Boxmining v2

Category: Coin Guide

There are several thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, known also as altcoins. These coins and tokens all have their own unique features and uses, for example, some are used to help decide the direction the creator company should take, others give you discounts or access to special features. The Coin Guide is a concise summary of the aims and technology behind a certain cryptocurrencies. Insight is crucial in this field. Many projects disguise their progress through complicated jargon, making it hard to distinguish those who are building something meaningful from those who are not.

  • Ripple and XRP – Revolution or Scam?

    Ripple and XRP – Revolution or Scam?

    manafort.com) temp927.kinsta.cloud/what-is-ripple-and-xrp/”>Ripple has been booming lately as more and more financial institutions have started to use the service for its fast transactions and extremely low fees. As banks seek to move away from the somewhat outdated SWIFT system, the Ripple protocol and it’s token XRP has risen up as a viable alternative. Ripple is also a very controversial coin, with proponents talking about interest from banks and opponents worried about centralization and lack of real world adoption.

    Will there be a demand for Ripple and XRP

    Previously, there were concerns about the use of the token. In theory, it is possible to use the Ripple payment protocol without the XRP token and people were left to wonder about it’s worth. However, Ripple has recently tweeted that, “3 of the top 5 global money transfer companies plan to use XRP in payment flows in 2018”.

    Furthermore, the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, has also confirmed that banks and payment providers plan to use xRapid (the XRP liquidity product) in a serious way.

    Future outlook for Ripple – serious challenger to bitcoin or scam?

    Ripple, currently second in market capitalization, has been continuing on an upward trend. At press time, the altcoin was trading at an average of $3.36. With a market cap of over $131 billion, it is over half that of bitcoin.

    One thing to take note of though is the high supply of Ripple. Bitcoin will only ever have at most, 21 million coins in circulation. Ripple currently has over 38 billion XRP issued. If we set the supply of Ripple to 21 million, using its current market cap, each coin would be over $6,200. And looking at it that way might ward off potential investors.

    The success of Ripple and other altcoins have led to an all time low for bitcoin dominance at 33.3 percent. With this recent news, will we finally be seeing a challenger to bitcoin for the top of the crypto throne or is just another flash in pan? One thing for certain is that 2018 is sure to bring much more exciting news for crypto.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1GshH0F9Ic

    Ripple Total supply vs Circulating Supply

    The XRP token was created with a significant portion of it reserved for development of the coin. Unlike mining, these coins can be issued out by the owners  (either the founders of ripple or Ripple Labs).  This is a large difference between the circulating supply and the total supply as well, with almost 60% of XRP left to be distributed.

    If XRP had the same supply as Bitcoin the Price would be walloping $18,953!

  • Binance Exchange and Token Summary (BNB)

    Binance Exchange and Token Summary (BNB)

    Binance is a crypto-crypto exchange with a focus on the international market and rapid development. Binance has grown tremendously over the past few months, especially with its early adoption over various coins and the large trade volumes for other popular coins. Currently, it supports English and Chinese users and there is a possibility to expand to Korean and Japanese in the future. Binance has recently expanded operations with various regional development teams around the world.

    The Binance token (BNB) was created during the ICO event to fund the development of the Binance exchange.

    Features of Binance

    • High performance – capable of processing 1.4 mil orders/second
    • Multi-language support – Chinese, English, Korean, Japanese
    • Good support team – Binance support is reachable (rare in crypto space)
    • All major coins available – BTC, ETH, LTC, BNB etc.
    • Low trading fee – Only 0.1% trading fee
    • Early support for Bitcoin Forks – Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond were all listed on Binance
    • GAS distribution for NEO – storing NEO on binance yields GAS too!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4jle45hMfg&feature=youtu.be

    Partnerships with Other Chinese Coins and ICOS:

    One of the advisors for Binanace is Da Hong Fei – The founder of NEO. This means that there is a strong partnership between Bianace and NEO. Currently, Bianace is the only exchange that gives NEO GAS for holding NEO on the exchange. The exchange takes a snapshot of the NEO balance on a daily basis and will distribute NEO GAS based on the snap shotted balance.

    Interview with the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao

    I had the privilege of interviewing the CEO of Binance, ChangPeng Zhao. Binance is taking the cryptocurrenc exchange scene by storm with a massively positive response from both the Chinese and International community.

    Binance ICO:

    The Binance Exchanged was financed through an ICO that was held on the 14th of July 2017. A total of 15 Million USD dollars were raised during the event. Here are achieves for the Whitepaper and the ICO page.

    Binance Token:

    Binance tokens were issued to project supporters. The token has 3 major features:

    1. Exchange Fees: Binance tokens can be used to reduce fees for trade costs and commissions. Currently, Binance has a 0.1% trade fee and 50% of the fee can be paid in terms of Binance tokens.
    2. GAS: Binance will eventually feature advanced features that require GAS. BNB tokens can be used as GAS to power these advanced features.
    3. Staking: Binance eventual want to develop a decentralized exchanged. The BNB tokens will eventually be used on this exchange to stake transactions.

    Sign up to Binance here: https://www.binance.com/?ref=10192887

    Disclaimer: Cryptocurrency trading involves significant risks and may result in the loss of your capital. You should carefully consider whether trading cryptocurrencies is right for you in light of your financial condition and ability to bear financial risks. (Rybelsus) Cryptocurrency prices are highly volatile and can fluctuate widely in a short period of time. As such, trading cryptocurrencies may not be suitable for everyone. Additionally, storing cryptocurrencies on a centralized exchange carries inherent risks, including the potential for loss due to hacking, exchange collapse, or other security breaches. We strongly advise that you seek independent professional advice before engaging in any cryptocurrency trading activities and carefully consider the security measures in place when choosing or storing your cryptocurrencies on a cryptocurrency exchange.

  • Komodo in a Nutshell

    Komodo in a Nutshell

    Komodo ICO (KMD)

    The Komodo ICO ran from Oct-Nov 2016. At the time they raised a total of 2636.37BTC. Komodo is a Zcash fork and so it will have all the same privacy features. However, they are not part of Zcash (ZEC). Their work is built on top of the open-source Zcash project.

    What is Komodo

    The zerocash protocol allows a higher standard of privacy and anonymity to transactions. It makes it  possible to send money online without disclosing receiver and sender information, while at the same time allowing for verification of the transaction’s authenticity. This utilizes a technology called zk-SNARKS.

    Komodo is also developing something called delayed proof of work or dPoW. Komodo has two levels of mining and two separate proofs of work (PoW). Only Komodo has to attach itself to the Bitcoin blockchain. Because of this, third party blockchains can use Komodo as an additional security layer. The Komodo blockchain will have the 64 notary nodes. The notary nodes, apart from finding blocks and recording transactions on the Komodo blockchain, take the confirmed blocks on the Komodo blockchain and notarize or engrave them on to the bitcoin blockchain.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBTMjFotWS8

    Other Applications

    Apart from the features listed above, Komodo is also being developed as part of a broader project called SuperNET. SuperNet aims include:

    1. assetchains that allow anyone to create their own asset with its own blockchain
    2. multiwallet where those assets can be stored, including many coins like Bitcoin and Komodo
    3. atomic swaps, so that people can trade their coins from the multiwallet without counterparty risks
    4. pegged assets – which are a form of price-stable assets created on the assetchains – these assets solve the problem of price volatility by attaching themselves to the value of stable currencies like EUR or USD.

     

    Resources:

    Whitepaper https://komodoplatform.com/whitepaper/

    https://steemit.com/komodo/@komodoplatform/a-guide-to-better-understand-komodo

     

  • Why is Bitcoin Valuable

    Why is Bitcoin Valuable

    Why does this have any value? It’s not backed by any goverment, and it’s not a physical commodity like gold where you can touch and feel it.

    It is Decentralized

    That means it is not backed by any government or central authority. For currencies like USD or the Euro they are backed by their respective government and groups of governments and with those goverments, there may be times of hardships. Hardships such as, but not limited to, war, famine, financial crisis, and natural disasters.

    It is a Store of Value

    When these difficulties hit, governments are usually tempted to just print out money. They might be needing that money because they are in debt or they need to fund a war. Printing more money increases it’s supply and this could ultimately lead to inflation.

    With bitcoin, there is a set maximum that can be created, and that is controlled by mathematics and computer code. Because there is a limit, it makes it a great store of value. You may have even heard of the term “digital gold” being used to refer to bitcoin.

    First movers advantage

    It is Secure

    Bitcoin can only be transferred by mathematics. It has to adhere to the programming code rather than people. We do know that people can sometimes be controlled or influenced by politics or other external pressures.

    As long as you are the only one in control of your private key, then your funds are safe. Someone cannot decide to suddenly lock up your account or freeze your funds.

    Transactions cannot be reversed

    when your bitcoins are sent, there’s no getting them back, unless the recipient returns them to you. They’re gone forever. This makes it difficult to commit the kind of fraud that we often see with credit cards, in which people make a purchase and then contact the credit card company to make a chargeback, effectively reversing the transaction.

    It is Convenient

    Earlier, when we talked about bitcoin being named as “digital gold”, we forgot to mention another advantage that is has. Since bitcoin is a digital currency, it has the benefits of gold without the drawbacks.

    Gold can be heavy and bulky, and thus hard to transport. You also need a secure place to physical store it. Since bitcoin is all digital, the cost of sending it doesn’t change no matter where you are. The amount of time it takes and how much it costs is the same whether you’re sending it to someone next to you or halfway across the world.

    It’s cheaper compared to bank transfers or international money transfers. The fees are a lot lower. Also, if you’ve ever tried to transfer money overseas, you know that it can take days. With bitcoin it is much faster – you can send money anywhere and it will arrive minutes later, as soon as the bitcoin network processes the payment.

  • Enigma (ENG) in a Nutshell

    Enigma (ENG) in a Nutshell

    Data is one of the most valuable assets we have nowadays. Information on a person’s preferences and habits are highly sought after by companies. It’s a central part of the business of a lot of tech companies. Big names such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have a combined revenue of over 20B USD in part due to their aggregation and monetization of data.

    What is Enigma

    At its core, Enigma is a decentralized data marketplace. It wants to take the power out of the hands of a few players and return it back to the people. They want to enable people to trade their data in exchange for incentives.

    With Enigma, they propose the following advantages:

    • More open data will be available for research.
    • More people and organizations will reap the benefits of selling and controlling their data.
    • Data’s value would become explicit, as opposed to implicit (which is the case today).
    • Data sharing could be revolutionized in the same way Bitcoin has revolutionized payments

    The protocol will have both on-chain and off-chain transactions. In their words, subscribing to a data source is managed on-chain, including rewards and penalties, which are exchanged using our token. The data itself, its storage and transmission, lives off-chain. In that sense, the blockchain acts as the controller of the network while the off-chain network handles everything else.

    Catalyst – How to Apply Enigma

    How Enigma and Catalyst work together

    In conjunction with the creation of the Enigma data marketplace, they also plan to develop Catalyst. It will run directly on the Enigma protocol and empower users to share and curate data and build profitable, data-driven investment strategies. It is a way of delivering quant trading to the masses, breaking down the massive barriers to entry usually associated with it.

    Enigma Hacking

    It would be remiss of me in an Enigma article to not mention the hack that happened about two weeks ago. The CEO’s email was compromised, and the hacker used it it to elicit funds from community members in their Slack channel. The oversight has since been fixed and extra precautions were implemented to prevent further cases from happening.

    Resources:

    https://www.enigma.co/

    https://blog.enigma.co/beyond-catalyst-enigmas-vision-for-the-future-of-data-22fbb5845556

    https://www.enigma.co/enigma_catalyst.pdf

  • OmiseGo (OMG) in a nutshell

    OmiseGo (OMG) in a nutshell

    (Updated on 31-08-2017)

    OmiseGO is a token proposed by Omise that allows real time, direct transfers across multiple fiat currencies and digital currencies. Omise go is an existing payment management platform mainly focused on Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Japan. With this new project, they plan to take this one step further and integrate their services with blockchain technology.

    What it Offers

    1. Ethereum based financial technology
    2. Ease of use – no bank account needed
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    3. Affordability – low transaction fees
      • Using traditional remittance methods make it difficult for a lot of their target market to send money home. The fees will take up a large percentage of the total amount. OmiseGo can offer almost instant transfers at low cost.
    4. Allows easy transfer between fiat currencies and also digital currencies

    What it Means

    Ultimately, OmiseGo should make it easier for foreign workers to send money home to their families. It also has the additional benefit of extra security through decentralized currencies. Millions of users in fast growing economies will be given the opportunity to go from fiat currencies to digital currencies.

    **Update**

    OmiseGo has announced their collaboration with McDonald’s Thailand. Founder, Jun Hasegawa, confirmed the news on his Twitter. Following the news, OMG has seen a slight rise of over 4% today.

  • Bitcoin Fees

    Bitcoin Fees

    What are Bitcoin Fees

    Bitcoin Transactions are not free, every single bitcoin transfer must include a fee. Here are some facts about Bitcoin Fees:

    • Fees are necessary  – Every Bitcoin Transaction is charged a fee. There is no standard price. Instead the fees are like a tip, the more you pay the faster the transaction is approved.
    • Higher Fees mean faster transactions –  Bitcoin transactions are not instant. Simply said, the more fees you pay, the faster the transaction is processed.
    • Fees are paid by the Sender – The receiver does not have to pay any fees.

    A generous tip (currently around $1 USD) will allow the transaction to be almost instantaneous (10 min) whilst modest tip ($0.05) incur a 10 hour wait time.  In fact, if no tips are included in a bitcoin transaction the transaction time may be infinite! Bitcoin transactions could be considered almost like a ‘tip’.

    Do large transactions mean large fees:

    In short: No. A common misconception is that the more bitcoins are transferred, the greater the fees that are needed. This however is not true, the amount of bitcoin fees that should be included depends on the amount of information relayed by the network. This means accounts with lots of small inputs would need more fees to transfer money out.

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    Cloud Mining generates tons of transaction fees

    One major downside of cloud mining is that the mined bitcoins will cost a LOT of transaction fees. This is because a lot of cloud miners (eg. genesis-mining) will give daily payouts. This means that you wallet will be filled with a lot of small transactions. Whilst this might seem like not a bit deal, when you try to send money out of the wallet the fee for the transaction might be up to 20% of the transferred amount!

    This is because bitcoin transaction fees are based on the number of inputs the wallet has. Because there are daily cloud mining payouts, the number of inputs in the wallet will be extremely high.

  • Decred and Hard Forks

    Decred and Hard Forks

    The problem of hard and soft forks have been huge issues in both the Bitcoin (Bitcoin Unlimited, USAF, Segwit) and Litecoin communities. Decred has come up with their own solution to this and may be something that other coins look to going forward. In this article I’m going to explain what a hard fork is, how the voting process works, and why it is so important for the development of a coin.

    Hard and Soft Forks

    Let’s start off by explaining what forks are. In simple terms, these are updates to the main protocol of a certain currency. Hard forks describe an update that causes a permanent divergence in the block chain. Both block chains may continue to run but they will not be able to send funds to each other as they are using different rules and the coins are not compatible with each other.

    Soft forks, on the other hand, are backward compatible updates that allow users to mine from both original nodes or updated nodes with the new rules. If by a certain time, a consensus is reached and a certain percent of the hash rate is mining from the updated nodes, then the new rules are implemented across the protocol and miners of the original nodes will basically be wasting their time.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpf0f3IGNs

    Why Fork and Who Gets to Decide?

    So the programming team decides perhaps they want to make a substantial upgrade to the network to enable a set of features. These features might be very important features such as lightning transactions which allow immediate transfer of currency. It’s important that the community keeps on developing these features because otherwise, your coin is going to be stuck in the mud.

    While the development team can propose upgrades usually what happens is that the mining community decides whether to implement these or not. The mining community acts as the accountants of the system. They process transactions and they form new blocks in the block chain. Consequently, they have the power to decide how to build the next block.

    One major problem with this is that the mining community decides what the future is and not the consumers – the people who actually use currency. One small set of people decide how upgrades should be processed and the other side that actually uses it, the majority of the users, get zero say in the matter.

     

    Decred to the Rescue?

    With Decred, they solve this problem by having the community vote on the blocks created by the mining community. If miners start implementing different upgrades the community can vote whether they want the upgrade to go on line or not. If the created block does not follow a certain protocol, they can vote it down and even refuse payouts to miners that don’t follow what the community wants.

    So this, in essence, allows the community to actually keep an eye on what’s happening with the miners. We don’t have just one power that doesn’t represent the community. Rather, we end up with the user community sort of policing what’s happening with the mining community.

    People who hold the coin should have the greatest say in how the future goes forward. Decred solves both hard forks and soft forks by allowing users to vote on the issues. Issues such as segwit and lightning transactions, which have caused many controversies in the Bitcoin and Litecoin communities. Decred is already trying to implement these changes this year and they may get these technological upgrades in advance of other coins.

  • Segwit in Easy to Understand Terms

    Segwit in Easy to Understand Terms

    Now that Segwit has been locked in for Litecoin. it’s about time to take a closer look at what Segwit is and how it improves Litecoin. Here is a very brief introduction of what Segwit – it is please forgive me if it’s a little bit too simplistic but I want to try to summarize it in very easy to understand terms.

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    What is Segwit?

    If you consider of Bitcoin miners as accountants that process all the transactions that happen on the network and bundles them up into a ledger called the blockchain. Then the Segwit is a change to the ledger.  Think of it as a tax form.  It’s the act of removing of a signature from the form and placing it into a separate form. That’s all it is. Segregation of witness – the removal the signature on a form and placing it elsewhere. By taking out the signature, you create additional room on the ledger to fit more transactions.

    Why Adopt Segwit?

    Segwit is vital for the Bitcoin network where transactions are taking a long time because there isn’t enough room on each ledger (block) to place all the transactions. Litecoin doesn’t have this problem. Instead, Segwit was adopted to allow for technologies such as the Lightning Network.

    Segwit is a technological upgrade, and I can see why miners will go crazy over this. Especially when miners are the ones who decide to adopt this or not. Consider like an association of tax accounts trying to approve a new form. Accountants don’t like each other already, and they must all agree on a substantial change to a tax form. It turns out for Litecoin it was possible to persuade the miners to agree with each other, whilst for Bitcoin, it’s not yet possible as there is much more drama.

    The Post-Segwit World

    Now that Segwit is locked in for Litecoin, there are substantial changes in currency price (generally in the upward direction). Of course, must take this with a slight grain of salt. Litecoin prices are susceptible to financial manipulations such as the good old pump and dump.  Litcoin is getting a lot of media attention. This means there will be a lot of new investors that still don’t understand the consequences of Segwit or how Lightning Networks work. Some will overvalue it while others are indifferent. The most important thing is to understand what Segwit is and learn more about the Lightning Network.