSD protocol). The price of the underlying asset (ERG) would have to drop over 75% in a very short time (like an hour or less) to actually begin depegging the stablecoin. Anything longer than that and people flooding into the Reserve Token will be making some good money from the SigmaUSD protocol fees. The price of Ergo is listed on the blockchain in real time by the Ergo Oracle.
Redeeming of SigRSV for ERG or Djed on Cardano can only occur when the reserve ratio is greater than 400%.
In a short answer for how to make money on this, if you're shorting Ergo price to go down in the future, you buy the stablecoin SigUSD and if the price of Ergo goes down you get back more Ergo when cashing out of the stablecoin. Likewise, if you're longing Ergo you can buy the reserve token SRV and if the price of Ergo increases further you cash out your SRV for more Ergo. It's actually a little more complicated than that since if Ergo price falls to the point SigUSD is lower than 400% overcollateralized to SigRSV, then people locking in ERGO for SigRSV tokens get exponentially more rewards in users fees as the price of Ergo goes lower. This is a reward mechanism to get people to buy more reserve tokens to get the SigUSD overcollateralized again (Which is why if even Ergo fell 75% in price in one day, other people would be too greedy buying SigRSV to let the stablecoin get depegged).
It was exhausting when I was first trying to understand SigUSD stablecoin and I know this is already information overload but I'm gonna dump some more links for you to come back to:
How would've Ergo's SigmaUSD held up with the whole LUNA Fiasco?
SigUSD is over-collateralised, every sigusd is backed by 3$ currently. Everyone can see that there is money in the bank. This stops a bank run at its inception. The breaking point of the peg is explicit and open for anyone to see. With UST, you have no idea, which gives you an incentive to get out first.
Luna supply depends on terra usage, Ergo does not. Burning luna when trend is up, pumps its price. However, when trend is down, luna price will dump harder, because more luna is printed.
collateral ratio for sigusd is higher. This means that the capital efficiency (less collateral tied for each stablecoin) is better for terra. That is why luna/terra can offer better yield.
However, this means that luna/terra needs an additional mechanism to ensure stability...
Obviously the big issue with web3 are the gas costs
First off the gas costs are no problem on chains that can achieve scalability (sidechains can offset transaction load and costs, layer 2 scaling solutions can offset costs, etc). Even without the scalability upgrades and without voting to decrease transaction rewards, if Cardano was to have the market cap of Ethereum and higher activity in its block, its transaction fees would be slightly above or below $1.69 and its smart contract fee would be around $8.46.
These fees are still low compared to Ethereum on a busy day though right now the gas fees are about $6.50 due to low activity.
A dirty little secret they don't tell you about Ethereum is that the blockchain in its accounting model is a global variable in validating every transaction. If Ethereum is having multiple transaction requests all at the same time (say like a token sale or NFT mint) then it'll only choose one and kick the rest out while taking their transaction and gas fees. I've lost $300 before just trying and retrying to transact a smart contract signed on Ethereum because the activity was so high, my transaction and smart contract would get kicked out of the line. I think if you watch this site during high blockchain activity (which is showing Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions in real time):
you will see some of the "kids" getting kicked off the bus after they were already let on. I think that is showing those failed transactions.
All coins are dogshit in scalability right now imo. Ethereum has made moves in this area with a lot of side projects focusing on scalability but you got to move those tokens to that project, there's nothing much on their layer at the moment. Also, them moving from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake in ETH 2.0 while the network is running will almost certainly lower security during crucial time periods of "The Merge".
I see what you're saying about decentralization when it comes to blockchains. But how about the projects being implemented on those chains? ... I see so many projects implementing way more on-chain than seems necessary, and pursuing decentralization without any apparent rational motive.
The whole point of Web3 is that users own a part of the platform their using and therefore get a voice in how it's used. Anything you use and believe is worth using should have your voice involved, no matter if it's small or large. I believe the mass of people that use a product should have a better say in how they want the product to be.
Wouldn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc be much better if all the people who used it could easily have a part ownership and voice in how its run? Google Class-C stock is $2245 at the time of writing this. We wouldn't be having problems with our private data being traded for profit without our consent! I cannot have a fractionalized ownership of the stock (say own 1/100th for $22.45) and have a vote in the company stock meetings. The easiest way to start acquiring Google stock is to be living in the US and going through a crap ton of paperwork, brokerage fees, etc. Stock meetings aren't online, I believe you have to go in person or mail in your vote and it is a complete hassle that isn't worth it unless you own a lot of Google stock and hence have a lot more say in how the company is run.
Contrary to popular belief Ethereum and Bitcoin are not as decentralized when you compare Nakamoto Coefficient (also known as minimum attack vectors, meaning # of validator/mining pools that need to team up to take control of over 50% of blockchain validation say).
Here is some great research from @trailofbits looking at how decentralized blockchains really are.
Data was taken from last year but you know who is missing? Cardano. At some points Cardano has even had a Nakamoto Coefficient of 30! You can look at Cardano's Nakamoto Coefficient over time here:
For example, you could implement a dutch auction for an NFT on-chain... but is there really an issue with centralization for the auction process (people trust their ebay auctions without an issue)? IMO you would only need consensus with the final bid and ownership.
No, it's not necessarily an issue. Some of the decentralization is a flavor of the week and stems from a complete distrust in authority and corporations from the past couple decades. But there are some things that would certainly run better and be better if the mass of people had more of a say and a stake in it. Centralization tends to run faster but it's also easier to corrupt/break so that's usually the tradeoff.
but I am curious about your thoughts on NFTs? What do you think is the best platform for developing complex NFTs? Right now it seems like ethereum has the most developed standard with ERC721, but the gas costs seem prohibitive.
Do you think any particular blockchain has a technical advantage when it comes to non-fungibles?
Ok you need to read this twit post:
9/18 Cardano eUTXO model is perfect for NFTs and dApps
Compared to ETH, ADA transaction model is a no-brainer for scalability:
Multiple assets in one transaction
Low and steady transaction fees
No fees are spent if the transaction fails
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
Cardano is #3 in trading volume of NFTs atm. They are cheap, made on-chain (so no gas fee to send, treated as Ada token), and because of the EUTXO model there are many types of NFTs that can be made on Cardano that I don't think would be possible on Ethereum (or if they are it isn't worth it).
If you know your probability/statistics, the thing about the Ethereum Accounting model is that it is a set inside of the Cardano EUTXO model. That means Cardano can make a smart contract that mimics like transactions done on the Ethereum blockchain, Ethereum on the other hand cannot mimic Cardano transactions.
The difference between Cardano's EUTXO and Ethereum Account model explained by Lars Brunjes (The Cardano Smart Contract Instructor)
I'm a big fan of Cardano and Charles (he's a genuine thought leader who is passionate for all the right reasons), but I've seen some technical NFT fud that did look legitimate.
If you have any technical FUD on Cardano NFTs I would certainly like to see it, I haven't seen anything that holds its weight in reality.
Here is a picture of types of NFTs and all (if not most) have been made on Cardano in some way or another. I don't remember the tweet this was posted from.
People are using NFTs as objects in their Cardano game. I saw a guy a few weeks ago that made an NFT that couldn't hold another of the same type of NFT unless he transacted the NFT he already had to a certain address. There's some strange and amazing things going on in that space, we don't even know where it'll end up 5-10 years from now.
Also, are you a developer? You seem to have a fair amount of technical knowledge. Do you do blockchain stuff professionally? And no worries at all if you don't want to answer that.
I've been studying blockchain like crazy in the last 2 years but I am not a blockchain developer. I really really want to be though and help build in whatever way I can. I have a couple mountains I'm climbing right now but I'm making moves.
Thank you so much for your detailed response. I'm going to go through all of these links and learn as much as I can. Can't even tell you how much I appreciate this.
I'm glad to be of help if I can! :) It was quite a weight learning all of this at first but I really enjoy it now that I have a bit more of understanding the tech. Also please send me that technical FUD you found when you get a chance, I'd like to read it and learn anything new that may be in there :)
lol, again, this is just a tool used to manipulate people coupled with a desire to enhance the related technology, you can get on the wave and ride or not your call.
This fable that you can become the next bitcoin or what have you is a function of riding the wave. The point is that when the chips are down the only currencies accepted are the ones that will be allowed, the others will be hunted to extinction.
Person-to-Person transactions traded with food/resources/services/etc can't be tracked so easily. If everyone gave up on the dollar, made new wallets, and just started doing person-to-person transactions with crypto, the government wouldn't be able to monitor it.
Also it's not about becoming the next Bitcoin, it's about giving people control of their own financial wealth. New innovations are coming out all the time and it'll only be so long till Bitcoin loses the market share of crypto. Government won't be able to take your crypto unless you give to them. No amount of threats and abuse can force them to take it from you, you have to give them the keys to your wallet to take your crypto. On the other hand, bank accounts can be taken all the time, money and gold is much easier to find as well than a single piece of paper with your keys on it hidden somewhere in the world.
How does one have control of their own financial wealth when your "money" is worth 1/3 of its value a few months ago? And technically doesn't even exist in real life.
Market prices will go up and down in a free market and while bitcoin is big, it isn't Euro or US dollar big by a long shot. Less random hands are moving money in and out and more volatility will happen.
Prices in crypto are down right now because the demand is low as people are in a crunch to pay their bills, food, gas, etc due to the inflation of the dollar. Good Cryptos like bitcoin have a set amount of crypto that'll ever be made so whoever saves their own crypto at least won't be diluted.
In our current fiat system with paper money, we have guaranteed inflation year over year. The way central banking works, an increasing percentage of the population must become debt slaves to the system to prop it up. Money is literally created from thin air when you take out a loan and depist it back into the bank.
Eventually too high a % of the population is in debt and the system collapses. Hyperinflation always happens with fiat systems, governments/corporations/people borrow too much that they can't pay and the fiat money loses its trust/value.
When this hyperinflation scenario happens, people wont be able to buy basic goods no matter what. They will be looking for an asset that is secure, can't be printed out into oblivion, and is already and used distributed among the population. They will stop paying with dollars because the price is more volatile than cryptocurrencies and instead opt into cryptocurrencies. A free and healthy market has volatility in it. Nothing is perfectly stable. Nothing lasts forever.
1 Bitcoin is 1 Bitcoin, whether thats trading 1/3 the price to US $ that it did 7 months ago or its trading 3x the price to US dollar in the future. Its a matter of what people are willing to pay for it. Right now they trust US dollars more, but the dollar is quickly losing value to basic necessities like food, gas, housing, etc. You print off 5 times the money supply you had 2.5 years ago and people will begin to lose trust as prices skyrocket.
It is all part of the internet of things, which is easily and tightly controlled.
Any exchange points or interfaces are easily caught, the capability for a user to operate standalone with other users can be diminished in many ways.
So, as long as it is not facing this type of control over it and remains free as it is, you are correct.
If you use the right kind of VPN where the account is made with no identifying info, that shields you from being monitored. If you pay for that VPN with crypto like say Monero or after buying bitcoin from a person with cash and putting it in a new wallet, that shields you. As long as you're on a VPN in an area that is frequently used by many people, that shields you.
You pay for things with you're Bitcoin and teach people around you how to trade securely with a new wallet and handing cash to people, that shields you. The Fed doesn't have the resources to monitor a million pseudononymous wallets that never move to a KYC exchange.
So let me get this straight.
Your grab your digital device, connect it to the internet via your ISP using your credentials, then using your credentials you sign into your VPN, which protects you.
And now you can easily exchange using the methods you prefer sight unseen.
Personally, I think your head is in the clouds on how this stuff works.
I think you are just a bit underneath reality on how the control mechanisms would come into play, you seem to think that with the internet you have this magical area you can dwell and operate and nothing can touch you.
It is odd, so, basically when this stuff becomes targeted you will then watch how the control mechanisms would be deployed and thus rendering your custom blockchain useless.
Oh you mean like when they took down thepiratebay and all the torrents hosted there? Oh wait, despite the police seizing a whole data center, the centralized website (the most vulnerable part) was back up again in just a few hours, while the torrents where never down at all.
good thing they were not able to track all those bit torrents and hunt down the perps huh?
so what is the pirate bay address again? surely it is still up somewhere?
Where is napster? or an mp3 exchange site?
HarmonyONE is not Bitcoin and the developers were warned months ago about this hack specifically the way it happened and they did nothing about it. This is another Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bridge hack. You will find most hacks in cryptocurrency involve Ethereum in some way or another. That is because the programming language they made up for smart contracts, Solidity, is highly expressible along the lines of Javacript but also highly open to exploits. Because there are more things that you can do on Solidity, there are more doors to open for hackers. Many top cryptocurrency blockchains right now are copies of the Ethereum blockchain architecture and set up. When a hack happens in one, similar hacks can happen in other similar blockchain and it's all a matter of how well the devs did to secure the network.
The hack is no different to what occurred with [Ethereum] Ronin network. 2 out 4 wallets were compromised to make transactions to unlock tokens on Ethereum side. But it was angrier that the exploit was warned in April, but the Harmony team didn't give a shit.
Bitcoin on the other hand runs on a functional programming language. It is very tight and doesn't leave room for bugs and exploits. This is both their greatest strength and weakness because they won't be able to run smart contracts but you won't find any hacks on the Bitcoin network.
Morale of the story, if you don't want hacks and want secure money, don't use Ethereum copies. Look for cryptocurrency blockchains that run on functional programming languages like Bitcoin or Cardano (which unlike Bitcoin can do smart contracts and still has never been compromised while maintaining a top 10 position for years).
Blockchains are a very simple data structure, few people could get it wrong, even if they tried hard. The dollar and most other western fiat currencies has been digital for decades too, just just haven't realized because the user interface has been slips of paper, checks or plastic cards which to you looks physical, while in the back end everything happens digitally.
I'm not onboard with anything digital between me and paying for anything.
Traveling with a pocketful of cash is the best. Traveling with a credit card is generally okay but you need more than one, particularly if you don't have any cash for emergencies. Being forced to travel with a mobile phone so it can monitor my carbon usage, my current location, take IR scans of my face, and spam me with ads would be a nightmare. And that's where any forced transition to mandatory digital payments is going: crypto or CBDCs.
Whatever Russia is doing with the ruble, implemented globally with each nations' individual currency, would be ideal.
And yet, where do you get cash without going to an ATM or a bank office, where digital dollars is processed before you get your cash, or your credit card which literally checks towards a centralized server your digital balance and credit score before you're allowed to spend your own money.
Cryptocurrencies may be digital, but still grants you better privacy, better uptime and better transparency. Not to mention the capitalist valuation where supply vs demand sets the value instead of the (((groomer))) tax known as inflation, because the (((groomers))) takes a cut out of your fiat stash, no matter if it's bank money or cash, every time it goes up in value. Then you lose big soon as it drops in value.
Whatever method is used to stabilize a cryptocurrency to make it a viable tool for commerce could be used to stabilize cash. I'm not arguing for the current system. I'm arguing for a completely free system, and that requires being able to transact with some off the grid farmer without bringing a shovel, ammo, and a 6-pack of beer to barter with.
For something like a cryptocurrency to be as stable as something like the Euro or US dollar, you'd need a similar market cap, volume of trade, and distributed to individuals spending that cryptocurrency. The smaller the market cap, the more open it is to volatility by extremely rich but as more people adopt a crypto and more random choices are made buying/selling a crypto, it becomes more stable over time because the random actions will cancel out the whales more.
I might be a dinosaur on this, but I think currency should be stabilized through assets and production, and not an artificial scarcity mechanic. You bring up valid points though. Just having assets wouldn't be enough.
Almost every cryptofan I know in real life enjoys the money for nothing, gambling aspect of it. Going down this path feels like a crossroads where 2 out of the 3 choices lead to CDBCs and only 1 leads to the completely decentralized, stable currency that the more serious fans imagine cryptos becoming.
I'm almost positive we're going to have to fight through 1 or 2 attempts to shove CDBCs down our throats before we see what emerges.
I think currency should be stabilized through assets and production
Let's say I have a blockchain I call BLOCKY that runs smart contracts and its coin is called $BLOCkCOIN
Any Decentralized Finance (DeFi) or Decentralized Application (dApp) that is running on a blockchain like BLOCKY will add to the price of the $BLOCKCOIN because the BLOCKY ledger is what is securing the DeFi and dApps. In order to secure that DeFi or dApp protocol, you need to make a transaction on BLOCKY using $BLOCKCOIN,
I can secure financial products, supply chains of corporations, messages and media and more all on the blockchain. The encrypted blockchain is like a near incorruptible referee. The more businesses using that blockchain, the more of the blockchains coin is needed to secure those businesses transactions on the blockchain ledger. The blockchain will become more valuable as more people use it because there are a limited number of coins and they can be devied up into .00000001 or less. More (useful) assets and production being built on the blockchain will help stabilize its price.
Going down this path feels like a crossroads where 2 out of the 3 choices lead to CDBCs and only 1 leads to the completely decentralized, stable currency that the more serious fans imagine cryptos becoming.
Take some deep dives into Cardano. I think you will find it interesting and like what you see. Cardano gives me more hope than anything else out there in the world right now. That's all I'll say and you're welcome to disagree but check out why they chose the programming language, the EUTXO model, their scalability plans, Voltaire and Project Catalyst (the worlds biggest DAO), the projects being built on it, proof of stake efficiency, their decentralization, and more. There's a lot to go into on that.
You understand that everyone did that, and that's why the market crashed, right?
Crypto used to make fiat gains is worthless, and a scam. Decentralized crypto, as an alternative to State and Bank run currency, has tremendous value. This is why US was quick to adopt crypto as a legal currency. Not only did it allow them to spend siezed coins, like they do cash, they can invest(control) in crypto markets the same way the stock market is.
Imagine if instead of propping up gamestop on Robinhood, everyone adopted a decentralized crypto...
The digital renminbi ... has a legal status higher than any other domestic digital currency. No one or institution can refuse to accept it.
In terms of user experience, online payment methods such as Alipay and WeChat Pay first need to bind a bank card, and then each transaction needs to be cleared through the inter-bank system, but digital RMB does not require these processes.
There is no need to connect to the Internet to use the digital yuan. The digital renminbi is not limited by the network, even if there is no network, or the network is not good, it can also make fast payments.
"no handling fee for cash withdrawal and inter-bank transfer" and "realization in seconds." When the account is received, there is no need to wait for the bank to settle the difference on T+1 day”, “more privacy protection, meet the needs of anonymous payment” and other advantages.
Then the code wouldn't have been open source and spurred innovation into a new industry.
You must not understand the value of open source. The code is open source to make it as good as can be. From there drawing it in and closing it up is a non issue.
Controlling other contenders is trivial when you own the system.
Just use a different cryptocurrency. There are several that are more decentralized than bitcoin just by measuring Nakamoto coefficient (or also called Minimum Attack Vector) alone.
If validators aren't your problem and instead it's the amount owned by elites, then look at cryptocurrencies with little VC backing that is still bought into that crypto.
If you think the system is rigged and you have a better way, fork another project like bitcoin/ethereum/cardano/etc and make your own blockchain with the new implementation that makes it better. Costs very little to do that but you'll only convince people to invest if you actually bring something new to the table that people find valuable and worthy.
Apologies for the late reply, I wrote a post earlier and something happened with the internet connection and everything was lost before being posted. I became depressed and made me some eggs.
There are several metrics other than price to look at both for long term investors and short term day traders who may look at metrics like the Relative Strength Index. For me when looking at a layer 1 blockchain, I like to look at long term metrics like how much development activity is happening on the core code (Github commits to measure) and # of (useful) projects that are developing on the blockchain. No matter what if the price is up or down, if there is no one developing on it then it is essentially a dead project that'll go to zero at some point. What gives real value is the number of people using that blockchain for real life improvements. In lower market cap projects I would also look at development activity (Github commits & # of projects developing) in ratio to number of devs on their team.
Other good indicators is to look at 30 day transaction volume (coinmarketcap and coingecko should take care of this), 30 day NFT Volume (if they're active in that space), total value locked in DeFi (there was a great etc.
EDIT:
https://nitter.net/cardano_whale/status/1534849482189578241
Be aware of extreme bias in the crypto community even in metrics websites and especially in journalistic/media sites. I am pretty biased to Cardano but I just see so many strengths there that are either not being reported or covered up with lies. I did my research, looked at all the top projects and this is my choice for the strongest project. People are waiting for the DeFi projects to roll out on Cardano, that is where I think it's going to get real good.
Given that, Messari and DefiLlama are other crypto metric sites many people use.
https://cryptoslam.io/ is a great website to look at NFT sales volume but they are very obviously missing Cardano NFT sales volume which would be #3 if included in their 30 day charts. If you notice, it is also only -20% in 30 day NFT sales volume compared to top 3 on Cryptoslam.io: Ethereum (-74%), Solana (-71%), BSC (-79%).
https://opencnft.io/market-overview#trend
https://www.cnftjungle.io/statistics
Another important indicator for me is how transparent that blockchain is in terms of development, roadmap, and projects developing. Can they give short and simple explanations as well as long and thought out explanations on the same topic? How big of a community of communicators do they have? Is their code open source? Is code being audited?
Red flags for me are projects that don't meet their roadmap goals after given ample amount of time. Here is a video with Vitalik Buterin announcing that by 2016 ETH 2.0 will be running proof of stake.
https://files.catbox.moe/uea6n1.mp4
6 years later Ethereum is still working on moving to proof of stake and they just suffered a 7 block reorg in their inital testnet for the merge. A block reorg is when the blocks in the blockchain get out of time alignment meaning the ledger is giving faulty information about when a transaction was made (definitely not good)
Ethereum Beacon Chain Suffers Longest Blockchain 'Reorg' in Years
https://decrypt.co/101390/ethereum-beacon-chain-blockchain-reorg
Visualising the 7-block reorg on the Ethereum beacon chain
https://barnabe.substack.com/p/pos-ethereum-reorg?s=r
Decentralization is absolutely worth pursuing because it takes much more entropy and time to destroy it. Take a look at this genius episode from a kids show from over 20 years ago to see what happens to an asset when it becomes completely centralized in hands of a few compared to the many. When an asset is completely controlled by a few people and everyone else sees it, the masses begin to reject that asset.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7WPeUpcBlg
Solana is one of those projects that is more centralized and the devs shut down their blockchain every other week to make "fixes" on it. This means they shut down all transaction activity on the blockchain and they ultimately control your ability to make transactions. That is a HUGE deal and imo nobody should ever have that kind of power. They also magically made Solana appear on the blockchain about a year ago on their first blockchain shutdown, idk why people forgot that. All it takes is one of the devs to go rogue and things could get really bad for Solana holders. Not to mention the recent DAO vote on their Solend project to take control and liquidate a wallet that was about to sell $180 million of Solana which would dump Solana price. The deciding vote was a wallet of $700k and took 80% of the vote. See how important decentralization is? The next day after the results were announced the devs held another "vote" to undo the previous vote of taking over the wallet and undid the previous voters. Pretty hypocritical if you ask me and not a safe place to invest.
Tether is going to lose its market cap, USDC will eventually take its place as the top stablecoin. The question is how fast will Tether lose its market cap? Also how much market cap is lost in the crypto community if Tether runs out of "dollar equivalent assets" before its actual market cap goes to $0.
Opinion: collapse of USDT
https://archive.ph/krSEF
https://assets.ctfassets.net/vyse88cgwfbl/4EtXPBkmEPDNbIHNajz9vQ/bb4766acfe36f5af0c4e54a2694c8a31/tether-march-31-2021-reserves-breakdown.pdf
Tether Claims 'Coordinated' Conspiracy Is Trying to Take It Down
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxnq8b/tether-claims-coordinated-conspiracy-is-trying-to-take-it-down
The next question is how safe is USDC? Who created and controls USDC and are they able manipulate my USDC coins/transactions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USD_Coin
I still need to do more research into them and how things can be affected if say Coinbase flops and/or the price of Bitcoin drops further pushing Bitmain out of business as well. These entities "manage" USDC but to what extent can they control my USDC and transactions?
As far as algorithmic stablecoins go, I would look into AgeUSD protocol (this is a stablecoin design but not an actual stablecoin) and specifically look at SigmaUSD stablecoin that is using the AgeUSD protocol.
https://github.com/Emurgo/age-usd
It is complicated but once you understand it, it's not that bad and it seems to be built much sturdier than the other algorithmic stablecoins that have failed recently like Luna (I remember somebody trying to get me into it and I kept asking what that 20% APY was backed by).
How to trust a stablecoin
https://files.catbox.moe/l6xf8y.mp4
SigmaUSD is an algorithmic stablecoin project on a smaller market cap blockchain called Ergo that has never depegged throughout this bull and bear market even with Ergo taking big dips. The stable coin is over-collateralized by the underlying asset (ERG on SigmaUSD protocol). The price of the underlying asset (ERG) would have to drop over 75% in a very short time (like an hour or less) to actually begin depegging the stablecoin. Anything longer than that and people flooding into the Reserve Token will be making some good money from the SigmaUSD protocol fees. The price of Ergo is listed on the blockchain in real time by the Ergo Oracle.
Redeeming of SigRSV for ERG or Djed on Cardano can only occur when the reserve ratio is greater than 400%.
In a short answer for how to make money on this, if you're shorting Ergo price to go down in the future, you buy the stablecoin SigUSD and if the price of Ergo goes down you get back more Ergo when cashing out of the stablecoin. Likewise, if you're longing Ergo you can buy the reserve token SRV and if the price of Ergo increases further you cash out your SRV for more Ergo. It's actually a little more complicated than that since if Ergo price falls to the point SigUSD is lower than 400% overcollateralized to SigRSV, then people locking in ERGO for SigRSV tokens get exponentially more rewards in users fees as the price of Ergo goes lower. This is a reward mechanism to get people to buy more reserve tokens to get the SigUSD overcollateralized again (Which is why if even Ergo fell 75% in price in one day, other people would be too greedy buying SigRSV to let the stablecoin get depegged).
https://files.catbox.moe/40td1h.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/bosr3r.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/rge4oz.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/mte70v.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/0l3b7c.png
https://files.catbox.moe/x27p74.png
https://files.catbox.moe/utwdiv.png
https://files.catbox.moe/6mls3x.png
It was exhausting when I was first trying to understand SigUSD stablecoin and I know this is already information overload but I'm gonna dump some more links for you to come back to:
How would've Ergo's SigmaUSD held up with the whole LUNA Fiasco?
https://archive.ph/mJOC5
SigUSD is over-collateralised, every sigusd is backed by 3$ currently. Everyone can see that there is money in the bank. This stops a bank run at its inception. The breaking point of the peg is explicit and open for anyone to see. With UST, you have no idea, which gives you an incentive to get out first.
https://nitter.net/ergoplatformorg/status/1524118293476700160
https://curiaregiscrypto.medium.com/sigmausd-vs-the-competition-e70b23fe37a3
Luna supply depends on terra usage, Ergo does not. Burning luna when trend is up, pumps its price. However, when trend is down, luna price will dump harder, because more luna is printed.
collateral ratio for sigusd is higher. This means that the capital efficiency (less collateral tied for each stablecoin) is better for terra. That is why luna/terra can offer better yield.
However, this means that luna/terra needs an additional mechanism to ensure stability...
PSA: sigRSV is not a simple long position
https://www.teddit.net/r/ergonauts/comments/prxpag/psa_sigrsv_is_not_a_simple_long_position/
Noob tries to explain SigmaUSD/RSV (an attempt at an ELI5)
https://www.teddit.net/r/ergonauts/comments/nhjc1f/noob_tries_to_explain_sigmausdrsv_an_attempt_at/
First off the gas costs are no problem on chains that can achieve scalability (sidechains can offset transaction load and costs, layer 2 scaling solutions can offset costs, etc). Even without the scalability upgrades and without voting to decrease transaction rewards, if Cardano was to have the market cap of Ethereum and higher activity in its block, its transaction fees would be slightly above or below $1.69 and its smart contract fee would be around $8.46.
These fees are still low compared to Ethereum on a busy day though right now the gas fees are about $6.50 due to low activity.
https://crypto.com/defi/dashboard/gas-fees
A dirty little secret they don't tell you about Ethereum is that the blockchain in its accounting model is a global variable in validating every transaction. If Ethereum is having multiple transaction requests all at the same time (say like a token sale or NFT mint) then it'll only choose one and kick the rest out while taking their transaction and gas fees. I've lost $300 before just trying and retrying to transact a smart contract signed on Ethereum because the activity was so high, my transaction and smart contract would get kicked out of the line. I think if you watch this site during high blockchain activity (which is showing Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions in real time):
https://www.txstreet.com/
you will see some of the "kids" getting kicked off the bus after they were already let on. I think that is showing those failed transactions.
All coins are dogshit in scalability right now imo. Ethereum has made moves in this area with a lot of side projects focusing on scalability but you got to move those tokens to that project, there's nothing much on their layer at the moment. Also, them moving from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake in ETH 2.0 while the network is running will almost certainly lower security during crucial time periods of "The Merge".
The whole point of Web3 is that users own a part of the platform their using and therefore get a voice in how it's used. Anything you use and believe is worth using should have your voice involved, no matter if it's small or large. I believe the mass of people that use a product should have a better say in how they want the product to be.
Wouldn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc be much better if all the people who used it could easily have a part ownership and voice in how its run? Google Class-C stock is $2245 at the time of writing this. We wouldn't be having problems with our private data being traded for profit without our consent! I cannot have a fractionalized ownership of the stock (say own 1/100th for $22.45) and have a vote in the company stock meetings. The easiest way to start acquiring Google stock is to be living in the US and going through a crap ton of paperwork, brokerage fees, etc. Stock meetings aren't online, I believe you have to go in person or mail in your vote and it is a complete hassle that isn't worth it unless you own a lot of Google stock and hence have a lot more say in how the company is run.
Contrary to popular belief Ethereum and Bitcoin are not as decentralized when you compare Nakamoto Coefficient (also known as minimum attack vectors, meaning # of validator/mining pools that need to team up to take control of over 50% of blockchain validation say).
Here is some great research from @trailofbits looking at how decentralized blockchains really are.
https://blog.trailofbits.com/2022/06/21/are-blockchains-decentralized/
Data was taken from last year but you know who is missing? Cardano. At some points Cardano has even had a Nakamoto Coefficient of 30! You can look at Cardano's Nakamoto Coefficient over time here:
https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/3136c55b-635e-4f46-8e4b-b8ab54f2d460/page/p_9vyfu6gorc
No, it's not necessarily an issue. Some of the decentralization is a flavor of the week and stems from a complete distrust in authority and corporations from the past couple decades. But there are some things that would certainly run better and be better if the mass of people had more of a say and a stake in it. Centralization tends to run faster but it's also easier to corrupt/break so that's usually the tradeoff.
https://nitter.net/i/status/1538780677298167809
9/18 Cardano eUTXO model is perfect for NFTs and dApps
Compared to ETH, ADA transaction model is a no-brainer for scalability: Multiple assets in one transaction Low and steady transaction fees No fees are spent if the transaction fails
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
Cardano is #3 in trading volume of NFTs atm. They are cheap, made on-chain (so no gas fee to send, treated as Ada token), and because of the EUTXO model there are many types of NFTs that can be made on Cardano that I don't think would be possible on Ethereum (or if they are it isn't worth it).
If you know your probability/statistics, the thing about the Ethereum Accounting model is that it is a set inside of the Cardano EUTXO model. That means Cardano can make a smart contract that mimics like transactions done on the Ethereum blockchain, Ethereum on the other hand cannot mimic Cardano transactions.
The difference between Cardano's EUTXO and Ethereum Account model explained by Lars Brunjes (The Cardano Smart Contract Instructor)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq4gS2mXhKk
If you have any technical FUD on Cardano NFTs I would certainly like to see it, I haven't seen anything that holds its weight in reality.
Here is a picture of types of NFTs and all (if not most) have been made on Cardano in some way or another. I don't remember the tweet this was posted from.
https://files.catbox.moe/9pjjdh.png
People are using NFTs as objects in their Cardano game. I saw a guy a few weeks ago that made an NFT that couldn't hold another of the same type of NFT unless he transacted the NFT he already had to a certain address. There's some strange and amazing things going on in that space, we don't even know where it'll end up 5-10 years from now.
I've been studying blockchain like crazy in the last 2 years but I am not a blockchain developer. I really really want to be though and help build in whatever way I can. I have a couple mountains I'm climbing right now but I'm making moves.
I'm glad to be of help if I can! :) It was quite a weight learning all of this at first but I really enjoy it now that I have a bit more of understanding the tech. Also please send me that technical FUD you found when you get a chance, I'd like to read it and learn anything new that may be in there :)
lol, again, this is just a tool used to manipulate people coupled with a desire to enhance the related technology, you can get on the wave and ride or not your call.
This fable that you can become the next bitcoin or what have you is a function of riding the wave. The point is that when the chips are down the only currencies accepted are the ones that will be allowed, the others will be hunted to extinction.
Person-to-Person transactions traded with food/resources/services/etc can't be tracked so easily. If everyone gave up on the dollar, made new wallets, and just started doing person-to-person transactions with crypto, the government wouldn't be able to monitor it.
Also it's not about becoming the next Bitcoin, it's about giving people control of their own financial wealth. New innovations are coming out all the time and it'll only be so long till Bitcoin loses the market share of crypto. Government won't be able to take your crypto unless you give to them. No amount of threats and abuse can force them to take it from you, you have to give them the keys to your wallet to take your crypto. On the other hand, bank accounts can be taken all the time, money and gold is much easier to find as well than a single piece of paper with your keys on it hidden somewhere in the world.
How does one have control of their own financial wealth when your "money" is worth 1/3 of its value a few months ago? And technically doesn't even exist in real life.
Market prices will go up and down in a free market and while bitcoin is big, it isn't Euro or US dollar big by a long shot. Less random hands are moving money in and out and more volatility will happen.
Prices in crypto are down right now because the demand is low as people are in a crunch to pay their bills, food, gas, etc due to the inflation of the dollar. Good Cryptos like bitcoin have a set amount of crypto that'll ever be made so whoever saves their own crypto at least won't be diluted.
In our current fiat system with paper money, we have guaranteed inflation year over year. The way central banking works, an increasing percentage of the population must become debt slaves to the system to prop it up. Money is literally created from thin air when you take out a loan and depist it back into the bank.
Eventually too high a % of the population is in debt and the system collapses. Hyperinflation always happens with fiat systems, governments/corporations/people borrow too much that they can't pay and the fiat money loses its trust/value.
When this hyperinflation scenario happens, people wont be able to buy basic goods no matter what. They will be looking for an asset that is secure, can't be printed out into oblivion, and is already and used distributed among the population. They will stop paying with dollars because the price is more volatile than cryptocurrencies and instead opt into cryptocurrencies. A free and healthy market has volatility in it. Nothing is perfectly stable. Nothing lasts forever.
1 Bitcoin is 1 Bitcoin, whether thats trading 1/3 the price to US $ that it did 7 months ago or its trading 3x the price to US dollar in the future. Its a matter of what people are willing to pay for it. Right now they trust US dollars more, but the dollar is quickly losing value to basic necessities like food, gas, housing, etc. You print off 5 times the money supply you had 2.5 years ago and people will begin to lose trust as prices skyrocket.
It is all part of the internet of things, which is easily and tightly controlled. Any exchange points or interfaces are easily caught, the capability for a user to operate standalone with other users can be diminished in many ways.
So, as long as it is not facing this type of control over it and remains free as it is, you are correct.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
If you use the right kind of VPN where the account is made with no identifying info, that shields you from being monitored. If you pay for that VPN with crypto like say Monero or after buying bitcoin from a person with cash and putting it in a new wallet, that shields you. As long as you're on a VPN in an area that is frequently used by many people, that shields you.
You pay for things with you're Bitcoin and teach people around you how to trade securely with a new wallet and handing cash to people, that shields you. The Fed doesn't have the resources to monitor a million pseudononymous wallets that never move to a KYC exchange.
So let me get this straight. Your grab your digital device, connect it to the internet via your ISP using your credentials, then using your credentials you sign into your VPN, which protects you. And now you can easily exchange using the methods you prefer sight unseen.
Personally, I think your head is in the clouds on how this stuff works.
Do you even know how to own a blockchain system like Bitcoin?
In what respect? registering it to the central digital coin authorities?
Do you know how to take control of a blockchain?
I think you're telling me you don't know shit about what you're talking about. This is the most basic of basics in understanding how blockchain works.
I think you are just a bit underneath reality on how the control mechanisms would come into play, you seem to think that with the internet you have this magical area you can dwell and operate and nothing can touch you.
It is odd, so, basically when this stuff becomes targeted you will then watch how the control mechanisms would be deployed and thus rendering your custom blockchain useless.
Oh you mean like when they took down thepiratebay and all the torrents hosted there? Oh wait, despite the police seizing a whole data center, the centralized website (the most vulnerable part) was back up again in just a few hours, while the torrents where never down at all.
good thing they were not able to track all those bit torrents and hunt down the perps huh? so what is the pirate bay address again? surely it is still up somewhere? Where is napster? or an mp3 exchange site?
The control mechanisms are beyond the view of most, which is why they work so well.
Enlighten me.
Its called enforcement. The governments do itz and usually the mechanisms are prison, fines, death, or military.....
https://communities.win/c/ConsumeProduct/p/15IXkcviA2/hours-ago--hacker-exploits-harmo/c
By attacking the weak parts of the system. Who cares if it would take a trillion years to break your password, just choose an easier method.
HarmonyONE is not Bitcoin and the developers were warned months ago about this hack specifically the way it happened and they did nothing about it. This is another Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) bridge hack. You will find most hacks in cryptocurrency involve Ethereum in some way or another. That is because the programming language they made up for smart contracts, Solidity, is highly expressible along the lines of Javacript but also highly open to exploits. Because there are more things that you can do on Solidity, there are more doors to open for hackers. Many top cryptocurrency blockchains right now are copies of the Ethereum blockchain architecture and set up. When a hack happens in one, similar hacks can happen in other similar blockchain and it's all a matter of how well the devs did to secure the network.
https://www.teddit.net/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/vjjwdt/there_was_harmony_once/
Bitcoin on the other hand runs on a functional programming language. It is very tight and doesn't leave room for bugs and exploits. This is both their greatest strength and weakness because they won't be able to run smart contracts but you won't find any hacks on the Bitcoin network.
Morale of the story, if you don't want hacks and want secure money, don't use Ethereum copies. Look for cryptocurrency blockchains that run on functional programming languages like Bitcoin or Cardano (which unlike Bitcoin can do smart contracts and still has never been compromised while maintaining a top 10 position for years).
Blockchains are a very simple data structure, few people could get it wrong, even if they tried hard. The dollar and most other western fiat currencies has been digital for decades too, just just haven't realized because the user interface has been slips of paper, checks or plastic cards which to you looks physical, while in the back end everything happens digitally.
The US dollar and most others are already 99% digital. You guys need to actually think.
I'm not onboard with anything digital between me and paying for anything.
Traveling with a pocketful of cash is the best. Traveling with a credit card is generally okay but you need more than one, particularly if you don't have any cash for emergencies. Being forced to travel with a mobile phone so it can monitor my carbon usage, my current location, take IR scans of my face, and spam me with ads would be a nightmare. And that's where any forced transition to mandatory digital payments is going: crypto or CBDCs.
Whatever Russia is doing with the ruble, implemented globally with each nations' individual currency, would be ideal.
And yet, where do you get cash without going to an ATM or a bank office, where digital dollars is processed before you get your cash, or your credit card which literally checks towards a centralized server your digital balance and credit score before you're allowed to spend your own money.
Cryptocurrencies may be digital, but still grants you better privacy, better uptime and better transparency. Not to mention the capitalist valuation where supply vs demand sets the value instead of the (((groomer))) tax known as inflation, because the (((groomers))) takes a cut out of your fiat stash, no matter if it's bank money or cash, every time it goes up in value. Then you lose big soon as it drops in value.
Panhandling. Or mugging people.
Whatever method is used to stabilize a cryptocurrency to make it a viable tool for commerce could be used to stabilize cash. I'm not arguing for the current system. I'm arguing for a completely free system, and that requires being able to transact with some off the grid farmer without bringing a shovel, ammo, and a 6-pack of beer to barter with.
For something like a cryptocurrency to be as stable as something like the Euro or US dollar, you'd need a similar market cap, volume of trade, and distributed to individuals spending that cryptocurrency. The smaller the market cap, the more open it is to volatility by extremely rich but as more people adopt a crypto and more random choices are made buying/selling a crypto, it becomes more stable over time because the random actions will cancel out the whales more.
I might be a dinosaur on this, but I think currency should be stabilized through assets and production, and not an artificial scarcity mechanic. You bring up valid points though. Just having assets wouldn't be enough.
Almost every cryptofan I know in real life enjoys the money for nothing, gambling aspect of it. Going down this path feels like a crossroads where 2 out of the 3 choices lead to CDBCs and only 1 leads to the completely decentralized, stable currency that the more serious fans imagine cryptos becoming.
I'm almost positive we're going to have to fight through 1 or 2 attempts to shove CDBCs down our throats before we see what emerges.
Let's say I have a blockchain I call BLOCKY that runs smart contracts and its coin is called $BLOCkCOIN
Any Decentralized Finance (DeFi) or Decentralized Application (dApp) that is running on a blockchain like BLOCKY will add to the price of the $BLOCKCOIN because the BLOCKY ledger is what is securing the DeFi and dApps. In order to secure that DeFi or dApp protocol, you need to make a transaction on BLOCKY using $BLOCKCOIN,
I can secure financial products, supply chains of corporations, messages and media and more all on the blockchain. The encrypted blockchain is like a near incorruptible referee. The more businesses using that blockchain, the more of the blockchains coin is needed to secure those businesses transactions on the blockchain ledger. The blockchain will become more valuable as more people use it because there are a limited number of coins and they can be devied up into .00000001 or less. More (useful) assets and production being built on the blockchain will help stabilize its price.
Take some deep dives into Cardano. I think you will find it interesting and like what you see. Cardano gives me more hope than anything else out there in the world right now. That's all I'll say and you're welcome to disagree but check out why they chose the programming language, the EUTXO model, their scalability plans, Voltaire and Project Catalyst (the worlds biggest DAO), the projects being built on it, proof of stake efficiency, their decentralization, and more. There's a lot to go into on that.
Thanks for the suggestion. I will.
i got all my money out when i made a bit of profit. and im glad i did. it crashed HARD right after
You understand that everyone did that, and that's why the market crashed, right?
Crypto used to make fiat gains is worthless, and a scam. Decentralized crypto, as an alternative to State and Bank run currency, has tremendous value. This is why US was quick to adopt crypto as a legal currency. Not only did it allow them to spend siezed coins, like they do cash, they can invest(control) in crypto markets the same way the stock market is.
Imagine if instead of propping up gamestop on Robinhood, everyone adopted a decentralized crypto...
real
I disagree because Digital Payments via Phones showing a Cashless Society are the pre-cursor, not speculating on BitCoin.
All the Chinese CBDC, e-CNY, needed to get started in 2020 was offer "$2 million of digital currency to 50,000 randomly selected consumers".
At the end of 2021 there were 261 million users in the extended trial who had made US$13.8 billion of transactions
This is in mandarin but Google translate makes it readable
https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2022-04-03/doc-imcwipii2181592.shtml