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      "author": "jaysonsmith1",
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      "body": "I used ChangeNOW multiple times with no issues until I made a large transaction. Four months ago, I sent $550,000 through their platform. They froze the funds and asked for KYC, which I fully completed. Since then, nothing. No explanation, no updates, no resolution.\n\nIf you’re thinking about using ChangeNOW, especially for bigger amounts, be very careful. They seem fine with small trades, but once the amount is high, things can go very wrong. Learn from my experience...don’t take the risk.",
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      "body": "I’ve been using ChangeNOW for a while, and things were smooth, until I sent a larger amount. Four months ago, I sent $550,000, and they froze the transaction. I complied with every KYC request, submitted all documents, and followed up multiple times.\n\nStill no resolution. No clear reason. Just silence.\n\nIf you’re using ChangeNOW, especially for big transactions, be extremely cautious. What seemed like a reliable service completely changed when real money was on the line.",
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      "body": "Four months ago, I sent $550,000 through ChangeNOW. They froze the transaction and asked for KYC, which I completed right away. Since then, no real communication, no progress, and my funds are still locked.\n\nI had no issues with smaller transactions, but once the amount was large, everything went wrong. If you’re thinking about using ChangeNOW, avoid sending big amounts. What happened to me can happen to anyone, and they’ve given me no sign they plan to fix it.",
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      "body": "I used ChangeNOW without issues in the past, but everything changed when I made a larger transaction. They froze my $550,000 and requested KYC, which I submitted immediately. It’s now been four months and I’ve had zero updates or justification.\n\nIf you’re using their platform, do not risk sending large amounts. This kind of thing can happen without warning, and getting any response or resolution has been nearly impossible. Proceed with caution.",
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      "author": "jaysonsmith1",
      "permlink": "sz4a5x",
      "title": "",
      "body": "$550,000 Frozen for 4 Months, ChangeNOW Still Ignoring Ticket #507360\n\nIt’s been four months since ChangeNOW froze my $550,000, and I’m beyond frustrated. Despite fully complying with every KYC and verification request, the funds remain blocked under Ticket #507360.\n\nThere’s been no transparency, no real explanation, and zero progress. This kind of behavior isn’t just unprofessional...it’s bordering on outright theft.\n\nI’m demanding immediate resolution and full release of my funds. This situation is unacceptable, and it cannot be ignored any longer.",
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{
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    {
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      "author": "jaysonsmith1",
      "permlink": "sz49qe",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Funds Held for 4 Months – Ticket #507360 – $550,000 Blocked Without Justification.\n                  \nI’m absolutely outraged at the complete lack of accountability from ChangeNOW. It has been FOUR MONTHS since my $550,000 was locked under Ticket #507360 — despite my full cooperation with all KYC and verification demands.\n\nThere has been zero transparency, no valid explanation, and no resolution in sight. This is not just unethical — it borders on theft. I demand immediate action and the unconditional release of my funds. \n\nEnough is enough.",
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  "op": [
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      "to": "changenow",
      "amount": "0.001 STEEM",
      "memo": ""
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{
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      "parent_permlink": "a-short-guide-on-bitcoin-atms",
      "author": "doddyalfayed",
      "permlink": "rda396",
      "title": "",
      "body": "@@ -51,8 +51,315 @@\n finance!\n+ The only thing I worry about is that ATM security technologies are not as perfect as the technology of blockchain and the way BTC works. I hope that develpers don't neglect the issues of security for ATMs and simply use solutions like https://atmeye.com/ As far as I know that is the best possible way out!\n",
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{
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      "parent_permlink": "a-short-guide-on-bitcoin-atms",
      "author": "doddyalfayed",
      "permlink": "rda396",
      "title": "",
      "body": "Thank you! I also think that BTC is the future of finance!",
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{
  "trx_id": "1f2ff81e1782b52251270874d3fe518a267ff0f3",
  "block": 59762814,
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    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "litecoin",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "why-is-litecoin-not-an-alternative-to-bitcoin",
      "title": "Why Is Litecoin Not an Alternative to Bitcoin?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQiibncBoJMtWGZgtHwaMYwrAjyg1iB9sW2G3mVyEbnhP/image.png)\n\nLitecoin was one of the first altcoins created after Bitcoin was forked in 2011. With time, Litecoin has made a name for itself in the world of peer-to-peer payments, and today, it is often called a “digital silver”. Litecoin was not designed to replace Bitcoin, however. Let’s take a look at how it works, what makes LTC unique from bitcoin, and what the use cases and shortcomings are for Litecoin.\n\n## What is Litecoin? How was it created?\n\nBitcoin became too difficult to mine shortly after it was introduced in 2009, as GPUs have become obsolete and the entry barrier has dramatically risen. Also, it has become clear that the coin doesn’t serve as a good tool for daily payments: the transaction speed is too low, and fees can potentially be very high.\n\nLitecoin got its start in 2011, when computer scientist Charlie Lee launched it as a fork from the Bitcoin Core source code. November 2013 has become the first prominent success for the coin: the LTC price grew 15x, and its market capitalization reached $1 billion. People started calling Litecoin “digital silver” and an alternative to Bitcoin.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmX6wetuecRZYf4z3GxGkMWFV8MJjqorPZfX53Cq64nCKB/image.png)\n\n## How is Litecoin different from Bitcoin?\n\nThe way Litecoin has evolved is the same as was originally prescribed for Bitcoin: as a way of making peer-to-peer payments. In this respect, LTC is better as it is cheaper, faster, and more convenient. Here are the technical innovations of Litecoin that made this possible:\n\n* **A different hash function**. Litecoin implemented the scrypt function instead of SHA-256 used in Bitcoin. Initially, this was a move to allow miners to use the power of their CPUs and make Litecoin GPU-resistant; however, today, LTC is only mined with ASICs same as Bitcoin.\n* **Reduced block time**. Bitcoin generates a block in 10 minutes, whereas Litecoin does so in 2.5 minutes. LTC transactions and their confirmations are carried out 4 times faster.\n* **A larger total supply**. Litecoin’s total supply is 84 million coins, compared to Bitcoin’s 21 million.\n\n## How is Litecoin better than Bitcoin?\n\nLitecoin creator Charlie Lee said the cryptocurrency was not created to compete with Bitcoin or to replace the first cryptocurrency. Rather, it was created to complement the digital gold. Litecoin would be a better choice for daily payments than Bitcoin, which is today primarily used as a store of value. Here’s why:\n\n**Litecoin transactions are faster**. As already mentioned, block time of LTC was increased 4x compared to Bitcoin. This also helps protect the coin from transaction queues and increased fees.\n\n**Reduced fees**. Bitcoin’s transaction fees typically range from [$2 to $5](https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee), but can climb to $30–50 during times of high network congestion. Litecoin’s transaction fees today range from [$0.01 to $0.04](https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/litecoin-transactionfees.html#3y). Since BTC’s high transaction fees restrict its daily use, Litecoin is better suited for everyday payments.\n\n**Cross-chain swaps**. Litecoin’s team is the most active in the cryptosphere working on what is known as atomic swaps, a technology for connecting blockchains (from LTC to BTC and others) without the need for trusted intermediaries. Such a way to operate with the funds is an advantage for users as it eliminates third parties in coin swaps.\n\n**SegWit transactions**. SegWit is an algorithm that allows making more transactions in the same block without expanding the block size, thereby increasing the coin’s capacity. Litecoin was one of the first cryptos to implement this technology. Later, Bitcoin also did this with a soft fork; however, still, not all Bitcoin wallets support SegWit transactions.\n\n## How is Litecoin mined?\n\nLitecoin mining is not too different from that of Bitcoin. It also runs on a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, and the only way to make your mining profitable is to use ASICs. The current Litecoin mining block reward is 12.5 LTC and reduces 2X via halving every 840,000 blocks. Since the coin is issued four times faster than BTC, its max supply has also been increased fourfold. One of the perks of mining LTC is that you can mine Dogecoin (a Litecoin’s fork) along with it.\n\n## What are Litecoin’s weaknesses?\n\n**In contrast to Bitcoin, it hasn’t achieved a network effect**. Litecoin has never managed to become as popular as Bitcoin. It’s not as widely accepted across online and offline businesses, and even its increased efficiency hasn’t made it a true means of daily value exchange.\n\n**Litecoin mining is only possible with expensive ASICs**, even though it was originally designed as a GPU-resistant coin. This makes it unavailable for ordinary users even if they leverage mining pools.\n\n**Litecoin lacks efficiency compared to newer coins**. Such peer-to-peer payment solutions such as Dash, Nano, or DigiByte offer higher speed and scalability.\n\nLitecoin was most popular back when the Bitcoin mempool was overloaded and its transaction fees went to the moon. However, today, Layer-2 solutions such as the Lightning Network allow users to send Bitcoin transactions instantly and at low fees.\n\nFurthermore, Litecoin seems to be losing market share to its competitors in terms of marketing and promotion, which explains why its popularity has diminished over the past few years: LTC used to be among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, but now it ranks 14th. Even so, Litecoin still has many applications.\n\n## What are the Litecoin use cases?\n\nThe media activity of Litecoin founder Charlie Lee inspires the coin’s enthusiastic community and new partnerships. Here’s how Litecoin is used today:\n\n**Daily peer-to-peer payments**. You can use LTC to buy tickets, Amazon gift cards, groceries in some stores across the world, etc. If any service accepts some cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin, most likely, Litecoin is among them.\n**HTC Exodus blockchain phone**. This device works as a hardware wallet and stores private keys from the user’s crypto. Users of Litecoin’s secure blockchain environment can make secure transactions using the phone, which supports several digital assets.\n**Partnership with Atari game developer**. Litecoin holders will be able to purchase digital assets in the Atari ecosystem using the native Atari token and pay in Atari casinos.\n**ATM machines**. Litecoin is the [second most popular](https://coinatmradar.com/charts/cryptocurrency-share/) cryptocurrency after Bitcoin available in the crypto ATMs worldwide. Recently, LTC has partnered with a South Korean MeconCash payments platform: over 13,000 Litecoin ATMs will appear in the country, and LTC holders will be able to exchange their funds for fiat currency or send Litecoin to South Korea from abroad.\n## Summary\n\nLitecoin is a fork of Bitcoin created in 2011 with the purpose to make mining more affordable to regular users. Today, LTC is mined on ASICs same as BTC, but its innovations made it a better means of value exchange compared to Bitcoin: it’s cheaper and faster, and thousands of users worldwide use it on a daily basis. Dubbed “digital silver”, LTC is not intended to replace Bitcoin, but serve as a method for making global payments, something that can no longer be achieved by Bitcoin alone.",
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      "permlink": "why-is-blockchain-interoperability-the-future-of-cryptocurrency",
      "title": "Why Is Blockchain Interoperability The Future Of Cryptocurrency?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQUGy8TY3YnBjxsRSMhhu9NJkgWoix42jWfUzCbE8YqLn/image.png)\n\nThe cryptocurrency launch a decade ago started to transform the global economy, which is inevitably moving towards a digital ecosystem. Institutional investors now view Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset, while many new networks have been launched that outperform BTC in terms of speed, fees, and usability. The lack of blockchain interoperability, however, is one big shortcoming that prevents users from taking advantage of a handy decentralized environment.\n\nBlockchain of the early Bitcoin era is often dubbed as blockchain 1.0. In 2015, blockchain 2.0 became available, allowing trustless interaction between users. Platforms that offer this functionality, however, are based on siloed blockchains, which restrict money and data exchange between networks. This problem is solved by blockchain interoperability and, along with enhanced security and scalability, will bring blockchain 3.0 — a state of technology that will allow its global adoption.\n\n## What is blockchain interoperability?\n\nInteroperability technologies allow different blockchains to interact with each other directly or via some intermediaries.\n\nAmong the features of cryptocurrencies are cross-chain atomic swaps that allow exchanging various cryptocurrencies directly and without a third party’s involvement.\n\nHowever, blockchain is also finding application in other fields of the economy as well: supply chain management, digital identity, internet of things, and more. In these areas, interoperability is crucial too as it breaks down silos and walled gardens of data, enabling organizations from different fields to merge and analyze data. It can contribute to the advancement of management, science, healthcare, and finance.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYUDzAbr35kaD6uwRTg9RSZQMdHAoaRJxgjuYPza2qbvP/image.png)\n\n*Cross-chain atomic swaps*\n\n## How does interoperability enhance cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based use cases?\n1. **Crypto can gain more users as it becomes easier to use**. The interoperable future will allow users to swap coins from different blockchains directly within their wallets, without having to find an exchange service. Yield farmers will find more freedom in moving their assets across chains while seeking more profitable strategies.\n2. **More corporations will adopt blockchain technology as it becomes more accessible**. The lack of standards in building blockchains hinders their interoperability, as stated by giants like IBM. Implementing easy-to-set-up, widely accepted blockchain solutions would reduce this barrier to adoption.\n\nIn a [report](https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/373781615365676101/pdf/Blockchain-Interoperability.pdf) by the World Bank Group published in 2020, the following examples are given of how blockchain interoperability could benefit the economy:\n\n1. **Digital payments and central banking**. Money transfers in the modern day are slow and cumbersome, which was especially apparent during the coronavirus lockdown. The monetary authorities of Singapore, Canada, the European Union, and Japan have carried out a series of experiments, showing the potential of blockchain interoperability in facilitating digital payments.\n2. **Digital identity**. Internet users today barely have any control over their identities: it is not always obvious how their data is used by corporations and governments. Digital identities built on interoperable blockchains would allow users to control data, settle agreements, and verify their identity in an interconnected environment.\n3. **Supply chains**. For logistical processes to run smoothly, all parties involved need to be able to exchange data frictionlessly. Using blockchains, fragmented supply chains can be unified.\n4. **Healthcare**. Today’s patients keep their health records across a variety of medical institutions, while organizations struggle to gather statistics and conduct research when data exchange between them is restricted. HIMSS, a non-profit organization in the United States that studies and develops healthcare information systems, has recently [investigated](https://www.himss.org/resources/how-blockchain-can-be-used-personal-health-record-storage-and-security) the use of blockchain in healthcare.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVnk5ZWuZ8AeiUf72BznbaftdD1rZjtNyWQ5w1dzFPH4h/image.png)\n\n## Here are four solutions to make blockchains more interoperable\n\nA hot topic today is creating more interoperability in the blockchain space, and new methods are emerging and evolving. We will review 4 solutions that make blockchains more interoperable today:\n\n* **Atomic swaps** allow for intermediary-free coin exchange between separate blockchains\n* **Polkadot and Cosmos** are the platforms that make it easy to create customizable interoperable blockchains\n* **Chainlink** offers a protocol for cross-chain smart contracts’ communication\n\nLet’s take a closer look at each of these.\n\n## Atomic swaps\n\nCurrently, the only way to exchange your [Bitcoin for Ethereum](https://changenow.io/) is to find a trusted exchange service. Through atomic swaps, it is possible to exchange coins from different blockchains in a trustless manner, without having to deal with third parties and their fees.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZCw4iDDjto3Kw5arDW6sJGv1jXh1UqberVYBRABpznvL/image.png)\n\nThe concept of atomic swaps was first introduced in 2012 when 99% of today’s crypto projects didn’t exist. This technology has now been around for 9 years: users initiate a transaction, creating two multisignature vaults, transferring coins to each other, and confirming they have received the coins.\n\nWith Atomic swaps, the “all-or-nothing” rule applies. If one of the users fails to send and confirm receiving coins by the deadline, the transaction will be canceled automatically.\n\nBecause atomic swaps don’t use any cross-chain intermediaries, they’re implemented by the community and coin developers. To date, these types of exchanges have not been widespread, and the first real swap occurred in 2017 when Litecoin’s founder Charlie Lee exchanged LTC for BTC:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTtxF3X5i8PyN2aUQRSZizBZSRypjqBQ1GgyMEkny7XE4/image.png)\n\nCheck it out on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/satoshilite/status/911328252928643072?s=21&ref=hackernoon.com)\n\nAn increasing number of networks are becoming interoperable via atomic swaps. In August 2021, the first swap between [Bitcoin and Monero](https://bitcoinist.com/confirmed-atomic-swaps-between-bitcoin-and-monero-are-a-go-heres-the-411/) was carried out, despite increased privacy in Monero transactions. We can expect to see more news of this type in the future.\n\n## Polkadot\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmT4M5ugZiuPcZkjs8qhwhXPXA4vGpJ3z52Mk1zSxcBg7e/image.png)\n\n[With Polkadot](https://changenow.io/currencies/polkadot), separate blockchains get the opportunity to communicate in a trustless way. Through the protocol, enterprises have access to interoperable blockchains that can be customized, while in the meantime, they can become interoperable with the existing networks.\n\nThere are two infrastructure levels in Polkadot that allow businesses to leverage interoperable blockchains. The first is the Relay chain, Polkadot’s main network, system core, and mediator. On the second level are parachains, which are independent blockchains that can be customized by developers and businesses. Parachains are built using one standard, so they are easy to set up, and the entry barrier is relatively low.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmduMAX5kjAxrPXRJfh3mxEJNTr8gFpmjB5NFZQNPU2VNd/image.png)\n\n[Bridges](https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/learn-bridges) are the third level of infrastructure that allow Polkadot to communicate with established networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Currently, this technology is being tested as a way to swap coins between these chains in a trustless manner.\n\n## Cosmos\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmchHmcnC3Lr4kzQZhMSdRfrpUBmHGPNjhbEb37NnAE1s6/image.png)\n\nCosmos is an environment of independent blockchains running in parallel, which is quite close to what Polkadot is. The Cosmos platform enables custom blockchain development, and its primary goal is to build a network of blockchains that are easily interoperable.\n\nToday, to build a decentralized application on Ethereum, for instance, you would have to develop a smart contract that was designed to cover many use cases, meaning that such an approach is inflexible. Cosmos SDK allows you to build an application-specific, customizable blockchain.\n\nMoreover, a Cosmos-based blockchain boasts sovereignty, one of the key concepts in Cosmos — it operates with its own set of validators, which makes it independent from the Cosmos mainnet. All blockchains built on Cosmos can interoperate with the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC).\n\n## Chainlink\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcvQvz867jqZ1Fvw6NfqYAeMR7VFi9NzPtkJAKGhpeu8P/image.png)\n\nChainlink is a protocol that brings off-chain data on the blockchain — something that is in a high demand in the crypto world. It uses a network of oracles to retrieve data from off-chain APIs and route it to smart contracts, thus creating a bridge between the on-chain and off-chain worlds (which is also important to the blockchain 3.0 philosophy). Google, SWIFT, and Oracle are among Chainlink’s partners.\n\nChainlink [introduced](https://twitter.com/SergeyNazarov/status/1425238273329401859) the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol ([CCIP](https://chain.link/solutions/cross-chain)) in August 2021, which allows smart contracts from different blockchain platforms to communicate and exchange data. It enabled decentralized messaging, data transfers, and token movements between blockchains. The release of these smart contracts will enable new use cases that were previously impossible, [according to](https://twitter.com/SergeyNazarov/status/1425238273329401859) Chainlink’s co-founder Sergey Nazarov.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPdfynh4SQAVbuUH3TTZyvEnnVVgHSN1RfrGivpAszrnB/image.png)\n\nCheck it out on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/SergeyNazarov/status/1425238273329401859)\n\n## Eventually, will all blockchains be interoperable?\n\nBlockchain interoperability remains in its infancy, despite the latest developments. Watching how Polkadot implements bridges between the largest blockchains and how Chainlinks’ CCIP works will give us a glimpse into the future of interoperability.\n\nIn the present context, it’s clear from the DOT price dynamics that the community is very enthusiastic about blockchain interoperability. The world as a whole is striving towards interconnection, even though we don’t yet have robust cross-chain bridges. We might even say blockchain interoperability is inevitable — and it may be implemented through solutions we’ve never thought of yet.",
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{
  "trx_id": "478cd25b036832e19e75aea616935c26a36e69af",
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  "timestamp": "2021-11-24T18:34:33",
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    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "finance",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "tips-and-tools-to-calculate-your-crypto-profits",
      "title": "Tips and Tools to Calculate Your Crypto Profits",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcx6bNhdzhmNScY1JyPgmFVs79bPBGFm9futgJqSzRxJK/image.png)\n\nWhen you sell your cryptocurrency at a higher rate than you’ve bought it, it’s not always clear how much money you’ve gained. There are a lot of numbers to keep in mind, and some investors ignore them. However, being aware of the exact amount you’ve earned will help you make your financial planning more precise and improve your profit-making strategies. Let’s see how you can do this.\n\n## Calculating Crypto Profits: First Steps and Fees\n\n## Calculating rates\n\nLet’s say you bought Bitcoin at $40,000 and sold it for $60,000. Your Gross profit will be $20,000, but do things look that simple in real life?\n\nOften you wouldn’t want to sell the whole stash of crypto that you’ve bought before. In this case, you’ll have to keep in mind what fraction of a coin you are selling and compare its current price to the one it was when you purchased the crypto. To keep all these numbers at hand, you might want to run an Excel spreadsheet. Some exchanges provide tools for such calculations, but if you keep your money on non-custodial wallets, you’ll definitely need a handy third-party tool to count your profits.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPVexC2exV7UBVpAmphJ45YpQZRhouxFWofiy7Kvo18EG/image.png)\n\n## Taking fees into account\n\nWhen you sell your crypto, a part of your profits will be spent on fees, and this is another thing to consider. In some cases, they are negligible or low:\n\n* In centralized exchanges like Binance, a trading fee is just 0.1% and lower. However, CEXes are not the best place to store your money, especially in the long-term: there, you don’t own private keys from your crypto, and the exchange can limit access to your coins at any time due to maintenance, a hacker attack, etc.\n* In case you trade from a non-custodial wallet, you’ll have to pay a transaction fee to the blockchain of the coin you are selling. Some cryptocurrencies charge very low transaction fees: in Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, or Solana they are always below $1 and sometimes even less than a cent.\n* The less often you sell your crypto, the lower fees you pay. This is especially the case for coins with high network fees. For BTC, they can reach $10-$30 or even more. Generally, you wouldn’t want to pay so much for small-sized transactions.\n\nFees are higher in non-custodial wallets when you trade on decentralized exchanges or exchange services like [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/). DEXes are very handy but they only allow trading assets based on Ethereum, which doesn’t work for everyone. In the case of ChangeNOW, fees are usually between 0.5% and 3%, and we allow users to trade assets from different blockchains. ChangeNOW partners with the best liquidity providers so we can pick the best rate at the moment of the exchange.\n\n## Why higher fees?\n\nIt’s important to keep in mind what you get for fees higher than on centralized exchanges. There’s an opportunity to trade right from your wallet, meaning that you never pass control over your crypto to anyone else. At ChangeNOW, we always calculate all fees in advance and include them in the estimated rate so that you can receive the amount as close to the estimated one as possible. We charge no hidden fees, so you can rely on this sum.\n\n## Interim summary\n\nGetting back to the topic of this article, it’s crucial to keep in mind what fees you pay while selling your crypto. You can calculate that in your Excel spreadsheet by measuring the difference between the average market price of a given coin (shown on CoinMarketCap) and the price that we offer at ChangeNOW (the estimated [exchange rate](https://changenow.io/)). In general, our fees are between 0.5% and 3%. However, they can go higher during periods of congestion on Bitcoin or Ethereum networks and if there’re high network fees (included in our estimated rate) of tens of dollars.\n\n## Crypto Profit Calculators\n\n## For traders\n\nIf you don’t only sell your cryptocurrency when it grows once in a month or so but also trade on daily and weekly price fluctuations, it might be a good idea to use a calculator like [Sabe](https://sabe.io/tools/cryptocurrency-profit-calculator) or [this one](https://btc.feh.im/).\n\n## When selling for fiat\n\nIf you want to sell your coins for fiat money, it will be convenient to calculate rates using the [CoinMarketCap calculator](https://coinmarketcap.com/converter/) or [Currexy](https://www.currexy.com/cryptocurrency/converter). Fees for fiat operations are generally higher than for crypto-to-crypto swaps. For instance, one of our fiat providers Simplex charges a 5% fee. However, we display all the figures in advance so you can decide whether you want to make a trade. Keep in mind that if you are selling crypto for a local currency, there is probably going to be an exchange of USD for that currency, and the rate might be slightly different than the one set by your national central bank.\n\n## For miners\n\nMining is a great way to make profits, however, as with anything else in crypto, it involves some risk-taking. To start mining, you’d need to put in a considerable investment before it starts bringing you money. We wrote about this in our article on the [basics of mining](https://medium.com/the-capital/the-basics-of-crypto-mining-81217185cb1e) and [Bitcoin pools review](https://changenow-io.medium.com/bitcoin-mining-pools-101-5beb713b68f1). You may need to invest from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending on the coin you choose to mine. You also need to consider additional cost factors like buying additional equipment, [maintenance](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336), repair, electricity costs and so on.\n\nSuch handy calculators as [BTC.com](https://btc.com/tools/mining-calculator) mining calculator, or [CryptoCompare Calculator](https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/btc?HashingPower=70&HashingUnit=TH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=1500&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1) will help you take into account many factors while calculating your mining profitability. You can set your local electricity price, hardware expenses, the price of the coin that you mine, and many other factors.\n\n## Calculating Taxes on Crypto Profits\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaHAA56BWFvKmsu5tirwHHR72YKVaCWFqNMeyKZH21tGZ/image.png)\n\nProfits from mining, trading and investing are all forms of income for which in most countries you have to pay taxes. First, you need to understand what exact action you are taking in terms of taxation and what will be a taxable event in your jurisdiction. For instance, holding appreciating Bitcoin in your wallet and swapping it to USDT is not taxable in the United States. Meanwhile, profits are taxed whenever they are gained via BTC-to-fiat transactions.\n\nIn each case, a special tax scale may be applied, so you can understand how much tax you have to pay step-by-step.\n\nHere’s our [article on crypto taxation](https://changenow-io.medium.com/crypto-taxes-in-2021-what-should-you-know-d965d272c893) that will help you understand the subject better. However, the best idea here would be consulting with a specialist — laws are unique for every country and change fast, so there are many nuances that we may have not shed light on. To calculate your tax expenses, use the [Cryptotax](https://cryptotaxcalculator.io/uk/) calculator.\n\nWe hope this article has helped you understand how to calculate your crypto profits taking into account fees, taxes, and using special calculators or even an Excel spreadsheet. There might arise some difficulties with the latter, however, if you like customization, you can make it as close as possible to your needs. Good luck with your crypto earnings!",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"finance\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcx6bNhdzhmNScY1JyPgmFVs79bPBGFm9futgJqSzRxJK/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPVexC2exV7UBVpAmphJ45YpQZRhouxFWofiy7Kvo18EG/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaHAA56BWFvKmsu5tirwHHR72YKVaCWFqNMeyKZH21tGZ/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://changenow.io/\",\"https://sabe.io/tools/cryptocurrency-profit-calculator\",\"https://btc.feh.im/\",\"https://coinmarketcap.com/converter/\",\"https://www.currexy.com/cryptocurrency/converter\",\"https://medium.com/the-capital/the-basics-of-crypto-mining-81217185cb1e\",\"https://changenow-io.medium.com/bitcoin-mining-pools-101-5beb713b68f1\",\"https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336\",\"https://btc.com/tools/mining-calculator\",\"https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/btc?HashingPower=70&HashingUnit=TH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=1500&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1\",\"https://changenow-io.medium.com/crypto-taxes-in-2021-what-should-you-know-d965d272c893\",\"https://cryptotaxcalculator.io/uk/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "9a44b0309520157fff9a96a46a1596ac8f3d8f4d",
  "block": 59281406,
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    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "cryptocurrency",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "top-10-cryptocurrencies-a-brief-intro",
      "title": "Top 10 Cryptocurrencies: A Brief Intro",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNcGhauLckFFqzdzpr6EThVn6Ki2N8kQ8vJhFMavpQnX3/image.png)\n\nIf you’re new to crypto or you would simply like to refresh your knowledge about the Top 10 cryptocurrencies, this article is for you. Since the featured list changes constantly, it provides an accurate picture of the current state of the crypto market. Here’re the Top 10 cryptos as of early November 2021:\n\n**Bitcoin** — the first-ever cryptocurrency that has never given up its leading position.\n**Ethereum, Binance Coin, and Solana** — three decentralized computing environments that power decentralized finance and other domains of the crypto economy.\n**Tether and USD Coin** — stablecoins, dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies that always cost about $1 each and are chosen by investors who seek to maintain volatility-resistant stability.\n**Cardano and Polkadot** — platforms built by former Ethereum co-founders to advance blockchain’s use cases.\n**Ripple** — a system facilitating cross-border payments for banks.\n**Dogecoin** — a meme cryptocurrency that went beyond being simply a joke.\n\nLet’s take a closer look at each.\n\n## 1. Bitcoin (BTC)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQ3Pwqa32jcBYRwpEC3mLvPtj8kvFou665pqt63JaNEjn/image.png)\n\n**Price: $65,078**\n\n**Market cap: $1.22T**\n\nBitcoin was launched in 2009 by a pseudonymous programmer (or a group of programmers) Satoshi Nakamoto who remains unknown to this date. The developer was aiming to introduce a brand new concept of money: electronic peer-to-peer cash that people would truly own unlike regular fiat money.\n\nAs envisioned by Nakamoto, cryptocurrency would become a form of money beyond the control of any bank or government, so that no one cannot suspend a transaction or freeze a wallet. He accomplished this by building cryptocurrency on the blockchain, a decentralized database and a value exchange protocol that is run by thousands of nodes worldwide, and no one single node is in full control of the network.\n\nBesides the immutability, transparency, and security of such a system, there’s one more important concept. It’s Bitcoin scarcity: the protocol says there will ever exist no more than 21 million BTC. With this rule, Nakamoto wanted to protect cryptocurrency from inflation — while governments can print trillions of dollars at their will, no one can “print” extra Bitcoin: new coins are mined according to a pre-set rule known to everyone. This makes the system more predictable than national economies.\n\nToday, the main Bitcoin use cases include long-term investment (HODLing), trading, and paying for goods and services online.\n\n## 2. Ethereum (ETH)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZrrFRwx9EeuxSbNLKHDgXm3oumyNJdGrPtWUVdcbciYT/image.png)\n\n**Price: $4,728**\n\n**Market cap: $558B**\n\nThe second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum was launched by a Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin in 2015. He realized that Bitcoin’s functionality could be greatly expanded by incorporating smart contracts: self-executing contracts written in code that would drive trustless economic relations between parties who previously didn’t know each other. After his proposal was rejected, Vitalik decided to launch his own platform — Ethereum.\n\nIn this network, developers and entrepreneurs can run decentralized applications — apps that look like regular ones but their backend runs on the blockchain. These apps have their inner economy that is based on their native tokens; Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s main cryptocurrency, fuels all transactions on this blockchain.\n\nAmong such decentralized applications, there are borrowing and lending services that make the DeFi economy (MakerDAO, Compound), decentralized exchanges for Ethereum-based tokens (Uniswap), games (Axie Infinity, Decentraland), and NFT marketplaces (Opensea, Rarible).\n\nOpenness to developers, good decentralization, and a clear roadmap have helped Ethereum gain trust among thousands of crypto users. Its current transition to [Ethereum 2.0](https://changenow.io/blog/ethereum-2-0) will make the network faster, cheaper, and a few dozen times more efficient.\n\n## 3. Binance Coin (BNB)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmU3fY12hm4S42CPigSZECaYUAoecfQ1kkWDWbQG2eJFV5/image.png)\n\n**Price: $625**\n\n**Market cap: $104.3B**\n\nBinance Coin fuels the huge Binance ecosystem, including one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, a public blockchain for building decentralized applications (Binance Smart Chain — BSC), another blockchain (Binance Chain), and a dozen other products. Binance has attracted millions of users due to its user-friendly interface, openness to new projects, and low fees.\n\nBinance Coin (BNB) allows users to pay for all transactions and trades in the Binance exchange and BSC. Following the rise of these services, BNB shot to the top of the Top 10 cryptocurrency list as well.\n\n## 4. Cardano (ADA)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcS3XcE8prmed2hLctLrLh7YxqiRB7Ype2H7ttGcL4U7P/image.png)\n\n**Price: $2.08**\n\n**Market cap: $69.2B**\n\nEthereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson pointed out some critical flaws of the second-largest cryptocurrency during his time at the company in 2015: it ran on an inefficient Proof of Work consensus, was vulnerable to security attacks and centralization risks, and had a low throughput and unpredictable fee structure.\n\nSo Cardano was born: a cryptocurrency whose blockchain’s security would be scientifically proven and in which a Proof of Stake system would allow low fees and high scalability.\n\nCardano boasts of a strong roadmap, and in 2021, the coin skyrocketed since it has implemented a few robust milestones of its plan. The network was enriched with smart contracts functionality, the possibility to run dApps, launch new tokens, and mint NFTs. Cardano’s enthusiastic community supports the rapid coin’s growth.\n\n## 5. Solana (SOL)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQc1xuPN1drW7WvBqFAkRpLehpKbP5WcuYA8emUpkAi4j/image.png)\n\n**Price: $238.05**\n\n**Market cap: $72.3B**\n\nSolana is somewhat similar to Ethereum and Cardano — it is also a network for running dApps that seeks to become home to the developing sectors of the crypto economy such as DeFi and others. Solana’s killer feature is that it was built on a PoS protocol that shows outstanding numbers compared to its competitors, offering at least [2,000](https://explorer.solana.com/) transactions per second (unlike 15–20 in Ethereum and ~250 in Cardano), fees of less than a dollar, and a block time of the whopping 400 milliseconds.\n\nSolana was launched in 2020, started 2021 at $1.79, and went all the way up to blazing $215, meaning it has made 126X this year so far. With Solana’s ambitions to bring 1 billion users into crypto, this number may grow even more.\n\n## 6. Tether (USDT)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeqz5rwnPZjExnuWUERJ81zcp6Ad8jCPo3okp6nWCYZqA/image.png)\n\n**Price: $1.00**\n\n**Market cap: $73.8B**\n\nLet’s say you are trading Bitcoin. After it has significantly grown in value, you would like to take profit and sell your BTC — but for what asset? Other cryptocurrencies are also volatile, and you are never safe from losing money without a stablecoin.\n\nStablecoins like Tether solve this problem. This asset’s price is pegged to the US Dollar, meaning that 1 Tether (USDT) always costs $1. This token exists on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Tron, and other blockchains. Whenever you feel like you want to stay where you are in terms of value in your trading, you can exchange your cryptocurrency for Tether. Traders do this both when they want to lock in profits and prevent their portfolio from losing value in case a given asset is plummeting.\n\n## 7. Ripple (XRP)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRVXtfSm1L6RwvA6BvL1m3H65zn9vbZrk27Css5YtVxb2/image.png)\n\n**Price: $1.21**\n\n**Market cap: $56.9B**\n\nRipple is not a typical cryptocurrency in the way that it works directly with banks, which some perceive even as a violation of the philosophy of cryptocurrency. However, XRP has been in the Top 10 for quite a while so far, which proves its value. Ripple powers cross-border fiat payments, allowing banks to get rid of multiple intermediaries, reduce wire transfer times, and cut fees.\n\nXRP has grown fivefold during 2021, which is a great result, though it may not look as brilliant compared to some other cryptocurrencies. One of the limitations for Ripple’s growth may be its continuing legal proceedings with the SEC. This is a reason why many consider it undervalued. If (and when) this issue is resolved, we may see the further growth of XRP.\n\n## 8. Polkadot (DOT)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQma99zpsXSoXcgu3yfXyZCi9AP6d2nzKGLnB65dyEjfGLB/image.png)\n\n**Price: $47.8**\n\n**Market cap: $47.2B**\n\nPolkadot focuses on blockchain interoperability: the central topic in building Web 3.0, decentralized internet that wins the hearts and minds of today’s crypto enthusiasts. Its core idea is uniting different blockchains: for instance, Bitcoin and Ethereum networks still cannot exchange value and data, whereas making such cross-chain swaps possible would provide another incentive to cryptocurrency adoption.\n\nPolkadot has another important use case: businesses can use the platform to build customizable blockchains that would interoperate through the Polkadot mainnet. This is one of the interoperability aspects that is viewed as the future of crypto. The topic’s relevance is supported by the DOT price dynamic: the coin has grown more than sixfold in the last 10 months.\n\n## 9. Dogecoin (DOGE)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQma9nsfoEEJdj4wYRfcyUy4oGAMP12EhtNR1YKTjTetTdx/image.png)\n\n**Price: $0.26**\n\n**Market cap: $35B**\n\nDogecoin has been the first one in a large cohort of doge meme coins popular today. Launched just as a joke, it didn’t pursue the goal to enter the Top 10. Although the “DOGE for $1” slogan was more of a joke to many, it doesn’t seem anything unrealistic anymore.\n\nDOGE is a fork of Litecoin, so the coins are in some way similar: Dogecoin works on the PoW consensus, with its block time of around 1 minute, and fees being less than $1. An incredibly enthusiastic community of DOGE has driven its growth, but until today, the coin remains quite a volatile and pretty risky investment.\n\n## 10. USD Coin (USDC)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdXyrxKFWj21AMTXK7PuwHUuFyAy2zCTAnthxRHPrwUrh/image.png)\n\n**Price: $1**\n\n**Market cap: $34.4B**\n\nWhy should there be another stablecoin, if there is Tether? USDT is widely used by crypto enthusiasts, but it has a serious shortcoming: it lacks transparency. Audits are not frequent enough, and there are doubts if USDT tokens are really backed 1:1 to assets from the fiat world as stated.\n\nMeanwhile, USD Coin is a stablecoin offering more transparency. It is fully backed 1:1 by US Dollars, and the Grant Thornton LLP accounting firm verifies that in its monthly audits. Ethereum is not the only chain USDC is running on: the token is also available on Stellar and Solana.\n\n## Final Word\n\nThese were the 10 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. Although there are projects worth tens and hundreds of billions of dollars on this list, it keeps changing almost every month. Keep abreast of our most up-to-date reviews of the top coins and learn what the deal with [Solana](https://medium.com/coinmonks/whats-the-deal-with-solana-a-guide-into-the-skyrocketing-cryptocurrency-5f5dbaf68d94) is or how [Polkadot](https://changenow-io.medium.com/is-polkadot-the-future-of-a-decentralized-internet-71e81266abfe) is revolutionizing blockchain interoperability.",
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      "memo": "Hi @changenow. Would you like to earn solid (115k SP) upvote on your latest post from @project.hope? Check out our recent post for more details. And hopefully you will find this publication worth your time and attention. We're explaining our community economy \"business model\", hoping that more people will join our efforts in the future. // LINk: https://steemit.com/hive-175254/@project.hope/project-hope-economy-explained-2021"
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "mining",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "want-to-quit-mining-here-s-how-to-sell-hardware-and-avoid-losing-your-money",
      "title": "Want to Quit Mining? Here’s How to Sell Hardware and Avoid Losing Your Money",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmecLCG2JwmQ4xJZsbQnvMHx2jZjHM2y8SAVJ4r22W8FnK/image.png)\n\nIn recent weeks, we’ve published a series of articles on mining: [what it is and how to start it](https://medium.com/the-capital/the-basics-of-crypto-mining-81217185cb1e), [how mining pools work](https://changenow-io.medium.com/bitcoin-mining-pools-101-5beb713b68f1), and [how to maintain a mining farm](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336). However, there is another relevant topic we would like to share with you. Sometimes miners decide to quit mining, so they want to sell their graphics cards at a good price. In this article, you will learn how to sell your mining hardware to get the greatest possible benefits and avoid financial losses.\n\n## Signs It’s Time to Sell Your Mining Hardware\n\nAny miner would want their graphics card to serve as long as possible and bring mining profits, but selling it for good money after it’s out of service is impossible. What’s the best time to sell it, then? Experts say that the average graphics card’s lifespan is around 3 years. It depends on several factors, such as overclocking, cooling, etc. And of course, the manufacturer plays a significant role. After three years of use, fans stop working, thermal paste has to be replaced, and chips become obsolete. Thus, the best time to sell your graphics card is when it still works and remains useful for the buyer. Especially as it’s possible to sell the whole hardware, not by parts.\n\n## Selling the Whole Mining Rig at Once\n\nWith this option, you don’t have to take apart your rig, you spend less time negotiating with buyers, and you save on advertising costs. Graphics cards are always in demand: some use them for mining farms, while the others assemble gaming computers with them. In the latter case, preserved packaging will be your advantage since gamers usually ask for component boxes. Also, it’s better to save your motherboard backplate that is usually removed while assembling a rig. You’re better off keeping it in place as buyers may need it to build a gaming PC.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdk5ekiHFrzARzwJ7JQx5hHdXAwQByWcVtjWDLSLcmh5X/image.png)\n\nDon’t forget to wipe all personal data, mining configurations, and all commercial Linux distribution settings of your hard drive. Simple formatting is usually not enough since it preserves the possibility of deleted data recovery. To make sure it’s impossible to restore your data, use free software like [**Secure Erase**](https://partedmagic.com/secure-erase/) that is available for SSD and HDD.\n\n## Selling Graphics Cards Apart\n\nThis way may be more profitable since standalone components usually cost more. However, this method has its shortcomings — you will spend more time searching for buyers, while some of the details may be out of demand (like small data storage units, low-performance processors, housings, and PSU synchronizers). Having the original VBIOS restored beforehand would ensure that the chips will work properly for gamers — without this, non-standard timings and low voltages may lead to games failing.\n\n## What’s the Graphics Card Service Time After It Has Operated For Years at Full Capacity?\n\nAs mentioned above, a graphics card is most effective when used for three years. If a chip has been properly maintained, its service shouldn’t be a problem. If it has worked for 3 years and is now being purchased by a gamer, that doesn’t mean it will fail in the near future. Most likely, it will serve well for a few more years.\n\nThere are two critical factors that can damage graphics cards — the chip soldering failure and sharp temperature changes. This happens when you turn off mining and the graphics card quickly cools down from 80°C to 30°C. In the same way, if a gamer launches a game that requires excessive processing power, the system will rapidly heat up. However, modern graphics cards allow for thousands of such heat-cool cycles without any harmful consequences. Moreover, if you constantly mine and don’t suspend the process too often, your chips will be safer than if you’d frequently turn mining off.\n\n## Recognizing Graphics Card Problems in Advance\n\nThe first symptoms of graphics card problems may not be visible, but the good news is that you can monitor the miner’s work and detect all issues in a timely manner.\n\nMost often, problems start with the cooling system and the memory rather than with the chip itself. Fans are [easy to maintain](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336) and change, but chips or memory require more investment. If a GPU breaks, you’ll have to re-solder chips, which needs special equipment and skills. However, you can learn about the problems in advance by monitoring the number of errors in the mining process. If you mine on Hive OS, errors will be displayed in red in the video card string as well as be shown in the mining software logs.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUmPGxtrq7aCFasNbeqGK9Q9xNLHPEYnUMtrQijQEKbUW/image.png)\n\nAs for errors, if there are fewer than 30–40 a day, they won’t affect mining much, so there’s no need to worry. If the number of errors is steadily growing, this is the reason to start taking action. First, turn down overclocking: for instance, decrease memory frequency from 2,100 to 2,050 MHz. In any case, these errors point to memory wearing, not a chip breakage — so the video card is still good for gaming. To make it serve well for gamers, restore the original VBIOS and run a few tests (3DMark benchmark, for example). If you don’t see artifacts (vertical lines or squares), a gamer will be able to use the chip for a few more years.\n\n## When Is the Best Moment to Sell?\n\nWhatever the performance of the graphics card may be after years of use, its price will be much lower than the one you bought it for. It is likely that you will sell a chip at around 20% of its original price, if you bought it at a price peak. For example, a rig made up of 7 video cards RX 470 4 Gb bought in 2018 for $3,000 can be sold only for $500–600 in 2021. The price decline of such cards is not something you should worry about — during their lifetime, they will pay for themselves several times over.\n\nNow, here’s a tip on selling your video cards. The demand grows as Bitcoin goes up, and so does their price. When the first cryptocurrency is about to set new records, it is the perfect time to check the prices and possibly sell your equipment. There’s a strong correlation between Bitcoin’s and graphics cards’ prices: when Bitcoin plunged to $3,400 in March 2020, the demand for GPUs was at its lowest. When crypto started to grow again in late 2020, even rigs with 4 GB video cards sold well. If you are about to sell your chips, keep track of the market situation — a bullish mood will help you get more money for the same bargain.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\nWe hope this guide has provided you with a better understanding of what to keep in mind while selling your graphics cards if you decided to give up mining. The key takeaways are the following:\n\n* Don’t throw away any graphics card components while setting it up as a rig.\n* Keep track of its memory performance and cooling system.\n* Try to turn off the mining process less often to preserve your chips.\n\nWhile GPUs can serve for many years if they are properly maintained, their optimal period of use is 3 years. Sell your graphics card when the crypto market is booming. There is greater demand for mining software, and you are more likely to make a profit.",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "holo",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "best-holo-hot-wallets-in-2021",
      "title": "Best Holo (HOT) Wallets in 2021",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaY7ZR83oLJYUpWi4B2yNJiUjRRKwwJ1GuJyuuDHuCKWR/image.png)\n\nHolo aims to change the way we use applications on the internet. Today’s apps depend on corporations’ central servers that act non-transparently and don’t allow users to own their data. Holo introduced the way to make apps decentralized: instead of a common solution of putting them on the blockchain (like in Ethereum), the platform makes apps peer-to-peer. Every app has its own dedicated P2P network of users whose devices host this app: the users are not only consumers but active participants who ensure the proper functioning of the network. Hosts get rewarded, while the rest of the members can simply enjoy the security and speed of an hApp.\n\nUnlike its name may suggest, Holochain is not a blockchain. Rather, it’s a programming framework for building decentralized apps as described above. Holo’s native asset, the Holo (HOT) token, is an ERC-20 token that runs on the Ethereum network.\n\nIf you have a bullish prediction for HOT, this article is for you: we will help you choose a crypto wallet to store your tokens. We will introduce you to three different wallets that serve best for various use cases and explain which one may be the best for you and why.\n\n## [Atomic Wallet](http://atomicwallet.io/) — for accessibility\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmR5E6qtbSBZfi3aBPRj21YTt7KyPeRJoESa7rPMPqDtPg/image.png)\n\nIf you have other crypto assets besides Holo and want to store the entire portfolio in one place, consider using Atomic. This wallet allows holding over 500 different crypto coins including HOT and is available for all major desktop and mobile operating systems. As a decentralized (non-custodial) wallet, Atomic stores private keys from your crypto locally on your device, and even developers have no access to them, meaning that no one but you have control over your HOT (unlike centralized exchanges like Binance that can limit your access to funds at any time). A built-in exchange tool powered by [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot) allows you to swap cryptos to and from Holo instantly at low fees; also, you can buy HOLO with your credit card right inside Atomic Wallet.\n\n## [MetaMask](https://metamask.io/) — for flexibility\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXSZA83hrZUcJZLPA6Tbhsc3Wy6DYncEbWxroQDCbLdPX/image.png)\n\nMetaMask is a wallet designed for storing tokens from public chains like Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain. The wallet is available for iOS, Android, and as a Chrome extension. MetaMask works well for HOT and other ERC-20 assets, but you won’t be able to store other crypto coins there. However, if you want to actively trade your Holo against other tokens on Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges, MetaMask is the best solution as it is fully integrated into the Eth ecosystem.\n\n## [Ledger Nano](https://shop.ledger.com/products/ledger-nano-s) — for security\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmf2MGxUbRnjHXFQjjXnrP13d4nwaEnux8nGNCJYfrNrJT/image.png)\n\nWe don’t want to say other wallets are insecure, but when you store your private keys on a device disconnected from the internet, this automatically makes them more resistant to hackers. Ledger Nano S allows storing 1100+ digital assets, sending and exchanging them. To send your HOT and other tokens, you’ll have to connect your Ledger to a PC via cable or to a mobile phone via Bluetooth. Ledger Nano S is a great solution for long-term storage free from worries about the safety of your funds.\n\nLedger is a great renowned wallet, but the company seems to have had some shipping issues lately. When ordering, make sure your area will be easily accessible to the post services that Ledger uses.\n\n## Summary\n\nIf you are planning to add Holo (HOT) to your portfolio, think of how exactly you are going to use the token. If you want to store it together with your other cryptocurrencies in an easy-to-access way, download [Atomic Wallet](http://atomicwallet.io/). If you want to easily swap HOT within the Ethereum ecosystem, get [MetaMask](https://metamask.io/). If security is your top priority, buy [Ledger Nano S](https://shop.ledger.com/products/ledger-nano-s).\n\nAnd remember that you can always buy Holo (HOT) and other 270+ cryptocurrencies on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot) instantly and without registration.",
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  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "hot",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "holo-hot-review-in-2021",
      "title": "Holo (HOT) Review in 2021",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZjJBQMT2kQCh1MWKAdokDQDLuQEPfMR6thDxwhjF5vdf/image.png)\n\nHolo is a peer-to-peer platform for hosting decentralized applications. By implementing a so-called ‘agent-centric’ approach, Holo apps turn users from passive consumers to their active participants, enabling them to store and control the app data on their local devices, being part of the application’s peer-to-peer network.\n\nHOLO is the native asset of the platform that is also convertible to HoloFuel — a cryptocurrency backed by digital assets that powers the processing, computation, and storage in Holochain. The project was launched in 2017 with the goal to bridge cryptocurrency with mainstream real-world applications. Now, let’s take a closer look at Holo.\n\n## What Is Holo?\n\nHolo was first introduced in an ICO in 2017. Its main goal was building a peer-to-peer distributed platform for hosting decentralized applications on Holochain. The latter is a framework for building fully decentralized peer-to-peer apps.\n\nHolo is aiming to redefine the interaction of users with applications. On the internet as we know it, most apps run on centralized servers. Holochain apps, instead of being dependent on servers, connect user devices in a secure peer-to-peer network. All software including the back end of an application is installed locally on a device, and developers don’t have to pay for cloud hosting — this is what Holo calls the agent-centric approach.\n\n**Agent-centric approach**. Holochain puts users in the center of the computing experience. Apps are stored on your device, allowing you to create self-owned identities and data. Open programming interfaces ensure you always have access to data in the app network.\n\n**Encrypted peer-to-peer network**. Every Holochain app (hApp) creates its own encrypted peer-to-peer network between you and the other users, and you are in full control over your communications.\n\n**Mutual accountability** ensures online safety. Any piece of data can be traced back to its creator, and every user helps enforce shared application rules.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZV3x8HhXfgZHK4eAk43cDakaCngZK2owZSUkB36JCjHi/image.png)\n\n## What Is the Team Behind Holo?\n\nHolo co-founders are Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun — two serial entrepreneurs based in Gibraltar. Their team consists of 22 professional developers and managers who describe themselves as “a community of passionate humans building a distributed cloud, owned and run by users like you and me.” Holo team members have participated in developing numerous cryptocurrencies, which has given them enough experience to try disrupting the $400-billion cloud hosting sector.\n\n## Holo Roadmap\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmew2uamyQHzTC2VxZhTYya9rJeNSE8jGi2ANqrtq793i2/image.png)\n\nHolo has a robust long-term vision: the team aims to make P2P apps mainstream, and the first step on this journey is building a marketplace for such apps. Think of it as a decentralized Google Play or App Store that is spread between users’ devices.\n\nAs of October 2021, Holo has laid the basis, carried out the first HoloFuel tests, and launched Elemental Chat — a proof-of-concept app that represents a successful end-to-end infrastructure test of the Holo Hosting network. Currently, Holo is in Alpha testing and is supposed to turn to Beta in 2022.\n\n## Holo (HOT) Network\n\nHolo aims to become an “Airbnb of apps” — something similar to what the service became for landlords. A multi-billion app market is well-established, though Holo believes a decentralized vision can disrupt it. With Holo, anyone with a computer will be able to become an application host (a full-node operator of the peer-to-peer network of a particular hApp) and earn rewards in the HoloFuel token.\n\nThat way, every hApp has its own P2P network, and all these networks are closely connected to Holochain — an open-source blockchain where developers and businesses can build these networks, and Holochain will secure their functioning. When a computer becomes a host in a network, it starts acting as cloud-based storage for that application and can take as much as its free disk space allows.\n\nHolo-based P2P app networks are built in the Distributed Hash Table (DHT) technology that eliminates the need for Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) with a database (ledger) to which all nodes must be connected. Instead, Holo implemented “individual source chains’’ and independent node sufficiency. Nodes are validated against each other and checked against their neighbors — in DHT, there is no Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, and other traditional consensus algorithms.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbqGGqR6bkt1g73xea8fMFJ8uqXwv14SXuRkYJogkubzB/image.png)\n\nCompared to Amazon Web Services and other cloud storage providers, an hApp is distributed across multiple hosts that get rewarded in HoloFuel for their work. This is not a regular cryptocurrency — it doesn’t have a ticker and a page on Coinmarketcap. HoloFuel is the internal micro-currency that powers the Holo hosting network, and its primary use is for app publishers to pay Holo hosts for their services. Several mechanisms ensure that HoloFuel is flexible enough and that its value is stable and predictable — to avoid the risk of “pump and dump” schemes inherent to regular crypto tokens that may cause severe price fluctuations.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmV8opoiVe9qWU9c6CN8ZqCJfnD6i1dSeUsVaSNVERQa8s/image.png)\n\n## Holo (HOT) Value Data\n\nThe current Holo (HOT) price is $0.0092, which is 29% of its $0.03157 all-time high reached on April 5, 2021. There are 172.90B HOT tokens in circulation, and the Holo market cap is $1.59 billion, which allows it to take the 70th position on the Coinmarketcap’s list.\n\n## Holo (HOT) Price Prediction\n\nThe future of the Holo price will depend on how its Alpha testing goes and how the token passes on to Beta. The next few months and 2022 will define the long-term price movement of HOT.\n\nCoinpedia predicts Holo will reach $0.07 by the end of 2021 and will dangle between $0.05 and $0.1 in the next 5 years. Digital Coin Price platform expects HOT to hit $0.013 by late 2021, $0.0155 by 2022, and $0.031 by 2026. According to Wallet Investor, Holo will cost $0.0185 a year from now and $0.055 in 5 years. The platform ranks the token as an “awesome” 1-year investment.\n\n## Where Can I Buy Holo (HOT)?\n\nOn ChangeNOW, you can [buy HOT with other 270+ cryptocurrencies](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot) instantly without registration. All you need to do is set the currencies and the amounts, enter your recipient address, and send the money to the wallet provided. As a non-custodial service, we never store your funds, and all crypto swaps are anonymous: we don’t collect any private data and don’t ask you for KYC. The average swap time is under 5 minutes, and there are no hidden fees: all commissions are already included in the estimated rate that you can see in the [calculator](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot). On ChangeNOW, you can also buy HOT with a credit card in a few simple steps.\n\n## Holo Summary\n\nHolo is a project with an ambitious goal: it aims to disrupt the cloud hosting market by establishing a peer-to-peer app marketplace and making P2P apps mainstream. These apps based on the Distributed Hash Table are hosted by individual devices and do not rely on a central server. Any computer with some free disk space can become an hApp host and earn rewards in HoloFuel. Currently, the project is in Alpha, and its further testing and deployment in 2022 will hint at how the Holo token will perform in the long run. If you believe in the investment potential of Holo, feel free to buy HOT tokens on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot) without KYC, registration, and hidden fees.",
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      "parent_permlink": "hot",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "holo-hot-review-in-2021",
      "title": "Holo (HOT) Review in 2021",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZjJBQMT2kQCh1MWKAdokDQDLuQEPfMR6thDxwhjF5vdf/image.png)\n\nHolo is a peer-to-peer platform for hosting decentralized applications. By implementing a so-called ‘agent-centric’ approach, Holo apps turn users from passive consumers to their active participants, enabling them to store and control the app data on their local devices, being part of the application’s peer-to-peer network.\n\nHOLO is the native asset of the platform that is also convertible to HoloFuel — a cryptocurrency backed by digital assets that powers the processing, computation, and storage in Holochain. The project was launched in 2017 with the goal to bridge cryptocurrency with mainstream real-world applications. Now, let’s take a closer look at Holo.\n\n## What Is Holo?\n\nHolo was first introduced in an ICO in 2017. Its main goal was building a peer-to-peer distributed platform for hosting decentralized applications on Holochain. The latter is a framework for building fully decentralized peer-to-peer apps.\n\nHolo is aiming to redefine the interaction of users with applications. On the internet as we know it, most apps run on centralized servers. Holochain apps, instead of being dependent on servers, connect user devices in a secure peer-to-peer network. All software including the back end of an application is installed locally on a device, and developers don’t have to pay for cloud hosting — this is what Holo calls the agent-centric approach.\n\n**Agent-centric approach**. Holochain puts users in the center of the computing experience. Apps are stored on your device, allowing you to create self-owned identities and data. Open programming interfaces ensure you always have access to data in the app network.\n\n**Encrypted peer-to-peer network**. Every Holochain app (hApp) creates its own encrypted peer-to-peer network between you and the other users, and you are in full control over your communications.\n\n**Mutual accountability** ensures online safety. Any piece of data can be traced back to its creator, and every user helps enforce shared application rules.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZV3x8HhXfgZHK4eAk43cDakaCngZK2owZSUkB36JCjHi/image.png)\n\n## What Is the Team Behind Holo?\n\nHolo co-founders are Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun — two serial entrepreneurs based in Gibraltar. Their team consists of 22 professional developers and managers who describe themselves as “a community of passionate humans building a distributed cloud, owned and run by users like you and me.” Holo team members have participated in developing numerous cryptocurrencies, which has given them enough experience to try disrupting the $400-billion cloud hosting sector.\n\n## Holo Roadmap\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmew2uamyQHzTC2VxZhTYya9rJeNSE8jGi2ANqrtq793i2/image.png)\n\nHolo has a robust long-term vision: the team aims to make P2P apps mainstream, and the first step on this journey is building a marketplace for such apps. Think of it as a decentralized Google Play or App Store that is spread between users’ devices.\n\nAs of October 2021, Holo has laid the basis, carried out the first HoloFuel tests, and launched Elemental Chat — a proof-of-concept app that represents a successful end-to-end infrastructure test of the Holo Hosting network. Currently, Holo is in Alpha testing and is supposed to turn to Beta in 2022.\n\n## Holo (HOT) Network\n\nHolo aims to become an “Airbnb of apps” — something similar to what the service became for landlords. A multi-billion app market is well-established, though Holo believes a decentralized vision can disrupt it. With Holo, anyone with a computer will be able to become an application host (a full-node operator of the peer-to-peer network of a particular hApp) and earn rewards in the HoloFuel token.\n\nThat way, every hApp has its own P2P network, and all these networks are closely connected to Holochain — an open-source blockchain where developers and businesses can build these networks, and Holochain will secure their functioning. When a computer becomes a host in a network, it starts acting as cloud-based storage for that application and can take as much as its free disk space allows.\n\nHolo-based P2P app networks are built in the Distributed Hash Table (DHT) technology that eliminates the need for Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) with a database (ledger) to which all nodes must be connected. Instead, Holo implemented “individual source chains’’ and independent node sufficiency. Nodes are validated against each other and checked against their neighbors — in DHT, there is no Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, and other traditional consensus algorithms.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbqGGqR6bkt1g73xea8fMFJ8uqXwv14SXuRkYJogkubzB/image.png)\n\nCompared to Amazon Web Services and other cloud storage providers, an hApp is distributed across multiple hosts that get rewarded in HoloFuel for their work. This is not a regular cryptocurrency — it doesn’t have a ticker and a page on Coinmarketcap. HoloFuel is the internal micro-currency that powers the Holo hosting network, and its primary use is for app publishers to pay Holo hosts for their services. Several mechanisms ensure that HoloFuel is flexible enough and that its value is stable and predictable — to avoid the risk of “pump and dump” schemes inherent to regular crypto tokens that may cause severe price fluctuations.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmV8opoiVe9qWU9c6CN8ZqCJfnD6i1dSeUsVaSNVERQa8s/image.png)\n\n## Holo (HOT) Value Data\n\nThe current Holo (HOT) price is $0.0092, which is 29% of its $0.03157 all-time high reached on April 5, 2021. There are 172.90B HOT tokens in circulation, and the Holo market cap is $1.59 billion, which allows it to take the 70th position on the Coinmarketcap’s list.\n\n## Holo (HOT) Price Prediction\n\nThe future of the Holo price will depend on how its Alpha testing goes and how the token passes on to Beta. The next few months and 2022 will define the long-term price movement of HOT.\n\nCoinpedia predicts Holo will reach $0.07 by the end of 2021 and will dangle between $0.05 and $0.1 in the next 5 years. Digital Coin Price platform expects HOT to hit $0.013 by late 2021, $0.0155 by 2022, and $0.031 by 2026. According to Wallet Investor, Holo will cost $0.0185 a year from now and $0.055 in 5 years. The platform ranks the token as an “awesome” 1-year investment.\n\n## Where Can I Buy Holo (HOT)?\n\nOn ChangeNOW, you can [buy HOT with other 270+ cryptocurrencies](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot) instantly without registration. All you need to do is set the currencies and the amounts, enter your recipient address, and send the money to the wallet provided. As a non-custodial service, we never store your funds, and all crypto swaps are anonymous: we don’t collect any private data and don’t ask you for KYC. The average swap time is under 5 minutes, and there are no hidden fees: all commissions are already included in the estimated rate that you can see in the [calculator](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot). On ChangeNOW, you can also buy HOT with a credit card in a few simple steps.\n\n## Holo Summary\n\nHolo is a project with an ambitious goal: it aims to disrupt the cloud hosting market by establishing a peer-to-peer app marketplace and making P2P apps mainstream. These apps based on the Distributed Hash Table are hosted by individual devices and do not rely on a central server. Any computer with some free disk space can become an hApp host and earn rewards in HoloFuel. Currently, the project is in Alpha, and its further testing and deployment in 2022 will hint at how the Holo token will perform in the long run. If you believe in the investment potential of Holo, feel free to buy HOT tokens on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=hot) without KYC, registration, and hidden fees.",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "mining",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "bitcoin-mining-pools-101",
      "title": "Bitcoin Mining Pools 101",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNUJs2EPM2qk22UZmxpn1fMPKUMczBytuZCBYA6L4iqXp/image.png)\n\nBitcoin solo mining has become infeasible many years ago — for individual miners, it’s nearly impossible to concentrate enough hash power at their homes to be able to ever mine at least one block. But if you still want to mine Bitcoin, there is a solution — join a mining pool, a large group of miners who put their computing power together to compete for a mining reward. Whenever a pool mines a block, the reward is distributed proportionally across all participants of the group.\n\nRecently, we published an article on the basics of crypto mining: what’s worth taking in mind before you start, how to calculate profitability, what software and hardware there are, and so on. If you’re new to mining, we recommend you look into [that text first](https://medium.com/the-capital/the-basics-of-crypto-mining-81217185cb1e).\n\nIn the current article, we will cover how mining pools work, what their payout models are, and what large pools deserve your attention.\n\n## What Is Bitcoin Mining?\n\nIn Bitcoin mining, the latest transactions are put together into blocks, confirmed, and added to the blockchain, while miners are getting rewards for doing this. To get such a right, they have to find a proper block hash, which is a mathematical problem that needs gigantic computing power. The one who finds the valid hash first will receive a 6.25 BTC block reward and transaction fees paid by their senders.\n\n## Why Join a Bitcoin Mining Pool?\n\nSeparate miners organize into mining pools to merge their computing power and raise the chance of finding a proper hash. If they succeed to mine a block, the pool receives 6.25 BTC and distributes it across users proportionally according to their contribution. Although the reward is shared, the profit for miners in a pool is more predictable than in solo mining — a pool always has a good chance of mining a block and getting the reward, unlike individual miners.\n\nBut why does mining a block require so many resources? Bitcoin was built the way that mining difficulty correlates with the network size. In the earliest days of Bitcoin, when it was served by a small network of nodes, a few trials and errors were enough to find a valid block hash. But as the network grew, mining difficulty rose either, and today, mining a single block requires trillions of hashing trials. There is no other way to find a proper hash than trying to hash the block again and again, and that’s why equipment like ASICs emerged to optimize the computational process. However, even single powerful devices like ASICs can’t ensure necessary hashing speed, so miners started to group themselves into pools.\n\n## What Are the Payout Models in Crypto Mining Pools?\n\nMining pools apply different models of distributing rewards and transaction fees among their participants. They have different approaches to paying for shares — an array of hashing solutions that you as a miner submit to the pool. In all models, your reward will among other things depend on how many shares you’ve submitted.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZLZ5jCCMFofiWT67aFtareCfxCDPny349k5fdwPwpa3k/image.png)\n\n**Pay-Per-Share (PPS)**\n\nPPS pools pay you for shares as soon as you’ve contributed some — irrespective of whether the pool mines the block or not, so you’ll get rewarded in either case. This makes payouts in the PPS model predictable; however, it’s rarely used in Bitcoin mining.\n\n**Pay-Per-Last-N-Shares (PPLNS)**\n\nThe PPLNS model rewards miners only after a pool finds a block. After the block is mined, the pool looks back and rewards you for the number of shares that you’ve submitted. Payouts in this model are harder to predict: they can fluctuate by 30% for a share depending on how many blocks the pool has found in a given period. However, according to statistics, PPLNS is 5% more lucrative than the predictable PPS and FPPS in the long run.\n\n**Pay-Per-Share + (PPS+)**\n\nThis is a hybrid model of PPS and PPLNS: the block reward is paid like in PPS, whereas transaction fees are spread like in PPLNS. PPS+ works well if the mining pool is large enough and it finds blocks consistently.\n\n**FPPS (Full Pay Per Share)**\n\nThis mode calculates standard block rewards and transaction fees within a certain period of time and distributes them to the participants according to how much computing power they’ve contributed to the pool. FPPS is the most predictable model of payouts and is preferred by miners who don’t like to take too many risks.\n\n## Top 8 Mining Pools\n\nOn the BTC.com [Pool Stats page](https://btc.com/stats/pool?pool_mode=month), you can find the list of Bitcoin mining pools and the table of their performance. Here’s a chart showing the top pool distribution calculated blocks mined over the past 3 days (as of mid-October, 2021):\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdD1V2ZdpYnyFjnSBRQdofsNzvWCiiKRDnVYT151CfgeX/image.png)\n\n**1. [F2Pool](https://www.f2pool.com/) (18.1%)**\n\nF2Pool is holding its leadership despite China’s recent crackdown on Bitcoin pools that caused a mass migration of mining facilities from the country. Launched in 2013, this pool boasts a 25.7 EH/s hashrate which allows it to control 18% of the overall Bitcoin network 141.7 EH/s hashrate.\n\nThe light interface of F2Pool that is available in a few languages will fit well for beginner miners. The pool offers PPS+ payouts, so rewards are stable and predictable. F2Pool has established itself as a transparent and secure tool for miners.\n\n**2. [AntPool](https://antpool.com/) (17.2%)**\n\nLaunched in September 2016, AntPool is operated by Bitmain — the world’s largest Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer, the first one to introduce ASICs. This pool is easy to use, it allows you to choose between PPLNS and PPS payout systems. However, AntPool is known for its lack of transparency and some controversies in the past. As of October 2021, AntPool’s hashrate is 24.4 EH/s, which is a 17.2% share.\n\n**3. [ViaBTC.com](http://viabtc.com/) (13.4%)**\n\nA relatively young pool launched in 2016, ViaBTC.com has grown significantly over a short period of time. In 2020, it introduced a Bitcoin cloud mining pool that allowed it to raise its user base even more. ViaBTC.com operates in 50 countries, it’s user-friendly, secure, and demonstrates the results of miners’ work in a transparent manner. The pool has a 19 EH/s hashrate (13.4%). The payout models available are PPS+ and PPLNS, which allows users to choose between predictability and risk.\n\n**4. [Binance Pool](https://pool.binance.com/en) (11.3%)**\n\nThis pool launched in 2020 is a part of the robust Binance ecosystem. Although the exchange’s founder originates from China, Binance Pool was the biggest non-China-based pool. Rather, its headquarters are located in Malta. Binance Pool offers an FPPS payout model, which means block rewards and transaction fees are paid according to the miner’s contribution irrespective of the actual performance of the pool. Binance Pool’s hashrate equals 16.1 EH/s, which gives it an 11.3% share.\n\n**5. [Poolin](https://www.poolin.com/) (9.3%)**\n\nPoolin was launched by the founders of BTC.com in 2017. Today, it’s the world’s fifth-largest pool with a 13.2 EH/s hashrate (9.3%). Its interface is available in multiple languages, gives detailed mining statistics, and is accessible via a mobile app. Poolin offers its users to leverage the FPPS payout model.\n\n**6. [BTC.com](https://pool.btc.com/) (8.4%)**\n\nBTC.com was launched in 2016 by the same founders as Poolin. The pool has a hashrate of 11.9 EH/s. Besides the pool, BTC.com is an ecosystem of products including a wallet where you can buy crypto with fiat, and more.\n\n**7. [Foundry](https://foundrydigital.com/) (8.4%)**\n\nFoundry USA was founded only in October 2020 and is the biggest originally American pool on this list. In just 6 months since its launch, it gained control over 8.4% of Bitcoin’s hashrate with 11.9 EH/s. Foundry works with the FPPS payout system and has quickly become popular among Americans and all those who want to challenge China’s dominance in the domain of Bitcoin mining.\n\n**8. [Slush Pool](https://slushpool.com/home/) (3.2%)**\n\nSlush Pool controls 3.2% of Bitcoin’s hashrate with 4.5 EH/s, and it is the oldest Bitcoin mining pool launched in November 2010. Despite its small size, the pool is considered by many as the best one — it’s easy to set up (which makes it accessible for beginners) and operates on its own rewards system called SCORE, one of the most lucrative ones. The model offers a proportional reward, but it is weighed by the time when shares were submitted. Each one is worth more in the function of time since the start of the current round.\n\n## Tips for Choosing a Mining Pool\n\nWe only named 8 of the few dozen Bitcoin mining pools: in total, there are 23 pools that have mined at least 100 blocks during the last year, and 32 polls overall. Choosing between them may be hard for a beginner, so here are some criteria that will help you decide:\n\n* **Reputation**. Google reviews on the pool, see what seasoned miners say. Thematic channels and groups on Twitter and Reddit will bring you insights into how well a pool operates.\n* **Transparency**. The pool should be open on how it distributes the rewards and if it treats all participants equally.\n* **Compatibility**. Make sure your PC, its operating system, and mining equipment are compatible with the pool and its software.\n* **Supported assets**. If you ever decide to mine other coins than BTC, it will be more convenient if your pool has support for that coins so you don’t have to look for new services.\n* **Geographic location**. The closer to the pool’s server you are, the lower your ping time (network latency) will be.\n* **Reliability and stable performance**. Encrypted connection and protection from hackers are a must for a mining pool.\n* **Payout options**. Make sure the pool of your choice pays rewards according to the model you prefer.\n* **Size**. In large pools, incomes are more frequent as the chance to mine a block is higher, but in small pools, the reward is higher as there are fewer participants to share it.\n* **Fees**. Some of the pools charge mining commissions for boosting their growth and incentivizing developers. Make sure you clearly realize the size of this fee in a given pool.\n## Environmental Concerns in Mining\n\nOne of the main criticisms of Bitcoin is its environmental impact. Bitcoin consumes more energy per year than the whole of Argentina, which raises concerns regarding the price that Bitcoin users pay to enjoy its benefits.\n\nIn February 2021, Tesla announced it would accept Bitcoin as payment — but then reversed its decision as critics pointed to the huge carbon footprint that the first cryptocurrency produced. Tesla’s rejection of Bitcoin was one of the reasons for the crypto market collapse this spring.\n\nThe Bitcoin adoption pace hints that the environmental impact is only going to rise. Whereas adoption raises demand for Bitcoin and hence its price, the profitability of mining BTC will stay high in the years to come, which will push new miners to participate and install new [mining rigs](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336).\n\nHowever, the world is becoming (or at least is trying to become) greener. In October 2021, El Salvador [mined](https://gadgets.ndtv.com/cryptocurrency/news/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-el-salvador-volcano-mining-energy-preident-nayib-bukele-2563196) its first Bitcoin on a mining farm drawing its energy from a volcano. After China’s crackdown on crypto, mining is seeking a new home across multiple countries — and there is a chance that this evolutionary process will make mining greener throughout the world.",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "defi",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "why-does-cryptocurrency-need-to-be-decentralized",
      "title": "Why Does Cryptocurrency Need To Be Decentralized?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbxtQUNojoE2z2A5whJ8o9S3Mfh1WCUWasgvwJ8Qg6MJp/image.png)\n\nDecentralization means that in a given computer system all operations are carried out by a distributed network of nodes rather than a centralized server. There is no single computer that controls this network — control is shared equally by all participants. This is the main difference of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies from centrally governed enterprise servers: they are fully transparent for any third-party observer, immutable (once data is in the blockchain, it stays there forever), and there is no single point of failure.\n\nLet’s consider why decentralization is important for crypto and what risks it may bear.\n\n## Predecessors to Today’s Decentralization\n\nThe computing era began when Harvard Mark I was invented by IBM in the early 1940s — a machine designed to help the U.S. in World War II. A 2.5-meter-high and 15 m-wide giant was an embodiment of centralization, and this was what the computing hardware remained to be until the late 1980s. In 1989, a British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, a child of mathematicians who worked on Mark I, invented the world wide web — and that was a huge step towards decentralizing the information technologies. By 2010, 80% of Americans had an internet connection.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdLFXLTkCSJKWM5TTHR3F4dYPAhsZJBtJgqt2CCC3U5B3/image.png)\n\nHarvard Mark I\n\nHowever, some attempts to decentralize computation had been made even before 1989. Ten years earlier, American computer scientist David Chaum introduced a decentralized protocol called Mix Network. He described his work in a paper titled “Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses, and digital pseudonyms”, which was a part of his Master’s degree thesis. Mix Network was not only designed to connect computers, but also to enable hard-to-trace communication, which is exactly what some of today’s cryptocurrencies do.\n\nIn 1983, David Chaum [launched eCash](https://cryptocurrencyhub.io/the-origins-of-cryptocurrency-from-ecash-to-bitcoin-and-on-fbb722b632c4) — anonymous electronic cash that is considered a direct predecessor to Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency invented only 25 later. Since then, the decentralization of the internet is one of the hottest topics in IT. But why exactly is it so important?\n\n## How Blockchain Decentralized Finance\n\nIn 2008, the world was struck by the global financial crisis. Banks, mutual funds, and governments have gone too far in their reckless gambling on the U.S. housing market, which resulted in a collapse of the international financial system. Millions of people lost billions of dollars, jobs, and houses — and that was the strongest recession since the Great Depression.\n\nThe 2008 crisis was the context in which Satoshi Nakamoto was developing Bitcoin. His goal was to invent a currency that no central institution could control and wreck. This is how Bitcoin emerged — decentralized peer-to-peer money that follows the previously set rules in its code and is controlled by a big network of nodes simultaneously. No single central authority such as a government or a bank has power over it — they can’t withhold a transaction, freeze a wallet, or change the rules of the currency.\n\nOne of the reasons for the financial crisis was mismanagement — and Nakamoto implemented some immunity to that either. In Bitcoin’s code, there is a programmable scarcity: there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoins, and new ones are issued according to a clear predefined rule. No organ could change the monetary policy at their will, which makes Bitcoin much more resistant to poor management. A central bank or Federal Reserve can print as much money as they want at their will thus devaluing the currency, while in Bitcoin, this is impossible, which makes the asset inflation-proof. Bitcoin holders have been enjoying the rising purchasing power for 12 years so far.\n\nBut how do you ensure the proper functioning of such a complex system with so many people involved? One of the key concepts that make Bitcoin’s decentralized network run is the Proof of Work consensus algorithm. The network’s participants (nodes) are incentivized to properly process transactions and [fairly add](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-are-crypto-transactions-confirmed-f0121b17fb7c) new blocks to the blockchain, for which they get rewarded. Such a motivation structure makes [many diverse types of decentralized networks](https://changenow-io.medium.com/consensus-algorithms-how-to-balance-efficiency-with-decentralization-f7ab01d8c474) run.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfJWxfki3VUvKV6fmRyuyD3fBia7856aghwhbuRc2qtwh/image.png)\n\nThe major Bitcoin network nodes — mining pools and their shares.\n\n## Risks of Decentralization\n## Hampered traceability → use for illegal purposes\n\nFiat currency is stored in banks and is rarely anonymous, which is why banks can relatively easily trace and block illegal money flows. In cryptocurrency, this is much more difficult — although Bitcoin is a public ledger, it’s still complicated to control it and link funds to particular individuals. This is how Silk Road emerged — an online black marketplace where illegal goods and services were traded using Bitcoin. The market was closed a long time ago and the founder was put in jail, but Bitcoin has still not completely got rid of the reputation of an asset that is mostly traded by criminals.\n\n## Potential difficulties that we don’t yet realize\n\nTraditional financial institutions such as central banks and treasuries are hundreds of years old, and we know well all their risks and negative phenomena that they can stimulate — inflation, corruption, incompetency, and so on. But cryptocurrency is a little over 10 years of age, and we can’t even possibly know all the potential risks that decentralization may bear.\n\nIf there’s a collapse in a centralized system, there’s always an authority that can take control and stabilize the situation. But is that possible in a blockchain? Every cryptocurrency has a team or a community of developers that manage it, but they don’t have absolute power over the network. If hackers find some critical vulnerability or simply perform a 51% attack, the coin’s community may not have enough resources to collectively reverse the blockchain to its older state in order to cancel the malicious changes in the database.\n\nAnd this is only one of the possible risks. At the moment of a crisis, centralized governance is always preferred for taking back control. Given the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies, doing so may be hard in the possible critical moments of the future.\n\n## Bottom Line\n\nDecentralization is a new way to look at money and it can bring more trust, transparency, and inclusion to the global economy. Its first implementations are dating back to the before-internet era, and today, its development is especially active with the advent of blockchain.\n\nOn the global economy level, decentralization prevents mismanagement and helps avoid boosting inflation. On the world wide web level, it fosters the introduction of Web3 — a decentralized internet where services are offered not by gigantic corporations with enormous power but transparent decentralized applications where users control their digital identity and traffic. This means that both money and the internet are becoming less dependent on a small group of managers and are getting better controlled by a community interested in safe and secure resource storage for all its members.",
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{
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  "block": 58937913,
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    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "blockchain",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "consensus-algorithms-how-to-balance-efficiency-with-decentralization",
      "title": "Consensus Algorithms: How to Balance Efficiency with Decentralization?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRNn7GpAjsMimY6FqV56nRCqxzLHz1ioYXMvRjXhwKBma/image.png)\n\nIn traditional accounting, there are ledgers where all transactions are written. The ledger is stored in one centralized server, and there is only one authorized entity that can update it. This organization has to be transparent and trusted if it wants to attract and retain users. But in any case, it has the means to change the information in the ledger arbitrarily at any time.\n\nIn blockchains, this is impossible unless the network isn’t attacked. The technology is also called distributed ledger — transaction records are stored across a decentralized network of nodes, where every member has a complete copy of these records that is updated simultaneously for everyone. But how do you update a distributed ledger?\n\nThis is achieved through a consensus that is reached through special rules allowing the network to agree on which version of the blockchain (transactions database) is correct. Consensus algorithms are the very heart of cryptocurrencies — depending on the type of algorithm, the coin works differently in technical means and the ways in which users interact with it.\n\nConsensus algorithms and decentralization of ledger allow people to operate their funds without the need to trust intermediaries, i.e. in a trustless way. Let’s see how this works and how different consensus algorithms ensure the security of cryptocurrencies.\n\n## Consensus algorithms general features\n\nDifferent consensus algorithms share the same principle: a user puts in a certain stake, and this gives them the right to validate transactions, maintain the security of the network, and get rewarded in return. This stake can be hardware that the user needs to invest in (like in Bitcoin’s Proof of Stake), a sum of money that they have to lock in a wallet (in Proof of Stake: Ethereum 2.0 or Cardano), reputation, or something else depending on the algorithm.\n\nFor doing their job, nodes (network participants) in every consensus algorithm get rewarded. For an attempt of validating in a malicious and dishonest way, many consensus algorithms have the punishment that can cut the size of a stake. Accordingly, algorithms have special tools to find malicious actors: these tools check if the data that the node is trying to add to the blockchain is valid.\n\n## Proof of Work (PoW)\n\nProof of Work is the first consensus algorithm that has ever existed: it was implemented in Bitcoin and many other cryptos later. However, the Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t invent Proof of Work: it had already been proposed in the 1990s as a way to discourage DoS attacks.\n\nIn PoW, network participants, or nodes, are called miners. To add a block with recent transactions to the blockchain, they need to perform a mathematical operation known as hashing. This is done via a hash function — an algorithm that [transforms](https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256.html) any text into hash, a unique string of 64 symbols. Hashing a block means passing transaction data and the hash of the previous block through the hash function. Here’s what the hash of the block [702296](https://www.blockchain.com/btc/block/00000000000000000009e520e01f0e8493ff7d4235b6a2c0916d4e0c66e22448) mined on September 26, 2021, looks like:\n\n00000000000000000009e520e01f0e8493ff7d4235b6a2c0916d4e0c66e22448\n\nHashing is very easy, but if you simply hash a block, you’ll first get a random string of numbers, whereas the hash needs to comply with the rule: there has to be a certain number of zeros at the beginning. Finding such a hash is only possible with billions of trials and errors by varying a random number in the block called the nonce (for more details, see [here](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-does-blockchain-work-2bceec034d2d)). Since this is a difficult and energy-consuming process, expensive powerful hardware is required.\n\nWhen the needed hash is found, it’s very easy to check if it’s valid. When a miner finds it, they demonstrate it to the network as proof of work. Nodes check it and let the miner add the block to the blockchain and receive their reward. Blockchain in all the nodes gets updated.\n\nSince you have to invest a lot of money in hardware, it’s extremely expensive to control at least 51% of the network’s hashrate to attack it. That’s why Bitcoin is so secure. However, a lot of energy is consumed, and that is a huge concern. To resolve this issue, energy-efficient consensus algorithms were created.\n\n## PoW pros:\n* The algorithm was time-tested on many of the large cryptocurrencies with millions of users.\n* The structure of incentives ensures that the bigger the network, the more secure it is.\n## PoW cons:\n* A lot of electricity is consumed, which is harmful to the environment.\n* In many PoW networks, only the biggest players can afford full-fledged solo mining.\n* This creates the risk of centralization: the one with more money has more control over the blockchain.\n## Proof of Work cryptocurrencies:\n* Bitcoin (BTC) and its forks: Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE)\n* Ethereum (ETH) until 2022\n* Monero (XMR)\n* Zcash (ZEC)\n\nSome of the largest coins run on Proof of Work, whereas most of the new coins don’t implement pure PoW. They use different kinds of it, but more often, leverage such an algorithm as Proof of Stake.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRYDTfmJE5Mg5CTmpjT19ekmYFmU8hdCVNroJjFANZhYq/image.png)\n\n## Proof of Stake (PoS)\n\nProof of Stake is the most widespread alternative to Proof of Work. It doesn’t require much computing power — rather, you need to have a stake in a given coin to get the right to validate transactions and add them to the blockchain. The concept of PoS emerged relatively early — back in the days when Bitcoin didn’t consume as much energy as today. The first PoS crypto was Peercoin created in 2012.\n\nIn Proof of Stake, validators confirm transactions instead of miners, add them to the ledger, and get rewarded. If you want to validate, you’d need to lock some coins in your wallet (however, not all PoS cryptocurrencies require this). Then, the system distributes the stakers’ chances to validate blocks either by the stake size or randomly. In the former case, like in PoW, it creates the risks of centralization — the one with a bigger stake has more chances to validate blocks and therefore more control.\n\nSame as in PoW, there is a control of correct block validation in PoS. This consensus algorithm also leverages hashing — but instead of the ‘trial and error’ mechanism, you have to get the right to hash a block, and whenever you do, you simply hash the block data in one step. If you’re trying to present an invalid hash to the system, your stake will be slashed.\n\n## PoS pros:\n* No huge computational resources are needed to validate blocks.\n* If a protocol is implemented favorably for small stakers, the coin can be very decentralized and resistant to attacks.\n## PoS cons:\n* If the algorithm is implemented in a way that the richest stakers win, the risk of centralization and hence lack of security is high.\n* If there’s a disagreement regarding which block is valid, the coin risks getting split in two (which is called a hard fork). In Proof of Work, it’s profitable for miners to work only for one chain not to divide their resources, whereas in PoS, validators don’t care. That’s why, theoretically, the risk of hard forks in PoS coins is higher.\n## Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies:\n* Ethereum 2.0\n* Cardano (ADA)\n* Tezos (XTZ)\n## Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)\n\nDelegated Proof of Stake was created in 2014 to increase the throughput of PoW and PoS. Compared to the basic Proof of Stake, in DPoS, validation of blocks is done by delegates rather than all stakers. The latter choose delegates based on their approval ratings and delegate them their coins. With a bigger stake, delegates get the right to validate blocks and distribute block rewards proportionally between those who voted for them.\n\nIf a delegator acts maliciously, their ratings drop, and stakers won’t vote for them anymore. This is a great incentive to act honestly.\n\nTerra (LUNA) and EOS running on DPoS are much faster and have a greater throughput compared to PoS and PoW coins because fewer nodes need to reach consensus. However, this also poses a risk of centralization — richer actors can create “stakers” and vote for themselves to become delegates.\n\n**Other kinds of consensus algorithms**\n\nToday, there is an abundance of different consensus algorithms aimed to improve the drawbacks of the existing ones. Here are some of them:\n\n* **Proof of Authority**. There are only a handful of approved accounts authorized to validate blocks, and their reputation (‘authority’) is at stake. VeChain (VET), Binance Smart Chain leverage PoA with a limited number of nodes. This is a deliberate “no” to true decentralization in favor of efficiency.\n* **Proof of Importance**. This one is similar to PoS, but nodes are ranked by their “importance” level before getting the right to validate blocks: it depends on how long they’ve been holding the coin for and how actively they were using it. NEM (XEM) uses PoI consensus.\n* **Combined PoW and PoS** in Decred (DCR). Miners validate blocks and get 60% of a block reward, and then these blocks are additionally confirmed by stakers who get 30%. The remaining 10% goes to the dev fund. Such a combination makes an attack on DCR even more expensive than on Bitcoin: you’d have to control not only mining but also staking.\n\nNow that you’ve got familiar with consensus algorithms, head on to our [blockchain 101](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-does-blockchain-work-2bceec034d2d) article to find out how Bitcoin miners process blocks and why this consumes so much energy.",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "bitcoin",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "a-guide-to-bitcoin-history-principles-of-work-legal-status-and-concerns",
      "title": "A Guide to Bitcoin: History, Principles of Work, Legal Status, and Concerns",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSai2NpdpQStkxqbA9zSYRXMTwxLLrkDw8uBG6FEWKf4Q/image.png)\n\nBitcoin is the first cryptocurrency founded in 2009. It runs on a blockchain, being the first real-life implementation of this technology. The killer feature of Bitcoin is its decentralization — cryptocurrency is digital money that no single party like a bank or a government can control. Rather, Bitcoin is run by a distributed community of miners of which no one has the deciding vote. This makes Bitcoin more secure than traditional money: it’s impossible to freeze a transaction on the blockchain or reverse it.\n\n12 years ago, Bitcoin was of interest to a small group of programmers, whereas by today, it has grown to a huge industry with thousands of various cryptocurrencies with a total market capitalization of $2 trillion. In 2021, Bitcoin is far from being the most convenient tool for daily payments — rather, it is a store of value for long-term investors. Let’s see what Bitcoin is, how it works, and what may be the future for the first cryptocurrency.\n\n## The story of Bitcoin: from geek forums to a trillion-dollar industry\n\nIt all started in 2008 when pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto sent out a document called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” across a cryptography mailing list. The paper was describing the fundamentals of what was then called “crypto-currency” and was a subject of interest of a handful of programmers and cypherpunks.\n\nOn January 3, 2009, the so-called Genesis block of Bitcoin was mined with a 50 BTC reward given to the miner. The first block with a transaction was mined one week later — the recipient was Hal Finney, Bitcoin developer who now stands in the list of contenders for never-identified Satoshi Nakamoto.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSjKqgoybZKJPesKodZ3McJxpiaLrnBwMiCZp3NkXgCjx/image.png)\n\n*Dorian Nakamoto who is often referred to as Satoshi — which is, however, most likely not true.*\n\nThe first real-life purchase made with Bitcoin happened a year later — on May 22, 2010, a developer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John’s pizzas for 10,000 BTC worth $25 at the time. Today, the same BTC amount costs $440 million, and May 22 is celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day. 6 months later in 2010, BTC reached a $1 million market cap.\n\nFaster than anyone would expect, cryptocurrency started to flourish. In 2011–2013, the first altcoins (alternative coins — cryptos other than Bitcoin) were created, expanding and improving Bitcoin’s use cases. Enthusiasts needed to trade the new coins somewhere — and this is how crypto exchanges emerged. However, there was much money, but very little security as the technology was yet immature, and several hacks took place where millions of dollars were stolen. It’s noteworthy that today, the story repeats — in the young and rapidly evolving decentralized finance (DeFi) segment with the lack of regulation, hacks and exit scams are very common.\n\nThe first massive crypto boom happened in late 2017 when the public realized the potential of cryptocurrencies and started extensively investing in any blockchain project that sounded cool. That was called Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) that have quickly become notorious for the abundance of scams. Bitcoin skyrocketed to $20k, but the bubble popped, followed by a “crypto winter”. When the pandemic hit the market, BTC collapsed even lower, diving below $4k. But during the 2020 and 2021 bull runs, Bitcoin restored its value, the faith in it was rehabilitated, and institutional investors started massively investing in the first cryptocurrency.\n\n## How Bitcoin works: decentralization, mining, and scarcity\n\nBitcoin runs on a blockchain — a distributed database and the protocol that defines how transactions are processed in it. However, you may have seen this definition on Wikipedia and it may not have made sense to you. Let’s break it down.\n\nImagine there are 100,000 computers united in a network. All of them hold the same copy of the blockchain — a database that contains records about all transactions that ever happened in this network. The database is organized into blocks — packs of transactions processed simultaneously; in Bitcoin, new blocks are created every 10 minutes. When a new block is mined, it is added to the chain of blocks, and the blockchain updates for all these 100,000 computers.\n\nThis database is public and transparent — anyone can look into it and see any transaction ever sent between any wallets. Importantly, it is also immutable — once a transaction has been mined, it will never reverse or disappear.\n\nNew transactions are added to the blockchain by miners. To mine a block, they solve an energy-consuming mathematical task called hashing and get rewarded in return. The one who solves this task the fastest gets the right to add this block to the blockchain and wins the mining reward. In Bitcoin, it’s currently 6.25 BTC.\n\nToday, Bitcoin mining is a billion-dollar industry, and to mine a block, you’d need enormous computational resources. Since it’s hard for anyone without gigantic computing power to mine a block, there’s a very low risk of attacks by malicious actors who would want to add arbitrary transactions to the blockchain in their favor. And since the biggest computing power is concentrated in the Bitcoin network, it’s considered the most secure cryptocurrency.\n\n**Besides security and decentralization of transaction processing, another key idea behind Bitcoin is its scarcity.** New Bitcoins are produced with every block as a reward for miners: today, it’s 6.25 BTC, and it gets cut in half every 4 years. By roughly 2120, all 21 million BTC will have been mined. While the demand for Bitcoin is growing, the limited supply is supposed to push the price up. This resistance to inflation was implemented by Satoshi Nakamoto in response to the short-sighted economic policy of governments that are prone to printing money and thus reducing its value.\n\n## How is Bitcoin used today?\n\nBitcoin was designed as peer-to-peer electronic money: it was meant to become the means of daily value exchange between users. And to some extent, this goal was achieved: thousands of companies worldwide [accept](https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/btc/) Bitcoin as payment, and there is an abundance of [crypto wallets](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-choose-a-bitcoin-wallet-a-short-guide-e37571025c91) for secure storage of BTC.\n\nHowever, as the crypto industry evolved, Bitcoin has become one of the least convenient ways to send money compared to other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin’s block time is 10 minutes, so normally it will take you 2–10 minutes to complete a transaction — and if you pay for a good or service, you’d have to wait 20 minutes more for [2–3 confirmations](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-are-crypto-transactions-confirmed-f0121b17fb7c). In the meantime, Ethereum offers a 10–15 sec block time, while in Solana, it’s a whopping 400 ms. And the fees in Bitcoin are very high: they can go from $5 up to $50 and beyond, whereas Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin offer transactions that cost less than 1 US Cent.\n\nThis is one of the reasons why Bitcoin has become more of a store of value than the means of daily payments. Its scarcity (total supply will never surpass 21 million coins) and the subsequent immunity to inflation make it a tool with an extremely good ROI: simply look at the Bitcoin price chart below. However, extreme volatility and risk are no strangers to Bitcoin as drawbacks of high returns.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUUmKEdyToZb4DBAZvj7S7zsBNZnmgbix4x9meWDSyxvu/image.png)\n\n## The future of Bitcoin\n\n## Institutional adoption\n\nBitcoin is scarce and used as a safe-haven asset — which is why it’s often referred to as ‘digital gold’. Long-term investment in Bitcoin has been a prerogative of retail investors before 2020, when institutional investors started to massively embrace cryptocurrency. Such giants as Tesla and MicroStrategy have put billions in Bitcoin amid the global pandemic: the profitability of traditional financial tools collapsed, and companies started to seek new lucrative opportunities.\n\nSpeaking of resemblance to gold, Bitcoin acted a lot like this precious metal in 2020. And compared to the global fiat economy with governments printing trillions of dollars, Bitcoin looked much more inflation-proof.\n\nMicroStrategy tech giant is leading the way in Bitcoin investment. The company has purchased BTC a few times and has reached a stake of $5 billion in BTC. CEO Michael Saylor was [sharing](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/michael-saylor-microstrategy-bitcoin-investing-gold-inflation-ethereum-2021-6?utm_source=markets&utm_medium=ingest) his thoughts on preferring Bitcoin to gold: it’s more lucrative, technologically advanced, and valuable as “digital property on an open monetary network” — the thing that will drive its adoption worldwide.\n\nElon Musk’s Tesla has a huge influence on Bitcoin, too. First, the company was even ready to accept BTC as payment, but then reversed due to its environmental issues (we’ll consider these below). Interestingly, given the huge stake in Bitcoin that Tesla has, its CEO and founder Elon Musk often criticizes Bitcoin and is a huge proponent of a meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin.\n\nAdoption across institutional investors is one of the core factors that drives Bitcoin’s price. Such enterprises raise trust in cryptocurrency and boost the interest of the public in Bitcoin, which, in turn, is also crucial for its adoption.\n\n## Adoption across different countries\n\nIn most countries, Bitcoin is legal, meaning that you can at least store it without any legal consequences. However, countries like Russia, India, and especially China have numerous restrictions that hinder the evolution of cryptocurrency in these countries. Governments in non-democratic and economically unstable countries have a poor understanding of Bitcoin and see more risks than profits in it.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeBakPj88zVyF8bYauaofrxXQQktTAf6XycG637FYDWzd/image.png)\n\n*The legality of cryptocurrency across the world. Grey marks regions with scarce cryptocurrency regulation.*\n\nHowever, that doesn’t mean their population isn’t using Bitcoin. In developing countries with local currencies that are volatile and prone to inflation, BTC serves as a hedge against financial risk. For instance, this is the case for Nigeria and Venezuela. In some countries, the government takes a step forward and embraces Bitcoin — in [El Salvador](https://changenow.io/blog/el-salvador-to-make-bitcoin-legal-tender) this year, BTC has become legal tender for the first time in history.\n\nBesides protection from inflation, Bitcoin offers unprecedented inclusion: you need nothing more than a device with an internet connection to leverage cryptocurrency. Unlike the traditional economy with its identity and credit checks, Bitcoin allows anyone to participate.\n\n## Environmental concerns\n\nBitcoin’s impact on the environment has been ignored for quite a while. But as mining difficulty rose, Bitcoin’s energy consumption skyrocketed: today, BTC takes 110 Terawatts-Hour per year, which is more than the whole of Argentina or Malaysia. Tesla has even suspended accepting Bitcoin as payment before these issues are resolved.\n\nToday, there are many discussions on how to make Bitcoin greener. Elon Musk has proposed to organize a committee that will force miners to transfer from charcoal to renewable energy — however, this initiative was criticized in the crypto community as it potentially violates the philosophy of Bitcoin: decentralization, independence of nodes, and resistance to censorship. This issue remains a tough one yet, but some actors have already started to make changes: aforementioned El Salvador is planning to [build](https://changenow.io/blog/volcano-powered-bitcoin-mining-farms) green Bitcoin mining farms powered by volcanos’ heat.\n\n## Is Bitcoin the future of payments?\n\nOne of the main obstacles that keep Bitcoin from becoming the means of global payment is that the coin transfers are lengthy and expensive. There’s also the scalability problem: Bitcoin simply can’t handle more than about 10 million transactions per month due to throughput limitations built in its code:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZ7eqEVhyUNBH7CaVcfcG5vx1z4CYKx2TQJFFXRyi7Rvc/image.png)\n\n*Number of Bitcoin transactions per month on a logarithmic scale*\n\nHowever, there is a way out. The so-called layer-2 solutions enable Bitcoin transactions that are not processed through the blockchain separately, but are put in packs and processed as one. This enables micropayments and raises the functionality of Bitcoin. Lightning Network is the most successful of L2 solutions and is gaining traction today.\n\nFinally, for the mass adoption of Bitcoin, it’s important to reduce the coin’s volatility. Retail and enterprise investors are concerned with the constantly fluctuating purchasing power of Bitcoin. However, as the first cryptocurrency remains volatile to date, the number of its users is constantly growing. This hints that the long-term value that people see in Bitcoin is stronger than even the most severe price drops.",
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  "trx_id": "30a4c90eaf1b84d80bdb89cfe42f4c02b2e707ca",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "farming",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "4-main-yield-farming-risks-and-ways-to-avoid-them",
      "title": "4 Main Yield Farming Risks, And Ways To Avoid Them",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZnYbz7vYBhURfBc1TsaezQtcNUy7NMdppMc6iGRTiYic/image.png)\n\nYield farming is a strategy in which users allocate their funds in a DeFi protocol and get some extra tokens as a reward. The first platform to introduce yield farming was Compound, and after DeFi skyrocketed in 2020, the strategy remains popular to date. Yield farming has become one of the drivers behind the growth of DeFi as it offered users unprecedented returns that could be accessed in a permissionless way, i.e. by everyone with an internet connection.\n\nYield farming is very alluring, but there are some risks associated with it. In this article, we will explore them, and you will learn how to stay safe in the yield farming sphere.\n\n## How does yield farming work?\n\nThe main idea of yield farming is that you do the good for the community and it rewards you in return. One of the main strategies is providing liquidity to liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges like PancakeSwap.\n\nThese pools allow DeFi users to swap between different tokens. For making this possible, you get a share from all the swaps processed in a pool and some extra CAKE tokens as a reward. APR on PancakeSwap can reach hundreds of percent, but this number constantly changes as the tokens’ prices are very volatile, so your income isn’t guaranteed.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdo4mtayugEBVjEhuHeGTTMUn82MpuUpNZLTDp3FndwGF/image.png)\n\nOther DeFi platforms such as borrowing and lending services also enable yield farming. For instance, Compound and Maker reward you for allocating money in these protocols, and the money further serves as loans for other users. This is basically the same liquidity provision, but the funds are used as collateral for loans rather than pool-locked tokens. For your assistance, these protocols reward you with COMP and MKR tokens, respectively. You can sell or reinvest these earnings to maximize your return.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRKC5hM2z1NMy25oKRjAcUduodMGxp8bPcKYUGMWoBtZB/image.png)\n\n## 4 critical risks of yield farming — and ways to avoid them\n\n## Token price drops\n\nThis type of risk is not specific to yield farming — it’s inherent to the entire crypto market. However, if we consider mastodons like Bitcoin or Ethereum, we know that they may drop in price dramatically, but we also know that they have long-term value, and soon or less, they are likely to recover.\n\nWhen we invest in liquidity pools of small tokens in search of the best APR, we may forget that these tokens may not have real value and a roadmap, and they are likely to dump. Do profound research and invest only in projects whose teams you fully trust.\n\n## Impermanent Loss\n\nOne of the DeFi strategies is providing liquidity into pools where users swap their tokens. You get rewarded for this activity, but there’s a risk of impermanent loss. Let’s see how this works.\n\nLiquidity pools where users allocate their funds are functioning on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap (Ethereum-based) or PancakeSwap (BSC-based). These exchanges don’t have order books like their centralized counterparts. Rather, prices in DEXes are formed not following the BUY and SELL orders’ balance in an order book, but based on the balance of tokens in liquidity pools, which is shaped algorithmically. This is called the Automated Market Maker (AMM) model.\n\nSo the price formation mechanisms in CEXes and DEXes vary, and the price of the same assets across them may be different. For instance, 1 ETH that you hold in your wallet or on Binance may be worth more than the same ETH held in an AMM. This difference is called impermanent loss. Whenever the token balance in your pool recovers, there is no loss. If you withdraw before it does, the loss becomes permanent — so it’s recommended not to withdraw before the price goes in your favor.\n\n## Smart Contract Risk\n\nAll yield farming is built on smart contracts — programs that run without human intervention. However, these programs were created by humans, so some of them have vulnerabilities. Hackers often target them to attack a protocol, which is another reason why you may lose your funds.\n\nYam Finance was quite a big incident last year. The protocol attracted $600 million of liquidity before even having been audited. Soon, it came out that there was a bug in Yam’s smart contract that made it impossible for the users to control the project. The community started to panic sell, and YAM price dropped by 99%.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVbB4F4LmvHi95ydTbyKksMM5edYD8Fb7cnF7a17ddtLF/image.png)\n\nOne of the latest examples is the Polygon-based YELD token from the PolyYeld Finance protocol. This time, the price collapsed not because the users lost their faith in the project, but because there was a bug and it was exploited by hackers. The attackers minted 4.9 trillion YELD, and as supply boosted, the price immediately collapsed. Hackers managed to withdraw 123 ETH.\n\nThe lesson here is simple — invest only in audited protocols whose security has been validated by the community.\n\n## High gas price\n\nWhile transaction fees on Binance Smart Chain are lower than a US cent, Ethereum gas prices are still high, reaching $50–100 at certain points. If you have to swap between yield farming protocols and your strategy implies frequent asset movement, you are at risk of catching extremely high gas fees. This is the reason why many farmers have transferred their funds to BSC.\n\n## Bottom line\n\nYield farming offers high rewards, but it also poses a high risk. Token price drops, impermanent losses, smart contract risks, and high gas prices are no strangers to the DeFi space. To stay safe, do you research, invest only in reliable projects, seize good moments to withdraw, and try avoiding money transfers in high gas periods.",
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{
  "trx_id": "98f4733ec7089ab9318f74ae5aa6fdc381425ff4",
  "block": 58793193,
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  "timestamp": "2021-11-07T15:28:42",
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    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "theta",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "5-best-theta-wallets-in-2021",
      "title": "5 Best THETA Wallets In 2021",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaUozXsyPYrPy4rBNdRGt5qcthKMMjGinzKiExRER8EZo/image.png)\n\nTheta is a blockchain-based streaming service and its native token, THETA. The latest developments in the project helped the token grow 3X since January, bringing it to the Top 30 cryptocurrencies list and making it one of the trending assets of 2021.\n\nGiven the surge of interest in Theta, we’ve prepared this guide on choosing a Theta wallet that will help you store your coins securely and conveniently. We will review 5 different wallets and suggest what use cases they are the best for.\n\n## What’s the deal with Theta?\n\nHow did Theta gain such popularity? People watch billions of hours of videos every day, but there are several problems with major centralized streaming services. On YouTube, content creators don’t really own their videos and can’t fully manage their monetization; they have to share royalty fees with the platform, but in the meantime, they can be blocked at any time due to authorities’ requests or non-transparent rules.\n\nTheta is a streaming service that delivers content in a decentralized way: there is no powerful central authority that governs the project. Instead, there are users who run hundreds of guardian nodes and thus secure the network: Theta is community-driven, which is a healthy sign for the project.\n\n## 5 best wallets to store Theta\n\n## [Guarda Wallet](https://guarda.com/)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmS2krDxQWQ6Y1iop3n9FqjrF8eQnqGtvhnAvrp3msMJSU/image.png)\n\nGuarda is a multi-asset wallet: besides Theta, you can store over 500 crypto coins there which allows you to manage your whole portfolio at once. Guarda wallet is available for all major web and mobile operating systems, which means you can access your funds whenever you want from each of your devices. To do so, save and securely store the seed phrase that Guarda will display to you at the setup — this phrase gives direct access to your funds, so make sure no one but you can see it.\n\nGuarda is a non-custodial wallet, meaning that it stores the private keys in an encrypted form on your device — this gives you full control over your funds, compared to centralized exchanges. In Guarda, there is a built-in swap tool that will help you exchange different coins, so you can buy or sell THETA right inside Guarda. Overall, this wallet is a good solution if you’re active with your crypto portfolio and THETA is not the only asset that you regularly send and receive.\n\n## [Theta Wallet](https://wallet.thetatoken.org/unlock/keystore-file)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZnnZMLZDsPTcWLm5PqqLMkSNYQGVgBnL78ebhcjcpK9P/image.png)\n\nTheta Wallet is the official wallet developed by the Theta team. It’s available as a web and mobile app (both for Android and iOS). This wallet offers you full integration with the Theta ecosystem: here, you can not only send and receive THETA transactions but also access the platform’s features as a decentralized streaming service.\n\nTheta Wallet supports TFuel — the second token of the platform that you can raise by watching other users’ videos and sharing your bandwidth with the network. It also helps you execute Theta transactions acting as gas, and if you’ve just set the wallet up, you can use a TFuel faucet to get some tokens for the start.\n\nIn Theta wallet, you can also stake THETA and TFuel, which allows you to secure the Theta network and get rewarded for it. If you’re a developer, Theta Wallet allows you to manage your Theta-based contracts if you have any.\n\n## [Trezor Wallet](https://trezor.io/)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQAF3L9bwp9S7xWurVwrUMbwyoopGevpU8q3fzerUY2bP/image.png)\n\nTrezor is a hardware wallet — a flash drive that stores your keys in an encrypted form away from the internet. This fact makes it one of the most secure wallets out there: hackers cannot physically access the wallet which makes compromising it close to impossible.\n\nBesides Theta, Trezor allows you to store 1000+ other crypto coins. Since it’s a physical wallet, you’ll need to connect it to a PC via a cable or a phone via Bluetooth to initiate transactions (but receiving them is possible when the wallet isn’t connected). Different models of Trezor wallet cost from nearly 50 to 200 USD.\n\nTrezor is a good solution if security is your number one priority, and you want to store your THETA together with other assets. It’s best to use Trezor if you don’t send the tokens daily (this may just be simply inconvenient). Although there is no native Theta app for Trezor yet, [you can use](https://medium.com/theta-network/theta-web-wallet-adds-support-for-ledger-trezor-hardware-wallets-a11ace6d2799) Theta Web Wallet to operate your THETA tokens in Trezor.\n\n## [MetaMask Wallet](https://metamask.io/)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXKFHsiUfthBfeTckXNYiVedFPpkzT1fH84GLwWEjnxTW/image.png)\n\nMetaMask is commonly used to access decentralized apps on Ethereum or Binance Smart Chain, but Theta has made its token maximum compatible with the ETH ecosystem: even their basic cryptography and wallet format are the same. Hence, you can store THETA in MetaMask that is available for mobile phones and as a Chrome extension.\n\nTo start operating Theta in MetaMask, set up the wallet and add Theta manually to the wallet’s list of networks. This is very simple: find the guide [here](https://medium.com/theta-network/theta-blockhain-now-accessible-through-metamask-plug-in-61b278633264). MetaMask will allow you to flexibly use Theta across multiple protocols, but be careful with the security — web wallets are considered quite vulnerable to phishing and other types of attacks.\n\n## [Atomic Wallet](https://atomicwallet.io/)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmY8iJjRENqVoUPtdKVpK6vhET6nupfAswrfKSkXXgW22U/image.png)\n\nAtomic Wallet is another good choice if you want to store all your portfolio in one place. It is available for Windows, macOS, and mobile phones. Same as Guarda, it’s a non-custodial wallet that supports 500+ coins and has a built-in exchange powered by [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/). Atomic is a good choice if you want to have permanent access to your coins and seek a seamless experience with sending and receiving crypto transactions. The use cases of Guarda and Atomic are quite similar, so you can try downloading them both to see which one you like best — this is entirely free and doesn’t require you to have any crypto.\n\n## Bottom line\n\nWe brought a list of reliable Theta wallets that suit various use cases. Think of how you’re going to use your THETA tokens, decide whether you want to store them with the rest of your portfolio — this will help you choose the optimal wallet. Download wallets by the links provided in the article — many scams are mimicking crypto wallet websites. If you want to get some THETA now, visit [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=theta) and see what we offer.",
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{
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    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "mining",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "the-basics-of-crypto-mining",
      "title": "The Basics Of Crypto Mining",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfLdEteC7YcyV869kjaoSbg2cfdr7huNXisLzeRatTMtW/image.png)\n\nMany newcomers in crypto think of mining as some sort of easy money: you buy a pair of chips, run the software, and get your 6.25 BTC every 10 minutes. Of course, in reality, things are more complicated. Today’s mining is like any other way of earning money — you have to do research, make the initial investment, and count your spendings and the potential revenue.\n\nIn this article, we will explore what mining is and what are the things to keep in mind before you start. Since there are quite many factors to consider, this article won’t be a step-by-step guide — rather, it will help you build an understanding of mining and provide insights into what to research and what action to take.\n\n## What is mining?\n\nMining is the process of validating transactions in the blockchain, for which a miner gets their reward. Let’s break this down.\n\n## Transaction validation\n\nLet’s say you’ve sent some Bitcoins to your friend. Before your transaction reaches its destination, it has to go through the following steps:\n\n* A miner should pick your transaction up in a mempool (memory pool) — the place where all unconfirmed transactions are collected. The miner will be motivated to do so if the fee for the transaction was set high enough (see [here](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-are-crypto-transactions-confirmed-f0121b17fb7c) for more details). By picking about 1–3 thousands of transactions, the miner forms a block that will be later added to the blockchain.\n* Now, the miner should find the proper mathematical solution for this block, and this is the very heart of mining. The mathematical problem that the miner is trying to solve is called hashing — it implies pushing all the block data through a hash function that transforms this data into a string of letters and numbers. Doing this is very easy, but the problem is that this string has to meet certain criteria, and miners need to hash the data many times to find the needed value. The first miner to find the solution gets the right to add the block to the blockchain. Miners with the biggest computing power win, and hashing is very energy-consuming.\n* When the miner finds the appropriate solution (i.e. block hash), they demonstrate it to the network as proof of their work (that’s why Bitcoin’s consensus algorithm is called Proof of Work). The miner takes the transaction fees and the mining reward.\n\nBitcoin’s blockchain is very secure — to hack it, you’d need to control at least 51% of the current total Bitcoin network hash power, which would cost you billions of dollars. Finding the proper hash is very power-consuming, so you have to buy expensive hardware to get the chance. Solo Bitcoin mining has become impossible many years ago, so to mine it, you need to join a pool that puts together the hash power of its participants.\n\nLet’s zoom out for a second to see how brilliant this mechanism is. As you understand, the killer feature of blockchain is decentralization — it is run by a distributed network of nodes rather than a central authority (i.e. miners). Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to incentivize them by issuing the reward. It covers high mining expenses and encourages to act fairly (no one will accept wrong block hash). In other words, miners do a great job of securing Bitcoin and get rewarded for it.\n\nBack in 2009, the reward for mining a block was 50 BTC. Every 4 years, a halving happens in the Bitcoin network, cutting this sum in half. Today, the mining reward for a block is 6.25 BTC (about $300,000 at the time of writing). But again, it’s quite hard to get the reward, and when a pool gets it, the sum is distributed proportionally between its members.\n\nLet’s see what you need to know before taking on your mining journey.\n\n## How do I choose what to mine?\n\nAs we’ve already mentioned, you can mine solo or in a pool. The profitability of this depends on a coin: while you can’t mine Bitcoin solo today, there are other coins that allow you to do so. However, joining a pool is anyway a great idea for the start.\n\nDifferent coins use different hashing algorithms: Bitcoin leverages SHA-256, Monero operates on RandomX, and so forth. In turn, different hashing algorithms require different hardware: for Bitcoin’s SHA-256, ASICs are the best, while Monero’s RandomX is ASIC-resistant and you can only use GPUs to mine it.\n\nThe first thing to do before starting mining is to decide how much you are ready to invest in it for your start. With this sum, you can see what pieces of hardware you can afford — and, accordingly, what coins you can mine. To choose between the available options, see the relevant mining profitability charts and decide what coin you believe in the most (in case its price grows, your mining will bring you more returns).\n\nWe’ll get back to calculating mining profitability further below. For now, we will list the coins mentioned in the best-for-mining charts out there. They include Monero (XMR), ZCash (ZEC), Ravencoin (RVN), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), and Beam (BEAM). [Here](https://whattomine.com/), you can find the best coins for each type of mining equipment.\n\nAs for Ethereum (ETH), it was profitable to mine it, but the coin is quitting mining by 2022 — it’s moving to the Proof of Stake consensus algorithm.\n\n## Mining software\n\nThe choice of software will depend on what coin you decide to mine, what hardware you use, and whether you mine solo or in a pool. There are many programs such as CGMiner, BFGMiner, and EasyMiner that run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. However, they won’t make much of your expenses, and the profitability of mining will mostly depend on your hardware.\n\n## Mining hardware\n\nThere are 4 main types of mining equipment — CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ASIC.\n\n**CPU, or Central Processing Unit**, is a piece of hardware that your PC is powered by. In the early days of mining, CPUs were widely used for mining, but as interest in crypto grew along with its hashrate, CPUs became obsolete. Very few coins can offer notable profits with a CPU today.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQQDaE5snwKmFiaoqpzXx65LzfjxBhuaLwRLiK7hCyk4C/image.png)\n\nAs you remember, to mine a block, you need to perform hashing at a very high speed. Such a capacity is called hashing power, and in CPU, it’s about 4 Megahashes per second (MH/s). In **GPU, or Graphical Processing Unit**, hashing power goes as high as 800 MH/s — this makes it 200 times more efficient for mining. GPUs are chips in video cards that are widely used in gaming, but with the advent of mining, demand for them surged, and so did their prices. Today, one GPU costs from hundreds to thousands of dollars.\n\nIt’s a common thing to put several GPUs together in a mining farm to maximize returns. However, farms are not only made of graphics units but also **FGPAs (Field Gate Programmable Arrays)**. This hardware is considered even more efficient than a GPU: FGPAs are not only faster, but they consume up to 5 times less energy. This is important as electricity accounts for one of the highest expenses for miners.\n\nFor mining Bitcoin and some other coins, **ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit)** is mostly used today. These chips are the most efficient ones you can find out there — for instance, the one called Ebit E10 can make 18,000,000 MH/s. This is, of course, reflected in the price — ASICs cost thousands of dollars.\n\n## How to calculate the profitability of mining? What are the other things to keep in mind?\n\nHere’s the most important thing: the better you count your expenses, the faster you will start getting profit. And aside from hardware, the main mining expense is electricity — if it’s expensive in your region, it may be easier to lose money on mining than elsewhere.\n\nSee how high are the electricity costs in your country compared to China and Venezuela — countries with energy prices favorable for mining. Then, after estimating what hardware you can afford, use one of the [mining profitability calculators](https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/btc?HashingPower=40&HashingUnit=TH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=1500&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1). There, you can enter your hardware hashing power, its power consumption and the electricity costs, and the calculator will show you how much you can earn a day, a week, and a year. It’s worth taking two things in mind here: these are only estimates and don’t guarantee you the exact returns; the calculator doesn’t show you the payback period which is also worth counting.\n\nAnother important thing is that your mining will be profitable only if the chosen cryptocurrency grows in price (or at least doesn’t drop). If you start mining a coin that depreciates, even low electricity and hardware costs won’t help you make a profit. So do your profound research and mine those coins that you would invest in.\n\nIf you’d like to test the waters before building a mining farm, there is such an option! Some coins offer moderate returns even without serious investment, so you can set up hardware and software worth under $1,000 and see what your electricity bills and returns are.\n\nKeep in mind that mining hardware is quite a noisy thing and that produces a lot of heat. Consider setting your mining rig separately from your living space in a room where you can enable climate control.\n\n## Final word\n\nMining is often thought of as something where you can make easy profits. However, to do that, you have to calculate everything thoroughly. To understand what coin you can mine, estimate how much you’re ready to invest at the start: every coin needs its own seed money.\n\nTo make your mining profitable, choose the coin that you have a positive price prediction for. Keep in mind that if this is a new coin, other miners may realize its potential as well, and as its hashrate grows, you will possibly need to switch to more competitive (and expensive) hardware.\n\nThings change fast in mining, and if you want to be heavily involved in it, don’t consider it passive income — mining needs a lot of time and work for [rig maintenance](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336?source=user_profile---------53----------------------------) and other things (you can go without them, but your returns will be lower), and it’s not a fixed predictable income. Engage in mining only if you are ready to take this risk.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"mining\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfLdEteC7YcyV869kjaoSbg2cfdr7huNXisLzeRatTMtW/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQQDaE5snwKmFiaoqpzXx65LzfjxBhuaLwRLiK7hCyk4C/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-are-crypto-transactions-confirmed-f0121b17fb7c\",\"https://whattomine.com/\",\"https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/calculator/btc?HashingPower=40&HashingUnit=TH%2Fs&PowerConsumption=1500&CostPerkWh=0.12&MiningPoolFee=1\",\"https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-keep-your-mining-farm-as-safe-as-possible-an-ultimate-guide-9e32560a6336?source=user_profile---------53----------------------------\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "6f191f75fc727c7fec6d2b50e4b36d070c92980d",
  "block": 58764227,
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  "timestamp": "2021-11-06T15:12:51",
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    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "blockchain",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "how-does-blockchain-technology-work",
      "title": "How Does Blockchain Technology Work?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUwGByYVN18yCjNRdvfmdm27gaPqqwCwCoSCnAZTRWxPq/image.png)\n\nOn the internet, as we know it, all services are located on centralized servers and are fully controlled by the companies that own them. If you want to interact with a service or any unfamiliar users in its ecosystem, you need to make sure you trust them, which is often hard.\n\nBlockchain technology changes these principles. Blockchain is a distributed database and a data exchange protocol that is run by a global network of users rather than a centralized authority. Anyone who satisfies the conditions of the protocol can update it, so the parties interacting through this protocol don’t have to trust each other — trust in the particular blockchain is enough.\n\nThe first real-world implementation of blockchain technology was Bitcoin. Today, cryptocurrency is still its main use case, but there are also many others. Each cryptocurrency runs on its own blockchain; some cryptocurrencies run on the blockchains of other cryptos.\n\n## Why is blockchain considered one of the main technological breakthroughs of the XXI century?\n\nWhen pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto was creating Bitcoin, he had two main things in mind. First, he criticized traditional finance for taking full control over people’s money, whereas blockchain returned this control to them. Second, Nakamoto roasted financial authorities for reckless money printing and boosting inflation. To address this issue, he implemented a scarcity mechanism in Bitcoin: only 21 million coins will ever be mined, and while the demand in BTC continues growing, so will its price.\n\nHere are the other core characteristics of blockchain that make it a revolutionary invention:\n\n* **It’s a distributed database**, meaning that all the members of the network simultaneously hold the same database and update it in real-time. Instead of a central authority, there is a consensus algorithm that ensures the agreement of all nodes regarding the updates to the database and the protocol. This means that no single company, bank, or government can alter what is happening in the blockchain — it’s impossible to freeze any account or withhold a transaction.\n* **Blockchain is transparent**. The database that the nodes hold is open to everyone through [block explorers](https://www.blockchain.com/explorer). If you’ve sent your money to someone, you can prove this using the public data from the ledger, and they won’t have any reason not to believe you.\n* **Blockchain is immutable**. Whatever is written in the blockchain, it cannot be altered or forged retroactively. This fact raises trust in this technology.\n## How does blockchain work?\n\n## Blocks\n\nEvery several minutes, Bitcoin holders send a pack of transactions to each other. These transactions are put together in units called blocks and are validated by miners. To do this, they solve complex mathematical problems, which require huge computing power.\n\nThe first miner to solve the problem shows the Bitcoin network their Proof of Work that demonstrates they’ve found an optimal solution for the block. If the network agrees, the miner gets the right to add this block to the database and receives the mining reward (currently, 6.25 BTC for a block). This block will forever stay in this database and will never be altered. The database looks like a chain of these blocks — the blockchain.\n\n## Hash\n\nWe mentioned a mathematical problem that miners solve to validate blocks. This problem is called hashing, and it is performed using a hash function.\n\nA hash function is a mathematical operation that transforms input information of any size into a fixed number of characters, which looks like an array of letters and numbers. Bitcoin leverages the SHA-256 function. Every input in it can be transformed into a unique combination of 64 letters and numbers; minimal changes in the input follow with the complete change of the output. You can test how SHA-256 works online — for example, [here](https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256.html).\n\nHere’s what hash we will get after hashing the word “Bitcoin”:\n\nb4056df6691f8dc72e56302ddad345d65fead3ead9299609a826e2344eb63aa4\n\nBut here’s what we’ll get if we hash “bitcoin”:\n\n6b88c087247aa2f07ee1c5956b8e1a9f4c7f892a70e324f1bb3d161e05ca107b\n\nHashing any amount of data is a very fast process (as you can make sure using the link provided). Whenever you send a transaction, your wallet will instantly display you the transaction hash — a unique identifier that allows you to track the transaction in a [block explorer](https://www.blockchain.com/explorer).\n\nBut why is it necessary to hash blocks of transactions, and why is it so difficult?\n\nWhen new transactions are sent in the Bitcoin network, miners pick them up and consecutively hash them several times. As a result, we get one hash for all transactions in a block, and it’s called the Merkle root hash (and the whole structure is called the Merkle tree):\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmadWfWXWc87yzuMys8y7J6N3D226SP3pqMquLd5k7uMia/image.png)\n\nMerkle root is one of the three main block components. Two others are the hash of the previous block and the nonce — a random number (we will explain what it serves for below). By hashing these three pieces of data, we easily get the hash of the block.\n\nThe difficulty in mining is that this hash has to correspond to one criterion — in the output, there should be several zeros at the beginning of the string. Here’s what block 700367 hash looks like (mined on September 13, 2021):\n\n0000000000000000000bb4629f421f14de975adba2d9eebca19013d0e2a8baf9\n\nTo get such a hash, you need to vary the nonce multiple times because you can’t guess in advance that nonce will correspond to the needed hash. And you have to do it so many times that people buy special hardware (GPUs and ASICs) to gain an advantage in computing it as fast as possible.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdPWpM4NgUnQv4rm9Z2Rwant62R6JSDBcnzEokQHbiN8N/image.png)\n\nWhy is this so important?\n\n1. The more zeros have to be at the beginning of the hash, the more difficult it is to find such a hash. **Mining (hashing) difficulty exists so that it wouldn’t be too easy to mine a block. If anyone could do it, malicious actors with very few resources could add any wrong information to the blockchain**, whereas with high mining difficulty, they’d have to put in billions of dollars to achieve this.\n2. As we already mentioned, every block contains a hash of the previous block. If malicious actors want to alter a certain block, they will have to change all the subsequent blocks (because if you change one block’s hash, all the subsequent blocks become invalid). This would also require the concentration of huge computing resources.\n\nNow, let’s consider two main types of blockchains — public and private ones.\n\n## Public blockchains — permissionless ledgers for all\n\nPublic blockchains are the networks of Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example. Anyone can join them and become a validator or miner (however, for some of the largest cryptos, you’d need huge investments to start). To become a validating node, you need to buy special hardware, install software, and download the full version of a given coin’s blockchain. No permissions are needed for mining — that’s why public chains are called permissionless.\n\nA true boom of cryptocurrency started in 2015 when Ethereum was invented with the purpose to enlarge the blockchain’s functionality. The platform enabled smart contracts — contracts in which all conditions are written in code and if met by two parties, get executed without any further human intervention. Hundreds of developers flooded into Ethereum and began building decentralized (blockchain-based) applications (dApps) for lending and borrowing, games, and collectibles, which provoked the first large crypto boom in 2017.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRiqsFY8XnKMCptAYcKuFxXoNsTBkQz9LZrEGo9U59cc3/image.png)\n\n## Private blockchains — permissioned enterprise networks\n\nNot anyone can join private blockchains — the participants need to be approved by a central authority, which makes such networks permissioned. They are mostly used by businesses.\n\nPrivate blockchains have drastically enlarged the range of blockchain use cases. They don’t usually power cryptocurrencies — rather, they are used to prove the authenticity of items, record ownership rights, and manage supply chains.\n\nAlthough these blockchains are private, they are still decentralized protocols for data storage and exchange. Let’s consider an example: a chain store wants to make sure that it buys fresh fish. It opens a supply chain that is joined by the fishery. The fishery adds to this ledger the data about the time and conditions in which the fish was caught; a logistics company will inform on its delivery status; the shop will verify all this info and put labels on the packages so that buyers could check the freshness of the fish via a QR code.\n\nAll fair parties have an interest in working transparently, and that’s why private blockchains are beneficial for everyone. With their help, companies can track the authenticity of gemstones, check different items’ ownership, and some governments even run elections.\n\n## The revolution of blockchain: the main outcomes and perspectives\n\nThe concept of blockchain was proposed long before cryptocurrencies, but its first implementation was Bitcoin. Since then, within just 12 years, its scope of application has significantly expanded. Decentralized finance and NFTs, blockchain-based games, supply chains, and digital IDs emerged.\n\nBlockchain changes fundamentally the very way people cooperate. It gives people more control over their funds and allows for near-instant cross-border payments free from third parties. But even more importantly, blockchain is not governed by central authorities, and no one can stop transactions or change their record at their will. Moreover, one doesn’t need any permission to build dApps, offering decentralized solutions for a wide range of cases.\n\nPermissioned blockchains have a big future, too. They are the same as transparent and immutable, which is why corporations and their alliances can become more open and gain more trust. The companies don’t need to spend millions on audits anymore. And by setting such a standard of openness, blockchain can eliminate out of competition the services that are not ready to offer such transparency. It seems that this is a win-win situation for all.\n\nAll things described above have only happened in 12 years. If in 2009, anyone said that millions of people would use bank-free loans and free instant remittances, that would have sounded impossible. That’s why it’s hard to imagine what blockchain will offer us in the next decade. However, we may be sure this will be something special.",
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{
  "trx_id": "a0792148600240e2eaff9205676a9c44e205d6cb",
  "block": 58764005,
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  "timestamp": "2021-11-06T15:01:30",
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    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "blockchain",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "how-are-crypto-transactions-confirmed",
      "title": "How Are Crypto Transactions Confirmed?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXfPkE2T5TYZFgdeKNknUZJdPwXN1RDfJtPJxVRCe7s3m/image.png)\n\nKnowing how your transaction is confirmed is the basis on which you can build your understanding of cryptocurrency. This is a technically difficult process, but you can grasp it without special terms — today, we will explain to you how it works. Let’s take Bitcoin as an example.\n\n## How do Bitcoin transactions get confirmed?\n\nWhen you send a transaction from your wallet (where it’s signed with a private key), it gets propagated to a network of Bitcoin nodes — participants who now have to confirm it. After the primary verification, the transaction goes to a mempool (memory pool) — the place where all unconfirmed transactions are gathered and where miners (nodes) pick them to confirm.\n\nTransactions for which users set higher fees are prioritized by miners — they are trying to make maximum profit from their work. When a node mines a block with your transaction and adds it to the blockchain, it means your transaction has been confirmed.\n\n## Why do I have to wait for confirmations?\n\nBitcoin block time is 10 minutes, and its block size is 1 MB — so it can’t accommodate transactions that take more space. Usually, there are more transactions that a block can take, so if you’ve set a good fee, miners will pick it in the current block, and you won’t have to wait more than 10 minutes. If the fee is low or there is a huge pile of transactions, your transaction may not fit into the first block, and you’ll have to wait 20–30 minutes until it makes it to the closest block possible.\n\nWhen your transaction is added to a block, this means it has got a confirmation. When another 10 minutes pass and one more block is mined, that means your transaction now has 2 confirmations. And so on — within 24 hours, a transaction gets around 140 confirmations.\n\nIf you pay for some goods or services or deposit money on an exchange, you may be asked to wait for a few confirmations. This can be fixed (2–3 confirmations) or flexible: the more money you send in a transaction, the more confirmations it needs. For transactions worth over $10,000, 6–10 confirmations may be required, and for those worth $1 million and more, it can be about 60.\n\nWhy is that needed, given that transactions are irreversible and once they make it into a blockchain, they will stay there forever? The thing is that shops and exchanges want to protect from potential attacks on the Bitcoin network. Attacking BTC is very expensive and there haven’t been cases lately, but this is highly relevant to other coins — for instance, Ethereum Classic (ETC) has experienced two 51% attacks in the last few years.\n\nWhen an attack happens, malicious actors take control over at least 51% of the network’s nodes and can put any data that they want in the blockchain. They may even cancel your transaction. However, this is possible only for the latest blocks — the older a block, the more difficult it is to reach it and alter it. 2–3 confirmations and especially 10 is a reliable indicator that nothing will happen to a transaction and it’s now forever in the blockchain.\n\n## How to set a good fee?\n\nAs we already mentioned, the higher the fee, the higher the probability that your transaction will get into the first block.\n\nSetting this is possible in [Atomic](http://atomicwallet.io/) and [Guarda](http://guarda.com/) wallets. Choose the currency, click “Send”, and then “Set fee”. You will see that fees are measured in sat/B, or satoshis per byte (1 Satoshi is one hundred millionth of Bitcoin — 0.00000001 BTC). By default, the fee will be set for the fastest confirmation time (about 100 sat/B).\n\n[Here](https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/), you can see how fast the transactions with different fees are confirmed. If you are not in a hurry, set a lower fee to save money — but make sure you don’t make it too low. With fees below 5–10 sat/B, a transaction may get stuck for hours and even days: miners will be disincentivized to take it from the mempool. To check the overall state of the latter, see [Mempool.Space](https://mempool.space/).\n\n## How long do I have to wait for a confirmation?\n\nBitcoin is one of the slowest networks — its block time is 10 minutes. See how the probability of a block being mined depends on time:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSfFgF7kjfUj5ktoEa64PHMtLux5PVyYmu5quuiak5j2r/image.png)\n\nEthereum was one of the first platforms to drastically improve this indicator, and its block time is 15 seconds. Even this is considered quite long today: such coins as Solana and Nano process transactions in less than a second, and the fees are extremely low or even absent.\n\n## Can ChangeNOW speed up the confirmation time for my transaction?\n\nUnfortunately not, even though we would love to. We can only recommend you to set the fees higher if you want your transaction processed faster by miners.\n\n## My transactions get stuck often. What can I do?\n\nMaybe you’re using a poorly working wallet. Try using [Atomic Wallet](https://atomicwallet.io/), [Trust Wallet](https://trustwallet.com/), or [Guarda Wallet](https://guarda.com/). They sync well with the blockchain, and their support team resolves the issues promptly.\n\n## How do I check if my transaction was confirmed?\n\nWhen you send crypto from your wallet, it shows you the transaction hash — a unique transaction identifier. Paste it into the [Bitcoin](https://www.blockchain.com/explorer) or [Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/) block explorer’s search bar to see if the transaction was confirmed and if it was, how many times. For other coins, find their block explorers on the internet and repeat the steps.\n\n## I used ChangeNOW to swap my coins, and my transaction got stuck. What can I do?\n\nContact our [support team](https://support.changenow.io/hc/en-us/requests/new) and describe as many details as you can. We will get back to you promptly.\n\n## Tips to spend less on network fees\n* Don’t send the coins when the blockchain is congested — you can see this data in the mempool. Usually this happens when the coin’s price grows or drops rapidly, following with a surge in transaction fees. If you don’t need to send money urgently, wait for a day or two.\n* If several hours won’t make much difference to you, lower the fee. Don’t make it too low, though — otherwise your transaction may get stuck.\n* If you are planning a few similar transactions, think of organizing them into one single payment. Fees don’t depend on the transaction size, so by putting a few into one, you’re saving a considerable amount of money.",
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{
  "trx_id": "5ca15a38bd52fedcf2443e3db7d7d4055d332816",
  "block": 58504430,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-28T13:19:51",
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    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "exchange",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "how-long-does-it-take-to-swap-crypto-is-it-possible-to-avoid-delays",
      "title": "How Long Does It Take to Swap Crypto? Is It Possible To Avoid Delays?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPuFExykukGS4zSsfRAXk7S9YPhg5TNokwhEZhkDxSFtB/image.png)\n\nBeing aware of how long a crypto exchange takes is very helpful: thus you can know what to expect and worry less about your crypto swaps. Understanding a transaction’s pathway lets you know why exchanges are delayed, and you get more tools to set an exchange the way that it will be processed faster.\n\n## What does the transaction time depend on?\n\nAny crypto swap made through non-custodial platforms like [ChangeNOW](http://changenow.io/) includes 3 steps: a customer sends their funds to the exchange service (transaction 1); the platform performs the necessary operations; swapped coins are sent to the user (transaction 2). The speed of the exchange depends on how fast the included transactions are.\n\nA transaction speed is defined by the block time of a given coin — the time needed to organize new transactions into blocks, validate them, and add to the blockchain (at this moment, the transaction is considered done). Bitcoin’s block time is around 10 minutes, Ethereum’s and all Ethereum-based coins’ is 15 seconds, Cardano’s is 20 seconds, and Solana’s is 400 milliseconds.\n\nIf your transaction falls at the time when the current block is being finished, a Bitcoin transaction may only take about 2 minutes. Generally, if a transaction gets into the current block, it’s finalized within 10 minutes. But the transaction may not fit into the current block if you’ve set a low transaction fee (some wallets like [Atomic](http://atomicwallet.io/) allow for such functionality), or the blockchain is congested.\n\n## What is the average exchange time?\n\nChangeNOW swaps cryptocurrencies in 2 minutes on average, but sometimes the time goes up to 20 minutes. We consider the swap time normal if it’s between 2 and 20 minutes.\n\nBlockchain is a living system, and sometimes there are factors that delay transactions. We cannot affect many of them, but we’re trying to warn the customers on our [Twitter](https://twitter.com/changenow_io) in advance. Some delay factors are in our area of responsibility. They can withhold an exchange for 30 minutes, or sometimes longer.\n\nHere are the main reasons why crypto swaps take longer than expected:\n\n* **The blockchain is congested**. Where there is an outburst of activity on the market, there are more transactions than usual, and miners/validators struggle to process them on time. This frequently happens to Bitcoin and Ethereum. For a transaction to go faster, you can set a higher fee in your wallet so that miners are more incentivized to process it; however, in this case, swapping the coin can become too expensive.\n* **DDoS attacks**. This isn’t a frequent case, but we always try to do our best to beat it fast.\n* **Cryptocurrency updates**. Sometimes we disable certain coin pairs to put them under maintenance. Usually, that doesn’t take long, and you learn about this fact before you initiate the swap.\n\nAt some exchanges, crypto swaps may take longer, especially if fiat currencies are involved. For instance, if you buy crypto with fiat on Coinbase, it can take the system [up to 7 business days](https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/buying-selling-or-converting-crypto/how-long-does-a-purchase-or-deposit-take-to-complete) to process the transaction. ChangeNOW’s fiat operations are normally instant, but they involve more actors from fiat providers to banks that sometimes act slower than we would like them to.\n\n## What is a transaction hash and how can I use it?\n\nWhenever a transaction is sent, a transaction hash is assigned to it — a string of characters that represents a unique identification of your transaction. With this hash, you can check the status of your transaction in a block explorer — is it confirmed and how many times.\n\nIf an exchange service delays your crypto swap, you can check the transaction hash to see if the coins sent from your wallet have reached the platform. Also, if you use a centralized exchange like Binance or Coinbase and want to deposit, you can find your transaction hash in a block explorer to see how many confirmations it has (the number of blocks that have passed since your transaction’s block). 2–3 confirmations for Bitcoin and about 20 for Ethereum are usually needed to deposit crypto on a custodial exchange.\n\n## What happens if a transaction is not confirmed?\n\nCrypto transactions are irreversible, meaning that once they have at least one confirmation, you can’t get the funds back (this is a serious reason to always double-check the sums and the addresses you are sending funds to). On the contrary, if a transaction is not coming through, the funds will return to your wallet. This is a very rare case, though.\n\n## What if a transaction is not confirmed for hours?\n\nMost of the crypto transactions cannot be accelerated once sent, but even in cases when it’s possible, the operation is technically very advanced. Algorithms of ChangeNOW are set in the way to process everything as fast as possible; however, the longest part of any crypto swap is when coins are verified in the blockchain, which we cannot affect.\n\nThat’s why if your wallet allows you to set fees manually, make sure to set them high enough so that the transaction doesn’t get stuck (it should be set as high by default). If the fee is set as low, it may take days for a blockchain to confirm your transaction. If a transaction is unconfirmed, the funds are returned to the customer.\n\n## What are the fees on ChangeNOW?\n\nChangeNOW partners with multiple liquidity providers, so at the moment of any crypto swap, we browse the market and automatically pick the rate that is the most favorable for you. On top of that, [fees on ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/faq/what-fees-are-there-during-an-exchange) are among the lowest on the market of non-custodial exchange services, being between 0.5–1% on average. They are already included in the estimated rate that you see in the [calculator](http://changenow.io/) before initiating the swap: there are no hidden fees.\n\nThe fees also depend on the exchange mode that you choose: classic or fixed rate.\n\nWith the classic rate, the swap is processed at the currency’s market rate relevant at the moment of the exchange. This moment happens when we receive your funds which usually takes 2–10 minutes. By that time, the rate may have slightly changed, so you may receive an amount a little different from the estimated one (if the rate goes in your favor, you will receive more).\n\nWith the fixed rate, we guarantee that what you see is 100% what you get. The fixed rate is a little less advantageous, but it eliminates risk, so we recommend you to use it if predictability is your top priority.\n\n**ChangeNOW allows swapping 250+ crypto coins without registration and custody. If you’re looking to invest in cryptocurrency or want to swap your coins hassle-free, visit [ChangeNOW](http://changenow.io/) and see what we offer!**",
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{
  "trx_id": "2e7201011c5d6fc08e040f616a20be9ab130dfc6",
  "block": 58504270,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-28T13:11:45",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "cryptocurrency",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "crypto-taxes-in-2021-what-should-you-know",
      "title": "Crypto Taxes In 2021: What Should You Know?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbMenNukszy5d9cFkcmiqWWinVxkycjqHdivUiHj2S4rE/image.png)\n\nYou must have heard the proverb: there are only two certain things in life, death and taxes. But when it comes to cryptocurrency, many ask themselves a question: do I have to pay taxes on crypto? This depends on where you live, but most likely, the answer is yes. There is crypto taxation legislation in most of the developed and in some developing countries, and citizens have to report their crypto savings.\n\nThe requirements can be very different: in some countries, you only pay taxes when you are taking profit from crypto and transferring it into fiat or paying for goods; some countries are crypto havens with no crypto taxes at all. Let’s take a deeper look at what crypto taxation looks like worldwide.\n\n## What causes a taxable event in cryptocurrency?\n\nBitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not considered legal tender in all countries of the world besides El Salvador, so their legal status is different from that of fiat money. In many countries, it is considered as property, which means there is a capital gains tax on cryptocurrency. You need to pay it, however, only in case you sell your coins.\n\nIn the USA, If you buy crypto, you don’t pay any taxes. And you can HODL it as long as you want without having to pay anything, too — no taxable events are triggered in case you store your assets in a private or exchange wallet. Unsold coins are unrealized gain.\n\n## How is crypto taxed when it is sold?\n\nAccording to the law of the US and many other countries, you generate profit while selling your crypto or paying for goods or services with it. Only the part of your crypto that you sell is taxed. Say, if you’ve bought 1 Bitcoin for $30,000, and then you have the same 1 BTC worth $40,000. If you sell the coin, you will get a $10,000 gain, and this exact gain is taxed — not the whole $40,000 pile. If you buy and then sell Bitcoin at $30,000, no taxable events will be triggered.\n\n## Is crypto trading taxed?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmctL3jKTcB8CgBsPZLSvSU9VXKN1jpr27sv9B8SLTmrQu/image.png)\n\nThe tax on cryptocurrency trading in the USA is the same as on selling crypto assets. If you trade on an exchange, you trigger taxable events. The profit that you get from the bargain is subject to capital gains tax. That’s why it’s important to keep track of all your trades in terms of tax declarations. Many exchanges have tools that facilitate this.\n\n## For crypto stored in the short-term and the long-term, taxes are different\n\nSo we’ve figured out that in most cases, you pay a tax only when you take profit from your assets. This also depends on how long you’ve been holding them: in the USA, there is a long-term capital gains tax paid for assets stored for more than a year, and a short-term one if there was a shorter period of storage.\n\nHere’s the good news: in America, you pay less in the case of long-term storage. The short-term tax is paid on one’s regular tax rate which depends on how much a person earns overall: their salary, crypto and other property, stocks, and other assets. The short-term capital gains tax may be 10–30% depending on the total income. In the long-term tax, if the yearly income is lower than $40,000 overall, you don’t have to pay taxes for the sold crypto at all. This is a great incentive to HOLD your coins for a year and longer.\n\n## What is the tax policy for the case of money loss?\n\nIn some countries including the USA, tax authorities are very loyal in the case of losses while trading or investing in crypto. One would expect that if they experience losses, nothing will return — but this is not the case. The money that you’ve lost is deductible from the total tax amount that you have to pay. This is why it’s worth mentioning your losses in the tax declaration.\n\n## Taxes on mining rewards, airdrops, and crypto loans\n\nDoes one have to pay taxes on crypto raised in mining or airdrops? This money is considered as a reward — for helping the network run securely or participating in marketing activities. The whole amount of mining rewards and airdropped crypto is subject to tax. You trigger a taxable event when you sell this crypto, but unlike in the cases described above, you pay tax on the entire sum, not only the one that represents the profit that you’ve made from holding the coins.\n\nWhen it comes to crypto loans, it gets more simple. You can get a loan in fiat with cryptocurrency as collateral. Both the cash that you get and the crypto with which you repay the loan [do not trigger](https://www.forbes.com/sites/shehanchandrasekera/2021/03/17/how-are-crypto-loans-taxed/?sh=3b84a8d1135e) taxable events. The tax here only arises if the loan is not repaid on time.\n\n## Crypto taxes around the world\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmepUJhgzo82UEsHJgJQA7NT1tDRC3muF5u97WcPoiYRrm/image.png)\n\n## The USA\n\nHere’s a summary of what we described above: cryptocurrency in the USA is treated as property and is subject to taxation. The capital gains tax is paid when you sell your coins or buy something with them; the tax can be as low as [0% and reach 37%.](https://www.goodreturns.in/personal-finance/taxes/how-bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrenies-are-taxed-around-the-world/articlecontent-pf20591-1213422.html) For assets held for more than a year, the tax is lower. Mining rewards and airdrops are taxed entirely; loans are not taxed.\n\n## Canada\n\nFundamentally, Canadian crypto taxes are similar to American ones: if you simply store crypto, you don’t pay any taxes, but you do in case you sell it, pay with it for goods and services, swap it for other cryptos, or present it as a gift. The capital gains tax can go as high as 50%. For businesses, the whole volume of crypto-related activities is taxed.\n\n## The UK\n\nCrypto taxes in the UK are similar to those in the USA and Canada: simply storing your coins does not incur a tax, while selling it does. By taking profit, mining, and exchanging crypto, you trigger taxable events. The tax rate depends on your total income, and the range is quite wide. If you have losses, they can be deducted from your taxes.\n\n## Germany\n\nGerman crypto tax legislation is a little different. Here, cryptocurrency is considered as a private asset — so instead of a capital gains tax, you pay an income tax. Only the assets stored for less than a year are taxed, where those held more are not. For gains up to €600/year, there is no tax.\n\n## China\n\nIn 2021, China cracked down on crypto. Bitcoin mining was virtually banned in several regions. Holding cryptocurrency in China is still not illegal, but the government is trying to discourage it in all the ways possible — crypto trading is banned, banks and payment providers can’t offer services to cryptocurrency holders and traders. Thus, crypto is not taxed in China as banks and authorities do not recognize it.\n\n## Australia\n\nThere are two groups of taxpayers in Australia — investors and traders. If you simply hold crypto and even trade it sometimes, you are qualified as an investor and are liable for capital gains tax. If you carry out some sort of business activity with crypto, you pay the ordinary income tax. For investors, there is a discount: if you hold longer than a year, all profits taken from this asset will be given a 50% tax discount.\n\n## Crypto tax havens: where do you pay no tax on crypto?\n\nMany countries have realized that the legalization of cryptocurrency and the introduction of tax benefits for it can foster their economies. In these countries, cryptocurrency is not legal tender — rather, it is a personal investment that is tax-exempt, meaning that it’s not liable for capital gains tax. For crypto businesses in these countries, however, the rules can be different.\n\nHere’s the [list](https://www.offshore-protection.com/offshore-blog/crypto-tax-haven-no-crypto-capital-gains) of countries that have no tax on crypto:\n\n* Hong Kong\n* Malaysia\n* Portugal\n* Singapore\n* Slovenia\n* Switzerland\n* Cayman Islands\n\n## How to keep yourself updated on the crypto tax laws?\n\nIf you trade crypto or invest in it, check what tax conditions there are for cryptocurrency in your country — this will allow you to stay safe and not worry about your stashes and, most importantly, the gains that they bring.\n\nIt is likely that in your country, cryptocurrency is treated as property, and taxable events are selling it for fiat or paying with it at stores and online services. It might be better in terms of tax to take profit from crypto held in the long term, and capital losses may be deducted from your taxes. However, this is the case far not for all countries.\n\nIt may not be easy to delve into crypto tax laws yourself, and it’s especially challenging to keep yourself updated on all their changes. In countries that have only started to recognize crypto recently, such changes can occur especially often. That’s why the best strategy may be looking for a good specialist and contacting them for clarifications. Luckily, many crypto tax experts have their YouTube channels, so finding one specifically for your country may be the best way to start exploring tax rules that apply to you.",
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{
  "trx_id": "15e4d2f59072ac72d951968fc82f91389bd40146",
  "block": 58395782,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-24T18:15:00",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "cryptocurrency",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "the-origins-of-cryptocurrency-from-ecash-to-bitcoin-and-on",
      "title": "The Origins Of Cryptocurrency: From eCash To Bitcoin And On",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPruqdobCEnT7zyVE7BRV1q3AXkMZEW7KFeUti8RbSQin/image.png)\n\nCryptocurrency is a little more than 11 years old, but it has already managed to trigger a revolution in the global economy that no one was expecting. Bitcoin serves as the new gold-like safe-haven asset; Ethereum runs hundreds of decentralized apps that allow users to access financial services in a trustless way; Ripple facilitates remittances by eliminating numerous intermediaries between banks.\n\nBut how did we get here? Cryptocurrency is based on cryptography that was known even in Ancient Egypt (a coded message was found in the Egyptian tomb of Khnumhotep II which dates back to roughly 1900 BC). With the advent of electricity and radio, it became easier to make encrypted messages and transfer them. And when the technology was applied to money in 2009, it launched a shift in the global economy that is gaining traction today.\n\n## How did it become clear: cryptography is the way to revolutionize money?\n\nIn the early 1940s, Germany was dominating in the Battle of the Atlantic. Its U-Boats had a big advantage over the Allied forces which had lost hundreds of ships during the war. However, there was one weapon that helped Allies win this war, and it was cryptography. A humble young cryptographer Alan Turing managed to decode the signals of Enigma — a cipher device used by the German army, thus saving roughly 14 million lives as the war ended earlier than it could. That example showed humanity how important cryptography is, and today, it is accountable for the biggest financial revolution ever happened.\n\nToday, money mostly exists in two forms — cash and fiat money that moved online. As for cash, many operations include transferring it from one place to another, which is slow, insecure, and prone to human error. Also, cash is popular among money launderers and tax evaders on a bigger scale than cryptocurrency, unlike it is usually thought. The money that is used online is more transparent, but it is fully controlled by banks and governments that can process it arbitrarily: they can freeze one’s bank account or emit more money thus boosting inflation.\n\nToday, cryptocurrency can change all this. The concept of digital money has been around long before Bitcoin, but there were a number of unresolved issues. How do you prevent people from just copying and pasting money (the double spending problem)? How do you ensure a consensus of a distributed network of nodes? In the early 1980s — the pre-Bitcoin era, enthusiasts began to understand that at least the double spending problem can be resolved using the methods of cryptography.\n\n## The “Before Bitcoin” era\n\nBefore Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin, there had been many specialists who realized the potential of cryptography for money. The first digital currency emerged in 1983: an American cryptographer David Chaum introduced eCash — anonymous electronic cash, which was 25 years before Bitcoin went live. However, back then, the world was not ready to embrace digital money: only one bank, the Mark Twain bank in St. Louis, Missouri, used the currency, and the project was scrapped in three years. The key reason for that was that in the 1980s, the internet was a very rare thing, compared to the 2000s.\n\nHowever, the idea didn’t go in vain, and Chaum was not the only one to grasp the potential of cryptography. A decade later, in 1996, America’s National Security Agency (NSA) published a paper in MIT describing the possibilities of “electronic cash”. The fact that an agency of such a high level was considering the matter was a good sign for cryptocurrency. Two years later, Nick Szabo — a computer scientist who will be working on Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin in the 2010s — introduced “bit gold”, something that we can consider a precursor to the first cryptocurrency. Its design was so similar to Bitcoin’s that some even argue that Szabo is the never identified Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto.\n\nSame as in Bitcoin, in bit gold, there were miners who applied computing power to become the first to solve a mathematical problem. The solution is inscribed in the distributed ledger and carries information about the previous block. Finally, this solution has to be recognized by the network of nodes as a correct one. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?\n\nYes, bit gold is very similar to Bitcoin, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto. First, Nakamoto may have just read Szabo’s works and implemented a similar design with some changes. Second, this might have been a case of parallel thinking where the same solution came to two minds independently. Third, there are other contenders for Satoshi Nakamoto. And finally, there’s a 10-year difference between bit gold and Bitcoin — who would wait so long to introduce their revolutionary project?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNWtWdHPXRp7fPYHKddvbHBi42F5DwHDJRAuhtbN29WFg/image.png)\n\n## Bitcoin’s early days: from humble pizza purchases to becoming legal tender\n\nIn 2007–2008, the subprime mortgage crisis hit the USA and then later the whole world. The housing bubble exploded which followed the financial mismanagement. With the criticism of the existing financial system (which, among other things, implies that governments can print money and boost inflation at their will), Nakamoto launches Bitcoin. This happened on January 9, 2009, and the first transaction of 10 BTC was sent three days later to Bitcoin developer Hal Finney.\n\nFor one more year, Nakamoto was present on Bitcoin forums, but then suddenly vanished in 2010 after mining 1 million BTC (roughly $50 billion today). Back then, Bitcoin wasn’t considered a real currency — it was just an interest of a handful of geeks discussing transactions on forums. One of such transactions was sent by Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer, to pay for a Papa John’s pizza: this 10,000 BTC transaction was the first real-world use case of Bitcoin and is now celebrated as Bitcoin Pizza Day.\n\nAfter Nakamoto disappeared, the new Bitcoin’s public face was Gavin Andresen, the coin’s chief developer. Soon after he took Nakamoto’s position, he had to deal with the consequences of a large Bitcoin scandal: on August 15, 2010, hackers exploited a bug in the Bitcoin code and generated 200 billion BTC. A few hours later, the transaction was erased from the blockchain, although leaving a trace in Bitcoin’s reputation. However, since then, only one more hack has happened: in May 2013, an unexpected fork occurred, splitting the Bitcoin’s network in two. Most nodes have successfully agreed on one version of the blockchain, and the network continued to work normally. Since then, no major flaws have ever happened to Bitcoin.\n\nBut while there were no problems with Bitcoin itself, there were many actors trying to exploit the anonymous nature of Bitcoin and technologically imperfect exchanges where it was trading. In 2011–2013, one black market was popular in the darknet — Silk Road where guns and drugs were sold, money was laundered, and so on. Bitcoin was widely used as a payment method in this market. In 2013, the FBI cracked down on Silk Road, and its founder Ross Ulbricht was sent to jail for life. In 2014, a crypto exchange Mt. Gox that was handling 70% of the world’s Bitcoin trading volume was hacked for 850,000 BTC and went bankrupt. In 2016, hackers exploited a vulnerability in the Bitfinex exchange’s code, stealing 120,000 BTC.\n\nDespite all this, Bitcoin adoption was rising fast, same as people’s demand for it — so many new secure crypto exchanges emerged such as Binance, Coinbase, [ChangeNOW](http://changenow.io/), and others. In 2011, WikiLeaks started accepting Bitcoin for donations. In 2015, over 100,000 merchants worldwide allowed customers to pay them with BTC. In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQma3scbZXm7EHR6XemKt32Ee6gh7NRnyiLRVo1k3iagfPv/image.png)\n\n## Not only Bitcoin. How altcoins emerged\n\nMany developers got quickly convinced into crypto, and new coins started to emerge from its very beginning. In 2011, the first altcoin was created — the now-abandoned Namecoin forked from Bitcoin. In the same year, Litecoin also forked from the first cryptocurrency and now remains firmly in the Top-20 coins’ list. These developments proved that there is demand for other cryptocurrencies than Bitcoin and thus opened the floodgate: new coins started to emerge once in a few months, trying to introduce a better version of Bitcoin, and later — the brand new use cases.\n\nThis is how blockchain of different types emerged — particularly with other types of consensus mechanisms. One of the first alternatives to cumbersome Proof of Work was Proof of Stake — nodes didn’t have to compete in terms of computing power anymore, and the right to validate blocks was assigned to them depending on the size of their stake. Today, many outstanding coins leverage PoS, among them — Cardano, Solana, and Polkadot. Ethereum is also transferring from PoW to PoS — a blockchain that was initially designed to enhance the speed, scalability, and functionality of Bitcoin, and now is the basis for thousands of crypto projects and whole industries such as decentralized finance and NFT.\n\nIn the early 2020s, cryptocurrency offers dozens of use cases that no one could even think of back in 2009. These are safe-haven assets (Bitcoin), means of everyday payments (Bitcoin, Dash, Nano), platforms for dApps (Ethereum, Solana), governance tokens for managing crypto projects (Maker, UNI), privacy coins (Monero, ZCash), tokens of decentralized games (MANA, SAND). Today, the number of cryptocurrencies and their diversity is growing faster than ever before.\n\n## What next?\n\nThere are thousands of cryptocurrencies today, and their total market capitalization exceeds $2 trillion — quite a robust way from 10,000 BTC for a pizza. This indicator keeps growing as institutional investors come into crypto and digital assets become more mainstream and clear to the general audience. Given the last 10 years’ blazing dynamic, it’s even hard to imagine today what cryptocurrency will look like in another decade.",
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{
  "trx_id": "ec1b1d5946692974169312fc8d74696e613cb9fa",
  "block": 58395561,
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    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "blockchain",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "how-does-blockchain-make-online-games-better",
      "title": "How Does Blockchain Make Online Games Better?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUoMx89nvod8AqAuaGWoPX6jGSP8uzi8zxYYTpjdmEqpf/image.png)\n\nThere are about 3 billion gamers in the world today playing on PC, console, and mobile devices. In 2020, the gaming industry revenue exceeded $170 billion. These are huge numbers, but there is one issue in the gaming industry that pushes it to change — players want to have more power over what’s happening in the game; they want their voices to be heard. Running games on blockchains can resolve this issue and introduce a new revolution in gaming. Let’s see how.\n\n## What’s wrong with the gaming industry today?\n\nPassionate gamers don’t usually play one particular game — they are often involved in many. However, as these games are run by separate organizations, it’s impossible to make gamer’s profiles in all of them interoperable. Therefore, one can’t transfer data and earned value between these games directly.\n\nHowever, this isn’t the largest problem — there is something of a bigger concern. Games spend hours and days improving their characters and getting expensive items to achieve progress in the game. However, all these items and characters are stored on centralized companies’ servers that are vulnerable to hackers and voluntary decisions of their managers. As a consequence, gamers never own their items and characters, while companies do. You can put much effort into your character but you will never have any control over it. This is what users want to change.\n\nAlso, players never have a say in what’s happening with their favorite games. Developers and founders can implement changes that most gamers don’t welcome — while the latter can’t do anything about it as the whole power is in the company’s hands. But what if there was a way to run community-governed games where the fans had control over what they’re involved in?\n\n## Blockchain — a technical solution to revolutionize gaming\n\nLet’s see how blockchain can become the infrastructure solution for games where users will be more involved and have more control over the flow.\n\n**Developers can build on secure encrypted blockchain platforms.** These platforms are decentralized — and far more resistant to hackers as there is no single point of failure. The game data is distributed across a network of nodes, making penetrators see no concrete goal to attack. Blockchain-based games are more resistant to DDoS attacks that users of traditional games suffer from.\n\n**All data is public**. In a blockchain-based game, all data is recorded in a public ledger, and no one can forge it. Users possess their items and characters. No one can just say “this item is mine” without demonstrating publicly verifiable proof of ownership. If you own something, everyone knows it.\n\nFor developers, this means their work can never be restricted or undone without the whole network’s consensus. On the other hand, devs can’t reverse the users’ value and data transfers, same as the community-driven decisions that they don’t like.\n\n**Blockchain facilitates in-game purchases**. Third-party payment providers and banks charge high fees and act in a non-transparent way, whereas blockchain eliminates middlemen and introduces direct payments. Native games’ tokens make value exchange inside games even more transparent and trustworthy.\n\n**Blockchain games are open-source**. Developers can review the games’ code and independently criticize it. To build your own game, you can freely learn the existing solutions to easily implement the best practice in your creation.\n\n**Gamers’ opinions matter**. The network operates based on a consensus, so devs can’t implement any changes arbitrarily. First, they have to ask the community, and any member can offer their own vision of changes.\n\n**In regular games, users pay money to companies. Here, they buy items to own them** which they can cryptographically prove. Moreover, a game’s tokenomics can provide various incentives: users can get tokens for their progress and then trade them.\n\nOne could say that this sounds good in theory, but is there any proof that blockchain in games operates the way it was designed? The answer is yes — now is the time to introduce you to the top blockchain-based games that have earned the trust of millions of users so far.\n\n## Top crypto games\n\n## CryptoKitties\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZMKSJSLGjtu6XVkLqz9RCABJzXymBWxydnboAAZCK7hD/image.png)\n\nThis game launched in 2017 on the Ethereum network has started the blockchain-driven gaming revolution. Here, users can breed cats, buy, and sell them in a decentralized marketplace. The most expensive cryptokitty ever sold is called Dragon, and the buyer paid 600 ETH ($172,000 in 2018).\n\nEven by 2019, the game was counting 1.5 million users and transactions worth $40 million ever made. In 2017–2018, the influx of CryptoKitty players was so high that the game congested the network and surged gas fees to their all-time highs.\n\n## Decentraland\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfKt5pPacikRz1L9rr1QnrvB51kse7VKjEEA6MoMo2eGx/image.png)\n\nDecentraland is a game where users can buy and sell parcels of land. It has also been introduced in 2017 on the Ethereum blockchain. In its ICO, the game raised $24 of crowdfunding in just a few seconds. Decentraland leverages the NFT technology that helps users prove their ownership of items. MANA is the game’s native asset that facilitates value exchange between gamers.\n\n## The Sandbox\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSpjLEoV5wa4Jr8kAj4HtfKXQKJztCX1AkMA5jVDdfKbk/image.png)\n\n[The Sandbox](https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-the-sandbox-nft-game-and-how-does-it-help-raise-money-2d3e962b365c?source=user_profile---------1----------------------------) is another Ethereum-based game that uses the NFT technology. Here, users can buy virtual land, build various game scenarios on it, organize digital concerts and exhibitions. Any item created in the built-in editor can be sold in the game’s NFT marketplace and located in one of the parcels of land. Buying land in the Sandbox is even [viewed](https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-the-sandbox-nft-game-and-how-does-it-help-raise-money-2d3e962b365c?source=user_profile---------1----------------------------) by some as a long-term investment.\n\nThe game became popular in April 2021 after the Winklevoss Twins and Atari gaming company bought some land in the Sandbox. The game’s market cap reached $1.6 billion and continued to grow.\n\n## How the gaming industry giants invest in crypto and blockchain\n\nGlobal gaming companies are starting to embrace crypto and blockchain. The South Korean video game producer Nexon Co invested about $100 million in Bitcoin in April 2021; the Chinese gaming company The9 put $6.7 million in Bitcoin miners.\n\nThese investments were, however, not about blockchain in games themselves. But here’s the data that directly proves the interest of investors in blockchain-based games: in the first half of 2021, blockchain gaming companies [raised](https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/06/the-deanbeat-blockchain-gaming-companies-raised-476m-in-the-first-half-of-2021/) $476M.\n\nHere is another good example: the Asian entertainment giant Atari (the one that created Tetris and Pac-Man in the 1980s) released the ATRI token — a currency that the company is going to use as a native asset in some of its games. The coin raised $1.5 million in a pre-sale event.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQjYp334Wj6DzvNfnSrY14xgMFiviY7LgUeqeQThzCw5R/image.png)\n\nMoreover, Atari has created a hybrid PC and console unit that is fully compatible with blockchain-based games and cryptocurrency transactions in them. The company ensures that this move is just the beginning of what it is going to introduce in the domain of blockchain gaming.\n\n## Bottom line\n\nBlockchain in gaming does one major thing: it gives users more control of what is happening in the game and what they possess. But importantly, this does not go against the developers’ interests: they can still build great games and generate good profits. The things happening now in blockchain gaming demonstrate that this model works and has a lot of potential. And today, we may expect one thing to happen: the major gaming giants will realize this fact as well, and we will be able to enjoy more robust blockchain-based games soon.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"blockchain\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUoMx89nvod8AqAuaGWoPX6jGSP8uzi8zxYYTpjdmEqpf/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZMKSJSLGjtu6XVkLqz9RCABJzXymBWxydnboAAZCK7hD/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfKt5pPacikRz1L9rr1QnrvB51kse7VKjEEA6MoMo2eGx/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSpjLEoV5wa4Jr8kAj4HtfKXQKJztCX1AkMA5jVDdfKbk/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQjYp334Wj6DzvNfnSrY14xgMFiviY7LgUeqeQThzCw5R/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-the-sandbox-nft-game-and-how-does-it-help-raise-money-2d3e962b365c?source=user_profile---------1----------------------------\",\"https://venturebeat.com/2021/08/06/the-deanbeat-blockchain-gaming-companies-raised-476m-in-the-first-half-of-2021/\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "c554081bf594dd6b762f47d275714f8b4646477a",
  "block": 58364628,
  "trx_in_block": 6,
  "op_in_trx": 0,
  "virtual_op": 0,
  "timestamp": "2021-10-23T16:08:21",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "kishu",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "what-is-kishu-inu-one-of-the-doge-meme-coins",
      "title": "What is Kishu Inu, One Of The Doge Meme Coins?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNS3EE2o34S4QFzgBAreEP866iGFsX3zhEybT1BkbQN6i/image.png)\n\nKishu Inu belongs to a cohort of cryptocurrencies inspired by Dogecoin — a meme coin whose value is mostly based on the activity of its community that loves Doge. KISHU was launched in April 2021 as a decentralized cryptocurrency with a focus on building a robust active community with incentives for users to spend the token.\n\nAlthough Kishu Inu has recently announced reaching 200,000 token holders, its price dynamic has been quite moderate across this summer. Let’s see what KISHU is and what the future for it may look like.\n\n## What is Kishu Inu?\n\nKishu Inu is a dog breed from Japan — just like Shiba Inu, the breed of Doge and another meme coin SHIB. The goal of Kishu is to bring the concept of cryptocurrency into mainstream by making it accessible and easy to understand. Same as other Doge-inspired projects, it’s trying to build an active decentralized community.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUtiudPTBbxfjiGK1iFoRV4jyAjrbXaPrT45YXh1K7eCG/image.png)\n\nWhen KISHU was launched in April 2021, it intended to become the “Dogecoin’s big brother” that would grow faster than the original coin. This goal is yet to be achieved, but the community is really growing fast: there are over [203k](https://etherscan.io/token/0xA2b4C0Af19cC16a6CfAcCe81F192B024d625817D#balances) KISHU holders to date, and it truly is decentralized: the largest KISHU address possesses 11.5% of the token, and there are only 7 addresses that hold more than 1%. The community is also pretty active on the KISHU [Twitter](https://twitter.com/inukishu) with 144k followers.\n\n## What is the KISHU team?\n\nSimilarly to Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, KISHU’s team is decentralized and mostly anonymous, so you can’t find its members’ photos on their website. However, unlike at SHIB, Kishu Inu has two co-founders active in the public space: Kishu Man (Head of Operations) and Inu Dev (Lead Developer). They sometimes hold AMAs in a voice chat of the KISHU Telegram.\n\nBesides co-founders, there are also about 20 team members involved in marketing and community management. They are currently volunteers; however, as Kishu Inu states in its roadmap, it’s planning to hire full-time team members and attract a bigger number of volunteers. KISHU is a non-profit project and there are no tokens reserved for development, so anyone can donate to help Kishu Inu run.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPUw2wVgMq9KZQyZJ12VZJ8vvNiFw2tpDzwWQz5PtTUyv/image.png)\n\n## What is the KISHU roadmap?\n\nKishu Inu’s roadmap (or, as they call it, Moonmap), clearly outlines 4 development phases, of which 3 have already been accomplished (the Launch, Growth, and Expansion phases). These were focused on launching the Kishu Swap decentralized exchange, reaching a certain number of Telegram members and holders, and initial CEX listings.\n\nThe current phase is called Utility and it focused on the following:\n\n* Launching **KISHU Paw Print** — a wallet tracker mobile app where users can see their KISHU stats and how it changes over time.\n* Launching **KISHU sWag** — a merchandise store for Kishu fans to represent the project “in the wild.”\n* Achieving more CEX listings.\n* Reaching 100,000 token holders and 50,000 Telegram members.\n* Launching Influencer Awareness Partnerships that help advertise and promote Kishu Inu to a wider audience.\n\nEverything on this list has already been achieved. The team has reached 200k holders and 70k Telegram members. As for the centralized exchanges, reaching out to them is a sign that Kishu Inu wants to attract a wider audience and go beyond the DEX community that doesn’t usually use CEXes. OKEx, Poloniex, BitMart listings make it more accessible to traders and thus more sought-after.\n\nThe only thing yet to achieve in the current Utility phase is the launch of KISHU Crate (NFT Marketplace). Kishu Inu is planning to hold a contest for artists where the community members will choose which pieces should be listed on the marketplace.\n\nAs Kishu Inu achieves most of its goals, the future direction of the project is not as clear — nothing beyond the current phase is outlined.\n\n## What are the incentives for Kishu Inu users?\n\nOne of the ways to foster any community is a system of rewards for its members, and this is what Kishu Inu actively does. In the KISHU ecosystem, any transaction made from a decentralized wallet generates a 2% reward for anyone holding KISHU in their wallet. This is an incentive to spend the token rather than passively hold it.\n\nTo spend KISHU and swap it for other tokens, anyone can use [KishuSwap](https://exchange.kishu.com/#/swap) — an official decentralized exchange of the community. It allows exchanging various ERC20 tokens and is powered by Uniswap.\n\nTo ensure a high level of security for the users, the team has ordered an audit of their smart contract. It was [passed](https://kishu.com/audits/KishuInu-Audit-TechRate.pdf) successfully.\n\n## What is Tenshi?\n\nSame as Shiba Inu, Kisha Inu is not a single-asset ecosystem. There is also the [TENSHI](https://kishuinu.medium.com/the-reawakening-tenshi-2-0-cc9063f59987) token that is called “the brother of KISHU.” This is a deflationary currency that provides another incentive: just by holding it, users passively earn Ethereum as a reward.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcGPT1LM2RRKLscQyG8L3F67f2x1yWw6X1biSSfZanuQ5/image.png)\n\n## Where can I buy and trade KISHU?\n\n## KISHU Wallets\n\nBefore buying KISHU, make sure you have a wallet that supports it. As KISHU is an ERC20 token, any wallet that works with Ethereum-based assets will suit you. Kishu Inu officially recommends using the [Metamask](http://metamask.io/) wallet that is available for iOS, Android, and Chrome.\n\n## KISHU exchanges\n\nKISHU is not only supported on decentralized exchanges such as KishuSwap and Uniswap — as we mentioned in the Roadmap section, the team is trying to get wider traction by listing on various exchanges. OKEx, BitMart, Poloniex are the major CEXes supporting the token. For the complete list, see the Kishu Inu [official website](https://kishu.com/).\n\nToday, you can also easily buy KISHU on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=kishu&amount=0.001). Unlike centralized exchanges, we don’t ask you for registration, KYC and don’t store your funds. Unlike decentralized exchanges, we allow buying KISHU for assets based on dozens of blockchains besides Ethereum.\n\n## Key takeaways for Kishu Inu\n\nKishu Inu is a meme cryptocurrency that aims at building a robust decentralized community of active users passionate about cryptocurrency. The KISHU team has managed to implement most of its roadmap so far and attract over 200k token users, but during the last summer, the KISHU trading volume has been steadily declining.\n\nThe team does a lot to incentivize the community and boost its activity, and currently, it has to do something else to ensure positive traction to the coin. If you have a positive price prediction for KISHU, visit [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=kishu&amount=0.001) to buy the token in a few minutes without registration.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"kishu\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNS3EE2o34S4QFzgBAreEP866iGFsX3zhEybT1BkbQN6i/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUtiudPTBbxfjiGK1iFoRV4jyAjrbXaPrT45YXh1K7eCG/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPUw2wVgMq9KZQyZJ12VZJ8vvNiFw2tpDzwWQz5PtTUyv/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcGPT1LM2RRKLscQyG8L3F67f2x1yWw6X1biSSfZanuQ5/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://etherscan.io/token/0xA2b4C0Af19cC16a6CfAcCe81F192B024d625817D#balances\",\"https://twitter.com/inukishu\",\"https://exchange.kishu.com/#/swap\",\"https://kishu.com/audits/KishuInu-Audit-TechRate.pdf\",\"https://kishuinu.medium.com/the-reawakening-tenshi-2-0-cc9063f59987\",\"http://metamask.io/\",\"https://kishu.com/\",\"https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=kishu&amount=0.001\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "7ed3135e2107bd9146b6554b5451fd36c956b85d",
  "block": 58364416,
  "trx_in_block": 13,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-23T15:57:45",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "bitcoin",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "what-happens-when-you-bet-everything-on-crypto-two-stories-and-one-conclusion",
      "title": "What Happens When You Bet Everything On Crypto. Two Stories And One Conclusion",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRzXE7CxFdxzojvGrGAXAgkp3Mtt1pvHrJWcHx15oEGLr/image.png)\n\nInvestment decisions are not solely about price predictions and coin analysis. They are about life — people trade not only for pleasure, but they are driven by the wish to improve their lives. Today, we will share two stories with you. They are about investing, but you won’t find any market review here — because they are also about people. People who once bet everything on crypto and that had consequences. People who reached success and failed in their desire to profit from crypto. Whether you invest much in crypto or not, these stories can bring you some insights about investing and forming a life strategy in general.\n\n## Disrupting the system\n\n**A man who sold everything bought Bitcoin before 2017, a went on a crypto-nomadic “decentralized life” with his family**\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSY97PnYnFdiYcwcEdmJiad6kjachb5DSz61UuzWWsqco/image.png)\n\nA man with a Bitcoin logo tattoo on his arm, Didi Taihuttu, is 41 years old and calls himself the “patriarch of the Bitcoin Family.” Fiat money is a part of his past, not present.\n\nHis story took off in 2013. A young man who Didi hired in his business told him about Bitcoin, and Taihuttu started mining it as it was “an evolution to disrupt systems” — something he was doing his entire life. Bitcoin mining was astonishingly promising at the time, and Didi spent 4,000 Euros on computers to start taking profits. Which, however, didn’t work out — Bitcoin collapsed in 2014, and the hardware was sold.\n\nThis could have been the end of the story, but not in the case of Didi. In 2017, his friend gave him a call and warned that the revolution of Bitcoin was starting and it’s time to get back into crypto. That day, Didi came to his wife with an even crazier proposal: “Darling, let’s sell our car, house, and everything else for Bitcoin.”\n\nRomaine may have said no — if not the kids. Do you think she wanted to secure and multiply her savings with scarce and inflation-proof Bitcoin? No — the reason was almost totally opposite. Didi was claiming that the wealth and stability that they had at the time were bad for the kids. In 2016, the family visited their roots in Indonesia — and saw most of the people growing rice for their living and having no access to banks, which made them think about the nature of cryptocurrency and blockchain. Later on, Didi’s father died from cancer, and all his savings couldn’t cure him. Taihuttu’s family realized money wasn’t really important for them anymore — but simply being with each other was.\n\nRomaine said yes. The family sold most of what they had for Bitcoin and went to Thailand, where they joined a group of other traveling families. A few months in a small town weren’t a problem — the basic infrastructure accepted crypto. The next destination was the Netherlands — there, they bought the rest of their Bitcoin for $1,000–2,000. In December that year, the first cryptocurrency hit $20,000.\n\nAt its peak, Didi was thinking of cashing out and transferring his wealth back into fiat — this would secure his savings for the rest of his life. However, he made the decision not to get involved with the banking system anymore — and it didn’t change even when Bitcoin’s prices started to crash in January 2018.\n\nWith today’s Bitcoin at nearly $50,000, Didi’s story is a story of success. Would it be different if Bitcoin didn’t skyrocket? We can’t know that. But we know that when the prices started to drop in 2018, Didi was firm in his decision to keep his life decentralized. His crypto stayed with him, and his family did, too. That’s what matters for Didi.\n\n## How to lose a 3-year salary in crypto and not abandon it\n\nAnyone reading Didi’s story could oppose — this is a survivor bias, there could have been people with the same goals and values, but they didn’t make it to blogs’ and magazines’ pages because they failed and no one knows their stories. We believe that this is a valid argument, and that’s why we want to introduce you to Helvis — a [man](https://hackernoon.com/how-i-lost-dollar200000-trading-crypto-and-the-lessons-i-learned-5311378p) who lost 60,000$ in several weeks.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYqkbrxcgJK9MnfPnm9ZKvnZQopbc2b4cBAPiBpdsFfWg/image.png)\n\nYou definitely know the rule “Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.” When the 2017 bull run came, Helvis was happy to forget this rule. He put in his last $2,000 while listening to Twitter shouting about the bull run that is to come. With no plan and poor research, Helvis was eager to invest.\n\nEverything that followed was kind of a blur: Helvis barely remembers when he shaped his investment strategy. He put his money into Verge and Tron, and after they made him the blazing $60,000 out of $2,000 in just 4 months, he swapped for Ethereum. With Helvis’s total yearly income of $24,000, the success seemed tremendous. You may guess what followed next — the man started to want more.\n\nAnd when you want more, you put your funds in the most potentially lucrative (but also the riskiest) assets. Helvis put his money in Bitcoin that collapsed a few months later, ICOs that turned out to be a scam, and did margin trading — the synonym of risk. He got totally obsessed, and while losing his mind, he lost about 99% of his investments.\n\nThere is, however, some kind of a happy end in this story. Two years after Helvis lost everything in crypto, he is still involved in it — this time, as a blockchain developer. And after the emotions played out, Helvis is ready to take a wiser look at what happened and learn a few lessons:\n\n* **There was too much emotion**. Doing research and shaping a reasoned strategy is the first thing to do when you enter crypto. The second one is learning to understand and control your emotions.\n* **There was a feeling of control over the market**, which was only a delusion. When coins grow just as you expected, it’s cool, but that doesn’t mean they will continue doing so forever at your will.\n* **He didn’t learn**. Have you heard of the Dunning–Kruger effect? After reading a beginner’s guide, Helvis thought he’s now an expert in crypto trading. That played a bad trick with him.\n## Your own way\n\nIt may seem that Didi’s story is about good luck, and Helvis’s story is about bad luck. They couldn’t control market swings that brought them to where they are. However, what they could control was their wish to change their lives and the ways they chose to make it a reality. You may have your own idea of changing your life with crypto — and if you do, make sure you’ve counted the risks and your emotions will only help you on your way.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"bitcoin\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRzXE7CxFdxzojvGrGAXAgkp3Mtt1pvHrJWcHx15oEGLr/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSY97PnYnFdiYcwcEdmJiad6kjachb5DSz61UuzWWsqco/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYqkbrxcgJK9MnfPnm9ZKvnZQopbc2b4cBAPiBpdsFfWg/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://hackernoon.com/how-i-lost-dollar200000-trading-crypto-and-the-lessons-i-learned-5311378p\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "c4a1390d25dc94f92cd9a55693c9ab0c8cfbb763",
  "block": 58304858,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-21T14:02:00",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "ark",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "why-choose-ark-wallet",
      "title": "Why Choose Ark Wallet?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZJoZpHxu6bA5HWLFD2RFqyQWCGPNAfucNjwj7uHwyoYk/image.png)\n\nArk is an innovative ecosystem aimed at driving cryptocurrency adoption. Developers can leverage Ark to build custom blockchains in mere minutes and adapt them to their needs. Ark coin is the native asset of the ecosystem that allows using its services, vote for block validators, and more.\n\nLuckily, the Ark team has created an official wallet that helps make the most of the ecosystem. In this article, we will take a look at it and conclude why it is the best one to store Ark coins.\n\n## Ark Wallet: a quick overview\n\nArk wallet is a secure place to store your Ark coins available for desktop and mobile. It has a very clear and intuitive interface. Since the transactions are executed in 8 seconds, you can see how they are processed in real-time. A handy dashboard on the wallet’s main page can be accessed from any device.\n\nThe wallet is available for all major operating systems: macOS, Windows, and Linux. It is compatible with Ledger Nano, which allows storing your coins with maximum security. Ark wallet is not full-node, but it syncs with the blockchain very fast, ensuring a seamless experience.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdmLdYxaShFcb1gfSW7swxNJTZkDc8yUWmCsRoX6b9w6r/image.png)\n\n## Ark mobile wallet\n\nAccess the Ark ecosystem right from your pocket — the wallet has a mobile version available for Android and iOS. There, you can check balances and ARK price, send and receive money, manage your wallets, and do all the other things that you can do from the desktop version. Moreover, Ark mobile wallet supports BTC, ETH, and 12 other crypto assets.\n\n## Setting up your Ark wallet\n\nDownload the wallet for [desktop](https://ark.io/desktop-wallet) or [mobile](https://ark.io/mobile-wallet). Set up your profile following the instructions, create or restore a wallet, and deposit some ARK. If you have a Ledger Nano wallet, use [this guide](https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005174589-Ark-ARK-?docs=true) to start managing your Ark wallet in Ledger.\n\nYou can buy ARK right inside the wallet. To do this, click “Purchase ARK” on the main page or install a ChangeNOW plugin that will allow you to buy ARK with 200+ cryptos. This is super easy and will take you a few seconds:\nhttps://youtu.be/4LBxtcQq-Bk\n## Voting\n\nIn your Ark wallet, you can set up the voting process. Elect delegate nodes who will forge Ark blocks and share their rewards with you. In the wallet, click “Delegates” and see their rankings, votes, and after doing some research, vote for one who you think deserves your choice.\n\n## Security\n\nWhen creating a wallet, make sure to save a backup of your passphrase in multiple places: write it on paper, put it on a secure flash drive. A passphrase is what you need to access your funds from another device or if you can’t reach your main PC or mobile phone. If you lose your passphrase, you will lose access to your funds, and even the team won’t be able to help.\n\nTo protect your ARK, set up a wallet password. You will need it to access your wallet on a given device. The wallet password is optional, but if your device has a risk of getting into someone else’s hands, it’s good to have an extra layer of security.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZUFwNbhgqomNPaDSLXUHXEFj7Q4CJrkvsdCYGY4XHR2J/image.png)\n\n## Why Choose Ark Wallet?\n\nYou can store ARK in any other wallet, too. But here’s why Ark wallet is the best for ARK coins:\n\n## Seamless asset management\n\nCreate as many Ark wallets as you want, give them human-readable names, and then filter them with a search tool. Add contacts of people with whom you work or simply plan to exchange ARK regularly. All transactions are displayed in the dashboard in a clear form. Together with your family, friends, or colleagues, you can also leverage multi-signature transactions to enjoy agreed collective spending.\n\n## Import wallets\n\nIf you’ve already had any Ark wallets, you can import them now with a passphrase. Overall, you can have many Ark wallets existing in the Ark ecosystem and access them from multiple devices. This adds flexibility, but remember to protect and backup your passphrases.\n\n## Ultimate security\n\nAES-256 encryption makes Ark wallet one of the most secure ones out there. A custom-selected PIN option together with the wallet password makes it even more protected. A screenshot protection option is available.\n\n## Community is always ready to help\n\nArk boasts of a dedicated community that is open to newcomers and is ready to assist them in case of any issues. Post your question on [Reddit](http://reddit.ark.io/) or join the live chat in [Slack](http://slack.ark.io/).\n\n## Bottom line\n\nIf you are going to dive into the Ark ecosystem, Ark wallet is your best choice — no other wallet will allow you to flexibly manage multiple wallets, give them readable names, import and export wallets, and show your connections with the other members of the Ark community. You see right at the installation process how attentive the Ark team is: they point to things to keep in mind and encourage contacting them in case you have any questions. This makes Ark wallet one of the best ones designed by an official platform’s team.\n\nTo learn more about Ark and see how it contributes to crypto adoption, see our [Ark beginner’s guide](https://medium.com/coinmonks/what-is-ark-and-how-does-it-contribute-to-cryptocurrency-adoption-a5da18df9a01).",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "sand",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "what-is-the-sandbox-nft-game-and-how-does-it-help-raise-money",
      "title": "What Is The Sandbox NFT Game, And How Does It Help Raise Money?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQma5xQVZP1xouSnFYnQcXvnB6PymAJ4LnXwBEgWCheho3Z/image.png)\n\nBlockchain-based gaming is one of the most rapidly evolving domains of cryptocurrency. Remember CryptoKitties, a game for breeding cats that sparked record-high gas fees on Ethereum in 2017? It was one of the first ones to leverage the NFT format. Since then, many NFT games have emerged but with far more advanced features, game mechanics, and tokenomics.\n\nAs never before in gaming history, today, players have cryptographically proven ownership of land parcels and game items in a digital universe. Having an NFT guarantees that you own an item and no one can cheat and grab it, including the game’s dev team. This gives users the unique ownership experience that makes them pay millions of dollars for digital land that has no tangible “real-world” value.\n\nSandbox is one such game. Let’s see what it is and how users can monetize their game ‘property’.\n## What is Sandbox?\nSandbox is a blockchain-based digital universe (or a so-called metaverse) built on Ethereum. Here, players can create their own items, mint them as NFTs, and monetize — there is an NFT marketplace working in Sandbox.\n\nThere are three main elements in the Sandbox’s ecosystem. VoxEdit allows for building 3D models and designing game items; Marketplace makes it possible to trade these items, and the Game Maker interface lets users build their own games with scenarios inside Sandbox using no-code solutions such as script templates.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTuncEzC6x666a6q15Rj69dkJCRE6HPfGXAoFdtwJW9AY/image.png)\n\nThe economy of Sandbox is based on SAND — an ERC-20 utility token that is used to enter the game, exchange items with other players, and so on. The total supply of SAND is 3 billion. Also, it is a governance token, and soon, users will be able to stake it to earn rewards.\n\nBesides SAND, there are also a few assets in the Sandbox ecosystem — LAND, ESTATE, ASSET, CATALYST, and GEM tokens. With LAND, you can buy a property which you can further merge and get ESTATE tokens. CATALYST and GEM give unique characteristics to ASSET that is used with LAND in the game flow.\n## What is the roadmap for Sandbox?\nSandbox has quite a broad roadmap for 2021, 2022, and 2023. This year, Sandbox is planning to launch the Foundation DAO with SAND staking for voting on Creators Fund management; continue regular LAND sales, enable multiplayer mode, and make the game available for different types of devices.\n\nBy 2022, Sandbox is planning to make sure that the game is available on consoles, will introduce new premium NFTs, provide over 1,000 games in the metaverse, activate new features in Game Maker, and more. Find the Sandbox full roadmap on their [official website](https://www.sandbox.game/en/roadmap/).\n## How can I earn with SAND?\nThis year, SAND held a [mining event](https://medium.com/sandbox-game/the-sandbox-liquidity-mining-phase-4-bc6220c58a07) that ended in July; staking SAND for rewards is only to be introduced. However, there’s an interesting option to earn with Sandbox that is available right now.\n\nAs we’ve already mentioned, there is the LAND token in the Sandbox ecosystem that represents parcels of land that you can own in the game. The thing with it is that it’s scarce: there will never be more than 166K pieces of land in the Sandbox metaverse, while the interest in the game keeps growing. Some enthusiasts [consider](https://hackernoon.com/why-owning-land-on-the-sandbox-could-make-you-rich) it a good investment to buy LAND now — and then, when the demand for it surges, you can rent this land to game designers who want to build their games on this parcel; you can stake LAND when it will be possible; let people host their shops or galleries on your land, and much more.\n\nHowever, don’t consider this as investment advice. No one knows where the LAND price goes in the future and how lucrative this investment will be. Do your own research to make weighted and risk-aware decisions.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRNfRwtEL1j3yZj6q1Tvh79D94vfyodqQLQMiUu9uL3eV/image.png)\n\n## What is the SAND price prediction for 2021?\nSAND token grew tenfold from $0.06 to $0.6 in just one year. In January 2021, the token price was $0.43. The asset is in demand among investors as it represents the new emerging generation of gaming where players have the freedom to own the metaverse and have handy tools to build in it.\n\nThe hype around NFTs and the monetization opportunities in the game only add to its value. [Wallet Investor](https://walletinvestor.com/forecast/the-sandbox-prediction) price prediction platform gives SAND $1.23 in a year. [Tradingbeasts](https://tradingbeasts.com/price-prediction/the-sandbox) expects the token to reach $0.77 by September 2021 and $0.88 by 2022.\n## How can I buy SAND?\nAlthough Sandbox has a built-in marketplace, you can only buy the SAND token outside the game. Binance, Huobi, and Uniswap are the major exchanges that allow buying SAND. You can also get it with 200+ cryptocurrencies on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=sand) without registration and KYC. The 4-step process will only take you about 5 minutes even if you’ve never used the service before.\n\nWe also recommend following the official media of Sandbox: they often hold airdrops, contests, and ambassador programs that give an opportunity to get SAND for free.\n## What are the wallets for SAND?\nAny Ethereum wallet will work. To make the most of Sandbox, you need a wallet that will fully support all types of Ethereum-based tokens including NFTs, so we recommend setting up [MetaMask](https://metamask.io/). The wallet is available for Android, iOS, and Chrome.\n## Summary\nSandbox has attracted thousands of users with its near-addictive game mechanic, accessible tools for building inside the metaverse, and opportunities to profit. The game has gained especially much traction during the pandemic: some users spent their entire lockdowns engaging with the Sandbox universe. The sense of ownership and freedom to create are the things that make the game so valuable, and the scarcity of land inside it hints that the price of SAND will only grow.",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "crypto",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "how-can-i-exchange-crypto-at-low-fees",
      "title": "How Can I Exchange Crypto At Low Fees?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdMLQ8BDqbBShFuqUfVH18eDRoyTF7sm5hTPuzQtXvqPk/image.png)\n\nIf you’re looking for a platform to buy and sell cryptocurrency, this article is for you. We will tell you what types of exchanges there are, what fees they charge, and how to understand if a fee is high or low. We will list a few trusted services, so after reading this article, you will be all set to make your choice and start trading cryptocurrency right away.\n\n## Why is it hard to choose a crypto trading platform?\n\nIf you are new to crypto, you may feel lost in the abundance of services and platforms that the crypto industry has to offer. Most of them say the same thing: they are the fastest, the cheapest, and the most secure. How can we know this is true, though? Getting to real facts requires doing research.\n\nAnother important thing is that it’s not only about fees: a platform with the lowest commissions is not necessarily the best one. Is it a trusted platform or does it look a bit sketchy? Is it secure enough, or has been involved in some type of controversy? What KYC requirements does it have?\n\nAll these aspects are worth taking into account — however, read this guide first before diving deeper: we will recommend to you the trusted platforms that have earned the trust of the crypto community.\n\nNow, let’s see what types of exchanges there are and what fees they charge.\n\n## What types of exchanges are there?\n\n## Centralized exchanges\n\nIn **centralized exchanges (CEXes)**, you create an account, deposit some crypto from various blockchains and swap the coins instantly (executing a trade order takes less than a second) at low fees.\n\nSounds pretty cool, right? Yes, but usability in crypto always comes at the cost of security: if you store crypto on a centralized exchange, you don’t really own your crypto — you have no access to private keys. The trade goes off-chain (the transactions are not recorded on the blockchain): that’s why it’s so fast, but if an exchange is hacked or goes down, you may lose your funds. With decentralized exchanges and non-custodial exchange services, this is simply impossible.\n\n## Decentralized exchanges\n\nWhen you use a **decentralized exchange (DEX)**, you trade right from your wallet, and all transactions are written in the blockchain. This makes them more expensive and lengthy; however, you still truly own your crypto at any given moment, which is why millions of users prefer DEXEs.\n\nThere is one major drawback in DEXes: an exchange of this type is based on one blockchain, so you can’t make cross-chain trades here (say, swapping ETH to BTC will be impossible). This is not a problem, for, say, DeFi users, but we will skip DEXes in this article due to this disadvantage.\n\n## Non-custodial exchange services\n\nNow, there are also **non-custodial exchange services**. They are as secure as DEXes as the trade goes right from a user’s wallet and there are no accounts; they are as usable as CEXes because they allow for trading assets from different blockchains. Here’s how they work: you deposit some crypto coins from your wallet and the service sends you the swapped amount back in a few minutes while you remain anonymous.\n\n## What fees do exchanges charge?\n\nWhen you pay with a credit card, the store charges a little fee for using a bank card. It works in the same manner with cryptocurrency: any exchange service has a robust infrastructure that is hard to develop and maintain, and this is why **trading fees** are charged by all types of platforms for any transaction. These fees are usually fixed.\n\nIn the case of decentralized exchanges and non-custodial exchange services, there is also a **network fee** that you pay for depositing your coin on the platform. This fee is charged by the blockchain and is used to reward its developers and miners, so you pay it not to the exchange, but separately as an extra sum from your wallet.\n\nIn some cases, non-custodial services ask for liquidity at large CEXes that they partner with, so another **trading fee** may be charged. Finally, the last **network fee** is paid to the service so that it can send you the swapped crypto back.\n\n## Top centralized exchanges with low fees\n\nNow, we will mention two renowned centralized exchanges with reasonable trading fees and robust security levels. You can start using them right now if cheap and fast trade for you is more important than the risk of losing access to your funds and the need to register and disclose your identity.\n\n## [Binance](http://binance.com/)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXaHkScTWTsRvifXPt5HFzTT1wTvkqiAQUBWBqoZvRERQ/image.png)\n[Fees description](https://www.binance.com/en/fee/schedule)\n\nBinance is one of the largest crypto exchanges, its total volume reaching $2 trillion in 2020. Fees at Binance start at 0.1% and go lower if you have a significant trading volume. If you pay trading fees with Binance Coin (BNB), you will get a 25% discount.\n\n## [Kraken](https://www.kraken.com/)\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNxF1ZfF5z8isaTTZ9VNXqQ48sQep4tMn2Sd1iUR9Zir7/image.png)\n[Fees description](https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/201893638-How-trading-fees-work-on-Kraken)\n\nKraken is also one of the most sought-after crypto centralized exchanges. Its fees go up to 0.26% and depend on the trading pair and your trading volume. If you buy or sell at the market price, you are charged as a “taker.” Say, if you buy 1 BTC at $40,000, you will be charged 0.22% ($88).\n\n## How to trade crypto at low fees with a non-custodial service?\n\nLightning-fast order execution and low fees may be your top priority, and in this case, centralized exchanges work well. But remember about the security issues: not only a CEX can be hacked or go down, but it can, say, start maintenance at an unexpected time and limit withdrawals when you need them so much. This is something that is impossible with non-custodial exchange services.\n\n**[ChangeNOW](http://changenow.io/) is a non-custodial exchange service** that never stores your funds, can’t freeze them, or limit your access to them. We don’t ask you for registration and KYC, so you can preserve your anonymity and save huge amounts of time (a KYC check at Binance may take you several weeks, and until it’s over, your possibilities will be very limited!).\n\nYes, with a non-custodial service, you have to pay network fees on top of the trading ones. This can be annoying, but if you catch a moment when the network fees set by blockchains are not as high (or simply send many currencies with extremely low network fees), you will pay mere cents.\n\nChangeNOW partners with numerous liquidity providers, which allows us to choose the best rate between them all and offer it to you at the moment of the swap. And we charge no hidden fees: they are all already included in the estimated rate that you see in the calculator.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmY48pniD7CPQ3c4wtjia2bMhtZyhmsQd9EoUTpiDkPUcp/image.png)\n\n## What exchange service to choose?\n\nNow, you know what exchanges there are and what fees they charge. If you are planning to do tons of daily trading, centralized exchanges are probably the best solution for you in terms of fees. But if you want to stay anonymous and be always sure your crypto is with you, use non-custodial exchange services.\n\nReal test experience will help you decide. Go to [ChangeNOW](http://changenow.io/) and make a small crypto swap — you will see how simple and fast it is. See what rates we offer and compare them with what Binance or Kraken have.\n\nGood luck with choosing your best trading platform!",
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      "parent_permlink": "cake",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "what-are-the-opportunities-to-earn-with-pancakeswap-in-2021",
      "title": "What Are The Opportunities To Earn With PancakeSwap In 2021?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdycRxm7uZ7nUGKKZLsgsQhJo17Dpeesu8a4JoyG8Shie/image.png)\n\n11 months following its launch, PancakeSwap has become one of the DeFi’s largest yield farming protocols. According to the [DeFi Llama](https://defillama.com/protocols) portal, it has already beaten Uniswap in terms of total value locked with $5.5B of accumulated funds.\n\nHow did PancakeSwap manage that? How can you generate income with CAKE token and Syrup pools? Let’s find out!\n## What is DeFi and why is everyone talking about it?\nYou know well how traditional finance looks like: banks with their cumbersome procedures, credit history, and low APR. If you want to borrow money, you have to undergo a credit check which you never know the result of in advance; if you want to make a deposit, the best you can count on is an interest rate slightly higher than the inflation.\n\n[Decentralized finance](https://medium.com/coinmonks/centralized-and-decentralized-exchanges-which-ones-to-choose-217c4f8c2f42) offers the same services but with cryptocurrency. Since it’s based on a permissionless blockchain, everyone with an internet connection can access it without any restrictions. The services in DeFi are transparent and intermediary-free, meaning that no one can affect your funds in any way beyond what’s written in a smart contract.\n\nDeFi skyrocketed in 2020–2021 after the concept of yield farming was introduced: an opportunity to get extra tokens as a reward for providing liquidity to a protocol. PancakeSwap is one of such services — its simplicity and high profitability attracted millions of users in less than a year.\n## What is PancakeSwap? How does it work?\nPancake is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Binance Smart Chain — a blockchain launched by the Binance exchange in September 2020. As a DEX, PancakeSwap allows users to swap between BSC-based tokens right from their wallets at low fees.\n\nPancakeSwap leverages the Automated Market Maker model: in this exchange, there is no order book where all “buy” and “sell” orders are written. Instead, there are liquidity pools — smart contacts where a pair of tokens is locked. For example, if a user wants to sell their BUSD and buy some CAKE tokens (native asset of PancakeSwap), they would trade directly with a BUSD-CAKE liquidity pool.\n\nAnd here’s where the magic starts: these liquidity pools offer users numerous opportunities to profit. First, you can provide liquidity to a pool and get a share from every exchange in it as a reward. Second, when you provide liquidity to a pool, you get LP (liquidity pool) tokens that represent your share in the pool — and you can stake these tokens in farms and earn CAKE (this is exactly the yield farming part of the game). Third, you can stake the earned CAKE in single-currency Syrup pools and get even more CAKE or other BSC-based tokens.\n\nWe will review the earning process in PancakeSwap in more detail a little bit later.\n## What is PancakeSwap’s roadmap?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTUHQFrsaTmQQHuzJi8x2KFSYVe59qUu8awRR26PG3Sa4/image.png)\n\nThe anonymous team of PancakeSwap asks to better call their [roadmap](https://docs.pancakeswap.finance/roadmap) a to-do list because this is how they work: “as fast as we can, on the things we can.” Apparently, the roadmap does look like such a list:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmY2ieCL5tz2x31fyEU3t6VgMzp5t2MyCCcwYQuZ9mg5xo/image.png)\n\nCAKE staking and the basics of the NFT ecosystem are the things besides the core features already launched in PancakeSwap. Now, the team is working on the NFT-based gamification where you will be able to complete tasks to earn NFTs, borrowing & lending services for BSC and LP tokens, and margin trading for buying and selling BSC tokens with leverage.\n## What are the perks of PancakeSwap?\n\n## Wide choice of assets\nThe most popular BSC-based tokens along with rarer ones, stablecoins, and numerous wrapped assets are available for exchange and providing liquidity on PancakeSwap.\n## Compatibility with Ethereum\nPancakeSwap is well-prepared for users that seek to migrate from Ethereum. The interface is well-known for all Ethereum DEX users; connecting the same MetaMask or Trust Wallet is possible. As for developers, Binance Smart Chain made it easy to convert any ERC-20 token to a BEP-20 format and deploy it on BSC and PancakeSwap.\n## Low fees and fast transactions\nPancakeSwap leverages the general advantages of Binance Smart Chain: transaction fees between $0.04 and $0.2 that the Ethereum users can yet only dream of, and an average transaction time of 5 seconds.\n## Safety\nPancakeSwap is non-custodial, meaning that while trading and with this protocol, users’ funds always remain in their wallets and the team doesn’t have access to them. CertiK blockchain security platform has carried out an audit of PancakeSwap and proved it is secure.\n## How can I profit with PancakeSwap?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUgXvzcE29TqLaYTVCvSrBmS9Y8ih7gwCnSFVmAEciUKM/image.png)\n\n## Provide liquidity to pools\nAs we’ve discussed above, users can provide liquidity to pools and get rewarded. Here’s how it works: go to the [Liquidity](https://pancakeswap.finance/liquidity) page on PancakeSwap, connect your wallet (hit the button at the top right corner of the page), and click Add Liquidity. After you do it, you will get some LP tokens that will represent your share in this pool.\n\nWhenever a user swaps their tokens in a pool, they leave 0.017% of their transaction volume in this pool. This money adds to the amount of LP tokens proportionally between all the liquidity providers: say, if you get 1 LP BUSD-CAKE LP token after providing liquidity, you will have 1.05 LP tokens after a number of swaps are processed in the pool. When you want to return your liquidity, you will convert LP tokens back into tokens that you provided, and apparently, there will be more than the initial amount.\n## Farm LP Tokens\nYou can stake your LP tokens to get extra rewards with up to 190% APR. See the list of available [farms](https://pancakeswap.finance/farms) and choose one or a few based on the predicted APR and your trust in the tokens. Provide liquidity to the chosen pools and stake the LP tokens in these farms — this will bring you CAKE tokens.\n## Stake CAKE in Syrup pools\nOne step further to multiply your profits with PancakeSwap is staking your CAKE in one of the single-currency [Syrup pools](https://pancakeswap.finance/pools). It works very simply: after you lock your CAKE in one of the pools, you will start getting rewards with a chosen token, and you can click Harvest to collect your earnings.\n\nIn the Auto CAKE pool, you don’t only receive interest, but it automatically compounds daily: earnings add to your stake, and the APR increases. In other pools, you can also reinvest your interest, but that needs to be done manually.\n## What is the price prediction for the CAKE token?\nCAKE has made outstanding progress in 2021, starting at $0.6 in January and hitting $21 by August. This is even more than some of the services predicted: CoinGape was expecting CAKE between [$8 and $15 in 2021](https://coingape.com/pancakeswap-cake-price-prediction/). The solid use case and ever-growing user base helped the token surge.\n\nCoinpedia predicts PancakeSwap to soar to [$60 and $80](https://coinpedia.org/price-prediction/pancakeswap-cake-price-prediction/#h-what-is-pancakeswap) by the end of 2021 and $150 by the end of 2022. Another prediction platform Wallet Investor gives CAKE [$50 by August 2022](https://walletinvestor.com/forecast/pancakeswap-prediction#:~:text=At%20Walletinvestor.com%20we%20predict,be%20a%20profitable%20investment%20option.&text=Your%20current%20%24100%20investment%20may%20be%20up%20to%20%24925.82%20in%202026.).\n## How can I buy PancakeSwap (CAKE)?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdW8e5hjeE9ixKpQrq6j9MmsLV1LfyJGvvQrSn5CFsg8Z/image.png)\n\nAn obvious solution for buying CAKE is PancakeSwap: if you have some BSC-based BEP20 BNB or BUSD, you can get CAKE there instantly at low fees. Once you have it, you can immediately start making more profits by putting CAKE into one of the Syrup pools.\n\nHowever, if you’d prefer buying CAKE with any non-BEP20 coin or token, [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/currencies/pancakeswap-bsc) is at your service. Here, you can buy CAKE with Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other of 200+ assets at [low fees](https://changenow.io/faq/what-fees-are-there-during-an-exchange) in just a few minutes. No registration and KYC is required.\n## What wallets are the best for storing CAKE?\n\n## [Trust Wallet](https://trustwallet.com/)\nTrust Wallet is designed by the Binance team, so it has perfect support for BEP20 tokens and the entire BSC ecosystem including PancakeSwap. You can connect this wallet to the DEX in your browser and enjoy the opportunities of yield farming right away.\n## [MetaMask](https://metamask.io/index.html)\nMetaMask was originally designed for Ethereum, but as the DeFi domain evolved, the team has also embraced Binance Smart Chain. To add BSC to MetaMask, follow this official quick guide in [Binance Academy](https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/connecting-metamask-to-binance-smart-chain) — it will take you just a few minutes.\n\nMetaMask easily connects to PancakeSwap, and allows for storing your CAKE and LP tokens together with all other BSC-based assets. The wallet has once earned the love of the Ethereum fans and is now doing so with the Binance Smart Chain users.\n## PancakeSwap: the future of DeFi and farming\nPancakeSwap is one of the platforms that drive the entire Binance Smart Chain. This DEX is one of the factors why users are actively migrating to BSC from Ethereum: low fees, great yield farming options, and ERC20 compatibility facilitate this process. Earning with PancakeSwap is easy, and millions of users seize this opportunity.\n\nTo learn more about how decentralized exchanges work and why they are more secure than centralized ones, see [this article](https://medium.com/coinmonks/centralized-and-decentralized-exchanges-which-ones-to-choose-217c4f8c2f42). [Here](https://changenow-io.medium.com/uniswap-and-the-uni-token-a-beginners-guide-b7299cc4a4cf?source=user_profile---------11----------------------------), you can learn about Uniswap, PancakeSwap’s main counterpart on the Ethereum network.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"cake\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdycRxm7uZ7nUGKKZLsgsQhJo17Dpeesu8a4JoyG8Shie/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTUHQFrsaTmQQHuzJi8x2KFSYVe59qUu8awRR26PG3Sa4/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmY2ieCL5tz2x31fyEU3t6VgMzp5t2MyCCcwYQuZ9mg5xo/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUgXvzcE29TqLaYTVCvSrBmS9Y8ih7gwCnSFVmAEciUKM/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdW8e5hjeE9ixKpQrq6j9MmsLV1LfyJGvvQrSn5CFsg8Z/image.png\"],\"links\":[\"https://defillama.com/protocols\",\"https://medium.com/coinmonks/centralized-and-decentralized-exchanges-which-ones-to-choose-217c4f8c2f42\",\"https://docs.pancakeswap.finance/roadmap\",\"https://pancakeswap.finance/liquidity\",\"https://pancakeswap.finance/farms\",\"https://pancakeswap.finance/pools\",\"https://coingape.com/pancakeswap-cake-price-prediction/\",\"https://coinpedia.org/price-prediction/pancakeswap-cake-price-prediction/#h-what-is-pancakeswap\",\"https://walletinvestor.com/forecast/pancakeswap-prediction#:~:text=At%20Walletinvestor.com%20we%20predict,be%20a%20profitable%20investment%20option.&text=Your%20current%20%24100%20investment%20may%20be%20up%20to%20%24925.82%20in%202026.\",\"https://changenow.io/currencies/pancakeswap-bsc\",\"https://changenow.io/faq/what-fees-are-there-during-an-exchange\",\"https://trustwallet.com/\",\"https://metamask.io/index.html\",\"https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/connecting-metamask-to-binance-smart-chain\",\"https://changenow-io.medium.com/uniswap-and-the-uni-token-a-beginners-guide-b7299cc4a4cf?source=user_profile---------11----------------------------\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "cd166b6cda6138f99ccd6ac7e2402fc55f54e4b0",
  "block": 58135752,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-15T16:19:03",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "ark",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "what-is-ark-and-how-does-it-contribute-to-cryptocurrency-adoption",
      "title": "What Is ARK And How Does It Contribute To Cryptocurrency Adoption?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfNgae8jXRrnEi7mfAv4u5QSmx1CUQbKG9AxXbuH32XhA/image.png)\n\nWhat is the obstacle to blockchain’s mainstream adoption? Many businesses and individuals would even use the distributed ledger technology but consider the barrier to entry too high in terms of programming difficulty. ARK aims to solve this problem by implementing easily customizable blockchains that can be deployed in mere seconds. In this article, we will see why ARK calls itself “The simplest way to blockchain” and how it contributes to the adoption of this technology.\n## What does ARK do?\nARK is creating an ecosystem for businesses and developers allowing them to easily leverage blockchain technology. The open-source platform went live in 2017, following a successful crowdsale of 100 million tokens in 2016.\n\nARK calls itself an “All-in-one blockchain solution” and aims to democratize blockchain and drive its adoption by facilitating its development. With ARK, businesses and individuals can create their custom blockchains in mere minutes. ARK links these chains and helps them customize for various use cases with the ARK core blockchain.\n\nThe linking solution goes far beyond proprietary blockchains’ connection, though: ARK’s Smart Bridges aim to link different blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum for better interoperability in the crypto space.\n\nARK’s goal is to become the most flexible solution for solving real-world problems with blockchain. Let’s see how it achieves this.\n## Killer features of ARK\n* **Smart Bridges** are intermediaries between blockchains connecting networks with the same and different consensus algorithms. These bridges receive signals from one network and pass them to another, so you can trigger cross-chain transactions in your ARK wallet. To make this possible, a line of ARK’s code needs to be inserted into these networks’ code to make them ARK-compatible.\n\nTwo core elements of Smart Bridges are a data section called Vendor Shields and Encoded Listener nodes that monitor this data for tasks that they can perform.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmef75Ew8z9SgNueengEn1EmtgUg2ckP529fKXdEXNZUxk/image.png)\n\n* **Multiple-language software development kits** allow developers to build a blockchain on a programming language that they already know, which significantly facilitates the process. At least 18 languages are available.\n* **“Push-button deployable blockchains”**. ARK makes it easy to deploy a blockchain by using a clone of the ARK’s own chain. By linking all the created networks, ARK facilitates communication in the crypto sphere.\n* **ARK Logic allows users to leverage Smart Transactions** — thus lowering the need for complex smart contracts and replacing them with easy-to-build custom transactions written in preferred languages.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRqgGzUQicE4jGRSGmvqJjebz5kzkYbpLi7bGpWLnvyLv/image.png)\n\n## How is the ARK network secured?\nTo ensure good network decentralization and attract a bigger number of users, ARK implemented the Delegated Proof of Stake consensus algorithm. Here’s how it works: there are 51 delegate nodes elected by users staking their ARK coins, the utility token of the ARK network. Whenever a delegator forges a block, they get rewarded with 2 ARK and share a part of this sum with the users who voted for them.\n\nGiven that ARK block time is 8 seconds, the total daily reward across all validators and users is 200 ARK. To become a delegate who forges the blocks, one has to pay 25 ARK and wait until they are elected. Although those nodes who haven’t got in the group of 51 validators can’t earn rewards, they can contribute to the network as relay nodes.\n\nYou can stake your ARK, vote for validators, and earn your passive income, too. This is available in the ARK wallets that we will review below.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZvWAvyiLqRKVcMQ8MuREK4XMbRJhd3a1udukDXDuTtDF/image.png)\n\n## What price dynamic does ARK show?\nCounting from 2017, the ARK’s return on investment is over 8,100%. It’s all-time high was in the middle of the crypto boom in January 2018 at $9.99. The local maximum was reached by ARK in March 2021 at $3.2; its price was $0.4 before the 2020–2021 bull run, and the current value is $1.4 at the time of writing.\n## What is the best ARK wallet?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbRoMN7oaMLwWVhtSbwsZBRdLc6gEttY88g8SeY9TakeC/image.png)\n\nUnlike many other cryptocurrencies, the ARK team has developed its own wallet that gives access to all features of the ecosystem.\n## ARK Desktop Wallet\nThe ARK desktop wallet is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Here, you can vote for delegates (stake your ARK to raise passive income) and initiate Smart Bridge transactions. The wallet supports ARK and LISK cryptocurrencies. It launches instantly without syncing with the blockchain. As for the transaction fees, sending coins costs 0.1 ARK, while one vote will cost you 1 ARK.\n## ARK mobile wallet\nThis wallet is a way to leverage all features of ARK on your iOS or Android phone. Moreover, the wallet supports BTC, ETH, and over 12 other crypto assets, which makes this wallet a full-fledged multi-asset solution.\n## Conclusion\nARK is a decentralized ecosystem that facilitates building custom blockchains for businessmen and individuals. With ARK, a developer can build a new chain in just 10 minutes with one of the 18 programming languages available. Its ARK Logic allows for building a simplified version of smart contracts, while Smart Bridges enable interoperability between separate blockchains.\n\nIn the last few years, ARK demonstrated a moderately positive price dynamic. No one knows where it will go next, but if the topic of blockchain interoperability continues to gain traction, we may expect a further increase of ARK value.",
      "json_metadata": "{\"tags\":[\"ark\"],\"image\":[\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfNgae8jXRrnEi7mfAv4u5QSmx1CUQbKG9AxXbuH32XhA/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmef75Ew8z9SgNueengEn1EmtgUg2ckP529fKXdEXNZUxk/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRqgGzUQicE4jGRSGmvqJjebz5kzkYbpLi7bGpWLnvyLv/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZvWAvyiLqRKVcMQ8MuREK4XMbRJhd3a1udukDXDuTtDF/image.png\",\"https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbRoMN7oaMLwWVhtSbwsZBRdLc6gEttY88g8SeY9TakeC/image.png\"],\"app\":\"steemit/0.2\",\"format\":\"markdown\"}"
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{
  "trx_id": "1b0f64ebf48fd1585398038d697701daa23bfe61",
  "block": 58135178,
  "trx_in_block": 20,
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  "timestamp": "2021-10-15T15:50:18",
  "op": [
    "comment",
    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "bnb",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "why-do-investors-like-binance-coin-a-review-of-bnb",
      "title": "Why Do Investors Like Binance Coin? A Review Of BNB",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXNJQzAtwuJGLXZGYyg3NfYUGGEkc6vcnS9PGBSunQ3VF/image.png)\n\nOnce launched in 2017, Binance exchange managed to skyrocket on a highly competitive market. Its founder CZ became one of the first crypto billionaires in less than a year. Today, Binance is a huge ecosystem, and its key elements are the exchange, Binance Chain, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and their native coin, BNB. This asset allows you to save on trading fees on the exchange, pay gas fees on BSC, and much more.\n\nBinance is growing at a high pace, and so is BNB: investors appreciated how quickly it soared to the 4th position by market cap among all other cryptos. In this article, we will walk you through the basics of the Binance ecosystem and BNB, and you will see why it has become one of the pillars of the crypto industry today.\n## Why did Binance skyrocket?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmc6Bvvg72Uvqhx7VmnHdQFkHpoZpBHnfE9ZmNznRmrqWq/image.png)\n\nBinance was launched in 2017 — a year when the crypto market surged by 3,400%, and there were quite many competitors at the time. In just three months, Binance managed to reach a $500 million daily transaction volume. The influx of new users was so high that in January 2018, the company even had to suspend the registration of newcomers and upgrade its infrastructure due to the high load.\n\nThe exchange succeeded at the time when Bittrex was one of its main competitors, however, suffering from technical troubles amid the overheated market. On top of this, Binance proposed 230 coins for trading compared to Bittrex’s 190, and fees at 0.1% against 0.25% in its counterpart. These factors helped Binance achieve $2 trillion in trading volume in 2020.\n## Binance ecosystem: the core elements\n\n## Exchange\nLaunched first, Binance exchange remains the central element of the ecosystem. It allows for Spot, Margin, and Futures trading, and provides tools for both experienced and newbie traders. Unauthorized users have limited access to the platform, while those who’ve done a KYC check, can use fiat currencies and withdraw large amounts of money. The more you trade on Binance, the lower fees you will have.\n## Binance chain\nBinance Chain is a blockchain launched by Binance in April 2019. Its main goal was to promote fast decentralized (or non-custodial) trade, and Binance DEX was the largest DApp on the platform. However, due to this blockchain’s limitations, Binance Chain couldn’t provide a trading experience that would be fast and cheap enough for users. Binance Smart Chain was designed later to address these limitations.\n## Binance Smart Chain\nLaunched in September 2020, BSC is a blockchain that runs in parallel with Binance Chain. It is faster (block time is 3 sec) and cheaper (average gas price on BSC is around $0.01–0.03).\n\nSince it allows for building smart contracts, BSC has become a competitor to Ethereum in the domain of decentralized finance. Moreover, the chain is compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine, so anyone can easily migrate their smart contract from Ethereum to BSC — and that’s what many projects do. Although Binance Smart Chain is often criticized for being centralized, many users relocate there for low fees. In the chart below, you can see in yellow how fast the share of BSC in DeFi was growing during 2021:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNkMkpS8vx1gsP31PZQrLE3PTipo891cU5HeaoeTb8jcS/image.png)\n\n## Binance coin (BNB)\nBinance Coin is the native cryptocurrency of the Binance ecosystem. First, it was an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token; after Binance Chain was launched in 2019, BNB migrated there under the BEP-2 standard, and BNB ERC-20 were burned. Users with BNB ERC-20 could swap their coins to the new version. Later, another format of BNB emerged — BEP-20 on Binance Smart Chain.\n\nHere’s how Binance Coin is [used today](https://www.binance.com/en/bnb#):\n* **[Trading fees](https://www.binance.com/en/fee/schedule) on Binance exchange**. If you use BNB to pay for your trading operations, your fees will reduce from 0.1% to 0.075%.\n* **Gas fees on Binance Smart Chain**. Every transaction initiated on BSC has to be paid with gas. Gas is measured in Gwei (1 Gwei equals 1*10^-9 BNB), and its average price can be monitored on [BscScan](https://bscscan.com/chart/gasprice).\n* **[Services](https://www.binance.com/en/bnb)** such as payments, traveling, entertainment, and finance. For instance, you can buy an HTC smartphone or book a hotel on Travala.com with BNB.\n## What is a BNB quarterly burn?\nEvery quarter, Binance [burns](https://www.binance.com/en/blog/421499824684901944/15th-BNB-Burn-%7C-Quarterly-Highlights-and-Insights-from-CZ) about 1–2 million BNB coins, which is 0.4–1.2% of its circulating supply. By reducing the latter, Binance makes the coin inflation-proof: while demand for BNB is growing and supply is reducing, the price of the coin goes up.\n\nThe latest quarterly burn was carried out on April 16, 2021. 1,099,888 BNB were burned — and this is record-breaking in terms of value expressed in USD. The coin cost $510 at the moment, so in total, Binance burned over $0.5 billion! The burns will take place every quarter until 100 million BNB (50% of ever minted coins) are burned, and the quantity of burned coins is defined by the quarterly trading volume.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZGsezD2po3Af2QY9XnAusRFdebwNCcUYQPYXsLkatRYT/image.png)\n\nHere’s a table from 2019 showing why quarterly burns matter: keeping inflation under control helps maintain good price growth.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQUnstxEZrCip1VwW7hkV76rqmG3ouS99hLTXikm2iM3v/image.png)\n\n## Binance Coin price history\nIn the last 2 years, BNB was dangling somewhere between Top 10 and Top 20 cryptos by market cap. After the BSC launch, things changed amid the 2020–2021 bull run: Binance Coin soared from below $40 to the whopping $690 at the all-time high, and now is at the $345 mark. Upon its launch in 2017, BNB cost $0.1.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTFSpvnmFuRU1133KFaDohe66wvdT5tpfMc5yBvY5Fjyn/image.png)\n\n## How can I get BNB?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQdruNNfZ8wZowZoXuGkpKU6GYuw24tz9Ma3GM13DUHhU/image.png)\n\nBNB is a Proof of Stake coin, so you can only get it by buying or staking.\n## Where should I buy BNB?\nThe most obvious option is Binance — once you buy BNB there, you can stake it right away or use it for cheaper trading on the exchange.\n\nHowever, if you are mostly interested in the investment potential of BNB and your wallet lies outside of the Binance ecosystem, we recommend you using [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=bnbbsc). Here, you can buy BNB coins without registration and KYC: simply set the currencies and the amounts, deposit the crypto you want to buy BNB with, and receive your Binance coins in a few minutes. We offer you to buy BNB with over 200 crypto assets.\n## How do I stake BNB?\nOnce you have some BNB, you can [stake it](https://academy.binance.com/en/articles/a-quick-guide-to-bnb-staking-on-binance-smart-chain-bsc) to get some more coins as rewards for helping secure the network. Binance Smart Chain works on the Proof of Staked Authority consensus algorithm, which means blocks are validated by 21 nodes that have been elected by delegates. You can become a delegate and get a part of the validator’s rewards for confirming blocks. A delegates’ Annual Percentage Rate is 60%. You can delegate [here](https://www.binance.org/en/staking).\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNPX7PZSY7wxHbUxuTZS7zyDgdvAn79zxQ71LTDujLuv6/image.png)\n\n## What is the best BNB wallet?\nBinance officially promotes [Trust Wallet](http://trustwallet.com/) — a multi-asset wallet that supports 40 blockchains (hundreds of cryptocurrencies, including BNB). It’s non-custodial — unlike Binance exchange, it doesn’t store your funds and doesn’t have access to your private keys. Trust Wallet is deeply integrated with the Binance ecosystem, i.e. you can stake BNB and browse BSC-based DApps in it.\n\nWe also recommend [Guarda Wallet](http://guarda.com/) for storing your BNB: this wallet also supports BEP-2 and BEP-20 tokens. Here, you can buy BNB with 200+ other cryptos through a built-in exchange tool powered by ChangeNOW or use a fiat provider service to buy BNB with your credit card.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZoq1kCyEenAgK574uFREt5BMRghVAKJwrMso8iwMgRaC/image.png)\n\n## One more Binance use case\nBinance has become a very large ecosystem with multiple products that constantly drive its growth. This growth, together with thoughtful tokenomics, has made the system’s native cryptocurrency BNB a very sought-after asset among investors.\n\nOne of the latest drivers of Binance’s growth was BSC — a public blockchain with smart contracts and low fees that competes with Ethereum. One of its use cases is NFT: the largest marketplaces have quickly adopted BSC, and recently, Binance has launched its own [NFT marketplace](https://www.binance.com/en/nft/home). Remember the NFT boom in early 2021? Here’s what it ended up with: take a look at the [top-10 most expensive NFTs ever sold](https://medium.com/the-capital/top-10-most-expensive-nfts-ever-sold-b379c163ad5e).",
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      "parent_permlink": "monero",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "8-best-monero-wallets-in-2021",
      "title": "8 Best Monero Wallets in 2021",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYUhiK4iC6ystZKQA5ZHzS28PLnGUp3SrNXj78LfFDfjp/image.png)\n\nYou must have opened this article either because you’ve been fascinated by the privacy of Monero or you see it as a good investment. Using XMR for these and other purposes requires different wallet features, so we brought together a list of Monero wallets to show how they can suit different needs and use cases. Today, we will help you choose a Monero wallet that will be the best specifically for you.\n\nWe will start with a quick overview and then describe the wallets in more detail.\n## What are the types of Monero wallets?\n**Hot wallets** store your private keys on a device connected to the internet: PC or mobile phone. You don’t need any extra devices to access your Monero and can easily move your coins. Hot wallets are good if you want to trade XMR or regularly send it to other users.\n\n**Cold wallets** store the private keys offline on an encrypted flash drive or simply a piece of paper. These wallets are nearly impossible to hack, so they are good for storing large amounts of Monero and long-term investments. Daily use or XMR with cold wallets is less convenient: you have to connect the device to your PC or phone.\n\nLet’s take a look at the examples.\n## Monero hot wallets\n## Cake Wallet\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmV6z3mGSCvBkCKYmBhwm5d3UErcSrMwmQPBDMbBqiaNhb/image.png)\n\nCake Wallet has been developed by Monero enthusiasts: it’s free, open-source, and runs on donations. In 2018, Cake became the first open-source Monero wallet for iOS; the Android version was created in 2020.\n\nCake Wallet was initially focused on Monero only, but the developers listened to their community and made it possible to also store Bitcoin and Litecoin. Overall, there are two main goals of Cake Wallet: first, to let newcomers enjoy an intuitive interface and usability (for example, you can see what your crypto savings are worth in fiat). Second, Monero strives to offer advanced features to crypto-savvy users (e.g. choosing the XMR node to sync with).\n## Guarda Wallet\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdYBsqqfyqoS9PYnLNr8YEBdrNUxRMab8nQSEcWgnMjAy/image.png)\n\nGuarda Wallet allows you to store your Monero together with your entire crypto portfolio: it supports over 500 different cryptocurrencies. Accessibility is king in Guarda: the wallet is available for all major desktop and mobile operating systems. And this is secure enough: Guarda is non-custodial, which means the private keys are stored on your devices in an encrypted form and the developers can’t access them.\n\nIn Guarda, you can swap your Monero with other coins or buy it with a credit card right inside the app. Staking some coins and accessing dApps of Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain is possible.\n\nUse Guarda Wallet if Monero is a part of your short- or mid-term investment portfolio.\n## Monerujo\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdF4AnPsvoFu2NLqkKTk7w34evjsmpyHsfHCPcLchgQUo/image.png)\n\nMonerujo is the first Android wallet for Monero. Same as Cake, it’s community-driven and open-source. The wallet is lightweight and syncs well with the blockchain, which ensures fast transaction processing. Although Monerujo is a Monero-only wallet, you can leverage the SideShift.ai feature to pay on BTC addresses.\n\nIf you want to store or use Monero on your Android phone, Monerujo is for you.\n## MyMonero\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmdkgLSpiLm7SDABmB1i5L5hBE4pMcasuWbQq5GvdGAo7x/image.png)\n\nMyMonero is the official XMR wallet developed by the coin’s team. It is a web wallet — you don’t have to download or install anything and can access your crypto in a web browser. This is quite convenient; however, the Monero team itself warns against storing large amounts of XMR in this wallet since it’s hard for MyMonero to deliver its code to the browser securely enough. Treat MyMonero as a regular wallet: keep it safe but don’t store too much money in it.\n## Monero GUI Wallet\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNkDs2GvfEfYyghw7mT7B1CGzWqqotx4YgUrjnD9qprSJ/image.png)\n\nMonero GUI Wallet is the official Monero desktop wallet available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Compared to all the previous ones on this list, Monero GUI is a full-node wallet: instead of syncing with a Monero node via a third party, you run your own one, which eliminates middlemen and adds security. However, the wallet requires downloading the whole Monero blockchain that is over 60 GB in size, and initial syncing with it will last for several hours.\n\nUse Monero GUI Wallet if you trust the XMR team and want to make the most of your Monero.\n## Monero cold wallets\n## Ledger Nano S\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmc2tGh7XXMVMKKmsRH651WFZ51kfEF2v2LacstnTZrgYw/image.png)\n\nLedger Nano S is a hardware wallet: it is a flash drive that stores your private keys offline. The keys are encrypted, and you access them with a 2FA and a PIN code. In the crypto community, this is considered the most secure way of storing your digital assets.\n\nLedger supports over 1000 crypto assets, so you can HODL Monero together with the rest of your investments. Managing them is possible via Ledger Live App: to send a transaction, you’ll need to connect the wallet to your mobile device or PC, but simply tracking your portfolio is possible without the physical device.\n## Trezor T\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaTTTHneXdMQgUi7QjUb3XAJBUAc4JeXmM2uGwXiSX6HB/image.png)\n\nTrezor T is another hardware wallet for Monero. It costs the same $59 as Ledger Nano S and supports over 1000 crypto assets as well. The difference is in its appearance: Trezor is made of plastic and has a different design. It has a touchscreen compared to the OLED display in Ledger; security measures for entering the wallet are slightly different.\n## Monero offline wallet\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmWwBtuFoFCBhAVvWP4TRcSi9nnhmAbEWQSfTYnmSDuWie/image.png)\n\nMonero offline wallet is a paper wallet where your public and private keys are written. Here’s its core advantage: unlike in all wallets above, you don’t have to worry about the security of software and hardware, you simply have to keep a piece of paper in a secure place, and that’s it. However, there’s a risk, especially if you are prone to losing small things.\n\nWe recommend using a paper wallet for Monero only if you are planning to store it in the long term and not going to move it much — the latter is quite difficult and requires special tech skills. Making a Monero offline wallet is possible with a special generator online.\n## OK, so what Monero wallet should I use?\nTo choose the best Monero wallet for your needs, consider the way you are going to use your coins:\n* If it is a **long-term investment or simply a significant sum** of money, store it on Ledger or Trezor,\n* If you want to have **fast access to your Monero from numerous devices**, download Guarda Wallet,\n* If the **mobile version** is enough for you, get Cake Wallet or Monerujo,\n* If the **PC alone** is just fine and you want to use the **official wallet**, download MyMonero or Monero GUI Wallet.\n\nWe hope this article helped you understand better which Monero wallet you need. If you are also looking where to store other coins, check out our wallet choice articles for [Bitcoin](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-choose-a-bitcoin-wallet-a-short-guide-e37571025c91), [Dogecoin](https://changenow-io.medium.com/best-dogecoin-wallet-in-2021-7d394583091b), [Ethereum & ERC20 tokens](https://changenow-io.medium.com/where-should-i-store-my-maker-token-9315eea88af3?source=user_profile---------16----------------------------), and [TRON & TRC20 tokens](https://medium.com/coinmonks/4-best-bittorrent-wallets-in-2021-e0ddfe0d6e58).",
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    {
      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "bitcoin",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "why-is-bitcoin-not-used-for-daily-payments-as-much",
      "title": "Why Is Bitcoin Not Used For Daily Payments As Much?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPkgWfaNbSNWwS8NUbgRLGEDkYHhhV9WHn2ekYGW974eR/image.png)\n\nBitcoin maximalists may be dreaming of a future where Bitcoin is a means of daily value exchange used by all humans. Today, however, this is far from reality: in 2021, Bitcoin is obviously not the most convenient payment tool. According to on-chain data and surveys, Bitcoin’s main use cases today are speculation and a store of value — a way to multiply capital and protect money from inflation. But what limitations keep Bitcoin from becoming a means of daily value exchange, and are there ways to overcome them? What are the domains of the economy where Bitcoin is, however, widely used?\n## Bitcoin as digital cash — is the dream to come true?\n## The purpose of Bitcoin: 2009’s vision\nSatoshi Nakamoto was developing Bitcoin as an alternative to traditional money that we could use both as a means of payment and a store of value. In his [forum posts](http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source), Nakamoto criticized the existing financial system for being too centralized and short-sighted: central banks and governments can print as much money as they want at their will, which boosts inflation and lowers the value of money we own. Wait, we don’t even own it! Because a number in our balance is just a sum of money that the bank has to give us if we ask, while the real money is involved in the bank’s operations.\n\nBitcoin was designed as a peer-to-peer currency that only we truly own and have access to; to protect it from inflation, it was written in the Bitcoin’s code that there will never be more than 21 million coins. No one can issue new coins at their will and inflate BItcoin, and this adds long-term value.\n## Bitcoin for payments today: the scalability problem\nBut let’s get back to Bitcoin as a means of daily payments. Last August, the volume of BTC P2P transactions soared to $95 million weekly; PayPal has recently developed a handy tool for Bitcoin payments. However, we shouldn’t expect that everyone is going to start paying with Bitcoin due to the Bitcoin scalability problem. The network of the first cryptocurrency can process no more than 7 transactions per second (compared to 24,000 in Visa and expected 100,000 in Ethereum 2.0), and the monthly number of Bitcoin transactions hasn’t grown since 2017:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZ7eqEVhyUNBH7CaVcfcG5vx1z4CYKx2TQJFFXRyi7Rvc/image.png)\n\nHere’s how a Bitcoin payment looks in practice. What happens if you want to buy a coffee with Bitcoin? The best thing possible is that your payment is settled within 10 minutes, but this is not likely. Normally, a Bitcoin payment is considered irreversible after 2–3 extra blocks have been mined, which is another 30 minutes to your waiting. Your coffee got cold.\n## Layer 2 is king?\nMany proposals were presented to bypass the scalability problem. Most of them relate to the so-called layer 2 solutions where transactions would go apart from the main Bitcoin blockchain. The most prominent Bitcoin scaling project Lightning network enables transactions between Bitcoin nodes, not the blockchain per se. This network is only to get traction, however.\n\nBut even with these drawbacks, Bitcoin is accepted by quite many businesses worldwide. Let’s see what they are.\n## What can you buy with Bitcoin?\nEven as of 2020, 36% of small enterprises in the USA [reported accepting](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200115005482/en/HSB-Survey-Finds-One-Third-Small-Businesses-Accept) Bitcoin. Big enterprises don’t fall behind: Microsoft, Wikipedia, and Starbucks also have Bitcoin as a payment option. Cryptwerk platform [shows 6,800 merchants](https://cryptwerk.com/analytics/bitcoin/) accepting BTC compared to last Augusts’ 5,000; The [Bitcoin ATM map](https://coinatmradar.com/) displays over 24,500 Bitcoin ATM machines (compared to 10,000 one year ago).\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcL7tdja6qgnZtSEYFiB9kKEB4C1RMd6Y4bU1C6yMrHfJ/image.png)\n\nHere’s where you can pay with Bitcoin today:\n**Traveling**. Hotels, airlines, car rentals, and estate agencies [accept](https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/btc/) Bitcoin. Such booking services as [Travala.com](http://travala.com/) not only accept Bitcoin payments, but offer blockchain-based booking infrastructure where you can pay with 50 different crypto coins.\n\nTravala.com payments are powered by our friends from [NOWPayments](https://nowpayments.io/) — a handy crypto payment gateway that is easy to integrate on numerous types of platforms. We offer fees between 0.4–0.5%, 50+ currencies, and strong support. [Learn more](https://nowpayments.io/help)!\n\n**Entertainment**. Last September, Pornhub [started accepting](https://news.bitcoin.com/pornhub-accepts-bitcoin-top-adult-site-cryptocurrency-payment/) Bitcoin and other cryptos. Thousands of shops and markets worldwide accept BTC — check [Cryptwerk](https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/btc/), and maybe you’ll find some of them right by!\n\n**Internet services**. You can [pay for](https://cryptwerk.com/pay-with/btc/) hosting, email, VPN, and security services using Bitcoin.\n## Store of value — why is Bitcoin the new gold?\nAt all times in history, people were seeking financial tools that would allow them to preserve and multiply their capital. Traditionally, such safe-haven assets were gold and the US Dollar, and recently, Bitcoin has changed this cohort. Despite its volatility, many people save their money in BTC, placing their hopes in its inflation-proof and scarcity philosophy.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZTJJkbXbZ1Qeif5tixZ3NmQbXnuyvcSqdunqLPGUhjaG/image.png)\n\nHere’s why investors are optimistic about Bitcoin:\n* It’s the most secure cryptocurrency: an attack on Bitcoin would cost billions of dollars.\n* Bitcoin is transparent: everyone knows what the rules of the game are, and rests assured they are inalterable.\n* The total supply of Bitcoin will never surpass 21 million, which gives it ultimate protection from inflation.\n* Although the current price dynamic is controversial, most of the experts are bullish about Bitcoin in the long term.\n* Bitcoin is easy to [invest](http://changenow.io/) in. [Set up](https://changenow-io.medium.com/how-to-choose-a-bitcoin-wallet-a-short-guide-e37571025c91) a crypto wallet, buy some BTC, and don’t be upset when you see red candlesticks on daily charts: if you are a long-term investor, they don’t mean much to you.\n## Borderless peer-to-peer transactions\nHere’s how a regular bank remittance goes: it passes through dozens of intermediaries who charge their fees, and in several days, it reaches its destination. With Bitcoin, it’s different: payments sent to your neighbor and to your friend on another continent will be processed within the same time at the same fees. Also, no Bitcoin payment can be lost or frozen as no authority has any influence over it.\n## Local currency substitute in poor economies\nIn the USA, people buy Bitcoin to protect themselves from inflation: Bitcoin’s yearly yield covers the Dollar’s value decrease. But if people do this in one of the world’s strongest economies, what happens in the developing ones — like in Venezuela with its [10,000,000%](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/02/venezuela-inflation-at-10-million-percent-its-time-for-shock-therapy.html) yearly inflation rate, where the national currency plunges every month?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmaYcEwcEJjMipyGeq9Zfj4rB9r5fYvyEDkKwkqpfFzPMA/image.png)\n\nYou’re right — people in these countries buy Bitcoin! [Africa is a great example](https://changenow.io/blog/crypto-in-africa) here. In some of its countries, the population is far ahead of its government in terms of technology and crypto adoption — digital assets are under strong control in Nigeria, but people send huge amounts of Bitcoin to each other on a daily basis.\n## Final word\nBitcoin was created in opposition to the world’s financial authorities who can boost inflation excusing it for good reasons. This leads to the fiat currencies’ depreciation, and people choose Bitcoin as an investment option. Although the coin’s speed doesn’t allow it to become the means of daily payments, people entrust their funds to Bitcoin for its long-term potential. If you want to join the bandwagon, visit [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=usd&to=btc&fiatMode=true) and see what rates we offer for Bitcoin.",
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      "parent_permlink": "defi",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "defi-attacks-and-ways-to-avoid-them",
      "title": "DeFi Attacks And Ways To Avoid Them",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTTng1ke69vnVgyaevkXPGdsZAUij1x1Vz5uY5ByauZXg/image.png)\n\nTwo things are distinctive for the DeFi segment right now: it’s soaring to unprecedented heights; it’s poorly regulated, and barely anyone with resources or some tech skills can run a smart contract and attract the audience. These two make the field overly alluring to attackers: almost $300 [has been stolen](https://twitter.com/MessariCrypto/status/1387430151907123203) in DeFi since 2019, of which around $150 in 2021 alone.\n\nHow exactly do these attacks happen and how to protect yourself? We will look at the mechanics and bring examples of the biggest attacks in DeFi so you could see what protocols to be particularly cautious with.\n\n## The shortest possible DeFi overview\n\nDeFi gives access to blockchain-based financial services such as borrowing, lending, and interest-earning. The key thing is that DeFi is inclusive and permissionless — anyone irrespective of their citizenship, social status, and credit history can take advantage. DeFi is trustless as it runs on smart contracts — all the terms & conditions have been described beforehand, written in code, and now execute without human intervention. The only thing you are left to trust here is the protocol team’s ability to write good code. This, in turn, is commonly checked by audits and by the community as most of the projects are open-source.\n\n*If this makes no sense to you, consider reading these first: [8 perks of decentralized finance](https://changenow-io.medium.com/8-perks-of-decentralized-finance-455beaf266be) and [7 biggest DeFi projects in 2021](https://medium.com/the-capital/7-biggest-defi-projects-in-2021-6f5bfb6eebb).*\n\nHow does this leave room for manipulation, though?\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXrfsDzAovjSRzXE2hKJXsHfAnGkzwRMsaMiizaZTHZo7/image.png)\n\n## How do attackers take advantage of the insecurities in DeFi?\n\nA hack in DeFi is when someone uses the vulnerabilities of a protocol to gain access to the funds locked in it. Here are the three main “strategies” of how this is done:\n\n1. DeFi projects are made very fast, and the team doesn’t always have time to thoroughly review their code. Hackers exploit these vulnerabilities.\n2. Every protocol in DeFi has its own mechanic of how users lock their funds and how they get rewarded in return. Sometimes protocol founders don’t see how some of these mechanics can be abused and become loopholes for big money-making.\n3. Some teams cause problems intentionally — they misuse their huge influence in the project (which the community didn’t notice) by selling their stakes and dumping the token.\n\n## Two most used attack schemes in DeFi\n\nLet’s consider the two most widely used mechanics in DeFi — **Rug Pulls** and **Flash Loan Attacks**.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQYCDoieuX6HgEKx7UVo4s6AkxdH6GvBiJHeohwrbo7uA/image.png)\n\n## Rug Pull — withdrawing liquidity when no one is expecting\n\nIn a rug pull, owners or developers suddenly withdraw their liquidity from a pool, provoking panic and making everyone sell the asset. Basically, this is an exit scam. The higher is the founders’ stake in a project, the more suspicious it is: rug pull is exactly one of those centralization risks discussed in DeFi.\n\nHere’s how it goes from the beginning: the founders announce a new platform with its native token that offers some cool incentives. Then, the team creates a liquidity pool on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap where the token is paired with ETH, DAI, or other major coins. Users are incentivized to bring in more liquidity as it will bring them high yields. As soon as the token’s price pumps, the founders withdraw their liquidity and vanish.\n\nDevelopers’ big stake is not a great thing, but even if there is one, there’s a way to protect the project: devs can set the program in a way that won’t allow them to withdraw before a certain day in the future. This adds much to trust in the project.\n\n## Flash loan attacks — pumping and removing liquidity\n\n**What is a flash loan?** It allows you to borrow unlimited amounts of money without collateral for a very short time — during one single transaction. You have to repay the loan plus interest before the next block is mined, which happens in mere seconds. If you don’t repay the loan, the transaction will not settle and the borrowed funds will be taken away from you.\n\n**One of the key use cases of flash loans is arbitrage**: taking profits from price differences of an asset at different platforms. Say, Ethereum costs $2,000 on Exchange A and $2,100 on Exchange B. You can take a flash loan worth $2,000, buy ETH on Exchange A, sell it on Exchange B, and your profit will be $100 minus gas and loan fees.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmeHrJ3wf98RBx1ydrnhVfhWySKBDu7byS8PBpmBCdwCXh/image.png)\n\nThe limitless nature of flash loans paves the way for exploits. **Here’s a general scheme of a flash loan attack**:\n\n1. An attacker borrows 200 Tokens A worth $100,000 (one Token A costs $500).\n2. Then, he aggressively buys Token B in an A/B liquidity pool. This pushes the price of Token B up, while Token A dumps and is now worth only $100.\n3. When Token B skyrockets, the attacker sells it back for Token A at $100. Now, he can afford 1,000 Tokens A compared to the initial 200 (after a 5X decrease in price).\n4. The attacker collapsed the Token A price in this smart contract only, however. The lender of the flash loan still takes Tokens A at $500. Hence, the attacker repays the loan with his 200 Tokens A, and takes the remaining 800.\n\nAs you can see, flash loans exploit the decentralized exchanges’ nature with no actual hacks. They simply dump Token A and remove a considerable part of the pool’s liquidity, which is basically stealing the liquidity providers’ funds.\n\n## The major DeFi attacks in 2021\n\n## Meerkat Finance hack\n\nThis is a classic example of a rug pull, performed, however, with exceptional cynicism. Meerkat Finance was a yield farming protocol where the owners didn’t even have access to the pooled funds. Shortly before the attack (and one day after the project’s launch!), they upgraded the protocol to gain this access, deleted all Meerkat Finance social media accounts and their website, and escaped with $13 million in stablecoins and $17 million in 73,000 BNB.\n\n## Alpha Homora flash loan attack\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPCHK8X5v5B4g6GsPZzreNXU3a9sxsjoDmprLGSMRShiT/image.png)\n\nStakes are rising! $37 million was stolen in the [Alpha Homora](https://homora-v2.alphafinance.io/) attack this February. This borrowing and lending platform launched in October 2020 and recently, upgraded to a V2 version. In one of the Alpha Homora V2 pools, an attacker borrowed and lent out millions of stablecoins, which inflated their value, allowing the attacker to make huge profits.\n\n## EasyFi private keys theft\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQMzcpDEEsXPx5PNJdkNjSXpASbpEd6aBHZ8hi8p7K5uD/image.png)\n\nOne of the most severe DeFi hacks happened this April with [EasyFi](https://easyfi.network/index.html), a Polygon-based lending protocol. In a hack, a network administrator’s private keys were stolen, which gave the attackers access to the company funds. 3 million EASY tokens worth $75,000,000 were stolen. On top of that, another $6,000,000 in stablecoins was taken from EasyFi’s vault.\n\n## Saddle Finance arbitrage exploit\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPntSdKriw781PiTibTuyHMzMG7ikr7EibPVLLxVaFURh/image.png)\n\nThis is another flash loan attack on our list, especially illustrative this time. [Saddle Finance](https://saddle.finance/), a Curve-like protocol for trading wrapped assets and stablecoins, was attacked on January 21, 2021 — one day after its launch. By performing a series of arbitrage exploits, attackers managed to take almost 8 BTC of liquidity in mere 6 minutes. This was possible due to a vulnerability in a pool’s smart contract — the attackers stretched out the stablecoins’ prices so much that one of the tokens worth 0.09 BTC was swapped for another one worth 3.2 BTC.\n\n## How to avoid vulnerable protocols susceptible to attacks?\n\nFlash loans always happen unexpectedly, and one can’t always see the probability of a rug pull in advance. However, following these tips will help you draw more attention to suspicious signs and may help you avoid money loss. **We recommend you pay specific attention to:**\n\n1. **The team and its reputation**. Who are the founders and the developers? Is the team public? Has it ever been involved in any trustworthy project in crypto? If it hasn’t, this is not necessarily bad but should be a point of concern.\n2. **Access to vaults**. Does the team have it? To what extent? If the share of the founders in the pool is too high, this is not a red flag.\n3. **Multisig access to company funds**. If developers have enabled multi-signature access to vaults and someone outside the team holds some signatures, this may help prevent a rug pull.\n4. **Time-locked liquidity**. If developers have time-locked their funds for a year or so, the users can rest assured that the team won’t exit-scam at least before this period ends.\n## What measures could protect DeFi from attacks?\n1. Considerable amounts of liquidity in pools as DeFi matures could be the main factor for lowering the susceptibility to flash loan attacks.\n2. Flash loan maximum limits would not allow for attacking.\n3. Security audits for smart contracts would clear the space from vulnerable and misconfigured ones.\n4. Better regulation would help not to release knowingly vulnerable protocols.\n5. Community bug bounties already carried out by some projects help users get rewarded for finding bugs and backdoors in protocols.\n## Final word\n\nDeFi revolutionized finance with permissionless and trustless tools for raising considerable income in a short time. However, its numerous vulnerabilities are often used by attackers and malicious developers. Each attack urges protocols to raise their security, and this is the way how DeFi hacks help the industry grow. But until it’s safer, research well the projects you plan to invest in. Put your money only where you trust and remember there is always some risk.",
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      "parent_author": "",
      "parent_permlink": "polkadot",
      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "is-polkadot-the-future-of-a-decentralized-internet",
      "title": "Is Polkadot The Future Of A Decentralized Internet?",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSWZNiFzjvdXrEnrE6cbJrcKtf4mJXfKJfpgLrq1ykcCW/image.png)\n\nPolkadot is a protocol that aims to enable communication between different blockchains. The idea of an interconnected decentralized internet has been well received in the crypto community, and in 2021, DOT is showing a positive price dynamic. In this article, we will describe in simple terms how Polkadot works and what its native token DOT is. At the end, you will find a quick guide on buying DOT without registration.\n\n## How does Polkadot connect blockchains?\nCurrently, all blockchains exist separately from each other: their protocols are different and don’t allow for direct value and data exchange. As a result, we have distinct ecosystems connected only with things like Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) — an ERC-20 token that represents Bitcoin’s value on the Ethereum network. The founder of the latter Vitalik Buterin even called this embarrassing:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXGgiTr53vvTgjVm6ZN223ymzLBjcC8a3g5ArP9UhFuNs/image.png)\n\nSo how would the crypto world look like if all the coins were interconnected? What if we could bring together Ethereum with Cardano and Bitcoin with Binance Chain?\n\nThat’s what Polkadot has been working on in recent years: cross-chain interoperability where blockchains can communicate in a trustless manner. This will allow an Ethereum-based smart contract to trigger a Bitcoin payment, and a cross-chain swap between Litecoin and XRP will be possible. Polkadot, frequently dubbed as “the internet of blockchains,” was launched in 2016 by Gavin Wood, an Ethereum co-founder with Ph.D. in software engineering. One of the things Wood is famous for is the invention of Solidity — the language that Ethereum smart contracts are written in.\n\nPolkadot unites blockchains with its Relay chain, parachains, and connectors called bridges.\n\n**The Relay chain** is the key Polkadot network layer, a bookkeeper that tracks all the transactions going on between blockchains.\n\n**Parachains** are a second level. They include individual user-made blockchains that run in parallel with the relay chain and benefit from its security, also allowing for the increased scalability. Crypto companies can buy parachains, easily set them up, and customize them according to their needs. Besides blockchains’ interoperability, this is the second main use case of Polkadot.\n\n**Bridges** were designed by Polkadot to connect to established blockchains like Ethereum or Bitcoin. Break-in and break-out smart contracts will help Polkadot communicate with these networks.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQ42nvdfxevkRRiC2Ja386qNHW4xK7ahmCsSCjooGtwoU/image.png)\n\n## What is the DOT token?\nDOT is the native token of Polkadot. It allows for governance, staking, and bonding.\n\n**Governance**. Users use DOT to vote on the network upgrades, new features, and fees. Votes are weighed by token amount: the more DOT you have, the more you can contribute to the community decisions. The governance model helps Polkadot upgrade without forks.\n\n**Staking**. Polkadot Relay chain is based on the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism, and users stake DOT to help secure the network. Stakers are *nominators* who select *validators* — those who mint blocks. There are also *fishermen* who detect and report malicious validators for a reward. *Collators* link parachain transaction data with the Relay chain.\n\n**Bonding**. To buy a parachain and control it, you need to “bond” some DOT. Bonding ties the tokens to the relay chain when a new parachain is launched.\n\nPolkadot aims at building the multichain universe where all blockchains could operate together. This may bring us to the Web3 — decentralized internet. The community hailed such a vision: during the last year, Polkadot soared to the Top 9 position by market cap ($17.7 billion as of August 2021).\n\n## How to buy Polkadot?\nIf you consider buying Polkadot, try [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=dot). Here, you can do this without registration, KYC, and hidden fees just within a few minutes. Buying DOT is possible for over 200 crypto coins.\n\nHere’s the quick guide:\n\n* Use the [calculator](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=dot) to see what rate we offer. All fees are already included in the estimated rate. The ultimate amount you will get may only be different if the coins’ prices change during the time of the swap (which is, however, 5 minutes on average).\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVe5onVAwcC8VQyDc6FDS8SB6Bnhr8aPkQCDk3775tvSH/image.png)\n\n* Enter your DOT address. You can also change the amount here if you want.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmPr8FncxBh64JFJZvPNRKkf9oCSnzttXh8hsyzJwv8HA3/image.png)\n\n* Check the details and confirm:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRhSGzD5ozbqv3V2NRdvkfTqfVPhXmLQrctWpLW7HHWZc/image.png)\n\n* Now, send the specified amount of crypto to the address provided. If you’ve got a mobile wallet, scan the QR code, and the sum and address will paste automatically. After you deposit, the exchanged sum will land in your wallet in a few minutes.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYyrkyehRbrFg7ie7yBHXPsMgsTkesj7EUXg47A6Er5GS/image.png)\n\n## Why ChangeNOW?\n**No registration and KYC for crypto-to-crypto exchanges**. No emails and passwords — swap crypto in a few clicks.\n\n**No hidden fees**. All fees are already included in the estimated rate that you see in the calculator. To learn more about our fees, see [here](https://changenow.io/faq/what-fees-are-there-during-an-exchange).\n\n**No custody**. You don’t need to store crypto on our platform to exchange it. Deposit the sum you want to swap, and we will send you the exchanged amount right back.\n\n**It’s fast**. An exchange takes 5 minutes on average.\n\n**No upper limits**. In most of the pairs, you can swap as much as you want. The lower limit for each is a few US Dollars.\n\n**Community trusts us**. We’ve got [4.6/5 stars](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/changenow.io) on Trustpilot and [partner](https://changenow.io/for-partners) with such platforms as Binance, Trezor, and Simplex.\n\n## Buy Polkadot with a credit card\nYou can buy DOT with a credit or debit card on ChangeNOW. Click the [“Buy/Sell Crypto”](https://changenow.io/?from=usd&to=dot&fiatMode=true) tab in the calculator and choose one of the dozens of available fiat currencies:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfJEUZZgMcAZf6Fr97ySdSecHbBhHS6SnNkpNWJS2goiG/image.png)\n\nAfter you click “Buy”, you will be offered to choose between 3 different partner fiat provider services. After you select the one with the best rate, make sure it’s really the best one taking into account the fees.\n\nIf this is your first time buying crypto on ChangeNOW, you will need to pass a KYC check — the docs are verified automatically, and normally, it won’t take you more than 5 minutes. Once you’ve used a service, you won’t have to do any more KYCs in it. You may be asked for a new KYC in Guardarian, but in return, they are registration-free which eliminates the login-password hassle.\n\n## The future of the decentralized internet?\nMany enthusiasts see the future of the internet as decentralized: the services that people use are based on immutable blockchain that no governments or corporations can affect. Developing the distributed ledger technology was the first step towards this world, and now, there is the need to connect the platforms that have been built. This is what Polkadot does. Its efforts have been appreciated by the community, which is reflected in the DOT price. In case you share this vision and see DOT as a good investment, buy some without registration on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/?from=btc&to=dot).\n\nIf you want to learn more about crypto projects that contribute to the idea of a decentralized internet, discover [Storj](https://cryptocurrencyhub.io/what-is-storj-the-decentralized-cloud-storage-b5e05519c95f), the decentralized file storage.",
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      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "10-tips-for-staying-safe-in-crypto",
      "title": "10 Tips For Staying Safe In Crypto",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcvseXGArJcSBeUkmc6JndAoUqCGtANutDyv29Bmv3c2T/image.png)\n\nWhere there’s money, there’s fraud, and cryptocurrency is not an exception. In the USA alone, over [80,000 crypto frauds](https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2021/06/29/us-saw-more-than-80000-cryptocurrency-frauds-in-2020-report/?sh=6a6711c76f0b) were seen in 2020. A skyrocketing market attracts crowds of gullible newcomers, and, together with poor regulation, that makes it an appealing target for fraudsters.\n\nWhenever any innovation is introduced in the crypto market, scammers are right by. They run fraudulent ICOs, create pump-and-dump tokens, hack vulnerable flash loans and write malicious smart contracts. The crypto market lacks security — but there are good ways to protect yourself, and these tips are easy to follow. In this article, we will describe the typical characteristics of fraudulent projects. Avoiding them will help you prevent money loss.\n\n## 1. Avoid shiny promises\n\nThe first red flag relevant to financial offers of any kind is: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. When someone offers you 50% weekly interest with zero fees, it’s easy to buy into that — but the head should stay cold. Crypto is no place for guaranteed yields and firm promises. Google the project well and see what others say.\n\n## 2. Investigate suspicious founders\n\nCrypto is a very tight community, and most of the founders are known by the crypto enthusiasts at least to some extent. It looks odd when someone not ever seen in the market comes out with a cryptocurrency project — that may be the sign of a scam.\n\nWhenever you plan to use or invest in a new project, see what its founders are. If they are tied well to the community and have had partnerships with renowned projects — that’s good. Users of Quadriga exchange in 2019 might not have checked who its founder Gerald Cotten was before putting $215 million into the platform. After Cotten [died under mysterious circumstances](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/the-strange-tale-of-quadriga-gerald-cotten) and all the money vanished, everyone realized how dodgy his past was.\n\n## 3. Centralized platforms pose a risk\n\nYou may have seen some crypto projects being criticized for their centralization. This is a very reasonable concern: when an entity has too much control over the network, that gives it tools to manipulate transactions and commit fraud. And it’s not solely about scams: for instance, Binance is a renowned company, but Binance Smart Chain is criticized by many for being too centralized. That brings its risks: the way the platform functions may be easily altered by a small group of people at their will.\n\n## 4. Beware of dodgy websites\n\nWhen you visit a website of a crypto project, there are several red flags to pay specific attention to. Firstly, websites made with no effort at all, where the interface is overly simple and plain, are a common sign of a scam. Further, other elements that may hint there’s something wrong are stock photos, poorly made logos, weird office location, dodgy-looking reviews. To check the platform’s reputation, you can try finding team members on LinkedIn, checking TrustPilot and their social media. Let’s consider the latter more precisely.\n\n## 5. Check social media\n\nFraudulent projects don’t like promoting on legitimate crypto-related forums including Reddit as they know they will be unmasked by seasoned users. Rather, they prefer reaching out to the gullible audience on social media. There, they give many glittering promises but aren’t transparent on their team, roadmap, and work principles.\n\n## 6. Verify suspicious claims of influencers’ support\n\nStatements like “Vitalik Buterin supports our project” or “CZ hails our approach” raise trust, and scammers often use it. However, it’s easy to verify these statements on the internet, and if you find they are false, that’s an explicit sign of fraud. Question such claims particularly in case the project’s scale is incomparable with big figures such as Vitalik or CZ and you think it’s odd if they have even noticed it.\n\n## 7. Check compliance with the law\n\nLegitimate platforms most often have a section of their websites dedicated to the privacy policy, AML compliance, terms of service, and so forth. They disclose their jurisdiction and laws that they comply with. Some platforms also tell how they help fight scams and make crypto a better place — we have that on [ChangeNOW](https://changenow.io/business-ethics). Scammers wouldn’t bother themselves making up all this stuff. However, some would, but just for show — and one should be particularly cautious in this case.\n\n## 8. Recognize empty claims\n\nMost of the crypto projects, fair and fraudulent, claim they have great speed, usability, and security compared to their competitors. Fair ones provide extensive documentation and FAQs to prove these statements, while the fraudulent ones barely suggest any compelling grounds for their claims.\n\n## 9. Make sure it’s not only about bringing friends\n\nThere is this type of projects that ask you to bring friends to get more profits. If that is just for a raffle or goes as a bonus — fine, but if there’s nothing more to this mechanic, it must be some type of a scam. A legitimate project always lets you profit without bringing more people in.\n\n## 10. Don’t enter your passwords or seed phrases outside the platform where you use them\n\nHere’s an example right away: whenever anyone besides the MetaMask wallet login page is asking you for your MetaMask password or seed phrase, be sure this is a scam. Even the MetaMask team won’t ask you for this information. Another thing to protect yourself is: always check you’re at the correct website. Legit platforms sometimes have fraudulent clones with one letter changed in their URL. Entering your login data at such a website may result in money loss.\n\n## Bottom Line\n\nCryptocurrency scams prosper for two main reasons. First, the field is underregulated, and it’s relatively easy to build an attractive project, collect funds, and exit scams. Secondly, fraudsters capitalize on our unawareness: crypto newbies often miss the signs of a scam and ultimately lose their funds.\n\nWhile you can’t affect the former, you can easily avoid the latter. Follow the tips above, do your own research, and you will never fall victim to those who profit from our greed, thrill, and unawareness.",
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      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "how-to-stay-optimistic-when-the-crypto-market-collapses-lessons-from-mike-novogratz",
      "title": "How To Stay Optimistic When The Crypto Market Collapses: Lessons From Mike Novogratz",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUUNL2AUhLVtZSfKcui5ZUnFaFvS6hjA9gGwbK6hTJrvp/image.png)\n\nAre you nervous about the future of crypto right now? If so, we can easily understand — because we are, too. After Bitcoin at $60,000 in May, we’re seeing a bear market for all cryptocurrencies, and it’s unclear when the trend will reverse.\n\nLarge investors with a major part of their portfolios in cryptocurrency risk losing everything in such situations. But despite the market crash, some of them remain optimistic about the future of digital assets — like Mike Novogratz, a billionaire, CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners. He still believes in the long-term value of Bitcoin and claims crypto is the future of finance. Let’s see how Novogratz manages to maintain such optimism amid the bear market.\n\n## Mike Novogratz: a crypto enthusiast from traditional finance\nMany Bitcoin optimists originate from the crypto community — such as developers, early investors, etc. Mike Novogratz spent decades in traditional finance which is known for often looking down on cryptocurrency. But unlike his colleagues, Mike’s huge experience in hedge funds and institutional investments helped him see the potential of crypto.\n\nNovogratz started in the good old 1989-s, making his first fortune in Goldman Sachs on bond trading. The booms of Asian “tiger economies” helped him generate solid returns, which made him a partner by 1998. He continued this path, joining Fortress Investments and helping it cope with the 2007–2008 crisis.\n\nBy that time, Novogratz had already become a billionaire. The turmoil severely challenged his position, but cryptocurrency helped him reach this status again. In 2017, 20% of Mike’s net worth was in cryptocurrency, and by 2021, he reported his portfolio was by 85% made of digital assets. Galaxy Investment Partners company that Novogratz founded in 2018 boasts of several successful investment rounds including Bitfury crypto infrastructure firm.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmZYcFa1oTXRr1PYWwZ3kQa85P3BvQEbFDegAsVeo6MUhv/image.png)\n\n## “This is not us hunting on coins with funny names”\nOn May 12, 2021, Bitcoin started to sharply collapse. May 18, the coin lost 25% of its price within 24 hours and 50% in total compared to last month’s all-time high. However, this doesn’t look like the 2018 crash to Novogratz.\n\nIn his interview following the drop, Mike [said](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/19/crypto-bull-mike-novogratz-says-morning-plunge-felt-like-capitulation.html) that was a “liquidation event” and a “setback for the wallets and for the investor base.” People lost a lot of money, but that’s how the market self-regulates: when people feel that the asset is overbought, they cash out and take profits. According to Novogratz, the setback was caused by a “confluence of events — tax day, Elon Musk tweets, whatnot” that changed the trend.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNULsCrJ61QgnN1FHdQGUcWbG8DobD3U3q52ByPZDwRKU/image.png)\n\nNovogratz is optimistic about this bear market endgame. “The crypto revolution has happened”, and the current drop won’t change this. “The story hasn’t gone anywhere”, — Mike says.\n\nDespite Novogratz being too optimistic to some people, he stays in reality. He isn’t waiting for the instant return of growth: “Humpty Dumpty never gets put back together in two days … when he cracks.” The investor promised that the market would consolidate somewhere around $36,000–38,000 for Bitcoin. As we see 2 months later, the first cryptocurrency dangles around $32K with no more drastic collapses.\n\nAccording to Novogratz, the market crash in May only proved the concept of the digital assets’ ecosystem. He expects Bitcoin to replace gold in the years to come and assumes that it rather works as a safe haven asset than a means of daily payments. As for cryptocurrency in general, Novogratz believes “this is not us hunting on coins with funny names. This is a serious approach to rebuilding the financial architecture of the world.”\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVoQ5P1ULufZMjGgUZpCeJY9E9RxFmMRibqdH6kXwkqfa/image.png)\n\n## Optimistic in the long term: the run for institutional investors\nWhy is Novogratz so optimistic about the future of cryptocurrency? As we’ve already seen, he is not one of those Bitcoin maximalists who contributed to the early days of digital coins and simply got captivated by their possibilities. Rather, Mike works directly with people who became one of the drivers for Bitcoin’s growth in the fall 2021 — institutional investors.\n\nBig banks, hedge funds, investors from Wall Street are the people who Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital is persuading to invest in cryptocurrency. The firm positions itself as the “bridge between the crypto and the institutional worlds”, and it seems to live up to its name.\n\nGalaxy has $1.6 billion of assets under management, invests in hundreds of companies, including $295 million put in hyper-growth startups. The firm has 300 institutional trading counterparts that it helps to trade, manage assets, invest, and mine. According to the Galaxy’s [presentation for investors](https://investor.galaxydigital.io/overview/default.aspx), its net income grew from $336 million in Q4 2020 to $860 million in Q1 2021. This is quite a considerable gain compared to Wall Street.\n\nNovogratz sees with his own eyes how everything is moving forward, and that must be the source of his optimism. Mike’s vision is shared by his outstanding team: professionals from Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, Fidelity, and Google believe that 91% of institutional investors will have “digital asset exposure” in 5 years. That is, the big investment companies, hedge and pension funds will invest in crypto themselves or create tools for their customers to do so.\n\nGalaxy Digital pioneers the way, showing institutional investors how to allocate money in crypto, engaging many in this activity. Today, the matter is simply hard to ignore from Wall Street.\n## The job of Mike Novogratz\nEveryone has the freedom to think the way they’re comfortable with. If you’re pessimistic about the current trend in crypto, this article will barely change your mind. Its aim is simply to show: cryptocurrency does not only inspire small investors attracted by high and fast yields for their $100–1,000. It’s also in the focus of those who risk millions and billions, and moreover — or those whose mindset was shaped in the era of traditional finance. Mike Novogratz is one of those, and not only he believes in the future of cryptocurrency himself, but infects hundreds of his clients with this vision. “Our job won’t be done before every individual on Earth has a Bitcoin wallet”, he says.\n\n***\nAre you seeking a suitable investment tool? Visit [ChangeNOW](http://changenow.io/). In our instant crypto exchange service, you can swap 200+ most popular cryptocurrencies without KYC and registration. We offer reasonable rates, and the trade goes right from your wallet. We have [4.6 starts](https://www.trustpilot.com/review/changenow.io) on Trustpilot from over 3,900 reviews.\n\n*ChangeNOW does not give investment advice and has no responsibility for any trader’s decision or action. Cryptocurrency trading involves high risk, and we urge you to do your own research before making investment decisions.*",
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      "body": "Electronic-terrorism, voice to skull and neuro monitoring on Hive and Steem. You can ignore this, but your going to wish you didnt soon. This is happening whether you believe it or not. https://steemit.com/fyrstikken/@sqube/3dhq8e-i-am-the-only-motherfucker-on-the-internet-pointing-to-a-direct-source-for-voice-to-skull-electronic-terrorism",
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      "author": "changenow",
      "permlink": "taproot-upgrade-explained-the-way-to-more-private-and-efficient-bitcoin",
      "title": "Taproot Upgrade Explained: The Way To More Private And Efficient Bitcoin",
      "body": "![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmUYDCFh9KxNsFyhjuJLgjcGpWkoTR9Cnws1C1HNPFpZgo/image.png)\n\nTwo types of transactions in the Bitcoin network are becoming increasingly popular: multi-signature and time-locked. Multisig feature allows to send Bitcoins only when enough private keys are present, and time lock sets a specified date or block height to perform a transaction. But here’s a problem: both features undermine the privacy of money transfers. Furthermore, they demand extra space in blocks which makes the blockchain even more congested. Taproot upgrade is to solve these problems: it restores privacy for all types of transactions and is supposed to make Bitcoin 20% more scalable and efficient. Here’s how.\n\n## Privacy vs. usability in Bitcoin: no need to choose anymore\nAlthough Bitcoin can’t guarantee total anonymity to its users, it gave a lot to the fans of private money transfers. Never before in history was it possible to send any sum to anyone in the world without disclosing transaction details to banks, regulators, and governments.\n\nHowever, new features such as multisig and time-locked transactions compromise this privacy. In regular transactions, only public keys are seen by anyone in the blockchain, whereas it’s nearly impossible to link them with the coin owners. If you use multisig or time lock, information about additional transactional conditions goes public. If Alice contracts Bob to send him 1 Bitcoin on August 1 if certain conditions are met, everyone in the world can guess that Alice and Bob have such an agreement. This is how usability harms privacy in Bitcoin. However, with the Taproot upgrade, you won’t have to choose: top-notch cryptographic protocols will protect all types of transactions.\n\nAlong with this, Taproot is to improve Bitcoin’s efficiency. A usual block in the BTC network is 1 MB in size and contains about 500 transactions, but all these extra contract’s conditions also take space. They clutter Bitcoin up and make more people wait until their transactions are processed. Taproot upgrade will remove multisig and time lock data from blocks, which is supposed to raise Bitcoin’s throughput by 20%.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNYoZNQAN2uD7sKfVcqBNQSPqa68u8jmBHue9SKLnevun/image.png)\n\n## How does Taproot work?\nTaproot upgrade leverages the Schnorr signature scheme and Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST). In simple words, it aggregates several signatures of a transaction into one. For instance, when several signatures are needed in multisig transactions, Schorr signature puts them all into one ‘threshold’ signature without any threat to the transaction verification. Only 1 public key will be displayed in the blockchain.\n\nSchnorr signatures had been introduced long before Bitcoin. However, when Satoshi Nakamoto was developing the first cryptocurrency, they were still protected by a patent, and he had to use elliptic curve digital signatures (ECD signatures) instead. This algorithm is at the core of Bitcoin’s functionality: it matches public keys with private ones, which is necessary to prove your ownership of these coins. But the problem with ECD is that if there are two public keys, you need two signatures, and the public keys have to be written in the block.\n\nOn the contrary, Schnorr algorithm allows to aggregate one signature out of many, which corresponds to one private key aggregated from several ones. With Schnorr, the sum of signatures equals a signature of the sum of the private keys. This sounds complex, but we’ll explain this in simple terms.\n\nLet’s say Alice, Bob and Michael want to use multisig transactions. With ECD, Alice’s signature is “Alice”, Bob’s one is “Bob”, and Michael’s is “Michael.” If we put them together, we’ll have something like “AlBoMa.” Now, let’s suppose their private keys are 5, 10, and 20, respectively. Their sum is 35. What we have is that we can’t relate “AlBoMa” to 35 to verify the individual components of the transaction. This is how ECD works, and that’s why it requires separate signatures for each key.\n\nBut let’s say Alice’s signature is 50, Bob’s one is 100, and Michael’s one is 200, while their keys are 5, 10, and 20, respectively. Here, it’s easy to use addition and multiplication to aggregate all signatures in one threshold signature and all keys into one threshold key. This is how MAST trees and Schnorr signatures work — the ones to be implemented in the Taproot upgrade.\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXziiCrXk8Y4E37dDjkgv1BnMUvRXLNWjfgPR73rH454w/image.png)\n\n## When will Taproot go live?\nSince Bitcoin isn’t managed by a centralized authority, it can’t simply implement an upgrade in one day. For this, the network needs an agreement of a decentralised team of developers and miners. Since this is a huge community, the process took quite a while. The Taproot Bitcoin Improvement Proposal number 341 was introduced by a developer Greg Maxwell in January 2018 — and only in October 2020, Taproot was added to the Bitcoin Core library at the request of Pieter Wuille. For the proposal to be accepted, at least 90% of all blocks in a special 2-week epoch needed to contain special ‘signal bits’ — miners’ signals for their support of the upgrade. This condition was met, and as of July 2021, all miners have supported Taproot:\n\n![image.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVak6pU7uParytMwfmoBouCUE2dfZRJUBYf9RdQ4y1ahJ/image.png)\n\nSuch a consensus is quite a rare thing for crypto updates. This time, it went this way because Schnorr signatures are considered one of the best cryptographic solutions by the majority of developers and miners.\n\nTaproot upgrade is dubbed one of the major updates in the history of Bitcoin, and definitely the largest one since the SegWit implementation in 2017. As the consensus was reached, Taproot will go live in a November 2021 soft fork.\n\n## Summary\nTaproot update will increase privacy for multisig and time-locked transactions. It will modify the way signatures and private keys work, allowing to put a few in one and making numerous public keys invisible to the public. By cutting the amount of information to be written in blocks, Taproot also increases the Bitcoin network’s throughput. The update was widely supported in the community and will go live this November.\n\nBitcoin, however, is not the only cryptocurrency that undergoes major upgrades this year. Its second-largest counterpart Ethereum is implementing several hard forks in 2021 on its way to scalable and energy-efficient Ethereum 2.0. We [collected and explained](https://changenow-io.medium.com/berlin-and-london-hard-forks-a-short-summary-933099306f1c) all you need to know about these changes.",
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