As I pointed out in my Tech Trends for 2017 editorial, bitcoin regulation is going to be one of the dominant themes of the year. So we started out by transferring our Bitcoin onto the exchange that we use (Bittrex) and then we bought some different cryptocurrencies. It means that unless and until governments can stop people from passing strings of letters and numbers to each other (even on physical pieces of paper) then bitcoin will never be brought down completely. Yes, governments can and will (and are) regulating the exchanges that most people use to change their fiat currency into bitcoin (and vice versa), but they can’t stop people from transacting bitcoin. And when a tradesman says “that will be $500, or $400 if you pay cash”, he is offering you a choice of the official or the shadow economy. Any transaction that doesn’t pay tax is part of this sector, and that can include everything from buying some drugs to getting your car windows washed. If you want to earn block rewards from the network, you can join the network as a miner.
One must have a balance of at least 1000 DASH in order to host a Dash master node, this collateral is required to avoid 51% attacks on the network. For many years Ubuntu was totally dominant and always number one. Linux Mint came to totally overtake Ubuntu and was better in every way. The much easier but a bit more expensive way is to buy an Ethereum mining contract. I was a bit nervous about doing a post on cryptos that would remain on the blockchain and make me look like a complete dickhead if I got it all wrong. We expect Bitcoin to remain dominant for years to come because it has a bit of a Monopoly at this point, but we think a few others will start catching up with it in popularity. Luckily for free humanity, it will be impossible to outlaw direct bitcoin transactions altogether. First and foremost because of desperate government attempts to outlaw the use of cash. As with attempts to outlaw “illegal downloading” (remember Napster?) any attempt to stop something on the internet creates a massive increase in it. It is very high in regions like Africa, but even in first world countries, it’s generally at least 20% of the economy (it tends to be vastly underestimated, because it’s almost impossible to measure).
It’s very like share market trading. For example in New Zealand the marijuana industry is big (it’s NZ’s most valuable crop) but it’s entirely underground. Tech geniuses and programming geeks sometimes forget to reach the public in an approachable manner and at regular intervals and Dash is a shining example of good PR. They have an approachable spokesperson in Amanda B. Johnson who connects a highly technical topic to the general public using simple to understand analogies in an easy to digest manner. For those who don’t know, the blockchain is the key technological innovation upon which the bitcoin platform is based. Who would’ve thunk it? There are three main currencies in Steemit: Steem, Steem Power (SP) and Steem Backed Dollars (SBD). Users also receive interest from holding SBD. As a result, at the very same time we see this incredible, snowballing and omnipresent push to regulate bitcoin and other virtual currencies, we are also witnessing an incredible, snowballing and omnipresent interest in the idea of “private blockchains,” distributed databases developed and used by governments, businesses, universities and bankers to cut their own costs and speed up their own transactions. Steem Power holders receive interest from their holdings.
There need be no central authority that verifies and certifies transactions, as the verification and time ordering of transactions are accomplished through proof of work (solving Hashcash puzzles in the case of bitcoin). Case in point: bitcoin. They rejected the agreed consensus (aka BIP-91 or SegWit2x) and have decided to fork the original Bitcoin blockchain and create this new version called “Bitcoin Cash”. There’s always the chance this all a pump and dump, but the core pitch and systems they have in place seem to say this is the real deal. It is similar to bitcoin with regards to its protocol; Proof of Work SHA-256 hashing, 21,000,000 supply, same block times and reward system. The earliest votes gets the biggest share of the reward. With the largest variety of markets and the biggest value – having reached a peak of 18 billion USD – Bitcoin is dominant. Prediction markets are widely considered the best forecasting tool.
