A long needed statement about #Crypto…

There are 2 sub-topics that I think need addressing:

  1. The unending crypto scams.
  2. What crypto actually IS.

These are two mutually exclusive topics. NEITHER defines the OTHER.

What are MY credentials to be able to speak about this?

I’m a software engineer with many decades of experience. I’ve been involved in cryptocurrencies since 2014. I have used many of the crypto services and many of the cryptocurrencies. I have traded dozens of cryptocurrencies and currently hold many cryptocurrencies. I have created my own blockchain from scratch and my own cryptocurrency completely from scratch with code. I’ve created neural networks and have trained them on price histories of cryptocurrencies to build price prediction AI. I understand the technology from top to bottom at a fundamental level and I understand the use of it and the tools and services built around it. I also understand the political thought processes involved in the creation of BitCoin as I hold similar, if not exactly identical beliefs as well.

Let’s talk about the scams first:

While crypto offers many benefits to humanity, scammers know that people are interested AND that people think they can get rich quick with crypto. They know it’s still relatively new and that most people are uneducated about it. They use those 2 facts AGAINST unsuspecting people and cheat them out of their money. This is a HUGE problem that NEEDS to be both addressed AND dealt with.

HOWEVER! The same is true for Gold, Stocks, US Currency, and anything else involving people’s hard earned income. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with “crypto”. Humans are a greedy species and that greed will and does manifest around everything. Crypto is no exception. The greed and scams are a fault of the greedy and the criminals, not a fault of the financial tools.

The PROBLEM is NOT the object of investment. The PROBLEM is the greed of the scammers (and to an extent, the greed of the victims, but that’s another story for another time).

Gold, Silver, precious metals, cash, and crypto are ALL vehicles of financial transactions and investments (well, cash is NOT an investment since it’s DESIGNED to devalue over time). Do NOT make the mistake of getting angry at the financial instrument simply because there are bad people out there taking advantage of people’s lack of education about them.

Let’s talk about CRYPTO in its own right:

I’ll precede this topic by stating that crypto exists to liberate you from the corrupt financial system controlled by tyrants and greedy and corrupt politicians. It WILL NOT liberate you from greedy, corrupt individuals that will do everything in their power to trick you out of your holdings.

Let’s examine whether or not it’s living up to that dream:

A basic primer on what cryptocurrencies ARE and then, what they are NOT

What Cryptocurrencies ARE:

There are many cryptocurrencies and not all are implemented with exactly the same backend technologies. My description will be as basic and non-technical as I can get away with while still providing you the facts you need to understand it. This will be a challenge (for me, not you), so bear with me. The REASON it’s a challenge is because I’m a highly technical person and have created my own crypto from scratch with code, so I understand that when I talk about things of this nature to non-technical people, I, like all technical people, have a language gap between me and you. I’ll do my best though:

To understand crypto, we must first understand the system it’s designed to replace. It’s NOT designed to replace “money”. It’s designed to replace an entire corrupt and tyrannical financial system. This includes central banks, regular banks, credit cards, payment systems, all of which have denied services to people in recent years simply because of the individual’s political opinions. But THAT phenomenon has occurred SINCE the first cryptocurrency (#BitCoin) was invented. It was invented to protect your liberties from such tyranny, but at the time BitCoin was invented, we were in the middle of the 2008 housing collapse that destroyed the life savings of MILLIONS of Americans (and others around the world). One person, who to this day is still anonymous, decided enough was enough and designed a new currency that could NOT be controlled by a centralized authority. It was to provide the following functional differences from the current system:

  1. Impossible to forge the currency
  2. Impossible for your holdings to be confiscated by tyrants
  3. Impossible for your transactions to be blocked by tyrants
  4. Impossible for banks to hold or steal your money
  5. Impossible for central authorities to willy nilly devalue the currency by printing more

Notice that I did NOT mention “get rich quick”? That is not and was never a reason for cryptocurrencies.

How Things Are Going…

At the time of this writing, it’s September 2023. The BitCoin #whitepaper was released in January of 2009. It’s been 14 years. let’s examine each intended benefit and see how they’ve turned out so far.

1. Impossible to forge the currency

This has held up, at least for BitCoin and most cryptocurrencies. There have been thousands of cryptocurrencies created since the invention of BitCoin and some of those have been poorly designed and crypto was able to be forged. But not with the vast majority of them and most importantly, not with BitCoin. After 14 years and hundreds of thousands of white-hat hackers and actual bad guys trying to break it, it’s never happened.

Conclusion: SUCCESS!
For the remainder of this discussion, we’ll limit it to BitCoin since the nuances of the thousands of others are too many to cover. I may mention Ethereum, Monero, and stable coins, as those are notable and important to the discussion.

2. Impossible for holdings to be confiscated by tyrants

This too has held up. However, no doubt you’ve been blasted with stories of millions of dollars worth of crypto being confiscated by law enforcement or scammers or cryptocurrency exchanges going belly up. These are NOT cryptocurrency being confiscated by tyrants NOR BY ANYONE!

“WHY?” you ask?

Great question! The confusion comes from the poorly written articles about these events and lack of understanding of what actually happened. Let’s discuss the first big event: Mt. Gox. This was the first cryptocurrency exchange. An exchange is bridge between the current legacy financial system and crypto. An exchange is where you go to exchange dollars for crypto and vice versa, as well as crypto for crypto.

AN EXCHANGE IS NOT CRYPTO! IT’S A CENTRALIZED AND PRIVATELY OWNED AND CONTROLLED BANK!

Mt. Gox was an exchange. It’s a centralized business… a bank. People would sign up with it, give their personal information, open an account, put fiat currency into it, and use the bank’s software (their website) exchange dollars for crypto and vice versa. All this did was update records in a database in the bank’s records. The customer didn’t actually own any crypto. They just had records in a centralized database that said that user could withdraw certain amounts of crypto. As long as they failed to withdraw the crypto they were entitled to into their own, personal wallet, it was never their crypto. It was the bank’s crypto. Many people didn’t understand that and many still don’t to this day. If you “have crypto” in an exchange, do do NOT have crypto. You have an IOU from the bank.

To actually “OWN” crypto, you MUST move it from the entity that holds it to your own, personal wallet where YOU possess the private cryptographic keys. Once you do that, THEN and ONLY THEN do YOU own the crypto. It’s that private key that makes you the owner. Your crypto absolutely, positively, MATHEMATICALLY CANNOT move without the use of that private key.

Mt. Gox got hacked.

Let me repeat that: —===>>> Mt. Gox got hacked <<<===
BitCoin DID NOT GET HACKED!

Mt. Gox was a centralized bank with bugs in their software. Hackers discovered the security flaws and used it to steal about a hundred million or so dollars worth of BitCoin FROM Mt. Gox! Why? Because they were able to control Mt. Gox’s software and instruct it to use Mt. Gox’s private keys to move the crypto.

This was a failure of Mt. Gox to protect their private keys. BitCoin functioned as it should have. The hackers did NOT break the encryption of BitCoin. They effectively stole the combination of the bank’s vault.

Not a SINGLE CUSTOMER’S BitCoin was stolen!

“But HOW can you say that? None of them have ever recovered their BitCoin to this day!”

Ah, but they NEVER POSSESED THE BITCOIN! It was NEVER THEIRS! Why? Because they never cashed in on their IOUs from the Mt Gox bank. Once Mt. Gox was drained of Mt Gox’s BitCoin, they lacked the BitCoin necessary to honor the IOUs that people’s fiat currency was given to them to purchase. This was a failure of a central bank. This central bank defeats the purpose of BitCoin.

YOU DON’T OWN BITCOIN IF IT’S IN A CENTRALIZED BANK! YOU OWN AN IOU!

in case it isn’t obvious at this point; If you purchase cryptocurrency from a centralized exchange, you must immediately move it to your own personal wallet were YOU control the keys. If you don’t do that, YOU SIMPLY DO NOT OWN ANY CRYPTO!

With the explanation of WHO actually owns BitCoin, let’s move on. We’re still examining the dream of “2. Impossible for holdings to be confiscated by tyrants”…

With the explanation above in mind, you’ve certainly heard of governments “confiscating crypto from people” by forcing a crypto exchange to hand it over to the tyrants. This is identical, technologically, to the Mt. Gox breach. It’s simply the government doing it rather than a hacker, but by force instead of a hack. Once again, they took resources in possession of a centralized bank. They did NOT hack the BitCoin blockchain nor did they control the BitCoin network to take it. The user’s simply did not own any BitCoin. The centralized bank did and they handed it over to the tyrants. If the user’s had already moved their claimed crypto into their own wallets, the tyrants would never have been able to take it.

Conclusion: SUCCESS!
The BitCoin blockchain has never been hacked. As long as you hold your private keys securely, your BitCoin can’t be taken.

3. Impossible for your transactions to be blocked by tyrants

No doubt you’ve heard about the Obama administration’s scheme called “Operation choke point”, where they unconstitutionally strong armed banks from doing business with gun stores? They intimidated banks into closing the accounts of 100% legitimate American businesses that sold firearms to American citizens for their constitutionally protected second amendment rights to bear arms.

You’ve also heard of Justin Trudeau’s Canadian government that locked the bank accounts of tens of thousands (might have been more) of Canadians because he disagreed with them for protesting. Not only did he lock THEIR accounts, but hey ALSO locked the accounts of individual citizens that were NOT protesting, but simply donated to the cause. In addition to THAT, he also ordered an American funding organization, GoFundMe, to hand over all donations that AMERICANS had made to the cause. Fortunately, GoFundMe refused.

These are just 2 well known examples, but this happens every day to various degrees.

You’ve probably heard of a story recently in the news of the U.S. government going after a decentralized cryptocurrency mixer called “Tornado”. It allowed users to send a chosen amount of crypto to the mixer, give it multiple other crypto wallet addresses and it would take the crypto received from multiple other people, mix it up, and then send it out to the wallet addresses (think of a wallet address as a bank account number) specified by the users. This allowed the users to then own their crypto anonymously to achieve privacy in their transactions. Of course, the government has the tyrannical belief that they should know about every single transaction that ever takes places throughout all of humanity. They are wrong, but that doesn’t stop them from claiming otherwise. They ordered centralized exchanges to not honor any crypto that touched any of those wallets.

Did this block transactions?

Yes and no.

Yes in that if anyone that owned those wallets wanted to move their crypto into the exchanges, they were blocked.

No, in that the blockchain and the network was not blocking it. It was individuals choosing to not accept transactions from wallets the government told them not to. The owners of that crypt are still, to this day, able to transfer it to any wallet they want and to accept crypto from any other wallet. The attempt by the government to black list those wallets was embarrassingly stupid in that all a user had to do was spend 10 seconds creating a new wallet and moving their crypto to the non-blacklisted wallet.

Conclusion: SUCCESS! (with noted exceptions of individuals choosing to follow orders)

4. Impossible for banks to hold or steal your money

At first glance, knowing that exchanges are banks and can hold and steal your crypto, you might think that with dream was a failure. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Simply don’t give your crypto to a centralized bank. Problem solved.

Of course, the centralized exchange banks are necessary as they are the on and off ramps to and from crypto and fiat. But, not entirely. Also, if you claim your IOU immediately by moving your just purchased crypto into your personal wallet, you’re then safe. You can also acquire crypto in many other ways. For example, you can run your own cryptocurrency mining software that generates crypto for you. You can sell products and services by accepting crypto directly from the buyer into your own, personal crypto wallet, bypassing the centralized banks.

If your crypt is in your own wallet where you and ONLY YOU have the keys, then it is, indeed, impossible for any bank to hold or steal your crypto because they simply don’t possess it. In crypto, YOU are LITERALLY your own bank.

Conclusion: SUCCESS!

5. Impossible for central authorities to willy nilly devalue the currency by printing more

This one is the one that seems to be most misunderstood by the general public. And it’s because the average person does not understand the technology that makes up cryptocurrencies. They CONSTANTLY argue against crypto saying, “Well, crypto is made from thin air. They can just make more at any time!”

This is fundamentally and completely FALSE! Here’s why:

(Prepare for techno-talk. I’ll keep it as limited as possible)
BitCoin comes into existence in only 1 way: Complex software algorithms are used to hunt for special numbers in a huge universe of numbers. Once a special number is found, the computer that found it presents it to the whole BitCoin network. The network validates the number is in fact a genuine special number and rewards the finder with a certain amount of Bitcoin. Any validator that lies is kicked out of the network and black-listed. Any computer claiming to have found a special number and isn’t validated by the network is also black listed. It’s financially harmful to be dishonest in that network.

The amount of computation and searching for one of those special numbers is ENORMOUS. The BitCoin network is the most powerful supercomputer on the planet; leaps and bounds more powerful than any government supercomputer. A BitCoin represents the enormous amount of computational time AND power consumed to generate it. There is no central authority that can authorize more BitCoin. The network only allows the creation of new BitCoins when a miner finds one of these numbers and on average, the entire global BitCoin mining decentralized network finds only ONE about every 10 minutes. At the time of this writing in 9/2023, this number is rewarded by the network with the creation of 6.25 new BitCoins. Every 4 years, the network cuts that reward in half. At the next 4 year cycle, it will be cut down to 3.125.

This is designed specifically to prevent deflation of the value of the cryptocurrency and is a direct result of the central banks choosing willy nilly to print TRILLIONS of new dollars, intentionally devaluing all existing dollars. The BitCoin network software is also designed to stop producing new BitCoins once 21 million BiCoins have been generated. As of right now, nearly 20 million have already been created. But with the halving event of every 4 years, it will take another 140 years to mine that last 1 million BitCoins.

THERE WILL NEVER BE MORE THAN 21 MILLION BITCOINS

Conclusion: OVERWHELMING SUCCESS!

FINAL CONCLUSION

Don’t hate a financial asset and tool just because there are bad people in the world. 100% of all financial assets and tools have always been, are now, and will always be tools used by scammers too. An asset is not defined by the bad guys. It’s defined by it’s function.

Don’t let your previous anger at the scammers cloud your judgement on BitCoin. In fact, it’s to the tyrants advantage that you let it cloud your judgement, because they WANT you to remain in the tyrannical financial system where they are gaining more and more control over everything you can do with your own money. They’re desperately hoping that light bulb of awareness never turns on in your head.

Cryptocurrency is the key to your financial liberties. Don’t deny yourself and your family your freedoms because of your misunderstanding caused by scammers and propagandists that want you to remain in the system that THEY control.

Encrypted Video Conference Calls With Signal

No intro paragraph needed. Title says it all. Let’s get started:

If a group chat for everyone that needs to be on the conference call doesn’t yet exist, you’ll need to create one and add participants. Once it exists, anyone can join in a conference or bail out at any time. They can do it by text, audio, and/or video as long as the group exists.

You can inform everyone that you’d like to start at a particular date and time and they’ll need to set their own reminders to show up.

To Create a Group

(To JOIN an existing conference call, go to your existing Signal group, then skip ahead to step #8)

  1. Start Signal.
  2. In the lower right, tap the blue icon with the pencil in it to start a new conversation.
  3. You’ll see “New group” at the top.
  4. Type in someone’s name from your contacts. Tap their name in the search results and they’ll be added to the group.
  5. Repeat step 4 for everyone you want to be in the group.
  6. Once done adding participants, in the lower right, tap the right arrow in the blue circle.
  7. Enter a Group Name. This will be visible to all participants. Then hit the blue pill button in the lower right with “create” in it.
    1. The group now exists
  8. Anyone in the group can now text the whole group or join a video or audio call. Tap the camera icon in the upper right hand corner.
  9. You will join an existing video conference OR if you’re the first one, you’ll start one.
  10. While IN the conference call, tap anywhere on the screen where there is NOT a button or other control… for example, tap on someone’s face, and you’ll get 4 icons at the bottom of the screen. To toggle your camera, hit the camera icon. To toggle your microphone, tap the microphone button. Swipe up to switch between views of each member.

Anyone in the group can come and go as they please. Anyone can participate as video+audio or audio only or just send texts.

The group stays forever until someone deletes it.

Enjoy your encrypted conference calls!

Brave now part of the Decentralized Web

On January 19, 2021, the Brave browser released version 1.19.86. A MAJOR feature was added:

IPFS support

Now, if you enter an IPFS URL, such as:

ipfs://Qmf93BEm2UsgEm949QY3uSrXxn5UfDH83ZFSvQsBGyxPRt

It will resolve the reference and deliver to you the file.

The method in which it resolves this depends on your local settings and whether or not you’re running a local IPFS node, the IPFS browser plugin, or neither. In all 3 cases, it will still resolve the URL and find and deliver the file.

In addition to that, it will give you the option of running an IPFS node on your PC. I highly recommend doing that, IF you’re not low on resources. All it takes is a single button click.

Then YOUR PC becomes part of the global InterPlanetary File System network, increasing the geographical distribution of files and speeding up the global performance of the entire network, in addition to speeding up YOUR use of it. Any file, DAPP (distributed application), or decentralized website (which is just a DAPP, BTW), will load for you much faster the second time you access it AND it’ll be available to you even when you’re offline!

IPFS is a critical part of the infrastructure of the new world wide web, which is being built out as fully decentralized and censorship resistant. Unlike centralized websites that get bogged down and slow down when more people use them, DAPPs actually get FASTER as more people use them!

This is a BIG deal that IPFS is now fully supported in a browser.

Go get the Brave browser here. It’s build from the Chromium source code, so it looks and feels similar to Chrome and all Chrome extensions work in it. It also strips out all the Google spyware and has an ad blocker built in, so browsing is faster without all the page loading delays caused by the ridiculous amount of ads loaded in most web pages these days.

IPFS: Bypassing Big-Tech Censorship

Government Censorship

It used to be abusive, dictatorial, tyrannical 3rd world governments that blocked and censored information from the victims that lived in oppression under their rule. Technologies like TOR and encryption products were invented to help squeak through the iron fists of the banana republic tin pot governments hold on information flow.

Tech Censorship

Now, as you’re probably painfully aware by now, web sites, apps, and even PEOPLE in FIRST WORLD countries are being DELETED from the internet by a small group of emotional and sanctimonious people with little interaction with the vast majority of the public. But they are running the technology services that everything runs on and they’ve decided that THEY are your moral superiors and overlords and have appointed themselves the arbiters of “truth” and “morality” and are now ENFORCING that, aggressively on everyone, especially those in the first world. And the scary part about it, is these are the same people the created many of the technologies to HELP third world victims circumvent their government’s censorship!

Liberators

Now, there’s a NEW group of technology experts working to create new technologies to liberate the victims of censorship in the first world, as well as those in the third world. They’re reinventing the world wide web. The problem with the current (legacy) web is that it’s centrally controlled. All the technologies for creating your own website are dependent on multiple 3rd parties, each of which are in control of one or more aspects of your website. They are:

  1. DNS (Domain Name System)
  2. Registrars
  3. ISP (Internet Service Provider)
  4. Web Hoster
  5. Storage Provider
  6. Database Provider
  7. Client Software for users (Browsers)

IPFS solves the problems of:

  • Web Hosters
  • Storage Providers
  • DNS (partially)

Here’s how it works…

Volunteers, like you and me, and even some organizations, run software on their PCs that makes them nodes in the IPFS global network. If you want to “publish” a file, you simply make it available via your local node. That’s it. It would probably help if you give out the hash of the file. With that hash, people can request the file form the IPFS global network. The network will hunt through the nodes until it eventually finds YOUR file, then will deliver it to the requester. As a result of that request and transfer, your file is now in more than one place. The NEXT person that requests the file could get it from any of those places, and it gets replicated again.

The more a file is requested, the more it spreads and the faster its found by those requesting it. After it’s been replicated once, you could even turn off your machine and people can STILL get it.

You can even publish a website onto IPFS instead of a web hoster. Now your website is decentralized and available even if you shut down your PC from which you originally published it. Side note: If it’s decentralized, it’s an “app”, not a website.

Since there’s no central server, there’s no one place to attack to try to bring your site down.

Since there’s no central server, NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, not even the U.S. government can take down your app. In fact, not even YOU can take it down! The ONLY way it disappears is if people stop requesting it AND no one has your files “pinned” (marked as “do not delete”). Most files will eventually get deleted if they’re not accessed enough as newer files being requested start filling up the nodes’ storage space, older ones get flushed out.

How to Install your first BitCoin wallet app

This is part of a multi-part series of articles on how to get started in cryptocurrencies. This article is the first step you need to take: Installing your first wallet app. Before you do anything else, you must first create your own BitCoin wallet.

What does this mean and why?

In the cryptocurrency world, YOU are your own bank. That means YOU are 100% in control of your cryptocurrency and no one else. This means no one can steal your funds… not a bank, not the government, not hackers that hack a cryptocurrency exchange.

What’s a cryptocurrency exchange?

A cryptocurrency exchange is a CENTRALIZED authority where you can buy cryptocurrency with fiat currency. One of the articles in this series will cover that. Fiat currency is money you’ve been using your whole life like U.S. dollars, the British pound, the Euro, etc… Currencies created by and issued by governments are “fiat” currencies. Cryptocurrencies are created by citizens with complex computer code and not under the control of governments and are not assigned to any one country. They are borderless.

A cryptocurrency exchange is essentially a centralized bank. They are your “on ramp” and “off ramp” for cryptocurrency. (they’re not the ONLY way to acquire crypto) Before you buy any cryptocurrency with fiat from an exchange, you need to have your own, personal cryptocurrency wallet set up so that you can immediately transfer your purchased crypto into your own personally controlled wallet. If you don’t do that, you’re not in control of your crypto. “Not your keys, not your crypto”.

Not Your Keys, Not Your Crypto!

People often make the HUGE mistake of purchasing crypto, but then NOT moving it to their own, personal wallets. This is why people WRONGLY claim that crypto is always stolen. IT IS NOT! If they had moved their crypto into their own personal wallet files, the massive thefts of crypto that happened at exchanges like Mt Gox would NEVER have happened!

The REASON people lost money with exchanges is because they made the fatal mistake of LEAVING their crypto IN A CENTRALIZED BANK! Hackers got ahold of the central bank’s keys and stole millions of dollars worth of crypto… FROM THE BANK! Only the users that FAILED to move their crypto into their own wallets ever lost anything.

DO NOT MAKE THAT MISTAKE!

Install the Electrum BitCoin wallet app on your PC. Below, is a video demonstrating the entire process.

There are MANY wallet apps for MANY cryptocurrencies. I created a website for decentralized apps and services and I’m adding more to it all the time. Here’s a (growing) list of cryptocurrency wallets. Electrum isn’t the only one.

Cryptocurrency Wallet Apps

Decentralization Central

Moving to decentralized services and apps has recently become critically important if you want to maintain your sovereignty and your free speech, free from big-tech authoritarian censorship.

This is so important that I’ve dedicated my time to creating a hub for decentralized services and apps. I registered a domain name, secured it with an SSL certificated, and wrote an online, searchable database for anyone to access, listing dozens (and growing) of fully decentralized apps, DAPPs, and services, as well as some that aren’t necessarily 100% decentralized, but useful nonetheless, plus a few companions services and apps that may not, themselves be decentralized, but support decentralization.

Without further ado, allow me to officially introduce…

DecentralizationCentral.com <– Click here!

And yes, you can switch to light mode if you wish. Just click the dark/light button at the top of the page, next to “About”.

The services are easily discoverable by browsing the dozen or so categories. Each category houses multiple services. You can also use the search bar to search for both services and categories of services.

Each service has its own informational page, describing the service and listing the decentralization features it has. Each feature is color coded. A fully decentralized service will have all decentralization features listed in green.

Below that is a list of icons representing the platforms the service is support on.

And below the list of platforms supported, is a list of useful links. Note that SOME links are not regular web links. We ARE, afterall, talking about the next, decentralized web, which has new kinds of links that require new kinds of browsers to support them. Almost all links are traditional links that will work with your traditional (legacy) browser.

The new kinds of links you may run into are:

  • IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)
  • dat:// (beaker browser)
  • TOR .onion links (for the TOR network)

Please peruse this database and try out any of the services that peak your interests. And check back often. I’m constantly updating it with more decentralized products and services and adding new features.

Things to expect in the near to mid-term future:

  • Video demonstrations
  • Blogs
  • More informative text for each service… more like a wiki page.
  • User editable pages plus users being able to add more services.
  • How-to articles to get you started into the world of decentralization.
  • Forums
  • The ultimate goal will be having a fully decentralized version of this website.

What are your thoughts on big tech censorship and how to protect yourself from it? What would be useful for YOU in those services and on the DecentralizationCentral.com website? Let us know in the comments.

BitCoin Just had its 2020 Halvening: Here’s what that means

What Happened?

Earlier today (2020-05-11), the amount of new BitCoins awarded to each minor that hits the jackpot of finding the right hash to validate the latest block of transactions now gets rewarded HALF the amount of BitCoin that they would have been awarded for each block mined for the last 4 years. For the last 4 years, up until earlier today, every block that was mined, 12.5 BitCoins were awarded to the miner that mined it. Now, and for the next 4 years, any minor that mines a block will be awarded only 6.25 BitCoins.

Why did that happen?

Creating new BitCoins is like printing money. It shouldn’t be done unless it has to because doing so floods the market with new coins and reduces the value of every coin already in existence. This is called “inflation”. But, the miners have to be incentivised to run their expensive hardware and burn through their expensive electricity, therefore, they are rewarded with a small amount of new coins. But, also built into the algorithm is a maximum limit of 21 million total BitCoins. There aren’t that many BitCoins yet, and this halvening algorithm is part of the reason why. By cutting in half, the reward, every 4 years (more specifically, every 210,000 blocks mined), it will take 144 or so years before the last BitCoin is mined.

What does this mean?

For miners, it means their income is cut in half… but only in the short term. BitCoin is deflationary by design, so the value of BitCoin has been and it is expected to continue to go up over time.

For consumers, it doesn’t mean much, at least not in the immediate future. The price of BitCoin has not been immediately effected by prior halvening events. For the most part, it should be business as usual.

For HODL’rs (people that Hold On for Dear Life… saving for the long term), it should reinforce the future value of their BitCoin.

For day traders, given prior halvenings that turned out to be non eventful, they probably won’t experience much of a difference either.

Conclusion:

For the most part, there’s more hype than action… every halvening, but the algorithm for the halvening is critically important for the long term viability of BitCoin.

What’s the best crypto-wallet for daily use?

Cryptocurrency is different than fiat money, as you probably already know.  But those differences make a HUGE impact on how you choose which wallet software to use.  And it’s all about control… YOUR control over your own money.

Let’s begin…

Rather than telling you which wallet apps are best, I’m going to lay out the features you need to look for in wallets, and the ones you need to DEMAND.  In other words, in the “demand” features, you should remove any wallet from consideration that does NOT have the complete “demand” list.  Other features, that may help, but are not deal breakers will be listed as “nice to haves”.  One of the reasons I’m not listing any wallets is because that would make this article dated eventually.  What I’m presenting here should be relevant for decades to come.

DEMAND

  1. Open Source:  If the software wallet you’re considering is NOT open source, then ditch it immediately!  Why?  Because open source wallets have no secrets.  Their entire source code is freely available for anyone to inspect, to guarantee there are no malicious intentions hidden behind the scenes.  Closed source wallets are a black box and you’re throwing out any chance of verification of honesty and relying SOLELY on the word of the wallet creator.  The whole point of cryptocurrency technology is that you DO NOT TRUST ANYONE ELSE WITH YOUR MONEY!  And that INCLUDES programmers… ESPECIALLY programmers!  And I say that AS A PROGRAMMER, MYSELF!
    1. Addendum:  Just because a wallet CLAIMS to be “open source”, doesn’t mean it IS.  For example, I could publish a closed source wallet and just CLAIM it’s “open source” and people would just believe it and download and use it, while I never publish the source code.  So, if some app CLAIMS it’s open source, DON’T BELIEVE THEM… EVER!  You go and FIND the source code (usually on https://gitlab.com or https://github.com) and verify the source code exists.  A reputable wallet author will also provide you a link to the source along with the binary to download.
    2. In addition to FINDING the source code, make sure you download the app FROM the source code repository’s binaries, NOT from an app store or anywhere else!
    3. If you’re a programmer, just download the source and compile it yourself and use THAT!  If you’re NOT a programmer, do #1.2 above.
  2. Must be an app that runs on your own hardware.  In other words, if it’s a website, then you’ve just completely obliterated the ENTIRE PURPOSE of cryptocurrency.  A website “wallet” is NOT a wallet.  It’s a BANK!  THEY are a centralized authority holding YOUR money.  By definition, if YOU are not in control of it, then it isn’t YOUR money, it’s THEIRS.  They ALLOW you to access it, until they DON’T!  Stay away from online wallets, with the brief exception of online exchanges where you EXCHANGE your cryptocurrency for fiat money or vice/versa.  But as SOON as you acquire crypto from an online exchange, you MOVE IT IMMEDIATELY into your OWN wallet!
    1. This means that you must DOWNLOAD an app (desktop or mobile).  And I recommend staying away from browser plugin wallets.  Browsers are just not a safe enough environment.
  3. Your keys or seed phrases are not transmitted over the internet FOR ANY REASON!  Your keys ARE your money!  Whomever holds they keys, holds and OWNS the money.  This is the very core and soul of cryptocurrency.  It’s its reason for being.  NO ONE other than YOU should EVER know your seed phrase or passwords… EVER!!!

NICE TO HAVES

  1. Easy to use user interface.  A lot of people mistakenly think this is a “demand” feature, but you’re better off with a klunky UI that puts you in control of your crypto rather than a sleek and polished wallet that doesn’t meet all the “demand” features.
  2. light vs full node.  What does this mean?  The most secure wallet will be one that’s ALSO a full node on the network for that cryptocurrency.  But to do that, it would need to download the ENTIRE blockchain for that cryptocurrency.  For a popular cryptocurrency, like #BitCoin, that would mean HUNDREDS OF GIGABYTES of data (eventually TERABYTES!) and hours or days of downloading, plus consuming all that space on your hard drive, forever.  It would also mean that your PC would be an actor in the BitCoin network, processing transactions.  That’s actually a GOOD thing for the network, but NOT a good thing for your local resources.  If all you’re looking for is a wallet, a full node is beyond overkill.  It’s like running a whole grocery store just because you need a refrigerator for your Milk.  I’m not discouraging you to NOT be a node.  By all means, PLEASE DO run a full node.  It helps the whole crypto community.  But, it’s not necessary for YOU if all you want is a wallet.  A “light” wallet is JUST a wallet, not a full node.  As such, light wallets are the only kinds of wallets that are available on mobile.  A full node requires a desktop PC, plugged into the electrical outlet.

Other Considerations

There’s another kind of wallet that I’m on the fence for at the moment, because it violates demand #1:  It’s NOT open source.  However, it has some other interesting security features.

The Samsung cryptocurrency wallet

I know I said I’m not going to recommend any specific wallet, and I maintain that.  I AM, however, going to TALK ABOUT one:  The Samsung cryptocurrency wallet meets all the other demand features, but it IS NOT OPEN SOURCE!  However, it has an important security feature no other software based wallets have.  That is, modern Samsung phones and tablets have a hardware based key store.  This is a special, isolated chip that can store encrypted versions of your cryptocurrency keys.  This hardware IS robust and is an important, core feature of the Samsung Knox (now known as “Samsung Secure Folder”) isolated security environment.  It’s the only mobile environment approved by the US Department of Defense for its employees.  Take that however you like.

What is Samsung Knox (or “Secure Folder”)?  You know how you enter a PIN or a password, or a pattern, or a fingerprint, or a face image to unlock your phone?  Well, on Samsung phones, you have all that, PLUS another, completely isolated, secure environment INSIDE of that.  It’s like a smartphone within a smartphone.  Once you set up “secure folder”, you get a SECOND smartphone environment, with another home screen and another set of apps.  Apps installed inside this secure area are NOT accessible to apps outside of it.  I personally install all my financial apps inside of this area.  My games and less sensitive apps and data are stored in the regular phone area.

Side note:  Whether you use the Samsung crypto wallet or not, you SHOULD install the mobile wallet you DO use inside the Samsung Secure Folder area on your phone (if you’re using a Samsung device).

The Samsung Cryptocurrency wallet is a software mobile wallet, and just like all other mobile wallets, it encrypts your seed phrase to your cryptocurrency with your password.  But the difference is that it stores that in the isolated, secure chip.  THAT makes it immensely more secure.  HOWEVER, the app is NOT open source!  Hence my hesitation of recommending this app.  We have no way to know what’s REALLY going on inside the Samsung wallet, because it’s closed source.

My Compromise:

So, here’s my recommendation:  If you DO use the Samsung wallet, never have more in it than you’d ever put in your real, physical wallet.  In other words, in the days when you’d have a wallet in your pocket with cash in it (you remember that right?  That green paper that you’d trade for stuff?), you’d rarely carry more than about $100, because that’s all you’d need for 1 day and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you lost it or if it were stolen.

I recommend the same practice with the Samsung crypto wallet.  Only store about $100(USD) worth of crypto in your Samsung wallet.  If you run across a local place that accepts crypto, you can spend it, but if there’s ever any kind of a breach with Samsung’s OS and/or software, you’re not going to lose too much.

And I’ll give the same $100 limit advice for ALL OTHER mobile wallets too!  Store the remainder of your fortunes in multiple hardware wallets or multiple desktop wallets.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency was created for the purpose of YOU being in control.  Therefore, it’s pointless to store your cryptocurrency in a place that you DO NOT control.  As always, don’t put all your eggs or cryptos in one basket.  Don’t put your life savings into your mobile wallet.

Addendum

Speaking of not putting all your eggs in one basket:  As you start accumulating more and more wealth in cryptocurrency, either by continuous investing or by the value of it rising, it’s smart to create more digital wallets and spreading your crypto among them.  Don’t store all your passwords and seed phrases in the same place.  Following these practices, if any of your wallets are ever compromised by your own failures to protect them, you won’t lose ALL of your assets.

In the comments below, tell us what wallets YOU use… THAT FIT THE DEMANDS listed here?  Please keep the conversation limited to those that fit the minimal demand list.

Debunking another Flat Earth Video

Amazingly, there are grown adults in first world countries that believe the earth is flat.  They frequently post videos “proving” their B.S., military grade stupidity, thinking they’ve outsmarted the rest of the world.  It’s amazing and sad to see.  Here’s yet another one that I’ll be debunking here.  Although, MUCH of what they provide lacks source material, so we don’t know what they’re showing.

Debunking this video:

h t t p s : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / w a t c h ? v = G 8 f J N _ 6 N H h 4

  1. at 00:12 seconds in, showing 2 images of the space jump, one showing a label on the capsule and one not.
    You have to provide sources. Show us the video. Is one from a rendering or a test at a different time?
  2. at 00:22 seconds in, an astronaut suddenly appearing from nowhere: Again, CONTEXT MATTERS! Was this just NASA’s broadcast switching from one recording to another? It’s CRITICAL for you to show us the source material, otherwise, there’s no way to confirm or debunk.
  3. car in space: No argument is actually given, therefore, there’s nothing to refute.
  4. 1:04, showing blockiness around the earth in a photo from the moon.
    I’m surprised the video maker knows enough about a paint program to increase the contrast, but not enough to know that this is a VERY WELL KNOWN artifact of lossy image compression. Also, your video is at 720×480… EXTREMELY LOW RES. Why?

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_artifact
  5. Picture of full earth over moon horizon: AGAIN DUDE! SOURCE MATERIAL!!!! Where the HELL did you get this image from? Is it claimed to be authentic or is it an artists work that you found on the internet???
  6. https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/epic-galleries/2016/solar_eclipse/full/168_2016068234208.png image with tilted box: More than likely they rotated the image so the north & south pole line up for your viewing pleasure. There’s no up or down in space. Neither the satellite nor its camera are necessarily oriented perfectly with the earth’s axis of rotation with the top of the camera perfectly lined up with true, earth north. I moved the levels down even MORE in my local paint program, and you know what I found? STARS!
    1. Also, notice in both YOUR and MY level modifications, there are horizontal bands that line up with the rotated box frame?  Those are artifacts of the CCD.  A fake wouldn’t have these and certainly wouldn’t hide them in low levels.
    2. If these were fake, there’d be no reason to have a non black background, no reason to rotate it (just manufacture it in the orientation you want), and no need to put stars in there far below the viewer’s ability to see, hidden in the very low gray scales. All of your “evidence” is evidence of it being real. Here’s a link to the gallery it came from: https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries/2016/solar_eclipse
  7. 1:22 Saturn’s moon Enceladus: What are you trying to prove here? Again, you’ve revealed more detail of the surface of the moon that wasn’t visible in the original image and revealed stars that weren’t visible in the original image. Why hide this in a fake? You’re providing evidence that it’s real.
  8. 1:29 Green edge between moon and earth. Again, if it were fake, they’d have it perfect with no artifacts. This is likely an artifact of the CCD on the camera or the lenses. Everyone has seen these ghosting effects in cameras.
  9. 1:34 The earth and “copied” clouds. OMG! We’ve been debunking this one over and over and over for YEARS! That’s NOT AN IMAGE THAT NASA CLAIMS IS REAL!!! That’s the original iPhone wallpaper. There are multiple articles on how the artist created the image. Again, I’ve debunked this one so often, I write a blog post about it here: Does NASA fake photos of Earth?
  10. 1:47 yet AGAIN… JPEG COMPRESSION ARTIFACTS!!! How many DECADES do you want us to explain this to you before you finally understand what everyone else already understands?
  11. 1:58 Apollo 15 image. Ghosting on analog film is a VERY WELL known phenomenon. How many examples of this do you have in this video???
  12. 2:13, yet again, more JPEG artifacts!
  13. Poor lense, bandwidth, & compression problems in ISS footage.

OK, I’ve spent enough of my free time just on the first 3 minutes and 29 seconds of this 20 minute video… 13 innuendos in all.  I’ve debunked 100% of everything shown up to that point, though no proofs were shown of any claims, only innuendos, but I debunked those.  I never saw a top 10 count in that time segment though.  Maybe it’s later?  Maybe I’ll get back to it when I’ve got more time to waste.  But for now, I’ve got a life to get back to.