Tag Archives: Fiat

​Surprise! Bitcoin is not the only Cryptocurrency.

Posted by mysticstache on

Surprise! Bitcoin is not the only Cryptocurrency available, and that’s a good thing.

Within two years of users joining the Bitcoin network and mining coins with their CPUs competing currencies appeared developed by other teams by augmenting the open source code provided by the Bitcoin developers. Namecoin was the first and used the same protocol, SHA-256. In fact the two networks are so closely related that miners can submit the same work for both currencies. Litecoin came next and introduced the Scypt protocol.

Since then the number of Altcoins has grown to over 700, and there are over 10 different protocols. Several Cryptocurrencies never gained any popularity and because users did not maintain nodes, mining, or trade these currencies their projects have been abandoned.

Bitcoin can be thought of as the base currency. That same sort of role the US dollar plays now as an internationally accepted currency that many other currencies are traded against. Bitcoin was first, most widely accepted and most widely traded. But there are some inherent issues with Bitcoins design. In “The Bitcoin Network and You” I mentioned how the size of the Blockchain is over 110 GB. This is limits the type of hardware one can maintain a Node on. Not everyone agrees with the number of Bitcoins that will be mined before finding blocks will cease to generate a reward, some argue for less and others think it should be unlimited. These arguments usually playout in the creation of a new Altcoin.

The concept and implementation of a “Blockchain” itself has a lot of applications beyond making coins. Within each transaction is the ability to create messages. Some developers have taken this to the complex level of creating contracts, like Ethereum. Contracts between two addresses are forever part of the Blockchain once verified by enough nodes. In my work, I’ve considered Blockchain technology the logical choice for IoT applications. The distributed network allows for sensor recordings and commands to become part of the system without relying on a central server to manage the communications. That way allowing for remote devices that only need to communicate with 3 or for devices near by and not have full internet access. As long at the remote devices eventually daisy chain to all other node on the network, some other server can explore the Blockchain for the various messages to facilitate reporting and management.

The Altcoin phenomenon has motivated the team of developers of Bitcoin to consider making various improvements to the Bitcoin network to address some of the issues. These proposed changes involve a large amount of discussion and campaigning and ironically usually fail to be implemented. Bitcoin was designed without a central controlling authority. Changes to the Blockchain or the network are approved or denied by miner votes. Conflicting proposals and the option to not change are voted on by placing a vote message in the work submitted by the miners. When a clear majority opt for a decision, that change will become part of the code that makes up the currency and its network. Implementation of new code in the Network is called a Fork, and all nodes need to implement the new visions of the Node code in order or operate on the Forked code (continue to mine and trade).

Stay tuned!

Wikipedia – Bitcoin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Bitcoin Forum – The most popular place to discuss all Cryptocurrencies

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php

Cryptocurrency Trading Charts

https://coinmarketcap.com/

Most Profitable Mining Calculations

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Some Exchanges

https://poloniex.com/

https://btc-e.com/

https://www.gdax.com/

https://www.bittrex.com/

 

 

 

Acquiring Cryptocurrencies

Posted by mysticstache on

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, well almost exclusively Bitcoin, have been getting some play time in the popular media. Hopefully you understand what they’re talking about, if not check back to my earlier post “A Change in Direction”. Now you might be asking yourself, “How do I get some?”

Mining

Mining Cryptocurrencies is essentially using electricity to generate Cryptocurrency. Not all Cryptocurrencies can be mined. For those that can, the process involves looking for a new block in the currency’s blockchain. The miner who finds the block is rewarded with some units of the currency.

The process of looking for a block involves math, complicated and difficult math. The sort of math that would take you or me 30-45 minutes to do by hand with a calculator. Additionally, the more miners doing the same math for a currency increases the “Difficulty” of the math. New or less popular currencies are easier to mine until they become more popular. The more miners or powerful mining hardware working away at the currency, the more the completion rate of the calculation must be slowed down to keep the reward rate stable. The “Difficulty” of the calculations is proportional to the “Hash Rate” of the currency’s network and must adjust to speed up or slow down the reward frequency.

A later post will look at mining in more detail, but I will briefly touch on hardware concepts. Mining can be done on a computer’s CPUs, though the video card(s’) GPU(s), or with application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) hardware.

Staking

Staking also involves electricity, but does not require math. With staking, one is rewarded for operating a node in the Network and holding on some units of the currency. The more currency held in the wallet the more often the wallet receives a deposit from the currency’s network. When I say, staking requires electricity, remember that Cryptocurrencies are digital, requiring computing hardware, which requires electricity. When the computer (desktop, tablet, laptop, ARM device, phone) is not running and connected to the network, Staking does not occur. Staking currencies to not require miners to generate more currency.

The acts of maintaining a node and holding a balance of currency results is two things. First, having more nodes in the Network increases the speed of transaction verification and keeps the network well distributed and healthy. Holding back portions of the currency from trading increases the rarity of the currency and helps support higher trading prices through the laws of supply and demand.

Master Nodes

Master Nodes are very like Staking, but there some major differences. The amount or frequency of reward does not change with the amount of currency in the wallet of the node. Master nodes take a portion of the coins mined. Networks require a certain balance of the currency to qualify as a master node.

If you want to increase your reward with Staking, buy and hold more currency in your staking wallet. If you want to increase your reward with Master Nodes, create a new master node and buy the minimum amount of currency required to run the master node.

 

Exchanges

You’ve heard of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), right? There are several others around the world where people trade fiat currencies for pieces of a company. You may not have heard of FOREX exchanges. These market places are where people come to trade currencies.

Conceivably, you could trade or exchange some US Dollars (USD) for Great British Pounds (GBP) one morning at the Exchange rate of 1.60 USD for 1 GBP. Later that day the rate has changes and you can change your 1 GBP back to 1.80 USD. So over the course of the day you’ve made 20 cents just moving your balances from one currency to another.

The same concept is available in Cryptocurrencies. You can move your balances between Bitcoin and Altcoins, Bitcoin and fiat, fiat and Altcoins…. Altcoins and Altcoins.

Upcoming posts will break out some topics introduced in this blog and cover other concepts in detail.

Stay tuned!

Wikipedia – Bitcoin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Bitcoin Forum – The most popular place to discuss all Cryptocurrencies

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php

Cryptocurrency Trading Charts

https://coinmarketcap.com/

Most Profitable Mining Calculations

http://www.coinwarz.com/cryptocurrency

Some Exchanges

https://poloniex.com/

https://btc-e.com/

https://www.gdax.com/

https://www.bittrex.com/

 

 

 

A Change In Direction

Posted by mysticstache on

There are a lot of great and exciting things happening in the world of Microsoft. I am nearly overwhelmed with the evolution of Data Science technologies, my specialty. And yet I’ve not found an opportunity within my current career to dive in and work on solving interesting problems utilizing these new technologies. Instead I find myself becoming more passionate about the developments in Cryptocurrencies.

There is a lot of introductory information available on this topic. I will include some links at the end for further reading. But to summarize and explain it in my characteristic easy straightforward manner: A Cryptocurrency is a digital asset. That is: A Cryptocurrency is something of value that exists as 1s and 0s. Simple, right? Let’s try an analogy, most of you have played some kind of mobile or PC game that involved earning money or points that can be traded in for improvements to your ability to play. In a lot of cases there are means to spend USD, GBP, or Euros to purchase in game Cryptocurrencies. From here on out I will refer to USD, GBP, Euros, other government managed currencies as fiat.

These concepts are directly transferable to Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, LiteCoin, Dash, Ethereum, Stratis, ZCash, so many more. They exist within digital systems (computers). They can be traded between fiat currencies. They are not carried around as physical paper or metal. In most cases, they can be acquired through a repetitive process.

Enough about game money, let’s focus on Cryptocurrencies that actually have some financial ramifications. Bitcoin was the first. The brain child of a mysterious personality,  Satoshi Nakamoto, took form first as a white paper (technical article). A short time later the concepts in the article were built as software and the first chuck of Bitcoin was created, some of it going to early supporters of the project.

Since that time several imitators have been created. Currently, any Cryptocurrency that is not Bitcoin is called an Altcoin (Alternative Coin). Nearly all of them have some value people are willing to trade fiat to acquire, anywhere from fractions of $0.01 to Bitcoin itself which is hovering over $1100 at the time of writing this blog. The reasons for development of these other coins vary as much as their value. In some cases, there are central challenges with the Bitcoin infrastructure they claim to solve. In other cases, the Altcoin is trying to stabilize the fiat trade value by limiting the supply. And there are those currencies created specifically for the creators to gin up hype, trade a lot of the initial supply for fiat, and then disappear.

Upcoming posts will break out some topics introduced in this blog and cover other concepts in detail.

Stay tuned!

Wikipedia – Bitcoin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

Bitcoin Forum – The most popular place to discuss all Cryptocurrencies

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php

Cryptocurrency Trading Charts

https://coinmarketcap.com/