Normally I'll scroll through dozens of articles on my crypto news feed and not find anything interesting. It's pretty incredible really, how much worthless information is out there (mostly price speculation). However, today I've found quite a few things worth talking about.
For starters
It's Thursday, so I've received another relatively big paycheck from Amazon and competed a Steem powerdown. I'm finally down to 26k coins, which is right around where I was before the I rallied to defend the chain. I've also restarted my Hive powerdown. I need more liquid coins and I need to increase my security (change recovery account).
I also found out the difference between the master key and the owner key the other day after wondering about it for years. I thought the owner key could be used to generate all the other keys, but alas, only the master key does that. Therefore, if your owner key gets stolen it doesn't necessarily mean your memo key was compromised, meaning all the messages you encrypted with it may still be safe. This is relevant because a new recovery service coming to Hive that may depend on things like this.
On to the real news I found.
OpenSeed & OpenOrchard
https://cointelegraph.com/news/former-steem-devs-found-openorchard-to-disrupt-open-source-tech
Seven former top Steem developers have converged to form OpenOrchard, a company seeking to build innovative open-source technologies on top of Hive.
Levine asserts that OpenOrchard’s mission is to make “open-source software development profitable so that open-source developers can compete with private corporations [that] keep their code secret.”
Emphasizing scalability as a priority for OpenOrchard, Levine states that the team is "leveraging our experience and expertise in the blockchain space to create a blockchain and second layer that are designed to work together,” adding: “This approach will allow us to provide developers with far more tools and features than they would otherwise have access to.“
Libra
Facebook-Initiated Libra Association Concedes to Regulators, No Longer Permissionless
libra-just-made-a-bunch-of-changes-to-play-more-nicely-with-regulators
Who'd of guessed it? Libra needs to fall in line with regulators? No way!
I maintain that the value of Libra is simply an onramp for the general population to get used to crypto and accept that it has value. Obviously Libra isn't a real crypto but that's not going to matter much if the majority of people using it think it is and it has a similar learning curve.
UBI
https://coinnounce.com/relief-is-on-its-way-is-you-are-an-american-who-knows-how-to-drive/
https://news.bitcoin.com/2000-month-us-lawmakers-basic-income-covid-19-economy/
The American government is talking about a free $2000 a month UBI. I can't even imagine the kind of inflation something like this would cause. I have to assume it's also tax-free.
I don't even want to know what kinds of strings are going to be attached to money like this if it actually happens. This is mark-of-the-beast type shit. What am I going to do if I'm faced with $2000 a month but only if I submit to things like vaccinations and whatever else like GPS under my skin? Truly potentially horrifying.
Not only that, most anyone who doesn't get the $2000... sounds like they're gonna be pretty much fucked. If we are actually approaching a crisis worse than the Great Depression I can only imagine how bad things could get. Fun stuff. Personally I'm not super worried. I consider myself pretty lucky despite everything.
McAfee
https://news.bitcoin.com/governments-unable-to-shut-it-down-john-mcafee-privacy-crypto/
McAfee is at it again and is making a privacy crypto called Ghost. I just watched a documentary about him the other day and wow, he is bonkerballs bananas. I'll have to save that for another post because it's just too much information. Bottom line: anyone who trusts him must be smoking the same designer drug he created that no one could prove because there is no test for it (GSU gang suppression unit raided his compound and found 'meth lab'). I guess I would also be remiss to omit the two people he probably got killed (plus a rape allegation).
Central Banks Recommended to Ban Stablecoins
I've long spoken about how stable coins poise a huge risk to the financial system. It gives corporations the ability to shadow bank just like central banks do. Too many entities with that power will almost certainly collapse fiat currencies around the world. It appears that central banks have finally figured that out and propose a ban on them.
This is a potentially very good thing for projects like MakerDAO/DAI and even HBD. I keep meaning to write a post about to stabilize HBD in a superior way to MakerDAO but I keep getting side tracked. Hopefully it will be my next post... but I've been saying that to myself for 4 posts now.
If/when central banks go on a regulation rampage against stable-coins, they'll find that they can only easily attack the stable-coins that are backed by USD in a bank. DAI is collateralized by Ethereum; HBD is collateralized by Hive. They'd have to shut down the entire network to stop it from happening. This is either an amazing thing for Hive or a potential death blow. However, if we could get taken out that easily, there was no long-term hope for us anyway. We were saying the same thing about Justin Sun, and look where we are now. I remain optimistic.
Oil Companies to Dominate BTC Mining
This is a pretty weird claim. Oil companies are going to dominate Bitcoin mining? Really? However, it is a very good example of how Bitcoin allows anyone to transfer electricity directly into money on site without having to sell it to anyone else (extremely simplified logistics). In this case, it allows a byproduct that may otherwise get thrown away to be reallocated to secure the Bitcoin network and get paid to do it. It's pretty interesting.
Crypto Needs to Meld with Legacy Financial systems for adoption
Uh, no...
Articles like this just crack me up. Crypto does not need to bend the knee to traditional finance. Crypto needs one thing and one thing only: to provide jobs. It amazes me that this never gets stated and that the former argument is constantly presented.
Regardless, no matter what I think, crypto is going to do these things. Crypto is running in every direction at once. Legacy systems will be ported to... obviously. Saying we need to do it like that's useful information is asinine. It's going to happen no matter what anyone says.
Conclusion
There is a lot going on these days.
It's almost hard to keep up.
Bitcoin is still trading below the doubling curve.
The halving approaches.
This financial crisis has no ending in sight.
Expect the craziness to escalate further.
That oil company news is quite crazy though, I do not believe a word about it, the oil industry in bitcoin mining should mean a gigantic pump in price....
Yeah it's a very bold claim.
However, if the oil industry has a huge surplus of this resource that they would otherwise just throw away... it does make financial sense.
Does have much more sense with solar energy, with oil is just like we're going to keep poisoning the entire world in order to get some cripto.
Long term sustainable energy makes more sense.
However cheap energy is cheap energy, and will be used to mine no matter the source.
I saw the documentary on McAfee and that was some weird shit. Apparently dude likes to have girls shit in his mouth. Didn’t know that was a thing. Pretty disgusting if you ask me. Dudes a big weirdo.
Yeah, I saw that. Girl talking about a specially designed hammock with a hole in it. I don't assign stories extra credibility for including detail, but if it's true, that's next level weird.
🤣🤣🤣 the hammock was epic and that women talking about it Im sorry she was not the greatest looking gal she must have took some massive dumps in his mouth. 🤣🤣🤣
haha spoiler alert!
plan on discussing it more some other time.
although I should probably hit while the iron is hot.
🤣🤣🤣 It was an interesting documentary to say the least.
$2000 a month... that’s an insane amount of money! At least if that’s per person.
Yeah if 200M people got it that would be 400B a month.
Like wtf...
It’s just not feasible! That’s what... almost 5 trillion a year? Just silly.
They are tipping their hand and preparing for hyperinflation on purpose.
Fiat as we know it will be completely destroyed in 10-20 years.
Maybe sooner if shit really hits the fan... who knows what they are actually planning.
You may have seen this...
https://peakd.com/gaming/@ash/the-best-game-you-will-play-while-in-quarantine
It amused me!
Well, less than two dozen co-signers of a bill out of 435 House members is a fairly small subset of the American government. 😅
But I’ve also seen talk of freaking hedge funds getting bailed out, so I guess almost anything is possible.
Even more than what the Congress is doing on the fiscal side of the equation, the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve are all but guaranteeing massive inflation at some point down the road.
Just the fact that they are talking about it implies to me that people up on high are planning for the inevitable fall of USD.
lol a bailout for a hedge fund.
what an oxymoron.
Funny, I'm not the only one who thinks the oil company one is wild!
I've been hearing since I started, and you have since you started, that crypto needs to conform to the ways of traditional finance. Hell no, that's why it's called cryptocurrency, not shadow currency, I mean fiat currency.
Anyone who can get cheap energy will be a POW miner in the future.
It only makes sense.
The thing is crypto will conform to traditional finance via corporations.
There's a lot of money to be made here.
However, when the regulators try to twist the arms of the corps they're going to find that they don't still have any power over layer 1.
Lots of gems here. Thanks for doing the legwork. I have some reading ahead.