Like the dramatic quest ofHollywood movieFinding Nemo,this quest of finding Satoshi Nakamoto the inventor of Bitcoin has also been dramatic.

Its fascinating to see how Bitcoin has become a multi-billion dollar thing, yet the Father of Bitcoin is still missing.

Satoshi Nakamoto made the Bitcoin software in 2008 and made it open source in January 2009.

And in 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared.

No one even knows what pronoun to use(he, she, or they)while referring to Satoshi Nakamoto because it is still not clear whether he/she is a person or a group of people.

Whomever Satoshi Nakamoto might be, there are some interesting facts about the entity that gave birth to this multi-billion dollar industry of cryptocurrencies.

Here are 9 interesting facts

The name Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the inventor of Bitcoin. In 2008, someone used this name and mailed the Bitcoin white paper to a cryptographic mailing list.

This mailing list contained renowned people who believedin decentralization and cryptography.

Thats why this name is so famous.

As is apparent from the name, its assumed that he was a Japanese man, but his flawless use of English in the white paper raises doubts about this conclusion.

It is believed that Satoshi Nakamoto owns 1 million bitcoins(or more) which makes his present net worth at the time of writing this article to be $2.6 billion.

In 2009 January, Satoshi mined the Genesis block, andin 2010, he officially stopped communicating. Between this period, the bitcoins came into existence exist on the blockchain ledger, but they have not been used or spent. Thisproves how much Satoshi owns.

1 million BTC is a huge number which, if dumped suddenly, could wreak havoc on the crypto market. Thats why Bitcoin has also earned the title of being a Ponzi scheme-because the speculative founder owns a significant share.

The anonymity of Bitcoins founder has led to a mushrooming of a totally new merchandising concept. Now you can buy T-Shirts with Satoshi Nakamoto things printed on them.

Things like:

You can buy one for yourself from e-commerce sites likeZazzleandTeespring.

Some even suggest that Samsung, Toshiba, Nakamichi, and Motorola together created Bitcoin, as you can tell from their names:

Satoshi Nakamoto

However, there is no official proof for such a conclusion.

Nick Szabo, a US computer scientist, and cryptographer is considered by some to be the founder of Bitcoin. Nick coined the concept of digital currency for the digital age by creating Bit Gold. Bit Gold was the ancestor of Bitcoin. However, it was not used by the masses because of limitations.

After analysis of Satoshis white paper, a blogger concluded that Nick Szabo was Satoshi Nakamoto. but Nick has never accepted this hypothesis.

Craig Wright, an Australian Entrepreneur, claimed to the BBC on 2nd May 2016 to be the inventor of Bitcoin. However, when examined by core Bitcoin developers like Peter Todd, Craig was unable to provide any acceptable supporting evidence for such a claim.

Though initially, he said he would come back with relevant evidence, he failed to do so, and said on his blog that he was sorry and didnt have the courage to continue.

In March 2014, another speculation came on the identity of Satoshi. A news source claimed that they had found Satoshi, and he lived inCalifornia, USA.

His full name, as reported, was Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto. He was aphysicist and a systems engineer who had recently been laid off by the government.

Later on, the person identified denied all such claims and said he is not the Nakamoto which everyone has been searching for.

Hal was a cryptographer even before his involvement with Bitcoin. He was on the mailing list that received Satoshi Nakamotos Bitcoin white paper.

Hal claimed that he had been communicating with Satoshi to support his testing, which led to the speculative conclusion that he himself was Satoshi.

Hals writing style also closely resembles that of Satoshis in the Bitcoin white paper. The suspicion evaporated when he showed his email conversation with Satoshi, but that could just be a diversion tactic.

Fun fact:Hal was the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi on January 12, 2009, after Satoshi mined the genesis block on3rd January 2009 at 18:15:05 GMT.

An employee of Fast Company, a media brand, said thatNeal King, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry were the group of people that created Bitcoin. This employee proved it by searching unique phrases in Satoshis white paper.

They even patented the phrase which appears on the Bitcoin white paper computationally impractical to reverse.

However, all of them have publically denied such allegations.

Whatever anyone may say or think, the anonymity factor of Satoshi Nakamoto has proven to be healthy for Bitcoin.

But theres still a big mystery here:

No one knows the truth.

I would like to end this article by quoting two very early adopters of Bitcoin, Erik Voorhees andRoger Ver(two people who are definitely worth following on Twitter).

Bitcoin is the most important invention in the history of the world since the internet.

Roger Ver, Bitcoin Jesus

This shows how important Bitcoin, blockchain technology, and of course, Satoshi Nakamoto all are!

And yes, Bitcoin has become more important than a single individual, but we would all love to solve this mystery once and for all.

If you know any more interesting facts that I have missed in this article, thendo let me know in the comments below!!!

And if you liked this post, dont forget to share it!

Here are hand-picked articles to read next:

Harsh Agrawal is the Crypto exchange and bots expert for CoinSutra. He founded CoinSutra in 2016, and one of the industrys most regarded professional blogger in the fin-tech space.

An award-winning blogger with a track record of 10+ years. He has a background in both finance and technology and holds professional qualifications in Information technology.

An international speaker and author who loves blockchain and crypto world.

After discovering about decentralized finance and with his background of Information technology, he made his mission to help others learn and get started with it via CoinSutra.

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Satoshi Nakamoto: 9 Interesting Facts You Need To Know

At the beginning of the month, the world-famous Washington Post published documents on the secret service activities of Swiss Crypto AG, the German Federal Intelligence Service, and the American CIA. The "top-secret" report was about decades of spying and listening to over 120 countries around the world.

In a more than proud way, the report says:

It was the intelligence coup of the 20th century.

It all started with a supposedly harmless company: the Swiss Crypto AG. This very company, which was founded after the Second World War, produced encryption devices for governments around the world. Governments use the devices to ensure "supposedly safe" communication - be it in military areas or in communication between diplomats. The Swiss company's clients included countries such as Iran, India, Pakistan, the Vatican and a large number of Latin American countries.

Now we come to the political explosiveness of the topic: Crypto AG was unofficially controlled by the CIA. In other words: the Swiss Crypto AG belonged to the CIA. She was the secret owner. And it is precisely this "home advantage" that the CIA uses to incorporate secret back doors into the encryption mechanisms and devices of Crypto AG. With the help of these backdoors, the Americans were able to eavesdrop on all of the communication between the countries concerned for decades.

Let us slowly approach the absolutely vague and highly speculative thesis: What if Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto was just a CIA construct? - To do this, we have to bear in mind that since the mid-1970s, 120 states have involuntarily and permanently given the most sensitive and important information to the Americans. Also in the context of the NSA publications by Edward Snowden, it became clear that the USA is not exactly squeamish when it comes to skimming private data. Her strength is the operation in the dark and the camouflage of her own software.

And in parallel, Bitcoin has existed since 2009. A cryptocurrency that now has a market cap of nearly $ 200 billion. The network transfers millions to billions of dollars a day and is used worldwide. We use a currency and an underlying technology without knowing exactly who is behind this concept. Sure, a smart guy named Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin white paper on October 31, 2008.

But who is smart Satoshi Nakamoto? This question remains open. Of course, now you could argue that the "nice and fancy" thing about Bitcoin is the trust in technology and algorithms.

Have you ever wondered if Satoshi Nakamoto really has any meaning? Is there any translation of the name?

The short answer is "yes". Actually, there is a handful of translations.

The Japanese term satoshi has many meanings. Among some other things, Satoshi means "enlightened", "wise" or "intelligent". And last, but not least, Nakamoto means something like "middle", "base", "root" or "central". This would make Satoshi Nakamoto the Central Intelligence 🙂

What do you think about this (absurd?) Thesis?

Can you imagine such a connection or do you see the thesis as completely absurd and unrealistic?

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Satoshi Nakamoto - Is The Bitcoin Founder Just a CIA ...

Bitcoin was conceived as a communal project. Designed as an open-source software and released to the public in 2009, Bitcoin was conceived with openness in mind. Functioning on an open ledger that is accessible to the public, Bitcoin is an open-source project.

But despite all its openness, one grand mystery remains unsolved:

Who Created Bitcoin and Who exactly is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Finding an answer to this question isnt easy. We know that all the code that created Bitcoin originated with Satoshi Nakamoto, but that is about all we know. Satoshi Nakamoto didnt work alone on launching Bitcoin.

Some of the early Bitcoin devs have been pointed to as possible Satoshis, but there are numerous issues when it comes to proving that any specific person was the creator of Bitcoin.

First, lets detail what is known for certain. The first step was taken in 2007, when Nakamoto wrote the Bitcoin code. In November 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto published hisnow famous White Paper, which laid the groundwork for the Bitcoin protocol.

On January 3rd, 2009, the first ever Bitcoin block was mined, marking the creation of the cryptocurrency, it bore the message :

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

Satoshi was heavily involved with the Bitcoin community, and collaborated with them in order to modify the underlying bitcoin protocol. After two years of involvement, Nakamoto handed the reins to Gavin Andresen, and seized involvement with the Bitcoin project in December of 2010.

In the Spring of 2011, Nakamoto returned to leave a final message, stating in a post that he had moved on to other things, and that Bitcoin was in good hands with Gavin [Andresen] and everyone. That was the last the world heard of the secretive Bitcoin creator.

The mystery behind Nakamotos identity has only grown, as the Bitcoin community eagerly speculates who it could potentially be. Satoshi Nakamoto claims to be Japanese, born on April 5, 1975. To this day, it is unknown whether Nakamoto is male or female, or whether Nakamoto is even a single person or a group of individuals.

Today most people are familiar with digital currency, thanks to the epic crypto rally of 2017. Back in 2008 when this was all getting started, the cryptocurrency world was a lot smaller. We know for sure that some of the people we talk about below knew each other.

In the case of David Kleiman and Craig Wright, there is solid evidence that the two worked together to get bitcoin off the ground, and both had substantial amounts of the tokens. There is an ongoing saga between Kleimans estate and Wright, alleging that there could have been some kind of graft, and that Wright ended up with bitcoins that were rightfully Kleimans.

You might notice that we wrote Kleimans estate and not Kleiman. The sad fact is that some of the people who could be Satoshi Nakamoto have died, which makes a positive identification much harder.

When the first bitcoins were being mined, basically nobody cared about them. The first bitcoin transaction was a trade of 10,000 BTC for two pizzas, which should give you some idea of how playful some of the early devs were with their project. There are a lot of questions surrounding the origins of Bitcoin, and as time goes on, they may become harder to answer.

While Nakamotos identity remains unknown, This has not stopped enthusiasts from investigating his background and drawing up conclusions.

Nakamotos use of perfect English in his posts and his publication of the White Paper has raised skepticism as to his Japanese origin. Furthermore, his occasional use of British English in the code and comments has fueled speculation that he is a native English speaker of commonwealth origin.

Additionally, Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active member in the Bitcoin community, graphed the time stamps of Nakamotos more than 500 posts, showing his or her complete absence of posts between midnight am and 6 am Greenwich Time, further informing investigators as to his potential whereabouts.

To date, there are several potential individuals suspected of being the mysterious Bitcoin creator. One of the first suggestions was Nick Szabo, a decentralized currency enthusiast who published a paper on Bit Gold considered to be a precursor to the first cryptocurrency.

By running a reverse textual analysis, internet researcher Skye Grey found dozens of unique phrases that linked Szabos writing style to that of the original whitepaper. This evidence is only circumstantial, however, and Szabo has repeatedly denied that he is the creator of Bitcoin.

Despite all the denials, the research into how the Bitcoin whitepaper was written shows remarkable similarities between how Szabo writes, and also what was omitted. One of the most curious things is that Satoshi Nakamoto made numerous references to ideas that had been used by Bit Gold, but never talked about Bit Gold directly.

Omitting the origin of relevant ideas strange, unless Szabo was deliberately trying to cover up his tracks. None of this is hard evidence, and to date Szabo has flatly denied being the key driver of Bitcoins launch.

Nick Szabo, Image from The-Blockchain

Another possibility is a Japanese American man living in California, named Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, birth name Satoshi Nakamoto. First brought up in a March 2014 Newsweek article, Leah McGrath Goodman pointed to Nakamotos training as a physicist at Cal Poly University in Pomona and libertarian background as potential indicators of his identity.

Goodmans biggest piece of evidence was his response to a question regarding Bitcoin: I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. Its been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection.This led to a wild media frenzy, which even included a car chase.

However, in a later interview, he recanted his previous position, stating that he had misunderstood the reporters question, thinking it was related to his previous classified work as a military contractor.

Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, Image from The Verge.

David Kleiman had an interesting life, and was certainly involved in the beginnings of Bitcoin. His involvement with Bitcoin goes back to its earliest days, and he was one of the first Bitcoin miners. Kleiman had a long standing interest in computer security, and had designed systems that were used by the highest levels of the US government to secure their digital systems.

After becoming a paraplegic in a motorcycle accident, Kleiman went barreling into the world of cryptography. He was on the Metzdowd list, which may be where he first came in contact with the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Another theory puts him and Craig Wright at the center of the project. Gizmodo cites an email that allegedly came from Wright that states,

I need your help editing a paper I am going to release later this year. I have been working on a new form of electronic money. Bit cash, Bitcoin and also, You are always there for me Dave. I want you to be a part of it all.

The email is alleged to predate the release of the Bitcoin whitepaper by a few months, which would make it a key piece of evidence in the search for Satoshi Nakamotos true identity.

Sadly, Kleiman died in 2013 under mysterious circumstances, which effectively eliminates him as a future source of information. Given his aptitude for data security, whatever digital information he left behind is also probably going to be difficult to access.

David Kleiman, Image from Gizmodo

Hal Finney is another potential candidate to be the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. Finney was a pre-bitcoin cryptographic pioneer and was only the second person after Nakamoto himself to make use of the software, file bug reports, and suggest improvements.

Finney was the first to ever receive Bitcoin, stating in an interview that [he] was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to [him] as a test.

Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg speculated after requesting aid from writing analysis consultancy Juola & Associates that Greenberg may have been the ghostwriter for Satoshi Nakamoto.

Further adding to the speculation that Finney was involved with the creation of Bitcoin was his correspondence with the aforementioned Nick Szabo, and the fact that he lived only blocks apart from Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto.

At the time of his death on August 28, 2014, only circumstantial evidence pointed to Hal Finney being the original Satoshi Nakamoto.

Hal Finney, Image from Wired.

Yet another possible contender to be Satoshi Nakamoto is the Australian academic, computer engineering expert, and entrepreneur, Craig Wright.

In early November of 2015, Gizmodo received an anonymous email (referenced above) from an individual stating that not only did he know that Craig Wright was the creator of Bitcoin, but that he had also worked for him.

On December 9, hours afterWiredcertified that Wright was indeed Nakamoto, the Australian Federal Police raided his home, and afterwards stating the [the] matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the digital currency Bitcoin.

Afterwards, Wright deleted his internet presence until May of 2016, when he stepped forward and revealed himself on Twitter as the creator of the digital currency Bitcoin, and claimed he had the proof to back up his statement. Then, amid a torrent of skepticism, Wright retracted his statement and did not offer the extraordinary proof he claimed to have, stating that he did not have the courage to prove his identity.

Craig Wright, Image from CCN.

In an era where information is widespread, Satoshi Nakamoto has managed to maintain his identity a complete secret. So why is uncovering Nakamotos identity so important? If Nakamoto is indeed a single individual, then he or she owns approximately 5% of the worlds Bitcoin supply, placing him or her as the 52nd richest person in the world as of December 12th.

The implications of this wealth are considerable, beyond even the real world implications. If Satoshi Nakamoto were ever to sell the rumored 980,000 Bitcoins in his or her possession (currently worth over $3.9 billion at todays price, as of 18th March 2019 ), the price of Bitcoincould potentially become more volatile than it already is.

A quote that is attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild goes like this, Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!

Like many famous quotes, the authenticity of the above statement is questionable.

On the other hand, the idea expressed is rock-solid. The power-of-the-purse is one of the most important ideas in modern political ideology. Being able to control the issuance of a popular currency gives the controller extreme amounts of power.Bitcoin undermines the idea of a central bank, or the involvement of centralized authorities at their most basic level. As the last decade has shown, the idea of decentralized money or political systems has been met with extreme opposition by many established organizations.

Satoshi Nakamoto wrote,

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust thats required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts, in their now-famous 2009 whitepaper.

In 2008 no one would have seen Satoshi Nakamoto as a threat to global socioeconomic system. Today, that probably isnt true. Nations like China have banned cryptos outright, and the Western central banking cartel has been vocal in its opposition to widespread use of cryptos.

Whoever Satoshi Nakamoto is, they are likely wise to have dropped off the radar when they did. The idea that fiat money could be replaced with a system that marginalizes central authorities is extremely dangerous to the people that currently hold power.

Anyone who could act as a lightening-rod for a global decentralized society would probably face some pretty nasty blowback.

Furthermore, there is significant debate as to the future of Bitcoin. Heated discussions have arisen due to some of the growing pains surrounding Bitcoin, particularly the issue of how to deal with an increase in transaction volume in the Bitcoin network. As the number of blocks increases, the Bitcoin network runs the risk of becoming overloaded.

One side of the debate wants to fundamentally change the Bitcoin node by increasing the block size, in order to allow the system to process transactions more quickly. The other side of the debate sees this as a betrayal of the original concept behind Bitcoin, arguing that this would lead to increased centralization.

Identifying Bitcoins true creator would create more certainty and could potentially lay down the following steps in Bitcoins ever growing development.

The Bitcoin community will be forced to coexist with the enigma that is Satoshi Nakamoto, whether they like it or not. There are a few ways that Satoshi Nakamoto could show that they are, in fact, the creator of Bitcoin, but convincing the entire crypto community will be a challenge.

Even if a plausible Satoshi came forward, they would probably have to deal with ongoing doubts from within the crypto community, and untold difficulties from the global power structure. The raid on Craig Wright by the AFP is a small taste of the legal morass that the real Satoshi Nakamoto would find themselves facing.

Ultimately, identifying Bitcoins creator may be a quixotic endeavor. His or her complete silence since the Spring of 2011 means it is likely we will never hear from them again. Nevertheless, Bitcoin, the open source digital currency created nearly a decade ago, will continue to in spite of this mystery.

53,540

Originally posted here:

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? A Look at the Candidates

The sculpture will have a reflective or mirror-like face.

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May24, 20212 min read

Despite the fall in the price of cryptocurrencies in recent weeks, the creator of Bitcoin will have a statue in Budapest, Hungary. The bust of the person known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto will be made of life-size bronze, according to local media.

To this day, it is not known with certainty who or who the creators of this digital asset are, for this reason the statue will have a reflective or mirror-like face so that people who come to admire it will be able to see their reflected face.

According to Index, Hungary , the goal is for the idea that everyone is the creator of the cryptocurrency, we are all Satoshi, come to life in the European country. Also, this is a reminder that Bitcoin is characterized by being decentralized and independent.

The sculpture will be in charge of the artists Rka Gergely and Tams Gilly, while the idea was conceived by Andrs Gyrfi. On the other hand, the financing will be carried out by four organizations called Mr. Coin, Crypto Academy, Blockchain Hungary Association and Blockchain Budapest.

Likewise, the cryptocurrency community in the country joined the financing to place the missing amount. In total, 3 million florins were collected (10,556.94 US dollars, and 209,649 Mexican pesos approximately).

It is the name or pseudonym of the person or intelligence agency that developed Bitcoin and the reference software for the digital currency. His work allowed the transfer of values between two users located anywhere in the world without the need for a third party such as a financial organization or a bank.

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The founder of Bitcoin will have a statue in Budapest - Entrepreneur

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Nothing fires the imagination like an anonymous hero with a secret identity. Its been an enduring trope since the Scarlet Pimpernel rescued his first aristocrat from Madame la Guillotine. From Batman to the street artist Banksy, each hero has his own reason for donning the mask of anonymity.

This phenomenon has come to the world of finance in the person of Satoshi Nakamoto, the so-called father of Bitcoin. He appeared out of the ether in 2008 and disappeared just as abruptly three years later, after establishing the worlds first cryptocurrency. On April 23, 2011, he sent a farewell email to a fellow Bitcoin developer. Ive moved on to other things, he wrote, assuring that the future of Bitcoin was in good hands. He has not been heard from since.

Today, Bitcoin is valued at more than $1 trillion, and while Nakamotos identity might be simply a matter of speculation for some, it means far more to others: He is said to own over 1 million Bitcoins with a current value hovering somewhere around $60 billion. Thats equivalent to about 5 percent of the total number of bitcoins currently in circulation.

Should the personor personsbehind the name Satoshi Nakamoto decide to sell just some of this hoard, the transaction would completely upend the cryptocurrency market. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, which went public on the Nasdaq on April 14, noted the potential revelation of Nakamotos identity (and the movement of that persons Bitcoin holdings) as a risk factor in its IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Coinbase even went so far as to send a copy of the filing to the last known email address for Nakamoto.

Increasingly, financial services behemoths like BlackRock, JPMorgan and BNY Mellon are offering cryptocurrencies and related services to their customers, adding legitimacy to an asset that Berkshire Hathaways Charlie Munger once characterized as contrary to the interests of civilization.

Bitcoin came to life when Nakamoto published his famous white paper on a cryptography mailing list describing a digital currency that would allow secure, peer-to-peer transactions without the involvement of any middleman, whether that be the government, financial system or a company. These transactions would be tracked through a blockchain, a ledger like those used by any financial institution, except that this ledger would be distributed across an entire network, with exact duplicates held by all participants and visible to all, secured by cryptographic means. There would never be more than 21 million Bitcoin.

Nakamoto created his cryptocurrency with the goal of wresting control of currency from financial elites and putting it in the hands of the common man. The first Bitcoin transaction occurred when Nakamoto sent 10 Bitcoins to Hal Finney, a well-known developer who had downloaded the Bitcoin software on its release date. The first commercial transaction came in 2010, when a programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz bought himself two Papa Johns pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin. At Bitcoins current price of nearly $60,000, those were some very expensive pizzas.

Bitcoin is open source, meaning its design is public. No one person owns or controls Bitcoin, and anyone can participate. While Satoshi continued to control Bitcoins development, users and developers congregated in Bitcoin forums to contribute code and work on the project, which had become a collaborative effort. The users running the Bitcoin software were the ultimate authority.

Many programmers and developers have written code for Bitcoin, but Gavin Andresen was one of the most enthusiastic. He reached out to Nakamoto in 2010 and became the founders right-hand man. When Nakamoto withdrew from sight, he left Bitcoin in Andresens hands. Today, even Andresen himself has grown more reclusive: He no longer serves as core maintainer of Bitcoins code; in fact, that role may soon become as decentralized as the cryptocurrency itself.

Throughout the history of Bitcoin, efforts to unveil Nakamoto have continued unabated. Gossips in cryptocurrency forums have engaged in wild speculation: Nakamoto is a member of the Yakuza, part of a cabal of developers, a money-launderer or maybe even a woman.

In 2014, a reporter from Newsweek identified 70-year-old Dorian Nakamoto, a soft-spoken resident of Los Angeles, as Bitcoins creator. While his long and distinguished career in engineering was cited as evidence, Nakamoto has vehemently denied any involvement with the cryptocurrency. The day after Dorian Nakamoto released a public statement, Satoshi surfaced in an online forum. He posted I am not Dorian Nakamoto before vanishing once again.

Dorian Nakamoto, a 70-year-old resident of Los Angeles, vehemently denied a 2014 Newsweek report that he was the founder of Bitcoin. Sakatoshi Nakamoto also released a statement refuting the claim.Nick Ut/Associated Press

Australian Craig Wright claimed to be Nakamoto in 2016, and Bitcoin developer Andresen corroborated the statement, saying he was 98 percent sure that Wright was the elusive Satoshi. The cryptocurrency community wasnt having it, and Wright backed away from the claim.

Suspicion also fell upon Nick Szabo, a secretive crypto expert who contributed significantly to the development of Bitcoin. Linguistic researchers analyzed Szabos writing as well as writing from other suspected Satoshis. The linguists claimed that there were definitive similarities between Szabos writings and Satoshi Nakamotos. The New York Times even went so far as to pin Szabo as the shadowy Nakamoto, but Szabo strenuously denied the claims.

The upshot is that Satoshi Nakamoto remains anonymous, a mythical creature with a Bitcoin stash of epic proportions. He has strong incentives to remain anonymous. Owning a $60 billion fortune makes personal security a compelling concern. Given Bitcoins potential to challenge sovereign fiat currencies, Nakomoto could fear potential legal actions by governmentsif not other forms of government sanction.

Unquestionably, efforts to uncover the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto will continue. The threat he poses to the cryptocurrency market is too great and the mystery surrounding his identity is too compelling. In a world where anonymity is increasingly difficult to pursue, Satoshi Nakamoto has succeeded beyond imagination in keeping his secrets.

Rebecca Baldridge, CFA, is an investment professional and financial writer with over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. She is a founding partner in Quartet Communications, a financial communications and content creation firm.

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Why The Father of Bitcoin Is Nowhere to Be Found - Robb Report

Satoshi Nakamoto is inventor of the Bitcoin protocol, publishing a paper outlining it via the Cryptography Mailing List on November, 1 2008.

He then released the first version of the Bitcoin software client in 2009 and participated with others on the project via mailing lists until he finally began to fade from the community toward the end of 2010.

Nakamoto worked with people on the open source Bitcoin team but took care never to reveal anything personal about himself. The last anyone heard from him was in the spring of 2011, when he said that he had moved on to other things.

But he was Japanese, right?

Satoshi means clear thinking, quick witted, wise. Naka can mean medium, inside or relationship. Moto can mean origin or foundation.

Those things would all apply to the person who founded a movement by designing a clever algorithm. The problem, of course, is that each word has multiple possible meanings.

It is not known for sure whether Satoshi Nakamoto was Japanese or not. In fact, its rather presumptuous to assume that he was actually a he. Allowing for the fact that this could have been a pseudonym, he could have been a she, or even a they.

Does anyone know whoNakamoto was?

No, but the detective techniques that people use when guessing are sometimes even more intriguing than the answer. The New Yorkers Joshua Davis believed that Satoshi Nakamotowas Michael Clear, a graduate cryptography student at Dublins Trinity College.

He arrived at this conclusion by analyzing 80,000 words of Nakamotos online writings and searching for linguistic clues. He also suspected Finnish economic sociologist and former games developer Vili Lehdonvirta. Both have denied being Bitcoins inventor.Michael Clear publicly denied being Satoshi at the 2013 Web Summit.

Anonymous group of people

Adam Penenberg at FastCompany argued instead that Nakamoto may actually have been three people: Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry. He figured this out by typing unique phrases from Nakamotos Bitcoin paper into Google to see if they were used anywhere else. One of them, computationally impractical to reverse, turned up in a patent application made by these three for updating and distributing encryption keys. The bitcoin.org domain name originally used by Satoshi to publish the paper had been registered three days after the patent application was filed. It was registered in Finland, and one of the patent authors had traveled there six months before the domain was registered. All of them deny it.

In any case, when bitcoin.org was registered on August 18th 2008, the registrant actually used a Japanese anonymous registration service and hosted it using a Japan-based ISP. The registration for the site was only transferred to Finland on May 18th 2011, which weakens the Finland theory somewhat. Others think that it was Martii Malmi, a developer living in Finland who has been involved with bitcoin since the beginning and developed its user interface.

A finger has also been pointed at Jed McCaleb, lover of Japanese culture and fomer resident of Japan. McCaleb created troubled bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. He also co-founded industry startups Ripple and Stellar.

Another theory suggests that computer scientists Donal OMahony and Michael Peirce are Satoshi based on a paper they authored concerning digital payments along with Hitesh Tewari, based on a book that they published together. OMahony and Tewari also studied at Trinity College, where Michael Clear was a student.

Israeli scholarsDorit Ron and Adi Shamir of the Weizmann Institute retracted allegations made in a paper suggesting a link between Satoshi and Silk Road, the black market web site that was taken down by the FBI in October 2013. They had suggested a link between an address allegedly owned by Satoshi and the site. Security researcherDustin D. Trammell owned the address, and disputed claims that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.

In May 2013, Internet pioneer TedNelson threw another hat into the ring: Japanese mathematicianProfessor Shinichi Mochizuki, although he admits that the evidence is circumstantial at best.

In February 2014, Newsweeks Leah McGrath Goodman claimed to have tracked downthe real Satoshi Nakamoto. Dorian S. Nakamoto has since denied he knows anything about bitcoin, eventually hiring a lawyer and releasing an official statement to that effect.

No, Satoshi Nakamoto is not a Japanese man living in California.

Hal Finney, Michael Weber, Wei Dai and several other developers were among those who are periodically named in media reports and online discussions as potential Satoshi Nakamoto candidates.A group of forensic linguistics experts from Aston Universitybelieve the real creator of bitcoin is Nick Szabo, based upon analysis of the Bitcoin whitepaper.

Dominic Frisby, a comedian and writer, also suggests that bit gold creatorSzabo was the most likely candidate to be Satoshi in hisbook, Bitcoin: The Future of Money. His detailed analysis involved thelinguistics of Satoshis writing, judging the level of technical skill in C++and evenSatoshis likely birthday.

In Nathaniel Poppers book, Digitial Gold, released in May 2015, Popper reveals that in a rare encounter at an event Szabo denied that he was Satoshi.

In early December 2015,reports by Wired and Gizmodotentativelyclaimed to have identified Nakamoto as Australian entrepreneur Craig S Wright.WIREDcited an anonymous source close to Wright who provided a cache of emails, transcripts and other documents that point to Wrights role in the creation of bitcoin.Gizmodocited documents sourced from someone claiming to have hacked Wrights business email account as well as efforts to interview individuals close to him.The idea that the Wright-Satoshi connection is nothing but a hoax has been floated byobservers, though.

What is known?

One thing that is known, based on interviews with people that were involved at an early stage in the development of bitcoin, is that Satoshi Nakamoto thought Bitcoin out very thoroughly. His coding wasnt conventional, according to core developer Jeff Garzik, in that he didnt apply the same rigorous testing expected from a classic software engineer.

How rich is he?

An analysis by Sergio Lerner, an authority on Bitcoin and cryptography, suggests that Satoshi mined many of the early blocks in the network, and that he had around 1 million BTC.

What is he doing now?

No one knows what Satoshi is up to, but one of the last emails he sent to a software developer, dated April 23 2011, said Ive moved on to other things. Its in good hands with Gavin and everyone.

Did he work for the government?

There are rumors, of course. The obvious question would be why one of the three-letter agencies would be interested in creating a cryptocurrency that would subsequently be used as an anonymous trading mechanism, causing senators and the FBI alike to wring their hands about potential terrorism and other criminal endeavors.

Perhaps it doesnt matter. Core developer Jeff Garzik puts it succinctly. Satoshi published an open-source system for the purpose that you didnt have to know who he was, and trust who he was, or care about his knowledge, he said. Open source code makes it impossible to hide secrets. The source code spoke for itself, Garzik added. Moreover, it was smart to use a pseudonym, he argues, because it forced people to focus on the technology itself rather than on the personality behind it. At the end of the day, bitcoin is now far bigger than Satoshi Nakamoto.

Having said that, if the real Satoshi Nakamoto is out there get in touch!

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Satoshi Nakamoto - CoinDesk

The massive popularity of crypto-industry is visible in numbers. For example, the bitcoin market cap reached more than $1 billion and blockchain is expected to hit $23.3 billion. The general market cap of cryptocurrencies is expected to hit $1087,7 billion by 2026. Due to these very eye-catching numbers, crypto banks remain on the rise, while the traditional banking system already is undergoing several backlashes.

The public survey has shown that 79% of Americans have heard of cryptocurrency and a big number of them are investing in it. One of the biggest markets coinbase has verified more than 56 million users. To compare the engagement of the website to the traditional investment management company Fidelity. According to the official statistics, they have 35 million user accounts. Cryptocurrency banks are surpassing traditional banks, but what about traditional institutions?

Crypto banks VS Traditional Banks

The terms such as Blockchain, AI, cryptocurrencies are the ones that are trending on almost every platform where the financial market is discussed. This is a period when we are facing significant changes and those changes are especially driven by the crypto-industry as the number of transactions is increasing not from year to year but on a daily basis. It is assumed by the financial experts that the compound annual growth rate will be roughly to say 12 % by 2024. This is when people started questioning the role or even the future of tradition. Fiat currencies, while we have been using traditional currencies for centuries already, the massive use of cryptocurrency will help it to gain the role of technologies in our lives even more. One of the major obstacles that traditional banks are facing in comparison to crypto banks is that the transaction speed is way lower than in the case of executing crypto transactions.

Limitations of traditional banks

The use of cryptocurrency makes the transaction and investment process way different from what we are used to during the last few decades. The global financial crisis that occurred in 2008 has shown the entire world that the banking system is also vulnerable to economic challenges. When it became clear that those financial institutions could not secure their funds, the demand for alternative ways of securing their funds was massively increased. This is when Satoshi Nakamoto invented the first-ever virtual asset, named bitcoin.

The main advantage of it was to remove the traditional banking payment system from the process, also known as third-party involvement. Today we see that the price change in one bitcoin is wild since it has reached the historical maximum of $64,000.

The role of decentralized technology

The obstacles that the traditional banking system created for the people, was its own policy, regulations, and mainly, interest rates that promoted the insufficient processes for the clients. The new crypto payment system was offering them the service that not a single bank was able to provide them with, this is a customer-centric approach and they are given the possibility to hold the assets anonymously.

The solution to the complex banking system was the decentralized banking process, which first came up in Nakamotos head. This new system has its own risks of course, but it also has advantages that people cannot refuse to take.

Digital Dollar

The Federal Reserve has announced that they are about to implement the digital dollar in summer 2021. This does not mean that the digital dollar will be cryptocurrency, neither will it be decentralized, nor will it be built on blockchain technology. It will be a traditional, fiat currency in a digitized form.

The main reason why the government has decided to create the digital dollar is to make even economically poor Americans gain access to the banking system. This might also be an attempt to overcome the challenge that the crypto-industry has created for the traditional banking systems. Many other huge corporations that operate on the financial market, for example, Mastercard and Visa are trying to collaborate with the central banks to create a customer-oriented approach and modify the old-fashioned system.

Crypto Banking

There are a plethora of crypto enterprises however, crypto banking means the process of how digital currencies get introduced into the market in order to be exchanged or transacted. There are special crypto platforms created that allow registered users to hold or store virtual assets. When we say crypto banks, we mean the apps for the platforms that are created online. The users, while signing in to their accounts are able to see their secured digital wallets and execute the transactions they wish for, and all those happening just in seconds.

It is believed that the whole crypto banking system has a bright future ahead. There are still big security challenges that not only the crypto-industry but the blockchain system has to overcome as they both have a superior nature.

Original post:

Crypto banks are gaining momentum over traditional banks - Finextra

This crypto bull run has shown many similarities to what happened in the 2017 run-up. In that cycle, cryptocurrencies seemed to be sprouting out of the ground at an alarming rate.

There was a mania of initial coin offerings and it was hard to discern what projects were real and which ones were outright scams. Today, there are over 10,000 different cryptocurrencies, all promising new use cases.

Dont miss out on how smart money is playing the crypto game. Subscribe to our premium newsletter - Crypto Investor.

With the recent Dogecoin craze, several cryptos popped up that seemed entirely fake. Ones like Siba Inu, Akita Inu, Dogelon and more. They all seemed to be capitalizing on Dogecoin's success with meme culture investments, but what about SafeMoon? Is it trying to do the same or is it a serious project?

SafeMoon is a BEP-20 token launched on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem on March 8, 2021. BSC is a centralized finance (CeFi) ecosystem and a competitor to Ethereums decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

SafeMoon has quickly risen to be Binance's third-largest token by market capitalization.

Its website says that the cryptocurrency has three core components. The first is reflection. This is where SafeMoontransactionsare charged a fee which gets distributed among holders of the token.

The second is a fee charged on transactions that will be given to various liquidity pools on Pancake Swap and other platforms.

The third component is a token burn that occurs on each trade. Nowhere in the whitepaper, or the rest of the site, does it clarify the percentage of each transaction that gets burned. It only says that transactions are taxed a 10% fee that is split two ways.

5% goes to reflection rewards and 5% to liquidity pools. 2.5% of the 5% that is sent to liquidity pools is converted into Binance Coin (BNB) to ensure the liquidity of the SafeMoon and Binance Coin pair.

In the SafeMoon whitepaper, it states that they intend to have manual token burns done by the team. These burns do not seem to be prebuilt mechanisms in SafeMoon's protocol but will be done at the team's discretion.

"Having burns controlled by the team and promoted based on achievements helps to keep the community rewarded and informed. SafeMoon aims to implement a burn strategy that is beneficial and rewarding for those engaged for the long term. Furthermore, the total number of SAFEMOON burned is featured on our readout located on the website"

https://safemoon.net/#about

It's unclear what criteria the team uses to make these decisions, nor is it clear what level of autonomy the team has in changing SafeMoon's max supply. The team's ability to burn tokens at their discretion could allow for potential manipulation of supply and price.

As seen above, 416 trillion SafeMoon have been burned so far. This quantity is accurately represented by the following wallet which looks to be SafeMoon's burn address.

https://bscscan.com/token/0x8076c74c5e3f5852037f31ff0093eeb8c8add8d3?a=0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000001

SafeMoon currently ranks 202 on coinmarketcap with a market capitalization of $2.9 billion and a circulating supply of 585 trillion tokens. The total supply of SafeMoon is one quadrillion tokens.

The token is run by a group of six that all look to have some degree of previous work history together.

https://safemoon.net/#team

According to LinkedIn profiles The CEO, John Karony, CTO, Thomas Smith and Community Manager, Trevor Church, founded and worked together at an indie game studio called TANO, an acronym for Technically A New Operation.

TANO's site only has the words "Alpha Launch Coming." So it's unclear if this is a functioning business or something yet to come.

The CTO, Thomas Smith, has the most established work history of the group with various software engineering roles held at a number of companies.

The rest of the team seems to have varying degrees of experience in web development, game development or general management. Henry "Hank" Wyatt, SafeMoon's VP of research and development, also founded a game development company, according to his LinkedIn. Unforetunealty, the website leads to a 521 error from the host's end. SafeMoon's web developer, Jacob Smith, apparently worked for this game development company as well.

On Jacob Smith's LinkedIn he states that he "Worked as the lead website developer working on several of their projects. Work is on hold atm due to the lack thereof."

Henry Wyatt is the only team member to have earned a four-year degree. The rest look to have spent brief periods at universities or colleges.

While education or experience at larger companies is not prerequisites for creating a cryptocurrency, their previous work history and credentials seem a bit unclear. They promote SafeMoon on their Twitter accounts, which isn't that out of the ordinary from crypto project leaders, but it's hard to say how genuine the project is or how qualified they are.

The site also has SafeMoon related merchandise for sale, including hoodies, hats, sweatpants and more. This isn't very typical for a cryptocurrency project, though proceeds could be used for development money.

As mentioned, SafeMoon is a BEP-20 token issued on the Binance Smart Chain. The creator of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, has admitted that BSC is not decentralized. In a since-deleted tweet,Zhao called BSC "CeDeFi," which is short for centralized DeFi and a bit of an oxymoron.

The Binance Smart Chain uses a consensus mechanism called proof of authority. In proof of authority, the block creators are known as validators. These validators are pre-approved and chosen by Binance. To be approved, they must confirm their real identities, invest money to prove long-term commitment and be equal to all other candidates. This makes proof of authority reputation-based by design.

In this model, Binance has absolute control over the blockchain. They decide who becomes a validator and they remove validators at their discretion. All of the chain's users must trust that Binance will behave in everyone's best interest. Should Binance decide to alter any aspects of the chain or ecosystem it has the power to do so.

Bitcoin uses a totally different consensus mechanism called proof of work. Proof of work was the original consensus mechanism used by blockchains and has proved to be very effective at securing a decentralized system from bad actors.

In proof of work, computers compete with each other to process and validate transactions. To win this competition, the computer must solve complex mathematical puzzles. Once they've won, the computer adds a new block of transactions to the blockchain. These computers are also known as miners and they are given Bitcoin for completing a new block of transactions.

This process is very energy-intensive and helps to secure the network. Enough miners geographically distributed makes for a decentralized network without a central authority, which is drastically different than how the BSC operates. Today, Bitcoin is a massively distributed and decentralized network with many thousands of nodes and miners across the globe.

Choosing to invest in SafeMoon is a personal decision that should be made based on how much risk you would like to take. The success of SafeMoon depends on Binance, the SafeMoon team and whatever community is built around it.

Acalculated investment in SafeMoon would require the investor to take into account the centralization of the Binance Smart Chain and how much control Binance has over it. It would also require a level of faith in the legitimacy of the SafeMoon team, which has little proof of previous success. While people need to get their start somewhere, a healthy dose of skepticism can go a long way.

SafeMoon, along with all other tokens on the Binance Smart Chain, is effectively at the whim of Binance with the centralized nature of proof of authority. If Satoshi Nakamoto returned and could make direct edits to Bitcoin's code and have it implemented to every miner and node in the network it would no longer be decentralized and would therefore reduce faith in the system.

An investment in SafeMoon in its current stage would be pure speculation as it is not yet a proven team or project. That said, all ships tend to rise with the tide. Should Bitcoin continue on its trajectory in this bull market there could be a chance SafeMoon will increase as well, and other speculative investors could push it higher, but these are risky bets to make.

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Is SafeMoon Really a Safe Investment? - TheStreet

Elon Musk has become a name known to any person remotely aware of cryptocurrency. With over 55 Million followers, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Company seems to be shaking the crypto world with his witty tweets. His relationship with cryptocurrencies has been a complex one. First, he loved them, and then he endorsed them, now he thinks it's terrible for the environment.

Every time he tweets about cryptocurrencies, the market seems to react to them. As an aftermath of these tweets, CoinSwitch Kuber stated that there is usually a surge in their trade volumes.

Does that indicate that Elon Musks tweets are solely responsible for the crypto market movements? Let us discuss it in more detail.

Twitter, Elon and cryptocurrencyElon Musk's tweets are known for his pronouncements on cryptocurrency. He has amassed a considerable fanbase in the crypto market using Twitter.

In 2014, Elon first mentioned bitcoin to be 'probably a good thing'. Soon rumours were stating that he could be Satoshi Nakamoto (pseudonym of the Bitcoin founder). As a response, the entrepreneur tweeted. "Not true. A friend sent me part of a BTC a few years ago, but I don't know where it is."

Amidst many institutions such as Microstrategy, Square etc., coming forward

to invest in Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, Tesla announced that they had invested in $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. Eventually, Elon also tweeted that Tesla will be accepting payments for their cars in Bitcoin too. The announcement came as a big cheer for the crypto community, and many new investors entered the market. An institutional giant such as Tesla backing the game only added to its credibility. Soon after he announced this, Bitcoin reached its then all-time high price of $58,000.

Elon Musk changes his mindIn April, Tesla sold 10% of its Bitcoin holdings, causing panic among investors. Elon responded to this with a tweet stating that Tesla sold Bitcoin only to test its liquidity and that he still holds his Bitcoin investment.

Soon after this, Elon Musk broke the hearts of many investors with tweets that seemed to question the environmental impact of the asset. He sent out a tweet that said Tesla would no longer be accepting payments in Bitcoin owing to the high energy consumption of Bitcoin in the mining process.

This decision sent cryptocurrencies into a downward spiral, and Bitcoin fell to nearly $30,000.

When confronted about his stance on crypto, his tweet read, "The true battle is between fiat & crypto. On balance, I support the latter".

Earlier this week, he continued to toy with crypto. He took to Twitter to indicate his support to help miners make their processes greener. Following the tweets, Bitcoin jumped 19% to trade at $39,944, which had earlier slumped to nearly $30,000.

Are Elon's tweets solely responsible for the crypto volatility?The above account seems to paint a picture that Elon has the power to move the crypto markets with his tweets. However, a deeper look into the working of crypto as an investment suggests otherwise.

We could distinguish the price cycle of any asset into four phases - Accumulation, Markup, Distribution and Markdown. This natural cycle that any investment goes through is vital for its growth and sustenance in the long run.

When the crypto market picked up towards the end of 2020, it went through the accumulation phase, where many investors entered the market. Towards mid-February 2021, the currency marked up and settled at an all-time high of $60,000. The distribution phase began when the RSI indicator showed that the asset was overbought, slowly triggering a markdown.

The meltdown in the case of cryptocurrencies has indeed taken a toll on investor sentiments. However, the fall was not sudden because Elon is tweeting a bunch about it.

If you take a look at the historical prices of BTC, you will notice that there was a steep fall in its value even before Tesla made any announcements.

Elon Musk took a U-turn regarding his opinion on Bitcoin later on 12th May, indicating that it was not the first downtrend in its value.

Many technical analysts believe that Bitcoin was overbought at that point and needed a trigger to fall and correct itself. Elon Musk's tweet just acted as a catalyst for the much-anticipated correction in the crypto market.

Will the crypto market recover?Bitcoin has fallen over 30% this month, but its value remains 300% higher than last year. The fall of this scale could be a tiny blip for an asset with great potential, such as Bitcoin itself.

Elon Musk questioning Bitcoin's environmental impact did indeed play a role in affecting the investors' sentiments. However, it was not the sole reason for the market fall. Just like his tweets, many other factors only act as a catalyst for driving investor sentiments.

Extreme volatility isn't a new phenomenon but an innate characteristic of this new asset class. Volatility is what enables intense growth in the value of cryptocurrencies.

However, attributing the rise and fall of a global asset to just one person's actions seems unwise. Cryptocurrency is not owned or controlled by a single individual/organization. It is a community in itself.

While there may be trigger points for investor sentiments, exchanges like CoinSwitch Kuber believe that cryptocurrencies' long-term outlook remains bullish.

Disclaimer: The above content is non-editorial, and TIL hereby disclaims any and all warranties, express or implied, relating to the same. TIL does not guarantee, vouch for or necessarily endorse any of the above content, nor is responsible for them in any manner whatsoever. The article does not constitute investment advice. Please take all steps necessary to ascertain that any information and content provided is correct, updated and verified.

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Extent of Elon Musk's influence on cryptocurrency; where is it headed? - Economic Times

Cryptocurrencies are a digital form of money, also called virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies, which use digital encryption and have the main function of constituting a means of payment.

It is a digital asset that works using a peer-to-peer or person-to-person network, called P2P (just as other programs worked at the beginning of the year 2000, as means for exchanging files). They were created in 2009 by "Satoshi Nakamoto". and, to date, the identity of this person is unknown. It is unknown if he/she is an individual or group of people, since he/she is only known by its pseudonym. The idea of creating the cryptocurrency called Bitcoin arose after the great international economic crisis that affected hundreds of countries and millions of people. The intention was to create a new way to carry out international transactions quickly and safely without so many requirements and / or protocols, since there is no financial entity that regulates it. Its issuance is decentralized because it is notlinked to any particular State or issuing bank. The design of Bitcoin allows the transfer of values between accounts anonymously and without intermediaries, since transfers are made directly from person to person, thus reducing costs, since no intermediary is used and no commission must be paid.

In addition, its system is so sophisticated that it is almost impossible for it to be forged, which makes it a more secure mechanism than a transfer between bank accounts.

It is important to mention that cryptocurrency transactions are irreversible and their main feature is their anonymity since it isnt necessary to reveal any identity when carrying out transactions, thus preserving the privacy of the parties.

Today, cryptocurrencies are used in different acts of international trade. Although their use is not regulated worldwide, in our country there is a draft law, presented on October 22, 2020, that seeks to regulate the use of virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies and the forms of transaction with them in the territory of the Republic of Panama.

Said draft law, in its article 3, numeral 1, defines cryptocurrencies or virtual currencies as "an asset of a virtual nature, which is represented in a value thats registered electronically and that can be used by people as a form payment for any type of legal act and whose transfer can only be carried out through electronic means ".

If approved, this law has, amongst its objectives, to increase tax collection since it is intended to tax any transaction carried out with virtual currencies and thereby contribute a portion of the proceeds to the Disability, Old Age and Death Fund (nown in Spanish as IVM) of the Social Security Fund. It also contemplates the creation of the Cryptocurrency Fluctuation Reserve Fund, which will be attached to the General Directorate of Income, that will administer a percentage of the tax paid as on cryptocurrency operations.

It is extremely important that the uses of commerce go hand in hand with technology. Countries that do not adjust to this new reality and update their laws will loose competitiveness within the international trade and their economies will surely be affected.

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The government of Panama in search of cryptocurrencies regulation - Lexology

After years of obscurity when it was only really known inside computer circles, Bitcoin is now world-famous. Nearly everyone knows about the cryptocurrency that was supposedly created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Even so, a large proportion of the worlds population is still to be convinced about it. Aside from Bitcoins struggles to go mainstream, it also needs to convince the world that it is sustainable. While there are many advantages to the introduction of this cryptocurrency, there are also some detrimental effects on the environment.

One of the main concerns to do with Bitcoin is the amount of energy required to mine it. Recent studies have brought to light some questions as to whether cryptocurrency is sustainable as a long term alternative to existing currencies. As nations across the world are in the process of reducing their impact on the planet, it doesnt seem to be the right time to introduce a currency that is going to take a vast amount of power to run. Indeed, if Bitcoin doesnt find a renewable energy source to run from, it could be reined in by governments before it has even begun.

It was recently claimed by the BBC that Bitcoin uses more electricity than Argentina. When people mine cryptocurrency, they need to use high-powered computers that are designed to solve complex algorithms. At any given mine, there will be a multitude of computers working on solving the problems that result in the release of Bitcoin. However, some other articles have claimed that the overall energy consumption is hard to measure and that the doom and gloom reports could be way off.

It has been noted that the statistics put forth by sites like the BBC have skewed them for dramatic effect. Bitcoin may use more electricity on a whole than Argentina, but it doesnt account for the main energy consumption of most nations in the world. In actuality, countries use more energy from oil, gas, and coal than they do from electricity. With that in mind, even though it sounds like Bitcoin uses a great deal of energy, it may not be quite as bad as some publications are trying to make out.

The main thing that works in Bitcoins favour that a lot of people may not realize, is the fact that most money that already exists is virtual. Indeed, only eight per cent of the worlds wealth exists as physical cash and coins. The rest of it is all zeros and ones, stored in computer hard drives in electronic banks. This shows that the planet is already prepared to go fully digital when it comes to money.

All the signs point to cash being on the way out. There are many reasons why handing over pieces of paper in exchange for items is not something that will continue in the future. Hygiene, safety, and convenience are all issues when it comes to cash and coins, and all of these things can be rectified with virtual currencies. The fact that people can carry cards and phones that can be used to perform transactions renders cash useless. However, there is still a way to go until every merchant in the world can accept these methods of payment.

When the world does go fully cashless, it will also give rise to arguments as to whether countries actually need their own individual currencies. The fact that most European countries already gave up their past currencies in exchange for the Euro shows that this uniformity is a real possibility. If the world decided to go down this route, it would need one currency to represent every country. Bitcoin is well-placed to fulfil this purpose if that ever comes to pass.

The borderless world of the internet could be the first place to see a global currency. When people perform transactions online, many of these take place internationally. A consumer who has to complete payments using a different currency to the seller may be at the mercy of fluctuating exchange rates. But if both people were using the same cryptocurrency, this wouldnt be an issue.

People have already grown accustomed to using online payment systems as an alternative to traditional options. Businesses that exist online have found that offering a wide variety of choice is a great way to attract customers. According to Vegasslotsonline, in the online casino industry, credit cards and debit cards are still the most commonly used forms of payment. Naturally, offering a wider set of payment methods allows for more customers to use your services. But people are growing fonder of other options such as PayPal, Neteller, and Entropay. It seems that the sites that can provide the most varied options are the ones that attract the most players.

Other areas of the gaming industry are using these systems as well. Console players have long been able to use PayPal in the online game stores. Mobile gamers are also accustomed to having to download apps with digital systems. All of these new platforms have helped build peoples trust in online payments, and have allowed people to get used to the idea of transferring funds in this way. All of this has paved the way for Bitcoin to be accepted by the general public.

It certainly seems as though the benefits of Bitcoin outweigh the negatives. If its true about the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency, there is no doubt that it will need to find sustainable ways of using energy to move forward. But if this comes to fruition, Bitcoin could easily become the world currency.

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What Are the Pros and Cons of Bitcoin? - LA Progressive

The arrival of NFTs in the mainstream has brought a new crowd to cryptocurrency and its blockchain technology.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are tied to files, like serial numbers, to show ownership. Theyve become popular among the arts and collectibles crowd.

The format exploded in sales during a high point of this springs digital markets. But projections differ wildly. One suggests NFT markets will double by October. Another says sales are cooling.

Not everyone is on board with NFTs, or the crypto-currency ecosystem. Some, who are just becoming aware of the format, are joining environmentalists and others who criticize the cryptoworlds energy-consuming mining process.

The industry has critics from the finance side, as well. Critics say market upheavals in Bitcoin and other digital currencies mean the digital markets are full of hype, and show instability.

Still, Illinois State University finance professor Alan Cring is among many who believe in riding out the wild rides of the markets even with last weeks crypto market crash. Cryptocurrencies have real staying power, he said.

Google Maps

And he's not alone, although most stores around here don't use cryptocurrency yet, crypto ATMs are turning up everywhere. A quick search of Google maps shows dozens of locations in the Twin Cities allow using a debit card to buy crypto.

There will be ups and downs in this. But as it expands, and as more and more very powerful and wealthy institutions and other entities get involved in it, theyre not going to let this go down,said Cring.

Many blame the crash on Chinas altcoin crackdown, U.S. regulatory talk, and on Tesla founder Elon Musk as an influencer. He has waffled on Bitcoin support, often blasting his views on social media.

The volatility also matters to digital artist Ryan Bliss of rural McLean County. Bliss said some NFT marketplaces have open access, meaning they could prey on artists unfamiliar with the upload process. Transaction fees sometimes are high, regardless if the artist ends up earning any profits.

Thats what I worry about, that these community marketplaces are kind of taking advantage of the hype and selling shovels during the gold rush, said Bliss.

Others say the biggest obstacle for cryptocurrency is also its strongest feature; it isnt tied to a country. Illinois Wesleyan University finance professor Jaime Peters said decentralization having the checks and balances performed by users as a whole was core to the creators of industry giant Bitcoin.

That platform disrupted the financial world in 2009 when launched by Satoshi Nakamoto (the pseudonym of the person or group behind the launch.) In little over a decade, the landscape has evolved to many platforms.

Whats behind Bitcoin? Theres nothing. Theres nothing there. Theres no central government manipulating it, which is true. But theres also no central government supporting it, said Peters.

These cryptocurrency platforms make the users as a collective responsible, rather than in individual company or government.

There is nobody responsible for any problem happening. So, theres no guarantee of protection, echoed Shaoen Wu, State Farm Endowed Chair for ISUs cybersecurity program. He's in favor of more regulations for the industry.

Some investors like cryptocurrency's decentralized model because of its low-interest rates and possible high yield, according to Jim Jones, executive director of ISUs Katie School of Insurance and Financial Services.

He said cryptocurrency also can be a way to diversify portfolios, beyond the traditional options of gold, platinum, or silver. Typically you have those commodities, so when the world seems more risky, you have something to fall back on if big wars disrupt these real-life currencies. Maybe, cryptocurrencies could be that, he said.

Other investors dont like the lack of consumer protection, and the fact criminals use the virtual cash to get non-traceable payoffs, said Jones.

The recent Colonial Pipeline cyberattack resulted in a ransom of $4.4 million dollars in Bitcoin.

Minings environmental costs

Then theres global climate change drawing other critics to the scene.

One of the biggest criticisms of the cryptocurrency world is its reliance on a proof-of-work model. Earlier this month, Teslas Musk joined the vocal critics, calling on the industry to move away from the model -that uses a ton of fossil fuels.

This spring, as NFTs gained a huge following, it also brought more people to consider the concerns about the carbon footprint from NFTs processing.

Bliss said many in the digital arts community paid attention when ArtStation announced plans to launch its own NFT platform. Less than a day later, they ditched the plan because of so much backlash.

And Bliss said on one of his Digital Blasphemy social media pages, a recent discussion on NFTs drew more than 250 comments. Most of the artists, and art fans, on the thread seemed to be collectively scratching their head about the new format. Many were concerned about the environmental costs.

ISUs Cring also is a digital artist. Hes uploaded some of his art as NFTs. He said Bliss concerns about artists getting swept up in a gold rush mentality has some truth to it. So, he encourages fellow artists to research marketplaces before making the leap to creating NFTs. Some marketplaces only will charge "gas," or transaction fees, if the NFT sells.

But it's much more common that gas fees are part of the uploading process, regardless if an item sells. Those gas fees are an environmental concern.

A move to more energy-efficient models

Cryptocurrencys infrastructure created with Bitcoins launch is blockchain. Thats a decentralized, digital ledger. Peters said think of the record keeping like this: First, we used a single bank, then a computer network and later a cloud. Now we have blockchain.

It sits on thousands and thousands of computers, she said. Instead of a single government backing the transaction, all the users do, creating a web of interconnected, duplicated records.

But that models original form, using a proof-of-work model, has drawn heavy criticism for its impact on the environment.

In proof-of-work, blockchain uses complex computer calculations to solve equations. In cryptocurrency models, closing a block results in earnings for miners. Thats what the gas fees are tied to.

That leads to an incentive to go and find the next coins. So you have more and more energy being used. Cryptos growth has translated to mining warehouses filled with energy-guzzling computers.

Moving to proof-of-stake is the direction of most new platform developers for this reason. Various test nets are popping up, including Ethereum 2.0. And Cardano, EOS, and Tron are just a few. Another new kid in town is a cryptocurrency called Internet Computer. That token allows users to create apps, websites and other web-based services

Internet Computer: Blockchain Singularity

Some Central Illinois digital artists wont make NFTs yet, partly because of this issue. But others say participating doesnt prevent a focus on green solutions.

ISU creative technologist Rick Valentin, who released a set of NFTs this spring, said NFTs are just a drop in the bucket of the digital markets. Reducing carbon emissions drastically is imperative, but that includes emissions from oil and plastics, too, he said.

ISU physics professor David Marx, who teaches classes on energy and the environment, said after reading up on this topic, hes not a fan. He said major digital currency blockchains only process a few transactions at a time with an enormous electrical power drain.

Some estimates show Bitcoin and Ethereum the latter which caters to NFTs have a combined annual electricity usage equal to 9.4 million U.S. homes, according to Marx.

Jones calls Bitcoin the most damaging to the environment because of its sheer size.

The website Digiconomist has been at the forefront of tracking the impact, updating those figures regularly on its bitcoin energy consumption index. Signs show the energy usage continues to rise.

And Jones blames Musks celebrity move into Bitcoin with a $1.5 billion investment for drawing hordes to the platform, thus shooting the energy usage through the roof.

The billionaire's influence could swing the pendulum toward greener cryptocurrency too, though. Last week after he spoke against Bitcoin's proof-of-work model, more miners announced they'd be joining the Crypto Climate Accord.

The private-sector led movement based on the Paris Climate Agreement aims to create a cryptocurrency world with zero carbon emissions by 2030.

There are nearly 5,000 cryptocoins. The growing field is finding more identifying as green.

Cring said those new-developing cryptocurrencies are more often than not working toward more energy-friendly versions. But he said the tech world needs to think even further outside the box.

We need to create blockchain on green energy, build a better blockchain, he said. Make it so the blockchain every level proofs its own ability to sustain itself, he added. Tech company Devvio is exploring that kind of zero-emissions idea.

Not all blockchain is about money

The coin versions causing the climate damage are just one type of blockchain in use, said Shaoen Wu, ISU's State Farm endowed chair of cybersecurity.

Blockchain just refers to a specific type of database one that stores its information in blocks, that chain together. After a block closes, the information is locked there, and not able to be changed or erased. One growing popularity use for blockchains is decentralized apps, or Dapps for short.

Illinois Wesleyan Universitys Jaime Peters notes industries such as accounting and finance like Blockchains permanent transactions, and records that cant be altered or lost, adding State Farm Ilikes it, too.

Wu said blockchain technology will mature, but its a mystery how it will turn out.

It will come somehow. But in what kind of format? That I dont know, he said.

When looking at cryptocurrency, blockchain and other developments, its important to remember technology in and of itself isnt good or bad, said Wu. How people use it is key, he noted.

Wu explores ways to stop those bad actors in how cryptocurrency fits in with the fields of artificial intelligence and the newer field of Internet of Things. He said some cybersecurity faculty have focused research on the blockchain, and students in the program get the opportunity to see how their future roles in security will interact with that technology, too.

At one time people couldnt imagine a tiny phone-slash-computer could fit in a pocket, or that we could see a friends face a continent away and have a live conversation. But thats normal to us now.

Some see NFTs as disrupting how the art world does business. Some see cryptocurrency as disrupting the financial world. But Cring said blockchains arrival into our daily lives represents a much larger cultural moment.

This is disruption. Theres not a continuity of experience thats going to happen. This isnt down the road. This is happening right now, all around us, he said.

Cring said NFTs, and related technologies, are here to stay regardless of peoples opposition.

Those of you who dont want to do NFTs, go for it. Youre following your conscience, I admire that. However, its still going to happen, he said.

But unfortunately, responsibility for the environment, responsibility to human rights and all of those things are secondary matters to business, according to the finance professor. Business will do what it must to create the newest products and knowledge. Thats very related to the digital world, he said.

Unless the Internet dies, this isnt going away, he said.

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Environmental Concerns Temper Excitement About NFTs And The Crypto Ecosystem - WGLT

Although the price of bitcoin has partly rebounded after last week's rout, the digital currrency remains well off its April 13 high of nearly $65,000. In early trading on Monday bitcoin fetched $38,477, up 12% from the previous day, according to Coindesk.com.

The extreme volatility that has marked bitcoin's emergence in recent years was on full display when its price plunged as much as 29% earlier this month after financial regulators in China banned domestic banks and other financial institutions from supporting bitcoin. That includes processing payments, allowing customers to hold bitcoin in their accounts and converting bitcoin into yuan or any other currency.

Such roller-coaster swings in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which have also been buffeted of late, is raising questions about their risks as investments and viability as financial assets. Here's what you should know.

A on May 18 statement posted on the Chinese Banking Association's website said financial institutions should "resolutely refrain" from providing services using digital currencies because of their volatility.

Virtually every cryptocurrency fell after the industry group's statement. Bitcoin slumped to $30,202 before recovering to $38,038, down 12% on the day, according to Coindesk. Most cryptocurrencies lost between 7% and 22% of their value and shares of Coinbase dropped 5.4%.

And China isn't the only country clamping down on cryptocurrencies. Many banks in the Middle East are also barred from dealing in bitcoin, while U.S., regulators appear to be leaning toward more actively monitoring cryptocurrencies. On Thursday, the Treasury Department said it would require businesses to report any bitcoin payment over $10,000, citing an effort to crack down on tax evasion.

Trending News

The value of bitcoin can change by thousands of dollars in a short time period. On the last trading day of 2020, bitcoin closed just under $30,000. In mid-April, it flirted with $65,000. The price bounced around after that, with some notable swings, before taking a decidedly negative turn last week.

Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows users to spend money anonymously. The coins are created by users who "mine" them by lending computing power to verify other users' transactions. They receive bitcoins in exchange. The coins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other currencies. Some businesses take bitcoin as payment, and a number of financial institutions allow it in their clients' portfolios, but overall mainstream acceptance is still limited.

Bitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. Transactions can be made anonymously, making the currency popular with libertarians as well as tech enthusiasts, speculators and criminals.

Bitcoins have to be stored in a digital wallet, either online through an exchange like Coinbase, or offline on a hard drive using specialized software. According to Coinbase, there are about 18.7 million bitcoins in circulation and only 21 million will ever exist. The reason for that is unclear, and where all the bitcoins are is anyone's guess.

Yes, and a fairly big one. Musk announced in February that his electric car company Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin. In March, Tesla began accepting bitcoin as payment. Those actions contributed to the run-up in bitcoin's price, and Musk also promoted the digital currency Dogecoin, which also spiked in value.

However, Musk reversed course in just a short time, saying last week that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin because of the potential environmental damage that can result from bitcoin mining. The announcement sent bitcoin falling below $50,000 and set the tone for the big pullback in most cryptocurrencies.

A number of bitcoin fans pushed back on Musk's reasoning. Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban said that gold mining is much more damaging to the environment than the mining of bitcoin.

A 2019 study by the Technical University of Munich and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the bitcoin network generates an amount of CO2 similar to a large Western city or an entire developing country like Sri Lanka. But a University of Cambridge study last year estimated that on average, 39% of "proof-of-work" crypto mining was powered by renewable energy, primarily hydroelectric energy.

The digital payment company Square and its CEO Jack Dorsey also the CEO of Twitter have been big proponents of bitcoin. Overstock.com also accepts bitcoin, and in February, BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the U.S., said it would include digital currencies in the services it provides to clients. And Mastercard said it would start supporting "select crypto currencies" on its network.

Bitcoin has become popular enough that more than 300,000 transactions typically occur in an average day, according to bitcoin wallet site blockchain.info. Still, its popularity is low compared with cash and credit cards.

Yes, plenty of it. Tracking bitcoin's price is obviously easier than trying to figure out its value, which is why so many institutions, experts and traders are skeptical about it and cryptocurrency in general. Digital currencies were seen as replacements for paper money, but that hasn't happened so far.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank prefers to call crypto coins "crypto assets," because their volatility undermines their ability to store value, a basic function of a currency.

While some banks and financial services companies are getting in on it, others are staying away.

Regulators aren't very worried about a possible crash in digital currencies dragging down the rest of the financial system or economy.

Even with the recent sell-off, digital currencies have a market value of about $1.5 trillion, according to the website coinmarketcap.com. But that pales compared with the $46.9 trillion stock market, $41.3 trillion residential real estate market and nearly $21 trillion Treasury market at the start of the year.

The European Central Bank said Wednesday that the risk of cryptocurrencies affecting the financial system's stability looks "limited at present." In large part, that's because they're still not widely used for payments and institutions under its purview still have little exposure to crypto-linked instruments.

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve said a survey of market contacts found roughly one in five cited cryptocurrencies as a potential shock to the system over the next 12 to 18 months. That's a turnaround from the fall, when a similar survey found none mentioning cryptocurrencies.

Washington officials have been talking about regulating digital currencies more, and worries about a heavier hand have played a role in the recent swoon in prices.

Gary Gensler, who took over as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, has said that cryptocurrency markets would benefit from more oversight to protect investors.

In a hearing before the House's financial services committee earlier this month, Gensler said neither the SEC nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he used to head, has a "regulatory framework" for trading on cryptocurrency exchanges yet. He said he thought Congress would ultimately have to address it because "there's really not protection against fraud or manipulation."

It's a mystery. Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin was then adopted by a small clutch of enthusiasts. Nakamoto dropped off the map as bitcoin began to attract widespread attention. But proponents say that doesn't matter: The currency obeys its own internal logic.

In 2016, An Australian entrepreneur stepped forward and claimed to be the founder of bitcoin, only to say days later that he did not "have the courage" to publish proof that he is. No one has claimed credit for the currency since.

Read more here:

Why is the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies falling? - CBS News

While cryptocurrencies experienced their fair share of ups and downs over the week, nothing is holding back the stratospheric rise of NFTs. As another busy week comes to a close, a lot has unfolded in the world of NFTs. Heres a quick rundown of the top events of this week.

Bluzelle, the decentralized data network for dApps, undergoes a massive transformation to bring forth a new and updated version, Bluzelle 2.0. While it started as a decentralized database, the platform has added several new modules alongside a brand redesign.

To cater to the rising demand for tamper-proof, secure, and scalable storage for NFTs, Bluzelle 2.0, in collaboration with Mintable, has added file storage to its existing services. The new feature allows you to store NFT files over its decentralized network, replicating the files across several validator nodes, ensuring scalability, security, and availability.

Acclaimed artist Rob Prior, known for his legendary artwork for Marvel and DC, will burn his original painting and unveil the NFT during the NFT Livestream event hosted by Mogul Productions.

Robs painting, inspired by the Wolf of Wall Street, showcases money falling from the sky. It is an expression signifying the future of art and NFTs. The painting will be digitized as an ERC1155 NFT during the live stream. In addition, Rob will also be unveiling two of his upcoming NFT drops, featuring a painting of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars and a Deadpool rendition.

Enjin, the worlds leading NFT ecosystem and creator of the ERC1155 token standard, launched a unique marketing campaign to attract and engage new users. Dubbed as MyFirstNFT, the marketing tactic lays the foundation for a revolution in social media marketing.

As part of the campaign, Enjin airdropped 50,000 unique NFTs, embedded in digital ads and social media posts across Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. All of the NFTs were displayed as scannable QR codes that activated transactions when scanned with the Enjin wallet. The campaign was a roaring success as all 50,000 NFTs were claimed within 48 hours, adding 38,000 new users.

Terra Virtua, the home of digital collectibles, added another unique artwork, the Br8ve, to its platform. The NFT includes the worlds most advanced VR headset designed by the Finnish brand Varjo, controllers, a powerful laptop, and a physically signed print copy of the original version.

Commissioned by an anonymous crypto OG who first revealed that Satoshi Nakamoto is not one but eight different individuals, the Br8ve NFT tells the story of Bitcoin. To bring the NFT to life, digital artist VESA spent five months converting it into digital artwork, followed by another six months of work by 3D maestro Frank Spalteholz and music composer Mighty33 to convert it into an exclusive VR artwork finally.

Currently the bid for the artwork is at $500,000, which is the highest bid thus far on the Terra Viruta marketplace.

The Associated Press (AP) has listed the first item from its collection of 10 unique NFTs for auction on OpenSea, the worlds biggest NFT marketplace. Dubbed as the AP ARTiFACTS: The 175 Collection, the series of NFTs celebrates the legendary news agencys exceptional photojournalism over 175 years.

The first NFT from the collection, a photo of American soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, is now available for bidding. Renowned digital artist, Marko Stanojevic, is the man behind transforming the Pulitzer Prize-winning image into digital art. It also includes some of the rarest images clicked by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal alongside an original music composition by Nick Kennerly.

From iconic images to comics, whats next for NFTs? Can you think of any other unexplored niche? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, Terra Virtua, Rob Prior YouTube channel, Enjin, AP

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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NFT Weekly Roundup: Bluezelle's Innovative Solution, Rob Prior's Live Stream, Ap's Iconic NFT Collection, and the Br8ve Auction Bitcoin News -...

What is Ether? The price of the worlds second largest cryptocurrency, ether, hit a new all-time high of US$1,440 (1,050) on January 19. This breached a previous high set three years ago and gave ether a total value (market capitalisation) of US$160 billion, although it has since fallen back to around US$140 billion.

Ether, which runs on a technology system known as the ethereum blockchain, is worth over ten times the price it was when it bottomed during the COVID market panic of March 2020. And the cryptocurrency is still only five years old. In part, this remarkable rise in the value is due to excess money flowing into all the leading cryptocurrencies, which are now seen as relatively safe store-of-value assets and a good speculative investment.

But ethers price rise has even outstripped that of the number one cryptocurrency, bitcoin, which only had a seven-fold increase since March. Ether has outperformed partly due to several improvements and new features being rolled out over the next few months. So what are ether and ethereum and why is this cryptocurrency now worth more than corporate giants such as Starbucks and AstraZeneca?

Blockchains are online ledgers that keep permanent tamper-proof records of information. These records are continually verified by a network of computer nodes similar to servers, which are not centrally controlled by anyone. Ether is just one of over 8,000 cryptocurrencies that use some form of this technology, which was invented by the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto when he released bitcoin over a decade ago.

The ethereum blockchain was first outlined in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin, a 19-year old prodigy who was born in Russia but mostly grew up in Canada. After crowdfunding and development in 2014, the platform was launched in July 2015.

As with the bitcoin blockchain, each ethereum transaction is confirmed when the nodes on the network reach a consensus that it took place these verifiers are rewarded in ether for their work, in a process known as mining.

But the bitcoin blockchain is confined to enabling digital, decentralised money meaning money that is not issued from any central institution unlike, say, dollars. Ethereums blockchain is categorically different in that it can host both other digital tokens or coins, and decentralised applications.

Decentralised applications or dapps are open-source programs developed by communities of coders not attached to any company. Any changes to the software are voted on by the community using a consensus mechanism.

Perhaps the best known applications running on the ethereum blockchain are smart contracts, which are programs that automatically execute all or parts of an agreement when certain conditions are met. For instance, a smart contract could automatically reimburse a customer if, say, a flight was delayed more than a prescribed amount of time.

Many of the dapp communities are also operating what is known as decentralised autonomous organisations or DAOs. These are essentially alternatives to companies and seen by many as the building blocks of the next phase of the internet or web 3.0. A good example is the burgeoning trading exchange Sushiswap.

Ethereum has evolved and developed since its launch six years ago. In 2016, a set of smart contracts known as The DAO raised a record US$150 million in a crowdsale but was quickly exploited by a hacker who siphoned off one- third of the funds. However, since then, the ethereum ecosystem has matured considerably. While hacks and scams remain common, the overall level of professionalism appears to have improved dramatically.

Financial interest in ether tends to follow in the wake of bitcoin rallies because it is the second-largest cryptocurrency and, as such, quickly draws the attention of the novice investor. All the same, there are other factors behind its recent rally.

The first is the pace of innovation on the platform. Most activity in the cryptocurrency space happens on ethereum. In 2020, we saw the emergence of decentralised finance (DeFi). DeFi is analogous to the mainstream financial world, but with the middleman banks cut out.

Users can borrow, trade, lend and invest through autonomous smart contracts via protocols like Compound, Aave and Yearn Finance. It sounds like science fiction, but this is no hypothetical market approximately US$24 billion is locked into various DeFi projects right now. Importantly, DeFi allows users to generate income on their cryptocurrency holdings, especially their ether tokens.

The second factor behind the ether surge is the launch of ethereum 2.0. This upgrade addresses major concerns impacting the current version of ethereum. In particular, it will reduce transaction fees especially useful in DeFi trading, where each transaction can end up costing the equivalent of tens of US dollars.

Ethereum 2.0 will also eliminate the environmentally wasteful mining currently required to make the ethereum blockchain function (the same is true of many other cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin). Within the year, ethereum should be able to drop the need for vast industrial mining warehouses that consume huge amounts of energy.

Instead, transactions will be validated using a different system known as proof-of-stake. The sense that ethereum addresses problems like these quickly rather than letting them sit could prove a major differential from the sometimes sluggish and conservative pace of the bitcoin development culture.

A final factor is the launch of ethereum futures trading on February 8. This means that traders will be able to speculate on what ether will be worth at a given date in the future for the first time a hallmark of any mature financial asset. Some analysts have said the recent bitcoin rally has been fuelled by traditional investment firms, and the launch of ethereum futures is often touted as opening the doors for the same price action.

However, as every seasoned cryptocurrency user knows, both currencies are extremely volatile and are as liable to crash by extremes as rise by them. Bitcoins price fell 85 percent in the year after the last bull market in 2017, while ether was down by 95 percent at one stage from its previous high of US$1,428.

Whatever the valuation, the future of ethereum as a platform looks bright. Its challenge is ultimately external: projects such as Cardano and Polkadot, created by individuals who helped launch ethereum itself, are attempting to steal ethereums crown.

But as bitcoin has shown, first-mover advantage matters in cryptocurrency, and despite bitcoins relative lack of features it is unlikely to be moved from its dominant position for some time. The same is most likely true for the foreseeable future with ethereum.

Image Credit: Reuters

Paul J Ennis, Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Management Information Systems, University College Dublin and Donncha Kavanagh, Professor of Information & Organisation, University College Dublin published this article first on The Conversation. The views expressed are the authors own.

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Ether: What You Should Know About Worlds Second Largest Cryptocurrency - SheThePeople

From Dogecoin to Bitcoin to Coinbase, cryptocurrency is the hottest trend in investing right now. Heres what you need to know before buying in. USA TODAY

Whether the price is surging or dipping, Bitcoin stays a hot topic.

The price of the famously volatile digital currency fell nearly 30% at one point Wednesday after the China Banking Association warned member banks of the risks associated with digital currencies. The decline narrowed to below 10% that same afternoon, but Bitcoin had still lost about $70 billion in market value in 24 hours.

Bitcoin has lost about 38% of its value since April 13 when it hit a high of more than $64,800, according to Coindesk. The China warning was just the latest headwind: Before Wednesday, Teslas decision to not accept the digital currency as payment for cars after it said it would and murmurings in Washington about tighter regulation of digital currencies had put pressure on Bitcoin. The price is still up about 31% in 2021 and nearly 300% from a year ago.

Heres a look at Bitcoin and digital currencies in general:

Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows users to spend money anonymously. The coins are created by users who mine them by lending computing power to verify other users transactions. They receive Bitcoins in exchange.

The coins also can be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other currencies. Some businesses take Bitcoin as payment, and a number of financial institutions allow it in their clients portfolios, but overall mainstream acceptance is still limited.

Bitcoin on the upswing: Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies rebound amid volatile week of trading

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Warren Buffett called Bitcoin rat poison, but the technology behind it is something everyone can agree on. Here are other life-changing uses you didnt know about.

Bitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. Transactions can be made anonymously, making the currency popular with libertarians as well as tech enthusiasts, speculators and criminals.

Bitcoins have to be stored in a digital wallet, either online through an exchange like Coinbase, or offline on a hard drive using specialized software. According to Coinbase, there are about 18.7 million Bitcoins in circulation and only 21 million will ever exist. The reason for that is unclear, and where all the Bitcoins are is anyones guess.

On Wednesday, a statement posted on the Chinese Banking Associations website said financial institutions should resolutely refrain from providing services using digital currencies because of their volatility.

(Photo: Getty Images)

Virtually every cryptocurrency fell after the industry groups statement.

As of 4:15 p.m. eastern time that day , Bitcoin was down more than 7% at around $40,310 per coin. Most cryptocurrencies lost between 7% and 22% of their value and shares of Coinbase dropped 5.4%.

Its not unusual for the value of Bitcoin to change by thousands of dollars in a short time period, though swings totaling around $20,000 in one day are extreme. On the last trading day of 2020, Bitcoin closed just under $30,000. In mid-April, it flirted with $65,000.

Yes, and a fairly big one. Musk announced in February that his electric car company Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. In March, Tesla began accepting Bitcoin as payment. Those actions contributed to the run-up in Bitcoins price, and Musk also promoted the digital currency Dogecoin, which also spiked in value.

However, Musk reversed course in just a short time, saying last week that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin because of the potential environmental damage that can result from Bitcoin mining. The announcement sent Bitcoin falling below $50,000 and set the tone for the big pullback recently in most cryptocurrencies.

A number of Bitcoin fans pushed back on Musks reasoning. Fellow billionaire Mark Cuban said that gold mining is much more damaging to the environment than the mining of Bitcoin.

A 2019 study by the Technical University of Munich and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that the Bitcoin network generates an amount of CO2 similar to a large Western city or an entire developing country like Sri Lanka. But a University of Cambridge study last year estimated that on average, 39% of proof-of-work crypto mining was powered by renewable energy, primarily hydroelectric energy.

There had been some concern among Bitcoin investors that Tesla would sell some or all of its Bitcoin holdings, but Musk indicated in a tweet Wednesday that Tesla was sticking with its investment.

The digital payment company Square and its CEO Jack Dorsey,also the CEO of Twitter,have been big proponents of Bitcoin.

Overstock.com also accepts Bitcoin, and in February, BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the U.S., said it would include digital currencies in the services it provides to clients. And Mastercard said it would start supporting select crypto currencies on its network.

Bitcoin has become popular enough that more than 300,000 transactions typically occur in an average day, according to Bitcoin wallet site blockchain.info. Still, its popularity is low compared with cash and credit cards.

Yes, plenty of it.

Tracking Bitcoins price is obviously easier than trying to figure out its value, which is why so many institutions, experts and traders are skeptical about it and cryptocurrency in general.

Digital currencies were seen as replacements for paper money, but that hasnt happened so far. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank prefers to call crypto coins crypto assets, because their volatility undermines their ability to store value, a basic function of a currency.

While some banks and financial services companies are getting in on it, others are staying away.

Regulators arent very worried about a possible crash in digital currencies dragging down the rest of the financial system or economy.

Even with the recent sell-off, digital currencies have a market value of about $1.72 trillion, according to the website coinmarketcap.com. But that pales compared with the $46.9 trillion stock market, $41.3 trillion residential real estate market and nearly $21 trillion Treasury market at the start of the year.

The European Central Bank said Wednesday that the risk of cryptocurrencies affecting the financial systems stability looks limited at present. In large part, thats because theyre still not widely used for payments and institutions under its purview still have little exposure to crypto-linked instruments.

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve said a survey of market contacts found roughly one in five cited cryptocurrencies as a potential shock to the system over the next 12 to 18 months. Thats a turnaround from the fall, when a similar survey found none mentioning cryptocurrencies.

Washington officials have been talking about regulating digital currencies more, and worries about a heavier hand have played a role in the recent swoon in prices.

Gary Gensler, who took over as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission last month, has said that cryptocurrency markets would benefit from more oversight to protect investors.

In a hearing before the Houses financial services committee earlier this month, Gensler said neither the SEC nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he used to head, has a regulatory framework for trading on cryptocurrency exchanges yet. He said he thought Congress would ultimately have to address it because theres really not protection against fraud or manipulation.

Its a mystery. Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin was then adopted by a small clutch of enthusiasts. Nakamoto dropped off the map as bitcoin began to attract widespread attention. But proponents say that doesnt matter: The currency obeys its own internal logic.

Associated Press Reporters Matt Ott, Ken Sweet and Stan Choe in New York contributed.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2021/05/22/bitcoins-been-up-and-down-exactly-what-and-how-does-work/5220333001/

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Bitcoin is up, then down. But exactly how does it work? - USA TODAY

The price of Bitcoin has collapsed, yet again, just like this time last year.

Those who got in on the ground floor years ago have made a killing. Those who got in last year after the crash and exited shortly after Elon Musk took the plunge in February have joined the ranks of the uber-rich.

And for all the criticism about its volatility, instability and environmental irresponsibility, we probably haven't seen the last Bitcoin rally.

But before we get around to considering that question, let's just back-track a little.

Well, maybe just a little more than a little. Let's go all the way back to 1637 to Holland, then one of the most powerful nations in Europe.

That was the year that tulip mania finally ran out of puff, the year when one of the most insane investment bubbles of all time burst spectacularly. And yes, we're talking about tulips, the flowers.

Originally from Turkey, they became highly fashionable in the early part of the 1600s, sought after by the well-to-do and, ultimately, a symbol of wealth and power deemed an absolute necessity for anyone with social pretensions or ambitions.

By 1634, demand for tulip bulbs which not only were rare but fragile was such that the trade crowded out most other Dutch industries. At its peak, a single tulip bulb cost six times the average income, with some going for as much as $1 million in today's money. They were traded on stock exchanges in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other Dutch cities.

Three years later, it all came to a crashing halt. A large swathe of the population had borrowed to buy bulbs, certain that prices would only ever go higher, and when the market turned, it did so with a vengeance as investors were forced to dump their, um, flowers.

If this sounds too ridiculous to be true, you're right. But it really did happen.

A lot, as it turns out.

Economics is really a study of human behaviour at both an individual and a group level and there are a couple of fundamental laws, or assumptions, used as the bedrock.

One is that individuals always act rationally. The other is that everyone always acts in their own best interest.

That explains why economists have such a dismal track record in forecasting anything. Not sure about you, but your correspondent's behaviour occasionally has veered towards the irrational and certainly not in anyone's best interest. Multiply that several billion times and you have a recipe for unconstrained lunacy.

It's why we have booms and busts, prosperity and poverty, wars and famine, why we lurch from one extreme to the other. You can't just assume it all away and pretend it's not there.

Which brings us to Bitcoin and the mysterious world of cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin is just one of more than 4,000 cryptocurrencies. The unifying feature of almost all of them is that they employ what's known as blockchain technology a record-keeping or ledger system to conduct transactions. While it is a complex system, it relies on a simple idea: to ensure stored data is public and cannot be manipulated or controlled by any party, state or individual.

Blockchain technology has huge potential for almost every facet of a data-dependent world, from conducting elections to healthcare to financial services. The Australian Securities Exchange uses it for its transactions.

While Bitcoin was among the first to use the technology, it doesn't own it. That's something many Bitcoin investors don't get. They're quick to extol the virtues of blockchain but don't understand that Bitcoin is just one of many thousands of organisations that employ it.

Not only that, there are as many different variations and applications of the technology as there are users. The technology can be customised, depending on how you want to use it. And Bitcoin's blockchain has quite a few deficiencies.

When it was launched in 2009, Bitcoin devotees declared the decentralised ledger system would render the global financial system obsolete. Central banks would have no place in the world and Bitcoin would replace national or fiat currencies.

That hasn't happened. Ironically, more than a decade down the track, Bitcoin remains priced in US dollars, the world's reserve currency, and investors continue to measure their wealth in good old dollars and cents. In an even greater insult, central banks, including the Reserve Bank of Australia, are actively pursuing their own forms of digital currencies.

Investors are jumping into ETFs at record levels but are they a safe investment? We ask the experts.

And while Bitcoin remains the poster child, and by far the biggest cryptocurrency, it has spawned legions of imitators, some of which hold far more promise than the original.

Elon Musk, the Tesla car founder who splurged $US1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) on Bitcoin in February, now concedes the currency uses far too much electricity. It's an environmental disaster in the making so he's now plugging Dogecoin, the joke currency based upon a dog.

What few investors will admit, however, is that Bitcoin is slow and hugely expensive to use. That's not just compared to other digital currencies. It's way more expensive than conventional transaction methods.

Among its rivals, Ethereum, the second-biggest network, is often touted as the system that eventually will dominate. But its transaction fees are horrendous as well. It operates a little like Uber, with surge pricing.

Last weekend, for instance, if you'd gone out to lunch on Saturday and spent $120 and then tried to pay with Ether, you would have been hit with a $385 transaction fee.

But who needs to use these systems when you can create your own blockchain and cryptocurrency? Binance, a major exchange, runs off the Ethereum network and offers others the chance to piggyback its system.

That has attracted some unusual traffic. Blockchain transactions may be public but the identity of those behind them can be obscured. That's why authorities have been concerned about nefarious activity such as drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism financing.

Among the many new currencies is one to facilitate online pornography subscriptions, the aptly titled Cumrocket. And like most fields of human endeavour, there's no escaping toilet humour. PooCoin launched last month along with a stern warning from UK authorities about the potential risks of investing in it. Or stepping in it.

One of the few operations that seems to have a real business model, along with executives, employees and actual offices, is XRP, the currency launched by Ripple Labs. It is aiming to compete or replace the SWIFT international payments transfer system used by most banks. It is quick and cheap.

Perhaps because of that visibility, it has become the subject of a lawsuit by America's Security and Exchange Commission, which has charged it and two executives with selling $US1.3 billion in unregistered securities.

Interestingly, SWIFT is fighting back. It is attempting to compete with Ripple's blockchain technology with a rival technology, Global Payments Innovation.

Bitcoin is a bubble. Last Wednesday, it went through some wild gyrations, dropping 33 per cent before surging by a similar amount to end the session down 8 per cent.

From the outset, it was designed to become increasingly rare.

Only 21 million coins exist. Most already have been released and the final one won't be mined until next century. That was a deliberate attempt to make its value rise, along the same lines as gold, so that it could become a safe harbour, a store of wealth when things turn ugly.

US magazine Newsweek says it has found the enigmatic creator of the online currency bitcoin.

While its value has risen exponentially in recent years, its incredible volatility makes it anything but a safe harbour. Given it isn't much good for transactions and holds no proprietary technology or intellectual property, about the only thing it is good for is speculation.

On Friday, it was bouncing around more than 10 per cent every few hours, ending another 9 per cent lower, and at $US39,000 was well below the $US63,346 peak last month. That makes it a bargain, some reckon.

Maybe. But remember, it's a virtual commodity. It doesn't actually exist. No-one even really knows whether Satoshi Nakamoto, the mythical founder, is real.

Who knows, it could go beyond $US100,000 sometime in the near future. But if everyone suddenly decides to abide by the rules of economics and starts acting rationally, be prepared to lose everything.

At least you can tiptoe through tulips.

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Bitcoin has just crashed and we may see another rally. But is this the time to buy? - ABC News