[Samurai]

It doesn't look like an U-turn at all. He says blockchain is real, which is not really disputed. He is not at all saying bitcoin is real. He regrets calling it a fraud. He just regrets being so noisy about his negative assessment. I don't see him being positive about bitcoin.

[lambuhere1]

Hi,

Did anyone purchase ICO tokens based on ERC20 with ETH ?

Wondering how to go about with the procedure.

Any guidance will be highly appreciated

[msdivy]

Look who joins the bandwagon - Reliance Jio planning its own cryptocurrency called JioCoin

After Indian telecom, the crypto currency scene is heading for disruption :-)

Company has the plan of going about:

“The company plans to hire 50 young professionals with average age of 25 years for Akash Ambani to lead. There are multiple applications of blockchain (for the company). The team would work on various blockchain products,” a person familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity.

Link: http://www.livemint.com/Companies/Az...d-JioCoin.html

[sudev]

Reported meltdown yesterday on South Korea banning Bitcoin trading. Good time to buy for those who have faith for future of Bitcoin. Others would say I told you so in increasing volumes.

[lambuhere1]

Price Manipulation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

Bitcoin price manipulated from $150 to $1,000 by single actor – researchers

Source :

https://www.rt.com/usa/416036-bitcoi...ge-rate-price/

The paper claims that Willy Bots were allowed to make trades even during the times when the Mt. Gox trading API (application programming interface) went offline for several hours, while no other trading activity was being processed.

[SmartCat]

Now this is interesting - a smartphone that uses "blockchain technology" (but based on Android OS)
www.sirinlabs.com



They managed to raise $160 million via ICO. Sirin Labs is an Israeli company and is not a flyby night operator. Couple of years back, they had launched a $14,000 super secure smartphone called SOLARIN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhLtRo0PIRQ&t=154s

[V.Narayan]

It would be interesting to hear the perspectives of Bitcoin investors after the crash this week and halving of value from its peak 6 to 7 weeks ago. Digital currencies - regulated and governed - will come but they won't be free for alls like the current lot. Bitcoin in my estimate (no science here) will settle at around $ 4000 for now before the regulators really dig their teeth in. Best of luck. Let's re-visit in 9 months time.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

It would be interesting to hear the perspectives of Bitcoin investors after the crash this week and halving of value from its peak 6 to 7 weeks ago. Digital currencies - regulated and governed - will come but they won't be free for alls like the current lot. Bitcoin in my estimate (no science here) will settle at around $ 4000 for now before the regulators really dig their teeth in. Best of luck. Let's re-visit in 9 months time.

A small beacon of hope for Bitcoin "investors"- it had fallen 80% in 2014. From $1,100 to $240.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by smartcat

A small beacon of hope for Bitcoin "investors"- it had fallen 80% in 2014. From $1,100 to $240.

Attachment 1718040

Sadly many innocent albeit greedy small investors will take hope from this while ignoring one zero that is missing in value per bitty and several zeros in total market value of all bitties. I hope too many BHPians don't lose their shirts by clinging onto a hope of revival. There could be a short positive correction that will bring out the hopes and astrologers in one go.

Never underestimate the power of Government.

[vamsi.kona]

Originally Posted by Samurai

One bitcoin transaction uses 215 KWh of electricity.
One ethereum transaction uses 45 KWh of electricity.
One visa transaction uses 0.00651 KWh of electricity.

Yes, bitcoin transaction uses 33000 times more energy compared to visa transaction.

And here is the real kicker. The energy usage by bitcoin/ethereum will continue to increase as the complexity of verification is designed to increase. Meanwhile, energy usage by visa transaction will not increase, and may even decrease due to faster processor, as computing complexity remains constant.

This is actually the problem with blockchain technology. Until now I was quite thrilled about blockchains, and now I am really bummed by the carbon footprint of blockchain.

Last year, around November, Bitcoin network used eletricity equivalent to the one used by entire Ireland. Now it has surpassed that and is on the way to takeover New Zealand and Hungary

Bitcoin’s electricity usage is enormous. In November, the power consumed by the entire bitcoin network was estimated to be higher than that of the Republic of Ireland. Since then, its demands have only grown. It’s now on pace to use just over 42TWh of electricity in a year, placing it ahead of New Zealand and Hungary and just behind Peru, according to estimates from Digiconomist. That’s commensurate with CO2 emissions of 20 megatonnes – or roughly 1m transatlantic flights.

Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it

And we are only talking of just Bitcoin.

Another very interesting article, more from the financial angle is the one below where the author discusses problems with Crypto currencies where there is no regulatory authority to settle transactions which might have failed etc. In another words dispute resolution is almost absent, which in financial transactions is of paramount importance.

One interesting point of note in that article is that if we run all the transaction being done on Visa through blockchain technology, it would require 5000 Nuclear reactors. To put it in another way Visa now processes approximately 60k trasanctions per second while bitcoin averages at 7 per second and most importantly consumes 35 times more power than Visa for just those 7 transactions. If we were to increase Bitcoin volume to that of Visa, it would consume the power equivalent to what the world consumes.

Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by vamsi.kona

Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

Thanks for this brilliant article. I love when people with sound understanding of economics take a poke at crypto concept.

His conclusion is too good, especially the highlighted part.

Which leaves us where we started — currency speculation and illegal transactions — along with perhaps a lesson. In conversations with bitcoin entrepreneurs and investors and consultants, there was often a lack of knowledge or even interest in how the jobs were being done today or what the value to the end user was. With all the money spent on bitcoin cash registers, nobody went out and did a survey about whether most credit card users would be willing to give up their frequent flyer miles in return for also losing the ability to dispute a transaction. Presumably, they thought, the reason IPOs are so expensive or venture fund formation paperwork is so onerous is because all those lawyers and accountants are just getting rich sitting around pushing paper… a bunch of smart engineers in their 20s with no industry experience could certainly do their jobs, automatically, in a matter of months, with just a few million bucks of venture capital.

So far, not so much.

[SmartCat]

So basically, Satoshi Nakamoto in his whitepaper assumes that presence of trusted third parties (Visa, Google, banks etc) is a problem because they unnecessarily increase cost of transactions.

But this author says trusted third parties are exactly what customers want - because they provide additional services. And that they are not there just to steal your money.

Examples:

1) Opting for a Google drive account (instead of a blockchain based online storage) is such a seamless exercise - because it is linked to your Google Account, and is accessible on Android/iOS devices.
2) Ability to dispute and ask for a refund when you buy from Amazon.com
3) Ability to call up Citibank and raising a stink even if Rs. 1,000 vanishes from your account.

[sushantr5]

ICO has been buzzword in my team. Each and every person is investing into some kind of ICO believing in the product the company will build. Like I said earlier, one suggests others follow, nobody knows the technical details. I have studied some of the ICOs and tempted into investing but my conscience said better I stay away from these frauds. One story I would like to tell about ICO 'Wagerr'

Wagerr is claiming to be revolutionary blockchain based betting platform for all sports. They had ICO sometime in Sept Oct 2017 raising 6 cents per token. From my team various colleagues bought substantial amount believing in what is being claimed. Sometime I also find the final product may be good if they really come up with this. Sometimes I think why do they need blockchain based solution for this online betting portal. Technical things apart... coming back to main story.

November Wagerr announced that they will release first version on January 15. So the speculation started to build price of token went from 6 cents to $1. All the portfolios were swelled up much beyond the dream. As D Day was coming; hype, euphoria was on the rise among investors. Tweets began to set price trends.

Finally D day arrived, I am in Europe. No news, No tweet, Not a single motion. People thought Wagerr may be released on the 15 January of USA. So in the night all slept with the hope that by morning they will be billionaires. But in the morning they woke up will squeezed up portfolios. Value was reduced to 35 cents. Friends are still in profit though but fun thing is that they can not sell. As for the people who have used web wallet from Wagerr, all wallets are locked till the time of actual release of first version. Only partial quantity on some exchanges is tradable may be only owned by promoters.

So on 16 January somebody tweets that 'Wagerr is thinking for future so they are adopting new anonymous protocol so this is the reason for delay. This will avoid hard fork in future'. Hurrey, ray of hope among investors. Then again price rally has started. Lost profits are regained. But

None of my friend can sell the tokens they have...
there is only one tweet explaining the postponement...
there is no release date given...

[vamsi.kona]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Thanks for this brilliant article. I love when people with sound understanding of economics take a poke at crypto concept.

His conclusion is too good, especially the highlighted part.

Leave alone the technological aspects, one of the main arguments that I have heard or read from people who very strongly believe in Crypto currencies is that, crypto currencies help avoid the hegemony and regulation of governments and banks on their finances. They seem to be of the opinion that a world where there is no government control over currency and no regulation of central banks over financial transactions would be the ideal world. Majority of them seem to be laying the blame for the recent financial crisis at the feet of the governments and regulations. While the regulators are certainly to blame, what they are ignoring is that the reasons behind the crisis were not regulations, but rather lax regulations and in some cases wilfully altering the regulations. Therefore the financial crisis was in spite of regulations, not because of them.

It would be nice if we all can live in a just world where everyone self-regulates and behaves in a just way, but that is not the real world. It was never thus in entire history of human civilisations and would never be so, especially when it comes to finance. They seem to be living in a utopia.

Another major issue is they seem to conflate the technology with the product. Sure Blockchain technology might find uses in less demanding areas like land records where the number of transactions will not be as huge as currency markets etc, but it doesn't need to be Bitcoin. Blockchain is an open source technology so why would someone shell out money for something that is free. Without blockchain technology what is the value of Bitcoin? And what is so peculiar about Bitcoin that can't be replicated by anyone else using the same technology, which is already done as there are hundreds of crypto currencies. If one wan't to gamble on Bitcoin or other crypto currencies that is fine, if they know that they are just gambling. In fact I would have been a millionaire now had I gambled on it in 2013 when one of my friends asked about it. I didn't even bother about it when I heard that it is some digital currency without backing of any government or bank. Some times gambling isn't that bad

Originally Posted by smartcat

So basically, Satoshi Nakamoto in his whitepaper assumes that presence of trusted third parties (Visa, Google, banks etc) is a problem because they unnecessarily increase cost of transactions.

I doubt the transaction cost are lower for blockchain, especially Bitcoin. I read somewhere that it costs around $4 or $5 for a transaction worth $1000 or $2000, but not entirely sure. And that is with a delay of a few minutes. I am also not entirely sure if the cost of electricity consumed by all the miners is included, because for every transaction there would be many miners who would be trying to solve the algorithm but only one would be successful. I believe the transaction cost includes only the power consumed by the successful miner rather than all the miners trying to solve the same problem.

[SmartCat]

Top banks suspend accounts of major Bitcoin exchanges in India
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/...w/62576882.cms

The above article also confirms what I suspected - exchanges like Zebpay artificially increase the bid/ask spread using "market makers". When you buy a bitcoin, you need to pay more. When you sell a bitcoin, you get paid a lot less.