The booming stock market is driven by perception of the Federal Reserve’s commitment to high prices and growing individual trading, but how sustainable is it?
The accused were also charged by the CFTC and the SEC for allegedly soliciting funds from over 1,000 people for the fake forex and bitcoin trading fund.
Crypto-dollars offer an alternative to unreliable currencies and the dangers of holding physical cash. They just need to be designed for everyday people.
Signature Bank gave out dozens more PPP loans to crypto firms than previously known, Ethereum Classic has suffered another 51% attack and a digital yuan wallet went live and disappeared.
With bitcoin still lagging behind U.S stocks and additional tax guidance in the U.S., CoinDesk's Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup!
Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy sits down with Cooper Turley, editor at Defirate and one of the closest people to the fast moving world of yield farming. In one hour Cooper covers everything - what is yield farming, how the craze is attracting massive amounts of capital and attention, specific projects and where he thinks this is all headed. Oh my, what an episode.
As Coinbase continues on its path to growing the cryptoeconomy and creating an open financial system for the world, we’ll look to leaders and experts from a range of fields to help guide us. Of primary importance is our Board of Directors. We look to our Board members and Observers to draw from their areas of expertise to counsel us on everything from product development to world-class governance practices.
Today I’m excited to announce the addition of two new industry leaders to Coinbase’s Boardroom: Marc Andreessen, co-founder and operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s leading venture capital firms joins as a Board Observer, and Gokul Rajaram, an executive at DoorDash, has joined as a Board Director at the designation of the DFJ Growth Fund and Series C shareholders. Both bring a wealth of experience that we’ll put to use to the benefit of the company, our customers and the broader community.
Marc Andreessen has a storied history in Silicon Valley and was an early believer in the potential of crypto. As far back as 2014, he penned a seminal op-ed in The New York Times that introduced many to Bitcoin for the first time. Recently, his “It’s Time to Build” blog, written in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, has become a rallying cry for engineers and innovators around the world. An innovator and creator, he is one of the few to pioneer a software category used by more than a billion people and one of even fewer to establish multiple billion-dollar companies. Marc co-created the highly influential Mosaic internet browser and co-founded Netscape. He also co-founded Loudcloud, which as Opsware, sold to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion. He later served on the Board of Hewlett-Packard from 2008 to 2018. In 2009, with cofounder Ben Horowitz, Marc founded Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s premier venture capital firms.
Gokul Rajaram has served on the executive team at DoorDash since November 2019, after Doordash acquired Square’s food delivery business, Caviar. Prior to DoorDash, he worked as the Product Engineering Lead from July 2013 to October 2019 at Square, where he led several product development teams and served on Square’s executive team. Prior to Square, he served as Product Director of Ads from August 2010 to July 2013 at Facebook, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul has served as a Director of Pinterest (PINS) since February 2020, The Trade Desk (TTD) since May 2018 and Course Hero since June 2008.
With Marc and Gokul joining our Boardroom, two longtime Board contributors will be transitioning out. Chris Dixon has contributed to Board and Executive Leadership meetings in an Observer capacity for seven years. He was one of the earliest investors in crypto and in Coinbase, and his guidance has helped shape Coinbase into the company that it is today. We look forward to continuing to benefit from his insights on the cryptocurrency industry as it continues to grow.
Additionally, Barry Schuler will step off as the Series C Director, but we will still benefit from Barry’s continuing contributions as a Board Observer. Having seen the early days of the internet, Barry has been a great visionary in cryptocurrency, and for Coinbase. His operational experience running one of the largest early internet companies has been incredibly valuable as we’ve grown.
The company sincerely thanks both Chris and Barry for their past and continuing contributions to Coinbase and wishes them well as they share their knowledge and insight with the next generation of innovators, builders and technology pioneers. Both of them have been a major contributor to Coinbase’s success.
Signature Bank gave $20 million in PPP loans to roughly 40 firms in the digital asset space. Only nine loans were revealed in public documents last month.
Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi is taking aim at competitor OKEx in the business of trading bitcoin futures and other derivatives contracts, opening up a new front in a longstanding rivalry that has historically focused on the lucrative Chinese market.
nChain chief scientist Craig Wright has delivered an obscenity-laden interview discussing decentralized finance and stablecoins, calling such projects a "complete scam" and "illegal."
The U.S. tax department has provided guidance around crypto revenue earned from microtasks via crowdsourcing platforms, and yes, such income is taxable.
An early supporter of the now defunct blockchain-based Civil is taking another swing at a writer-owned media collective. She hasn't lost faith in blockchain.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell tried to make it seem like the end of an era, but didn’t inspire confidence in the central bank’s ability to lead in the era that comes next.
China Construction Bank had quietly opened up the wallet service of China's digital yuan to public users – but has now disabled it shortly after the feature gained wide attention.
Chainlink has acquired privacy-focused oracle solution DECO from Cornell University. The data feed system is also drafting a second white paper for the project.
The "Silicon Valley Therapist", Howard Scott Warshaw joined Tatiana and Lauren for a deep conversation about the ins and outs of psychotherapy, the psychological conditions of tech people, and how these crazy quarantine times are affecting all of us.
Howard started out as a programmer, but after a wildly successful career in the video games industry, he started looking for something else. After trying his hand at art and filmmaking (also with spectacular results), he found psychotherapy as the perfect way to integrate all his skills and better help the people he used to entertain.
He shared how it is possible to conduct sessions on Zoom, how he reconciles the brainy and the emotional aspects of himself and his clients, and all the right (and wrong) reasons for starting therapy. Tatiana then geared the conversation towards love and relationships, specifically among tech professionals. Turns out there are a number of common problems that these people face due to often being socially excluded in their early years. However successful they become as the new ruling class, they keep questioning their self-worth and have trouble connecting with people.
Lauren was then wondering how COVID-19 is affecting people psychologically, which is something Howard had a lot to say about! The difficulty of creating connections drains everyone, but basic human emotions are not going to change.
The trio ended the discussion by exploring why conspiracy theories are rampant today, and what possible solutions there could be to recreate the connections we feel are lost.
About the Guest:
Artist, technologist, creator and healer, Howard Scott Warshaw is first and foremost a communicator. Holding master's degrees in Counseling Psychology and Computer Engineering, his career accomplishments include Video Game pioneer, MoMA artist, celebrated software developer, award winning film producer, author, educator and columnist. These days Howard enlists his eclectic skill set in the service of others as a psychotherapist in California's Silicon Valley, where he specializes in the issues of hi-tech leaders and the super-intelligent. He loves exploring fresh perspectives as well as cultivating new talents and finding creative ways to apply them. Howard is a complex person who can be summed up in five words: Passion with a Balanced Perspective.
Remember, this is a new show, so if you like it, please be sure to tell 3 friends! Leave a good review on Itunes, and be sure to follow us on our socials!
*You have been listening to Proof of Love. This show may contain adult content, language, and humor and is intended for mature audiences. If that's not you, please stop listening. Nothing you hear on Proof of Love is intended as financial advice, legal advice, therapy or really, anything other than entertainment. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Oh, and if you're hearing us on an affiliate network, the ideas and views expressed on this show, are not necessarily those of the network you are listening on, or of any sponsors or any affiliate products you may hear about on the show.
Over the last three years, I have had a huge array of guests from cypherpunks, developers, economists, libertarians, activists, Wall Street veterans and punk rock legends all with one thing in common; Bitcoin.
In this episode, to celebrate What Bitcoin Did's 250th show, I asked some of my previous guests to tell me one thing about Bitcoin, that matters to them.
Hal Finney is remembered as one of the early pioneers of Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, and an advocate for widespread use of cryptography to help enhance people’s privacy.
Finney was one of the biggest defenders and supporters of Bitcoin from its earliest days. He rose to the defense of the still incubating technology against fellow cryptologists who were convinced it would never work. Finney held the distinction of getting the first bitcoin ever transferred to anybody as a test from Satoshi Nakamoto (whoever that is).
He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in August 2009 and fought for years to continue to do what he loved: write code. From one of his last posts on the Bitcointalk forums titled “Bitcoin and Me,” he wrote,
“ALS is a disease that kills moter neurons [sic], which carry signals from the brain to the muscles. It causes first weakness, then gradually increasing paralysis.”
“Today, I am essentially paralyzed… I operate the computer using a commercial eyetracker system. It also has a speech synthesizer, so this is my voice now.”
“It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad. I can still read, listen to music, and watch TV and movies. I recently discovered that I can even write code. It’s very slow, probably 50 times slower than I was before. But I still love programming and it gives me goals.”
“That’s my story. I’m pretty lucky overall. Even with the ALS, my life is very satisfying.”
ALS is a progressive, fatal neuromuscular disease that slowly robs the body of its ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. The life expectancy of a person with ALS averages from 2 to 5 years from the time of diagnosis. ALS can strike anyone, and presently there is no known cause or cure.
The Bitcoin Magazine team is participating in the Nashville Chapter of the ALS Association’s virtual walk and fundraiser. From now until October 3, we’ll be remembering Hal’s legacy in different ways across all of our channels. Please consider donating toward our fundraising efforts by visiting https://bitcoinmagazine.com/our-hero-hal-fundraiser. All of the donations are handled by the ALS Association through its website and we are not directly accepting donations.
The ALS Association organizes walks all over the United States and there’s most likely one near you. If you’re interested in starting your own fundraiser, please let us know via Twitter and we’ll be sure to help promote your efforts. We’ve also set up a reward on Carrot, a new app we’re using to support our mission, so you can earn sats if your fundraiser reaches $100 in donations.
As our latest piece of content about Finney, we’ve published an article by Aaron van Wirdum detailing his work on Reusable Proof of Work, “How Hal Finney’s Quest for Digital Cash Led to RPOW (and More).” His article is the fifth installment of Bitcoin Magazine’s The Genesis Files series, which has covered the advancements that led to Bitcoin’s creation. The previous articles in this series covered David Chaum’s eCash, Adam Back’s Hashcash, Wei Dai’s b-money and Nick Szabo’s Bit Gold.
Finney’s dedication to his craft will always be an inspiration to people that value freedom, privacy and sovereignty.
Disclosure: BTC Inc is the parent company of both Bitcoin Magazine and Carrot.
Mongolian authorities have limited cheap electricity for crypto miners, Venezuela is seeing crypto use outside government-approved exchanges and a “critical bug” has left 13% of Ethereum nodes useless.
Once described by PGP creator Phil Zimmerman as “the Mister Rogers of cryptography,” Hal Finney (1956) was known for his relentlessly uplifting spirit. He carried a positive perspective on life with him even when amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) paralyzed his entire body, until the Bitcoin pioneer ultimately passed away from the disease on August 28, 2014.
In the 1980s, as a graduate from the California Institute of Technology working in the startup computer game industry, Finney’s optimism made him fit in naturally with the Extropians. This Californian techno-libertarian movement drew much of its inspiration from Austrian economists and libertarian authors, and embraced nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, space travel and other futuristic technologies as tools to propel humanity toward a next evolutionary stage. If science and innovation could progress free from government interference, the Extropians believed, eternal life and other transhumanist goals were within reach.
Finney, too, liked to operate on the cutting-edge of technology. When the internet became publicly available for the first time in the early 1990s, he immediately began to explore the World Wide Web and other corners of the brand new information superhighway, and quickly recognized the revolutionary potential embedded in the nascent network. Humanity would for the first time become connected across the globe, regardless of geographic distances, cultural differences or arbitrary borders.
But there was a flip side. Finney, well-versed in the design tradeoffs presented by the internet, knew that cyberspace didn’t just offer exciting new possibilities, but also potential risks. As communication went digital, anyone’s conversations were in peril of being monitored. The Net could represent an encroachment on everyone’s privacy and, therefore, become a possible threat to human liberty.
This was true for regular communication, and Finny realized it was equally true for financial transactions. In a digitalizing world, money would inevitably go digital, too. This meant that anonymous payments could become a thing of the past.
“Dossiers could be built up which would track the spending patterns of each of us,” Finney explained in a 1993 essay. “Already, when I order something over the phone or electronically using my Visa card, a record is kept of exactly how much I spent and where I spent it. As time goes on, more transactions may be done in this way, and the net result could be a great loss of privacy.”
Just like regular, physical cash — the paper banknotes and metal coins that you carried in your pocket — Finney concluded that the internet needed an untraceable form of money, allowing for anonymous transactions. The internet needed digital cash.
The Birth Of Digital Cash
Fortunately, it turned out that digital cash was in development already.
“It seemed so obvious to me,” Finney later wrote. “Here we are faced with the problems of loss of privacy, creeping computerization, massive databases, more centralization — and [David] Chaum offers a completely different direction to go in, one which puts power into the hands of individuals rather than governments and corporations. The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them.”
Indeed, having foreseen many of the same problems as Finney, cryptographer David Chaum had come up with a design for digital cash, called eCash. What’s more, Chaum had founded a company, DigiCash, to make such a system reality. Designed as a privacy layer for existing currencies — dollars, euros, yen — the plan was to sell the technology to banks.
Finney soon found himself promoting Chaum’s project to his fellow Extropians, at one point authoring a seven-page explainer for Extropy, the magazine at the heart of the movement.
“Cryptography can make possible a world in which people have control over information about themselves, not because government has granted them that control, but because only they posses the cryptographic keys to reveal that information,” he wrote, advocating the potential of digital cash to the techno-libertarian crowd. “This is the world we are working to create.”
Around that same time, in 1992, Finney had received an invitation from fellow-Extropian Tim May. Along with some tech-oriented and privacy-focused friends in the Bay Area, including former DigiCash-employee Eric Hughes, May was assembling a group of hackers, computer scientists and cryptographers to further online privacy by leveraging the potential of cryptography.
The group would call itself the Cypherpunks. Its weapon of choice: the software it would create and distribute. “Cypherpunks write code,” as it would adopt as a rally cry.
Finney did write code; he was responsible for some of the group’s early successes. Together with Hughes, he developed and ran the first remailer: a server that anonymously forwarded emails to help people communicate privately. When Zimmerman released PGP, Finney became a major contributor to the project. And as a much-publicized stunt, he also organized a contest to break Netscape’s export-grade (read: weakened) SSL encryption, which a fellow-Cypherpunk indeed succeeded in breaking.
But Finney’s main interest was always digital cash. When alternative electronic cash proposals popped up on the Cypherpunk mailing list, carrying names like Magic Cash, Brands Cash or TrustBucks, Finney was always eager to review them. Focusing on privacy features in particular, he’d often explain to his fellow Cypherpunks how the different systems worked, helping them understand the possibilities and limitations of different digital cash solutions. And whenever the topic came up in conversation, he was always available to offer his constructive insights.
Hashcash And Proof Of Work
One particularly interesting digital cash design was proposed in 1997 by a young computer scientist and Cypherpunk from England named Adam Back. Hashcash, as this proposal was called, used a “proof-of-work” system to generate something akin to postage stamps, as a solution to counter spam. In a nutshell: before sending (say) an email, a Hashcash user would need to generate a hash (a seemingly random string of numbers) using parts of the email and some extra data, and send this hash along with the email to the recipient. The recipient would only accept the email if it included a “valid” hash, otherwise the email would bounce.
The trick was that only a subset of potential hashes based on the email would be considered valid. This meant that users had to spend some computing power — essentially, energy — to generate Hashcash. This was trivial for a regular user sending a simple email; it would maybe cost a few seconds of computations. However, if a spammer wanted to send millions of emails at once, the energy requirements to find all the required valid hashes for each of the millions of emails would quickly add up, rendering spam unprofitable.
Back’s proposal could function as a type of postage, but wasn’t really intended to work as fully-fledged currency. Most importantly, each proof-of-work uniquely corresponded to a specific email, which meant that a Hashcash recipient couldn’t re-spend the same proof-of-work elsewhere.
Regardless, Cypherpunks quickly realized that Hashcash offered something very interesting. Proof-of-work introduced a digital representation of a scarce real-world resource: energy. And since scarcity is a fundamental property of money, Back and other Cypherpunks recognized that proof-of-work could potentially serve as the basis for a whole new type of currency: an unbacked digital cash, that didn’t require banks at all.
In the following years, two notable digital cash proposals were indeed based on proof of work: Nick Szabo’s Bit Gold and Wei Dai’s B-Money. But while both were interesting designs, they still had some weaknesses, for which the suggested solutions were complex and not fully thought out. Probably in part because of this, neither proposal was ever actually implemented.
Meanwhile, DigiCash was failing to turn Ecash into a success. Chaum’s company — initially considered a hot new startup by internet pioneers of the 1990s — ended up filing for bankruptcy before the end of the decade.
When, by the early 2000s, the Cypherpunk movement started to fall apart as well, their dream of digital cash was turning into little more than a fading memory.
RPOW And Remote Attestation
But Hal Finney, ever the optimist, wasn’t ready to give up.
In 2004, about a decade after he first started promoting electronic cash within Extropian circles, Finney proposed a digital currency system of his own: Reusable Proofs of Work, or RPOW (pronounced: “arpow”). While simplified in several ways, the Cypherpunk had taken inspiration from Bit Gold, and used Hashcash’s proof-of-work system for currency generation.
“Security researcher Nick Szabo has coined the term bit gold to refer to a similar concept of tokens which inherently represent a certain level of effort,” Finney’s RPOW website explained. “Nick’s concept is more complex than the simple RPOW system, but his insight applies: in some ways, an RPOW token can be thought of as having the properties of a rare substance like gold. It takes effort and expense to mine and mint gold coins, making them inherently scarce.”
Where Szabo and Dai had stopped short of implementing their digital cash proposals into software, Finney actually coded up an RPOW prototype. He invited people to try the system out, advertising the electronic cash on a simple blue-and-green webpage featuring an RPOW logo in comic book style. (Think of the “POW” letters marking the spot where Batman’s uppercut meets some poor henchman’s jaw.)
For the prototype, Finney had set up an RPOW server running open-source software. The server acted as the mint where new RPOW tokens were issued, and would also check that tokens weren’t being spent multiple times by the same user (“double spent”).
To see how this worked, let’s say Alice wanted to generate an RPOW token. First, she’d connect with Finney’s server, potentially over Tor for optimal privacy. Alice would then take some data unique to the server and herself, and start hashing it until she’d find a valid proof of work. She’d send the proof of work to the server, which would check it for validity. If valid, the server would create a unique RPOW token (really just a string of data), and send it to Alice in return. The server would also store a copy of the token in a local database.
When Alice wanted to spend the RPOW token, she’d simply send it to the intended recipient, let’s say Bob, for example, to download an MP3 file from him. It didn’t technically matter for the RPOW system how she’d send the token, as long as she’d be sure it’d make its way to Bob without anyone intercepting it. (A message encrypted with Bob’s public key would have done the trick.)
As Bob received the RPOW token, he’d need to check it for validity, and make sure that it hadn’t been double-spent. To do that, he’d immediately forward the token to the RPOW server, where the software would check that it was included in its internal database, and wasn’t already spent. If it checked out, the server confirmed this to Bob, and Bob could send Alice the MP3 file. The server would then also mark the RPOW token as spent, deeming it invalid for future use. Finally, it would create a new RPOW token, send this to Bob, and include this new token in its internal database. Bob could then spend this new token again, repeating the process. In this way, tokens representing a single proof of work could continue to circulate indefinitely. It was, effectively, reusable proof of work.
The system as described so far would work fine — but it would have required trust in the operator of the RPOW server: in this case, Finney. Finney could have adjusted the RPOW software to cheat, and for example mint RPOW tokens for himself without producing any proof of work. Or he could double spend the same tokens without anyone noticing.
Finney, however, didn’t want users to have to trust the operator of the RPOW server, even if that operator was him. An RPOW server therefore needed to have a special property. As the system’s main innovation, the RPOW server was hosted on a secure hardware component, the IBM 4758. This allowed for something called “trusted computing.”
In short, the tamper-proof hardware contained a private key embedded by IBM, that no one — not even the owner of the secure hardware component (Finney, in this case) — could meddle with or extract. Using a trick called “remote attestation” the private key could generate a certificate stating what software is running on the secure hardware component. With this certificate, anyone connected with the server could verify that the secure hardware component was running the exact RPOW open-source code, without any backdoors or other adjustments.
“[T]he RPOW system is architected with one overriding goal: to make it impossible for anyone, even the owner of the RPOW server, even the developer of the RPOW software, to be able to violate the system’s rules and forge RPOW tokens,” Finney’s RPOW website explained. “Without such a guarantee against forgeability, RPOW tokens would not credibly represent the work that was done to create them. Forgeable tokens would be more like paper money than bit gold.”
The Fate of RPOW…
RPOW was live. But Finney knew that this simplified version of Bit Gold still had its limitations.
For one, the prototype depended on a central server. Thanks to the open-source code and trusted computing, this didn’t give Finney unchecked power over the system — although, perhaps, a rogue IBM employee could do some damage. A more realistic concern, however, was that Finney could for example choose to take his server offline altogether, or be forced to do so. This would instantly render all RPOW tokens useless.
But an even bigger problem was probably that the tokens would be subject to a form of inflation. As computing power would become cheaper over time, it’d be easier to generate valid proof of work year after year.
“If Moore’s Law continues to hold true, the cost of creating a POW token will drop at a steady, exponential rate,” Finney wrote on the project website. He noted that the hardest proof of work would continue to be difficult to generate well into the future, and that computational performance increases would slow down over time as well. Yet, he told readers: “[k]eep in mind that this is not money and is not intended to be a stable store of value, but rather an easy-to-exchange representation of computer effort.”
Indeed, the RPOW creator considered his electronic cash system more in line with Back’s original Hashcash proposal. While proof-of-work could now be “reused,” the tokens were still mainly intended to function as something like a form of digital postage — not really as a fully-fledged type of money. Users could utilize the system to counter spam, use it to align incentives in a file-sharing network or maybe even have some fun with it as poker chips in a peer-to-peer poker game, but RPOW tokens weren’t exactly useful for savings.
Where Szabo and Dai attempted to solve the inflation problem with layers of added complexity, Finney just accepted the inflation. This made RPOW much simpler in design, but may also be why RPOW never took off. With no financial incentive to hold RPOW tokens, there was very little reason to accept them as payment in the first place. And without anyone accepting the tokens for payment, there was no one to spend them, meaning there was even less reason for anyone to accept them for payment… and so on. RPOW faced a chicken-and-egg problem.
For an electronic cash system to succeed, that chicken-and-egg problem had to somehow be overcome.
…And the Faith of Finney
In October 2008, Finney received an email through the Cryptography mailing list that he subscribed to, which was widely considered to be the spiritual successor of the Cypherpunks mailing list. In the email, Satoshi Nakamoto — only later to be assumed to be a mysterious pseudonym — proposed a new type of electronic cash: Bitcoin. Like RPOW, Bitcoin was based on Hashcash’s proof-of-work system, but unlike RPOW, it didn’t depend on any central server.
While innovative, Bitcoin wasn’t immediately received with much enthusiasm. Most Cypherpunk veterans on the Cryptography mailing list had by then seen one too many electronic cash experiments come and go, without any real successes to account for. And there were some valid concerns with this new proposal as well: Bitcoin transactions weren’t instant, adversaries with a lot of computing power could overpower the system, and the solution didn’t appear to be very scalable.
But Finney, being the optimist that he was, had decided to focus on the positive instead.
“Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea,” Finney responded on the mailing list. “I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker. […] I also do think that there is potential value in a form of unforgeable token whose production rate is predictable and can’t be influenced by corrupt parties.”
Indeed, Finney recognized that Bitcoin solved a big problem. Nakamoto had figured out how to limit the issuance of new currency. Where RPOW tokens became easier to generate as computing power became cheaper over time, Bitcoin would have a fixed issuance schedule. Proof of work was still used to generate new tokens, but a clever difficulty adjustment algorithm ensured that increased computing power would also make it more difficult to find new tokens. (And vice versa: a decrease in computing power would make it easier.)
Just a few months after dropping the proposal on the Cryptography mailing list, the pseudonymous author of the Bitcoin white paper followed up with actual code, including an issuance schedule. As fewer and fewer new coins would be released over time, the total supply would eventually level out: there would never be more than 21 million bitcoin.
“One immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it at first, there is still a difficulty in coming up with a reasonable argument in favor of a particular non-zero value for the coins,” he wrote. “As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.”
Concluding:
“So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim, are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about…”
The tokens could have value, Finney figured, even if just speculative value at first. This could provide an incentive for people to mine it, hold it, and of course accept it for payment. Bitcoin offered a way out of the chicken-and-egg problem that RPOW hadn’t been able to overcome. When Bitcoin launched, in early 2009, Finney was one of the first miners on the network, and — while he helped Satoshi Nakamoto with technical contributions — he became the first person in the world to receive a Bitcoin transaction, from the system’s pseudonymous creator himself.
Later that same year, Finney was diagnosed with ALS. But he didn’t let the disease bring him down. While spending the last stage of his life paralyzed, restricted to a wheelchair and dependent on breathing assistance, he was using eye-tracking software to continue writing Bitcoin code. “I still love programming and it gives me goals,” Finney told users of the popular BitcoinTalk forum. “It has been an adjustment, but my life is not too bad.”
And even now, in death, the RPOW creator carries a spark of optimism along with him. Following in an Extropian tradition, Finney wasn’t buried or cremated. Instead, his body is cryogenically frozen and preserved in sub-zero temperatures by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Perhaps, as the Extropian philosophy predicts, a cure for ALS will be found one day, and technology advances to the point where Finney can be brought back to life.
It’s a long shot, to be sure, with most mainstream scientists dismissing the idea. But if Finney wasn’t the type to take optimistic long shots, few of us today might have heard of the Bitcoin pioneer at all.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell did not raise many eyebrows Thursday morning when he announced the U.S. central bank would encourage some periods of inflation above its 2% target in certain circumstances to boost the long-term economy.
"Bitcoin is ... the only known commodity in the universe that has a deterministic and fixed supply," the Winklevoss brothers wrote in a blog post saying the cryptocurrency may one day hit $500,000.
According to the announcement by Bison Trails, this will allow users on Coinbase Custody to stake their solana (SOL) tokens using secure offline storage.
The aim is a comprehensive database of information gleaned from previous hacks and fraud used to proactively fight future ones. The platform supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRX and EOS blockchains.
Bitcoin’s options market foresees little price turbulence in the short-term, even as markets await a key speech from the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is expected to announce new measures to control inflation at his annual speech on the U.S. central bank's policy approach during the Jackson Hole symposium Thursday.
DeFi Pulse invented "Total Value Locked." Yet TVL's mechanics have been somewhat confusing to those in the space. Here's how the leading DeFi metric works.
Messaging giant LINE has launched a blockchain platform where developers can issue tokens and run decentralized applications, and a wallet that helps users manage digital assets.
Chain Reaction Host Tom Shaughnessy sits down with Anton Bukov, the co-founder of 1InchExchange. This is the go-to episode on 1inch as a DEX aggregator, scaling to handle over $1B in volume in a short period of time and the launch and benefits of Mooniswap - a next generation AMM protocol.
Thank you to our sponsor Crypto.com for making this happen! Visit bit.ly/cryptodelphi for more information!
Mathew D’Souza, the founder and CEO of Blockware Solutions and Blockware Mining and the manager of the Blockchain Opportunity Fund, died on August 21, 2020 after a seven-year battle with leukemia. He was 29 years old.
D’Souza’s passing was announced by Blockware Solutions, a service provider for the Bitcoin mining industry and one of the largest distributors of mining rigs in the U.S., which he founded in 2017. The Blockchain Opportunity Fund, which he also founded in 2017, serves investors as a multi-million dollar cryptocurrency hedge fund. Blockware Mining, which D’Souza founded in 2019, has generated over 52 percent returns for its investors, according to the announcement.
“Matt came from humble beginnings,” Blockware Solutions shared. “At the age of 13, Matt began caddying at the Park Ridge Country Club. He went on to be awarded the Evans Scholarship to the University of Illinois in 2008. The Evans Scholarship is a full tuition and housing scholarship for high-achieving caddies who embody a strong caddie record, excellent academics, financial need and outstanding character — all qualities Matt possessed.”
D’Souza was an outspoken advocate and educator for blockchain technology and the Bitcoin ecosystem. He co-authored detailed research reports on behalf of Blockware, including a recent analysis of how the bitcoin price is influenced by miners. He was a frequent guest of industry podcast and events, including Bitcoin Magazine’s Halving live stream. But it was his advocacy for his team members and support of his loved ones that may best define his legacy.
“Despite all of his achievements in the cryptocurrency industry, Matt can be best remembered for his huge heart, strong will and generous spirit,” according to Blockware Solutions. “Everyone who knew him, loved him.”
Blockware Solutions asked that those who want to honor D’Souza’s memory make donations to the Evans Scholars Foundation.
According to the Wirex’s announcement regarding the partnership, existing Wirex card customers in the region have already been ported to Railsbank-issued cards.
OnMonday,August 31, transfer CELO into your Coinbase Pro account ahead of trading. Support for CELO will be available in all Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions. Per previous launches, transfers will open during business hours, Pacific time.
On Monday, August 31, we will begin accepting inbound transfers of CELO to Coinbase Pro. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) the following day, if liquidity conditions are met.
Once sufficient supply of CELO is established on the platform, trading on our CELO-USD, CELO-BTC, CELO-EUR and CELO-GBP order books will launch in four phases, transfer-only, post-only, limit-only and full trading. If at any point one of the new order books does not meet our assessment for a healthy and orderly market, we may keep the book in one state for a longer period of time or suspend trading as per our Trading Rules.
We will publish tweets from our Coinbase Pro Twitter account as each order book moves through the phases.
Celo (CELO) is a cryptocurrency that acts as a utility and governance token for the Celo platform. The Celo platform is designed to make it easy for anyone with a smartphone to send, receive, and store stablecoins running on Celo (for example, the Celo Dollar) without needing a crypto wallet.
Please note that CELO is not yet available on Coinbase.com or via our Consumer mobile apps. We will make a separate announcement if and when this support is added.
You can sign up for a Coinbase Pro account here to start trading. For more information on trading CELO on Coinbase Pro, visit our support page.
Please note Coinbase owns CELO tokens as a result of a 2018 investment in Celo. Coinbase intends to maintain its investment in Celo for the foreseeable future and maintains internal policies that address the timing of permissible disposition of its digital assets, including CELO tokens.
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Major Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck aims to launch its first Initial Exchange Offering project for Hash Palette, a content distribution platform for Japanese comic and graphic novels, anime and music by next March.
Digital asset trust company BitGo is in the process of “reaching out” to community partners to build an Ethereum sidechain because of rising fees, according to CTO Ben Chan.
Today, we’re sharing the next phase of our European journey by announcing new leadership for our European operations. Marcus Hughes, who currently serves as General Counsel for our international operations, has stepped into the role of General Manager for Europe. In this role, he will be responsible for continuing to scale our operations across Europe, along with bringing to market the products and features that our customers want.
It has been a busy few years for Coinbase in Europe. Last year, we rolled out Coinbase Card, a Visa debit card that lets customers in the UK and 26 European countries spend crypto as effortlessly as the money in their traditional bank accounts. We were also approved as a Visa principal member, a first for a crypto company.
On the regulatory front, in 2018 Coinbase became the first crypto company to meet the exacting standards of the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and receive an E-Money license, and to be given access to the Faster Payments Scheme (which allowed our customers to benefit from seamless, instantaneous deposits and withdrawals). A little over a year later, we again blazed a trail for the crypto space by being one of the first financial services companies to be given an E-Money license in Ireland.
For the past two years, Marcus has led numerous complex projects for Coinbase around the world as we have grown internationally. He has also been responsible for establishing and maintaining our regulatory relationships across multiple regions, working closely with regulators to educate them on crypto and advocating for appropriate regulation. Prior to joining Coinbase, Marcus spent almost a decade at Morgan Stanley, where he was an Executive Director in its legal and compliance division and specialised in electronic trading across equities and fixed income.
Marcus moves into his new role as our current European lead, Zeeshan Feroz, transitions into a new phase of his journey with Coinbase. After leading in the region for more than three years and driving many of the initiatives mentioned above, Zee is shifting into a role as a strategic consultant for the company. In this new position, he’ll draw from his years of experience with Coinbase and other roles to help the company on a range of projects.
Please join us in congratulating Marcus on his new role, and recognizing Zee for his tireless efforts to bring access to the cryptoeconomy to our customers throughout Europe.
The number of addresses on Bitcoin’s “rich list" is reaching new highs while another firm is putting its cash reserves into bitcoin, not a bank account.
The birth of the internet caused one of the most significant cultural shifts in human history. Global communication and information sharing has allowed for considerable advancements in society, and it is integral to the world we live in today. However, it is not all positive; the internet sucks up vast amounts of personal data which is then sold and exploited.
There are many ways your data is used against you from targeted advertising to voter manipulation, and Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the internet, cited the loss of control of our personal data as one of his biggest concerns regarding the current state of the internet.
By utilising encryption tools and browsers like Tor, you can still retain your privacy while using the internet, but it is not straight forward. Start9 are changing this.
In this interview, I talk to Matt and Aaron from Start9. We discuss the growing demand for a private internet, retaining control of personal data, encryption and why bitcoin is fundamental to all of this.
According to a report by F-secure, a Finland-based cybersecurity company, hackers from the infamous Lazarus group targeted a crypto firm in an attack last year.
Quorum, the enterprise blockchain platform developed by mega-bank JPMorgan Chase, is to be acquired by ConsenSys, the Brooklyn-based Ethereum venture studio.
Blockchain application platform The hybrid blockchain will soon undergo a fork enabling network participants to stake and earn rewards from tokens held in offline wallets.
The Financial Conduct Authority is seeking to oblige more firms, including some working with cryptocurrency, to report how they manage the risks of financial crime.
The benefits of holding a scarce asset have never been more apparent. All over the world, central banks have been printing money at an unprecedented rate to attempt to stimulate faltering economies.
With the outbreak of coronavirus and subsequent lockdowns in March, the majority of markets crashed. Bitcoin was no different, hitting local lows of ~$4,000. Since then Bitcoin has rallied and is currently sitting at ~$11,000.
The price action and current economic conditions have led many to believe we are at the beginning of a bull market like the one we saw in 2016/2017.
In this interview, I talk to Anthony Pompliano, founder and partner at Morgan Creek Capital and the host of the Pomp podcast. We discuss his recent interview with Roger Ver, the economic impact of the coronavirus & the Bitcoin bull market.
Although it represents a revolutionary step in individuals’ ability to gain financial freedom, Bitcoin in and of itself is not enough to achieve complete sovereignty from third parties or central governments. As many adopters of the technology know, Bitcoin is not private or anonymous.
For many, basic pseudonymity (as well as Bitcoin’s other advantages) is enough. But for some, Bitcoin is merely a tool in the privacy toolbox — something that helps achieve the freedom they seek as part of a larger suite of dissident solutions. The upcoming Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin conference is for those who are interested in a more robust exploration of the technology and tools that can protect freedom.
“The goal is to help people increase their financial and physical sovereignty and freedom,” Ragnar Lifthrasir, an event organizer, explained to Bitcoin Magazine. “To do that, you need more than just one technology, like bitcoin, or one self-defense tool, like firearms. You need a full stack that’s integrated.”
A Full-Stack Freedom Tech Conference
Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin, which is taking place in Austin on September 19 and 20, will explore topics including crypto e-commerce and legal strategies. But as the name implies, the primary focus will rest on Bitcoin — particularly anonymous and surveillance-resistant methods for using it — and firearms — particularly homemade guns and ammo.
Bitcoin-specific content will include presentations from Josh Humphrey, who has developed a privacy-focused framework for bitcoin e-commerce and open-source technology called “Mithril”; DiverterBTC, who will share a comprehensive and easily-understood guide to bitcoin mining and discuss coin mixing as two surveilance-resistant practices in Bitcoin; and Dr. Brian Gross, who will discuss the Blockstream satellite, which is an internet-provider-free way of confirming Bitcoin transactions and maintaining the blockchain.
The event will also feature discussions about DIY guns and ammo from leading designers who circumvent the traditional firearms retail industry by utilizing 3D printing, numeral control (CNC) of machining tools and electrochemical machining to craft their own. Attendees will visit a private gun range for target shooting on the second day of the event.
“Freedom tech is those tools that put control of one’s money, information, communication and meat space security under control of the individual, away from malevolent actors, be they public or private,” Lifthrasir said of the guiding content behind the event. “Freedom tech provides asymmetric defense against more powerful opponents. Guns and bitcoin are my favorite examples.”
Hosting An In-Person Privacy Event In 2020
Like any other in-person event organizer this year, Lifthrasir had to be nimble as he planned Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin. The event was originally scheduled to take place in Portland in June, but Oregon’s governor extended a state of emergency and the venue cancelled their contract.
The organizers decided to move to a state with more relaxed COVID-19 regulations, and while Lifthrasir emphasized that they are following all government health guidelines, cancelling the event outright is not an option.
“Everyone participating in the conference is allergic to government control, but we’re adapting,” he said. “Come hell or high water, Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin 2020 is happening.”
But in-person restrictions brought on by the spread of coronavirus are not the only unique organizational hurdles faced by Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin. For an event that emphasizes freedom, privacy, the absence of digitally-recorded personal data, etc., ticket registration and in-person attendance require some special considerations.
The event encourages attendees to purchase tickets using BTC, a pseudonym and an email address that’s not tied to any personal information. It is accepting payments through a self-hosted BTCPay Server and WordPress website, to prevent third parties from accessing attendee information. The organizers will not maintain a list of names or pseudonyms to confirm registrants at the door, but leverage the email list instead.
Photography and video at the event are prohibited, except for those who opt into photos. Face masks will be required at the event, and attendees are welcomed to supplement them with additional identity-obfuscating accessories.
Through these methods, Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin attendees will have the chance to celebrate Bitcoin, and their other favorite sovereignty solutions, at an event that’s been tailor made for them.
