In the last few days, Bitcoin (BTC) price has underperformed Ether (ETH) by almost 20%. Even though BTC seems to be struggling to break the $18,800 barrier, both cryptocurrencies display the same bullishness according to derivatives markets data.

Ether is entering a parabolic rally as its Eth2 network launch progresses, and this optimism is reflected in the options markets. Despite the lack of similar price action from BTC, Bitcoin traders seem unfazed, and data shows they are still wildly bullish.

Analyzing the basis indicator is a useful procedure as it compares the futures contracts level to the current price at regular spot exchanges.

Healthy markets usually display a 5% to 10% annualized basis, in a situation known as contango. On the other hand, futures trading with a discount usually occurs during heavily bearish markets.

The Ether futures basis has been ranging between 10% and 20%, indicating bullish expectations. Instead of leaving Ether at a derivatives exchange, the seller would rather utilize them for staking. Therefore, it is only natural to demand a premium for the trade.

The BTC futures premium has been behaving similarly, despite today's lackluster negative performance. Had traders given up expectations of a continuous bull run, this indicator would have moved below 10% annualized.

There's only one reason why a trader pays such a hefty premium on a futures contract, and the reason is bullishness. This indicator can be interpreted as a tax to carry leveraged long positions.

Viewing the 25 delta skew also provides useful insight into the sentiment and stance of pro traders.

A positive 25% delta skew indicates that put (sell) options cost more than similar call (buy) options, signaling bearish sentiment. On the other hand, a negative skew suggests bullishness.

The indicator usually oscillates between -20% to +20% in neutral markets, although it hasn't been the case for Ether over the past weeks.

Take notice how the Ether futures basis touched extreme optimism levels on Nov. 21, which is highly unusual.

This data suggests that options traders are unwilling to sell upside protection. At -20%, the skew indicator signals that derivative investors remain bullish despite the 28% rally over the past seven days.

One should expect BTC options traders to be slightly less optimistic after today's negative performance, but that hasn't been the case.

Data shows that BTC option traders are presently remarkably optimistic, regardless of how difficult the last couple of days have been. Thus, there is no indication of a shift in sentiment coming from derivatives markets.

Although there are multiple ways to read the same chart according to technical analysis, BTC hasn't precisely been transpiring optimism.

Traders that prefer shorter time frames might have a bearish interpretation of the recent price action. Meanwhile, professional investors know how unpredictable BTC markets are. Therefore they are not ready to reduce their positive expectations at a whim.

For now, there seems to be no reason to doubt Bitcoin's positive momentum. Even though Ether has outperformed it, traders are exhibiting the same confidence in both cryptocurrencies.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Key Bitcoin and Ethereum options metrics show traders are wildly bullish - Cointelegraph

This deposit contract is the first step that would eventually lead to the launch of Ethereum 2.0. If to consider that the launch will go down successfully, Ethereum will ship the Beacon Chain and introduce proof-of-stake to the ecosystem, which is currently based on the proof-of-work, another consensus algorithm that is based on mining. Shard chains would be the next upgrade to follow Beacon Chain.

Ultimately, the eventual launch of Ethereum 2.0 will have an effect on the decentralized finance market. In 2020, the DeFi sector has grown significantly but has already experienced a slight cooldown. Due to this, there have been claims that DeFi is a bubble that will soon burst. However, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has stated that, despite these signs, DeFi is here to stay and compared these early speculations to the apprehensive stance the community showed toward the ICO bubble in 2017.

Major players in the DeFi market expect Ethereum 2.0 to have a large impact on the community, as its used as the foundational network for most of the DApp DeFi use cases. Cointelegraph discussed this aspect further with Steven Becker, president and chief operating officer of DeFi project MakerDAO. He said:

Although the scaling capabilities of Ethereum are set to increase multifold due to the launch of Eth2, whether it will be able to scale fast enough to cope with the growth of the DeFi markets remains to be seen. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, recently stated that he believes the Ethereum 2.0 launch will not be able to cope with the potential growth that could be witnessed in the DeFi market. He has even opted to build his own DeFi project, Serum on the Solana blockchain, instead of choosing Ethereum, which is the most popular option right now.

The multi-phased launch plan entails a lot of uncertainty as far as coping with the potential growth of DeFi markets in the same duration, according to Jay Hao, CEO of the OKEx cryptocurrency exchange, who stated further to Cointelegraph:

To address these challenges, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated in a Nov. 17 Reddit AMA session that the benefits of Ethereum 2.0 will come faster than people expect. Hao supports this sentiment, saying: As DeFi grows, so will Eth2, and it will become increasingly faster, more scalable and decentralized.

Additionally, DeFi protocols could also begin ETH staking natively onto their platforms, but the downside of this would be the reduction in the decentralizing impact of the network. Patrick Collins, developer advocate at Chainlink Labs, told Cointelegraph:

Following the Beacon Chain upgrade, shard chains would be the next upgrade to follow. According to the Ethereum website, the capacity of the network will increase, improving the transactional speed by extending the network to 64 blockchains referred to as shard chains. Although in the initial stages these shard chains will not support smart contracts or user accounts, smart contracts support is essential for DeFi platforms due to their usage of oracles.

The most significant 2.0 update for DeFi would be Phase 1.5 where the existing Ethereum mainnet would be added to the Beacon Chain as a shard chain, transforming the network into a PoS consensus network from the current PoW consensus algorithm. Slated to launch in 2021, there is no specific date available for this transformation.

The DeFi boom has congested the Ethereum network, resulting in pushing transaction costs to an all-time high. This is perceived to be another reason for the slowdown in DeFi growth. Becker further elaborated on how the 2.0 upgrade can ease the pressure market participants are feeling: The Sharding upgrade alone should enable a return to the days when fees to generate and send Dai cost just cents, not dollars. Inexpensive transactions would facilitate an increase in DeFi adoption and innovation.

Kosala Hemachandra, founder and CEO of MyEtherWallet an Ethereum-based wallet platform even compared this expected growth to scale to the transactional levels experienced by electronic funds transfer giant Visa, telling Cointelegraph: Increased throughput and minuscule gas prices due to Eth2 will definitely help DeFi reach the next level. Currently, Visa can process around 20,000+ transactions per second; with Eth2, we will be able to reach close to that level.

The expected drop in network gas prices and the increase in throughput are bound to raise market participation in DeFi, as many investors faced this hurdle during the DeFi boom in the summer, which caused them to miss out on lucrative investment opportunities. The current scalability issues faced can be solved by projects launching layer-two solutions, which help to address this issue. Hemachandra chimed in on how these layer-two solutions could even help Ethereum 2.0 post-launch:

Even though layer-two solutions are capable of addressing the scalability issues that Ethereum 2.0 might face, the duration through the various phases of the launch might see the DeFi market grow exponentially, as evident through triple-digit gains of DeFi tokens amid the Bitcoin bull run. All the benefits proposed by the 2.0 launch will only be effective once the final stage of Phase 2 arrives, as the shards would be fully operational and include support for smart contracts.

But this launch phase may only be two years away, as the Ethereum roadmap states that its still in the research phase. Even though most DeFi solutions and DApps use Ethereum as their preferred blockchain, there are other blockchain networks that could contend with it for a share of the DeFi market. Simon Peters, a senior account manager at eToro a social trading platform told Cointelegraph: Ethereums transition to 2.0 could take a number of years to fully complete, which is why some competing networks, such as Cardano, Tezos, Tron and EOS, have used this to their advantage and acquired some of the DeFi market share.

Ethereums transition to 2.0 is happening in a live environment, as 1.0 needs to run seamlessly during the different phases of the launch. Peters alluded to the risks that this live transition currently means for the DeFi protocols:

Even though there isnt just one contender to Ethereum for DeFi and DApps, Ethereum is set to be critically important to DeFi, and that its contribution will only grow as the technology matures. Thus, the interaction between Ethereum and other blockchains that are beginning to operate in the DeFi space is of high significance. Hao elaborated on how these solutions would need to evolve: The real key is in making these solutions compatible with Ethereum and interoperable with other blockchains. I think that is one of the most exciting things about the DeFi space the constant innovation that we see.

The Ethereum deposit contract for Phase 0 of the Ethereum 2.0 launch went live on Nov. 4, slating the launch of Phase 0 on Dec. 1. Stakers would need to deposit 32 Ether (ETH) into the contract to participate. The deposit contract needs to accumulate 16,384 deposits of 32 ETH i.e., $200 million for the launch to be successful.

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Ethereum 2.0 to boost DeFi but delayed launch may set the network back - Cointelegraph

Ethereum, Ripples XRP, litecoin and chainlink are the world's biggest cryptocurrencies after bitcoin and they've suddenly soared this week.

Ethereum, XRP, litecoin and chainlink, with a combined market value of around $100 billion, have each added between 20% and 50% this weekoutpacing even bitcoin's rally.

While ethereum, XRP, litecoin and chainlink have been boosted by bitcoin's growing reputation as digital gold through 2020, other cryptocurrency trends have also pushed them up.

Ethereum has added 20% over the last week, with other major cryptocurrencies, including Ripple's ... [+] XRP, litecoin, and chainlink, all making similar double-digit gains.

This week, the ethereum price passed $500 per ether for the first time since June 2018. While ethereum remains far below its all-time high of around $1,500 set in January 2018, the ethereum price is up almost four-fold on March 2020, when the coronavirus crash wiped out global markets.

"Ethereum's touching $500 for the first time since June 2018 represents a significant milestone," Paolo Ardoino, the chief technology officer at British Virgin Islands-based Bitfinex, said via email.

"Ethereums up and coming transition to proof-of-stake is being closely watched. [Its] strong price performance underlines a mood of optimism that seems to be lifting the crypto space. While bitcoin is the undisputed king of crypto, the flourishing ethereum community is alive with many possibilities."

The ethereum price has shot over $500 per ether token this week, adding a whopping 50% in just the ... [+] last month.

One such part of the ethereum community is chainlink, an ethereum-based cryptocurrency token that powers a decentralized network designed to connect smart contracts to external data sources.

The chainlink price is up a staggering 500% over the last year and has exploded amid a flurry of interest in decentralized finance (DeFi)using crypto technology to recreate traditional financial instruments such as loans and insurance.

"Accelerating bitcoins growth is the growing demand for yield and the rise of DeFi, the fastest growing sector within the blockchain industry," Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of chainlink, said via email. Nazarov expects bitcoin to break $100,000 per bitcoin "during this market cycle," pushed on new DeFi cryptocurrency projects.

"Now, for the first time in bitcoins history and coinciding with a historic rise in inflation; not only can someone buy bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, theyre also able to receive a far larger APR or yield than they can expect to get from traditional finance."

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Why Ethereum, Ripples XRP, Litecoin And Chainlink Are Suddenly Soaring - Forbes

On Nov. 4, Ethereum (ETH) core developers hit a significant milestone. In a quick update on the Ethereum Foundation blog, developer Danny Ryan confirmed the release of the v1.0 specs for the hotly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which includes the mainnet deposit contract address. Anyone who wants to participate as a validator on the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet can now start depositing their minimum stake of 32 ETH.

The initial results looked promising, with 14,000 ETH (worth around $5 million) staked in the first eight hours alone. However, the developers have set a minimum total stake of 524,288 ETH from 16,384 validators as the trigger for launching the mainnet, known as the beacon chain. The target must be met at least seven days beforehand, so by Nov. 24. If this doesnt happen, the launch will take place seven days after the minimum staking threshold is met.

At the time of writing, less than 20% of the total amount has been staked. If staking continues at the current rate, the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet will launch not on Dec. 1, but in the early weeks of 2021.

Of course, the participation rate could change. As Nov. 24 draws closer, the growing anticipation may encourage more people to stake their ETH. Ben Edgington, the lead product owner at ConsenSys Quorum Protocol Engineering advising on Ethereum 2.0 development across the ConsenSys organization, maintains a positive outlook on the Dec. 1 launch date, telling Cointelegraph:

The numbers show that the potential is there, as the number of addresses holding 32 ETH hit an all-time high of 126,852 in the hours following the news. This means that fewer than 13% of addresses need to participate to hit the threshold.

On the other hand, those who do stake will be locking up their tokens in a one-way contract until the current Ethereum mainnet joins the beacon chain. Exactly when this happens, nobody knows, although the current Ethereum 2.0 roadmap specifies it will be in 2021.

Whether the beacon chain launches on Dec. 1 or in the weeks following, there wont necessarily be any big bangs to look forward to on the launch. The role of the beacon chain is to secure transactions on shard chains, which wont be available until later. The current Ethereum 1.0 mainnet will continue running as it does now.

So what are the next steps, and when can Ethereum become fully scalable? The beacon chain launch is known as Phase 0 on the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap. The next significant developments are slated for 2021 and will involve the launch of 64 shard chains, which will operate under the proof-of-stake consensus validated by those who staked ETH. However, in their initial state, shard chains wont support smart contracts or user accounts.

Perhaps the most significant milestone for the existing Ethereum 1.0 ecosystem will be Phase 1.5, when the Ethereum mainnet joins the beacon chain as a shard chain. This will mark the transition of Ethereum to a full proof-of-stake consensus. Again, its set to happen in 2021, but no exact date is available as of yet.

Only when the final stage of Phase 2 comes around will it be possible to assess the full effect of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade on the networks scalability. At this time, shards will be fully operational, supporting smart contracts and all transaction types. However, this could be as long as two years away. On the roadmap, the Ethereum Foundation states, Phase 2 is still very much in the research phase, effectively confirming that development isnt yet underway.

Even if all the roadmap phases are delivered within the next 18 months, which is a big if, it will be well into 2022 before the full scalable potential of Ethereum 2.0 is visible. However, rather than focusing on the development of Ethereum 2.0 as the endgame, its worth taking a birds eye view on the evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem over the coming years.

Despite coming into some criticism, layer-two solutions still offer the best hope of Ethereum scalability in advance of the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet becoming fully operational. Even Vitalik Buterin himself appears to favor other layer-two platforms as the current scaling solution of choice.

This year, both Matic Network and the OMG Network unveiled layer-two solutions based on variations of Plasma, which makes use of side chains to take processing load off the main Ethereum chain.

However, while Plasma was the scaling technology of choice for a while, the focus for much of this year has been on rollups, a solution also endorsed by Vitalik Buterin. Additionally, privacy protocol Aztec has launched private smart contracts based on zero-knowledge rollups. Zero-knowledge rollups bundle transactions together using zero-knowledge proofs to verify validity.

Another type of rollup, called optimistic rollups, is also in development by several projects. Optimistic rollups use game theory to avoid the need for the heavy computational load required by zk-Rollups. Erick De Moura, founder and CEO at Cartesi, explained to Cointelegraph how he believes rollups outperform Plasma-based scaling solutions:

Cartesi is set to launch its own version of optimistic rollups on its testnet during early 2021. The launch will come with a Linux-based infrastructure, effectively making a scalable version of Ethereum available to developers used to mainstream standards.

Its worth pointing out that the arrival of Ethereum 2.0 wont negate the development efforts of the layer-two platforms currently attempting to solve for scalability. Instead, technologies such as rollups or side chains will continue to help Ethereum 2.0 scale beyond its renewed capacity once sharding is fully implemented.

So, strap in and settle down for a long ride. Ethereum 2.0 may be gearing up for an initial launch, but its still only the first of many steps on the long road to scalability. The ongoing development of layer-two solutions means theres plenty of company along the way.

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Ethereum 2.0s long and winding road to scalability launch - Cointelegraph

On Nov. 18, blockchain solutions provider BlockApps launched a blockchain-based agricultural crop tracking network called "TraceHarvest" and one of the largest companies in the world, Bayer, is among its first users.

TraceHarvest reportedly provides users with the ability to trace the life cycle of agricultural products starting from the source of seeds, all the way to defining the responsibilities of each party involved in the supply chain. The platform also provides users with information in real-time, ideally mitigating problems associated with manually tracking crops.

TraceHarvest is open to all participants in the supply chain such as farmers, dealers, manufacturers, distributors, and technology providers, and also aims to provide farmers with the opportunity to enter new markets and generate additional income.

Besides tracking crops, the platform can be used for environmental and consumer protection for example, carbon offset credits and food safety recalls. Additionally, the company hopes that the data stored on the platform can be used by researchers to make the food supply chain more sustainable.

BlockApps collaborated with Bayer Crop Science on this project, a subdivision of German pharma giant Bayer. Bayer helped with the development of the network, and has been using it for the past two years in customer-related operations in the United States and Brazil to track soybean and corn yields, as well as several other crops.

BlockApps President and CEO, Kieren James-Lubin said of the launch, Blockchain technology is already revolutionizing the agricultural industry and, thanks to our partnership with Bayer, we are pioneers in this area. Together we have succeeded in making this concept a reality.

Recently, many countries and companies have also moved to adopt blockchain in supply chains related to crops. In October, world-leading agribusiness firms from the United States, France, China, and the Netherlands launched a joint venture that will use blockchain technology to streamline logistics processes in the agricultural sector in Brazil.

Likewise, in September, Steven Marshall, Prime Minister of South Australia launched a blockchain-based Entrust project with the primary goal of protecting the wine and dairy industries from fake fraud in global markets and achieving efficiency savings across agricultural sectors.

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BlockApps launches Ethereum-based Agritech network in collaboration with Bayer - Cointelegraph

Matic Network, a smart-contract platform acting as both a layer one and layer two for Ethereum, announced on Thursday the full launch of five Chainlink price feeds that are set to power its ecosystem.

Though there are many promised or existing Chainlink integrations outside of Ethereum, the majority of them are still in development or are indirectly using Ethereum feeds.

Matic now features five price feeds: MATIC/USD, USDC/USD, ETH/USD, USDT/USD and DAI/USD, promising that more will come later.

Chainlinks Verifiable Randomness Function is set to be integrated soon as well, which would allow Matic app developers to build provably fair chance games or other integrations.

The team said that the integration will be crucial for decentralized finance developers wishing to build on Matic, pointing to several projects, such as EasyFi and PlotX, that already committed to using Chainlink oracles.

The race for layer-two scaling to power the next cycle of DeFi adoption often sees Rollup-based projects as the favorites. Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Matic Network, told Cointelegraph that Matics hybrid approach is already generating interest, despite many being critical of Plasma as a solution for smart-contract scaling:

He argued that the flexibility of Matic, letting developers choose between Plasma and proof-of-stake, can entice different types of developers. Many apps like Games, VR spaces use pure POS while some DeFi and prediction markets choose Plasma, he added.

Like other layer-two solutions, Matic supports Ethereum tooling and allows developers to simply pick up their Ethereum smart contracts and deploy it on Matic sidechains within a matter of minutes, Nailwal said.

While Matic has been somewhat left out of mainstream comparisons, direct support from Chainlink can strongly contribute to further adoption. "We believe Chainlinks decision to build on Matic was rationalized on the basis of where the greatest demand for its services lies, Nailwal continued.

The number of prediction markets building on the platform, which have a particularly pronounced need for reliable price information, likely contributed to the decision to integrate Matic, he concluded.

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Matic becomes the first outside Ethereum to launch native Chainlink feeds - Cointelegraph

The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract has raised the minimum amount of funds needed to launch the upgrade on December 1. According to the blockchain data, the contract contains 628,064 ETHs at press time.

Therefore, the phase 0 upgrade, which will allow the world's second largest crypto by market cap to move from the proof-of-work to the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, starts next week. The Ethereum Foundation set as a condition for the launch that by November 24, future stakers must deposit at least 524,288 ETHs. The figure has been reached just a few hours before the deadline. The volume of daily deposits has exceeded 150,000 ETHs, while the last 25% was deposited in just four hours.

The full launch of the proof-of-stake on the Ethereum 2.0 will take time, and the initial stages of the Ethereum 2.0 deployment will not affect crypto users in any way. The main participants in phase 0 are stakers, who are rewarded for processing transactions and creating new blocks. In order to become a validator node in the Ethereum 2.0, users must deposit 32 ETHs.

At the same time, the price of Ethereum is rising. Over the last week, it has posted an increase of 31% and at press time the price of the crypto is $610.

If you are looking for a crypto trading platform to trade your assets, visit Gozo.pro, a safe and reliable exchange.

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Ethereum 2.0 Launch Will Take Place on December 1 - ihodl.com

As stakeholders, players, and crypto wannabes ponder if increasing their stakes on Bitcoin, the worlds most popular crypto seems ideal now, despite the fact that its trading near a record high, Nairametrics decided to weigh in on some key fundamentals showing Bitcoin looks like a bargain.

With prices exceeding $18,000 for the first time since 2017, BTC looks poised to break its previous all-time high. More investors are holding bitcoin for wealth preservation.

READ: Bitcoin on high demand, hits 2-year high, trading $17,000

A recent report from Glassnode, revealed plummeting Bitcoin exchange balances support the narrative that investors intend to hold their flagship crypto more than ever before, taking into consideration that with the prevailing demand in play, and limited supply of Bitcoin, the price would most definitely go north.

READ: Nigerians pay heavy price as laptop scarcity bites harder

Bitcoin liquidity continues its downward trajectory, buttressing that the macro bitcoin is becoming scarce for open sale.

It is also important to note that Bitcoin has a circulating supply of 19 million coins and a max supply of 21 million coins, meaning there are about 2million left to be mined.

READ: How Crypto can curb Nigerias high unemployment rate

Taking into account that about 4 million Bitcoins have been lost forever as a result of BTCs owners dying, and their next of kin not having access to such cryptos, it is fair to say there are only about 15million BTC presently in circulation to cater for over 7 billion people fighting to have a stake in Bitcoins, meaning that as BTC becomes scarce and more popular, it becomes a matter of time that the crypto asset valuation will hit the roof.

READ: Ripple hits a big bang, gains 30%

Its vital to consider the bias saying that as global financial regulators begin to implement their regulatory framework on cryptos, it could become a matter of months for global banks and multinationals to increase their buying pressures on BTC. Thereby, pushing the price beyond the reach of an average investor.

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Unknown identity moves $117 million worth of Ethereum - Nairametrics

Ethereum (ETH/USD) is finally making a bullish breakout. The previous bullish swing was 3 years ago when price action went above $1,300.

The pullback and correction was strong and lengthy. Can the ETH/USD bulls really wrestle back full control from the bears?

The ETH/USD continued higher over the weekend crossing the round $500 mark. The new high is also breaking above the -61.8% Fibonacci target. This is a typical target for a wave C so a break indicates that a wave 3 is becoming more likely.

The next confirmation of a wave 3 occurs if price action is able to break above the -100% Fibonacci target. A bull flag could develop as well (orange arrows) but eventually a breakout is expected (green arrows).

On the 4 hour chart, the bullish momentum remains strong. Price action seems to be in a wave 3 (grey). Once this wave 3 is completed, we are expecting a wave 4 correction. Usually wave 4s are long and choppy (orange arrows) like a bull flag continuation chart pattern.

A break below the top of wave 1 (green box) invalidates (red circle) the 5 wave pattern (grey). But it does not invalidate the entire uptrend due to the expected support at the long-term moving averages.

Good trading,

Chris Svorcik

The analysis has been done with the indicators and template from the SWAT method (simple wave analysis and trading). For more daily technical and wave analysis and updates, sign-up to our newsletter

For a look at all of todays economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.

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Ethereum First Break Above $500 After 2.5 Years - FX Empire

Community tracking tool Hive.one has updated its algorithm to better reflect the biggest Bitcoin, and Ethereum, influencers on Twitter, it said in a post last week.

If youve spent a while searching "#bitcoin" or "#ethereum" on Twitter, the vastness of the social space and the seemingly infinite number of self-proclaimed experts may have dazzled you. But Hive.one aims to solve just that, by building out social clusters and allotting trust metrics to popular users (who are followed by members of that cluster) for helping newcomers and veterans alike to better navigate the social space and know who to trust.

Hive.one calculates the influence scores using a Twitter accounts total following. This is similar to how search engine giant Google builds out its own word clusters, giving users faster and more accurate search results.

The more influential your new follower is and the fewer other accounts it follows, the bigger the boost to your score, Hive.one explained in a post.

The Hive.one system is now refined even further. The algorithm update last weekits biggest one yetbuilds on the various shortcomings of the previous versions, such as decreased accuracy and the use of manual intervention, and updates social clusters much faster than before.

The newer version of Hive.one can also quickly add a prominent individual who speaks about Bitcoin and allocate a trust score to them. This wasn't present in the previous version, which, for example, took several weeks to add enterprise software firm MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who holds nearly $800 worth of the asset across his company and personal accountsand has become a true Bitcoin shaman.

So which accounts take the cake for being the most trust, followed, and accurate? On the Bitcoin side, theres Bitcoin technology firm Blockstream founder Adam Back, engineer Pieter Wuille, and developer Pierre Rochard (who caused the SupplyGate controversy earlier this year) as the top three.

Their leading Ethereum counterparts are protocol creator Vitalik Buterin, content creator Evan Van Ness, and developer Hudson Jameson.

Some accounts have risen the ranks quite literally. For Bitcoin, the ranking of a pseudonymous profile called Psychedelic Bart has jumped 175 places to 102 (even above Monero maintainer Ricardo Spagni). On the other hand, lesser-known Ethereum developers Paul Hauner (now 61st) and Jacek Sieka (now 99th) have jumped 250 and 354 places respectively from their earlier rankings.

Meanwhile, Hive.one suggests to not take the rankings as a final word. We do NOT tell you who to listen to and what to trust. Instead, we map various groups and show you who are their members, who they pay attention to and what information they consider credible the firm cautions. So best to take with a pinch of salt then.

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Who Are The Biggest Bitcoin and Ethereum Influencers? - Decrypt

The Mooniswap decentralized exchange protocol, developed by DEX aggregator 1inch, will be the first Ethereum DeFi protocol to develop on NEAR, a sharded smart contract platform.

As part of a collaboration announced on Tuesday, the 1inch team pledged to port its automated market maker protocol to NEAR. Sergej Kunz, CEO of 1inch, told Cointelegraph that its Pathfinder aggregation algorithm will be eventually implemented as well.

The NEAR iteration of Mooniswap will remain independent from the existing version on Ethereum for the time being. While users will be able to use the NEAR Rainbow Bridge to bring Ethereum tokens to the new blockchain, the liquidity pools between the two platforms will be separate.

NEAR is a smart contract platform claiming a much higher current scalability than Ethereum. Unlike other protocols like Polkadot (DOT) or Cosmos (Atom), there are no independent blockchains or parachains on NEAR. Instead, the protocol offers a single chain that is sharded at the level of individual blocks. The goal of this construction is to simplify development by abstracting the underlying architecture into a familiar format. The NEAR Protocol has a single environment shared by all decentralized applications, similar to Ethereums current architecture.

Kunz said that the existing scaling technology on NEAR will allow the team to experiment with sharding and be prepared for the arrival of Ethereum 2.0. The protocol is set to be deployed on NEAR in 2021.

Mooniswap uses a unique system of delayed virtual prices to prevent front-running and help reduce impermanent loss by reducing the profit collected by arbitrage traders. Under this system, changes to the effective price of an asset from previous exchange transactions are gradually enacted over a fiveminute period.

Mooniswap is among the first major Ethereum DeFi protocols that committed to building on another blockchain. NEAR had previously inked a deal with the Balancer protocol to establish funding for independent developers, though the DeFi app did not commit to building a new iteration of its protocol.

After scaling issues on the main Ethereum chain became evident, DeFi protocol developers began looking into both Ethereum-native layer-two solutions and other layer-one protocols for solutions.

Though some protocols got a head start, the race has yet to officially start, as most scaling solutions are set to be released or completed in 2021.

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DeFi protocol 1inch set to be the first to expand to the NEAR blockchain - Cointelegraph

Ethereums Vitalik Buterin is in the news today after he called out Blockstream COO Samson Mow for his statements on how VCs and advisors need to legitimize sh*tcoinery so they can be intermediaries.

Retweeting a comment made by Chris Burniske, Mow added,

If its as simple as buying BTC, which it is, intermediaries are obsolete.

However, Buterin was quick to retort to this comment, commenting,

Dude, youre literally part of a company that created a proprietary consortium chain for people to stick their tokens onto that only needs to exist because BTC (and even trustless L2s on top of it) dont have the scalability or functionality to do so natively.

While Samson Mow was quick to clarify that the intermediaries he was referring to were financial intermediaries that advise on the complexities of investments, the original context for his statement had come from an earlier tweet by Chris Burniske, a partner at Placeholder.

According to Burniske, while holding BTC as a retail crypto-investor is sufficient, adding ETH gives broader exposure to crypto-innovation.

This is certainly true when one looks at the various protocols and DApps built on the Ethereum blockchain, in some ways, making growth on Ethereum a proxy for growth in DeFi and crypto-innovation.

This is not to say that ETH is the only other investable asset class for a retail crypto-investor either as quite a few altcoins have proven themselves to be fundamentally solid choices. For instance, Maker, Compound, Aave, and Uniswap have all been top DeFi platforms for a while now, each with a fairly large community of their own.

However, as expected, Burniskes statements were soon met with a lot of opposition, especially from some of the markets Bitcoin maximalists. In fact, many of them were quick to argue that many altcoins and DApps are unsafe and subject to hacks, as was the case with Pickle Finance, a DeFi protocol that recently lost $20 million worth of funds deposited into a smart contract, to a hacker.

See the article here:

Ethereums Buterin responds to Blockstream COOs sh*tcoinery remark - AMBCrypto English

Altcoins have in the last 24 hours rocketed to new levels, including Ethereum, Rippleand Bitcoin Cash. Ether and XRP hit new yearly highs, while BCH has added more than 17% to its value to trade at $345. Other smaller altcoins like Stellar Lumens and TRON also soared impressively to exchange hands at $0.17 and $0.036, respectively.

Intriguingly, HedgeTrade has spiked more than 370% in the last 24 hours and 391% in just one hour, according to CoinMarketCap. It seems the altcoin season is taking over, even with Bitcoin hitting new yearly highs above $19,000. Most of the top 50 assets are in the green on Tuesday during the European session.

The flagship cryptocurrency recently hit a barrier near $20,000. The resistance threw buyers off-balance, leading to declines that tested support provided at $17,500 and the 50 Simple Moving Average (SMA).

A reversal occurred, sending Bitcoin on a recovery mission, but it has been able to holdabove $18,500. BTC is at the time of writing making new yearly highs above $19,000 and closing in its all-time highs,amid a bullish building momentum. The formation of a symmetrical triangle pattern on the 4-hour chart points towards an 8% upswing to $20,000.

BTC/USD 4-hour chart

On the flip side, if the spike above the triangles upper boundary fails to confirm, bears could gain confidence and push for another correction. A breakdown under the triangle might result in an 8% spiral to $16,500, completely sabotaging the bullish outlook to $20,000.

Ethereum beat the $620 prediction on Thursday, ascending to new yearly highs at $621. The smart contract token is still holding to the bullish momentum despite a minor retreat following the resistance at 2020 high.

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is trading at $618, but bulls aim for gains above $620. Investors and analysts believe that Ethereum is yet to reach its 2020 limit, especially with the launch of ETH 2.0 around the corner.

The Relative Strength Index has validated the bullish outlook, which continues to strike higher levels within in the overbought territory. If Ethereum closed the day above $620, buyers would be encouraged to increase their positions and perhaps create enough volume to support another breakout to $700.

ETH/USD 4-hour chart

It is worth mentioning that Ethereums bullish outlook will be invalidated if the price hits a barrier at an ascending wedge channel. Trading under the wedge may call for more sell orders, resulting in a slump under $600. The most formidable support lies at $580, $520and $440.

The cross-border token went ballistic on Monday, almost hitting $1, following a flash liftoff. The drastic upswing sliced through various resistance zones such as $0.6 and $0.7. However, a retreat from the new yearly high has extended under $0.7.

XRP is trading at $0.68 at the time of writing amid developing bearish correction. The RSI has validated the slump as it drops from the oversold region. If a bearish divergence confirms, XRP could embark on a gain-trimming exercise. For now, the path with the least resistance is downwards until formidable support is established.

XRP/USD 4-hour chart

On the other hand, closing above $0.7 could renew the uptrend to $1. Meanwhile, the 50 SMA is still extending the gap above the 100 SMA and the 200 SMA, suggesting that buyers still control the token. Support is likely to be embraced at $0.6, $0.5and $0.4.

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Top 3 Price Prediction Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple: ETH and XRP go ballistic, lead the altcoin bull cycle - FXStreet

Wealth.ng has announced the launch of a personal Wealth Advisor Ola an AI-powered conversational investments chatbot developed to optimize Investment service delivery via WhatsApp, the preferred social and communication network. Ola aims to make it easy for Wealth.ng customers to Invest and manage their portfolio easily via social media.

WhatsApp allows its users to communicate using less data while protecting shared data (conversations, media content, banking details, etc). Ola also processes authenticated transactions via one-time-passwords (OTPs) sent to users registered phone number or email.

Users can chat with Ola through the dedicated WhatsApp Chatbot number+234 904 444 8652 or via the link https://bit.ly/ChatwithOla. You can perform pretty much all the Investment Services such as: Creating a Wealth.ng account, link your Wealth.ng account, browse investment products, Fund Cash Balance, Invest, View your Portfolio, View Market Summary, Check Order Status and ask Ola a question.

Artificial Intelligence-enabled chatbot solutions like Ola make it easy to interact with users by providing virtual assistance 24-7, just as a human would.

Here is Olas Profile

Speaking on the initiative, Wealth.ng Digital Marketing Manager, Ifeoluwa Apampa mentioned that the decision to deploy the service is part of Wealth.ngs strategy to deliver optimum customer experience through technology while also increasing the investment participation of customers by providing a scalable and efficient service for managing their investments and portfolios.

She further mentioned that African tech users like to be guided, to know what it is all about and how it can benefit them. They also want quick answers to their questions and Ola is well positioned to render assistance to users by helping them understand and navigate Wealth.ng and manage their investment portfolios smoothly.

Ola will augment Wealth.ngs existing customer touch points and be available to receive multiple queries and promptly respond with relevant investment information to various customers at the same time. However, customers cannot call the number since it is only reachable through WhatsApp chat.

Wealth.ng offers premium investment products such as Treasury Bills, Stocks, Bonds, Eurobonds, Agriculture and Wealth Cash and you can get all these done with your buddy Ola.

Ola promises to deliver a consistently great experience every time you chat with her, so if you have any questions, need investment advice or guidance, shes got you covered!

Chat with Ola on WhatsApp Now

Heres how to chat with Ola

All you need to do is:

It is our desire to ensure that we put Ola everywhere, but for now Ola has been rolled out to customers on WhatsApp and will soon be available on other platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Telegram to guide customers through the wealth building journey.

Chat with Ola on WhatsApp Now

About Wealth.ng

Based in Lagos, Wealth.ng is your personal finance platform that gives you access to diverse investment options. It is a user-friendly Self-service platform set up to equip the everyday person with simple tools and advise needed to create wealth while meeting your short and long-term finance needs.

Launched over a year ago, Wealth.ng has over 68,000 customers to its belt, 3 partner Integrations and processed over N4 Billion Investment Transactions.

To learn more aboutWealth.ng, please visit http://www.wealth.ng

Ola is powered by WealthTech, an entity registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an Investment Advisor. All investments on Wealth.ng are carried out by Sankore Securities Limited, a Fund/Portfolio Manager as registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ola is the 3rd AI (Artificial Intelligence) chatbot from the stables of WealthTech Limited (A Subsidiary of Sankore Securities), besides Diamond Bank ADA launched in March, 2018 and FCMB Temi launched in 2019.

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Best app to sell Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) in Nigeria - Jackocoins - Nairametrics

Charlie Osborne19 November 2020 at 14:29 UTC Updated: 19 November 2020 at 20:18 UTC

Security researchers can earn themselves up to $50,000 for finding flaws in the cryptocurrency platform

The Ethereum 2.0 bug bounty program has bumped up rewards for researchers who submit valid vulnerability reports ahead of a shift to a Proof-of-Stake model.

Bug hunters can earn up to $50,000for critical vulnerabilities in the hotly-anticipated Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

The Ethereum Foundation bug bounty panel will decide on financial rewards issued and will lean upon the OWASP risk model when making decisions.

Loosely categorized as low, medium, and high severity, the most dangerous vulnerabilities can earn researchers up to 25,000 points, whereas high impact bugs can be worth 10,000 points.

Medium and low risk security flaws can result in up to 5,000 and 1,000 points being issued, respectively.

Each point earned in the program is the equivalent of $2, made in either the Ethereum (ETH) cryptocurrency or Dai (DAI) stablecoin.

The program is looking for vulnerabilities impacting the safety of the core Eth2 Phase 0 specification, as well as finality-breaking bugs, denial-of-service (DoS) vectors, and security issues relating to validations such as when honest validators are impacted by calculation or parameter problems.

In addition, the prysm, lighthouse, and teku client implementations are in scope.

While more client implementations will join the list after they have passed preliminary audits, vulnerabilities associated with non-compliance, DoS attacks, crashes, and consensus splits will be considered.

The rewards on offer may also depend on the quality of bug reports, how easy they are to reproduce, and whether or not bug bounty hunters have offered a way to fix vulnerabilities.

Read more of the latest bug bounty news

Alongside financial rewards, the Ethereum Foundation has created a leaderboard to display its top bug bounty hunters.

The bug bounty program is an experimental and discretionary rewards program for our active Ethereum community to encourage and reward those who are helping to improve the platform, the organization says.

It is not a competition awards are at the sole discretion of the Ethereum Foundation bug bounty panel.

Previously, the program offered up to $10,000 for vulnerability disclosures.

The rewards boost comes roughly two weeks ahead of a planned transition from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) model to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

PoW models allow users to mine cryptocurrencies via their computers solving complex mathematical problems, however, the energy required to mine crypto increases over time. PoS uses validators to give voting rights to nodes based on a general consensus process.

The Ethereum Foundation has been working on a PoS system, dubbed Casper, since 2014, in what is known as the Serenity release. The shift to the Phase 0 Beacon Chain is slated for December 1.

The Daily Swig has reached out to the Ethereum Foundation and will update this article accordingly.

YOU MAY LIKE Google Project Zero to form crystal ball forecast panel to help improve vulnerability disclosure

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Ethereum bumps up bug bounty payouts ahead of 2.0 release - The Daily Swig

Remember Virgil Griffith, the Ethereum developer arrested a year ago for sanctions violations after attending a conference in North Korea? U.S. government prosecutors have argued against his defenses attempts to dismiss the case, saying he knowingly and willfully broke the law with his actions.

Griffith was released on a US$1 million bond in January 2020, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Its yet another demonstration that, while technology can provide a means to skirt human laws, it does not protect human participants from consequences once the law decides to get involved.

According to the prosecution, Griffith was well aware that his trip to Pyongyang in April 2019 would violate U.S. government sanctionsand that the knowledge he imparted in his lecture would assist others in North Korea in evading those sanctions. Quoting text messages hed sent in the year before the event, it claimed Griffith knew that knowledge of cryptocurrencies would help people in the DPRK get around sanctions imposed as part of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

Not only that, but the content of his presentation at the conference was specifically tailored to highlight these benefits, the government said. It also mentioned one or more co-conspirators in the case who had assisted Griffith at various stages.

Griffiths defense was attempting to have the case thrown out based on a number of reasons. It claimed the information he presented at the conference was general in nature and the contents were widely available to anyone with an Internet connection. Moreover, Griffith had not been paid to attend the conference so it couldnt constitute a service under the IEEPA.

Defense lawyers also argued the four-page indictment against Griffith was short and vague, and violated his rights under the Fifth and Sixth amendments by not providing him with adequate information or notice regarding the governments case against him.

Prosecutors called Griffiths arguments absurd, saying that sanctions forbid all services of this type whether paid or unpaid. They claimed Griffith had acknowledged before the trip that blockchain technology and developers could assist in evading trade sanctions, and that Griffith had arranged to send a transaction from North to South Korea as a demonstration, even mentioning to his co-conspirator that this action itself would violate sanctions.

As for the information provided in its indictment, they countered that it was sufficient and prosecutors were under no obligation to supply all the evidence they held on Griffith and his accomplices.

Whether or not the information he presented was available elsewhere, packaging it as a lecture and following up with questions and answers clearly represented a value-added service and was of economic benefit to attendees. Additionally, Griffith went ahead with his trip to the DPRK despite being denied permission by the U.S. State Department beforehand.

That digital assets and blockchain technology could assist in helping foreign governments get around trade sanctions had long been spoken about in industry circles, but was rarely touted publicly as a key benefit. Griffiths case in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York is the first to feature such a use case, though commentators have noted its more a national security matter that just happens to include cryptocurrencies.

Once again: code is not law

Why would Griffith have proceeded with his travel and presentation, despite alleged warnings and knowledge that it would break the law? It could be the hubris of developers who wrongly believe the ability to perform a successful process on a technological platform somehow means human authorities have no recourse. This is untrue, and dangerous to assume.

Code is law, that oft-repeated favorite maxim of crypto-anarchists, applies only to computers. Human operators of those computers and beneficiaries of their processes are still very much subject to human laws, and governments have a wide array of methods to deal with them.

Access to services can be severely restricted, even if their use remains available to a few. Humans program and maintain the machines running the code, and the output of the code influences events in the human world. While these humans still live in the physical world, they can still be arrested, fined, imprisoned and influenced like anyone else.

Virgil Griffiths case is ongoing, and yet to be decided by a judge. Regardless of how information and technology may have assisted the North Korean government, this case will have a decidedly human outcomesomething everyone in the technology industry should remember.

FollowCoinGeeks Crypto Crime Cartelseries, which delves into the stream of groupsfromBitMEXtoBinance,Bitcoin.com,Blockstream,ShapeShiftand Ethereumwho have co-opted the digital asset revolution and turned the industry into a minefield for nave (and even experienced) players in the market.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Ethereum developer knew he was helping North Korea evade sanctions: US prosecutors - CoinGeek

A slowdown in cryptocurrency trading on so-called decentralized exchanges has helped to alleviate congestion on the Ethereum blockchain, at least temporarily mitigating concerns that the network was becoming overloaded.

On Uniswap, the biggest decentralized exchange, or DEX, daily trading volumes have crashed to $224 million, versus a record high of $954 million on Sept. 1.

Low volatility in the crypto market as a whole has contributed to lower transaction volume and costs, said Connor Abendschein, a crypto research analyst at Digital Assets Data.

DeFi, a subsector of the cryptocurrency industry where entrepreneurs are developing semi-automated trading and lending platforms atop blockchain networks, had surged in popularity in recent months among investors and traders alike.But the resulting congestion had raised concerns that elevated fees for sending transactions over the blockchain might stymie some users, or push application developers to consider alternative networks.

Total collateral locked into DeFi platforms jumped to a record $11.2 trillion in September, from below $2 billion at the end of June, according to the data website DeFi Pulse. The amount has since subsided to about $10 billion.

The pullback has contributed to a drop in Ethereums daily transaction count to 1.3 million from about 980,000 over the past 2.5 weeks.

And with less traffic on the second-largest blockchain network, congestion has dropped, helping to reduce fee rates that had jumped as users paid up for priority transaction processing.

The average cost of executing a transaction on Ethereums blockchain has dropped to just above $2, from a record $14.58 on Sept. 2, according to the data firm Glassnode. The rate is still well above the 8-cent level that prevailed around the start of this year.

Transaction fees on Ethereum are slowly returning to normal as the DeFi hype that gripped the market for most of 2020 is subsiding, Nicholas Pelecanos, head of trading at NEM Ventures, an investment arm of the NEM blockchain ecosystem, told CoinDesk in a LinkedIn chat.

According to Digital Asset Datas Abendschein, the relief could prove only temporary for Ethereum users, since fees could quickly shoot back up if a new DeFi protocol emerges or prices rally for ether, the blockchain networks native token.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market value is currently trading at $340, well off of its two-year high of $480 on Sept. 1.

Originally posted here:

As DeFi Deflates, Ethereum Users Get Reprieve From Soaring Fees, Congestion - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

The amount of computing power on the Ethereum network is currently at an all time high following weeks of volatility in key metrics on the blockchain.

According to data from on-chain analytics provider Glassnode, the Ethereum hash rate hit an all time high of more than 250 terahashes per second (TH/s) on Oct. 6, marking an 80% rise since January. Glassnode reported that a surge in the hype surrounding DeFi projects this year sparking higher gas fees may have contributed to the metric reaching an all time high.

In addition, data from crypto mining pool F2Pool shows that it is currently up to three times as profitable to mine Ethereum (ETH) instead of Bitcoin (BTC).

F2Pool, which calculates mining profitability by determining current revenue (block reward and transaction fees) and deducting the cost of power, reports that BTC Antminer S19 Pro miners can earn $4.33 in profits over 24 hours, while ETH miners using GTX TitanV 8 cards can expect $15.56 over the same period making it 259% more profitable at present. Six of the mining rigs monitored by F2Pool show Ethereum miners show a daily profit of more than $10, while only two Bitcoin mining rigs have profits of more than $4.

Hash rate is a key metric when determining the health and security of a blockchain. It measures the computing power of the network. The last time the Ethereum hash rate was near these all time high levels was in August 2018, when the metric reached 246 TH/s. However, the price of the token steadily decreased from more than $400 to under $100 by December that year.

Various other metrics of the Ethereum network may be incentivize miners to choose the network over Bitcoin.

A surge in DeFi coupled with stablecoin growth drove transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain to all-time highs in Q3. Data from Glassnode shows Ethereum miners made $166 million from transaction fees alone in September. In contrast, Bitcoin miners earned only $26 million from fees over the same period.

However, earnings from transaction fees have dropped significantly more recently. Cointelegraph reported that average ga fees have dwindled since peaking at $11.60 on Sept. 17th to $2.98 on Oct. 1, a decline of more than 74% in two weeks.

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ETH hash rate hits all time high, mining it is 3X more profitable than BTC - Cointelegraph

(Photo by Yuriko Nakao)

Yesterday I was in shock, today I am wearing my Bitcoin socks. Free money is real.

It is enough to shake my faith in reality that after knowing for the bulk of my life there was no such thing as free money, I just received a chunk. Now its actually, totally naive to believe there is no such thing as free money because the vast majority of people in this world get just that. The breadwinners are a small proportion of the modern world and the majority get paid out by them all day, every day. Ill try not go too Ayn Rand on you but when you think of the ratio of dependants to creators of value that the dependants rely on, the ratio is sobering.

But I am programmed not to believe in free money and yesterday crypto handed me $1,700 for basically nothing. A gift of $1,700 out of thin air is worth an Anglo-Saxon verb and I ejaculated one a few times.

So let me continue right away with my conclusion. Crypto is a huge creator of wealth that is doing an end run around all those rent-seeking rentiers who slice and dice us all to death. Because of this avoidance of such rip-offs, or shall we call them depredations, the process showers the early adopters with money. Lets hope this is an unstoppable process because if it is, it will generate vast wealth by amputating the guilds, cliques and oligarchies that siphon off the wealth of the world for themselves by dint of the currently inescapable structure of human society.

But this is not my point and comrade I have no wish to come across like a post-modernist.

Here is the thing. Crypto is giving income-starved people a shot at a great rate of return and you can understand why. Crypto does not have to support a vast infrastructure of cost, middlemen and owners all with their Tabbi-esque blood funnels stuck into your money supply. Old school dot-communists would call this dis-intermediation and it runs wild in the DeFi crypto revolution.

So the free money story goes like this. There I was playing with the new wild DeFi applications springing up like weeds and there is a leading pioneer called UniSwap. Its app is basically a market maker/stock exchange where you can be the fee earning exchange cum market maker if you fund a market making pool with some crypto.

Click: you add some funds, click: you can withdraw them. Every day you have crypto in a pool you make your share of the trading fees. There is no custodian, no trading floor, no server centers, no compliance, no $10 million CEO salary, etc. You get a 0.3% fee from the trade size in proportion to how much of the liquidity pool you are.

So I popped in $50 and stared at it for a bit and 49 days later pulled out the money. If Id known which link to click I would have calculated I was earning at a 60% yearly rate and I would have thought, unsustainable, it will all end in tears, ridiculous.

So I read this previous weekend that because of a certain but typical crypto-saga, Uniswap was handing out tokens, equivalent to shares, in itself to previous users. I thought I would risk obvious disappointment and go see if I had won any.

I had won 400. Nice,if the value was a couple of cents each thats equal to a free sandwich and as we know, a free lunch is hard to find. But no, the tokens are worth $4.20 something, so I got $1,700. (Which I immediately moved and turned into bitcoin in case I suddenly woke up out of the dream.)

And there it was: Uniswap with $2 billion of liquidity grinding away paying 5%-10%-70% return on its range of liquidity pools, not an opaque investment scam, a real revolutionary business anyone can be part of.

Uniswap is not a scam or a Ponzi, it is a transparent, decentralized, mainly autonomous exchange, handing out market making revenue for people prepared to dive into the deep black waters of bleeding edge technology, and it just gave me $1,700 for being the merest of friends.

No amount of arguments about risk can explain why this was not free money. The question is: is this a freak or is this simply a function of an emergent revolution?

It is the latter, I was simply splashed with some of the geyser of money being unleashed by this tech revolution.

The zillionaires of technology are not men that fell to earth. They were fortunate enough to push their talented spades into a latent mother lode of wealth. They were lucky and smart enough to survive as huge winners of a technical gold rush that sweeps us all along. Such waves have established superrichdynasties since time immemorial.

Crypto is such a mother lode and it has paid me out like this at every turn. As a man once said, By their fruit you will know them and crypto keeps delivering fruit in abundance.

Yet for many, digging into this crazy upwelling of technology is not going to be for them. Its arcane to say the least, but what is becoming quickly clear is, crypto offers a solution to what many chronically need, and that is income.

There are now many accessible ways to earn income with crypto and you dont have to stake liquidity on Uniswap for a lunge at 60% annual percentage yield (APY) to get it. Ill be covering this in later pieces because a 4% annual return on your dollars feels like Nirvana for many and 8% too wildly high to be true. Meanwhile an experimental $8,000 is earning me right now, but maybe not for long, 67% APY. So this is a must know development.

So-called yield farming can certainly be a spicy game, but it is definitely real and it will take a long time for the mainstream to swamp the returns and drive them anywhere near to what the overhead bloated financial infrastructure cares to pay out while they skin you for 20% interest on your credit card balance.

Get a complementary issue of Forbes CryptoAsset and Blockchain Advisor here.

Clem Chambers is the CEO of private investors websiteADVFN.comand author of 101 Ways to Pick Stock Market Winners andTrading Cryptocurrencies: A Beginners Guide.

Chambers won Journalist of the Year in the Business Market Commentary category in the State Street U.K. Institutional Press Awards in 2018.

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Ethereum: Free Money Is Real - Forbes

In brief

Its been a long time coming, but Ethereum 2.0 is finally on the horizon. The major update aims to address the networks scalability and security through a number of changes to its infrastructuremost notably, the switch from a proof of work consensus mechanism to a proof of stake model.

Ethereum 2.0, also known as Eth2 or Serenity, is an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain. The upgrade aims to enhance the speed, efficiency, and scalability of the Ethereum network so that it can process more transactions and ease bottlenecks.

Ethereum 2.0 is launching in several phases, with the first upgrade expected to launch towards the end of 2020.

While Ethereum 1.0 uses a consensus mechanism known as proof of work (PoW), Ethereum 2.0 will use a proof of stake (PoS) mechanism.

With blockchains such as Ethereum, there is a need to validate transactions in a decentralized way. Ethereum, like other cryptocurrencies, currently uses a consensus mechanism known as proof of work (PoW).

In this system, miners use computer hardware processing power to solve complex mathematical puzzles and verify new transactions. The first miner to solve a puzzle adds a new transaction to the record of all transactions that make up the blockchain. They are then rewarded with cryptocoins. However, this process can be energy-intensive.

Proof of stake (PoS) differs in that instead of miners, transaction validators stake crypto for the right to verify a transaction. These validators are selected to propose a block based on how much crypto they hold, and how long theyve held it for.

Other validators can then attest that they have seen a block. When there are enough attestations, a block can be added to the blockchain. Validators then are rewarded for the successful block proposition. This process is known as forging or minting.

The main advantage of PoS is that it is far more energy-efficient than PoW, as it decouples energy-intensive computer processing from the consensus algorithm. It also means that you dont need a lot of computing power to secure the blockchain.

One of the main reasons for the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 is scalability. With Ethereum 1.0, the network can only support around 30 transactions per second; this causes delays and congestion. Ethereum 2.0 promises up to 100,000 transactions per second.This increase will be achieved through the implementation of shard chains.

Did you know?

The current Ethereum set-up has a blockchain consisting of a single chain with consecutive blocks. This is secure, but very slow and not efficient. With the introduction of shard chains, this blockchain is split up, enabling transactions to be handled in parallel chains instead of consecutive ones. This speeds up the network, and can scale more easily.

Ethereum 2.0 has been devised with security in mind. Most proof of stake networks have a small set of validators, which makes for a more centralized system and decreased network security. Ethereum 2.0 requires a minimum of 16,384 validators, making it much more decentralizedand hence, secure.

However, according to Lior Yaffe, co-founder ofJeluridaand lead core developer of theArdorandNxtblockchains, there is a potential vulnerability that focuses on the level of participation rates in the network.

Security audits of Ethereum 2.0 code are being carried out by organizations including blockchain security firm Least Authority.

The Ethereum Foundation is setting up a dedicated security team for Ethereum 2.0 to research possible cybersecurity problems in the cryptocurrency. In a tweet, Ethereum 2.0 researcher Justin Drake stated that the research will include fuzzing, bounty hunting, pager duty, cryptoeconomic modelling, applied cryptanalysis, formal verification.

Following a series of testnet launches, Topaz, Medalla, Spadina and Zinken, the full roll-out of Ethereum 2.0will take place in three phases: Phase 0, 1, and 2 (developers like to count from zero). Phase 0 is aiming for a 2020 launch date, with the other phases coming in the following years.

Phase 0 sees the implementation of the Beacon Chain; this stores and manages the registry of validators as well as deploying the proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism for Ethereum 2.0. The original Ethereum PoW chainwill run alongside this so there is no break in data continuity.

Phase 1, due in 2021, will see the integration of proof of stake shard chains. The network is expected to launch with 64 shards (enabling 64 times more throughput than Ethereum 1.0) though at launch they won't support accounts or smart contracts.

Phase 1.5, an interim update due in 2021, will see the Ethereum mainnet officially becoming a shard and transitioning to proof of stake.

Phase 2, slotted to launch in 2021/22, will see shards becoming fully-functional and compatible with smart contracts. It also involves adding Ether accounts and enabling transfers and withdrawals, implementing cross-shard transfers, and contract calls. It will build execution environments for scalable apps that are built on top of Ethereum 2.0.

September 2020 brought news that the Spadina testnet had run into problems on its launch, forcing at least one more "dress rehearsal" before launch. Spadina is a short-term testnet designed to trial genesis, or the creation of the first block, on Ethereum 2.0. It is distinct from the larger Medalla testneta general sandbox that represents the up-and-running version of the network. Issues with the Spadina testnet included low participation, coupled with "confusion" and "invalid deposits."

Ethereum 2.0 is on track for a November 2020 launch, according to one developer on the project, but what will the future hold for the cryptocurrency?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has laid out a roadmap of how the next five to ten years could pan out for Ethereum 2.0. He says that over the last two years there has been a solid shift from "blue sky" research, trying to understand what is possible, to concrete research and development, trying to optimize specific primitives that we know are implementable and implement them.

He says that the bulk of the challenges is now increasingly around development, and development's share of the pie will only continue to grow over time.

In June 2020, Buterin noted that Ethereum 2.0 will need to rely on current scaling methods such as ZK-rollups for at least two years before implementing shard chains.

Excerpt from:

What is Ethereum 2.0 and Why Does It Matter? - Decrypt