Bitcoin Magazine

Celebrate Bitcoin Black Friday, Propel The Bitcoin Circular Economy

25/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin Black Friday was started by Jon Holmquist in 2012 as a way to co-opt a mainstream celebration of consumerism and help Bitcoiners promote their favorite technology. By encouraging merchants to offer discounts on their goods and services when shoppers paid with BTC, the holiday became a showcase for Bitcoin as a payments system, a tool to encourage more businesses to adopt it and a way for HODLers to propel the Bitcoin circular economy.

The team behind Bitcoin Magazine relaunched Bitcoin Black Friday this year with a refreshed website featuring dozens of discounts on things as diverse as hardware wallets and VPNs to apparel and gambling services.

Bitcoin has come a long way as a payments technology since 2012. There are a variety of bitcoin-backed debit and credit cards, high-quality bitcoin payment processors and, of course, the Lightning Network, which has made bitcoin payments vastly more efficient. To showcase this progress of the Bitcoin circular economy, and help readers understand how they can participate, our editorial team wanted to underscore the importance that celebrations like this play in building an economy where bitcoin is the chosen medium of exchange.

We’ve compiled related articles from some of the space’s best thinkers and most active participants below. As you prepare to celebrate Bitcoin Black Friday 2020 on November 27, give these pieces a read, and remember: It’s not just about discounts, it’s about showcasing the future.

“Because Bitcoin Is A Necessity, Its Economy Will Be Circular” by Aleksander Svetski

If bitcoin is the next and final global money, then by definition (and by design) it is already circular.

“It’s Time To Join The Bitcoin Circular Economy” by Ragnar Lifthrasir

The Bitcoin circular economy is Bitcoin: permissionless, untied to identity and P2P. It’s time to start participating.

“Four Lies about The Bitcoin Circular Economy” by Brian Harrington

It’s helpful to take a closer look at a few lies about an increasingly popular topic: the Bitcoin circular economy.

Finally, don’t forget to visit BitcoinBlackFriday.com and see for yourself the number of merchants from industries of all kinds that are actively incentivizing the world to leverage bitcoin.

The post Celebrate Bitcoin Black Friday, Propel The Bitcoin Circular Economy appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Video: “The Fiat Standard” With Saifedean Ammous

25/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

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“The Bitcoin Standard” by Saifedean Ammous is a fan-favorite book among Bitcoiners that is constantly recommended to newbies and veterans alike. It serves as a fantastic reference to learn about the history of money and what makes money valuable: two critical factors informing the importance of Bitcoin.

I personally have written a few articles of my own about these topics and always find myself coming back to “The Bitcoin Standard” to gather information for my research. Learning the ins and outs of how money operates is a very interesting and beneficial thing for anyone to understand.

But even after reading this book, I found myself wanting to learn more. And, if you felt the same way, you’re in luck because I had the chance to discuss Ammous’s latest book, “The Fiat Standard,” with the author himself.

“The Fiat Standard” is the “debt slavery alternative to human civilization,” as described on its cover, and it will take readers on a deep dive into the monetary system and underlying technologies behind fiat money to find out exactly how it functions.

Fiat Money

In this podcast interview, Ammous and I dive into multiple topics surrounding fiat money, such as its foundational technology, the debt standard, fiat states and fiat banking.

Understanding how fiat operates in comparison to Bitcoin can be a difficult task. Since Bitcoin is an open-source protocol, it allows anyone and everyone to check its code down to the very last detail. Fiat, on the other hand, is protected by smokescreens that hide its operational methods, with an additional layer of propaganda promoted by people who benefit from it the most.

“So, I started distilling the operation of the fiat standard away from … the means of its promoters and its propaganda that is taught about it in schools, [to] just talking about it operationally: How does it actually work?” Ammous explained in our conversation. “And I’m delighted to announce that it doesn’t work too well.”

Although fiat money has its problems and is not the most efficient monetary system, Ammous brought up a point that some Bitcoiners may not like to hear: He explained that even though fiat currency is a shitcoin, it has still succeeded in some areas.

“When you think about it this way, you can see where the advantages lie,” he said. “It is a shitcoin, but it’s still a shitcoin that is massively adopted by seven and a half billion people and it does a lot of transactions every day.”

The slight advantages of fiat don’t mean that it’s an overall positive monetary system, as fiat money has brought us upon the debt standard and possibly the worst debt crisis that the world has ever seen, with no end in sight.

“When mining fiat works through lending, then everyone has an added incentive to engage in lending,” Ammous said, building an analogy between Bitcoin and fiat. “It’s essentially a subsidy to lending. So everyone who wants to borrow is effectively being subsidized. When you borrow, you effectively mine a block of fiat.”

Fiat Education

Looking back on the history of civilization under sound money, you tend to find that it helped to bring great times of prosperity to humanity, while easy money brought on hard times, war and utter chaos.

One of the most effective ways to usher in a solid fiat standard is to start “educating” the youth that all of this nonsense is not only good, but beneficial to them and everyone else. This has brought us to fiat education.

Fiat education plays a massive role in the debt crisis as discussed above. Universities today depend heavily on and are essentially controlled by fiat money.

“The major form of subsidies that is given to universities is the low-interest rates loans for students,” explained Ammous. “That is what constitutes an enormous subsidy to the university-industry. And so with this kind of subsidy, plus all the money that comes in for research, universities effectively are run by fiat.”

Also, people used to go to universities to connect with other like-minded individuals and increase their knowledge on whatever subject they’re interested in. But today, we don’t see that at the “overpriced country club” that is the fiat university.

“Universities have become completely separated from reality, and they can afford to be completely separate from reality because their paychecks do not depend on reality” said Ammous. “Because they need to meet bureaucratic targets, they don’t need to meet the approval of people on the market.”

In my opinion, this lack of proper education and arguable brainwashing that occurs in universities today has been affecting the real world in a negative way after their graduates go on to find jobs and function in society. The combination of the lack of proper education and easy money has spiraled into fiat medicine, science, fuel, families and more.

Today we are truly living in peak, fiat euphoria. Bitcoin fixes this.

The post Video: “The Fiat Standard” With Saifedean Ammous appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

It’s Time To Join The Bitcoin Circular Economy

25/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

Makers of 3D-printed guns operate by the motto, “Free men don’t ask permission.” They don’t ask the State for permission to bear arms. They don’t rely on gun manufacturers to make a gun that they’d like to see developed. In doing so, 3D gun printing functions parallel to, and outside of the legacy model of regulated manufacturers producing compliant and serialized guns that can only be bought through third-party licensed firearms dealers after passing a State background check.

A “Bitcoin circular economy” runs on the same principle. Free men don’t ask permission to transact with each other and don’t rely on the legacy third-party financial institutions that operate in tandem with State authorities.

In this article, I will define the Bitcoin circular economy, provide examples, describe its benefits and give advice on how to get started.

Defining The Bitcoin Circular Economy

A Bitcoin circular economy (BCE) is Bitcoin.

The title of the Bitcoin white paper is “A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” The “system” is an economy consisting of peers in a network, trading with each other using bitcoin. You’re acquiring bitcoin by earning it or receiving it through donations.

“Circular” is a bit redundant. But it helps to describe Bitcoin economies where the participants trade frequently with each other, rather than describing the entirety of all Bitcoin transactions in the P2P network.

A common misunderstanding is the scale of this economy. A Bitcoin economy isn’t the size of a nation-state, replacing central bank-based economies. The minimum size of a Bitcoin economy is three participants. Three participants are a network, a system. A BCE is parallel to the fiat financial system.

One misunderstanding about Bitcoin economies is that they’re all or nothing.

“Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust-based model.”

Satoshi Nakamoto, The Bitcoin White Paper.

The individuals and companies operating in a Bitcoin economy can also, and often should, use fiat. One can think of Bitcoin economies like the Tor network of money — separate, more private and much harder to censor. The clearnet works well enough for most people and internet applications. However, for certain people and applications, Tor is needed. Of course, if the internet was Tor, and Tor had less latency, it would be better for everyone except the State. Similarly, if Bitcoin was the dominant financial system, and suffered from less volatility, it would be better for everyone except the State.

A second misunderstanding about the Bitcoin economy is that it’s mutually exclusive from HODLing. You can earn bitcoin and HODL it. You can take spend from your HODL and replace it. Don’t get caught in binary thinking.

Example Of The Bitcoin Circular Economy

The hub of 3D gun printing is a collective called Deterrence Dispensed that has over 18,100 members. Let’s trace how bitcoin circulates in this community.

Soon after a 3D-printed Glock design came out, Deterrence Dispensed member “Spooky Rails” started making and selling aluminum rails that increased the Glock’s durability. He only accepted bitcoin because Spooky Rails didn’t want to know or have a record of the real identity of his customers. And he wanted to protect his own identity. From the bitcoin he earned, Spooky Rails likely contributed to one of the five Deterrence Dispensed Bitcoin bounties to develop new designs.

In September, my company Guns N’ Bitcoin held a conference called Bear Arms N’ Bitcoin where we held a silent auction. The proceeds were donated to Deterrence Dispensed in bitcoin. Perhaps the winner of the 3D gun bounty bought one of the auction items.

Benefits Of The Bitcoin Circular Economy

Bitcoin is the separation of money and identity.

Nation state money is the marriage of money and identity. Your credit cards, checking account and PayPal account start with your identity; your name, home address, social security number, email, phone number and more. This has three tyrannical consequences for economies.

First, the State and third parties can censor commerce before it occurs. If you try to open an account with Visa with the identity of Gab Founder Andrew Torba, or his wife, you will be denied access to their services. Torba and his wife can’t use these services to participate in the social media economy.

Second, the State and third parties can censor future commerce. With third parties, you are your transactions. Third-party services record every transaction you perform. They monitor your commerce and if you buy or sell something they disagree with, they mark your identity as non grata. They prohibit you from future commerce. By doing this to thousands of companies and millions of people the State and third parties have censored entire economies before they can even form.

In contrast, a Bitcoin economy isn’t tied to identity. Perhaps this is Bitcoin’s most underappreciated application, and why bitcoin has become the preferred money for 3D gun printing commerce. A Bitcoin economy is a censorship-free economy.

Another benefit of participating in a Bitcoin economy is acquiring bitcoin without using third-party, KYC/AML-compliant services. These services are the problem that Bitcoin was meant to solve. As Nick Szabo said, “Trusted third parties are security holes.” Third-party, KYC/AML-compliant services are largely how the State is able to surveil, censor and collect tax revenue from users of Bitcoin. Bitcoin you earn or receive as a donation is bitcoin you didn’t have to buy on a third-party exchange. The more people who acquire bitcoin through commerce or donations, the less necessary the KYC/AML services become, making Bitcoin less fragile and more robust.

When you participate in a Bitcoin economy, you build relationships with individuals who value peer-to-peer Bitcoin. You can trade bitcoin with them, rather than buying and selling on third-party, KYC/AML-compliant exchanges.

Getting Started

You can participate in a bitcoin economy today! The easiest way for most people to do so is to use bitcoin as the method of payment with those who do their best to use their earned bitcoin as a method of payment. You certainly don’t need to always use bitcoin with them. You may or may not use bitcoin with companies that accept bitcoin but who immediately convert it to fiat. But do spend some bitcoin sometimes.

You can also earn bitcoin! Start a side gig. Ask for donations through either BTCPay Server or a Samurai PayNym. Sell items on Craigslist for bitcoin, or ask to be paid in bitcoin at your current job.

Engage in peer-to-peer trade. Ask a friend to buy or sell you bitcoin. Try doing so $20. Do it as a fun exercise and experiment.

In Summary

A Bitcoin circular economy is one where commerce flourishes free of surveillance, censorship and reliance on third parties. Anyone can participate by earning, spending, donating and buying bitcoin from those who do the same. A Bitcoin economy runs apart from and parallel to the central bank fiat economy.

Bitcoin commerce is Bitcoin exemplified.

The post It’s Time To Join The Bitcoin Circular Economy appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Algorithmic Bitcoin and Ethereum Social Attention List Ranks Influencers With Math

25/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

$Algorithmic Bitcoin and Ethereum Social Attention List Ranks Influencers With Math$

On November 19, Hive.one, a project that maps the community clusters of Bitcoin and Ethereum social status using mathematics, announced the launch of a new algorithm version. Since the last time Hive.one published a list, social influencer scores and ranks changed and the creators believe the new scores “better reflect reality.”

Just recently Hive.one announced the launch of the project’s new algorithm (v 2.0) and said it was the “biggest change to the algorithm yet.” Hive.one characterizes itself as a platform that describes groups of people mathematically and the web portal showcases two lists of Bitcoin and Ethereum influencers. The lists are generated algorithmically using data from Twitter and it updates every 24 hours. Hive.one even created a Covid-19 list based on epidemiology-related Twitter influencers to help fight coronavirus misinformation.

The list of influencers represented on the bitcoin (BTC) side includes a great number of individuals. The top five social influencers include people like Adam Back, Pieter Wuille, Pierre Rochard, Elizabeth Stark, and Jameson Lopp. Following the top five today, influencers like Stephan Livera, Matt Odell, Matt Corallo, Olaoluwa Osuntokun, and Turr Demeester trail behind the top five respectively.

The list also gives a score, the number of people the influencer follows, how many individuals follow the luminary, and a seven-day percentage. The BTC list has 1,158 Twitter accounts recorded and there’s a document of the list as well.

Influencers stemming from the ethereum (ETH) list include Vitalik Buterin, Evan Van Ness, Hudson Jameson, Peter Szilagyi, and Hayden Adams for the top five. The latter end of the top ten list includes Nick Johnson, Austin Griffith, Joseph Lubin, and Georgios.

Hive.one says it only aggregates data from Twitter sources and the developers call the algorithm “Peoplerank.”

“It works similar to the original Pagerank,” Hive.one’s algorithm page states. “Instead of ranking websites— it ranks identities. Instead of tracking links— it tracks attention. It’s also a second-order metric. This means that it matters not only who pays attention to you, but also who pays attention to the people who pay attention to you. And so on.”

Additionally, the CIO from Arcane Assets, Eric Wall, discussed Hive.one’s recently updated algorithmic list on Twitter.

“I did a little bit of analysis on the [Hive.one] data to compare Layer 0 decentralization between BTC ETH,” Wall tweeted. “I figured the Gini coefficients of the influencer scores (top 50) would reveal the differences in influencer equality (which I bet has an impact on protocol consensus).”

Wall further added:

This little test indicates that ETH has a slightly higher degree of Layer 0 (social layer) inequality. This could possibly be a result of [Vitalik Buterin] having a much stronger standing in ETH vs what [Adam Back] has in BTC, as the influencer scoring shows (but I’m not certain). This isn’t a complete picture of course— it’s more of an idea for a methodology I’d like to propose. Generally, I think Layer 0 centralization is one of [the] most important aspects of centralization, yet we rarely try to measure it.

Following Wall’s tweet, Hive.one responded to the analysis and said that there is “a lot more that can be done with our data and we encourage creating your own analysis.” Hive.one says that the new algorithm is also “much faster when it comes to identifying changes in the cluster.”

“The algorithm now has self-correcting mechanisms,” Hive.one explained in a tweet. “It can identify changes in the underlying structure of the cluster as they happen and adjust accordingly. This means that the scores should maintain a stable level of accuracy over time. The algorithm can now scale ‘up and down.’ We can map sub-clusters within each cluster as well as the super-cluster it belongs to. This means that given enough data and [computation] we could index the whole Twitter with its millions of clusters,” the Hive.one Twitter account added.

What do you think about Hive.one’s social ranking list from Twitter for Ethereum and Bitcoin influencers? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Algorithmic Bitcoin and Ethereum Social Attention List Ranks Influencers With Math appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Threshold Met: Proof-of-Stake ‘Beacon’ Chain Starts in 7 Days

24/11/2020 by Idelto Editor

The Ethereum network’s ETH 2.0 contract has crossed the threshold needed to initiate the upcoming upgrade. Currently, there’s more 694,368 ether worth over $422 million resting in the contract, as developers hope the proof-of-stake launch will begin on December 1.

At the end of the first week of November, the Ethereum Foundation initiated the first process of the highly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 (ETH 2.0) upgrade specifications, which detailed the initial rules of the genesis phase 0. The genesis phase 0 contract specification noted that there needed to be approximately 524,288 ETH and at least 16,384 validators to invoke the proof-of-stake process.

The requirements needed to kickstart Ethereum 2.0 for December 1, mandated that the threshold be met by November 24, 2020. Additionally, a web portal called Launch Pad was published so users can learn how to be an ETH validator and secure the blockchain.

The requirements needed to spark the genesis phase 0 process were officially completed on the 24th and there’s now 694,368 ether worth $422 million in the contract.

The contract address has seen approximately 16,736 transactions of around 32 ether per transaction. 32 ETH is what is needed to become a validator and earn a stake on the Ethereum chain. At the current exchange rate of $608 per ether, it costs close to $20k per staking validator. Roughly the last 25% of the ether needed to meet the threshold was deposited into the contract in less than a four-hour timespan.

Screenshot from an editorial called “The Genesis of a Beacon Chain” written by Ben Edgington.

Following the deposit milestone, a great number of Ethereum proponents and developers celebrated. “We reached it,” said Ethereum 2.0 R&D member Hsiao-Wei Wang. “Thanks to all the Eth2 teams and the community that wrote the history. And thanks to the Ethereum critics who made us stronger. Don’t forget to update your Eth2 client in a couple days,” Wang added.

The “Eth 2.0 Deposit Contract – Progress Meter Bot” also tweeted about the landmark occasion and stated:

We have liftoff. Thank you to the devs, the researchers, educators, and community members who made this happen. See you on December 1st @ noon UTC.

Many Ethereum supporters also understand that the Ethereum 2.0 genesis phase 0 will initially start with the “Beacon” blockchain, a baby-step that will make it so the upgrade will have less of an impact on the main network. The ETH 2.0 upgrade will start in seven days’ time and the Beacon chain will begin the first of four initial phases.

Estimates say that Ethereum 2.0 validators could earn about 20% in annualized rewards. After the requirements were filled, Ethereum proponent Tom Shaughnessy said that the Ethereum 2.0 launch “got more attention in an hour than every other layer 1 did this entire year put together.”

Ethereum Foundation member Hudson Jameson tweeted about how the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon chain launch will happen the day prior, and what needs to happen in order to create a successful launch.

“The beacon chain marks the beginning of the transition to Eth 2.0, but that doesn’t mean that everything immediately changes,” Jameson wrote. “Eth 2.0 is a multi-year process and the first few pieces of that process won’t heavily affect the current Ethereum mainnet.”

Jameson also stressed that whatever happens, the Ethereum community should be impressed with the Ethereum 2.0 development team. He also explained when he thought the Beacon chain launch would begin.

“My opinion (not an official stance of the Ethereum Foundation) is that we will launch between December 1st and December 5th,” Jameson concluded. “I base this on how quickly deposits are coming in as of the last 48 hours.”

At the time of publication, ethereum (ETH) is trading for $608 per ether, as the token has gained 26% during the last seven days and 49% in the last 30 days.

What do you think about the culmination of the highly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 launch? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Threshold Met: Proof-of-Stake ‘Beacon’ Chain Starts in 7 Days appeared first on Bitcoin News.