While supporting crypto mining companies, the Russian lawmakers are still not sure whether they should ban individuals from mining crypto.
As Russia continues to work on new regulations for the cryptocurrency industry, the Russian Ministry of Finance has expressed fresh support for Bitcoin (BTC) mining.
Russia should encourage the development of industrial-level cryptocurrency mining in the country, the Ministry’s director of the financial policy department Alexey Yakovlev urged.
There’s also no point in banning retail or household Bitcoin mining, Yakovlev said, as the local publication Prime reported on Thursday. The Russian lawmakers discussed the two categories of cryptocurrency miners at a recent round table called the “Mining regulation in Russia: For and against.”
According to Yakovlev, Russian officials reached a consensus on the regulatory framework for crypto mining companies long ago, supporting their work and requiring them to pay taxes.
But there’s still some disagreement regarding retail miners, Yakovlev said. He added that the Finance Ministry is not inclined to prohibit such mining, stating:
“We believe it’s necessary to focus on the development of industrial mining, but it probably does not make sense to ban household mining.”
Yakovlev went on to say that lawmakers continue working on the Russian crypto regulation bill, planning to maximize the economic efficiency and minimize potential risks like money laundering and terrorism financing as well as ensure the energy safety.
As previously reported, some major crypto mining-related companies in Russia would have no problem with running their operations in case the government starts a crackdown on crypto. BitRiver, the largest cryptocurrency mining colocation services provider in Russia, is unlikely to be affected by such actions, according to the firm’s CEO.
The firm previously said its reserves would be in cash and treasuries.
On Thursday, USD Coin (USDC) operator Circle announced that it had selected financial institution BNY Mellon as the custodian of its USDC reserves. Founded in 1784, BNY Mellon is one of the oldest banks in America and possesses over $46.7 trillion in assets under custody or administration worldwide. It serves as a single point of contact for clients looking to manage their investments. With the new partnership, BNY Mellon said it will also explore the possibility of using digital cash for settlement purposes. Roman Regelman, CEO of asset servicing and head of digital at BNY Mellon, gave the following remarks:
"We are at a point in the evolution of our industry where the digitization of assets presents new and exciting opportunities to a broad range of market participants. As a custodian for USDC reserves, our role supports the broader marketplace and brings value to clients, founded on our role at the intersection of trust and innovation."
Meanwhile, Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO at Circle, added:
"As we continue to see exponential growth in USDC, the opportunity to work with BNY Mellon is one way we build bridges between traditional financial services and emerging digital asset markets without sacrificing trust."
USDC is one of the fastest-growing dollar digital currencies globally with over $52 billion in circulation as of March 2022. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the total supply of stablecoins hit $180 billion last month. The United States is one of the most regulatory-friendly countries regarding stablecoins, with Fed Governor Waller previously voicing skepticism as to the adoption of a central bank digital currency, saying that it would potentially stifle innovation in the private stablecoin sector.
With so much drama in the LBC, it’s only right that we drop a dope NFT.
Recording artists Snoop Dogg and Billy Ray Cyrus have teamed up to release a new smash single, “A Hard Working Man.” The hip hop-country mashup, produced by the legendary Avila Brothers, will debut on April 2 during Grammy weekend in Las Vegas.
Cyrus’ 2019 hit remix of “Old Town Road” with rapper Lil Nas X made history by going 16x multi-platinum in the United States. Asked about his genre-bending approach to music, Cyrus replied, “My philosophy to making music is no limitations. No rules, no limits, no preconceived notions. Don’t try to think inside the box or outside the box, just think like there is no box.”
Adding to the excitement of the song’s debut, metaverse entertainment company Animal Concerts is hard at work (pun intended) developing a new 50,000-piece nonfungible token (NFT) drop to accompany the single. Cointelegraph is producing the artwork for this massive collection, which will be featured on Crypto.com NFT. The drop also features an exciting array of redeemables for music fans, from concert tickets and backstage passes to merch and free tickets to Animal Concerts’ “Meta-Concerts.”
Animal Concerts recently burst onto the scene with a host of high-profile live concerts featuring some of the hottest names in music, from Alicia Keys and Future to Meek Mill.
Bridging the NFT world, the metaverse and utility for the community, Cointelegraph and Animal Concerts will be expanding their collaboration beyond this drop. In the coming months, the two will be releasing other high-profile NFT collections, including with beloved celebrity dog Izzy the Frenchie and some of the biggest names in music.
Animal Concerts is reinventing the future of concerts. From interactive metaverse shows to immersive live events, Animal Concerts enables established and emerging artists to deliver amazing next-generation fan experiences. Stay up to date with all upcoming announcements, launches and Meta-Concerts by following Animal Concerts on its social platforms.
Cointelegraph is the world’s largest independent digital media outlet covering a wide range of news on blockchain technology, crypto assets and emerging technology trends. Since 2013, Cointelegraph has delivered the most accurate, up-to-date news from both the decentralized and centralized worlds.
Award-winning entertainer and icon Snoop Dogg has released 19 studio albums, sold over 40-million albums worldwide, reached No. 1 countless times on Billboard charts internationally, and received 20 Grammy nominations. In addition to his extensive work in music, Snoop Dogg has made his mark in the television and film space, with numerous partnership deals with major studios and networks, including TBS, Netflix, VH1 and more.
Billy Ray Cyrus is a critically and commercially acclaimed superstar who has established himself as a household name across multiple areas of the entertainment landscape, including music, television, theater and more. When one scopes out Cyrus’ trophy case, the awards are represented across all genres: Grammy Awards, Billboard Music Awards, BET Hip Hop Awards, MTV VMA Moonmen, Country Music Association Awards and American Music Awards, among many other accolades.
Compton Magic, a premier AAU basketball program, has partnered with Swan Bitcoin to gift bitcoin to players and pay coaches in bitcoin through benefits plans.
Compton Magic, an AAU basketball program known for developing high-level collegiate and NBA players, has partnered with Swan Bitcoin for the first Bitcoin-Basketball program.
Players of Compton Magic will be gifted bitcoin on a recurring basis and through world-class educational resources at Swan Bitcoin, players will learn the values of sound money.
Coaching Staff will also be awarded bitcoin through a Bitcoin Benefits Package provided by Swan Bitcoin.
Compton Magic, a premier Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball program known for its ability to develop star athletes in the NBA and collegiate circuit, has partnered with Swan Bitcoin to launch the first Bitcoin-Basketball program, according to a press release covered by Yahoo.
“The sovereign athlete is the future of basketball, and Bitcoin is the future of money,” said CEO of Compton Magic, Etop Udo-Ema. “We're bringing the two together to create the first Bitcoin Basketball Program, a program that aligns itself with Bitcoin's principles of respecting time, long-term thinking, and sustainability.”
Bitcoin will be gifted to the players utilizing Swan’s gifting solution that allows users to send gifts to another user's email, and once that user has created a Swan account they are eligible to accept the gift. The ease of which bitcoin can be given allows an easy onboarding for new users, and through Swan’s high-level educational resources, the players will be given access to world-class Bitcoin educational resources.
“I'm personally passionate about both Bitcoin and basketball, so I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Etop and the Compton Magic,” said founder and CEO of Swan, Cory Klippsten. “Swan is dedicated to educating the world about the value of sound money for their future.”
Swan will also be utilizing their Bitcoin Benefits Plan, which will see coaching staff also receive bitcoin, though theirs will be a benefits package for their employment. Swan will direct deposit a set amount of bitcoin each month into the Swan account created by the employee automatically, continuing to push the boundaries of ease and accessibility in the bitcoin ecosystem.
“The early interest in our new Bitcoin Benefit Plan is overwhelmingly positive,” said Klippsten. “It's an easy way for employers to share the future of money with their teams, along with Swan's incomparable service, world-class education, and our vibrant community, too.”
In addition to the KYC-free units of censorship-resistant internet money, mining bitcoin at home brings unique security threats.
Home mining is one of the best expressions of individual sovereignty available, but every retail mining operation carries a variety of risks that need to be accounted for and mitigated as much as possible.
Broadening awareness of the benefits of converting electricity into KYC-free units of censorship-resistant internet money in a basement, garage or backyard shed has been a key catalyst for the ongoing surge in at-home mining. But just like storing private keys can involve tedious operations security (OPSEC) measures and careful planning, every serious miner must also consider the risks and vulnerabilities of their home mining operations. Unlike secure storage planning, however, mining faces a significantly wider array of heightened risks.
Understanding these risks and modeling responses to prevent or react to attack scenarios is essential for long-term, at-home mining success.
Home Bitcoin Mining Vulnerabilities
Theft is the most basic and obvious vulnerability to at-home bitcoin miners. For starters, every mining operation regardless of scale involves at least one rather valuable piece of computing equipment — a bitcoin ASIC miner — built with precious metals and specialized microchips that sells for anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $10,000 at current prices, depending on the model.
Visibility is also a concern. How conspicuous is a mining setup? Just like publicly advertising large amounts of bitcoin-denominated wealth is always ill advised, distinctly noticeable mining setups aren’t always the safest. Noise levels, heat signatures, spiking electricity bills and other signals are easy giveaways (with relatively simple mitigations) to close neighbors or utility companies that someone is probably mining bitcoin. Consider a permanent bare spot on an otherwise snowy roof or an ongoing 80-decibel fan noise as examples, and the point is made.
Custody is also a key consideration since miners are responsible for managing the security of each step in the flow of mining rewards from their pool accounts to cold storage.
The list of potential vulnerabilities goes on, and not every mining operation faces the same types or degrees of risks. But every setup has risks. Beyond just acquiring hardware, transmitting power and building efficient airflows, modeling these risks is an essential part of every miner’s planning.
Threat Model Basics For Home Bitcoin Mining
So, what is a threat model?
The term “threat model” is just a fancy way of expressing what someone is defending and who they’re defending it from. And unlike a financial model, threat models are minimally mathematical and highly intuitive and deductive in assessing what risks exist and how to mitigate them.
Consider the example of cannabis farmers who doubled as bitcoin miners outside of the U.K. city of Birmingham. Police inadvertently discovered their illegal bitcoin mine while raiding their illegal cannabis farm. It’s safe to say that the threats facing this cannabis-bitcoin venture were poorly modeled and mitigated, if at all.
For most technology companies, threat modeling usually involves code review and software changes. For most humans, day-to-day threat modeling is intuitive, which is why most people prefer well-lit walkways to dark alleys. For miners, the same sort of threat assessments affect a variety of software, firmware and hardware products.
Building A Home Bitcoin Mining Threat Model
Threat models can be as complex or simplistic as the creator wants. But a home miner can’t adequately prepare against potential threats if they don’t understand what risks they face.
Setting the scope of a threat model is the first and possibly most important step. Think carefully about what needs protecting (e.g., mining hardware, site access, electrical and cooling infrastructure, internet access, payout deposits and wallet storage) and who it needs protection from (e.g., friends and family, neighbors or unexpected visitors, targeted attacks). Of course, not every miner faces the same potential risks. Someone with two S9s in a suburban neighborhood deals with different risks than a landowner in the Midwest with a dozen S19s on 80 acres. But listing any possible attack scenario is key to setting the scope of the model.
The key to making this list is simply asking, “What could go wrong?” Any answer gets added to the list.
Focusing on pool accounts and payout withdrawals, for example, this aspect of a mining threat model would include pool account security and planning strategies and tools to account for vulnerabilities in password protection, two-factor authentication, payout address reuse, etc.
Likelihood and effort are two additional considerations. Take the “bad scenario” list and use basic probabilistic attack analysis to evaluate how likely each risk in the list is to happen. After ranking these scenarios, decide how much effort and preparation each item deserves. This involves two steps phrased as questions. First, what mitigatory steps are required for a particular risk? Second, based on the perceived likelihood of a given threat, how much effort is a miner willing to give to prevent it? There is no rulebook or answer key for this process. Each of these steps are up to the discretion of the miner.
“Let’s build a threat model” isn’t usually the first thought a home miner has when planning their operation, but this extra OPSEC work can avoid serious problems in the future. And threat modeling really isn’t that complex. But, like any other aspect of OPSEC, threat analysis is best thought of as an ongoing process that can always be adapted and refined, not a finished task.
Additional Resources
Nothing in this article is meant to be an exhaustive explanation of how to safeguard a home mining setup. Instead, the goal of this article is to provide a simple breakdown of what threat models are, how miners can use them and encourage home miners to begin building one of their own.
Continue reading about threat modeling and how to develop one for a mining operation with these resources:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a surveillance self-defense guide with an important chapter on developing a security plan.
Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute published a lengthy article on available methods for successful threat modeling.
One of the principal security solutions architects at Amazon Web Services also published a long article about how to approach threat modeling.
Conclusion
Small miners, especially at-home operators, are mostly left to fend for themselves regarding the security and threats facing their setups. Large institutional miners always have best operational security practices and threat models in place to safeguard their mining facilities. But there is no playbook or standardized manual for at-home mining security.
Even for miners who have been hashing for years, it’s never too early or too late to create a threat model for an at-home operation of any scale. Thinking carefully about all aspects of home mining and planning to safeguard them with a custom-made threat model is key to ensuring a miner’s long-term survival.
This is a guest post by Zack Voell. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
AAVE price broke from its long-term downtrend after the launch of Aave v3 added support for six different blockchain networks in the DeFi space.
The decentralized finance (DeFi) market has been undergoing a period of maturation over the past year and many of last year's fast risers have faded into obscurity but this does not mean the formerly "famous" protocols have not continued to build.
One blue-chip project that is regaining momentum is Aave (AAVE), a non-custodial liquidity protocol that allows users to lend, borrow or stake their assets to earn yield from their holdings.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of AAVE has rallied 110% from a low of $114 on March 15 to a daily high at $242 on March 29 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked 442% to $1.26 billion.
AAVE/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Three reasons for the price resurgence in AAVE have been the release of AAVE v3, the expansion of the protocol's ecosystem and steadily improving fundamentals.
AAVE v3
Traders have long anticipated the release of Aave v3, which was announced on March 16.
1/ Aave V3 is here!
The most powerful version of the Aave Protocol to date, V3 brings groundbreaking new features than span from increased capital efficiency to enhanced decentralization. Read what's new in V3 in the thread belowor visit https://t.co/H3jTyKRqNs to dive in! pic.twitter.com/LXzn7660nA
According to Aave, the new features will help provide greater capital efficiency, increased security and cross-chain functionality while also helping to promote decentralization across the DeFi ecosystem.
Some of the new features include portals, which offer only “permit listed” bridge protocols that have been approved by Aave governance to facilitate cross-chain transactions, a high-efficiency mode (eMode) that allows users to extract the most out of their collateral by providing a higher borrowing power within the same asset category and an isolation mode, which limits the available collateral for newly listed assets as a way to help limit exposure and risks to the protocol.
Aave v3 is currently deployed on Polygon (MATIC), Fantom (FTM), Avalanche (AVAX), Arbitrum (ARbit), Optimism (OTO) and Harmony (ONE), with more integrations planned in the future.
Ecosystem expansion
A second factor bringing fresh momentum to AAVE has been the expansion of the Aave ecosystem, which includes launching on new networks and forming partnerships and integrations with other DeFi protocols.
On top of now being available on seven different networks, Aave continues to explore new networks on which to launch, including Metis.
Aave has also seen an uptick in support from wallet providers and Web3 aggregators, including Instadapp, Debank, 1inch, Paraswap, Zapper, DeFisaver and Zerion.
A third sign of the building strength for Aave can be found by looking at the community behind the protocol, which has continued to see new users onboard into the ecosystem despite the wider struggles of the DeFi sector.
Total Aave users over time. Source: Dune Analytics
According to data from Dune Analytics, there are now more than 92,000 unique wallet addresses that have engaged with the AAVE protocol. With the number of chains supported by Aave continuing to increase, there is a strong possibility that this number will rise further in the future.
As a result of new users and the addition of support for new chains, the total value locked (TVL) on the protocol is once again on the rise and currently sits at $13.99 billion, according to data from DeFi Llama.
Total value locked on Aave. Source: Defi Llama.
The recent addition of support for liquid staking assets, such as stETH from Lido Finance, has also helped boost the TVL on AAVE, possibly because ETH stakers are looking to maximize their return.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for AAVE on March 24, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
VORTECS™ Score (grey) vs. AAVE price. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for AAVE climbed to a high of 73 on March 24, around one hour before the price began to increase 45.8% over the next five days.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
A vision into the future — what would the education system look like under a Bitcoin standard?
Author Disclaimer: The following work is analogous to fan fiction in your favorite sci-fi world. I do not intend to infringe or misappropriate any real-world ideas or work. Any similarity to concepts or work is purely coincidental. This is Part One of a series I call “Bitcoin: What-If.” Marvel can’t own that, right?😉
What If … Education
Centralized education has failed the individual. That's not to say that all students are failures. Rather the education structure employed by most of the civilized world 1) creates an environment that picks winners and losers much like the fiat monetary system, 2) has not kept pace with the rate of technology and information growth in subject matter and infrastructure, and 3) discourages free thought while driving its participants to capitulate to a specific viewpoint.
The compulsory education as known in most of the contemporary world ironically fails to remain contemporary. The infrastructure of the academic system has made little change since the “Committee of Ten” established it at the end of the 19th century.
With that structure came many other philosophies that have shaped the country’s and the world’s general outlook on education. The Committee of Ten of 1892, made up of high school and collegiate educators, determined that “...every subject which is taught at all in a secondary school should be taught in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil so long as he pursues it, no matter what the probable destination of the pupil may be, or at what point his education is to cease.”
What does this sound like? Keynesian economics, which is a “macroeconomic economic theory of total spending in the economy” according to Investopedia, chooses to minimize the importance and uniqueness of the individual’s action. This perspective chooses to employ generalizations, prejudices, and heuristics over critical thought and tailored analysis that answers questions about human action and individual incentives.
Contrarily, Austrian economics “can be expressed in terms of microeconomic foundations,” as Steven Horwitz stated in his book “Microfoundations And Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective.” From a rational perspective, the macro/corporate entity is made up of the micro/individual, not the opposite. Therefore, if the capability is available, the individual must be the basis of economic study.
Education has missed out on true prosperity similar to the corporate-focused Keynesian economic world. This has resulted in individual students being left behind for the sake of "taking the easy road." Even The Committee of Ten claimed that better academic success would follow the simplification of teacher training through the unification of content taught. To these academic central planners, it was more important to get a task completed than to get a task right!
Where does this track of thought lead us? To accept information propagated by authority because of the existence of the office rather than the rationale resonating from the office. In other words, “Do not question what you are told.” What is science? Prior to 1900, a sovereign creator was considered a legitimate origin theory. In the 20th century, the uncontested centralized perspective states that man evolved from fish. Instead of encouraging the understanding of both positions and enabling Socratic learning for students to choose (and maybe change their mind over time with more information), educators of the “free world” oppress one view and promote another. As long as there is a centralized mandate for education, it will always be a form of social programming.
While science may be an acceptable compromise to those that wish to erase the concept of God, the same forced narrative takes place with the dissemination of history to students. Did President Abraham Lincoln really care about the evils of slavery or did he want to preserve the union’s tax revenue golden goose in the south? Was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt a courageous hero of freedom or did he bait the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor to sway the public and Congress to favor a lucrative total war in Europe? Is Black Lives Matter a destructive Marxist group preying on social strife in America or are they the new banner carriers for civil rights like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X before them?
History and science in a fiat world is written by the victors. The education of our youth is directly impacted by this coercive, centralized approach.
While the argument over “whose science” and “which history” could be debated endlessly, the subject matters of English, science, history and mathematics have been the core of primary and secondary education since the Committee of Ten report over 125 years ago. All the while, as finance and economics are immensely more important now than before, students are still learning about flowers in biology until ninth grade. We are in a world where five-year-olds navigate touchscreen operating systems, but software design is rarely available as an elective for highschoolers. One could place the blame on a slothful industry lacking initiative or funding to progress. But if this system is truly another pillar of the fiat ponzi scheme, then the limited, outdated, and redundant education is by design to inhibit broad scholastic progress. Therefore, to protect a skewed system where the powerful few understand and monopolize control over money, it would be counter-intuitive to educate the masses about how their natural rights are continually infringed.
Natural rights? Where in school do we discuss if we have natural property rights to our body and our labor? Is that up for a debate? Or is that part of the education that in order to justify government encroachment of property, people must never think they truly own anything, including themselves? We are left with an education system where the student, without intervention of a parent, church, or their own pursuits, will be subject to learn twisted history, skewed science, unapplied mathematics, and centralized literature. Additionally, students remain unaware of the natural laws of existence as a human and receive zero instruction on navigating the economic landscape of this world. Academics, as it is today, is antithetical to the concept of liberty. Its proponents must fervently defend the wasted time of students and money of taxpayers so as to protect the most efficient avenue for propagating control over the next generation: abject nascence. But all is not lost. As you may have heard before, Bitcoin fixes this.
It Is Sometime In The Early 2040s …
In this future there is hope. In this future, humanity prospers. Fiat money has capitulated to Bitcoin, the decentralized monetary network, and has consumed nearly all value of many countries’ fiat wealth. Through years of violently volatile trading with world governments being public buyers, bitcoin surged through bull and bear markets whose end was only marked by the 2033 Bitcoin International Treaty (B.I.T.) to dismantle central banks across the world for the sake of a new Bitcoin monetary standard, 100 years after Executive Order 6102 that forbade the individual ownership of gold by U.S. citizens for a period of time. Nearly all governments in North America, Europe, South America, South Asia, Middle East, Africa, would adopt bitcoin-backed regional digital tokens (dollar, euro, peso, rupee, dinar, franc). These currencies had levels of government oversight and insurance that was more palatable to a segment of the population.
Some countries in Oceania and Asia remain obstinate to a hard money supply, like China and Australia. They did not participate in B.I.T. and outlawed owning any alternate currency or token, especially bitcoin. Instead they chose the path of surveilled and coercive CBDCs as they continued to slowly steal the wealth from their constituents. CBDC implementation was made easier upon outlawing emmigration a few years before as citizens of some countries became essentially prisoners.
Because the Bitcoin world virtually ceased inflation, the exchange rate of 1BTC became 25 million North American dollars. As the age of central banks came to a close, governments also began divesting other areas of society on which they had previously dominated. The world quickly discovered the limitations of government reach when sound money is the root of all human action.
Forced Adaptation
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many to make drastic, unprepared changes in their educational life. Parents were not ready to police their children for at-home learning. Students lost fear of discipline for absent-mindedness and effortlessness. Teachers began to mail-in their effort behind video conferencing and irregular meetings. They were also forced to make due with curriculum and tools not designed for distance learning.
As society moved past the pandemic, something interesting, yet familiar happened: humanity found opportunity in apparent barriers. Schools began to leverage premade online courses as aids to in-person education. High-achieving students showed similar concept retention as with live teaching. The more automated lessons were implemented, the more teachers were able to act as supplemental tutors focused on lagging students. The problem with many traditionally “poor” students was found to be a lack of attention from teachers. This was an impossible issue to solve with overcrowding classrooms. The relationships teachers made with these students became a difference-maker for overall classroom success when implementing this simple technology supplement.
The teaching profession was going through a redefinition, not an extinction. Construction workers were not made non-existent because of cranes and bulldozers. Accountants did not disappear because of tax software. These individuals were rather empowered to achieve more with technology at their disposal. Teachers at this time in history similarly were able to inspire excellence from their students because they had more time to actually teach and less time needed for lesson planning and regurgitating concepts taught millions of times before. Not surprisingly, students greatly benefitted across the spectrum raising performance in various metrics like standardized tests and qualitative feedback about their learning environment.
These successes were not without challenges. In this Bitcoin future, endless government spending was simply not an option without overt, public debasement of the regional currency. Taxation without inflation was not enough to maintain many state-operated institutions. The traditional academic infrastructure suffered despite measurable student success. Many teachers quit the industry. The ones that did not experienced furloughs and layoffs, but as learning modules were refined, the teachers left behind were able to administer more students at nearly all grade levels and the academic progress maintained despite a rapidly rising student-to-teacher ratio.
Lightning: A Decentralized Information Network
As the Bitcoin Lightning Network matured, decentralized video services grew in usage as uncensored alternatives to YouTube grew in demand. There people could create content and earn in multiple ways, such as streaming satoshis per minute, charging a lump sum per video, periodic subscriptions, tipping and more. The streaming service "NakaVision," in particular, attracted educational content because of the “live party mode” that enabled the publisher or a proxy to interact with viewers during scheduled sessions. These premium options enabled administrators in the virtual room to play the role of teacher assistants that provide live help to prerecorded courses that air at specific times. This was not always necessary, but came in handy for math, science, and social studies classes where live problem-solving and discussion was a part of the learning process.
NakaVision established a standard for course length that publishers could follow. This suggested standard was one major step toward enabling their courses to compete with traditional academic course credit. The service was leveraged for on-the-job training, compliance training, and academic curriculum.
*Given a recommended five hour per day lecture workload
It soon became the one-stop shop in the Bitcoin world for all virtual learning. However, because of the decentralized nature of the network, every user enters a unique agreement with each content provider as they are sovereign over their own node. There is no centralized effort by a platform to promote, propagate, censor, or cancel content. This was something that older centralized services pretended to provide, but never did.
NakaVision also featured a machine learning protocol that captured questions asked about the published content. Early after a publication, the creator may have some work cut out for them to address questions from their audience. After a piece has been published for a significant time however, question-and-answer periods could be nearly autonomous as old questions that come back around would be addressed by the system. This technology dramatically reduced the required man hours to maintain a dynamic learning environment. Newly-published work could even import Q/A databases (if allowed) from similar courses so as to reduce the need for future content to start from scratch. Technology, again, was driving the cost of knowledge acquisition to zero.
The Free Market Of Knowledge
Outreach through education became a new social marketing frontier for this decade. Not education about products for sale, but about industry-applied processes and knowledge. This seemed to matter more in the Bitcoin world than the values-based social marketing of the early 21st century. Back then, microeconomic decisions were primarily based on how much a company pandered to an individual’s morals. The economy became a political game of poker to see who could spend more resources not focused on productivity.
In this Bitcoin world, companies set themselves apart by how much they contribute to the knowledge of the future generations. All of this was done with little effort because they simply taught what they did. Marketing firms creating marketing education content. Aircraft producers taught aeronautical engineering and physics. Some companies with larger marketing and outreach budgets created entire academic branches to manage and distribute content that would equate to hundreds of hours of educational content for the edification of society and the advancement of an industry.
The topics of lecture were as vast as the internet. Where the Committee of Ten determined that “every subject which is taught at all in a secondary school should be taught in the same way,” this could not be further from the truth in the Bitcoin world. Never before have so many perspectives of history been readily available to students. Students, given the choice, actually desired more challenging modules that were relevant in the real world. Secondary students had an appetite for the design of the Tesla robot, 3D printing from Nano Dimension, multiple philosophy courses, and Austrian economics that inspired the Bitcoin network they grew up in. Alternative methods of learning like Socratic teaching were often implemented which guided students to ask the right questions rather than telling them the right answer.
The subjects that attracted the least interest were basic math, unapplied science, and traditional history which took up most of students' time in the 20th century. These courses were seen as distractions and one of many causes for the Great Inflation Theft from 1971 to 2031 that kept generations of students unaware of the fiscal policies that hurt so many people.
Testing centers have always been a part of society for professionals to acquire certifications for program management, architecture, engineering, medicine, and law. These centers exponentially grew in popularity as a form of integrity control for countless virtual education modules online. Because these centers charged both tester and testee, there was a cost benefit for both sides to optimize the number of graded exams. While too few may not be able to test enough key factors to the course, too many tests would result in undesirable fees to the testing centers. In this free market of education, the better-quality instructions were often given a longer leash to test students more frequently, but if a competing course offered a similar quality lesson and required fewer sessions at the testing centers, a change in market share could occur as students look to maximize their value. At the same time, a course that tested students too little could result in graduates that do not prove concept retention in future courses or jobs. This would result in poor marks for the course from the industry at large.
While there were corporate sources for education, there were also comparable grassroot modules as well. These groups did not represent any significant business, but out of the passion for a topic, propagated knowledge for the masses to use for their own benefit. While some were free, most used a recurring fee system so a student was incentivized to complete a course efficiently and without unnecessary delay. Because of the ability for nearly anyone to access these courses, there was no need to charge exorbitant amounts of satoshis or regional currencies. Technology was driving the cost of knowledge acquisition to zero.
Gradually, Then Suddenly
A large city in Colorado made a decision that shocked the country: they set in motion to abolish their municipal school district over the course of five years. In the place of dozens of education department administrators and educators was left a charter, some student counselors, and a few clerks to aid in transition. Their rationale was that all the infrastructure for students of traditional K-12 grade to learn was publicly available for less money than tax revenue to operate the legacy school system. They felt the legacy system was actually infringing on their maximum learning potential and maximizing the use of NakaVision would result in a diverse and inclusive academic experience allowing students to enjoy the pursuit of knowledge customized to their person rather than a one-size-fits-all plan. The city created a simple charter for all stakeholders.
Students shall maintain 25 hours per week of academic lecture upon the NakaVision network.
Students shall leverage open-source curriculum programs of their choosing from NakaVision with signed parental consent.
Students shall leverage privately-owned testing centers as necessary for course completion exams.
Counselors shall assist students as requested in selecting modules.
Student athletes and performers are free to participate in the Amatuer Athletic Union and other private amateur programs alongside their normal course load.
Students athletes and performers are free to participate in major or minor professional organizations or entertainment with a tailored version of their curriculum not to subceed 10 hours per week.
It was a drastic change from the bureaucratic and archaic mess schools were in before. But because of NakaVision and technology growth in general, it became more apparent of the abject waste that students were forced to endure simply because that is the way it always was. If Bitcoin changed the monetary standard, then it was only logical that other institutions were to be at least audited.
A year later, a small city in Pennsylvania decided to try the same thing. A few months later, Las Vegas jumped on the bandwagon. The next year, the entire state of Texas pledged to abolish all school districts within 18 months. Academia was being flipped on its head, but students were not the only beneficiaries.
Teachers Wanted
Public school teachers were at a crossroads. While some moved to other towns and continued their life as normal, others saw the writing on the wall and realized the profession as they knew it was changing forever; there was no running from this revolution. As much as technology made traditional university and secondary school virtually obsolete, there was still a significant role for child education specialists in the Bitcoin world. With some exceptions, there was a very real need for specialists to educate ages five to 10 (K-4 grade) for localized in-person learning. Private institutions grew in number and provided a service for parents, as necessary. While there was still use for NakaVision education modules for the youth, much of the teaching at these formative levels was delegated to live instructors.
Because this became such a unique gap in the NakaVision, primary-level educators became much more desirable in the free market. A second-grade teacher in the old system was restricted by the price disruption of the government system to make true free market earnings. However, those primary educators filling such a critical need in the new decentralized world earn two or three times more value compensation for a similar career in the old fiat world. This not only increased the competition, but the quality of professionals. Much like a coveted position on a sports team, they worked diligently to earn and keep their job.
A World Without “Mean Girls?”
While the teachers were needed still in the lower legacy grades, education was near-autonomous in the more mature courses. Without a center needed for students to congregate for learning, students had no mandate to congregate socially. The very fabric of how generations of teenagers defined their childhood was abolished. The unrealistic, ephemeral social hierarchy of middle school and high school did no one favors growing up. The social roles in the legacy academic social system generally encouraged elitism and popularity based on athletic prowess, threat of physical violence and lawlessness (underage drinking and drugs). Because there is no free market in the schools, the most valuable social currency was always the “shock” factor. How far can he throw a football? How many nerds will that bully beat up? How wild of a party can they throw before the police break it up? When the centralized school was abolished, students not only congregated amongst groups that shared their ideals, for they already did that, but they were now in virtually no contact with the other groups that formed the artificial social structure. Athletes socialized with one another, but were no longer school heroes because there was no school. The school bully had no victims to cross paths on a normal basis. The pretty girl’s popularity, while she surely would still receive her fair share of attention, was drastically reduced without the test-tube universe that was high school.
Students in this Bitcoin world leveraged their newfound sovereignty over their time to revolutionize their social life. While peer pressure never fully went away, the traditional high school forced interactions within social groups that generally would never take place in the adult world ceased. These situations often led to feelings of violence and abuse for the losers and a false sense of value for the winners in the social construct. Rather than creating a more disaggregated society, students instead interacted with those outside their social group with more humility and respect. This has inspired some people to a call for society to move on from democracy, which always devolved into objective mob-rule, and to a form of rules of government that respects all participant’s property and being. I want to live in this world!
The University: The Temple Is Destroyed
“The University” has been the symbol of many facets of human progress for centuries. Libraries to store knowledge, laboratories to expand science, great halls to share ideas, and alumni networks to extend its reach into civilization and industry. To some it is a romantic representation of human achievement. To others, it is a thick pillar of the fiat world that is a gatekeeper to information and power.
Universities for years were losing their value proposition as many people in the 2010s began to question the benefit of a degree which cost three or ten times more than prior years. The rapid growth of the internet combined with the productive deflation of bitcoin created exposed the university system as simply too archaic and sluggish to provide real benefit to the people of the 2030s and beyond. The growth of technology and their relevant expertises were seldom able to be taught effectively because those experts were needed too much in the productive market. Education for cutting-edge topics like augmented or virtual reality, robotics, or nanotechnology was rarely found in the halls of the university.
With the lack of relevance of the most contemporary areas of human progress as a value offering, institutes of higher learning began to divest their catalog. World-renowned schools like those in the Ivy League began to draw straws amongst one another, narrowing their scope to specific fields. Harvard focused on medicine, University of Pennsylvania focused on business, Princeton narrowed to mathematics. State colleges and private universities followed suit narrowing their discipline to law, medicine, engineering, or philosophy. The divestiture increased the quality of the education experience, as removing cost-burdened departments decreased the cost of attendance which made traditional schools more affordable. This was enough for colleges to remain an option for those teenagers that desired to leave the nest to study. Nevertheless, digital learning was an industry-killer and reduced college enrollment by 85%. The world of academia had its bubble popped by the Bitcoin standard. Even though traditional education was more affordable now than it had been in over 40 years since the 2000s, most students chose not to pursue that route.
The Learning Game
The Bitcoin world in the 2040s was a renaissance of learning. People wanted knowledge because it was increasingly more affordable, increasingly uncensored, and accessible. The knowledge from the decentralized platform, NakaVision, was high quality but it was not the same as a college degree. There was no mandated course track. There was no lambskin at the end of the journey.
The NakaVision community developed another standard that would help students organize their learning goals in a way that would be value-added for them and for job offerers that could more accurately assess relevant knowledge acquired. Modules were assigned experience points or “XP” for the focused discipline or function that was taught. Additionally, each module was allowed up to 10% bonus XP based on other supporting subjects involved. Experience points like in a role-playing game brought a bit of gamification to learning and encouraged the pursuit of knowledge beyond the confines of traditional learning years.
A student could take a physics “double” that features a 10 XP bonus credit on math. A philosophy “course” could heavily reference historical context and feature a 5 XP credit in history.
Students in this network would work toward achieving degrees of mastery. Different from the university system, there is no bias for academic milestones upon a university name at the top. NakaVision put forth a metric system for learning milestones as a way to bridge the gap during this period of parallel systems:
In a parallel system of tracking and assessing knowledge and competency, the mastery system had the advantage of identifying gates or milestones, but was not an all-or-nothing system like traditional college. Your NakaVision learning profile could say “1500 XP in Mathematics and 1000 XP in Computer Science.” This is much more granular and personal information than “Bachelor of Science in Computer Science” based on the work you as an individual student accomplished.
This system did not tax the students' time through general education under the disguise of a benevolent mandate. If a student wanted to be a nurse and a job required a first-degree nursing mastery, they did not need to waste their time through philosophy, trigonometry, or creative writing. The courses for nursing would essentially be self-contained where once completed you were indeed qualified as you could be without on-the-job training.
Traditionally advanced degrees like law and medicine would even still be first-degree if that is the value of relative training. However, a first-degree of medicine may have already received a first or second degree in biology or general science.
The education system of the past became a gatekeeper for who was allowed to learn and consequently who was allowed to pursue careers. NakaVision became a byproduct of the Bitcoin monetary standard balancing the playing field of education through the use of technology and decentralization.
Getting There From Here
Jumping back to the present day, it is easy to see this education system built upon the tools and mediums we have now.
Homeschooling is a concept that has pushed the limits of innovation and creativity. Pre-recorded VHS tapes were used for teaching in the 80s and 90s. I spent most of elementary school in a 90s virtual setting with Abeka Academy who is still innovating their process decades later. My mother took it a step further with my siblings by using more than one home education service. One she chose for math and science while another was better at language and social studies. When is optionality not a good thing? Anything that monopolizes your time or effort is a form of slavery or bondage. Some students may indeed benefit from a traditional classroom, yet that does not mean all should be compelled to partake in the same practice.
The Saylor Academy and the Khan Academy are both non-profit education organizations whose goals are to bring education to the world free of charge. Leveraging technology today, this is possible with donors. This medium is not a fad. It will continue to improve alongside technology and entrepreneurship. AR and VR are not off limits as an enhancement to educational experiences in the future as well.
This is not doomsday for teachers. To the contrary, teachers will be more celebrated than ever before as technology and the free market will bring the best teachers to a wider scope of appreciation where they can impact more with their ability to convey knowledge. Additionally, their time will be freed up to develop relationships with students they could never have in the past, bringing teaching back to the mentorship and apprenticeship of the times of Aristotle and Socrates.
Bitcoin will not only refine the way we transact, but the way we educate, and learn.
Credit to Heidi Porter and Mark Maraia for peer review. Credit to @bitillustrated for the awesome cover art.
Have you signed #DOMI yet? Check out declarationofmonetaryindependence.org and lend your support for a document that unifies us against the incumbent system.
This is a guest post by Ulric Pattillo. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
The zero-knowledge-based platform is expected to be fully operational in Q3 of 2022.
Layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution, Polygon (MATIC) has announced the establishment of Polygon ID, an identity platform designed to complement the decentralized finance and decentralized application (DApp) economies by providing users greater privacy and sovereignty within Web3.
Professed to be the first identity platform of its kind to adopt cryptographic-based zero-knowledge technology, the platform will utilize Iden3’s Circom ZK toolkit, including zk-SNARK cryptography for the generation and the zk-Proof Request Language protocol to verify the authenticity of the proposed claim.
Users of the platform can provide proof of their identity when engaging in activities such as initial coin offerings, token airdrops, decentralized exchange (DEX) trading, or those in which strict Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements apply.
With the capacity to introduce a Sybil-resistant one-vote-per-person mechanism, the use-cases can also expand beyond the DeFi sector, to the metaverse, gamify and nonfungible token (NFT) industries whereby asset authenticity is verified via on-chain, privatized claims.
The team is expecting to deploy the public version of the ID wallet app during Q2 of 2022, alongside features such as “Claims Issuance, Private Authentication, zk-Proof Generation and Verification,” with the full platform release and accompanying SDK functionalities scheduled for the following quarter.
In November 2021, Polygon made a concerted effort to expand its zero-knowledge proof development by pledging over $1 billion towards the technology, a sum that included 250 million MATIC tokens for startup firm Mir.
On a video call with Cointelegraph, Rafal Nazarkiewicz, the product manager at Polygon Hermez and Polygon ID, shared exclusive insights into the technicalities and purported benefits of the technology for blockchain advocates and consumers, alike.
Speaking on the importance of identity ownership within the Web3 space, Nazarkiewicz argued that "identity is fundamental for many use-cases within digital inclusion, and for the right to be recognized," and that "in Web3, it's supposed to be private by default and decentralized," before affirming that none of the content of the claims, for example, their personal information, will be transacted or stored on-chain, only the proof of validity.
The use-cases of identification systems are not wholly limited to on-chain activities, but can also be utilized in the interaction of traditional contract agreements, aNazarkiewicz reveals, such as "legal ownership for the propose of transfer of tokenized assets such as securities, intellectual property and land titles."
Keep personal details, personal.
Introducing Polygon ID - a self-sovereign identity solution powered by zk cryptography.
The last 25 years have seen venture capital funds dominate the financial scene — but Bitcoin could change the game.
VCs have great reputations.
They are thoughtful visionaries that bring disruptive technologies to the masses through their capital. They are wise oracles that guide inexperienced startups to glory. They are hyper-competent winners that bring immeasurable value to their investors.
This couldn’t be further from reality.
VCs act like entitled aristocrats. They expect you to kiss their rings, defer to them, and treat them as demigods of business. What’s worse, they believe their own hype.
The first venture capitalist I ever met was Bob. I was 23, working at a startup founded by my high school friend. We were sitting around his disorganized kitchen table in a cruddy apartment-slash-office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bob wore an expensive, custom-tailored, yellow suit, shiny alligator boots, and an honest-to-goodness man purse. His presence made as much sense as Vitalik Buterin at a bodybuilding competition.
Bob was a VC legend, and we wanted him to invest in our Series A. We sat there as he told us how he used to be a hippie, but discovered his true talent: investing. We politely listened as he told us stories of the companies he helped. We leaned in as he told us our strategy and widened our eyes as he told us about the music album he was working on. We made up for our modest circumstances with our attention — like girls feigning interest in a rich guy’s humblebrags.
We desperately wanted to impress him. We wanted him to see us as a world-class investment, a jewel for his portfolio. He was the owner of a trendy nightclub and we put on our hoochie dresses to get in. We wanted access to his money, his network, his world.
The Party
This was the late 90s and the dotcom boom was in full swing. Meetings like this were common because VCs were pouring money into startups like a drunk guy buying beanie babies.
We were a hot company, not because we had a lot of sales, but because we had the right story.
My high school friend and founder of the company had graduated from Harvard. Of the eight employees, six had graduated from Harvard and one from Yale. I graduated from Michigan, making me the less attractive one that gets past the velvet rope because of the group I’m with.
A month after that awkward meeting in the kitchen, we closed our A round with investments from top-tier VCs, including Bob.
Access Game
VCs are monetary aristocrats. As ruthless and greedy as the banker in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” yet they dodge criticism because they own the bank. Founders need their money. Journalists need their stories. Politicians need their lobbying. Rich people, the guys buying bottle service, need access to startups. They enjoy a good reputation and everyone is afraid that their access will get cut off.
They’re also blissfully unaware of their narcissism. They really think that throwing around some money at Burning Man makes them artists. They think that doing DMT and Ayahuasca makes them spiritual. They think having read Friedrich Nietzche once makes them philosophers. Everyone humors them because no one wants to piss them off.
Messing with monetary aristocrats is like puking in the VIP section. VCs talk to each other. You could easily be blackballed — they know the vomit smell will reduce demand for bottle service. Monetary aristocrats are the gatekeepers not just of money but of reputation. That’s why it’s so rare to hear any criticism of VCs. Their power comes from being in between the rich people and the startups.
Our startup got into their club but it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. We worked 80-hour weeks, did too many speculative deals and went in way too many directions. The company was unhealthy spending too much money for too little revenue while hiring too many people. We were being treated like all their portfolio companies, like pigs that needed to be fattened up before going to market. VCs don’t care if some pigs die since the obscene profits from the ones that survive more than make up for the ones that don’t.
The VCs’ greed is coming back to bite them. Jack Dorsey called them out on their scamming of retail investors. They were always using the public markets to exit, but now they’re scamming retail investors with altcoins, ICOs, IEOs, DeFi, NFTs and Web3. These aren’t businesses and tokens aren’t equity. They’re not even selling pork to the general public anymore, but some sort of industrial sludge masquerading as pork.
VC firms have had an amazing 25 years. The returns on many of their funds have been obscene and they’ve gotten used to the lifestyle. Venture capital, for many college graduates, is the new investment banking: a place to make a lot of money, doing less work. The problem is, monetary aristocrats have been the nightclub owners for so long that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to continue getting their returns. Who cares if the public gets screwed?
An Alternative System
Monetary aristocrats exist because of fiat money. New money is created all the time and that money has to go somewhere. Much of it finds its way to wealthy people, who now need to deploy that money. After all, they don’t want to keep it in cash since there will be even more money created shortly. The wealthy people deploy that money through investments, much of it going to VC funds. They have to go to the nightclubs if they want access.
The monetary aristocrats determine the winners and losers with their money. They outspend, rather than outcompete to win. This is as unsustainable as an aging supermodel’s plastic surgery.
As fiat money loses its power, so will the monetary aristocrats. Bitcoin is the decentralized alternative that will turn the lights on in the club. We’ll soon find out that there’s a lot of ugly drunk companies embarrassing themselves. We’re seeing it already. You paid how much for a database pointer to a drooling chimp jpeg?
“♪…Closing Time, you don’t have to go home…♪”
Instead of going through the monetary aristocrats, startups can bootstrap with bitcoin and go to market directly. Why go to a dark nightclub where everything costs too much, when you can meet people on a normal date? Their competitors powered by VC money will get diminishing returns on their money as bitcoin price rises.
No more of this weird debauchery and fakeness of nightclubs. No more narcissistic monetary aristocrats.
I can’t wait for the lights to come on.
This is a guest post by Jimmy Song. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
BTC and altcoins could enter a short consolidation phase before retesting their breakout levels, a sign that the current price action could be a buying opportunity.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally is taking a breather near the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) and that has resulted in what is either a minor pullback or consolidation in BTC and select altcoins.
In the last few days, Terraform Labs has been on a Bitcoin buying spree. The wallet address speculated to be that of Terra, has received $139 million worth of Bitcoin on March 30, taking its total to about $1.5 billion in BTC.
With Terra breathing down its neck, MicroStrategy seems to have taken up the challenge. The business intelligence firm’s subsidiary MacroStrategy has secured a $205 million loan from Silvergate, which will be used to purchase Bitcoin, cover general corporate expenses and pay the necessary fees and interest on the loan.
The buying interest is not limited to the two companies. CoinShares data showed that institutional investors pumped in $193 million into digital asset investment products last week, the largest inflow since early December 2021.
With institutional investors buying in large quantities, could Bitcoin and the major altcoins break above their overhead resistance levels? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.
BTC/USDT
Bitcoin rose to the 200-day SMA ($48,288) on March 28 but the bulls could not push the price above it. The buyers again tried to clear the overhead hurdle on March 29 but failed.
BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The bears will now try to pull the price to the immediate support at $45,400. If the price rebounds off this support, the bulls will again attempt to thrust the BTC/USDT pair above the 200-day SMA. If they succeed, the pair could start its journey to $52,000.
The rising 20-day exponential moving average ($43,531) and the relative strength index (RSI) near the overbought zone indicate that bulls are in control.
This positive view will invalidate if the price turns down and plummets below the 20-day EMA. If that happens, the pair could extend its stay inside the ascending channel for a few more days.
ETH/USDT
Ether (ETH) broke and closed above the overhead resistance at $3,411 on March 29 but the bulls could not clear the obstacle at the 200-day SMA ($3,488). This indicates that bears have not yet given up and are attempting to stall the recovery at the 200-day SMA.
ETH/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
If the price sustains below $3,411, the bears will try to pull the ETH/USDT pair to the 20-day EMA ($3,042). A strong rebound off this level will suggest that the sentiment has turned positive and traders are buying on dips.
The bulls will then again try to propel the price above the 200-day SMA. If they succeed, the pair could rally toward $4,000.
Contrary to this assumption, if the price breaks below the 20-day EMA, it will suggest that the traders may be rushing to the exit. That could pull the pair down to the 50-day SMA ($2,853).
BNB/USDT
Binance Coin’s (BNB) tight range trading between $425 and $445 has resolved to the upside, indicating that bulls have absorbed the supply and are trying to gain the upper hand.
BNB/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The upsloping 20-day EMA ($409) and the RSI in the overbought territory indicate that bulls are in control. If they sustain the price above $445, the BNB/USDT pair could rise to the 200-day SMA ($467) and later to $500.
Conversely, if the price turns down and breaks below $425, the pair could drop to the 20-day EMA. This is an important level to keep an eye on because a break and close below it will suggest that the bullish momentum has weakened. The pair could then oscillate between $350 and $445 for a few more days.
XRP/USDT
Ripple (XRP) broke above the overhead resistance at $0.91 on March 28 but the bears did not allow the price to sustain the higher levels. This indicates that the bears are aggressively defending the zone between $0.91 and $1.
XRP/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The bulls are attempting to sustain the price above $0.86. If they succeed, the XRP/USDT pair could again rise to $0.91. A break and close above this level could open the doors for a possible rally to the psychological level at $1.
Conversely, if the price sustains below $0.86, the bears will attempt to pull the pair below the moving averages. If they manage to do that, it will suggest that the bullish momentum has weakened. The pair could then drop to $0.70.
ADA/USDT
Cardano (ADA) is facing resistance at $1.26 as seen from the long wick on the candlestick on March 28 and 29. A minor positive is that the bulls have not given up much ground.
ADA/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The upsloping 20-day EMA ($1) and the RSI in the overbought territory indicate that the path of least resistance is to the upside. If buyers propel and sustain the price above $1.26, the ADA/USDT pair could rise to the 200-day SMA ($1.51) and thereafter rally to $1.60.
Alternatively, if the price turns down from the current level and breaks below $1.15, the bears will try to pull the pair to the 20-day EMA. This is an important level to watch out for because a break and close below it could sink the pair to $0.74.
LUNA/USDT
Terra’s LUNA token broke and closed above the overhead resistance at $96 on March 28. Although the long wick on the day’s candlestick showed selling near $100, the bulls did not allow the price to break back below $96.
LUNA/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The buying resumed on March 29 and the bulls thrust the price above the all-time high at $105. If bulls sustain the price above $105, the buying momentum could pick up and the LUNA/USDT pair may rally to $115 and later to $125.
A minor negative is that the RSI is showing signs of forming a negative divergence. If the price breaks and sustains below $105, the pair could drop to $96. This is an important support for the bulls to defend because a break and close below it could aggravate selling. The pair could then drop to the 50-day SMA ($78).
SOL/USDT
After sustaining above $106 for the past two days, Solana (SOL) has risen above the overhead resistance at $122, indicating strong buying by the bulls.
SOL/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
If buyers sustain the price above $122, the SOL/USDT pair could start a new uptrend, which could reach the 200-day SMA ($150). This level is likely to act as a stiff resistance but if bulls overcome it, the rally could reach $180.
Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns down from the current level and breaks below $106, it will suggest that the break above $122 may have been a bull trap. The pair could then drop to the moving averages and remain stuck between $81 and $122 for a few more days.
The long wick on the candlestick of the past two days shows that bears are defending the level at $98. However, a minor positive is that the bulls have not allowed Avalanche (AVAX) to drop to the 20-day EMA ($85). This suggests that the traders are in no hurry to exit their positions.
AVAX/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The rising 20-day EMA and the RSI in the positive territory indicate that bulls are in control. If buyers thrust the price above the $98 to $100 resistance zone, the AVAX/USDT pair could pick up momentum and rally to $120.
This positive view will invalidate in the short term if bears sink and sustain the price below the 50-day SMA ($81). Such a move will suggest that the pair could extend its stay inside the $65 to $98 range for a few more days.
DOT/USDT
Polkadot (DOT) has been facing stiff resistance at $23 for the past three days but a positive sign is that the bulls have not ceded ground to the bears. This suggests that the bulls expect a break above the overhead resistance.
DOT/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The 20-day EMA ($20) is sloping up and the RSI is in the positive zone, indicating that the path of least resistance is to the upside. If bulls drive and sustain the price above $23, the DOT/USDT pair could pick up momentum and rally to the 200-day SMA ($29).
Contrary to this assumption, if the price turns down from the current level and breaks below the 20-day EMA, it will suggest that the bullish momentum may have weakened. That could keep the pair range-bound between $16 and $23 for the next few days.
DOGE/USDT
Dogecoin (DOGE) rose above $0.15 on March 28 but the long wick on the day’s candlestick suggests that bears are selling at higher levels.
DOGE/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView
The moving averages have completed a bullish crossover and the RSI is in the positive territory, indicating that bulls have the upper hand. If the price turns up from the current level and breaks above $0.15, the DOGE/USDT pair could rally to the overhead resistance at $0.17 where the bears may again mount a strong defense.
Contrary to this assumption, if the price continues lower and breaks below the moving averages, it will suggest that the pair may spend some more time inside the range between $0.17 and $0.10.
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.
In collaboration with Swan Bitcoin and Spade Payment Solutions, OctaPharma is testing a pilot of 32 locations that allows donors to be paid in bitcoin.
OctaPharma launches a 32 location pilot that pays bitcoin for plasma donations.
Swan Bitcoin collaborated with Spade Payment Solutions in order to create a smooth user experience that simply requires an email to be paid in bitcoin for donations.
The pilot is on a limited-trial and participation is crucial to the continuation of the program, enabling bitcoiners to alleviate the falling plasma donation rates being experienced worldwide.
OctaPharma Plasma, a U.S based pharmaceutical company that collects plasma for life-saving medications, has partnered with Swan Bitcoin and Spade Payment Solutions to allow individuals to get paid in bitcoin for donating plasma. The partnership allows plasma donors to receive $100 of bitcoin for their donations up to twice a week in a pilot launch across 32 locations, per a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.
“This is a way to consistently stack sats. If a person donates twice a week they can legitimately stack $10,000 worth of sats in a year,” said Court Harrington of Spade Payment Solutions.
Donors need only create a Swan Bitcoin account, or provide the email associated with their already existing account to the representative at OctaPharma. This allows the representative on location to select bitcoin as the default payment method going forward. OctaPharma uses this information to create a profile in which the email is stored on file, allowing donors to simply present their name or email address upon return.
Rare, chronic and hereditary diseases are treated through plasma donations, and immunodeficient patients rely on regular treatments of plasma while the supply has steadily declined over the years.
Peter Jaworski, a researcher and associate teaching professor from Georgetown University explained that “The cause-in-fact is a decline in plasma donations of 20-25% in the United States as a result of the pandemic.”
This issue becomes exacerbated when one realizes the magnitude of which American donations affect the total supply, as Jaworski continued to explain. “The U.S. provides 65-70% of the source plasma used to make plasma therapies like immunoglobulin for the whole world.”
Bitcoiners have a unique opportunity to showcase why pharmaceutical companies should integrate bitcoin as a payment method for donation services while serving a greater community at large. Not only can initiatives like this change the lives of many people that find themselves in need, but donors can simultaneously showcase the demand of bitcoin while filling personal coffers.
“The support of the Bitcoin community is vital to show businesses that engaging with Bitcoin is a smart business decision,” Harrington says in the release. “If projects like this take off and show results other businesses won’t be far behind in implementing all sorts of Bitcoin related offerings and promotions.”
Spade Payment Solutions focuses on integrating bitcoin with donation based businesses while Swan Bitcoin enables its users to get paid in bitcoin purchase bitcoin with ease. OctaPharma hopes to list the locations of the pilot on their website in the near-future, but a simple phone call to a local facility will let you know if the location is participating in the pilot.
The service would allow users to bridge assets from any blockchain to BNB Chain.
On Tuesday, centralized cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced the rollout of Binance Bridge 2.0. The feature enables users to bridge assets from any blockchain, including tokens not listed on the Binance app, to the BNB Chain. Bridged tokens listed on Binance will be stored in the Funding or Spot Wallet, while unlisted bridged tokens will be transferred to the Funding Wallet only.
Users can bridge-in or bridge-out tokens between their native blockchains and BNB Chain via regular deposit and withdrawal functions. In the future, Binance also plans to create a better version of its mobile app to allow users to facilitate such conversion via a single click. Regarding the development, Mayur Kamat, head of product at Binance, said:
"With Binance Bridge 2.0, we can make decentralized finance accessible to a larger audience worldwide while still providing the seamless user experience that centralized finance offers. We are already seeing this via the tremendous adoption of the PancakeSwap Mini-app."
Binance has also implemented a brand new automated token circulation control system in Binance Bridge 2.0. The exchange will not maintain a surplus of pegged tokens, also known as wrapped assets, except for a buffer size in hot wallets. Instead, it will print additional tokens when users withdraw pegged tokens onto the BNB Smart Chain.
The company indicated that all other circulation will be backed by the native tokens deposited by the users from the original blockchains. When users want to switch from the pegged tokens back to the original tokens, they can deposit the pegged tokens into Binance and withdraw the original tokens. Simultaneously, the excessive tokens will be swept to the cold wallet and burnt automatically.
