Empowering the people?

If this roadside seller being rob heads on, the robber go to jail.

But when he being robbed blatantly through inflation, nobody goes to jail.

The (inflation) robber and the poor guy are at two opposite far end of the entire financial food chain.

“The few who can understand the system will be either so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while, on the other hand, that great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint and, perhaps, without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.”

Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.

Where have all the revolutionist gone?

Blockchain will do to banks what the internet did to media

Socmed (Social Media) put the newspaper into everybody’s phone. Now everyone is a reporter.

When technologists put a bank into everybody’s phone, everyone can become a bank. Where would the banks be then?

As we speak, the crypto world is moving rapidly, progressively.

A bunch of people are trying to form the real “public’s” bank, where unbanked and underbanked have no place in it, where poverty (caused by financial slavery) could really be a thing of the past.

Somehow, history will mark this period of time as another important milestone for human progress, equivalent to that of Renaissance, and Industrial Revolution.

From conceptional coins to corporate tokens to eventually the CBDC (in whatever form it may be), what the people innovate, the power to be appropriates.

Will we witness how things conclude in our lifetime? Only time will tell.
Anyhow we are part of it now.

One for all, all for one.

The Name of The Game

The post The Financial Food Chain appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

And as we move, thank God that the universe is providing us the answer piece by piece, one at a time, every right things happen at the right moment.

Reading Notes:

Yes, there are no ready-to-go legal models built for corporates to attract or borrow funds from DeFi protocols on the market today.

But it’s possible to build one with minimal effort, as the benefits of DeFi borrowing easily cover the efforts of building such a system.

DeFi might be able to provide borrowing on perfect terms for corporate institutions, which is something that might make them consider entering the market.

Meanwhile, corporate institutions will be willing to provide several types of stable assets to be used as collateral for their loans.

However, there is a real need for real-world assets to be used as collateral in DeFi protocols to prevent more market falls in the future, fixing the over-collateralization issue along the way.

Opinion from the author:

Until new regimes for the offering of tokenized instruments are built (and there are no bright signs in this direction), I believe real-world assets tokenization in a form of an STO will still be limited to closed offerings with no attention from the global market.

Artem Tolkachev is the founder and CEO of Tokenomica. For over six years, Artem has been a key blockchain and tokenization opinion leader in the CIS region. Since 2011, he has been an intellectual property and information technology lawyer and entrepreneur. In 2016, Artem founded and headed Deloitte CIS Blockchain Lab. As part of that initiative, he led a range of innovative projects involving the implementation of enterprise blockchain solutions, tokenization of real-world assets, tax and legal structuring of security token offerings, development of cryptocurrency, and blockchain legislation.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/why-defi-plus-asset-tokenization-will-take-crypto-to-new-heights

Notes: Less regulatory uncertainty, a developed market infrastructure, and less risk surrounding security will bring the crypto market cap to $2T and above.

The post DeFi and Asset Tokenization appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments

2020 was in many ways an inflection point for cryptocurrencies. Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments, will be discussing trends the firm is seeing among its investors, who have invested over $10B across its various products, and answering questions including – Who are these investors? What are they investing in? How are they investing?

(KEYNOTE) https://crypto-finance-conference.com/agenda

Grayscale Now Owns More Than 3% (630k+) of Total 21 Million Bitcoins That Will Ever Exist

https://tokenview.com/en/Grayscale

3 key investment themes that underpinned Bitcoin’s (BTC) dramatic breakout in 2020:

(1) macroeconomic uncertainty and quantitative easing;
(2) legendary investors and brand-name companies investing in BTC; and
(3) the continued strengthening of regulatory frameworks around digital assets.

Sonnenshein believes 2021 will see a continuation of these trends as more investors diversify into Bitcoin and other digital assets.

Grayscale CEO outlines 6 themes that will shape crypto market in 2021:

(1) Decreased career risk associated with digital-asset investing
(2) Growing interest among financial advisers
(3) The growth of North American and clean-energy crypto mining
(4) Increased stablecoin integration
(5) Nation-state adoption of digital assets
(6) New regulatory developments

https://cointelegraph.com/news/grayscale-ceo-outlines-6-themes-that-will-shape-crypto-market-in-2021

BlackRock’s new SEC filings list Bitcoin derivatives as possible investment

The multi-trillion-dollar asset manager mentions “Bitcoin” 25 times in its submissions with the SEC.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/blackrock-s-new-sec-filings-list-bitcoin-derivatives-as-possible-investment

The post Of Grayscale and Black Rock appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

The say blockchain is the internet, all over again.

Some truth in it.

Back then, nearly 20+ years ago, when we told people we develop web-based retail management system, we got questions like

“How much is a PC now ah? Which PC brand is the best to buy now?”

Vague among hardware, software, and world wide web / internet, so to speak.

Recently, the questions we got become something like

“Bitcoin (still) can buy or not ah? Any alt coins can recommend ah?”

Vague among blockchain, bitcoin, and money.

From transfer of information to transfer of value.

Few understand. And I still learning.

p/s: Thank God for the blessings to have able to write something about this few years back. (Links below).

Information are free.

It’s what we do with the knowledge we gain that matters.

God bless and all the best.

DYOR – Do Your Own Research

Chapter 1: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Money

To explore Blockchain,
you need to study Bitcoin.
To understand Bitcoin,
you need to know what is money and how it works.

Chapter 2: The Name of The Game

All things blockchain, ledger technology, and cryptocurrencies.

If you don’t believe me or don’t get it, I don’t have time to try to convince you, sorry.

I don’t know the future.

I didn’t write this to tell you how this is going to end.

I write about how it all begins.

I’m going to show you a world without boundaries. A world where anything is possible.

Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you.

Chapter 3: Smart Money

What we have now is truly borderless, programmable money
backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.

The post Understanding Bitcoin or Simply Buy Sell? appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

From 1,930 to 14,173, stats from Coin ATM Radar shows that there is a near 10 fold increase in number of Bitcoin ATM installed within 3 years since 2018.

What’s behind the figure?

As shown in slide #3 of https://lnkd.in/gzJckJH

This is a form of bridging between the fiat and the crypto world.

Bitcoin ATM, Bridging Two Monetary Worlds

It’s part of ripple effect or spin off industry / business brought by blockchain revolution, standing between two worlds of fiat and crypto currencies.

Would it still exist once everybody go digital and the prophecy of putting a bank in everybody’s phone fulfilled (if)?

Another interesting space to watch.

It’s a blessing that we are sitting at the front row and watching how history unfold itself.

p/s: Just wondering, according to coinatmradar.com, #Singapore got 9 bitcoin ATM, even in #Phuket as a tourist hot spot. But non shown for #Malaysia?

The post Bitcoin ATM, Bridging Two Monetary Worlds appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Reading notes from article by OSATO AVAN-NOMAYO:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-turning-12-from-the-genesis-block-to-wall-street-adoption

BTC 12th Anniversary: From the Genesis block to Wall Street adoption

Jan. 3, 2009

• Satoshi mined the Genesis block, known as #0, coding it into the software.

Jan. 9, 2009

• The first block, or #1, was mined, putting a true start to the network as it is known today.
• Satoshi announced the news to the cryptography mailing list with a download link to Bitcoin 0.1.0 (which was only compatible with the Windows operating system) on the open-source software database platform Sourceforge.

Jan. 12, 2009

• Hal Finney received the first-ever BTC transaction.

“The possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute time may be quite a good bet.” ~ Hal Finney

The programmer and cryptographer enthusiast famously predicted that Bitcoin could attain world reserve currency status and reach $10 million per coin.

“It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on.” ~ Satoshi

October 2009

• Bitcoin (BTC) received its first official valuation.
• The New Liberty Standard, an early BTC exchange, created a benchmark price for Bitcoin set at 1,309 BTC to $1.

December 2009

• The first client version with Linux support through the release of Bitcoin 0.2.0.

May 2010

• Laszlo Hanyecz cemented his place forever in Bitcoin folklore, paying 10,000 BTC for pizza in what is widely considered to be the first “real-world” Bitcoin transaction.

2010

• Satoshi’s plea to Assange (WikiLeaks) was one of the last pieces of digital correspondence from the Bitcoin creator before exiting the scene completely.

2011

• Bitcoin appeared to be evolving from being a strictly cypherpunk affair to the realm of anarchists and proponents of a free market.

Middle of 2011

• Bitcoin was at $30, but a 25,000-BTC theft from a user’s slushpool account caused a great price crash.
• Graphics processing units and field-programmable gate arrays provide more efficient Bitcoin mining capabilities.

2013

• Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange platform handled over 70% of the global BTC trade.
• The news of hackers stole about 850,000 BTC between 2011 and 2014 caused another major Bitcoin price crash.
• Tech adoption was on the rise, leading to the emergence of such products as BTC storage devices by the likes of Elliptic.
• U.S. crypto exchange giant Coinbase came on the scene, raising $25 million in funding.

Between 2013 and 2014

• The beginning of several governments taking notice of Bitcoin.

2015

• Major altcoins projects such as Ethereum begun to emerge.
• The introduction of application-specific integrated circuits and the rise of industrial Bitcoin mining.

August 2017

• A chain split leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
• Bitcoin’s price grew almost 20-fold from January 2017 to mid-December, almost eclipsing the $20,000 mark, followed immediately by a substantial and prolonged crash that bottomed out at $3,800 in early 2018.
• Several proponents arguing for institutional adoption as the next step in the Bitcoin evolution.

By mid-2019

• 
  BTC fundamentals continued to improve. The network hash rate topped 70 exahashes per second — more than 10 times the number of grains of sand on the planet.
• Bitcoin derivatives took off, introducing markets such as futures and options contracts
• Mainstream firms such as Fidelity announced plans for Bitcoin custody solutions.

2020

• Bitcoin appeared to have become the darling of institutional investors.
• Hedge funds and corporations pursuing direct exposure to BTC.
• Some publicly listed companies added Bitcoin to their balance sheets, holding the top-ranked cryptocurrency by market capitalization as a treasury reserve asset amid recurrent currency debasement policies in major economies.
• Bitcoin shot past the $20,000 mark in late 2020.

Early days in 2021

• Bitcoin reached above $42,000, two times more than the magic number back in 2017.

What next?

Perhaps, government adoption is next on the agenda, and Bitcoin could become a reserve currency of a major world power.

The post Bitcoin’s 12th Anniversary, A Brief Chronology appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

Simply math and logic, decentralized, limited supply, institutional FOMO…

Bitcoin’s immutable monetary policy makes it a very attractive contender for better money… if not the best. #FewUnderstand ~ Jason Chew, Bitcoin Malaysia #1 Group

If Bitcoin (BTC) is destined to be
the digital gold,
this is the gap it has to / is going to fill.

Supply and Demand

Amount of gold is not finite
as people tend to believe.

Bitcoin is transparently finite,
pure mathematics and logic
verifiable via public ledger.

Originality and Scarcity

Gold is scarce,
but it will never be ‘provably’ scarce.
Few understand the difference.

As Bitcoin becomes more mainstream
people are starting to understand
why the underlying technology
is so groundbreaking and
it is this hard cap of 21 Million bitcoins
that separates it from anything
the world has ever seen before.

Originality creates value.
Scarcity protects it.

从短期来看，比特币经历了从计算机代码逐步演变为准国际货币的过程，比特币占国际储备份额可能升至1%左右，比特币的合理价格在6000至7500美元左右。

从中期来看，比特币占国际储备份额比重可能升至日元的水平，那么比特币的合理价格在2.3至3万美元左右。

长期来看，如果比特币有机会发展成为最重要的国际储备货币，那么比特币的价格可能升至40万美元以上。

比特币的出现表明区块链要得到关注，但比特币不要随便进入，因为这些新生事物都有很大的不确定性。

DYOR – Do Your Own Research.

The post Bitcoin, Digital Gold 2.0? appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

People were afraid of using their credit card when the internet first came out.

E-commerce giant Alibaba achieved a total transaction volume of 213.5 billion yuan (US$30.69 billion) in a single sales day during the Double Eleven Shopping Festival on November 11, 2018.

People are sceptical about cryptocurrencies now, as we are still in the floppy disk days of the blockchain technology.

Current state of the crypto market:

• Market cap: $211B
• 24 hours volume: $13B
• BTC dominance: 52.3%

Cryptocurrency market will surpass the $1 Trillion mark.

It’s just a matter of time. One day we will look back and remember how early we were.

2 years later, at 13th November 2020:

DeFi was one of the missing puzzles back then.

Many more pieces of puzzles to come, until the dust settles.

Similar to how the web progressed throughout the past 20 years, blockchain is the web, all over again.

From information sharing to value transfer.

Just like every business needs a digital presence today (going online), anything that can be tokenized will eventually be tokenized 10 to 20 years down the road.

What next? NFT (Non-fungible Token).

Build trust. Transfer value.

p/s: And $1T cryptocurrencies market cap will be just the beginning mark of another great journey in human history. #ToTheMoon

The post The $1 Trillion Market Cap appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

• Fidelity Investments’ crypto arm expands custody to Asia
• Visa powers one more crypto card amid ongoing antitrust charges

The post Bitcoin vs Gold appeared first on Blockchain Insider.

• Mission-driven cryptocurrency requires an active commitment to equity
• Leaders of global CBDC projects talk shop in panel today

Reading Notes

Doing Good

Doing good costs time and money, and it is rarely profitable.

If it were so easy and rewarding, the financial exclusion would likely not be a problem for billions of people in the first place.

But that is the point.

If a company is to claim that it is mission-driven, it cannot simply make its products and assume that it will be used for good.

Even if that assumption is correct, a mission-driven organization must-do part of that work itself if it is to ensure its products and work are directed toward doing good.

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies can create a financial infrastructure uniquely suited to addressing financial exclusion, but without enabling easier access to that infrastructure, its benefits are not fully realized.

The real barrier is poverty and people’s inability to access the most basic infrastructure, including the internet and smartphones, which are outside of a cryptocurrency company’s direct mandate.

A mission-driven company will have to understand the societal problems of today and determine when they can be solved by technology and when they require something more entirely.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/mission-driven-cryptocurrency-requires-an-active-commitment-to-equity

Leaders of global CBDC projects talk shop in panel today

“The challenge is not so much technology in itself, but it’s more about — we have to choose what sort of policy objectives do we want to focus on, what is the problem we want to solve. Depending on what that is, and the purposes we want to serve, then you choose the technology after that.” ~ Cecilia Skingsley, First Deputy Governor of Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden

“If there’s a winner, I don’t think the winner is necessarily who’s first and the loser is necessarily who’s last. What matters is, which central bank successfully incorporates its societal values in the successful development of CBDC. On the other hand, one can’t be too late to the game here.” ~ J. Christopher Giancarlo, former U.S. CFTC chairman.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/leaders-of-global-cbdc-projects-talk-shop-in-panel-today

The post Technology and Purposes appeared first on Blockchain Insider.