crypto news – Crypto-corner

Billions of dollars transferred for just a few cents : the power of Bitcoin.

people are now transacting millions of dollars’ worth in bitcoin in a single transaction, for fees below one dollar………

The invention of Bitcoin is arguably the biggest threat to the banking system already revolutionising the way money is being exchanged and transacted. There’s no doubt that in the past few years the cryptocurrency gained popularity and much respect from all fin-tech sectors for its ability to offer a faster and much cheaper alternative to cross-border money transfers, along with some other use cases that made it a factor in finance that can no longer be ignored or ridiculed (that was a popular practise in the early years of its lifespan).

Besides being censorship-resistant, Bitcoin offers the ability of true ownership and self-management of your own capital, without the need of a third party involvement. For the first time since the modern monetary system was invented, people are able to have unlimited and permisionless access to their own capital.

There are millions of transactions happening on a daily basis and while this is not news, I want to draw your attention to the fact that people are now transacting millions of dollars’ worth in bitcoin in a single transaction, for fees below one dollar. Remarkable, right?

The twitter account @BtcBlockBot reports about such large transactions and this month alone, it reported about more than 20 of them. Out of these, only one incurred a larger fee (80 usd for a billion dollars’ worth of bitcoin) possibly transacted by Bitfinex as reported by the bot on January 14. In contrast, the rest of the whale transactions are all at the cost of just a few cents each. On January 20 for instance, a transaction of 51511 bitcoins estimated at around $450 million were moved from one wallet to another for a fee of just $0.25 (USD) – yes, a single quarter, which really can’t get you anything in the western world these days. This equates to a fee of effectively 0%, with 0.25/450,000,000 on the calculator outputting an odd number in scientific number format and this could have even been an overpaid fee, with the transactor likely having the option of paying an even lower fee, under the $0.1 range, if they didn’t mind waiting a bit longer and could have saved 30% in fees by upgrading to SegWit and 16% more than that if there was a full upgrade to a native SegWit-Bech32 address.

A few more examples:

January 3 – $468 million USD was transacted for a fee of just 0.0000268btc which comes to $0.23;
January 9 – $466 million USD transfer incurred a fee of $0.71
January 15 – $465 million USD (53,911 BTC) was transferred for a fee of $0.29 (3360 sats)
January 16 – a whopping 124946 btc (that’s over 1 billion USD) was moved at a fee of just $0.48 USD.
January 17 – a transfer of 52,511btc (half a billion USD) was costing just $0.35

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All of this just goes to show that while still struggling to be accepted as a currency, bitcoin is really doing a good job as a means of exchange – one of the qualities of money.
The volatile nature of the cryptocurrency is still an issue for the end-user, especially in the retail sector where price stability is essential, but even if bitcoin fails to deliver the “digital cash” promise for the smaller, day-to-day use cases, that doesn’t stop it from achieving its more ambitious goal – disrupting the banking industry and giving the power to us – regular folks who want to have a greater control over our own capital by avoiding the third party intermediaries and their ever-so-high fees and restrictions of transacting.

Don’t invest in Bitmain.farm without reading this first!!

There’s a new service that is claiming to do cloud mining under the name “Bitmain.farm” and I just saw their ad on one of the crypto websites I visit regularly, so I decided to research more about it.

What raised my interest (and suspicion) was the unusually high return rate that they advertised, so I will lay down my finding here for you.

First, let’s see what exactly is being advertised:

bitmain-farm-ad (2)_LI.jpg

At first glance, the words that stand out: Bitmain, 8% per day and “secure” (scammers really love to boast about how safe and risk-free their offers are…)

Why do I think this is a scam? Well, keep reading (or watch my video below if you’re not keen on reading much).

The first red flag for me was the 8% return. I’ve been in the crypto and online money making business since 2014 and I can tell you that there is NO legitimate business opportunity that has ever been able to offer anything close to that. It’s only hyips that do this kind of claims and these are ponzi-type of schemes that only rotate money for a short period of time and then disappear, usually leaving hundreds or thousands of people in the red.

This is going to be the case with Bitmain.farm too, mark my words. I’ve reviewed loads of similar schemes and I used to post videos to warn people about them back in 2016 but I haven’t done it in a while and I feel it’s time to spread the word again. There are so many newbies that came in this space since then, offering an easy prey for the scammers and it’s our duty to stop them or at least make it harder for the bad actors to scam us.

Let’s continue with my research so you don’t get the impression that I’m writing only on personal conviction or without anything to back up my claims.

Bitmain.farm’s website doesn’t reveal any information about the people who are behind it, nor its location (more red flags) and on top of that it was registered in August 2019 while Bitmain – the actual company and their official website (bitmain.com) has been around since 2007.

In this case, I am convinced that the person who is running Bitmain.farm is fraudulently using the name of the biggest mining and chip producing companies (Bitmain) because their brand is really well-known around the world. For many years Bitmain has been the leading company in mining, responsible for more than 80% of the market share in ASIC producing chips and controlling one of the biggest mining farms Antpool. You can see all of this on their official website and please note that there’s absolutely NO information there about this cloud mining service that Bitmain.farm is claiming to do.
Weird, right?
If you operate such service, wouldn’t you have a link or some type of promo about it on your own official webpage?
Damn right you would.
Except, if you’re not at all running such service and not even aware of it.
Which is the case here. I can say that with great conviction too since it was noted by a user on trustpilot – one of the respected websites for reviews and feedback from users.

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After a quick browse through the comments here it becomes clear that Bitmain.farm is nothing but a scam website and like many others before it, it runs the all-too-familiar ponzi scheme that pays for the first few withdrawals, just enough to make people feel easy and to encourage them to promote it to their friends and followers. Like with many other hyips, users are able to withdraw in the first days/weeks because it is known that the more-cautious members will put in small amounts, then try the withdraws before they deposit the bigger chunks of their capital. This is the strategy that makes people feel confident that the website is “real” and that it pays, so they go bold and start putting in more money and getting their close circle involved too.

There is a 8% affiliate commission offered to members, which is enough to make those early “investors” share it with many others and thus, the scam grows fast, the money keeps coming in, alas, not much of it is ever going out. Here are a more comments from Trustpilot supporting this very scenario:

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In addition to this I also browsed through one of the oldest forums: bitcointalk and the lesser-known “beermoneyforum” where I found more comments and reviews that confirmed everything I laid out above.

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All in all, these reports and comments should be enough to make you keep away from the Bitmain.farm website and avoid loosing money in their ponzi scheme but if you aren’t convinced yet, I hope you will use my research and take it a step further and conduct your own due diligence. At least, I hope this post will help you make an informed decision and will challenge you to do more research.

As far as cloud mining goes, there are really not many opportunities that are legit or profitable for the end user, which is also why I have not been involved with these for quite some time. Out of 30 or more offers I reviewed over the past year, I only picked one that I trust and this is only because I know the people who run the mining. I’d like to note here that I used to be a big proponent of Genesis Mining – one of the first cloud mining companies (which is still running today) and I do have a couple of Zcash and Dash contracts with them since 2016 but I am very disappointed with them since 2018 when they abruptly ended my Bitcoin mining contracts when the mining difficulty rate jumped a lot and the mining became un-profitable for a period of a few months. My contracts were “open-plan” which meant they should run for at least 5 years or more, but they were shut down after just 2.5 years, so in the end, I cannot recommend them either.

For more great crypto content (market analysis, news and more) sign up for my Crypto Newsletter from this link.

Youtube’s crackdown on crypto content

This Christmas many of the most avid YouTube content creators in the crypto space got an unexpected gift… a channel strike accompanied with the removal of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of their videos.

It’s a complete crypto mayhem in fact and many are having their most popular videos taken down in the eve of Christmas. What a way to celebrate ey?

I’m probably least affected since only a few of my videos received the strike but other creators such as Chris Dunn, Heidi, BTC Sessions, Ivan On Tech and Chico Crypto are reporting a much bigger scale of the attack coming from Youtube right now.

It’s no secret that YouTube has been suppressing some channels’ content for years, many of the creators I’m following have expressed concerns over the past couple of years and reported that their views have dropped by more than 50%, in some cases even worse. I myself have had similar situation with my own channel in the past year as well. The difference this time is, that right now we’re seeing people’s videos being taken down for “violating community guidelines” which is a very broad excuse and could include anything from having referral links or donation address in the description, to actually soliciting financial advice and a number of other finance-related activities that are deemed violation by Youtube. What makes no sense at all to me though, is the fact that many of the videos that are being removed, are in fact from a couple of years ago. I spoke to Ivan On Tech and he’s had a few videos removed that were from 2018. The videos I had removed, were even older – from early 2017… so what exactly has triggered this YouTube crackdown and why is it mainly affecting videos from times past… is yet to be revealed.

You can see, both of my videos are educational, one is about the Segwit upgrade and what it actually means, the other one is about a hard fork called Bitcoin Gold which occurred in 2017 and I reported about it – without any financial advice or other call to action to my viewers, which means there’s little room left for YouTube to justify this action and I do not expect them to get into the specifics on why and what did they deem as inappropriate. They rarely get into such details. I will keep you updated on this but the bottom line is, we are using a centralized platform and we are all at the mercy of those who control and run YouTube as a private company despite providing public service. It’s what centralized authorities do. They can decide whose content stays visible and as if it’s up to them, we will only watch make-up tutorials and nonsense-driven “LOL” type of content. This is always recommended by Youtube, even if you’re not into that kind of time-wasters. It’s non-political, non-threatening and most of all, makes people spend their time on un-important stuff – exactly what the ruling elite wants from their subordinates.
However, if their control spreads more and affects even more content creators, its popularity will be threatened and it opens the door for decentralized platofrms like LBRY to get in the game and win over the crypto community. Steemit unfortunately requires a video link, so it’s not really an alternative, but LBRY is offering the option to upload content directly and this is why many of the creators are now moving over there to avoid having their videos removed again. The only downside to this is that it’s still early days for LBRY and only a handful of users know about it, so it will be a long while before we get to use it on its own. YouTube is still having the highest discovery and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

—- (added on 26th Dec)—-

Today IBS Intelligence reported in an article that due to public outcry from the crypto community, Youtube has reinstated the videos that were removed. The excuse was rather vague and came as generic as one can expect from YouTube – they blame it on a rogue algorithm which was done as an error.
However, some argue that this was linked to the expanding regulatory issues surrounding the COPPA – the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which for the past few years has been applied to more and more services and recently involved YouTube changing their terms yet again, asking everyone to comply with even more restrictions.

Like it or not, the fact is that YouTube is essential to all vloggers today and is the most popular platform even after a decade. In my case, YouTube videos helped me tremendously in the early days when I was learning about crypto and this type of censoring of educational content (and not even the really risky, trading or ICO shilling content) is giving us some food for thought. Despite this being played out as an error, it raised the awareness of vloggers about the risks of their content being censored without even being issued a warning. The result is: more and more content creators will now diversify their platforms and we will see Bittubers, Dtube, LBRY and others gain more traction in the future but will they manage to provide the much-needed alternative with a reasonable traffic and greater discovery than what they currently offer is questionable still.

Types of Forks in Crypto Explained.

Welcome to another edition of my short series “Crypto Jargon”.
In these series, I break down the complex terminology we use in reference to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

In this article are featured the following acronyms for software changes and upgrades (known as software forks):

Soft Fork (SF)
Hard Fork (HF)
User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF)
User-activated Hard Fork (UAHF)
Miner-Activated Soft Fork (MASF)
Contentious & Non-Contentious Forks.

These are some of the types of forks most commonly referred to, so let’s explain the differences.

First, what is a fork?

In programming terms, a fork is a (permanent) modification, upgrade, divergence or simply any change in the original code of a software.

Forks generally happen in the crypto world when new “rules” are built into a blockchain’s code. Sometimes a fork is used to test a process, but with cryptocurrencies, it is mostly used to implement a fundamental change or to create a new asset with similar (but not equal) characteristics as the original.

There are two main types of programming fork: hard and soft.

A Soft Fork is an upgrade in the software that is compatible with the original version. When the changes are implemented, they are backward compatible, meaning that even users who haven’t upgraded to the new software, are still able to run their nodes and mine blocks on that blockchain. In the case of Segwit for instance, which was a soft fork on the bitcoin blockchain, users and node operators could choose if they want to run the older version (legacy) or the new version (segwit) of the protocol. And still, to this day there are certain economical nodes, such as the Blockchain.com Wallet and KeepKey for instance, which are running the legacy version and you can tell by the wallet address – a Legacy Bitcoin address begins with the number 1 while a Segwit wallet address begins with the number 3.

A User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) is when a soft fork is activated on a specified date and is enforced by full nodes; a concept sometimes referred to as the economic majority. A UASF requires a lot of industry support and coordination. Originally Segwit was going to be implemented as a UASF and as a response to that Bitmain, a major mining firm, announced A contingency plan against it in the form of a User Activated Hard Fork UAHF which they did anyway and thus Bitcoin Cash was born.

A Hard Fork is an upgrade in the software that requires all users to switch to the new version of that software. It is not backward compatible, meaning that anyone who wants to mine blocks on that blockchain has to use the latest version of the code.

It can be a “Planned hard fork” – which is simply an upgrade to the protocol that had already been made clear in advance by the project developers and there’s no conflict in its implementation. Usually, a high-degree of consensus from the project developers and the community would have already been reached, before the hard fork occurred. Examples of a planned hard fork is Monero’s hard fork in January of 2017, which saw the addition of a new privacy feature known as Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT) and the 2019 Ethereum change to a Proof Of Stake protocol which was announced years ahead of implementation.

In this regard it’s also known as a non-contentious hard fork which means everyone upgrades and moves on.

The opposite is a “Contentious hard fork“, which is not being accepted by everyone and some users decide to continue running the older version and this way the chain splits into two: one path which follows the new, upgraded blockchain; and one path which continues along with the old blockchain version. This is how Ethereum Classic was created and also Bitcoin Cash when it split from Bitcoin in 2017.

A hard fork can also be initiated if a 51% attack occurs, or due to a bug in the system so it doesn’t always create a new coin.

A User Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) is where developers add a mandatory rule set to change the node software. These changes make previously invalid blocks become valid after a flag day, which does not require a majority of hash power to be enforced.

The most significant example for applying UASF and UAHF is the forking of Ethereum.

In May 2006, Ethereum started The DAO project. But a month later the project was hacked and a sum of about $55,000,000 was stolen. This amounted to more than 10% of the circulating supply of Ether at the time. After the incident three solutions were suggested:

To accept the theft and do nothing
To roll back the Blockchain to the time before the theft which would be through a hard fork
To accept all the transactions to the hacker’s wallets false and return the money back which would be done as a soft fork.

The Ethereum community chose to go with the second proposal, but some users weren’t happy with that. They assumed that “code is law” and is the main concept of cryptocurrency. These users accepted the theft and decided to stick to the original version without any rollback, so when the hard fork was executed, there were two chains. One that is known as Ethereum, ETH, and another, known as Ethereum Classic, ETC.

The signaling for consensus on a fork proposal can also be handed to the miners which are known as a Miner Activated Soft/Hard Fork (MASF).

There are also Accidental forks – a rare occasion when two or more blocks have the same block height, forking the blockchain. Typically occurs when two or more miners find blocks at nearly the same time. It can also happen as part of an attack.

As you probably know I also post these definitions on my YouTube channel, here’s my episode with today’s terms:

If you liked this article, you will most certainly love my eBook “Crypto Jargon A-Z” – this is the most up-to-date publication of its kind. With over 700 terms, acronyms and trading slang, it contains everything related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech – all the complex terminology we use in media articles, blogs, forum chats, social media posts and of course video content too so go check it out on Amazon at one of the following links:

US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Germany https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
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Italy https://www.amazon.it/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Netherlands https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Japan https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Brazil https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Canada https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Mexico https://www.amazon.com.mx/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Australia https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07Y9DT3H6
Asia-Pacific https://www.amazon.in/dp/B07Y9DT3H6

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🏆Exchanges I use for trading crypto:

►Binance
►Kucoin
►Bittrex
►Bitfinex
►HitBtc

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Where I buy crypto:

►BitPanda (Europe)
►Cex (Global)
►Coinmama (Global)
►Changelly (good for instant coins swaps)(Global)
►Payeer (Europe, Asia, alternative to paypal)
►Bitfinex
►Coinbase (USA, EU, Africa) Get $10 worth of Bitcoin on your first $100 crypto purchase with this link: http://bit.do/coinbase_join

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Where I store my crypto:

Ledger Nano – the best hardware wallet (offline storage)
Trezor – also one of the best wallets out there.
Exodus – desktop wallet
Coinomi – mobile phone wallet with instant coin swap feature
Crypto.com – mobile wallet and exchange

War on Privacy Coins – the future of Anonymous crypto transactions is bleak…

There have been a number of crypto exchanges that recently delisted privacy coins from their platforms. The likes of Zcash, Monero, ZEN, PIVX and many other privacy oriented coins have been taking a beating from the regulated exchanges due to compliance concerns raised after the FATF ruled them unfit to meet AML criteria and threatened to follow up with closures, and other compliance penalties to those who do not follow their “Travel Rule” about reporting all details on their customers transactions.

Is this a WAR on PRIVACY COINS? What is the future of anonymity in crypto?

These are two of the questions discussed in my recent chat with Rob Viglione – co-founder of ZEN (Horizen) – a privacy oriented coin and multi-facet crypto project that is working toward creating greater privacy to the end-user.

This is my Crypto Corner video podcast episode #80 and you can watch it here in its entirety:

🚩Relevant links:

To get ZEN for free use this link: https://getzen.cash/auth/register?ref=126946

Find out more about Horizen: https://www.horizen.global/technology/
Academy : https://academy.horizen.global/
Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-19/privacy-coins-face-existential-threat-amid-regulatory-crackdown
Nodes count : https://medium.com/coinmonks/ranking-cryptos-by-number-of-nodes-57a12e4ae51a?

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Where I buy crypto:

►BitPanda (Europe) http://bit.do/bit-panda

►Cex (Global) http://bit.do/c-io

►Coinmama (Global) http://bit.do/coinma

►Changelly (good for instant coins swaps)(Global) http://bit.do/changelli

►Payeer (Europe, Asia, alternative to paypal) http://bit.do/payeer-join

►Bitfinex https://bitfinex.com/?refcode=Zh_5OPGD

►Coinbase (USA, EU, Africa) Get $10 worth of Bitcoin on your first $100 crypto purchase with this link: http://bit.do/coinbase_join

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🏆Exchanges I use for trading crypto: ►Binance http://bit.do/B1NANCE

►Kucoin http://bit.do/ku-coin

►Bittrex bittrex.com

►Bitfinex https://bitfinex.com/?refcode=Zh_5OPGD

►HitBtc http://bit.do/hit-btc

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🔑My Top hardware Wallet for Crypto is Ledger Nano X (offline wallet/cold storage) – http://bit.do/ledgerNano
here’s my tutorial on How to set it up – https://youtu.be/lHzFY4ucTYQ

And lastly, here is my top choice for safe storage of my top cryptocurrencies, check out the Ledger Nano S, it can store a large selection of coins, it is a definite MUST HAVE.

5 Reasons to use Kucoin exchange

Kucoin exchange is having a great choice of cryptocurrencies, all the most popular coins are listed as well as many lesser known ones and their bonus features are what really sets Kucoin exchange apart from its competition….

I’ve written about my preference to Kucoin exchange on a few occasions and I will point out here the top 5 things I consider to be the main points of advantage over other exchanges.

Now, I am not trying to say that Kucoinis the best exchange out there, I wouldn’t go as far as to claim it is better than Binance, Bitfinex, Bittrex or the other giants on the market, after all, we all know that liquidity is king and this is why Binanceis always coming on top of the list when comparing exchanges. However, there are a few things that Kucoin does differently and these make it one of my top exchanges to use, so here we go.

Choice of coins.

Kucoin exchange supports a great variety of small-cap altcoins that are often in their infancy which makes it ideal for those who prefer to trade the less-known coins for greater gains. It is not unusual to catch a winning trade with 10x or more gains on a low-cap cryptocurrency (experience needed*) and this is one of the main reasons why many traders prefer Kucoin over the more established competitors.
“Buy with Fiat” option.

Kucoin exchange is one of a few that offers the option to buy crypto directly with a credit card on their platform which for many is an important feature when starting their online trading experience.
Lesser fees.

Compared to many other exchanges, Kucoin exchange has trading fees starting at 0.1% which is below the industry standard (most commonly fees range between 0.15% to 0.25%), with the option to reduce your fees further by holding a certain amount of KSC which is the native Kucoin token.
Numerous competitions.

The incentives run by Kucoin exchange are a great way to get some extra coins for free. Whether by taking part in competitions or completing tasks. These are happening pretty much every week.
Regular airdrops to token holders.

If competitions are not your cup of tea, then you can just get lucky one day and find out that you’re being awarded an airdrop simply for holding a certain coin. This happened to me on a few occasions (see screenshots below), most recently for having some Tron in my account which was a nice bonus.
They do airdrops quite often and they always make announcements about these on their telegram news channel so it’s good to keep an eye on these.

And here’s an EXTRA point to make: The Kucoin Bonus offers.
Members of this exchange can make additional profit from the KCS – the Kucoin native token that pays a daily bonus for holding the tokens and the second offering is the commission-based affiliate side of the business that will bring some extra coins to your wallet should you choose to promote them.

I am taking advantage of both of these bonus offerings and I am getting small rewards on a daily basis paid to me for holding some KCS coins and from the fees that Kucoin collects from the trading activity of my peeps so while this is by no means big money, it’s still something extra that comes passively and without any effort, so it’s worth considering it.

The bottom line is: Kucoin exchange is having a great choice of cryptocurrencies, all the most popular coins are listed as well as many lesser known ones and their bonus features are what really sets Kucoin exchange apart from its competition so go check it out here >>> kucoin-exchange <<<

LEDGER BLACK FRIDAY SALE is ON

It’s that time of the year again.

My favourite hardware wallet – Ledger Nano is having a massive sale offer ALL WEEK.

I’ve been using the Ledger devices ever since I got my first Bitcoin and throughout the years they improved their devices so much.
Ledger has been a solid little vault since the early days but the latest model and the upgrades to their firmware made it even better. Gone are the days where we had to choose between only 3 or 4 coins to store, the early Nano S model was having a very limited capacity but with the latest upgrade to its firmware, we can now store up to 10 different coin apps on the device and there are over 1000 to choose from.

What’s even better, the latest model – NANO X can store over 100 and it even has a Bluetooth option to navigate it from your mobile phone on the go – which is what I’m doing most of the time and this has really changed everything for me. I used to store smaller amounts of my coins in cloud wallets just to have the convenience to use them when I’m not at home or on short travels where I don’t carry my laptop with me but since I got the Nano X I don’t have to worry about this anymore, I just sync it with my phone app and I’m able to access all my crypto assets from anywhere – how good is that.

I’ve posted many tutorials on the Ledger devices over the past few years, the latest one was my Start-to-Finish tutorial on how to set up your Nano X device and how to restore it as a previous device – if you have already used a previous one, so make sure you check these out too.

So, if you’ve been eager to get your hands on one of these devices, now is your chance to get them at a great discount all week…

Yes, it’s really a week-long black Friday event and the sales are now ON. Click the banner below or to the right ——>>>
or use this link to get the discount offer straight from their official website.

https://shop.ledger.com/pages/black-Friday?r=ea2f

Thank me later.

Choice of coins.

“Buy with Fiat” option.

Lesser fees.

Numerous competitions.

Regular airdrops to token holders.

It’s that time of the year again.