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itscryptovision-blog · 7 years ago

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Blockchain and Mining

Welcome to this week’s cryptocurrency blog. Last week we slightly touched on the blockchain and also a little on mining cryptocurrency. These two topics work hand in hand. Blockchain is the larger entity here, whereas mining works with the blockchain to accomplish its task. Without the blockchain, many cryptocurrencies would be inefficient, as they depend on it for their processing of transactions. It is easier to start things off with what the heck is the blockchain and what makes mining crypto so popular today.

Blockchain is a newly defined term that is not going away. Rather, it is growing in definition and use. The term “blockchain” is used to describe a coding technology used for managing, organizing, and securing financial record. Essentially, it is a ledger containing permanent record of irrefutable transactional data in chronological order, readily available for public examination. A blockchain is secured using advanced cryptography techniques, so what happens within a blockchain staying within the blockchain. Blockchain is desired because on it, no entity is able to manipulate the financial record. The way you make use of a blockchain is by using its associated cryptocurrency, and everyone using one’s associated cryptocurrency is held to the same standards as everyone else using it. Blockchain is the only technology in existence in which we have potential for a fair and honest peer-to-peer marketplace. This market is globally accessible and will connect the world.

As mentioned before, a blockchain uses advanced cryptography to keep the transactional record private and immutable. In today’s economy, it is a common event to see value printed out of thin air. This act jeopardizes the value of the currency we use to survive, given that raiding and looting other people’s goods is frowned upon. When asked for an audit to prove organizations actually have the funds claimed, it is often a ��you scratch our back, we scratch yours situation”, and documents are completely falsified. This type of behavior is what enables organizations to manipulate economies around the globe; this same type of behavior is what blockchain technologies eradicates. Every single transaction that occurs on a blockchain is set in digital stone. Using a coding science known as “hashing”, the transaction is scattered across the chain so no entity can go in and manipulate the data. Current computing technologies calculate it would take billions of years to regather sufficient data to manipulate it. To use the blockchain, you must use its digital currency - think bitcoin. Bitcoin has value as long as there are people willing to use it, and that value is derived from scarcity. There are twenty one million bitcoin to be mined and no more will ever be created. If things continue down this ideology, the smallest fractions of a single bitcoin will have more purchasing power than any used currency today. This is great because no controlling organization has power to create more and transactional record is immutable within the blockchain. An audit is as simple as gathering the transactional data from the record, and if you claim that it is something it is not, anyone can check themselves to see what exactly the truth is. How the record is both publicly visible and immutable is courtesy of the coding sciences used. Upon realization of the potential here, more and more people will hop on board the blockchain train.

Blockchain has already been adapted by a couple of companies, which are driving their supply chain. UPS and FedEx, two major shipping giants, use a blockchain for many reasons. Being a shipping company, there are going to be multiple checkpoints for packages to be checked in, switch trucks, put on an overnight plane, etc. These companies would like to know where every single package is between which checkpoint and location as well. Using the blockchain helps these companies drastically being able to stay on top of their packages for their customers. Customers in the shipping industry are very heavily dependent on being able to track their packages at any time of the day. UPS and FedEx customer complaints and issues have gone down since the adaptation of the blockchain. Another company that uses blockchain is Walmart. Walmart employees have the technology at their fingertips to pick up an item and scan it with their phone or device and discover everything about the item. Employees can scan mangoes and figure out which farm the batch of mangoes came from specifically, as well as where they would be stored in the facility. This technology can definitely streamline the restocking process. Blockchain isn’t only being used here, but is being adapted in aviation, finance and banking, automobiles and more. The technology is revolutionary. The companies who have already implemented it into their system know how beneficial it is. Much of the computing and background filing jobs can be put to rest as the blockchain can completely take over. Seems like it only makes sense to make your systems more efficient, and also private. Possibly the best part that the blockchain has to help companies benefit is the way it can store information. It can hold all of a company’s files and keep them safe and secure. Everyone wants their files safe and secure.

The blockchain has different blocks that record each transaction that occur, which helps miners when it comes to figuring out which cryptocurrency they are looking to mine for. Yes, you can mine many different cryptocurrency, not just Bitcoin. Mining is not a simple task though. Miners are to verify the transactions on the blockchain, ensure they aren't false, and keep the infrastructure humming along. In order to successfully create a block, it must be accompanied by a cryptographic hash that fulfills certain requirements. The only feasible way to arrive at a hash matching the correct criteria is to simply calculate as many as possible hashes and wait until you get a matching hash. When the right hash is found, and a new block is formed, the reward for doing so, a miner's fee if you will, is payment in that block's coin. The payment is based on how much their hardware contributed to solving that puzzle. Once the block is solved, coins are distributed fairly to miners who worked on that block. Early on, miners were able to miner many bitcoins in a single day. Now, it is nearly impossible to mine a full Bitcoin in one day.

Although we are not able to mine crypto to the amount we use to due to mass adoption, we are still able to mine hundreds of different cryptocurrencies now. Each crypto is able to be mined differently due to supply of coins and the overall adaptation of consumers that want that specific coin. Generally, the less adapted, the more coins or amount of a crypto one will be able to mine and receive in profit. The more adapted coins, like bitcoin, are mined by millions of people daily. The crypto couldn’t just be handing out its currency left and right otherwise once all mined, it would become unable to mined again and the currency would then have a value based on the holders.

Mining cryptocurrency takes a lot of energy. So much in fact, that mining one full bitcoin takes 343 megawatt. That amount of energy can power up a quarter of a million houses. There was an article posted saying that Iceland has the most cryptocurrency mining in the world going on. The country as a whole runs collectively on about 700 gigawatts per year. This past year, the mining facilities and miners combined as a whole, consumed about 840 gigawatts of power in the country. That amount of energy is absurd! Renewable energy should be the main focus when it come to becoming efficient in the future.

A large majority of miners run their machines 24/7, taking up a large portion of energy. Many miners typically don’t just have one machine either, as they want to max their return on investment potential. These mining rigs are not cheap either, generally running around a couple thousand dollars a rig collectively. At first, most miners use their earnings from their mining rigs to pay for their electricity bill. The amount earned all depends on the token supply and the demand of the crypto itself. The more sought after coin will be worth more and harder to mine because so many people want to mine as well. The amount you earn also depends on the mining rig that you purchase. Like I said, they vary in the thousands of dollars. Doing my research, I’ve seen it is best to get one of the top two mining rigs if you want the best ROI down the road. The cheaper ones are not going to produce as much crypto as one would think they would. Those who buy the cheaper ones sometimes end up paying more for their electric bill that they are earning from their rig. Doing my research, the better ones are the way to go. It would be nice to have a large chunk of change lying around.

#mkt400uwl #cryptocurrency #bitcoin

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itscryptovision-blog · 7 years ago

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ICOs and is crypto legal?

Hello everyone, welcome to this week’s blog post about cryptocurrency. This week you will be entertained with insight on ICOs as well as the legality of cryptocurrency as a whole. Cryptocurrency can be looked at as a speculation. No one can be 100 percent positive about cryptocurrency prices going up or down. That being said, those that do invest in crypto have the opportunity to have great return on investment plus more. Then again, they also have the chance that all of their investments could completely disappear. That ladies and gentlemen, is the wonderful world of crypto.

If you are a computer scientist with a vision, blockchain related or not, it is very easy to fundraise via a digital token. All you really need is a great vision and people that support it. To begin your crowdfunding efforts, you design a token economy for your project and let people invest at various stages of an ICO. ICO is a newer term and stands for Initial Coin Offering, basically entailing the same thing as an IPO, only investors are awarded an amount of tokens, rather. The risk-reward comes into play for investors in the form of how early their investment is into a project timeline. If one invests early, they risk the project failing and all they are left with is a “wallet” full of useless computer code. On the other hand, if one invest in the earliest stages of an initial coin offering, they will receive a ridiculous stake in the project. When a team of developers and computer scientists have done a good job in regards to their ICO, exchanges will rush to add them to their markets so crypto users can begin trading this new coin. This enables investors to start trading their share in this project for bitcoin, ethereum, and sometimes other trading pairs; oftentimes, a new listing is the first step in continued project funding, otherwise the project is left with finding business partners over the counter. Last fall ICOs were hotter than ever. Authors and journalists were calling this “the digital gold rush”, and with such a title came enormous interest. People were naively throwing in their money with hopes of getting rich very quick, and it opened up ridiculous opportunity for scam artists. If you weren’t buying during the wrong market cycle, you were investing in projects that had no intentions of ever releasing a real product. It is this aspect of the cryptosphere that brings out talk of regulation, along with other undesirable outcomes. With that disclaimer out of the way, there wouldn’t be this much fuss over the topic if there weren’t amazing products and incredible returns available so always be sure to do your own research and always be skeptical.

Given the dangers associated with investing in an unregulated market, one must be aware of ways to manage risk. The single easiest way to manage risk is to not invest. If you cannot resist or think you’ve got what it takes, then you need to familiarize yourself a great deal with many terms and insights. One of the most obvious red flags in this market is the promise of great, or any, returns. No project can guarantee any amount of return on your investment, so if they are, odds are they just want it to sound appealing. As a rule of thumb, if it seems too good to be true it probably is. Another red flag is projects offering bonuses for referring new users. If there is a bounty for new users, it is a sign that they are incapable of marketing any real product. A question to ask yourself is, “why can’t their product alone incentivise users to invest?” What happens in these scams is new user’s investments are what are used to pay out current existing users, and they continue this behavior until someone can not be paid for the payouts they deserve. The developers will then shut down the platform and make away with a lot of bitcoin or ethereum investments, and since this market is mostly unregulated, no one chases them down to return your investment. As one final method for safe investing, stay away from ICOs entirely. Only invest in projects that already have a working product and existing use cases. Some projects are already being used by many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of users; this is an excellent sign. There are people that will try to steal your funds from you, so be mindful of the above and manage that risk for your own benefit.

It is important to remember that this market is mostly decentralized and unregulated. What happens in it is between only involved parties, but this does not prevent government associations from doing what they can to keep you safe/keep you from investing, depending on which side of that argument you align with. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, to legally invest in ICOs you need to be an accredited investor. Anyone can become an accredited investor, but many people do not wish you become accredited investors and treat this as a scare tactic. I cannot make that decision for you. An accredited investor is someone that has a net worth of at least one million dollars, excluding their residence. Let me tell you something interesting; about 90 percent of the investors in ICOs are not accredited investors. They are everything but accredited investors, actually. This 90 percent consists of young teenagers, college students, middle-aged financial analysts, and the rest being of a miscellaneous group. They are all interested in one of the two reasons; the project itself, how it works, how it will better the online community, how it can help something be more efficient, etc., or the other reason is to try and get rich quick. These ICOs offer the starting shares at usually 10 cents to one dollar. The reason people invest in these projects is because of the return on investment, or ROI, they have speculated to get back once it has hit the market. Many of these projects end with 10 times on your investment, right away. Think about it, who wouldn’t want to invest say 100 dollars and get 1000 dollars in return? It’s a no brainer! The one thing that a large amount of people did not know early on in the ICO scene, is that there are people who set up ICOs just to scam as many people out of as much bitcoin as soon as possible, which is mentioned earlier. One other form of regulation that US investors need to be aware of is that the tax man wants his share of your profits. The amount taxed on these profits is a ridiculous sum, and people have already realized means to avoid this. You are not technically securing any profit until you cash out for fiat currency. If you do not cash out on your investments, you will not be taxed, and bitcoin maximalists believe it will be the currency of the future, so they have no problem with not securing profits on paper. Another interesting fact that has been brought to light is that less than four percent of investors actually paid any amount of taxes on crypto gains. They are not scared to get taxed, because if they have done their due diligence, they can make sure they are never to be located. If you doubt that this technology can remain completely anonymous, then you do not understand the nature of the coding technology. Transactions on a blockchain are completely dismantled and will not exist until all involved parties signal they are present, in layman's terms. This of course requires extreme caution, so it is not suggested that anyone gets a wild hair and becomes a total anarchist. Still though, it is exciting to see existing powers try and regulate it. Be careful and due your due diligence.

There are many different thoughts on cryptocurrency whether cryptocurrencies should be legal or illegal, and discussion of regulation goes beyond authoritative powers. Some crypto enthusiasts will forever stand by the idea that some form of regulation needs to be maintained in this market, and without it, mass adoption can never ocurre. I don’t see there being a single solution to this discussion, and even if there was one agreeable solution, as long as there is someone with coding capabilities, they can construct their own decentralized blockchain. What coins are used for obviously becomes a highly discussed part of this argument. The anonymity allows users to purchase undesirable services from interesting places on the web, and this frightens a lot of people. People worried about this would probably be ones arguing for some method of market regulation. Other users see regulation as a direct threat to the beauty of cryptocurrency. It seems to be glanced at from a distance due to some being unsure about how legal the product a user buys, sells, or trades actually is. In fact, it does matter if you made or lost money on crypto. The IRS has recently, within the last six months, looked further into many of people using crypto to evade taxes or launder money.. In the year of 2017, Bitcoin went from $800 to $19,000. Think of those who had a few, or even a hundred Bitcoins. The gains on those investments are going to need to be noted by the IRS, otherwise you can be charged heavily on your capital gains. It is very smart to file your taxes on your investments to cover your back. I suggest keeping you back covered so you don’t get burned.

Whether you’re a risk taker or not, initial coin offerings are definitely something to look into, but you need to do you research before ever investing. This is the only way you can feel like you are investing rather than gambling, but hey, even gamblers can win big. Isn’t that part of the excitement? There’s more than just 15 minutes of research to do on a coin before investing in their ICO, so make sure you are reading white papers, consulting community threads, and are aware of the red flags mentioned previously. Also, never invest more than you can afford to lose. This is not only with crypto investments, but with any and all investments. I hope you are able to learn something useful in this write-up and feel inspired to get your toes wet. Stay safe, smart, and as always, do your own research.

#mkt400uwl #cryptocurrency #crypto

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itscryptovision-blog · 7 years ago

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Markets

Cryptocurrency is much more than just a currency, a utility, or an app/platform. Cryptocurrency is becoming its own micro-economy. From it emerged a marketplace exchanging coins for goods and services. The market is growing at a very substantial rate as more and more players come into the scene, showing growing interest in the peer-to-peer ideology.

The crypto market has a number of different exchanges that millions of people use every single day. The main three cryptocurrency exchanges are Binance, Bittrex, and Coinbase. On these exchanges, one accesses the cryptomarket for all supported coins. The reason that there is not a single cryptocurrency exchange is because each one has something particular to offer. For instance, Coinbase serves as the only exchange with US Dollar capabilities. If you send your coins here, you can get US Dollars in return at a fair and undisputable market price. Binance, another one of the biggest exchanges, has their own coin to help fund the exchange operations, and if you hold their coin you will be able to use some of it for cheaper transaction fees. Some exchanged hold coins that others do not. The point is that there are a lot of new emerging technologies in this area, and its all catching the eyes of millions for a number of different reasons. For the most part, the scene has managed to maintain a level of professionalism and integrity, seeking to work with, rather than against.

Let’s talk about coin supply, which is similar to stocks. The supply of coins/tokens is determined by the team of developers, and based on a variety of different ideas. If the asset is to be used as access to a service, generally they will create upwards of billions of coins, with mass distribution in mind. Others that are designed to serve as a peer-to-peer exchange will have a lower coin supply. Let’s next take a look at fiat currency. Fiat currency involves currency not backed by a commodity. Rather, fiat currency receives value through supply and demand, and the value derives itself from fiat decree, meaning that fiat currency has value simply due to the fact that an entity declares that the currency has worth. Common fiat currencies include dollars, british pound, euro, and other variations of these currencies. This is where global appeal comes into play. The nature of the coding technology creates a perfect medium for exchange of goods and services using coins with inherent value. Let’s take Bitcoin for example. Bitcoin has 21 million coins, of which, about 17 million coins have been bought or mined. Once all 21 million bitcoins are bought or mined, the price of bitcoin is almost uncapped. The more bought and in circulation, the more the price of Bitcoin will increase. Something today that didn’t affect cryptocurrency before as much, is the news or media. Whenever there is a decent size company that partners up with a crypto, the price usually hikes up. Whenever negative news hit the paper, the results can get ugly, which will be talked about in a later section.

In its infancy stages, crypto was not much to talk about. Honestly, it held a grey cloud above it, as it was used extensively on the darknet.. Today however, this is no longer the case. There is growing interest in this technology and all of its different use cases. One of the more peculiar ways people go about supporting crypto these days is via what is called “mining.” One of the overhead concerns with this technology is energy consumption because it takes energy to keep a blockchain operational. Developers began, essentially, crowdfunding computational power to keep a blockchain running through mining. What people do is offer their own computer processor to developers, often remotely, in exchange for an amount of that blockchain’s currency. Collaboration and fairness is the foundation for this industry; they are demanded. It is obvious why there is growing interest in this technology.

Earlier, it is mentioned that coins are exchanged between people at any given time for any number of reasons. This willingness to exchange coins is where value is derived, and as this market has grown, people began applying traditional stock market practices to help predict market sentiment. For example, one can apply a Fibonacci sequence to predict upward and downard strength. Market sentiment is the attitude of the entire community for the entire market. When words like “regulation” are mentioned, people begin to worry and will panic sell their coins. Taking this into consideration, market makers, people/groups with many millions of dollars invested, can withdraw their funds and decrease the entire market capacity. While being familiar with traditional market strategies and indicators helps tremendously, it is little considerations of human psychology that will keep you thriving above and beyond, at least until more stability occurs, and it will occur in time. You can be as prepared as you need to be to earn yourself a living in this market, and even that will not keep you safe from a growing danger.

In today's internet, hackers are better than ever before. Exchanges unfortunately have the ability to be hacked too. In the past few years, there have been many thefts to exchanges. These thefts were not just small petty thefts either.. The smallest theft was valued at 2.17 million USD, whereas the largest one in history happened this last January to an exchange named Coincheck, who lost 532 million USD worth of cryptocurrency to hackers. Since no government currently backs the currency, once the crypto has been taken or released from one’s wallet, there are very limited measure to return the stolen cryptocurrency. The point being made here is to be as safe and secure as possible with all of your cryptocurrency.

Everyone should know that there are many ways to take precaution from being hacked or stolen from, its just how far will you go to protect your crypto. Many people use Coinbase as a wallet to store their cryptocurrency. What a number of these people don’t know is that Coinbase is an online wallet, meaning that it is attainable on the web 24/7. If you keep your coins on an online exchange wallet, odds are you don't actually possess your own coins, but rather a promise of coins. So, what happens when an exchange is hacked? Your promise of coins is absolutely broken. In crypto, you are your own savior and there are ways to keep your crypto secure and private. In being proactive here, you will always possess your own coins and they will never disappear. There are a few different offline wallets that you can download straight to your desktop, allowing you to be your own banker. I use one of these, Exodus, to keep my coins safe. Exodus is one of the better offline wallets that is updated regularly and is often upgrading each update. They have a code that they give the user at the beginning of using the application that allows each user to access their wallets wherever Exodus is download as long as they use that code. The code identifies who you are to the servers of Exodus. Once recognized, you will have your standard password to finally reach your crypto. Now Exodus offers over 30 different wallets for crypto on their application. I have about 50% of my crypto portfolio in my app, and the only foreseeable way for these funds to disappear are in the event that my desktop crashes and I do not have my restoration code safely stored away. Offline wallets are more popular for people that are moving greater volumes of crypto around than the average holder. Offline wallets are still generally on the user’s laptop, so they are able to move their crypto in a more efficient way. Being just on the laptop itself, hackers still have the ability to get into your files using by decoding your restoration password - a password that does not exist anywhere unless type it in a file or write it on paper. On file somewhere, hackers can however steal this information from your device, so write this down and never touch it. The safest bet though, is to store your crypto offline and off any connected device in general, which brings us to the last option for safe crypto storage. This ideology is possible given what are known as hardware wallets. Hardware wallets are special because they hold private keys inside of them which are only known by the user, and the device disconnected from all web accesses. Hardware wallets are essentially USB devices that hold all of your different crypto coins. These are fantastic for storage because you can plug in, load it up, unplug, and toss it into a safe. Your cryptocurrencies will be in your possession and the access keys inaccessible, granted you have not uploaded them anywhere. If you are thinking about investing, there is a group that I am a member of that has increased my knowledge of crypto tenfold. The link provided below will take you to the #GG telegram chat room, where you will find both meaningful and meaningless conversation, guidances through the cryptoverse, insights on market trends when investing in crypto and another open vision for cryptocurrency. Essentially an extraordinary think tank for all things crypto. Here you will never be alone on this journey.

http://t.me/joinchat/E_kDM06nO1ZphWPh15XXQ.

The crew is there to inspire, help you learn, and accomplish huge things. Consider doing yourself a favor and pay a visit. You will soon discover just how fun the cryptoverse has become. Next weeks blog I will be going over ICOs and the legality of cryptocurrency, which go hand in hand.

#mkt400uwl #cryptocurrency #bitcoin mining

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itscryptovision-blog · 7 years ago

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Welcome.

Hello everyone welcome to my blog. Herein, I intend to inform any who are intrigued, even by the slightest, about the wonderful world of cryptocurrency. I have been following cryptocurrency since bitcoin and the blockchain first came out in 2009. I bought my first bitcoin in 2010 for 11 dollars. This last December I sold it for 19,000 dollars. It was one of the best feelings I have ever had in my life. As a college student, every bit of money is as important as ever. I felt like I hit the lottery. I paid off a few college loans and had some of my investment left over. I thought, well it happened once, so I think it can happen again so I bought into more cryptocurrency. This time was much different though. Since 2009, over 1000 different cryptocurrencies have been created, all of which having their own unique use case. Before we are to dive into how each of these digital currencies can positively impact the globe, we need to take a step back again.

To enlighten those who are not familiar with digital currencies, or cryptocurrencies, they are virtual store-of-values, and behave similarly to an investment in the stock market. The general name for these comes from the root word “cryptography” which involves security embedding for computer programs and software. It is indication of the featured security bonuses. The actual currencies themselves take no physical form, which creates ease and sustainability in its production. Think of all of those lovely pennies laying around on the street that cost more to produce than they are worth in store value. Cryptocurrency includes ease of storage, transfer, and operation, as well as offering inexpensive and more rapid transactions. It gives users pseudo anonymity, privacy, and financial independence from governments and central banks, which serves as one of the many characteristics creating value for these digital currencies. At the moment there is no government or central bank that can issue cryptocurrency. The lack of central banks and government control allows users of cryptocurrency to maintain total decentralization.

Cryptocurrency started with three main coins - Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Currently, as I mentioned earlier, there are over 1000 different kinds. Most of these cryptocurrencies can be broken down into three different groups. The first group, often referred to simply as currencies, are used for micro transactions. Given that these are the quickest and cheapest to transfer between parties, these are the most familiar and used. Currency cryptos are traded like fiat currencies like the US dollar or the Euro. The most common currency crypto by a majority is Bitcoin. Many different cryptocurrencies out there try to replicate bitcoin and add their own twist or try to make a better usable crypto. It is often speculated that Bitcoin is the most valuable given its “first mover advantage”, but the fact of the matter is that it is valuable, thus indicating global desire for fair and equal spending power. Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash are examples of coins being used for micro transactions. These essentially work the same way a bank account works. If you want to buy something, you send an amount of a currency from your wallet to the person’s wallet you are purchasing anything from. A wallet serves as your very own, accessible only by you, bank. That’s right, you are your own banker. Putting people in charge of their own wealth, you will see banks around the globe step up to the challenge that will be suppressing this technology. Federal and international banks alike are nothing more than a business, and at the end of the day they seek to make money off you simply trying to live. Again, there is significant value that comes with that potential.

The second category of cryptos are the “utility” cryptocurrencies. Utility currencies exist to perform a function different than transfer of wealth within a blockchain; a blockchain is simply the name of the coding technology used in developing cryptos . Ethereum and Basic Attention Token (BAT) are prime examples of cryptos given value because of their utility purposes. Ethereum allows developers to create applications within a network of blockchains, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property. It is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. Ethereum enables developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in the past (like a will or a futures contract) and many other things that have not been invented yet, all without a middleman or counterparty risk. Anyone with a vision can purchase some Ethereum and make it reality on the Ethereum blockchain. Basic Attention Token or BAT for short, is a blockchain based digital advertising browser and utility token that can be exchanged between publishers, advertisers and users. The neat thing about the utility of BAT token is that it is based on user attention as users view ads and content in the brower’s tabs.. BAT has a browser that is catered to the user on how they spend their time online. This allows publishers of ads the perfect way to engage specific audiences. BAT’s ads are anonymously matched with customer interests. Using learning algorithms, the browser caters less irrelevant ads to the consumer.

The last category of cryptos are the “app/platform” cryptocurrencies. These represent the equivalent of an app or platform. While this area is still being created as developers get more and more creative with blockchain technology, one platform that I am most thrilled about is one called Steemit. Steemit is nothing more than a social media platform, yet it offers so much more than any other social media platform currently in existence. As we all know by now, we are a product on most social media platforms, and we are sold out to businesses in the form of our data and contributions, think targeted advertisements. At the end of the day, isn’t it peculiar that we do not get a share of that wealth we create for platform developers? That is where Steemit intends to change the game. When a user of this platform presents something on their page, Steemit rewards the creator of the content based on how big of an impact it has amongst other users. This is especially valuable for two reasons; the first reason being that people with a genuine product to offer people can present it on this platform, and help fund their effort with the currency they recieve for bringing content to Steemit. The currency received is called Steem, and though not recognized as one of the greats, can be used for exchange of value between peers. The second focus in which we find value for this technology is in its ability to give back to the average user for the data they contribute. If you are on Steemit posting photos, and you have 500 users liking that photo, Steemit rewards you for offering something that other people liked. You are no longer creating wealth only for some company selling your data, but also for yourself as you are part of the reason that data has any value to marketers. As more and more platforms are created under this premise, there is opportunity for major shift in distribution of wealth.

Another app or platform coin that I am very fond of is called Siacoin. Most people in today’s day and age are familiar with the cloud, specifically the ICloud and Dropbox. Both platforms are popular and are used by many people. But how safe is the ICloud or Dropbox storing all of your information you please to keep in the cloud? Both of the platforms have been hacked many times, which makes you question if your information could be stolen as well. What if there was a cloud storage platform that couldn’t be hacked? There is! Siacoin is that platform. The platform separates your files, and encrypts them with a code that makes all of the files you choose to store, available to the users eyes only. This means no outside company or third party can access your files like many cloud storage providers do. To store items away on the platform, you can only use Siacoin tokens as means in exchanging for a place to store your files. Once exchanged, the users files are the spread among the platform and divided into smaller pieces that are then distributed in the decentralized network. Having files on the decentralized network secures consumers information from any kind of hacking or manipulation. Not only is it the most secure cloud storage platform, but it the cheapest as well. Siacoin’s service is about 90 percent cheaper than the leading cloud storage platforms like ICloud, Dropbox, and Amazon. Purchasing 1TB of storage on Siacoin’s network will run the user about $2, compared to the $23 that Amazon charges per month. I think we all know the better option here.

There are many more cryptocurrencies in this space that offer a unique potential to improve the world. The list is truly expansive and only growing as more and more brilliant faces get involved. I believe so much in the good that cryptocurrency could do for us if they were given the proper chance, as with the passage of time, there are always well defined waves of change and the zeitgeist of this forthcoming wave is indisputably cryptocurrency. Once understood, it only feels right that this technology holds an influential spot in history.

#cryptocurrency #news #MKT400UWL

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