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rhetoricandlogic · 7 years ago

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The Thing In the Walls Wants Your Small Change

by Virginia M Mohlere

The penny was gone again.

Caro huffed and dropped her grocery bags in the hall. She reached in, took a penny from the change bowl by the door, and rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger, said Nana’s charm for the house spirits, to keep them happy and home.

She blew on the penny and tucked it down by the threshold.

Five days she’d lived here, and seven times the penny had been gone, either in the morning or after she returned from an errand. The apartment didn’t set off her Spooky Senses, but the penny thing was weird.

Nana was unsympathetic.

“Girl, you got house spirits with expensive taste,” she said, laughing. “That’s what you get, moving yourself where everything’s snow and concrete. Down here the house spirits know us. They miss you.”

“Nana. That’s you missing me,” Caro said, guilt eating at her just a tiny bit.

Just a tiny bit: mostly, she was still pinching herself that everything had worked out so smoothly: this cute little apartment with southern exposure, high tin ceilings, and a dark-stained, carved sideboard set into the dining/living room wall that she loved so much she wanted to lie down on top of it despite its sticking drawers. This ridiculous neighborhood that was like something out of a romantic comedy, with its painfully adorable coffee shops, blocks of grey stone townhouses, and ethnic restaurants entirely outside the dreams of most other people from Pointe Coupee Parish.

And the job. Hired from across the dang country to write cybersecurity algorithms for enough money that the offer letter had made her choke, when surely there were a thousand coders nearby who’d have jumped at the chance. After 2 weeks, she still half expected that to show up at the address every morning and find an empty lot. It was too hard to believe this was all real.

“Yes, it’s me missing you, baby. Every old minute. But you know I’m happy for you.”

“I know, Nana.”

“Your mama keeps asking after you.”

And there was the familiar sensation of acid boiling up into her sternum.

“Nana, you won’t –“

“I won’t, baby. I won’t ever give her your number, I promise. I do keep telling her you’re happy as can be.”

Caro laughed.

“That must make her furious.”

Nana laughed too, but high-pitched, tense.

“That it does. Don’t you let that snake I birthed hurt you all that way away. You go to your fancy job and show them how lucky they are to have you, and call me on the iPad on Sunday so I can see your face.”

“Love you Nana.”

“Love you, baby.”

The penny was gone again in the morning. Caro rolled her eyes and put another one down.

It was the biggest mystery of her new life in Chicago – which, as troubles go, she was not going to complain about. It wasn’t like an extra half-dollar or so each month to appease her greedy house ghost was going to crack her budget, but it vexed her.

Well. And there was that scratchy sound behind the wall in the back hallway, next to the bathroom.

“No way, I spray once a season,” her landlord said. “Sorry, kid, it’s just an old building. It makes noises.”

Which was okay.

“It’s rats in the walls. Every building has them. Anybody ever tell you about the super-rats from the eighties? They were the size of cats. My cousin knew a family whose dog got killed by one.”

This not-okay statement solidified Troy from sales as The Office Asshole. Poor guy, he seemed so shocked when his follow-up invitation for shots after work got shot down. Ha ha.

Still: rats. Was there anything more gross than rats? Every time she heard that faint scritch behind the wall it made her spine feel like a spaghetti noodle. Was it enough to give up the sideboard? Was it enough to give up her three-block walk to the train? Or the taco stand two doors down?

She stood in the hallway, staring down at the wall panel, waiting. Wasted hours this way, it was so stupid.

It was easy to spend long days at work, avoiding her apartment and the scritch. It was easy to take long walks on weekends. She found an endless supply of cute boutiques and tasty stuff to eat. She learned her way around St. Bran’s so thoroughly that she was almost grateful to the scritch for driving her outside.

Her neighbors in the other five apartments were a quiet bunch – she almost never saw them, other than brief greetings at the mailbox or holding the front door open. Seemed like maybe two couples, a guy her age, an older woman, and someone on the third floor who listened to a lot of classical music but never left the building.

Caro found herself in the laundry room with the older woman on a Saturday morning, having just heard a particularly loud, long scratching sound and something almost like a purr.

“Rats?” the woman said in answer to her question.

She frowned with soft eyes, as if thinking hard. When she shook her head, the beads in her long grey dreads clacked.

“No, I can’t see rats. It’s an old building, sure, but this is a clean place. Protected.”

Protected?

Then the woman grinned and squeezed Caro’s bicep in a strong grip.

“You’d be more likely to find, I don’t know. Borrowers in the walls. Did you ever read that book when you were little? That wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

She pulled her clothes – ancient jeans, calico smocks, and faded concert t-shirts – out of the dryer and laughed to herself.

“Borrowers in the walls,” the woman said, “that’s good. I’m going to use that.”

Caro shrugged after her.

It made her feel better, though, that her neighbor couldn’t “see” rats. To someone who went to the actual bank to get rolls of pennies for house spirits, it didn’t even sound so weird. She looked up Borrowers and wished that her eight-year-old self had read the books. Tiny people in the walls who collected junk and put it to ingenious use. That would’ve been like holding a piece of Nana’s old trailer with her, back in the days before Nana got custody.

Back in the days when she hadn’t had any possessions she couldn’t sleep in, on, or around without their disappearing into vodka bottles or the garbage or the toilet. So a book wouldn’t have lasted long anyhow.

She went so far as to actually speak to the cute girl at the gym, whose name – Aly – even turned out to be cute. The first time they went for drinks, Caro stumbled home drunk enough that when she fumbled emptying her jacket pockets and all her change spilled to the floor, she thought ‘screw it’ and went to bed.

The change was gone in the morning.

God dang. It had been like seventy cents.

Caro heard the scritch and the little purr-sound and knocked one knuckle sharply into the wall panel. The resulting silence was full. Whatever was frozen on the other side of the wall, possibly praying that she had run into the wall by mistake, was too smart for standard rodentia.

“Hey,” she said, “don’t get greedy.”

The penny by the doorjamb stayed for three days, then disappeared. Caro laughed at the floor, pulled a penny out of the bowl, and said the charm.

“I see how it is,” she said to the panel in the back hallway, “you require regular offerings. I get it.”

She took to leaving pennies and nickels on the floor around the living room. As long as there was a coin or two hanging around on the floor, the luck penny stayed by the front door.

“See? You’ve worked things out,” Nana laughed into the phone. “Though what a house ghost wants with that much currency I can’t imagine.”

In October, Caro came down with a bad case of the flu and didn’t leave the apartment for eight days straight. Takeout and an emergency drop-off of oatmeal and cans of soup from Aly saved her life, but mostly she lay on the couch, alternately shivering and sweating, wishing she’d ever bothered to buy a cable package or at least a charging cable for her iPad that reached all the way to the couch.

She almost called Aly for a ride to the emergency room on day four when she woke from a nap and hallucinated a small black creature in the middle of the floor, picking up a nickel and running down the hallway.

Still, there was no denying when she woke up later that the nickel was gone.

Caro couldn’t blame it on the flu when she woke from a Saturday-afternoon nap three weeks later and saw it again, sitting by her desk with a penny in each. In each claw.

The thing froze when she inhaled; Caro willed her body to relax and closed her eyes to slits. Her heartbeat was fast as a bird’s, but she held herself still, hopefully as if she remained asleep.

The thing blinked its red eyes twice, then looked back down at the pennies it held. It made the purring sound she had twice heard behind the wall.

She figured she could probably hold it in her two cupped palms: it was the size of a kitten, the color of charcoal, with a triangle-shaped head and two greenish horn-things curling over the top.

It was obviously a dragon. The tiniest, cutest, most ridiculous dragon any person could imagine, which Caro was obviously doing, because dragons were obviously imaginary. Except for the part where it held a penny in each forelimb. Except for the part where it shoved both pennies into its pointy little jaw and galloped across the room to the back hallway.

Except for the part where something had been taking her loose change for the past three months and scritching behind the wall.

Caro tried to see it again. She left change all over the floor and pretended to take naps almost daily, but though she heard it behind the wall, the little sucker remained elusive. She knocked on the wall once and pitched her voice to be as gentle as possible when she said,

“Hey, it’s okay to come out. I won’t hurt you.”

Silence – and all the coins remained on the floor for a couple of days after.

She learned that value wasn’t the creature’s priority: it liked pennies best, followed by nickels. Dimes and subway tokens would stay on the floor until they were the only things remaining. She got a Canadian penny among her change once; that was snapped up. It preferred shiny pennies to dull ones.

Emergency life-saving via oatmeal caused Aly to appoint herself Boss Of Caro, which sucked at the gym (so many reps) but had its own advantages, aside from Aly’s fundamental cuteness. She pitched enough of a fit when she found out that Caro wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving that several of the dudebro lifters glowered in their direction. She arrived outside Caro’s building at nine a.m. for the drive out to River Forest. Caro brought a bottle of wine and flowers and tried to treat it as a cultural expedition, eating turkey without any cayenne on it, dressing made of bread instead of rice, and not one oyster on the table.

Caro called Nana during the break between dinner and dessert, when Aly and her dad were setting up trays in front of the football game on TV. If she hadn’t been at a stranger’s house, Caro would’ve thrown up on the carpet when Nana answered the phone with their code phrase, “I’m sorry, I don’t make donations over the phone, but thank you for calling.”

Mama was there.

“You all right, honey?” Aly’s mom asked.

Caro took the plates out of her hands and used to walk to the living room to calm herself down.

Over the long Thanksgiving holiday, Caro holed herself up with leftovers from Aly’s family dinner and banished all motherly thoughts by trying to draw the dragon out, making a trail of pennies down the hallway that led to a highly polished quarter laid just inside her bedroom door. She turned off all the lights at 8:30 and climbed into bed, wedged among pillows, her blankets swirled around with only one eye uncovered but a clear view of the hall and the doorway.

It was over an hour, easy – more than enough time for her limbs to ache with the desire to sleep. Finally, she heard a creak, a scratch, and a sound that might have been sniffing. The little dragon ran down the hallway and skidded to a stop right in front of her doorway. It was almost impossible to see when it was still – just a shadow in the darkness – but she could hear it sniffing. When it walked forward, she could see its little hunched shape, its tail.

She could hear when it found the stack of pennies just inside the living room.

“Rar!”

Its voice was high-pitched and creaky, almost like a dog’s squeaker toy, and it took every drop of Caro’s willpower not to laugh at the sound.

“Rar rar!”

And happy Thanksgiving to you too, she thought.

It ran back and forth eight times, carrying the pennies to its home behind her bathroom wall, humming to itself the whole time.

It left the ones closest to her bedroom door for last, standing up on its hind legs in a posture so cute that Caro wanted to curl up into a ball, tilting its head back and forth and sniffing.

“Raaaaar,” it hummed softly.

The dragon crept into her room, one foot at a time, peering up at the bed between steps, while Caro held herself completely still.

It stopped in front of the quarter and stared down. Sniffed. Bent to touch the coin with the pointy bit of its face. Did it lick the coin? Caro hoped it licked it.

“Haaaaaa,” the little dragon breathed.

It picked up the quarter and put it in its mouth, but the coin dropped to the floor with a clink. The dragon froze, staring at the bed. Caro did her best impersonation of a rock.

After half a dozen breaths, the dragon reached down again and picked up the quarter. It shoved the coin back in its mouth and held it in place with one forelimb, then hobbled out of the room on three legs.

Once it was gone, Caro curled up and put both hands over her face. What even was this? If her life got any cuter she might not survive it.

“A dragon,” Nana said the next day, her skepticism so strong it would’ve curdled the cord on a landline.

“I swear! A dragon the size of a kitten.”

“Sweetheart, you sure you didn’t drink too much at your friend’s house?”

“Nana. I’ve seen it three times. It’s what kept taking my spirit penny! I’ve been leaving coins out for it for months! I wish I could get a photo of it, you would not believe it.”

“I don’t believe it, baby.”

“Nana,” Caro groaned. “How is this any weirder than your spirit pennies and all your red strings with knots in them and that gross jar full of herbs that’s as old as me?”

“Don’t you bad-mouth my binding jar, it’s what keeps your mama from making even more trouble.”

“Uh huh. And?”

Caro knew the expression Nana was making back at home – lips pressed together so the places where her pink lipstick had feathered up into the wrinkles around her mouth stood out, eyes narrowed behind her gold-rimmed glasses.

Caro noted a trend toward her own face doing the same thing.

Oops.

“Well. I guess I don’t want to call my best grandbaby a crazy person. Are you sure it doesn’t mean you any harm?” Nana said finally.

“One hundred percent. It’s only interested in money.”

Nana laughed.

“Well that’s true of lots of folks! You ever left a dollar bill out for it?”

“No!”

Once she bought in, Nana had a dozen questions about the little dragon. She laughed again when Caro tried to imitate its squeaky voice.

“Aw, baby, I still don’t know how this can be, but damn me if that don’t sound like a pure delight. Who knew such things could live under the sun.”

Nana pitched her voice lower.

“And you know if we both have to spend our time with dragons, at least yours is a cute one.”

Caro couldn’t make much of a laugh at that one. Mama had shown no sign of leaving Nana’s house. At this rate, Caro wouldn’t be able to ever go home again.

Caro heard a series of sharp, muffled thunks over the phone, followed by,

“The hell you out there doing, Mama? You’re out of cooking sherry.”

Caro hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in three years, but even over a phone line and through a closed door, she could hear the telltale burr that the cooking sherry had gone done Mama’s gullet. She wondered whether it was the old bottle that had sat at the back of Nana’s cabinet for as long as she could remember.

Was it too much to hope that it had turned to poison?

“Don’t you worry, Betsy,” Nana bellowed into the phone, making sure Mama would hear every word, “I don’t mind a bit doing the altar on Sunday. You just rest that ankle. I’ll be there at seven-thirty sharp.”

“Gawd,” Mama said.

“Got it,” Caro said. “I’ll call you then. I love you.”

“You bet.”

Caro sat on the floor by the bathroom door to have her cry. She didn’t mean to scare the little dragon, but she didn’t want to feel alone.

Her phone rang on Saturday afternoon – Nana must’ve slipped out to the grocery store.

“You okay?” Caro asked when she answered.

There was a long pause, then.

“Huh.”

She registered that it was Mama’s voice just as the phone beeped to signal the line being cut off.

Crap.

She called Nana at 7:34 the next morning, and Nana picked up on the first ring.

“Caro.”

“Nana, are you all right?”

“Sweetie, I am so sorry. I’ve been so good about keeping my phone on me, I just let it go for a minute.”

“Nana. Are you okay.”

Oh, the pause was too long.

“What did she do?”

“I’m fine, baby.”

“Nana.”

“It was just one cigarette and I got butter right on it, my hand’ll be fine.”

Caro sat down on the floor.

“Honey, I’m fine. I swear.”

“Nana, you have to make her leave.”

“Well, baby, I think I did. I spent last night at your aunt Betsy’s house, and we’re headed back to the house after church with Pere John and Sheriff Huntley to make sure. Sheriff’s got a locksmith friend who’s coming out to change all the locks and help me fix up my windows. But Caro, baby. Your address was in my phone.”

Caro lost all ability to remain vertical and lay on the floor.

“You should get a different phone, baby.”

Caro’s belly dropped at that tone. It wasn’t one she heard very often. Nana tried hard not to let her down. But it happened. Nana wasn’t a superhero.

“What else, Nana?”

“Baby, I’m sorry.”

“I know you are, Nana. What else?”

“You know I always kept my Christmas tin in the same place.”

Always. Caro had stolen from it once or twice – never more than a couple of dollars for candy, until the day Nana caught her and said “don’t be like your Mama, Caro. The road’s too hard.”

She’d never touched it again, and it wasn’t because of a hard damn road.

“She’ll probably drink it all up, sweetheart.”

“Was it enough for bus fare?”

“It was.”

There was a long silence. Caro enjoyed how cold and hard the floor was. She was glad she hadn’t gotten around to buying a rug. Her shoulder blades ached against the wood, so there was one part of her not filled up with sickness and worry.

“She’ll probably drink it all up,” Nana repeated.

Probably. But not certainly.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” Nana said.

“I know.”

Then she remembered her manners.

“It’s okay, Nana. You didn’t do anything.”

“That’s half the trouble, isn’t it?”

Caro would never agree to that aloud.

“Let’s just hope you’re right and she goes on a bender in Baton Rouge.”

“I love you, sweetheart,” Nana said, her voice miserable.

“I love you too. I’ll send you my new number.”

She turned the phone off. No use in courting trouble.

But she wasn’t going to sleep, not with the idea that Mama might show up at the door, expecting food, booze, the bed, to be the center of all attention. To have her every whim obliged on pain of broken bones, property destruction, and plain viciousness.

Caro watched TV (looked at the TV without registering what was on it) for several hours, until her eyes felt coated in sand. She had gone through hungry and out the other side to a queasy exhaustion.

How Mama would laugh at all the change on the floor. Before she picked it all up and pocketed it.

Caro reached for her wallet on the table next to the sofa. She had five quarters in the change pocket. She tossed them onto the floor in front of the sofa and wrapped up in the quilt aunt Betsy made for her high school graduation. May as well make a little happiness in the house.

And boy howdy did she. She dozed a bit, so she had no idea how much time had passed by the time she woke to see the little dragon hopping around the quarters on its little claws. She had always thought the word “scamper” was a dumb word, until she saw it in action by a miniature imaginary creature.

“Rar raaaaar!” it squeaked.

And she couldn’t help the choked-off sob she made – it was such a relief to see happiness.

The dragon froze and stared at her. Caro stared back, keeping her hands inside the quilt and her head still, but not bothering to hide her face.

After a long pause, the dragon blinked at her, titled its head back and forth. She blinked back.

It sniffed. Caro sniffed.

The dragon laid one claw experimentally on a quarter, and Caro blinked again.

“Go ahead,” she said in a soft voice.

The dragon startled, but it didn’t move. It tilted its head again.

“They’re for you. Take them.”

It waited a long time, moving its claw fractionally, until the moment when it lifted the quarter to its mouth and skittered on three legs down the back hallway. She thought maybe she had scared it for good, given the length of quiet afterward. Long after she’d given up, she saw it creeping along on the floor, hunched down, its triangular head angling toward her as it passed.

The knot in her chest let go. The dragon went totally still when she sniffed in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the tears rolling out of her.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just really glad you came back.”

The little dragon huffed at her. Caro wiped her face on the quilt, and by the time she looked up, the dragon was gone with a second quarter.

It didn’t hesitate to come back for the third one. By the fifth one, it didn’t even pause. It sauntered casually past the sofa and lifted the coin straight to its mouth.

“Rrr!” it squeaked.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and it was enough to let her sleep.

The knock she dreaded came two days later. She’d had a very uncomfortable conversation with her boss, who shocked Caro to her bones by calling HR on speakerphone and asking them to get started on transferring Caro’s desk to the badge-only floor.

“Do you have a picture of her?” he asked. “Get one to security and they’ll make sure she doesn’t get in the building. You want somebody to travel back and forth with you?”

Caro cried a little bit, much to her horror.

“Look, I don’t care how much you try to pull this ‘y’all don’t bother about lil ole me’ crap,” Aly said at the gym. “I’m coming over on Saturday, and I’m staying until you find out for sure that you’re not getting any unwanted visitors. Pay me in pancakes.”

That had made her cry a little again.

So she had a little steel in her spine by the time the door rattled. Was a fifteen-year-old restraining order from Louisiana in force in Chicago? She had no idea.

“Caroline, it’s your mama, open up!”

Caro tried to will herself to grasp the doorknob and was unsuccessful.

“Caroline! I saw the light on, I’ve been traveling a whole day and night, darlin, don’t you want to see your mama after all this time?”

She pounded on the door again.

“Open the fucking door, Caroline.”

Her neighbors would be able to hear all this. Her neighbors seemed like nice people. They’d try to help, if they thought there was trouble. Trying to get between Mama and what she wanted was a great way to get hurt.

She opened the door. The grimace on Mama’s face morphed into something like a smile.

“Caroline.”

She pushed past Caro into the living room and looked around, clearly displeased. She was still taller than Caro, still broad-shouldered. But her skin hung loose on her frame, aside from her round belly, and she looked a decade older than her early fifties.

Friends ought to take care of one another, Caro thought.

Mama’s best friend, ethanol, didn’t take good care of anybody.

“The hell kind of dump is this?” Mama said. “Can’t afford anything modern?”

Caro remembered that she was a grown-ass adult and not a terrified elementary schooler.

“You’re more than welcome not to stay,” she said.

Mama rounded on her with a well-remembered expression: narrow eyes, lower jaw jutted out, cheeks dark with more than the standard burst capillaries.

“What makes you think you can talk to me that way?” she said, grabbing Caro’s arm. “I’m your mother, you show some respect.”

Caro shrugged hard, trying to pull her arm free, but Mama’s grip was as fierce as her snarl.

“Don’t you fight me, girl, I know every trick you’ve got.”

“Let me go.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, Caroline.”

“You let me go!”

Caro pulled. Her instant of calm had devolved into the weak-kneed helplessness that dogged her every time she saw her mother. She heard her own breath. She would lose. She always lost. Mama was a juggernaut. Everything fell down in her presence. Everything had always fallen down.

“You straighten up now, girl, I won’t have –“

Mama’s face went vaguely green, her eyes wide. A calm corner of Caro’s mind saw that the sclera were yellow.

“What,” Mama croaked, looking over Caro’s shoulder.

“Rrrrrrr!”

Caro turned. The little dragon was barely three feet away from them, tiny white teeth bared and its back end wriggling like a cat about to pounce.

“No! No, run!” she yelled, pulling so hard that she wrenched her arm free, although the sleeve of her sweater tore.

The dragon hissed.

“The hell is that,” Mama whispered.

“Oh, don’t,” Caro said, then backpedaled when the dragon jumped.

She landed hard on her butt and stayed planted, mouth open, while the dragon leapt at Mama’s knees, banked off them, whirled around on the floor, and jumped again, making its squeaky growl the whole time. Its little claws stuck in Mama’s clothing while it climbed her, shrieking in a rasp. Mama stayed frozen and gaping until it reached waist height, then she batted at it and cried out.

The dragon latched onto her hand with its mouth; Mama yelled again and waved her arm. The dragon let go, arched in mid-air, and landed on her shoulder, scrabbling around on her back while Mama pounded her own shoulders, turning in a circle. The dragon kept squeaking “rar rar” and head-butting her between the shoulder blades. Caro could see little spots of blood along Mama’s arms and seeping through her shirt. The dragon moved so fast that sometimes it was a blur, crawling up and down Mama’s body, pausing only to head-butt her or bite.

“The hell is this?” Mama yelled, “What the hell is going on?”

The dragon hopped onto Mama’s shoulder and dug in, then clamped its jaws around her earlobe.

Mama screamed.

Caro felt a vast hysteria rising up from her guts.

Over the sound of Mama’s shouts and the dragon’s squeaks, Caro heard a firm knock at the door and a muffled voice,

“Neighbor? Everything all right in there?”

Whatever this was, she could answer that question.

“No!” she shouted, “it’s not!”

The door slammed inward, and the non-rat-seeing neighbor jumped inside, her dreadlocks flying like Medusa’s own snakes. She glanced from Mama, to Caro, back to Mama again.

“What?”

“Get this damn thing off me!” Mama yelled.

The dragon squeaked one more time for good measure, then dropped to the ground. Mama lunged for it; it scrabbled briefly against the wood floor and took off for the hallway. Caro lunged to get between it and Mama –

Who was on her knees, her arms pinned back by the neighbor, eyes wide, her chin shiny with spit.

“What was it?” Mama said in a hoarse voice.

“Are you all right, sweetie?”

There was no sign of that dreamy look in her neighbor’s eye: this glance was all business.

“I’m okay. I’m not hurt,” Caro said.

And then, “I’m not hurt,” with a laugh.

“The hell was it?”

“I think you should leave now,” the neighbor said, tugging so that Mama grunted and climbed to her feet with a stumble.

“What was it?”

“I can tell by your voice you’re not from here,” the neighbor said. “Why don’t you get on home, now?”

“She came on the bus,” Caro said.

Mama had left a bag in the hallway. There was a return bus ticket in the side pocket. Open ended. Of course.

“Are you stupid?” Mama barked when the artist crowded her into the hallway and pressed the ticket into her hand. “Didn’t you see that thing?”

“This is a safe place,” the neighbor said, staring up at Mama. “Protected. I don’t think you’re a very safe person. You should leave now.”

“I’m not damn well –“

Must’ve been some kind of martial arts training. Anyhow, whatever the artist did to Mama’s elbow, Mama went down the stairs with her and out the door.

“I’m not leaving my daughter in this hell hole with some kind of goddamn monster,” Mama said at the end.

The dramatic intensity of this was greatly lessened by her saying it through a cab window.

“Oh, I think you are,” the neighbor said. “I think you’re leaving her here for good.”

She slapped the cab, and it left.

“Well!” she said, “sorry about your door! I’ll make sure Mike knows to put that on my rent and not yours.”

“I don’t even know how to thank you,” Caro said.

“Oh honey,” the neighbor said. “Just bake me some brownies or something some time. It all comes out in the wash.”

She peered into Caro’s apartment on the way back upstairs.

“I didn’t know this place was protected quite so literally. I’m definitely going to use that.”

Caro lay on the floor in front of her sofa and took a while to alternate between hysterical laughter and hysterical sobs. It seemed the thing to do.

When her voice felt as if it might be trustworthy, she called Nana, who took her own turns between laughing and crying during the high points of the story and set Caro off again.

Caro didn’t see the dragon the first night, and fretted. The second night, she put down coins and sat on the sofa. The dragon came out a couple of hours after dark, walking slowly.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

The dragon swiveled its little head toward her and heaved a squeaky sigh.

It looked around at the coins on the floor and sighed again; put a penny in its mouth and walked slowly toward the back hallway, exhaustion plain in every scale on its tiny body.

“Oh!” Caro said, and put her hands to her chest, laughed a little.

She gathered up the coins and took them to the hallway next to the bathroom door.

“Rrr!” the dragon squeaked when it saw her sitting there, the coins in her hands. But it took them from her, one by one, disappearing in between into a shadow under the sink that during daytime was a plain piece of wall. Up close, its body was hot, and it smelled of copper.

“Hff!” it sniffed when it took the last one.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Go get some rest.”

“Oh baby, I know it’s all my fault,” Nana said on the phone the next day.“I just couldn’t stop her.”

“It’s okay, Nana. It’s all okay.”

“How are you going to thank your little friend?”

“I’ve got a good plan.”

She went to the bank and stood in line to see an actual teller. Slid a twenty across the counter.

“I’d like to exchange this, please, for dollar coins. The gold Sacagawea ones, if you have them.”

#Virginia M. Mohlere #The Thing in the Wall wants your Small Change #short story

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rohitch · 4 years ago

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Cryptocurrency Trading Guide For Beginners

Cryptocurrency Trading

Trading is the standard practice of transacting that involves money, a valuable asset, or a commodity. The world economy relies upon the phenomena. It dictates the prices of every entity, which is in demand or otherwise. Contemplating the similar behaviour in cryptocurrency, the mode of transaction and trading in cryptocurrency is understandable.

Need of cryptocurrency

The basis of any invention or discovery is the need. If it works in tandem with human welfare, acceptance is the subject matter of time. To serve the concern of the digital economy and its far-reaching effects on humanity, it came into existence. Besides, keeping safety the priority, the crypto form of the digital economy is finding places in people’s hearts.

Precisely, it is the way ahead and mode of keeping your hard-earned money within the purview of your pockets. Thieves can have no claim on it.

What is the utility of crypto trading?

It is a question that validates the importance of cryptocurrency trading. Why did the need arise? What was the requirement to jump on it from the conventional and traditional stocks and commodity market trading?

One answer that suffices it all is the responsive feature. It is time that we all are running short. In that way, stocks take a longer duration to fit in your portfolio. On the other hand, cryptocurrency is right there in your account within a few minutes.

For now, crypto trading is a decentralised entity. No government, authority, and administration control it. The liberty that it warrants makes it an attractive option for users.

Stocks and commodities have to follow the rules and regulations. It abides by the laws of a nation. So, companies listed in stock markets across the world have a governing body regulating them.

Whereas cryptocurrency does not depend on outside dynamics. It has its own set of advanced computer mechanisms, networks, and software running it.

The technology heads it ahead of other volatile markets. And security features are a given.

Mechanism of cryptocurrency

It relies on cryptography for verifying each transaction. It is posing as an alternative form of economy for many. However, for now, it overtly depends upon the third party as the means of exchange. The deduction in the overall value of amount hurts the prospects.

Banks may take a day or more to acknowledge receiving the payment. It causes inconvenience.

Though, Bitcoin is one such cryptocurrency that delivers on all the doubts. Its optimum transparency technology can help cut down on corruption and help in mitigating inflation.

Cryptocurrency trading for beginners

Before we invest our time, energy, and money in anything, proper research does not harm. And beginners should remain wary enough before initiating a step. In-depth research, study, and investigation can pave the way for understanding the dynamics of this trading.

Steps aiding you to deal in the game of crypto trading

Beginners need to be cautious about every stepping stone. They should consider noting down their activities in a diary. This exercise enriches their experiences and teaches them a lesson.

Write down all your passwords, URLs, login credentials, confidential information regarding your crypto wallet.

As you are new to the game, make sure to invest in the blue-chip or the best prospects.

Do not store your password on a browser or your login manager or devices that have access to the internet.

Violating the above step can make you easy prey for hackers, so watch out.

Long and convoluted passwords are saviours for life. It applies handsomely for everyone.

To keep up with the first line of defence, take up complex questions and answer them likewise.

Sanitise your system before making any transaction on it. A single malware or virus can lead to mayhem.

Make exchanges from official currencies to deny any cheating.

Using the same password for other accounts can dupe you.

Platforms assisting cryptocurrency trading

Cryptocurrency trading platforms help you in buying and selling of your favourite virtual currency. Here will we shed light on the best performing platforms that are ruling the chores of the trade.

Bitfinex:-This platform plays on its user-interface acceptability. It is the tipping point that attracts a vast footprint. Its support to all renowned virtual or cryptocurrencies makes it a good prospect for traders. The less time lag allows here, allows the buyer to get hold of the entity in a budget. Though, not everything here is hunky-dory. The threat of security looms large. It has a past of landing in the hands of hackers.

Coinbase:- It is one of those platforms that trends Bitcoin. People lay their faith in it without inhibitions. It comes packed with multiple features that work in favour of buyers, sellers, lookers, learners, beginners, technicians and everyone involved in it. Folks keep it on their priority because of unbreachable security features and acceptance of money from a plethora of wallets. It offers a fantastic buying limit at a low cost. What else would a beginner want? Despite heavy traffic, it manoeuvres your transaction in no time.

Change now:- If you are willing not to take too much botheration, then the platform serves the purpose effectively. Sign-up is not required for an account opening here. It is a tailor-made space for those who want everything quickly. They provide 24 hours support for 365 days a year. No extra penny gets charged for a transaction. The artificial intelligence-enabled element in it informs the best buys regularly.

Poloniex:- It is gaining momentum in the hearts of people because of the deliverables. Investors are finding their friend on the platform due to high exchange and volumes in some cryptocurrencies. It provides seamless trading to its clients. The platform can store the data in offline mode also, which adds to the security purpose—Poloniex strategies its ideas with algorithmic technology to serve people with better chances of earning.

Changelly:- People who wish to keep their identity under wraps or conceal it, the platform assists them in doing so. The trading finds its initiation through an email, and it makes everything hassle-free. It is accessible to all from across the globe. So, the universal appeal is translating into positive word of mouth. It has the potential to convert cryptocurrencies using other applications. Clients can use it as a widget also. Changelly does not have any limitations cap to man it.

Kraken:- This website works on leveraging the user experience through its simplified and super responsive features. It offers solutions to all types of traders who visit Kraken. The site provides plans that are accessible for beginners to veterans, coupled with flawless customer support. The enchanting services that it swears by have cut short the possibility of fraudulent to bare minimum.

Bittrex:-The platform is revolutionising the dynamics of trades by enhancing public perceptions. It stands out in standards in terms of technology trading cryptocurrency market. The resourcefulness in the stream transactional capacity and faith of customers has led it to become one of the finest. It is one of the rarest sites that allow third party intervention through API. Digital wallets, advanced blockchain technology, swift transactions, and focus on security concerns make it viable.

How to go about trading in the cryptocurrency market?

As others would mention, there is no rocket science to it. You should take your chance but wisely. Consider the virtual currency market as some traffic signal. Stop when it is reds (dipping furiously), get your funds in yellow, and in green just invest.

There are no rules for guessing, and you have to be patient with your greedy appetite. An appetiser in these scenarios should quench your thirst. Quest for more significant profits can cast troubles.

Some of the essential tips that one pay heed to:-

Rewards and risks may seem synonymous with each other. There is a thin line manning both intentions. So, never invest more than you can lose.

Averaging your portfolio from time to time is advisable to learn tricks of the trade.

Do not hesitate to make small profits.

Greed takes a toll on your wealth. So, be wise and exit while the crypto market is surging.

Do not make a significant investment at once. Take your time and picture the volatility, fundamentals, and fluctuations.

Unlike stock markets, cryptocurrencies trade for twenty-four hours a day and three sixty-five days a year. This phenomenon makes it highly unpredictable.

Eye bitcoin:-If you are willing to scale heights in the market, then you must keep a tab on how bitcoin performs. The reason for it is that most of the crypto or virtual currencies get traded using bitcoin. If it is on the rise, the market shows signs of a surge, else it slips.

Small portion investment:-You cannot gulp the entire food at once. Small portions intake with some variety helps in better digestion and taste, of course. Similarly, investing your money on a single virtual currency can incur losses. It can cause a deficiency in the wallet and your account. For result-oriented and profitable outcomes, invest in a few currencies. If one causes you some loss, who knows the other one can provide you with some respite. It is like being mindful.

Important categorisation:-While putting yourself into research, categorisation plays a pivotal role. You come across relatively volatile coins, which have limited volumes but enormous fluctuations. There are some that trail with great publicity and fall short on delivery point. A few currencies seem right for the future, holding them for long-term is profitable. Bifurcate or categorise them to create a balance in your investments.

Do not Panic:-Beginners tend to feel helpless when markets shatter. These are the testing times. Have patience, consider them as an opportunity for calculated investment. That can result in a profitable venture. Correction or dip in the market is like rain for farmers. You can sow the seeds and wait for good crops. Here your calm works as the sunlight to ream them.

Put a stop loss:-Initially, when you are susceptible and vulnerable regarding your coins’ performance, put a barrier. It is known as stop-loss in the technical term. If you do not want to hold a coin for a longer time and it’s dipping, put a stop-loss on a specific price. Once it touches that, you’ll exit automatically, as your asset gets sold. That can save you from incurring heavy losses.

If you are a fresher and thinking of getting into the unknown waters of cryptocurrency trading, just do it. Never have two thoughts once you decide to experience something new. Research about it, learn from other’s mistakes, analyse, check the volumes and see the past. Take one step at a time. Once you claim expertise in the domain, I’m sure that you will over time, experiment. Once you make profits, keep your invested money on the shelf and use it instead for future transactions. And pass on the sound advice.

#forex broker reviews #forex scalping #fx broker #cryptocoin #crypto #crypto currency #stocks #litecoin #forexeducation #bitcoin #btc

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blogmarydsouza · 5 years ago

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Crypto Currency - Future of Transactions

Introduction of Crypto Currency

A cryptocurrency is a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses strong cryptography to secure financial transactions, control the creation of additional units, and verify the transfer of assets Cryptocurrencies use decentralized control as opposed to centralized digital currency and central banking systems.

The decentralized control of each cryptocurrency works through distributed ledger technology, typically a blockchain, that serves as a public financial transaction database.

Bitcoin, first released as open-source software in 2009, is generally considered the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Since the release of bitcoin, over 6,000 altcoins (alternative variants of bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies) have been created.

History of Cryptocurrency

In 1983, the American cryptographer David Chaum conceived an anonymous cryptographic electronic money called ecash.

1995, he implemented it through Digicash, an early form of cryptographic electronic payments which required user software in order to withdraw notes from a bank and designate specific encrypted keys before it can be sent to a recipient. This allowed the digital currency to be untraceable by the issuing bank, the government, or any third party.

In 1996, the NSA published a paper entitled How to Make a Mint: the Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash, describing a Cryptocurrency system first publishing it in a MIT mailing list] and later in 1997, in The American Law Review

In 1998, Wei Dai published a description of "b-money", characterized as an anonymous, distributed electronic cash system.Shortly thereafter, Nick Szabo described bit gold. Like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that would follow it, bit gold (not to be confused with the later gold-based exchange, BitGold) was described as an electronic currency system which required users to complete a proof of work function with solutions being cryptographically put together and published. A currency system based on a reusable proof of work was later created by Hal Finney who followed the work of Dai and Szabo

The first decentralized cryptocurrency, bitcoin, was created in 2009 by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto. It used SHA-256, a cryptographic hash function, as its proof-of-work scheme. In April 2011, Namecoin was created as an attempt at forming a decentralized DNS, which would make internet censorship very difficult. Soon after, in October 2011, Litecoin was released. It was the first successful cryptocurrency to use scrypt as its hash function instead of SHA-256. Another notable cryptocurrency, Peercoin was the first to use a proof-of-work/proof-of-stake hybrid.

On 6 August 2014, the UK announced its Treasury had been commissioned to do a study of cryptocurrencies, and what role, if any, they can play in the UK economy.

The purpose of Cryptocurrency

The purpose of cryptocurrencies is to create a medium for gambling and speculation. There is no way any crypto could become a sort of international or universal medium of exchange. The only purpose for having a money system is to provide an acceptable and guaranteed medium of exchange to facilitate trade. As there are no regulations relating to cryptos there is no way anyone can provide a guarantee that they either exist in the first place, of that what is being speculated on is, in fact, a genuine bit of digital dust floating around in cyberspace.

Besides that, no digital currency is worth anything unless it, ultimately, can be exchanged for some form of legal tender. Only a nation’s Government has the authority to declare what shall be a nation’s legal tender and only the Government has the authority to guarantee the tender by punishing counterfeiters.

Characteristics of Cryptocurrency

In order to believe in the crypto revolution, it’s important to understand the fundamental aspects of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology that make it so revolutionary.

The 3 key characteristics of cryptocurrencies are that they are trustless, immutable, and decentralized.

1) Trustless

Bitcoin is trustless because it was designed in a way that nobody has to trust anybody else in order for the network to function.

Every form of currency before bitcoin required a central authority that you had to trust in order to use it. In all cases, that central authority becomes the central weakness that leads to the demise of the currency.

With bitcoin, each part of the ecosystem validates what the other parts are telling it without needing to trust anybody. If you broadcast a bitcoin transaction, all nodes receive it and verify that the signatures are valid. If the signatures are not valid, they discard the transaction.

Everyone on the network has a copy of the ledger so we no longer need to trust a single entity/organization/third-party because there is no need to trust when you can just verify against this ledger because you have a copy of it. The decentralized ledger is known as the block chain.

The incentivization of individual network actors though the proof-of-work consensus algorithm is one of the most groundbreaking ideas in modern economics.

The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU proof-of-worker than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins.

He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favor him with more new coins than everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth.

— Satoshi Nakamoto

Although we are still figuring out exactly how we use cryptocurrencies and and what for, they are here to stay. Aside from the other major benefits of cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech, solving the centralized trust issue alone is a big enough innovation to give crypto staying power.

2) Immutable

“Immutable”, in its simplest sense, means “cannot be undone.”

Immutability in regards to blockchain and cryptocurrency should follow 3 principles:

· It should be highly improbable or difficult to rewrite history.

· It should be impossible for anyone but the owner of a private key to move funds.

· All transactions are recorded on the blockchain.

When we want to check how money has been spent from our bank accounts, we check our transaction history with the bank. We trust our banks not to fabricate transactions or manipulate our money as we trust them to deliver our transactions to recipients. If there are fraudulent transactions, the bank also needs to be trusted to change them and fix the situation.

As we have already seen that the elements of centralization and trust are removed from cryptocurrency, there is no longer a third party for us to trust to do these things. Therefore, transaction records are made public and unchangeable (immutable).

Although it isn’t impossible to change the transaction ledger, cryptographic security makes it extremely difficult. It require you to compromise the entire network of cryptocurrency users.

3) Decentralized

Since “decentralization” is such a relevant buzzword in the crypto community, it’s important to define it well. It can take on different meanings.

“Blockchains are politically decentralized (no one controls them) and architecturally decentralized (no infrastructural central point of failure) but they are logically centralized (there is one commonly agreed state and the system behaves like a single computer).” — Vitalik Buterin

· Fault tolerance: decentralized systems are less likely to fail accidentally because they rely on networks of separate components.

· Attack resistance: decentralized systems are more expensive to attack and destroy or manipulate because they don’t have vulnerable central points that can be attacked at much lower cost than the surrounding system.

· Collusion resistance : it‘s harder for members of decentralized systems to act in ways that benefit them at the expense of others. On the other hand, corporations and governments collude in ways that benefit themselves but hurt others all the time.

With central banks and governments, the supply and creation of money through mints and interest rates are controlled only by the banks. Users of fiat currencies are at the mercy of the central banks’ money-printing whims.

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power — we must have a dispersion of power .

— Milton Friedman

If you are not yet outraged by the central banking money-printing scam, it is helpful to think of it as a hidden tax when they print and destroy the wealth you have stored in those fiat currencies.

Moving Into the Future

Top Cryptocurrencies will play an important role in the future, with the use steadily increasing over the past several years. Bitcoin is currently used in 96 countries and growing, with 12,000 transactions occur every hour. Understanding more about cryptocurrency is the first step, and the second is to try it.

Purchase a small amount of cryptocurrency through an exchange, test it out, and complete a few transactions. After you get a feel for the process, you may decide to try mining. But whatever your path, know that the future of cryptocurrency is bright, and the list of cryptocurrencies is only expanding.

Genesis Mining offers you a smart and easy way to mine using our cloud hosting solution. Our solution is designed for those who are new to the world of cryptocurrencies, as well as for cryptocurrency experts and large-scale end users. Genesis Mining is the world’s first large-scale multi-algorithm cloud-mining service, offering an alternative to those who would like to engage in Bitcoin and altcoin mining.

#cryptocurrency #historyofcryptocurrency #purpose #characteristics #future of money

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studyofeverything · 8 years ago

Link

An algorithmic paradigm is a generic method or approach which underlies the design of a class of algorithms.

It is an abstraction higher than the notion of an algorithm.

This is like an algorithm is an abstraction higher than a computer program.

Examples of algorithmic paradigms

greedy algorithms : greedy approach

dynamic programming

divide and conquer algorithms

prune and search

...

Greedy algorithms

A greedy algorithm is an algorithmic paradigm that follows the problem solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage with the hope of finding a global optimum.

Fortunately, some greedy algorithms (such as Kruskal's or Prim's for minimum spanning trees) are proven to lead to the optimal solution.

The greedy algorithm of coin change problem gives a non-optimal solution.

Dynamic programming

Dynamic programming is a method for solving a complex problem by breaking it down into a collection of simpler subproblems, solving each of those subproblems just once, and storing their solutions – ideally, using a memory-based data structure. The next time the same subproblem occurs, instead of recomputing its solution, one simply looks up the previously computed solution, thereby saving computation time at the expense of a (hopefully) modest expenditure in storage space. The technique of storing solutions to subproblems instead of recomputing them is called "memoization".

A dynamic programming algorithm will examine the previously solved subproblems and will combine their solutions to give the best solution for the given problem.

Divide and conquer algorithm

In computer science, divide and conquer (D&C) is an algorithm design paradigm based on multi-branched recursion. A divide and conquer algorithm works by recursively breaking down a problem into two or more sub-problems of the same or related type, until these become simple enough to be solved directly. The solutions to the sub-problems are then combined to give a solution to the original problem.

Prune and search

The basic idea of the method, prune and search, is a recursive procedure in which at each step the input size is reduced ("pruned") by a constant factor 0 < p < 1.

Let n be the input size, T(n) be the time complexity of the whole prune-and-search algorithm, and S(n) be the time complexity of the pruning step. Then T(n) obeys the following recurrence relation:

T(n)=S(n)+T(n(1-p)).

This resembles the recurrence for binary search but has a larger S(n) term than the constant term of binary search. In prune and search algorithms S(n) is typically at least linear.

#algorithmic paradigm #algorithm #computer science

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jacobhinkley · 7 years ago

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NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started

The NAGA platform has a lot going on, with an extensive ecosystem of proven use cases and value drivers. With such a diverse portfolio, it’s easy to overlook the core components of NAGA — here’s everything you need to know to get up to speed.

The Many Benefits of NAGA COIN (NGC)

At the very center of NAGA is the ecosystem’s in-house cryptocurrency token, the NAGA COIN (NGC), which powers the platform and integrates seamlessly with all of NAGA’s tools.

The most impressive aspect of NGC is that it successfully decentralizes cryptocurrency for traditional financial markets, virtual goods, and cryptocurrencies, by undermining and removing the need for greedy banks and corporations. Why share your profits with costly middlemen when NAGA cuts them out entirely?

There is also a whole slew of other benefits for NGC token holders, including:

Reduced trading fees on NAGA TRADER, as well as on every asset using an NGC account. For example, NGC users will pay 50% less on trading commissions for each trade they perform on NAGA TRADER.

Cashback on a per-trade basis performed by NAGA TRADER using an NGC account.

Double crediting of copy bonuses on NAGA TRADER using an NGC account.

Lower trading fees for every asset listed on NAGA VIRTUAL.

Membership in the NAGA VIRTUAL Cashback Program.

Payment method for all NAGA Academy courses

Discounted purchase of ad credits for the NAGA VIRTUAL and NAGA TRADER AdManager.

Community status and free access to paid and premium content.

Users also benefit from the digital transformation of the largest industries in the world.

The cryptocurrency market is full of useless coins, but NGC has already flexed its muscles. In fact, on May 23, the 24-hour trading volume was $15 million.

The token’s success has also helped it garner an impressive listing on the popular cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex, and has recently been integrated into the cryptocurrency exchange service Changelly.

The token is also available to trade on other major cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Upbit, HitBTC, OKEx, IDEX, and Cobinhood.

NAGA TRADER, The First Social Trading Network

NAGA doesn’t just feature an impressive token, of course. It also boasts a robust trading network unlike any other currently available, allowing users to trade 700 markets in real-time — including cryptocurrencies, stocks, and forex. It also supports the funding of trading accounts with cryptocurrencies.

The social aspect of NAGA TRADER is what really sets the platform apart, however. The network affords users the opportunity to create public and private chats, automatically copy the platform’s best traders, and use CYBO, a self-learning algorithm which manages users’ portfolios 24 hours a day. Portfolios are also kept safe with NAGA TRADER Protector, which help limit risk and automatically secure trading profits.

NAGA TRADER also keeps users up to date with a continually refreshing News Feed, which displays the most relevant news as it breaks, but cuts out all of the junk.

Finally, the latest update to the NAGA TRADER app has added — in addition to improvements regarding stability and security — a fully-automated verification process, complete with face recognition.

A Wallet Unlike Any Other

No bonafide cryptocurrency ecosystem is complete without a safe and secure wallet. NAGA has one, of course — but the platform’s wallet is more than simply a place to store your cryptocurrency.

In April, the NAGA team launched its new-and-improved NAGA WALLET — well ahead of its roadmap’s scheduled release. Featuring ultra-low fees, the NAGA WALLET is a top-of-the-line cryptocurrency wallet that allows users to securely store six of the world’s leading digital assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Dash (DASH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), and NAGA COIN (NGC). Additionally, it supports all ERC-20 compatible tokens. If you can name it, there’s a good change NAGA WALLET can store it.

The NAGA WALLET is also helping push cryptocurrencies into the mainstream by allowing users to instantaneously send coins and tokens on the blockchain without having to know other people’s wallet addresses. Users may send coins and tokens directly to their contacts through their email address — taking the stress and complication out of cryptocurrency transactions.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, NAGA transactions are also up to 18,000 times faster than Bitcoin transactions — and carry extremely small fees.

Furthermore, NAGA WALLET is also a multi-currency payment gateway, equipped with a multi-factor authentication system which provides the highest level of security. Of course, the NAGA WALLET also seamlessly interacts with the entire NAGA ecosystem — making it one of the best wallets around.

youtube

NAGA VIRTUAL, A Platform for Gamers

A lesser-known, but nevertheless important, NAGA offering is NAGA VIRTUAL (Switex) — a unique, safe, fair, and modern market-oriented towards gamers.

NAGA VIRTUAL provides gamers a platform on which to buy and sell items to and from each other, which positively converts the time and effort gamers spend gaming into something profitable. The platform also affords gamers the freedom and ability to trade from different games of different sources (PC, console, mobile etc.), which also benefits the game publishers themselves. Furthermore, NAGA VIRTUAL offers an individual store for publishers, which serves as a direct income channel and a distribution platform for new items from their games.

vimeo

Just the Beginning

Ultimately, the information detailed here is merely scratching the surface of what the NAGA ecosystem has to offer the cryptocurrency and traditional investment community. It’s also just the beginning.

NAGA has already launched NAGA ACADEMY — in cooperation with a leading Cypriot educational institution, which boasts over 20 years of experience and offers UK-recognized Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. (All tuition fees are payable with NGC.)

Furthermore, NAGA will soon be adding to its diversified ecosystem with the introduction of NAGA CARD, NAGA EXCHANGE, and NAGA WEALTH — proving that the best has yet to come.

The post NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started appeared first on NewsBTC.

NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

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michaelbennettcrypto · 7 years ago

Text

NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started

The Many Benefits of NAGA COIN (NGC)

At the very center of NAGA is the ecosystem’s in-house cryptocurrency token, the NAGA COIN (NGC), which powers the platform and integrates seamlessly with all of NAGA’s tools.

There is also a whole slew of other benefits for NGC token holders, including:

Reduced trading fees on NAGA TRADER, as well as on every asset using an NGC account. For example, NGC users will pay 50% less on trading commissions for each trade they perform on NAGA TRADER.

Cashback on a per-trade basis performed by NAGA TRADER using an NGC account.

Double crediting of copy bonuses on NAGA TRADER using an NGC account.

Lower trading fees for every asset listed on NAGA VIRTUAL.

Membership in the NAGA VIRTUAL Cashback Program.

Payment method for all NAGA Academy courses

Discounted purchase of ad credits for the NAGA VIRTUAL and NAGA TRADER AdManager.

Community status and free access to paid and premium content.

Users also benefit from the digital transformation of the largest industries in the world.

The cryptocurrency market is full of useless coins, but NGC has already flexed its muscles. In fact, on May 23, the 24-hour trading volume was $15 million.

The token is also available to trade on other major cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Upbit, HitBTC, OKEx, IDEX, and Cobinhood.

NAGA TRADER, The First Social Trading Network

NAGA TRADER also keeps users up to date with a continually refreshing News Feed, which displays the most relevant news as it breaks, but cuts out all of the junk.

A Wallet Unlike Any Other

No bonafide cryptocurrency ecosystem is complete without a safe and secure wallet. NAGA has one, of course — but the platform’s wallet is more than simply a place to store your cryptocurrency.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, NAGA transactions are also up to 18,000 times faster than Bitcoin transactions — and carry extremely small fees.

youtube

NAGA VIRTUAL, A Platform for Gamers

A lesser-known, but nevertheless important, NAGA offering is NAGA VIRTUAL (Switex) — a unique, safe, fair, and modern market-oriented towards gamers.

vimeo

Just the Beginning

Furthermore, NAGA will soon be adding to its diversified ecosystem with the introduction of NAGA CARD, NAGA EXCHANGE, and NAGA WEALTH — proving that the best has yet to come.

The post NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started appeared first on NewsBTC.

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brettzjacksonblog · 7 years ago

Text

NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started

The Many Benefits of NAGA COIN (NGC)

At the very center of NAGA is the ecosystem’s in-house cryptocurrency token, the NAGA COIN (NGC), which powers the platform and integrates seamlessly with all of NAGA’s tools.

There is also a whole slew of other benefits for NGC token holders, including:

Reduced trading fees on NAGA TRADER, as well as on every asset using an NGC account. For example, NGC users will pay 50% less on trading commissions for each trade they perform on NAGA TRADER.

Cashback on a per-trade basis performed by NAGA TRADER using an NGC account.

Double crediting of copy bonuses on NAGA TRADER using an NGC account.

Lower trading fees for every asset listed on NAGA VIRTUAL.

Membership in the NAGA VIRTUAL Cashback Program.

Payment method for all NAGA Academy courses

Discounted purchase of ad credits for the NAGA VIRTUAL and NAGA TRADER AdManager.

Community status and free access to paid and premium content.

Users also benefit from the digital transformation of the largest industries in the world.

The cryptocurrency market is full of useless coins, but NGC has already flexed its muscles. In fact, on May 23, the 24-hour trading volume was $15 million.

The token is also available to trade on other major cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Upbit, HitBTC, OKEx, IDEX, and Cobinhood.

NAGA TRADER, The First Social Trading Network

NAGA TRADER also keeps users up to date with a continually refreshing News Feed, which displays the most relevant news as it breaks, but cuts out all of the junk.

A Wallet Unlike Any Other

No bonafide cryptocurrency ecosystem is complete without a safe and secure wallet. NAGA has one, of course — but the platform’s wallet is more than simply a place to store your cryptocurrency.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, NAGA transactions are also up to 18,000 times faster than Bitcoin transactions — and carry extremely small fees.

youtube

NAGA VIRTUAL, A Platform for Gamers

A lesser-known, but nevertheless important, NAGA offering is NAGA VIRTUAL (Switex) — a unique, safe, fair, and modern market-oriented towards gamers.

vimeo

Just the Beginning

Furthermore, NAGA will soon be adding to its diversified ecosystem with the introduction of NAGA CARD, NAGA EXCHANGE, and NAGA WEALTH — proving that the best has yet to come.

The post NAGA’s Already-Extensive Ecosystem is Only Just Getting Started appeared first on NewsBTC.

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programmingsolver · 6 years ago

Text

Homework #4 Solution

1 Coin Change

We now prove the simple greedy algorithm for the coin change problem with quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies are optimal (i.e. the number of coins in the given change is minimized), when the supply of each coin type is unlimited.

Let qo , do , ko , po be the number of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies used for changing n cents in an optimal solution.

First,…

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politicalfilth-blog · 6 years ago

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New Details Emerge Jussie Smollet Is Really Dumb

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In this video, we give you the latest breaking news on the entire Jussie Smollet debacle. The truth is that Jussie Smollet is everything that is wrong with our culture.

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Transcript

Now as you probably heard already Jesse Smollett the crisis actor has been taken into custody after a grand jury indictment is charging him of a felony that has a minimum one-year prison sentence and that’s why in this video I specifically wanted to talk about all the new latest developments which I think prove that jussie Smollett is one of the dumbest criminals ever as well as a deeper conversation at the end of the video which I think Jesse actually explained the best himself something quote who is more to blame? A devil who spreads obvious lies or a fool who chooses to believe those lies and pass them along to hashtag bus as the mainstream media is losing their mind and actually saying that they’re mad that I hate crime and of course running cover for the divide-and-conquer racial divisions that they have been promoting and pushing the American people restart just know that you’re watching a fully Independent Media broadcast brought to you by yuya. Soft viewer and without your support your donations we wouldn’t be here and the only reason we are as because of you and your support so if you like this work considering donating because yeah we have a lot of things against us I mean just this particular story loan if you look on YouTube when you type in Jessie Smollett the first thing that you don’t even get a video you should get a Fox News article talking about how Don Lemon says it’s not juicy spot on YouTube where the hell am I supposed to force read an article by mainstream media outlets and then of course CNN Fox News time mainstream media propaganda nothing organic I totally rigged algorithm promoting of course corporate propaganda trying to control ants the ordinary live on this important issue personally I also think someone measures are happening on Facebook right now of course this is done because the Jessie Smollett case is on national issue that everyone is talking about right now and I have to say the details surrounding this case are absolutely incredulous now of course. People died in the original story when it first came out only to be vilified attack viciously on the mainstream media and of course verified Twitter personalities even people who question the narrative or attack asking rational questions like a damn this guy ever hear of GrubHub why did he have the new still around his head and why didn’t he comply with officers and give away the phone but will not work we’re finding out all those details and I can pretty much say that jussie Smollett most likely will be going to jail because again this is not his first run-in with the law as in 2007 he was actually charged with lying to a police officer providing false information as well as driving Under the Influence a DUI without a license and of course repeat offenders face a higher chance of being sent to jail which I believe will be happening in this particular case and with these particular charges he is facing a felony charge of a one-year minimum sentence to as high as a 3-year sentence. Smart somehow is still denying that he had anything to do with the planning of this attack which is.

Absolutely ridiculous when we look at just the evidence that is provided here with your chosen.

This man is not really that smart now it’s important to note here that Smollett could also be facing federal charges because of a previous incident that happened right before this one what’s the Chicago Police Superintendent said was an attempt by Smollett to gain attention by sending a false letter that railed on racial homophobic and political language which was also by the way filled with a white powder.

Have to call in a HazMat team and is also looking like a hoax and potentially may even bring Federal indictment charges on top of this felony charge that he has already been indicted by Jessie Smollett.

Gencive paper trail and really I don’t know how someone.

Just like that because when you look at the details here because it is absolutely mind-boggling to think that Jesse was thinking he was going to get away with this especially since there is phone records with some of that talking to the Nigerian Brothers he hired when she actually talked to an hour before the attack and an hour after attack and also when the brothers went to Nigeria if there’s even surveillance footage of the Nigerian Brothers in a store buying all the supplies even what looks like a red Maga hat here finally climas and other tools that were used during this apparent assault start racist homophobic hate crime and for goodness gracious.

Smollett even paid $3,500 with a check at a personal check from his own bank account which was this Twitter account users as hopefully the 1099 by the due date with the IRS.

Now along with that and what I’m hearing is over 24 detectives who are investigating this were spending their police resources on this in one of the most violent cities with the most murders in the United States Chicago of all places that they even clearly had footage of the Nigerian brothers and then of course falsifying this attack which allegedly was because of his salary According to some police sources now Jesse Smollett actually made $65,000 per episode for starting and of course the TV series Empire which has 18 episode again I say allegedly he was dissatisfied with his 1.17 million-dollar salary which allegedly wasn’t enough of course nothing is better than hate especially in today’s manufactured divide and conquer conquer media landscape that we’re all being thrown into and if that would have gotten away with this he most likely would have gotten. Probably a major book deal a lot of attention a lot of support I pretty much the gold medal in the oppression Olympics here which should raise some questions here because unless he’s some kind of incredulous greedy psychotic lunatic the prospects of him getting monetarily from this seem weak compared to the power and influence that someone would get because of this false flag hate attack that happened no one really knows here because yeah he could be a psychopathic greeting its sane human being and not to be the case here but it is the most telling aspect ears of course how the mainstream media is responding to this with Don Lemon saying that he’s sad that this happened sad that a fake crime didn’t happen to look at the mentality of these people they have lost a major PR war that has been faked that has been engineered that has been pushed that has been manufactured that has just been rammed down our throats without looking. Any of the evidence any other due diligence they messed up and their reaction to all of this is you know it’s actually good that a hate crime didn’t happen like this in our country not their reaction is.

Wish I was just absolutely insane it’s like running the Twilight Zone. Let me sing oh he just lost in the court of public opinion he just got fired Vice the mainstream question about this terrific job another CNN slumlord hate promoter Brian Stettler also ran cover nothing wrong here it’s not his fault tree media and these asinine individuals trying to be victims out of this entire situation this is absolutely insane and you just get him sneak peek into the promotion of the victim mentality that they want you to have it I want you to have a backbone they don’t want you to stand up for yourself you don’t want you to actually represent the ideas and fight for them and do something morally good they want you to sit back get beat up run on social media and a social controllers the corporatist they’ll run on by with of course the problem reaction solution dialectic. Coming together with oh no we have to help all these poor victims but the globalist corporatist Baxter’s and big government come and help you since we’re the authority here and we’re going to help you buy sensor and Candice drawing the basic Freedom elements in our society and I’m utterly sick of it and this is why again I’ve been saying this for your the most dangerous weapon in the world is of course the control of information and then ability to silence anyone who opposes and the first step in combating all of this is realizing.

That’s my opinion if you think I’m wrong let me know why in the comments section below we always answer, it’s within the first hour of the video being released so make sure you subscribe click the notification button it means a lot to us because if it wasn’t for you to be here that’s why I love you guys thank you again so much watching state to inform.

The post New Details Emerge Jussie Smollet Is Really Dumb appeared first on We Are Change.

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dailycryptonews-blog · 7 years ago

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ASIC Resistance: Will Ethereum Join Monero Against the Mining Giant?

ASIC Resistance: Will Ethereum Join Monero Against the Mining Giant? Subsequent to Monero hard fork Ethereum may abandon PoW to send ASIC miners to the penalty bench. The crypto community is bracing for a real revolution – leading cryptocurrencies may abandon the Proof-of-Work (PoW)... You May Likes reading: Crypto Millionaire - Crypto News, Daily Bitcoin News, Crypto Daily, And ICO Review. Cryptocurrency News, And Review about technology, Finance, and Blockchain ASIC Resistance: Will Ethereum Join Monero Against the Mining Giant?

Subsequent to Monero hard fork Ethereum may abandon PoW to send ASIC miners to the penalty bench.

The crypto community is bracing for a real revolution - leading cryptocurrencies may abandon the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm. The reason is the far-reaching game of mining giant Bitmain, which is building up its monopoly on the market by stamping out new ASICs for top coins. This concerns not only the users who prefer traditional GPU farms, but also the developers themselves, as the ecosystem becomes increasingly centralized and vulnerable to attacks.

It seems that the line production of short life ASICs for new coins has turned into an arms race between Bitmain and less-rapid rivals. Everyone wants to bite off the last piece from the PoW algorithm, promising a quick payback and leaving no chance to traditional GPU farms. The first Antminers are sold out before the start of sales, and users seem to receive the promised profit. If it were not for one thing - ASICs are quickly becoming unprofitable, and growing hash rates lead to Blockchain centralization.

ASIC resistance

In the community, Bitmain has gained a reputation of a "greedy bunch" after using a huge hashrate on its own pool (Antpool.com) to block important votes in the Bitcoin network. The resistance formation itself began at the start of the year when Bitmain suddenly announced the launch of Antminer A3 production for SiaCoin mining, destroying 4 months of labor of its old competitor Obelisk.

We are proud and happy to announce that we are launching the Antminer A3, a new Antminer model to mine cryptocurrencies using the hashing algorithm Blake(2b). The actual price and option to buy will be available here https://t.co/mrymOaMy4i after 2:30PM (17 Jan, GMT+8). pic.twitter.com/Ye0cxNn95M

— BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) January 17, 2018

At that time, David Warrick, the founder of SiaCoin and owner of Obelisk, did not fulfill his soft fork promise and gave Bitmain a chance to fix the situation.

After much consideration and discussion, we've decided to not invalidate A3 miners via soft-fork unless Bitmain takes direct action to harm the Sia project. We're incredibly excited about 2018 and will move forward stronger. Full response: https://t.co/I96X8Y6VMi

— Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ) January 25, 2018

Actually, the situation was corrected by itself. At the start of sales, Bitmain promised a daily profit of $460, which in just 10 days fell by 2 times, with only $10 to date.

Image source: Whattomine

Yellow card #1

The winter party A3 was not sold out yet when Bitmain announced a new model, which this time would take up the extraction of more popular coin, Monero (XMR):

We are pleased to announce the all-new Antminer X3, to mine cryptocurrencies based on the CryptoNight hashing algorithm. Two batches: shipping in June (https://t.co/VeidZrreK2) and shipping in May (https://t.co/RKtJe6Rm8D) To prevent hoarding and to enable.... (1/2) pic.twitter.com/PBKdXrwg9b

— BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) March 15, 2018

Already tense, the state of things was further fueled by Baikal, which following its rival hastened to bite off a piece from the Monero pie. Developers of the latter were less compliant than SiaTech and kept their promise to conduct a hard fork for resisting ASIC mining. Nevertheless, Bitmain didn't arrive and withdrew from responsibility for possible problems with Monero, promptly placing the following disclaimer on its website:

"One major cryptocurrency which is using CryptoNight hash function is about to change their PoW algorihtm [CT: site misprint], and according to their public statement, it is purposely to brick ASIC mining rigs including X3. When you buying it, you are betting that they are wrong."

Although ASIC miners support other coins, for example, Bytecoin, Aeon and Dash, what about the $4,500 profit promised per month that turned into a pumpkin?

Monthly return as of April 26, according to Cryptocompare

Image source: Cryptocompare

Monthly return as of March 17, according to Cryptocompare

Image source: Cryptocompare

Particularly as many users are dissatisfied with the the reduced profitability and unusable equipment that “crashes every 30 to 40 minutes and restarts the PC”.

Yellow card #2?

Bitmain owners would not have been themselves, had they not coveted a more delicious crypto piece. On April 3, developers announced the release of the "world's most powerful and efficient EtHash ASIC", now under the Ethash algorithm, which Ethereum and Ethereum Classic work on.

We are pleased to announce the Antminer E3, world's most powerful and efficient EtHash ASIC miner. Ordering limit of one miner per user and not available in China. Limited stock, order here now: https://t.co/Zfw3afjJHs#antminerE3 pic.twitter.com/SjHu2eUThp

— BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) April 3, 2018

The master of surprises from China successfully refuted the general belief that the Ethash protocol is ASIC resistant and Ethereum can be mined only through traditional GPU cards.

In addition to Bitmain, three other companies are working in this direction, one of whom - Halong Mining - recently joined the Blockchain Defensive Patent License initiative with a patent for the overt version of AsicBoost technology.

It seems that this caused concern in the Ethereum Foundation, which until then had been slow to move to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm for reducing the role of mining. Is Bitmain sure that Ethereum will not be able to abandon PoW, and the transition to PoS will result in just another Ethereum classic-style hard fork?

While one of the Ethereum developers initiates a hard fork Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) #958 on Github, and the other one receives a 57 percent vote from his Twitter followers supporting this radical measure, Vitalik Buterin shared with Cointelegraph his opinion that the threat is overestimated:

“I am in principle open to it, but I feel it's early to commit to a specific fork, because we still know fairly little about what kind of ASICs we're dealing with, whether they are really ASICs or just super-optimized GPUs with non-essential parts stripped out, and what options there are for changing the algorithm.”

He also told Cointelegraph that he expects it “to continue to be debated within the community in the short to medium term”.

It seems that he is right. While some users expect to see a large number of GPU cards coming to the secondary market soon, others pay attention to the fact that by the time the Antminer E3 reaches the consumer, it may actually lose its relevance. According to AsicMinerValue, E3 owners will get $7.38 per day or $221.36 per month after deducting electricity costs.

Image source: AsicMinerValue

While Bitmain again shirks responsibility and happily accepts orders for the Antminer E3, no more than 5 units are able to be ordered at a time. According to the manufacturer, by the time the shipments start, the performance and energy efficiency of the model will be improved.

Penalty bench risk

Bitmain's monopoly continues to grow. At the same time, the number of available coins decreases and the number of miners remains the same. The debate is becoming more acute, shifting more pressure on the development team. The creators of ZCash were openly accused of betraying the interests of the community, Monero conducted a hard fork, and Ethereum is on the way to changing the algorithm.

While some companies conduct hard forks and others occupy waiting positions, Bitmain and its colleagues are actively bringing more and more powerful devices to the market that can supplant obsolete configurations. However, it is worth remembering one weak spot of ASICs is they can be hit by ASIC Resistance followers. This is the impossibility of reprogramming the core. So, fundamental changes in the PoW algorithm could soon send Bitmain to the panel bench.

Source #bitcoin #news #cryptonews #cryptocurrency #dailybitcoinnew

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awesomeblockchain · 7 years ago

Link

ASIC resistanceIn the community, Bitmain has gained a reputation of a "greedy bunch" after using a huge hashrate on its own pool (Antpool.com) to block important votes in the Bitcoin network. The resistance formation itself began at the start of the year when Bitmain suddenly announced the launch of Antminer A3 production for SiaCoin mining, destroying 4 months of labor of its old competitor Obelisk.

We are proud and happy to announce that we are launching the Antminer A3, a new Antminer model to mine cryptocurrencies using the hashing algorithm Blake(2b).

The actual price and option to buy will be available here https://t.co/mrymOaMy4i after 2:30PM (17 Jan, GMT+8). pic.twitter.com/Ye0cxNn95M

- BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) January 17, 2018At that time, David Warrick, the founder of SiaCoin and owner of Obelisk, did not fulfill his soft fork promise and gave Bitmain a chance to fix the situation.

- Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ) January 25, 2018Actually, the situation was corrected by itself. At the start of sales, Bitmain promised a daily profit of $460, which in just 10 days fell by 2 times, with only $10 to date.

Image source: Whattomine

Yellow card #1The winter party A3 was not sold out yet when Bitmain announced a new model, which this time would take up the extraction of more popular coin, Monero (XMR):

We are pleased to announce the all-new Antminer X3, to mine cryptocurrencies based on the CryptoNight hashing algorithm.

Two batches: shipping in June (https://t.co/VeidZrreK2) and shipping in May (https://t.co/RKtJe6Rm8D)

To prevent hoarding and to enable.... (1/2) pic.twitter.com/PBKdXrwg9b

- BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) March 15, 2018Already tense, the state of things was further fueled by Baikal, which following its rival hastened to bite off a piece from the Monero pie. Developers of the latter were less compliant than SiaTech and kept their promise to conduct a hard fork for resisting ASIC mining. Nevertheless, Bitmain didn't arrive and withdrew from responsibility for possible problems with Monero, promptly placing the following disclaimer on its website:

Although ASIC miners support other coins, for example, Bytecoin, Aeon and Dash, what about the $4,500 profit promised per month that turned into a pumpkin?

Monthly return as of April 26, according to Cryptocompare

Image source: Cryptocompare

Monthly return as of March 17, according to Cryptocompare

Image source: Cryptocompare

Particularly as many users are dissatisfied with the the reduced profitability and unusable equipment that -crashes every 30 to 40 minutes and restarts the PC".

Yellow card #2?Bitmain owners would not have been themselves, had they not coveted a more delicious crypto piece. On April 3, developers announced the release of the "world's most powerful and efficient EtHash ASIC", now under the Ethash algorithm, which Ethereum and Ethereum Classic work on.

We are pleased to announce the Antminer E3, world's most powerful and efficient EtHash ASIC miner.

Ordering limit of one miner per user and not available in China.

Limited stock, order here now: pic.twitter.com/SjHu2eUThp

- BITMAIN (@BITMAINtech) April 3, 2018The master of surprises from China successfully refuted the general belief that the Ethash protocol is ASIC resistant and Ethereum can be mined only through traditional GPU cards.

-I am in principle open to it, but I feel it's early to commit to a specific fork, because we still know fairly little about what kind of ASICs we're dealing with, whether they are really ASICs or just super-optimized GPUs with non-essential parts stripped out, and what options there are for changing the algorithm."

He also told Cointelegraph that he expects it -to continue to be debated within the community in the short to medium term".

Image source: AsicMinerValue

Penalty bench riskBitmain's monopoly continues to grow. At the same time, the number of available coins decreases and the number of miners remains the same. The debate is becoming more acute, shifting more pressure on the development team. The creators of ZCash were openly accused of betraying the interests of the community, Monero conducted a hard fork, and Ethereum is on the way to changing the algorithm.

https://ift.tt/2Krli62

#Ingentium #Inc. - Today

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cryptobully-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Monero and SiaCoin Reject Bitmain’s ASIC Miners, Who Could Be Next?

http://cryptobully.com/monero-and-siacoin-reject-bitmains-asic-miners-who-could-be-next/

Monero and SiaCoin Reject Bitmain’s ASIC Miners, Who Could Be Next?

On March 24 the creators of Monero made an unprecedented statement – the project devlead, Riccardo Spagni, warned that the coin’s protocol would be changed every six months to make the cryptocurrency less appealing to application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners.

The measure was initiated after Bitmain announced a new super powerful Antminer X3 ASIC miner designed specifically for calculations based on the CryptoNight algorithm, which is the basis for such cryptocurrencies as Monero (XMR), ByteCoin (BCN) and AeonCoin (AEON).

The dominance of Bitmain shook the reputation of industry giants AMD and Nvidia, whose shares fell sharply after Wall Street firm Susquehanna reported that Bitmain’s new Ethereum miner would increase its competitiveness on March 26.

Manufacturers of miners monopolize the market

Today, when the cryptocurrency market becomes stagnant, mining may be the only way to earn profit. This forces the largest manufacturers of video cards and specialized ASIC chips to bring new, more productive models of devices to the market. ASIC-based miners overtop competitors’ CPUs and GPUs, creating a real threat of mining concentration between the largest players provided with the most powerful equipment.

Some in the Blockchain community are concerned about such kind of centralization that could damage network security. Actually decentralization based on the miners’ competition helps to defend the system and its participants, protecting the network from intruders. That’s why the token developers are forced to create artificial obstacles to the use of ASIC equipment.

Due to the present monopoly on the production of ASIC miners and the expansion of its positions in the mining equipment market as a whole, according to Bernstein analysts, Bitmain earned about $4 bln last year, the same amount as Nvidia. It is noteworthy that Bitmain achieved this level six times faster than Nvidia, who took 24 years to achieve these levels of profits.

Antminer X3 developers promise $4,500 profit per month

As stated by CryptoCompare, the new ASIC can give up to $4,500 in monthly profits to its owner, but its calculation process is based primarily on the involvement of devices in Monero network transactions, which may lead to disrupting XMR network functioning.

Image source: CryptoCompare

Monero reaction

The developers of Monero, in their turn, published defamatory posts about the insolvency of Antminer X3. Monero devlead Riccardo Spagni noted on his Twitter page that it “WILL NOT work” for Monero, since Monero’s core development group (CDG) is going to perform regular updates of the hashing algorithm.

Moreover, the upcoming hard fork will be aimed at making significant changes to the Proof-of-Work (PoW) protocol in order to prevent potential threats from ASICs.

Just a reminder that this WILL NOT work on Monero https://t.co/rhy6k2I4Yh

— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) March 15, 2018

To prevent the centralization of mining, changes would be regularly made in the protocol, making it impossible to calculate Monero using the new high-performance devices. The first update, preventing XMR mining on any types of ASIC chips, has already been released.

Some experts expressed their support for the official devteam of Monero on the issue of updating the algorithm.

Antonio Moratti, co-founder of the GoByte platform, which uses the NeoScrypt algorithm, said that he “would do the same”. He told Cointelegraph:

“GoByte was X11 in the testing phase. And some users have already started mining with ASICs. And we decided for NeoScrypt. Even that the GPU temps are not so good compared to other algos. I think XMR will have a new algo. I would do the same.”

David Vorick, the founder of Siacoin, wrote on his Reddit post:

“Bitmain has historically been very greedy, and very willing to sacrifice the well-being of the community, of their customers, and of the ecosystem, if that means they can make a couple of extra dollars.”

Surge of hashrate

Monero’s steps to prevent potential threats from new Bitmain equipment could have been caused by the surge of hashrate up to 1,07 GH/s in their transactional network, which was observed in mid Feb. 2018, when the values of XMR tokens’ mining process soared.

Image source: Coinwarz

Some users linked the surge to the subsequent Bitmain announcement to sell used devices. A month ago one popular Reddit user made a post where he suggested that Bitmain might “calculate very thoroughly when to announce and sell them [ASICs] so their customers will be (or think they will be) able to make some pennies”.

Here is how he describes what comes next – “dump their used equipment on the market by batches as the new version batches comes in freshly manufactured”.

Bitmain reputation: developers feel “anxiety”

Earlier, Bitmain had already acquired an ambiguous reputation before the start of sales of a new model. In January, amid negative rumors about the chance of extremely high network values, which could be created by the mass launch of Antminer designed for SiaCoin, the latter refused to support the algorithm at all.

Unexpectedly, Siacoin founder David Vorrick and his ASIC manufacturing company, Obelisk, fell into competition with Bitmain, which almost has a monopoly on Bitcoin mining equipment.

In his Reddit post Vorick expressed dissatisfaction, saying that the developers of Siacoin feel “anxiety”.

Later, SiaTech leader Zach Herbert gave an official green light to Bitmain and said they would “not invalidate A3 miners via soft-fork unless Bitmain takes direct action to harm the Sia project”.

After much consideration and discussion, we’ve decided to not invalidate A3 miners via soft-fork unless Bitmain takes direct action to harm the Sia project. We’re incredibly excited about 2018 and will move forward stronger. Full response: https://t.co/I96X8Y6VMi

— Sia Tech (@SiaTechHQ) January 25, 2018

Mine or buy?

Although Antminer X3 can contribute to the production of cryptocurrencies based on CryptoNight technology (DarknetCoin, AeonCoin etc.), the previous equipment for mining XMR usually did not bring a profit comparable to the potential profit from Monero’s trading circulation.

According to the analysis made by Reinisfischer XMR mining is “profitable, but not as lucrative as mining ether”, moreover “it would break even after a year of operations”.

For instance in December with $3,880 (the average price of 12 GPUs) one could earn about $1,940 in 10 days,

Image source: Coinmarketcap

while CryptoCompare says mining with GPUs for the same price would bring only $325 per month.

Image source: Cryptocompare

Beyond the immediacy of security issues, in general, Bitmain’s activity does not affect the state of individual cryptocurrencies.

That’s what co-founder of GoByte platform, which works on the principle of decentralized mining – a potential competitor of the current technology, Antonio Moratti, said to Cointelegraph:

“I don’t think a privacy coin would want to gather a lot of attention. XMR can mature further on its own without any further PR scandal.”

Will CryptoNight algorithm be used?

The fundamental task of CryptoNight is to eliminate the gap in the production of tokens between users of standard PCs and owners of specialized ASIC devices. The algorithm technology is based on allocating a data block with an unpredictable sequence in the computer’s RAM, with the data temporarily stored in RAM and not calculated at each access.

Compared with the same Scrypt algorithm, the CryptoNight structure has a number of technical advantages:

small time intervals between blocks (transaction speed less than 60 seconds),

smoothly falling emissions,

less central processing unit (CPU) and graphics card heating than when mining on other algorithms,

use of CPU + GPU binding and thus achieving faster access to RAM, increasing the speed of transactions.

Among other advantages of this hashing algorithm there are adequate conditions for its use on CPUs, where even passive income is possible (for example, on some Intel Xeon E3 users steadily receive up to $2 per month by using CryptoNight).

Who’s next?

Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, Decred and Sia – one by one these cryptocurrencies have become “victims” of ASIC-miners. The miners could consider the cryptocurrency becoming more centralized after the appearance of specialized devices, although the practice has not yet proven this.

Monero can become the first of the leading cryptocurrencies that will launch a radical means of combating ASIC-miners through the update of CryptoNight hashing algorithm. The further events will show how much the algorithm will be modified and whether this will affect the sale of Antminer X3 models.

Monero

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