Investors rug-pulled after pouring $57M into dog-themed OlympusDAO fork

Hong Kong police have reportedly been notified of the incident, with the primary suspect having filed a police report and handed a computer over to authorities.

After launching via a Discord channel on Oct. 28, AnubisDAO went on to raise roughly 13,256.4 ETH using Alchemistcoin’s liquidity bootstrapping protocol (LBP) Copper. However, the funds were unexpectedly sent to a different address roughly 20 hours into the LBP.

CNBC spoke to one investor who claims to have lost almost $470,000 to AnubisDAO. The investor, Brian Nguyen, conceded to subscribing to a “buy first, do research later mentality,” describing the loss as “pretty painful.”

Nguyen noted that he was attracted to AnubisDAO because of its canine-themed branding amid the meteoric gains recently reaped by some dog-token investors after seeing Anubis promoted on Twitter by prominent pseudonymous DeFi advocate “0xSisyphus.”

Anubis is the Greek name for the Egyptian god of death and the underworld, with Egyptian imagery depicting the god as donning the body of a human and the head of a dog.

Investors appear to have lost roughly $57 million worth of Ether in what many are describing as a rug-pull executed by the upstart canine-themed OympusDAO fork, AnubisDAO.

0xSisyphus has published a detailed timeline outlining AnubisDAO’s formation and launch, and claims to have engaged law enforcement in both the United States and Hong Kong. 0xSisyphus has also offered to cease the civil proceedings should the perpetrator return the stolen finds minus a 1,000 ETH bounty.

In lieu of a case number which can be released to the public (hopefully this is available tomorrow), please see below for confirmation I am actually in touch with authorities https://t.co/jCgOwaq129

— Sisyphus (@0xSisyphus) October 31, 2021

Inside job?

According to 0xSisyphus, the idea for an OlympusDAO fork inspired by Shiba Inu’s branding arose from discussions among members of the PebbleDAO project during Oct. 26 and Oct. 27.

A Telegram for the project was created on the 27th, with its six original members all hailing from PebbleDAO. The following day it is decided that the pseudonymous founding member “Beerus” would be tasked with deploying the LBP — a decision that 0xSisyphus now describes as a “critical mistake”:

“This was the critical mistake. This should have been done from the original multisig wallet.”

With just hours left until LBP was scheduled to close on Oct. 29, Beerus claimed “to have opened a malicious link from a PDF” and exposed the private keys used for the LBP launch. 13,556 Ether was then pulled from the LBP shortly after, however Beerus’ personal wallet funds appear to remain “intact and under his control.”

0xSisyphus also notes that “security researchers provided the PDFs from phishing emails” distributed during the day Beerus claimed to have clicked the malicious link, noting at “at this point, none have found any malicious content contained in the PDFs.”

Beerus’ real-world information is also collated and partially published to Twitter and Hong Kong authorities are contacted on Oct. 29. Beerus filed a report and turned one computer over to Hong Kong police the following day.

0xSisyphus also notes that wallets associated with the incident have since sent ETH to Coinbase, adding that the exchange has been notified of the transactions.

via cointelgraph.com

Industrial Bitcoin mining breathes new life into tiny Texan town

Major Bitcoin miners have set up shop in a former aluminium smelting plant in the small Texan town of Rockdale.

Two Bitcoin mining giants are duking it out for cheap electricity in the tiny town in Texas.

Both Bitdeer, a mining firm that spun out from Chinese giant Bitmain, and Riot Blockchain, one of leading publicly traded Bitcoin mining firms in the United States, are operating data centers hosted at a former aluminium smelting facility in the Texan town of Rockdale.

The town’s aluminium smelting plant was previously the world’s largest, until the company that ran it, Alcoa, began winding up operations in 2008. According to Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, the facility’s energy capacity was wasted from Alcoa’s departure until the miners set up shop.

Despite Rockdale comprising a tiny rural town of just 5,600 people, it exhibits all the benefits sought after by industrial-scale miners — crypto-friendly politicians, large plots of land hosting abandoned industrial infrastructure rip for repurposing, and dirt-cheap electricity prices thanks to Texas’ deregulated market.

Rockdale Mayor John King describes the relationship between local grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and miners as mutually beneficial. He emphasized that miners regularly consume electricity power that would otherwise be wasted, and they can also shut down operations instantly should power be needed elsewhere. He added:

“Miners are committed to buying a certain amount of power and what they do is they sell it back at market [value] and make a profit. They have a contract of two cents or three cents...and they can sell it for $9 a kilowatt hour.”

As reported by Cointelegraph on Oct. 7, Riot has more than tripled its Bitcoin production this year.

The firm now estimates that the facility is producing more than 500 BTC per month from its facility in Rockdale. At current prices, the mined coins equate to $30 million per month. Riot says the site hosts 100,000 mining rigs.

Related: Crypto cowboys: Texas counties welcome Bitcoin miners with open arms

Texan lawmakers are pushing for a further expansion in the state’s Bitcoin mining embrace, with Senator Ted Cruz describing mining as a means to capture natural gas that the state currently flares.

Speaking during the Oct. 10 Texas Blockchain Summit, Cruz argued that natural gas is currently being flared in West Texas because “there is no transmission equipment to get that natural gas where it could be used the way natural gas would ordinarily be employed.”

“Use that power to mine Bitcoin. Part of the beauty of that is the instant you’re doing it you’re helping the environment enormously because rather than flaring the natural gas you’re putting it to productive use,” he added.

via cointelgraph.com

Bitcoin price descending channel and loss of momentum could turn $60K to resistance

After a slight hiccup in BTC futures premium, traders seem comfortable despite the $58,000 support retest and the risk of $60,000 turning to resistance.

Bitcoin (BTC) appears to lack the strength to retest the $67,000 all-time high that it reached on Oct. 20 and this is causing investors to question whether or not the bullish moment has faded. Even with the price facing these hurdles, it’s still premature to call the $58,000 support level test the beginning of a descending channel.

Bitcoin price in USD at Coinbase. Source: TradingView

Among the factors limiting the rally is the regulatory uncertainty in the United States. Anne Termine, a partner in the government enforcement and investigations practice at Bracewell LLP and former chief trial attorney at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said that “there are no easy answers” for the agency to provide clear rules.

Increasing adoption, on the other hand, has been pressuring traditional banks to seek cryptocurrency product offerings. For example, major Russian private bank Tinkoff, owner of a large online brokerage services, is researching crypto-related investment services even though the Bank of Russia withholding such launches.

This week Coinbase exchange hit the top spot as the most downloaded app for the United Stated Apple Store, which is mind-blowing. Coinbase beat tech giants like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram and this is not a small feat. Coinbase first listed on the app store in 2014 and was the most popular download in the U.S. in 2017 and May 2021.

Pro traders stumbled but are bullish again

To determine how bullish or bearish professional traders are, one should monitor the futures premium — also known as the “basis rate.”

The indicator measures the difference between longer-term futures contracts and the current price at spot market exchanges. A 5% to 15% annualized premium is expected in healthy markets, otherwise known as contango.

This price gap is caused by participants demanding more money to withhold settlement longer, and a red alert emerges whenever this indicator fades or turns negative, known as “backwardation.”

Bitcoin 3-month futures basis rate. Source: Laevitas.ch

Notice how the sharp decrease caused by the $58,000 resistance test on Oct. 27 caused the annualized futures premium to reach its lowest level in three weeks. Still, the indicator recovered nicely to the current 17%, signaling a moderate bullishness.

To confirm whether this movement was specific to that instrument, one should also analyze options markets.

The 25% delta skew compares similar call (buy) and put (sell) options and will turn positive when “fear” is prevalent. That situation reflects the protective put options costing higher than similar risk call options.

The opposite movement holds when market makers are bullish, causing the 25% delta skew indicator to shift to the negative area. Readings between negative 8% and positive 8% are usually deemed neutral.

Deribit Bitcoin options 25% delta skew. Source: laevitas.ch

The 25% delta skew has been ranging in the neutral zone since Sep. 30. The latest bottom on Oct. 25 was negative 6%, not enough to be considered moderate bullishness. However, not even Bitcoin’s 12.5% correction from $66,600 on Oct. 21 to $58,200 on Oct. 28 was enough to inflict fear on professional traders.

Although no bearish signs emerged from the Bitcoin derivatives market, bulls should worry about the potential descending channel starting on Oct. 19. If that movement gets further confirmation, traders should expect $60,000 to become a resistance by Nov. 12.

There are no stress signs currently from professional traders, so a correction after a 63% rally in three weeks that led to the $67,000 all-time high on Oct. 20 should not be problematic.

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

via cointelgraph.com

Top 5 cryptocurrencies to watch this week: BTC, ETH, BNB, MATIC, FTM

Bitcoin is witnessing modest profit-booking, but the long-term trend remains intact and altcoins like ETH, BNB, MATIC and FTM may remain in focus in the short term.

The weekend failed to ignite bullish momentum from crypto investors and both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) turned down on Oct. 31. The bulls will now try to achieve the third successive weekly close and the first-ever monthly close above the psychological $60,000 level.

$63,000 is another level of interest for traders because the stock-to-flow creator PlanB, projected this level as the “worst-case scenario” for October. In the recent past, PlanB’s worst-case theory was proven to be correct in August and September.

Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360

Apart from the near-term interest, investors should remember that Bitcoin was launched on Jan. 3, 2009, at a price of $0.0008 and from there rallied 8,374,999,900% to hit a high at $67,000.

The journey for the hodlers was not easy as there were several gut-wrenching corrections along the way and each time a handful of analysts called for the end of Bitcoin. However, in hindsight, all these dips turned out to be good buying opportunities.

Today marks the 13th birthday of the Bitcoin white paper released on Oct. 31, 2008, paving the way for possibly the biggest financial disruption.

Let’s analyze the charts of the top-5 cryptocurrencies that could attract traders’ attention in the next few days.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin has formed a flag pattern but the bulls have not been able to push the price above it. The failure to break the overhead resistance could have prompted selling by short-term traders, which has pulled the price to the 20-day exponential moving average ($59,679).

BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

If bears pull the price below the 20-day EMA, the BTC/USDT pair could drop to the support line of the pattern. This is an important support for the bulls to defend because a break below it will invalidate the setup. The pair could then sink to the next support at $52,920.

If the price rebounds off the 20-day EMA, the bulls will make one more attempt to thrust the pair above the flag. If they succeed, the pair could retest the all-time high at $67,000 and then rally toward the pattern target at $89,476.12.

BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

The 4-hour chart shows that bears are aggressively defending the resistance line. The pair has dipped below the moving averages and a break below $60,000 could result in a decline to the support line.

This level is expected to attract strong buying from the bulls. A bounce off the support line could keep the pair inside the descending channel. The bulls will have to push and sustain the price above the resistance line to indicate the possible end of the corrective phase.

ETH/USDT

Ether broke above the all-time high at $4,375 on Oct. 29 but the bulls could not continue the up-move. The bears pulled the price back below the breakout level on Oct. 30, indicating that sellers are active up at higher levels.

ETH/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The ETH/USDT pair could drop to the 20-day EMA ($4,010), which is an important support for the bulls to defend. If the price bounces off this support, the bulls will try to thrust the pair above $4,460.47.

If that happens, the pair could resume its journey toward the psychological mark at $5,000. On the contrary, a break below the 20-day EMA could result in a decline to $3,888. If the price rebounds off this level, the pair may remain range-bound for a few days.

The bears will have to pull and sustain the price below $3,888 to gain the upper hand. That could open the doors for a decline to the 50-day SMA ($3,564).

ETH/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

The pair has been trading inside an ascending channel for the past few days. If the price rebounds off the 50-SMA, the bulls will attempt to push the pair above $4,460.47. The pair could then rally to the resistance line of the channel. A break and close above the channel could accelerate the uptrend.

Alternatively, if the price dips below the 50-SMA, a drop to the support line of the channel is likely. A bounce off this level could keep the uptrend intact but a break below the channel will be the first sign that the bulls may be losing their grip.

BNB/USDT

Binance Coin (BNB) broke above the overhead resistance at $518.90 on Oct. 29 but the bulls could not build upon this advantage. This suggests a lack of demand at higher levels.

BNB/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

The bears have pulled the price back below $518.90. If the BNB/USDT pair sustains below this level, the next stop could be the psychological support at $500 and then the 20-day EMA ($480). This is an important support for the bulls to defend.

If the price rebounds off the 20-day EMA, it will suggest that sentiment remains positive and traders are buying on dips. The bulls will then again try to resume the uptrend by driving the price above the overhead zone between $518.90 and $540.50.

Conversely, if the price slips below the 20-day EMA, the correction could deepen and the pair could drop to the 50-day SMA ($431).

BNB/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

The price has dipped back to the 20-EMA, which is likely to act as a strong support. If the pair rebounds off this level, the bulls will attempt to resume the uptrend and push the price to the pattern target at $554 and then to $600.

If the price breaks below the 20-EMA, it will suggest that the bullish momentum may be weakening in the short term. The pair could then drop to the 50-SMA and next to the neckline of the inverse head and shoulders pattern. A break below this level will indicate a possible change in trend.

Related: What is the worst nightmare that could happen to crypto? Experts answer

MATIC/USDT

Polygon (MATIC) skyrocketed and closed above the overhead resistance zone at $1.71 to $1.79 on Oct. 28, which indicated the start of a new uptrend.

MATIC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

Usually, after the price rises above a significant resistance, it turns down and retests the breakout level. The bulls will now try to flip the $1.79 to $1.71 zone into support and use it as a launchpad to resume the uptrend.

A breakout and close above $2.22 could clear the path for a rally to $2.43 and eventually a retest of the all-time high at $2.70. The rising 20-day EMA ($1.65) and the RSI in the positive territory suggest that bulls are in control.

This positive view will invalidate if bears pull and sustain the price below the 20-day EMA. Such a move will indicate that the recent break above $1.79 may have been a bull trap.

MATIC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

The 4-hour chart shows the price has dipped to the 50-SMA, which is likely to act as a strong support. If bulls drive the price above the downtrend line, it will suggest that the selling pressure may be reducing.

Alternatively, if the price breaks below the 50-SMA, the pair could drop to $1.71. This level is again likely to act as a strong support but if it cracks, the selling could intensify. The pair could thereafter drop to $1.50.

FTM/USDT

Fantom (FTM) broke out to a new all-time high on Oct. 28 but the bulls could not sustain the breakout. The long wick on the day’s candlestick shows that traders booked profits at higher levels.

FTM/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView

In an uptrend, bulls generally buy the dips to the 20-day EMA ($2.52). If the price rebounds off the current level, it will suggest that sentiment remains bullish and traders are buying on dips. The bulls will then attempt to push the price above the overhead resistance at $3.48.

If they succeed, the FTM/USDT pair could resume its uptrend with the next target objective at $4.10, followed by a move to the psychological level at $5.

Contrary to this assumption, a break below the 20-day EMA will signal that traders continue to dump their positions. The pair could then drop to the 50-day SMA ($1.86). The negative divergence on the RSI suggests that the bullish momentum could be weakening.

FTM/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

The moving averages have completed a bearish crossover on the 4-hour chart and the RSI has dipped into the negative zone, indicating that bears are at an advantage. The first support on the downside is the earlier breakout level at $2.45.

A strong rebound off this level will suggest that bulls are attempting to flip this level into support. If that happens, the pair could again attempt to rise to $3 and later to $3.48. This positive view will invalidate if bears pull the price below $2.45.

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

via cointelgraph.com

Inside the blockchain developer’s mind: What is a testnet?

By familiarizing themselves with the nuances of testnets, blockchain developers can become better equipped to evaluate specific testnet releases.

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability, and governance.

Blockchain testnets are an interesting subject because they come in all shapes and sizes. So, in this post, my goal is to leverage my inside experience as the CEO of Koinos Group (developers of Koinos) to demystify testnets and perhaps give some insight into why they seem to have such an impact on price.

The most obvious place to start is with the name: testnet. The purpose of a testnet is to test a network. At a very high level, there are two “flavors” of testnet. The first is a testnet that is released prior to a mainnet (main network), and the second is a testnet that is released after a mainnet is already in operation. The functions these serve are similar, but the context in which they are released dramatically impacts the perception, and impact, of the release.

I’ll start with the second kind of testnet because, in a way, this is the more straightforward context. When you’re talking about existing networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum, testnets serve two primary functions. The first is that they are a live environment in which developers can test their decentralized applications. Every good developer knows that there’s no such thing as perfect code, so testnets give developers an environment that is very similar to the “main chain” (e.g. Ethereum) in which they can test their code with effectively zero risk. Things running on a testnet are expected to break, and the tokens used are expected to be worthless.

Related: London fork enters testnet on Ethereum as difficulty bomb sees delay

So, testnets are an environment that enables decentralized application (DApp) developers to increase the value of their applications (i.e., make their apps better) precisely because there is no expectation of full functionality or wealth creation. In a sense, the value of a testnet stems from its worthlessness.

DApp developers vs. blockchain developers

But testnets have a two-sided nature, which brings us to the second function that testnets serve, and that function is to the benefit of, not the DApp developer, but the platform developer (in our case, the blockchain developer). One thing I have been surprised to see from my unique perspective is how commonly DApp developers are conflated with blockchain developers. Typically, people who write smart contracts are not blockchain developers, and blockchain developers generally spend very little time writing smart contracts.

Ironically, Koinos is throwing a huge wrench in this distinction because its entire system is implemented as smart contracts! Since Koinos smart contracts are upgradeable, this means that any feature can be added to the blockchain without a hard fork, but it also means that the people developing the blockchain (like members of the Koinos Group) are using and developing the very same toolchain and toolkit that developers will use to build their DApps. But this is a feature that is totally unique to Koinos, so we can put that aside for the sake of this discussion.

In every other blockchain, the blockchain developers have to develop updates in whatever programming language the blockchain is written in (C++, Rust, Haskell, etc.), and they are working on a very large and complicated system called a “monolithic architecture.” Within monolithic architectures, changing any part of the system can impact any other part of the system, so the risk of making changes is that much higher.

Blockchain developers also need a live environment with low stakes that they can use to test out their changes and see what breaks. Like application developers, they want this environment to be as close to the real network as possible, which means that they want their code to interact with code that application developers will be running as well.

Two sides of testnets

This reveals the two-sided aspect of testnets. They enable both the developers of applications and the developers of platforms to interact with one another and safely test their code in as close to a live environment as possible, but with very low stakes. This enables both groups to improve their products and make them more valuable to their users.

Now we can start to see why testnets seem to have such an impact on token price. If we assume that price is a function of value, and that testnets help developers increase the value of their products, then price impact should be expected. The problem is that this correlation has led to several undesirable outcomes. Projects will often release a “testnet” that has no utility to developers for the sole purpose of boosting their token price. Unfortunately, many people will see the testnet announcement and just assume that something valuable has been released, and so the act will have the desired effect on the price.

Testnets before mainnet

Up until now, I’ve been focusing on the utility of testnets in the context of existing blockchains, which is that they create a safe space for application developers to test their applications and for blockchain developers to test upgrades to the underlying platform. This will help you understand the other important context in which testnets are released, which is prior to the release of the mainnet.

Once again, testing is the primary objective, but the focus is far more on the system itself, as it has never before been operational. Of course, since it is new, there won’t be any applications running on it anyway. Now the situation is more one-sided. The majority of the people working with the codebase will be blockchain developers, and the goal is to get the platform to a place where developers want to actually build on it.

The first requirement developers will have is that the platform is proven to be sufficiently safe, and that should be the prime directive behind the specific tests that are run. Assuming developers are convinced that the platform is sufficiently safe, then they’ll need to be educated on how to use the platform. In other words, the testnet must be thought of as an educational tool that enables developers to gain a deeper understanding of how they will be able to use the platform while they are also helping to test the security of the network.

Finally, as they are testing the network and learning how to use it, they will inevitably find places where the platform could be improved — important libraries might be needed, or important documentation might be needed to help them understand the system. This information is invaluable feedback that the platform developers absolutely have to use to make the platform better before mainnet implementations are finalized.

Computer networks have become a major part of our lives whether we realize it or not, and they are only increasing in importance. Testnets are a critical step in the process of releasing new and innovative computer networks that can add ever-increasing value to our lives. Hopefully, by gaining a deeper understanding of the nuances of testnets and the important contexts in which they are released, you are now better equipped to evaluate specific testnet releases and whether they are being designed and launched for the right reasons.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Andrew Levine is the CEO of Koinos Group, where he and the former development team behind the Steem blockchain build blockchain-based solutions that empower people to take ownership and control over their digital selves. Their foundational product is Koinos, a high-performance blockchain built on an entirely new framework architected to give developers the features they need in order to deliver the user experiences necessary to spread blockchain adoption to the masses.

Koinos Group recently released version 2 of their testnet, which features stability improvements, their mana fee-less transactions system and a contract development toolkit that will allow developers to build and run smart contracts on Koinos.

via cointelgraph.com

The Bitcoin Dilemma

Game theory is the science of multi-agent decision making. It uses mathematics to study the strategic interaction of rational decision makers. Game theory has social, logical, and computer science applications. It also has Bitcoin applications at the personal, social, business, and nation state levels.

The Bitcoin Dilemma

The Center Cannot Hold: 11

Game theory is the science of multi-agent decision making. It uses mathematics to study the strategic interaction of rational decision makers. Game theory has social, logical, and computer science applications. It also has Bitcoin applications at the personal, social, business, and nation state levels.

Perfect vs Imperfect Information

Sequential games can be organized into two categories, those with perfect information (e.g., checkers) and those with imperfect information (e.g., bridge). A game of perfect information requires that all players know the strategies and payoffs available to the other players, but also know the actions or moves everyone previously made.

For the purposes of this essay we will consider “players” of the Bitcoin game to be those not only holding some Bitcoin but also running a node. We will here define “moves” to be on-chain transactions, or the lack thereof on the public Bitcoin ledger.

If we consider Bitcoin to be an accumulation game, its information is perfect on a surface level, but imperfect much beyond that. It would appear all the node runners know all the strategies and payoffs available to other players, for example they can audit how much Bitcoin they have, and they can even look into how much Bitcoin other addresses have generally on the public ledger, although matching up all the Bitcoin addresses to specific players is an impossible task. Further, all players can see the massive payoff to the common strategy of hodling.

The inverse is also true, players are generally aware that selling sats at any point puts them at great risk of having to buy sats back at a higher or sometimes infeasible price. Most players who sold their hundreds and thousands of Bitcoin during the early years will never possess nearly that number of Bitcoin again. The act of hodling is an emergent strategy that takes players varying amounts of time to adopt, although there was nothing stopping someone from hodling Bitcoin from the beginning. Indeed, Satoshi taught us to hold our Bitcoin from the onset.

The Bitcoin supply is auditable for all the players, the consensus rules are publicly available for every player to verify. All of the moves that have been made, the on-chain transactions are public, although attributing specific moves to specific players is often impossible.

There is also a wealth of more complicated Bitcoin accumulation strategies that have been evidenced on the blockchain, including the wealthiest players triggering sell offs and scooping up cheap Bitcoin at a declined price. More complicated derivatives strategies and a multitude of other Bitcoin accumulation and mining strategies however are not known to all, nor have all of them been developed. This is part of what makes Bitcoin accumulation such a creative and to an extent individualized pursuit. On the whole one could say the Bitcoin does not satisfy our prerequisites for a game of perfect information. Therefore, Bitcoin accumulation is a game of imperfect information.

Complete vs Incomplete Information

Bitcoin could be considered a game of complete information, which requires only that players know the strategies and payoffs available to other players. This is because all rational Bitcoin strategies boil down to increasing the rate of accumulation, and not selling Bitcoin accumulated. 

A game of incomplete information becomes a game of imperfect information when one or more players makes a move by nature, or one without stake in a strategic outcome, effectively generating randomness. Proof of stake securities operate like this. Outside of Bitcoin, one can never truly be certain one owns cryptocurrency because it is always susceptible to confiscation or negation via a hard fork initiated by some form of governance. Bitcoin assures you of your property, and does not disenfranchise players through upgrades. Although one could argue there are many moves by nature in Bitcoin as well, in the sense that the markets are irrational, but they don’t appear to be random.

Alpha-Beta Pruning

Chess is a combinatorial game of perfect information. The combinatorial subcategory of games denotes those in which the optimal strategy is based on a myriad of possible moves. Although chess is a game of perfect information, a provable optimal unifying strategy for chess has not been found. A novice chess player may experience information paralysis or a data overload due to the game’s combinatorial nature. If Bitcoin is combinatorial, the myriad of moves are all possible economic tradeoffs one could make to acquire it, and the optimal strategy is to buy and hold Bitcoin and never sell it.

Alpha—beta pruning is a type of computer program that uses a search algorithm. The program stops evaluating a move when it is found to be worse than one that was examined before. Artificial neural networks train through reinforcement learning to make games like chess more computationally tractable. Many people who come to Bitcoin make strategic mistakes at first, those with good internal alpha-beta pruning processes tend to forgo trading stocks and other assets, purchasing cryptocurrencies, and purchasing much of anything at all outside of Bitcoin.

Cooperative

A game is cooperative if players can form alliances that are externally enforced. Accumulating Bitcoin is in a broader sense cooperative. Anecdotally, one can probably stack more Bitcoin working for a Bitcoin company, which presents further opportunities to work with more people who have Bitcoin than working at a grocery store, which presents likely no growth opportunities, at a wage that is inflated away. The Bitcoin network is full of companies and mining firms who are reallocating capital in ways that are mutually beneficial to employers and employees alike. In this way Bitcoin accumulation incentivizes Bitcoin holders working together to bring products of value to market.

Games in which players can form agreements but only through self-enforcement, (e.g., a credible threat) are non-cooperative. Cooperative games can be studied with coalition forming predictions, joint group actions, and collective payoffs. Bitcoin exchanges, miners, mining pools, and businesses are all diligently studied in this way.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game which proves why two rational individuals acting in their own self interest may not cooperate to achieve an optimal outcome. This theoretical game is played as follows: Two friends are arrested for a crime. They are held in solitary cells without means of communicating with one another. The prosecutor’s do not have enough evidence to imprison both people on the principal charge, but they can both be imprisoned for lesser charges. Each person is offered the same bargain, in their own cell, at the same time. They are each given the option to cooperate with one another by remaining silent, or to betray, and testify that the other person committed the crime.

In this game there are four possible outcomes*:

1) A and B both betray each other, and each of them serves two years in prison.

2) A betrays B, but B remains silent. A is freed, while B serves three years in prison.

3) A remains silent, but B betrays A. A serves three years in prison, while B is freed.

4) A and B both remain silent. Both of them will serve only one year in prison for the lesser charge.

* It is implied that the decision to betray or remain silent will not affect a player’s reputation or well being in the future. Imagine there are no repercussions outside of the possible prison sentences. The strategy to this game changes when players play multiple times in a row, but that is a topic for another essay.

Below is the payoff Matrix for Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Payoff Matrix for The Prisoner's Dilemma 

Description of the Payoff Matrix 

We can see from this payoff matrix that to achieve the optimal outcome one player must betray the other. That means that two purely rational players will betray each other. Though there is a slight advantage in both players remaining silent (a shorter prison sentence), the risk of your partner defecting is very high. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a non-cooperative game, as the players have no information about the other player’s respective choice, so there is no means of agreement, but even if they could agree, there is no external enforcement agent binding players to their agreement. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game of complete information in that each knows the payoffs and strategies available to the other, but also one of imperfect information, because, at the decisive moment, one does not know whether their co-player has kept silent or betrayed.

The Bitcoin Dilemma

How does this apply to Bitcoin? A similar model can be found on any scale in our Bitcoin game. If you take any two individuals, businesses, competing nations, large corporations, any entities for whom the goal is to acquire more capital and enrich themselves, they are all witting or unwitting participants in the Bitcoin Dilemma. Players can either choose to accumulate Bitcoin at any moment or defer to a higher price.

Payoff Matrix for The Bitcoin Dilemma 

On September 7th, El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender. The world is watching this experiment, and Bitcoiners are eager to see what country will be next to adopt Bitcoin as nations are forced to compete through accumulating or be left behind.

In September, Edward Snowden took to Twitter to urge nations to embrace Bitcoin. After El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, the game-theoretic prisoner's dilemma of nation's Bitcoin adoption started playing out in global geopolitics. The famous whistleblower highlighted that Bitcoin favors those entities (at any level) that adopt it early, thereby putting pressure on other parties, which will be penalized for being laggards.

Adoption works like this on an individual level too, any insular community ignorant of Bitcoin can live some time without noticing the effects of not owning Bitcoin, although as soon as one member of the community begins to own the hardest money known to us, and that stack begins to appreciate, those who notice their success are presented at every moment with a choice to buy Bitcoin now or put off buying Bitcoin, only to buy it later at a higher price. 

31 October 2021

Read The Center Cannot Hold: 10: "The Bitcoin Constant"

Read The Center Cannot Hold: 9: "Schrödinger's Bitcoin"

Read The Center Cannot Hold: 8: "Bitcoin Is The Singularity"

Read The Center Cannot Hold: 7: "Bitcoin Will Advance Science And Technology"

Read The Language of Bitcoin: 6: “Michael Saylor Interview: The Predator Prey Dynamics of Bitcoin”

Read The Language of Bitcoin: 5: “Bitcoin Has No Competition”

Read The Language of Bitcoin: 4: “Bitcoin And Existential Risk”

Read The Language of Bitcoin: 3: “Bitcoin: The First and Final Rival Money”

Read The Language of Bitcoin: 2: “Bitcoin Alleviates Future Uncertainty”

Read The Language of Bitcoin: 1: “BTC Is The Best Explanation For The Way Money Is”

via bitcoinmagazine.com

Bitcoin Community Projects Communicate The Message Of Freedom

Projects like the Declaration of Monetary Independence are examples of how the bitcoin community can bring powerful messages to greater audiences.

Aspirational projects like the Declaration of Monetary Independence are designed to engender strong feelings — that’s part of their power. Much contemporary art was made about the American Independence movement, such as William Blake’s “America, A Prophecy,” and Philip Freneau in both “A Political Litany” and “American Liberty.” Such works help communicate the overall message of the movement to a broader audience, and often do a better job conveying the emotionality of the movement than the base layer argument.

We can see much artistic output coming from the broad Bitcoin community, with a great output of audio and visual works. For me, when I was exposed to early versions of the Declaration of Monetary Independence project, I was moved to write a couple of haiku. Upon hearing that they were looking for more of such work to assist with the project, I decided that this would be my contribution to it.

A few notes about the below. Each haiku is intended to stand on its own, while also being a part of a larger story. One apparent departure from the norm, haiku generally evokes nature. Here, while I do evoke nature, I also include aspects of Bitcoin’s construction (SHA-256), and memes. To my mind, these are part of Bitcoin’s nature, and so in evoking these, I believe these remain true to the spirit of English language haiku.

This is a guest post by Rick Poach And Colin Crossman. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

via bitcoinmagazine.com

Ten31 Launches: A New Bitcoin Venture Capitalist Firm

Ten31 is a new venture fund named after October 31, the birthday of the Bitcoin white paper. The venture fund’s ethos is tied to its namesake, with a mission to partner with, invest in, and support exclusively Bitcoin-focused companies whose mission is hyperbitcoinization.

Ten31 is a new organization named after October 31, the birthday of the Bitcoin white paper. The venture fund’s ethos is tied to its namesake, with a mission to partner with, invest in, and support exclusively Bitcoin companies whose mission is hyperbitcoinization.

On October 31, 2008 the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto posted the Bitcoin White Paper on the cypherpunks mailing list, a day that forever altered the course of humanity.

Satoshi's email announcing Bitcoin to The Cryptography Mailing List

Ten31 commented, “Our mission is to partner with, invest in, and support great Bitcoin companies creating infrastructure for a Bitcoin monetary system. We believe bitcoin is the tool that will facilitate the freedom of mankind and unlock individual sovereignty and human flourishing.”

Ten31 mission statement predicates on hyperbitcoinization, a single purpose which everyone regardless of skillset can contribute to. “We know not everyone can be shadowy super coders, but there are skills others have at their disposal to contribute to the ecosystem. We believe the traditional venture capital model falls short in its potential impact on the space, and thus we have purposely designed Ten31 to be different from traditional VC.”

In the spirit of Bitcoin, Ten31 funds are called “Low Time Preference Funds”, in which a portion of management fees are directed to fund open source Bitcoin development and grants to contributors in the space. Ten31 is focused “on building an active community of supporters who have seen the orange light of bitcoin and want to contribute.”

The Ten31 tribe, its limited partners, and the members of its team are a talented group of Bitcoin holders, comprising a wealth of diverse expertise and relationships across the world. Members include Bitcoin legends such as the indelible Matt Odell, Parker Lewis, Michael Tanguma, and Marty Bent.

The mission of Ten31 is best summed thus, “In a sense, we are the anti-fiat VC, with a singular focus: Bitcoin.” 

via bitcoinmagazine.com

Trick or Treat: Will Halloween NFTs be hauntingly good or too spooky for crypto?

Halloween-inspired NFTs are gaining popularity this year, but will the trend continue over time and will they prove to be great investments?

Halloween is traditionally known for costumes, candy and trick or treating, but this year, the holiday is transitioning to the virtual world as the metaverse unfolds. As such, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are being created to showcase Halloween themes in hopes of attracting collectors looking for themed drops. 

Although Halloween-inspired NFTs appear to be a new concept, NFT artist Etsploit told Cointelegraph that Halloween holds a certain cultural importance that can't be dismissed: “I think people will collect NFTs for Halloween similar to that of NFT limited editions or releases of anything else.”

Given this sentiment, Etsploit launched the “Mango Heroes” project, which is a series of NFTs built on the Solana blockchain and inspired by the decentralized trading platform Mango Markets. Etsploit noted that 7,000 “Mango Heroes” will be available on Oct. 31, along with a special edition Halloween portion of the collection. “We will be giving away a Mango Hero reminiscent of Jason from the Halloween Movie series to a member of our Mango Heroes discord who has contributed the most to growing our community,” said Etsploit.

Source: Mango Heroes 

In addition to Mango Heroes, an NFT series created by NFTignition known as “Monster Bash” has launched just in time for Halloween 2021. Danielle Davis, founder of NFTignition, told Cointelegraph that the Monsters Bash collection features 10,000 NFTs based on classic monsters living on the Ethereum blockchain: “The collection features a series of generative art pieces that come in both a human and monster form. Your "hooman" state will transform into a monster before your very eyes.”

Davis shared that the goal behind Monster Bash is to pay homage to classic movie monsters such as vampires, mummies and werewolves. Like most NFT projects that appeal to collectors seeking specific themes, Davis explained that the Monster Bash selection aims to spark nostalgia in people upon viewing these creations.

Source: NFTignition

Another Halloween edition NFT has been launched by Uncanny Apes, a collection created by the Imperium token team featuring 5,999 “misfit” apes. J.B. Shaw, co-founder of Uncanny Apes, told Cointelegraph that the Uncanny Apes Halloween edition features a “ghostly team of spooky apes with their own different level of uniqueness.”

Shaw shared that Imperium token will kick off the launch with a limited release of 666 NFTs of the uncanny primates: “The Halloween Edition apes have a total of 25 different possible traits with five different categories (backgrounds, head attire, hairstyle, eyewear and facial expressions).”

Source: Uncanny Apes

While killer mangoes, transforming monsters and colorful apes are being launched by the crypto community, some celebrities and major brands have also created Halloween-inspired digital collectibles.

For example, American businesswoman and television personality Martha Stewart released a Halloween series of NFTs this month that are currently on display on Fresh Mint — Stewart’s own NFT website. According to sources, one of Stewart’s NFT collections features several of the Halloween costumes that the eclectic T.V. host has worn over the years. Others showcase a Roy Lichtenstein painting, a “black widow” and a “ghostly equestrienne.” Some of Stewart’s featured NFT drops also include work from the Brooklyn-based collective “Maniac Pumpkin Carvers.”

Staying true to the vast Martha Stewart brand, it’s also been noted that customers interested in these NFTs can bid on offerings like the “Custom Carved Pumpkin,” while also requesting specific designs to be created that are not NFTs. On Oct. 19, Stewart stated in an Instagram post that this is the first of many NFT collections she plans to release.

If Martha Stewart’s NFT collection wasn’t shockingly horrifying enough, it may come as a surprise that Spirit Halloween — North America’s largest Halloween retailer — is also showcasing an NFT collection this year. Spirit Halloween recently announced a partnership with Upland, a blockchain-based metaverse, that would allow the retailer to feature some of their most iconic costumes like Jack the Ripper within Upland’s virtual world.

Celebrating Halloween in the metaverse with NFTs

What’s arguably interesting about Spirit Halloween’s NFT collection is the utility behind it. For instance, the full launch of Spirit Halloween NFT bundles began on Oct. 25 and features Halloween-themed game pieces called “block explorers.” Following the launch, Spirit Halloween will take over the Upland metaverse with their NFT bundles consisting of in-game decorations, frightening block explorers and Upland “Legits,” which is a new generation of interactive NFTs.

According to Dirk Lueth, co-founder of Upland, Legits incorporate 3D designs that are optimized for a mobile experience. Lueth added that these new NFTs will offer an added layer of gamification that “die-hard Spirit Halloween fans will want to collect, trade and showcase, including an increased level of interactivity.”

Source: BEAR NFT

Decentraland, another blockchain-based metaverse, is also celebrating Halloween with NFTs by partnering with BEAR NFT and a number of other organizations to produce a Metaverse event called “NFTs are Dead.” The virtual gathering is scheduled to take place on Oct. 31 and will act as Decentraland’s official Halloween party and concert.

Ryan Kieffer, event producer and co-founder of BEAR NFT, told Cointelegraph that NFTs will play a large role, given that Decentraland’s virtual land is a nonfungible token. Kieffer added that NFT wearables will be airdropped to users during the event:

“Guests are invited to wear their best costume for photo opportunities, a costume contest and other fun surprises. Attendees should also keep a look out for a secret special VIP guest who will be wearing a 1/1 wearable and will reveal himself for those who stick around for the party’s grand finale.”

According to Kieffer, the purpose of such an event is to bring people together in the metaverse, which seems to be an ongoing theme post-COVID-19. In addition to virtual Halloween gatherings, Davis remarked that Monster Bash collectors are able to earn passive income through in-game tournaments. “There will be a pit against other monsters, with one reigning supreme each time! Each of the monsters has their own traits, allowing them to be better at some contests than others,” explained Davis.

Interestingly enough, virtual games leveraging NFTs may be one of the best applications for holiday-themed nonfungibles. Recent data from ​​the Worldwide Asset eXchange found that significant NFT growth has been driven by a surge in gaming activity, noting that over $1 million in NFT trading was generated on the platform just during the last month.

Will Halloween NFTs be a trick or an ongoing treat?

While Halloween-themed NFTs certainly seem to be in abundance this year, some may wonder if this will be an ongoing trend or just another opportunity to jump on board the NFT hype train while it’s hot.

Although it’s hard to predict the future of crypto, Kieffer believes that there is space for more Halloween-centric NFT releases, especially with wearables that can be used as costumes. To Kieffer’s point, a number of luxury fashion brands have also launched NFT collections to be worn virtually as the concept gains traction.

Related: Culture converges with blockchain as luxury fashion brands launch NFT collections

Echoing Kieffer, Etsploit commented that Halloween-themed NFTs could indeed gain traction after a few years “I think currently though, most people are looking for what is going to be the next long-term blue-chip project,” he noted. Shaw further remarked that the Halloween edition of Uncanny Ape may be too specific for the overall market, yet he believes that the primary line of Uncanny Apes will spark collector interest.

Davis further commented that although the Monster Bash collection was launched during the days leading up to Halloween, the collection isn’t specifically a Halloween project:

“We believe monsters are for every holiday, they are year-round spooky friends! Just because Halloween ends, that doesn't mean the functionality stops or the art gets worse. We think that though there will be an obvious holiday-specific correlation in the market, that won't stop our community from existing and growing.”

via cointelgraph.com

What is the worst nightmare that could happen to crypto? Experts answer

What are decentralized-tech representatives most scared of? And what are their deepest fears in the crypto space?

Tim Draper of Draper Associates and Draper Fisher Jurvetson:

Tim is a pioneer of business ventures in the United States and a co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading investment firm in early-stage tech startups.

“I am fearless long-term. Bitcoin is coming. Short-term, it is spooky that some people are willing to give up this gift of freedom and trust in favor of government controls. Government controls have destroyed a lot of people’s lives and freedoms.”

These quotes have been edited and condensed.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Sheila Warren of the World Economic Forum:

Sheila is the head of data, blockchain and digital assets at the World Economic Forum.

“My worst nightmare with the crypto industry is that it will start to believe its own hype and forget that technology — any technology — is not on its own a cure for social problems, including financial exclusion.

I believe in the potential for crypto to enhance equity and inclusion and create new systems that empower people and provide them with agency. But that will only happen if the crypto ecosystem deliberately and intentionally focuses on these problems and includes these communities in the creation of the solutions. Without that, I worry that we will simply repeat processes that got us to where we are today, with so many people in the world cut off from opportunities that could meaningfully enhance their well-being.”

Ryan Sheftel of Radkl:

Ryan is the CEO of Radkl, a quantitative trading firm with a focus on digital assets.

“My worst nightmare for the crypto industry is that it gets co-opted by the current legacy financial industry and regulators, squeezing all innovation and dynamism out. The centers of excellence and new breakthroughs are pushed overseas, and the best and brightest that are looking to work in the industry are forced to find new jurisdictions to pursue their passion and create change.”

Rob Viglione of Horizen:

Rob is the co-founder and team lead of Horizen, a blockchain platform that aims to enable an application-rich, inclusive ecosystem through its leading-edge sidechain solutions.

“My biggest fear for the crypto market is that the U.S. dollar, or some other major fiat currency, suddenly becomes sound money! I mean, a currency responsibly governed with transparency, rules specified in advance and a supply that starts to look bound at something less than infinite. I’m not sure that Bitcoin could survive this kind of sound-money challenge, but at least we’d still have DeFi yield and NFTs to fall back on!”

Phillip Gara of the Render Network:

Phillip is the director of strategy at the Render Network, a blockchain GPU computing platform powering next-generation 3D content creation.

“A lot of artists are creating spectacular CGI using our blockchain service, RNDR, which pools together millions of GPUs mining cryptocurrencies to render out the next generation of digital content. With near-unlimited computing power and on-chain smart contracts, artists are pushing forward the state of the art in hyper-realistic imaging and generative code-based immersive experiences. If you follow some of the laws of exponential growth, it’s possible that we will be able to create synthetic worlds that are nearly indistinguishable from reality, similar to The Matrix. One of our advisers is Beeple, who often creates funhouse dystopias in his ‘Everydays.’ With RNDR, we are collaborating on developing technologies that will enable you to fully immerse yourself in his Everydays — almost literally stepping into the wild, eccentric mind of Beeple. Whether it is a nightmare, a dream or something in between is an open question, but that reality is coming at us all at an accelerating speed.”

Mitchell Cuevas of Stacks Foundation:

Mitchell is the head of growth at Stacks Foundation, which supports the mission of a user-owned internet through Stacks-related governance, research and development, education, and grants.

“My worst nightmare is obviously that someone is going to spill punch on the Metaverse and all these NFTs are going to come screaming to life and wreak absolute havoc on us. 

I’m not sure why more people aren’t panicking about this. Where’s Elon when you need him?”

Max Einhorn of 4K:

Max serves as the chief operating officer at 4K, a peer-to-peer marketplace for collectibles and luxury goods powered by NFTs.

“My biggest fear for the crypto industry is that the crypto and traditional worlds will war with each other rather than work together collaboratively. Just the other month, we saw U.S. lawmakers nearly pass a bill that would dramatically expand the U.S. government’s surveillance over the entire crypto ecosystem. They walked it back, but we came close to the brink. We in crypto are not without blame. Crypto culture glorifies DeFi ‘degens,’ where pride is taken in snubbing conventions, even if there are parts of the past that would benefit us today. Many spend more time chasing a few extra percentage points in yield or hyping a memecoin than they do searching for ways to improve the lives of the rest of humanity. We are eager to reinvent without always appreciating all the hard-learned lessons from history that got us to where we are today. Crypto is math. No one can stop it. Those of us building in crypto are wielding extraordinarily powerful tools. With great power comes great responsibility. Please build responsibly.

My second-biggest fear for the crypto industry is that it will lose touch with the revolutionary spirit that birthed this movement. Bitcoin was created during the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. It was the result of groundbreaking work done by humans that cared to empower the unempowered, enfranchise the non-enfranchised and wrestle power away from the few to put it into the hands of the many. The newer someone is to crypto, the more distant they are from the original emails on the cypherpunk mailing list that sparked this revolution. They see fast money and join to get a piece of that action rather than to further the ideals that ushered in this wave of abundance. Radical visionaries help society move forward. Stay radical, my friends.”

Mance Harmon of Hedera Hashgraph:

Mance is the co-founder and CEO of Hedera Hashgraph, a next-generation distributed ledger technology that claims to possess higher speeds and security guarantees than existing blockchain solutions.

“Regulatory uncertainty and unintended consequences of well-meaning regulations. We as an industry must work hard to educate all parts of the regulatory ecosystem, in the U.S. and globally, to make sure that the people writing policy, crafting consumer protections and shaping the industry going forward have all of the information and understanding they need to mature the industry in a way that benefits the average consumer and user of distributed networks, encourages innovation to flourish in a responsible way, and does not cause the U.S. to fall behind other countries.”

Joel John of LedgerPrime:

Joel is a principal of DeFi and VC investing at LedgerPrime, a quantitative and systematic digital asset investment firm.

“My biggest fear is that we fail to translate what we are doing to the common, average person in a way that is approachable and useful for mass markets. Very few applications do that currently. Axie Infinity is a good example, OpenSea is another — the industry and its stalwarts should not get lost in translation.”

Halsey Minor of VideoCoin:

Halsey is the strategic technology partner at VideoCoin Network, which provides video infrastructure for the blockchain-enabled internet and features token-driven decentralized video encoding, storage and distribution.

“My fear is that the SEC will ignore the tens of billions of dollars being lost today by consumers in ETNs (exchange-traded notes) and instead focus on the highly innovative DeFi space. ETNs are the new mortgage-backed securities. There are already many whistleblower complaints that are being ignored. Mortgage-backed securities, Libor, Wells Fargo, gold and silver market manipulation, and now ETNs — all ignored by the SEC until it was too late. They need today to stop banks from creating tragically toxic securities, not destroy real innovation.”

David Khalif of Viridi Funds:

David is the co-founder and head of operations at Viridi Funds, a registered investment adviser and emerging fund manager that offers environmentally conscious crypto investing options. 

“Our biggest nightmare is that crypto miners will continue to keep digging into the earth and finding no new Bitcoin. After spending so much on mining equipment and going underground to search in caves, we have yet to find any Bitcoin. We seem to only encounter this weird item called ‘gold.’ We don’t plan on giving up yet, but rest assured that when we find our first Bitcoin, we will make an NFT of it.”

Darren Franceschini of BlockBank:

Darren is the co-founder and chief operating officer of BlockBank, a multi-protocol utility wallet that combines the power of decentralized and centralized technology in a simple, secure application.

“My biggest fear is losing my private keys for good — that would be the biggest nightmare. Or experiencing what I’ve heard others go through being held hostage to hand over their keys.”

Daniela Barbosa of Hyperledger:

Daniela is the executive director of Hyperledger and the general manager of blockchain, healthcare and identity for the Linux Foundation.

“My greatest crypto nightmare is that a big crash or even a wave of extended volatility unnecessarily tarnishes the use of distributed ledger technology by enterprises, which aside from bad press would be otherwise unaffected.”

Caitlin Long of Avanti Financial Group:

Caitlin is the founder and CEO of Avanti Financial Group, an operator of a crypto-asset banking company focused on providing regulated services for digital assets.

“My worst nightmare is the discovery of a zero-day exploit in the Bitcoin Core code that no one has discovered yet. Every day that goes by, the probability of this diminishes exponentially — but it will never be zero.”

Andrew Levine of Koinos Group:

Andrew is the CEO of Koinos Group, an engineering-first company led by battle-hardened blockchain veterans with unrivaled experience as core developers and architects of the BitShares and Steem blockchains.

“My worst nightmare is that we are stuck with smart contract platforms that cater to crypto early adopters and treat ordinary people as second-class citizens. Ordinary users expect a feeless experience, and ordinary developers expect to be able to work in the programming languages they already know and love. These people don’t care about how it all works or whether something is ‘Ethereum-compatible.’ The only people who care about that are already deep in the space. Ordinary people just want something that is easy, pleasant and free to use. Until we have that, we won’t have true mass adoption.”

Amanda Keleher of ConsenSys:

Amanda is the chief people officer at ConsenSys, a global community of developers, businesspeople, programmers, journalists, lawyers and others made to create and promote blockchain infrastructure and peer-to-peer applications.

“My worst nightmare is to wake up in five years and realize the crypto industry has become just like the ‘old Wall Street’ — an exclusive industry. The crypto ecosystem is a unique opportunity to build a more inclusive global financial ecosystem empowering more women and more minorities. And to build it, we need to have the most talented, diverse people to do it. 

My fear is we fail to embrace this opportunity to make real, impactful, long-lasting change. Let’s not be scaredy-cats — let’s give everyone a pumpkin to talk about... Boo!”

Alan Chiu of Enya/Boba Network:

Alan is CEO of Enya, a data privacy company that operates the world’s largest secure multiparty computation platform. Alan also serves on the Stanford Graduate School of Business Alumni Board, as well as on the board of Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs as co-president.

“My biggest fear would be the U.S. following China’s crypto policy, driving innovation away from the country. Crypto would survive, but the U.S. would suffer from missing out on the wave of innovation coming out of crypto — Web 3.0 and DAOs, among other things.”

Introduction

Back on Oct. 31, 2008, a person — or a group of people — who called themself Satoshi Nakamoto published a nine-page paper describing a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” that introduced a brand-new online payments system called Bitcoin (BTC). Last year, for the white paper’s 12th birthday, Cointelegraph collected industry leaders’ wishes for Bitcoin. 

This year, Bitcoin turns 13, and since Oct. 31 is also the day on which Halloween is celebrated, we decided to combine these two events into one. Cointelegraph reached out to the deepest corners of the souls of a group of crypto industry insiders to find out their greatest fears and nightmares about crypto, asking them: What do you fear most of all?

via cointelgraph.com

Does The World Need A Declaration Of Monetary Independence?

A collaborative effort in the bitcoin community to establish the reasons for separation of money and state.

There comes a time, in the face of great discomfort and uncertainty, where one is obligated to stand in defiance against an established rule-set with which they may be conflicted. Social contracts are a necessity for organization and the development of civilization.

Cultures and societies — as well as governments — can be rendered obsolete — or inferior — as our species & technology advances, progressing our understandings of where we find ourselves amongst one another. Where one might find the rules by which they abide by no longer serve them, but constrain and oppress.

“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”- Plato, The Republic

Today, the state enjoys this excess liberty.

Today, the state has unfettered access to our data.

Today, the state has the power of our time.

Today, the state has the power of our attention.

Today, the state has the power over our future.

245 years ago the world was saturated with authoritarian and aristocratic government rule… a select few chose to sacrifice the comforts of the now as they saw the seemingly insurmountable task of attempting to secure the freedoms for the future as a worthy cause. A future that was not a guaranteed victory to be experienced within their lifetime. But a worthy cause nonetheless.

Where a handful American Colonists stood tall against tyranny, as the rest of the world watched-on.

Where the few resisted the many, against all odds and resources at their behest.

With sheer force of will, tenacity and spirit, the underdogs refused to surrender as they knew they fought for what was right and true.

We find ourselves at a very similar crossroads, yet again. We do not know what precisely is happening to our world. But we see many people across the world sacrificing their rights, and the rights of their neighbors in the search of “security” and comfort. This is where we find great opportunity — in the face of uncertainty and discomfort.

We have an opportunity to stand, again, for what is right.

Only this time, we aren’t limited to any one nation, or one geography. Through technological advancement we — as a people united on a global scale — can call for action taken together.

Only this time we can unite in a cause where all benefit, without need for violent revolution.

This time we cut the tether between money and state.

“Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo, The Future of Man

There comes a time... when an individual is presented with a choice; whether they play a role in history as progress is knocking at their door, or they resist change and defend “the old ways.”

The decision to take the Orange Pill. or the Blue Pill.

Will you stand for the right to shed the shackles of State power?

Will you stand and declare monetary independence from an unfair and broken system?

Sign the Declaration of Monetary Independence here, or by clicking the graphic below:

via bitcoinmagazine.com

Bitcoin set for record monthly close with BTC price still below 'worst case scenario'

$60,000 would be a monthly record, but longstanding analysis demands a minimum of $63,000 by the start of November.

Bitcoin (BTC) delivered fresh retests of $60,000 support on Oct. 31 with a matter of hours left until the crucial monthly close.

BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

Record monthly close hangs by a thread

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed lackluster price action on Sunday, with BTC/USD below the "worst case scenario" for its October close.

Analysts were eagerly awaiting to see if the end of the month could provide a turnaround and prove the worst case theory correct for a third month running.

Its creator, PlanB, father of the stock-to-flow model, correctly guessed the $47,000 and $43,000 finales for August and September respectively.

Even without succeeding, however, finishing October above $60,000 would mark several achievements in itself.

If #Bitcoin closes the week tomorrow above $60k, it would be the 3rd week in a row...

It would also be the first *MONTHLY* close above $60k ever.

— Benjamin Cowen (@intocryptoverse) October 30, 2021

As Cointelegraph previously noted, Sundays have tended to see weaker performance from Bitcoin this month, with Monday contrasting the mood with a show of strength — particularly into the U.S. open.

"BTC daily says get ready for November," popular trader and analyst TechDev summarized on the day, putting the focus on the coming month.

BTC/USD 1-month candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView

Shiba Inu ends its run in altcoin slowdown

Altcoins staged copycat moves as Bitcoin waned, with the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap seeing modest losses over the past 24 hours. 

Related: Bitcoin eyes third weekly close above $60K as Ethereum fuels new altcoin market cap record

Shiba Inu (SHIB), the star of the past week, lost more heavily, down 13% at the time of writing but still with weekly gains of 45%.

Sentiment mimicked the lack of upside, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index showing declining "greed" in recent days.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index as of Oct. 31. Source: Alternative.me

via cointelgraph.com