It was only a matter of time before Bitcoin started to get a foot hold and climb the up the profit ladder for the third time this year. Nothing seems to be able to stop the currency from gaining popularity. It was only last month that the Bitcoin Price quivered and shook under the might of the Far Eastern Government. Now the mining resumes in anger, as those who are intent on grasping as many fractions as possible, ramp up the power. Is this an excellent time to get involved? No one can be sure. The volatile market is a risk, and those who try to use the to try and predict the future benefits of online mining are cautiously considering what the future does hold. Will we see an all time high of $6000 dollars? Its possible, if the momentum continues. Only time will tell if Bitcoin is truly on target for 5 figures before the end of the year. Prices of hardware mining equipment and cloud mining have changed to match the market. Lifetime mining contracts have become 12 month contracts, claims of hardware shortages have rocked the markets. Bitcoin will be here to stay for a while longer, despite the negative reactions from those who see Fiat as the only currency. Ethereum has gained a foothold and has been trading far, far above what was expected of it back in Christmas 2016. Bitcoin was, this time last year, $600 dollars a coin. Now, it could be $6000 dollars before the end of the month. Author Posted on Categories Tags. For those of you who are just starting out in Bitcoin or experienced Bitcoin Enthusiasts, Hashflare can offer you the opportunity to mine Bitcoin without the need for expensive SHA 256 mining equipment. Do you think you've got what it takes to join the tough world of cryptocurrency mining? Power cost/Day. Profit per week. Pool Fee $ 0.1428. Power cost/Week. Ethereum - 120 MH/s - 24 Months - Genesis Mining Ethereum Cloud Contract. Hashflare provides a cloud mining service where you can invest as little as 2 dollars for 12 months of Bitcoin Mining. You can find out how much profit is possible by using the Hashflare Profit Calculator on the main dashboard of Hashflare which is as simple as using sliders to select the speed of mining, and the real-time cost of the mining is displayed. Mining using Hashflare is simple, they look after the equipment, they let you choose from a number of pools to mine, and they will release payment to you daily (providing your wallet has the minimum amount for withdrawal). Hashflare dont just offer the opportunity to mine Bitcoin, you can also mine a wide range of currencies easily from your dashboard. Currencies include Litecoin, Etherium and Zcash. Hashflare deduct the maintenance fees from your balance every 24 hours leaving you with profit based on the mining speed you have chosen. Author Posted on Categories Tags. Hashflare Profit Calculator Getting the best from your Online Cloud Mining account involves maximising profit and earning a generous return on investment with minimal investment. Hashflare’s Dashboard does include a basic and its important to understand the figure presented to you. Getting familiar with the Calculator is important. When users first see the Hashflare Dashboard they can be overwhelmed. There are many currencies to mine from as well as the most well known such as Bitcoin and Litecoin. You must first choose the currency you want to mine, and have done the research on the history of the difficulty and profit. Make sure that all the reasons for mining are based on a genuine interest in being part of a new form of online, decentralised currency and you do not invest more than you can afford to lose. Mining is not a get rich quick scheme. Many have made a lot of money from mining crypto but this is due to being early adopters or investing large amounts of money into profitable ventures and mining farms. Hashflare is tailored for the home miner, someone new to Bitcoin who wants to experiment with the currency, does not have the facilities or experience to own or run mining equipment. Hashflare is perfect for invest a few dollars or a few tens of dollars if you are unable to afford hardware mining equipment. To maximise the profit, and improve your return on investment, I suggest your withdrawal of funds is not done too regularly. Every time you withdraw bitcoin, Hashflare take a small cut to cover the transaction fee. The Transaction fee is quite high, but the amount is more often than not transferred into the very next block of transactions. You must consider when calculating profit that you include the maintenance and withdrawal fees into your long term plan. Author Posted on Categories Tags. The biggest problem that people have when starting out in Bitcoin is making a profit. This applies to all enthusiasts, from miners to traders, although trading certainly require more specialised knowledge. Mining on Hardware or in the Cloud using Hashflare’s Cloud Mining Service is at least somewhat predictable, and from the figures provided its fairly simple to calculate a ROI (Return on Investment) and deduce if a Profit can be made. When you first sign up for the Hashflare Service, the Dashboard presents you with a range of options and sliders, some for purchasing different mining contracts with options for choosing the most profitable pools. When a purchase is made it will usually take one day to mine your first Bitcoin, and then the profit calculator will start to display some useful numbers. The which we discussed previously, has come under a lot of Criticism for one main reason, and that is because the calculator does not deduct the maintenance fee’s from the predicted balance. The Calculator will show potential profit for a duration of time, from 1 day to 1 year, but this is the gross amount. My view is that the criticism is unfounded due to the volatility of the market. It is not possible for Hashflare to predict the future for Bitcoin, and many industry analysts and professionals from the world’s of Finance and Crypto combined agree. Hashflare can only present the amount of gross profit based on past figures and the current Bitcoin Difficulty / Price. Cloud mining aside, Hardware Miner are just as difficult to predict, with many advantages and disadvantages depending on the equipment purchased, its depreciation in value and its overall power consumption. In summary, to calculate the profit of any mining outfit, Hashflare, Alternative Cloud Mining, or Hardware Mining A great deal of speculation is involved. Its a fact that speculation runs the industry, and you should never invest more than you can afford to lose. Author Posted on Categories Tags.
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Discuss the expectancy theory of motivation and explain the four components associated with this theory For Questions 1-5, select the appropriate words for the sentence. (7 points each) 1. Although the Smiths had (already, all ready) eaten dinner, they (aloud, allowed) Johnnie to prepare his plate at the stove and join them at the table. Sarah (choose, chose) to go on the field trip to Atlanta and was nearly (busting, bursting) with energy as she boarded the bus. I believe the paper napkins will (affect, effect) the color scheme you selected for the wedding (regardless, irregardless) of what Ms. Compton says. We shall (precede, proceed) with the bake sale, and all (proceeds, proceed) will go to the Children’s Mission. “(Can, May) I attend the party with Bert?” I asked Dad. “I (no, know) he’s not (your, you’re) favorite person.” For questions, 6-10, select the correct word for each of the following sentences. (7 points each) 6. People can often work (to, two, too) much, which leads to burnout. (Your, You’re) understanding of this novel is so (thorough, through, though). He (sat, set) the plant on the windowsill so that it could take advantage of the pretty (weather, whether). Blake didn’t (no, know) if he (passed, past) his exam. You must (accept, except) the fact that his (been, being) here (effects, affects) you greatly. In a paragraph, define “plagiarism” (10 points), and discuss two (2) ways to avoid plagiarism in your writing (10 points each). Giraffes have long necks that allow them to reach more food sources in their habitat. The long neck trait is an example of 2. Which of the following is the most common kind of chemical bond in biological molecules? A cylinder and an airtight piston are used in the following experiment. CoinWarz Bitcoin mining calculator and Bitcoin profit calculator. Enter your mining rig's hash rate and the CoinWarz Bitcoin mining calculator and Bitcoin profit. Genesis Mining is a bitcoin cloud mining service that is an easy and safe way to purchase hashpower without. Bitcoin Cloud Mining Calculator Bitcoin Cloud. The piston is pushed up and down in the cylinder and the resulting pressure of the air inside the cylinder is measured with a pressure gauge. The results of the experiment are recorded in the following table: Volume of Air (L) Pressure Reading (Atm) 8 1 4 2 2 4 1 8 A hypothesis concerning the apparatus is stated as follows: “When the volume of the cylinder is decreased, the pressure is increased.” Which of the following statements is true? The hypothesis is supported by the experimental data. The hypothesis is refuted by the experimental data. The hypothesis is not addressed by the experiment. There is not enough information to make a judgment about the hypothesis. Which of the following procedures is an appropriate negative control for testing the hypothesis that air contains bread mold spores? A researcher wants to develop a new pharmaceutical compound to treat pain. Which of the following strategies will likely be the most effective process? The main function of lymphatic circulation is to 7. For which of the following temperature scales is 0° equal to the freezing point of water? Which of the following is an appropriate description of the arrangement of the cell membrane? Which of the following is the mechanism by which water is reabsorbed in the renal nephrons? Bitcoin Mining; Bitcoin Cloud Mining. Bitcoin mining is the digital form of mining gold. Back in the age of. Bitcoin mining is both a risky and. Bitcoin Cloud Mining Calculator. Useful Tips, Links & Cloud mining list. Posted on December 20, 2017 December 20, 2017 Full size 1280 × 528. A study demonstrates that treatment of peptic ulcers with antibiotics results in improvement in a large number of patients. This implies that 11. Which of the following is the function of bile? A student wants to design an experiment to demonstrate the effects of acid rain on plant life. Which of the following substances should be combined with water to best simulate acid rain? Which of the following statements best describes the energy of a waterfall? In developing countries, which of the following factors correlates with high birth rates? An experienced mountaineer decides to climb Mount Everest using the same route in the same season and with similar materials and equipment used by a fatal1924 expedition. The scientific purpose of such a climb would be to 16. Which of the following processes produces haploid gametes? The purpose of surfactant in the lungs is to 18. Which of the following terms describes changes in allele frequencies in the gene pool over a single generation? NaOH + HS0-+ Hp + NaS0 24 24 Which of the following is the number of moles of NaOH required to neutralize 1 mole of H2S04 in the equation above? (Note: The reaction is not balanced.) 20. Which of the following chemicals is insoluble in water? Plant -+ Deer –+ Tiger The first step in the energy chain that created the bonds of proteins 22. Which of the following best describes the result of using a catalyst in a chemical reaction? A population shows the following annual data: 3% emigration 2% immigration 2% births 1% deaths Which of the following is the change in population at the end of the year? Radiant heat energy from the Sun is most directly responsible for which of the following events of the hydrologic cycle? Which of the following is a main function of vitamins? Which of the following events occurs during photosynthesis? Which of the following events occurs during the S phase of the cell cycle? Which of the following structures is present in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells? Two students collect information about the number of dandelions in a park. Based on their sampling, they estimate that there are 900 dandelions in the 300-square-meter city park. To determine the accuracy of their estimate, which of the following questions is necessary? During the process of embryogenesis, formation of multiple cell types from stem cells occurs due to 33. Cellular respiration of glucose is an example of which of the following? Which of the following cranial nerves is involved in the control of balance? Three liquids of differing densities are studied. Samples of liquid 1 and liquid 2 are placed in a container together. Liquid 1 rises to the top. Another sample of liquid 1 is placed in a different container together with liquid 3. This time, liquid 3 rises to the top. If all three liquids are layered in one container, which of the following would be the correct order of the liquids from the bottom up to the top? 2, 3, 1 B.3, 2, 1 C. Your Final Project for this course will be a virtual time capsule. A time capsule is a grouping of items for future discovery. For our purposes, we will imagine that our time capsule will be buried at the end of the course and opened 100 years later. The goal of our capsule is to provide an overview of what you believe future generations should remember about the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The project can be composed in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. It can include multimedia if you wish. It should include the following eight parts A letter of introduction to tell someone in the future about your day-to-day life. What is your daily experience? Tell this person about your habits, your customs, your feelings about our present time, and your dreams for the future. An example of morality and decision-making in current culture in 100 words or more. Your definition of happiness in 100 words or more, including how you came to this view. Next, you will also choose an artifact for each of the following areas (4-8). You will explain the item in one paragraph, giving it context, and describing it. Then spend at least one paragraph justifying its inclusion in the time capsule: Why is this item worth preserving for the future, and what does it communicate about our culture today? Why this object above all the other possibilities? A significant literary work (poem, short story, play, or novel.) A significant example of art or architecture. A significant song or group of songs. A significant film. A significant item from popular culture (a toy, gadget, fad, etc.) Please feel free to include examples that you discovered in our studies this term. Challenge yourself to choose items that might be valuable for the future, though they might not necessarily be your favorites. Cite sources if you use them ). The CEO of ABC manufacturing commissioned a study to look at the differences between the current salaries of her employees by employee job title. There were three job categories: clerical, custodial, and managerial. The study collected current salary data of the three groups and the researcher conducted a statistic and the results are presented below. Using the five steps of hypothesis testing, explain what the researcher might have done, including the appropriate analysis, and interpret the results. Are there any problems with this study? If so, explain what they are. Average Salary Clerical (n = 363) $27,838.54 Custodial (n = 27) $30,938.89 Manager (n = 84) $63,977.80 Test statistic = 434.48, p 05 Is drug B superior to the currently used drug A in treating pancreatitis? A survey of 100 dog owners showed that the average dog checked the mail 11 times during an evening walk. Which question most probably represents the purpose of the study? The heights of 10 randomly selected fourth grade boys are in inches are 53 53 54 56 56 56 50 57 59 and 56. Find the sample standard deviations to 2 decimal places Salesman for the ABC plastics company drive an average of 240 miles per day with a standard deviation of 36 miles. If samples of 25 daily mileages are taken what is the standard deviation of the distribution of sample means? In 2003 the US death rate was 1.2 per 100,000 people do to motorcycle accidents. Motorcycles in the US were involved in fatal crashes at the rate of 35.0 per million miles driven. If the population of the US is 300 million what is the expected number of deaths due to motorcycle accidents? In one city there are 1,780 five year old children of whom 556 live with one parent only. Among a sample of 615 of the five year old children from this city, 226 live with one parent only. Find the population proportion of 5 year old who live with only one parent A manufacturer wishes to test the claim that one of its pancake mixes has a mean of weight that does not equal 24 ounces as advertised. Determine the conclusion of the hypothesis test assuming that the results of the sampling lead to rejection of the null hypothesis A 95% confidence interval for the mean of a normal population is found to be. Official 'FUNNY DETENTION SLIPS From REAL KIDS' video by Alonzo Lerone. Subscribe to see new Alonzo Lerone first: Check out important links below Follow Alonzo Lerone On: Facebook: Instagram: Twitter: SnapChat: @alonzolerone Alonzo Lerone Merch: _ Submit stuff to me HERE by Downloading my app! (links below) (Android) and (iOS) Watch More Alonzo Lerone: Dumbest FAILS Of The Internet: Reactions: Popular Videos: Challenges: Welcome to the official YouTube channel of comedian/entertainer Alonzo Lerone. Looking for comedy, or just a good laugh? You’re in luck! On this channel, you’ll find a variety of fail compilations showcasing the internet’s funniest and dumbest fails curated by Alonzo Lerone from Twitter, Facebook, advertisements, and much more. Question 1 Using the data in the attached spreadsheet, perform the accounting required for each of the following government fund transaction: Prepare the book calculations Perform the required journal entries Requirements: Complete all work on the spreadsheet attached to this assignment; it will be your only deliverable. Clearly identify the requirements being addressed. Show all calculations within the cells of an Excel spreadsheet. This means that you must use formulas and links so that the thought process can be examined. Make good use of comments to convey your thought process as well. No hard coding of solutions. Submit a single MS Excel file for grading. Discuss interdependence and explain two types of structural approaches to coordination. JIM is acquiring all of the assets of Mason Machining, Inc. In a merger transaction. Mason transfers assets having a FMV of $1,775,000 and an adjusted basis of $995,000 and $200,000 in liabilities to JIM in exchange for $750,000 in cash and $800,000 of JIM’s common stock. •Explain what type of merger this is. JIM distributes its stock and cash to Mason in exchange for all of its assets. •Calculate Mason’s gain on this transaction. •How much of this gain will Mason recognize? •How must tax liability will Mason incur from this transfer? Mason distributes the JIM stock and cash to its shareholders for all of their shares of Mason’s stock. Shareholders’ basis in this stock is $600,000. •Calculate how much gain the Mason’s shareholders will realize and recognize on this transfer. •How must tax liability will Mason’s shareholders incur from this transfer? •Explain the tax implications for JIM. Cholesterol: A Patient Conversation The purpose of this project is to provide insight into the therapeutic communication component of patient care. Have you ever been to a doctor’s office and had a doctor or nurse communicate with you using large, “scary” words you did not understand? Similarly, have you ever had a mechanic speak to you about the inner workings of your car’s engine using jargon you did not understand? You are a Physician’s Assistant and you are set to meet with a patient to talk about his cholesterol panel. The patient, Mr. Brown, is a 56 year old male who leads a largely sedentary lifestyle. He has admitted, in a previous visit, that his favorite activity is sitting on the couch and eating snacks while watching sports. He has also expressed concerns that you would try to drastically change his lifestyle (which he does not want to do) if his tests came back high. The panel that came back on Mr. Brown contains the following results: Test Result Triglycerides 145 mg/dL Cholesterol 210 mg/dL HDL 33 mg/dL LDL 160 mg/dL Explain to Mr. Brown what each test is measuring and how the results should be interpreted. Also, be prepared to address the following issues with Mr. Brown: •What are triglycerides? •What is cholesterol? •What are LDL and HDL? •Where is cholesterol produced? •What are the causes of high cholesterol? •What are the treatments for reducing high cholesterol? •What are the side effects of medication for treating high cholesterol? •Do the benefits of lowering cholesterol outweigh the risks of taking medication? •What options exist for a person to try and reduce his/her cholesterol without taking medication? •How would you alleviate any fears Mr. Brown may have regarding his condition? •What recommendations would you make to Mr. Brown knowing his concerns? •What approach would you take to encourage him to make any necessary lifestyle changes. Submission Guidelines •3 pages (does not include title page or references), double-spaced, typed, 12-point Times New Roman font. •You may choose to write your paper in the format of a script (like a movie or television show) •Use simple terminology and avoid jargon •Use real-life analogies to explain the issues •Provide references in APA format as appropriate On Sept 1 2010, a Coal company bought land containing coal for 50,000 cash. They end up spending 2,000 on exploration costs as well as 5,000 on development costs. Heavy equipment was purchased to work on the coal mine for 7,000 on a note. Equipment A was purchased for 4,000 with a 4 year estimated life and a salvage value of 500 dollars and will be used at a new location at the end of its useful life. Equipment B has no salvage value, 6 years est. Life, and will not be used again since it’s an essential part of the mining operation. Addition info: Mine’s estimated capacity is 12,500 tons of coal. When mine is empty the owner will sell it for $2,0000. In 2010, 4,000 tons of coal was extracted and sold. Use the DDB method for depreciation Needed; # Journal entries to record purchase land, exploration costs, development costs and equipment purchase. #2 also, calculate depletion for 2010, equipment depreciation and Journal entries for the depletion and depreciation for 12/31/10. All answers need to be reduced to lowest terms where possible. Answer the following problems showing your work and explaining (or analyzing) your results. Describe the measures of central tendency. Under what condition(s) should each one be used? Last year, 12 employees from a computer company retired. Their ages at retirement are listed below. First, create a stem plot for the data. Next, find the mean retirement age. Round to the nearest year. 55 77 64 77 69 63 62 64 85 64 56 59 3. A retail store manager kept track of the number of car magazines sold each week over a 10-week period. The results are shown below. 27 30 21 62 28 18 23 22 26 28 a. Find the mean, median, and mode of newspapers sold over the 10-week period. Which measure(s) of central tendency best represent the data? C.Name any outliers. Joe wants to pass his statistics class with at least a 75%. His prior four test scores are 74%, 68%, 84% and 79%. What is the minimum score he needs on the final exam to pass the class with a 75% average? 5.Nancy participated in a summer reading program. The number of books read by the 23 participants are as follows: 10 9 6 2 5 3 9 1 6 3 10 4 7 6 3 5 6 2 6 5 3 7 2 Number of books read Frequency 1–2 3–4 5–6 7–8 9–10 a.Complete the frequency table. B.Find the mean of the raw data. C.Find the median of the raw data. 6.The chart below represents the number of inches of snow for a seven-day period. Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 2 5 3 10 0 4 2 a. Find the mean, median, and mode. B.Which is the best measure of central tendency? Remove Wednesday from the calculations. How does that impact the three measures of central tendency? Describe the effect outliers have on the measures of central tendency. 7.A dealership sold 15 cars last month. The purchase price of the cars, rounded to the nearest thousand, is represented in the table. Purchase price Number of cars sold $15,000 3 $20,000 4 $23,000 5 $25,000 2 $45,000 1 a.Find the mean and median of the data. B.Which measure best represents the data? Use the results to support your answer. C.What is the outlier and how does it affect the data? What do the letters represent on the box plot? The test scores from a math final exam are as follows: 64 85 93 55 87 90 73 81 86 79 a.Create a box plot using the data. B.Label the five points on the box plot and include numerical answers from part “a.” 10. Using the data and results from Question 9, answer the following questions. A.What is the median? B.What is the range? C.What is the interquartile range? D.In a short paragraph, describe the data in the box plot. Barker and colleagues (2012) compared 61 parents fo children who had a serious mental illness (SMI) to 321 parents of children withour such an illness. The researchers examined the parents’ reported levels of stress, their levels of a hormone called cortisol (levels of this hormone provide an indication of chronic stress), and their use of several types of medication. The table below shows the results of the study. Focusing on the parents’ number of stressors (the first row of the table) and the parents’ use of medications for anxiety or depression (the last row in the table), explain these results to a person who knows about the t test for a single sample but is unfamiliar with the t test for independent means. An equal mass of which of the following states of matter could completely fill both a 100 mL or 500 ml container? Which of the following describes mitosis? A single cell splits and shares its chromatin with a sex cell. Two parent cells combine to create a single cell with equal amounts of DNA from each parent. The nucleus of a single cell creates two new nuclei with DNA identical to the parent cell. An X and a Y chromosome divide in the nucleus of a sex cell before combining into a gamete. The nucleus of an atom is composed of uncharged particles as well as which of the following? Less-economically developed countries will experience higher birth rates than more-economically developed countries due to 38. DNA can copy itself quite accurately while RNA cannot because only DNA is 39. Experiments cannot validate hypotheses, only falsify them. The statement above can be restated in which of the following ways? A researcher collects high-resolution photographs of the Earth taken from outer space at annual intervals for the last decade. This data would be most useful to analyze which of the following? Moths with a certain coloring are camouflaged in their habitat. Over time, more moths are born with this coloring. Which of the following best explains the increasing number of moths with this coloring? Pepsin, which speeds up the breakdown of proteins, is classified as 43. Which of the following is the purpose of the waxy substance that builds up in the ear canal? Lungs originate from tissue that also gives rise to the 45. Which of the following properties of water helps organisms maintain homeostasis with regard to thermoregulation? The function of the Golgi apparatus is to 47. Fitness is a result of which of the following factors? When calculating population growth, which of the following equations is appropriate? A researcher wants to develop a new pharmaceutical compound to treat pain. Which of the following strategies will likely be the most effective process? Two boys pull their identical sleds to the top of a hill. One boy loads his sled with bricks while the other boy does not put any extra objects in his sle 51. An individual suffers severe blunt trauma to the thoracic cavity. Which of the following organs are at greatest risk from this injury? Which of the following statements best explains the relationship between the mitochondria and the plasma membrane? A researcher is studying the rate of chemical reactions within living blood cells. When placing the cells into a petri dish with a pH of 2.5, the researcher should predict that the rate of the reactions will 54. Which of the following represents Boyle’s gas law? 40) As used in governmental accounting, interperiod equity refers to a concept of 41) The state has a legally separate State Building Authority, which has a board in its 42) Revenues of a not-for-profit organization should be reported as 43) Financial statements for a church-supported college should be prepared according to standards set by the 44) For a not-for-profit hospital, which of the following financial statements is required? 45) What agency has the ultimate authority in defining independence for publicly traded companies? 46) A report on internal control effectiveness by management of public companies is required by which 47) Once sufficient predication has been established, what is the first step a fraud examiner following the fraud theory approach should take? 48) Which of the following best describes the objective of a fraud examination? 49) Damages intended to punish a defendant and deter the defendant and others from engaging in the same tortious conduct in the future are called 50) Where a contract calls for action that violates a statute, in a breach of contract case the court will 51) Ted’s Gifts and Sweets enters into a written contract with Bannon Candies to supply Ted’s with 60 52) Jane and Bill are married. They purchase a house and lot as tenants by the entirety. Then Jane is 53) Which of the following is a correct statement of the requirements for a bona fide occupational qualification? 54) Which of the following statements accurately describes the workers’ compensation rules? 55) When a company holds between 20% and 50% of the outstanding stock of an investee, which of the following statements applies? 56) On December 31, 2008, Kean Company changed its method of accounting for inventory from weighted-average cost method to the FIFO method. This change caused the 2008 beginning inventory 57) Which of the following serves as the highest authority for tax research, planning, and compliance activities? 58) The retail inventory method is based on the assumption that the 59) When an item of expense is paid and recorded in advance, it is normally called 60) Antonio owns land held for investment with a basis of $28,000. The city of Lafayette exercises the right of eminent domain and Antonio receives a payment of $48,000. What is Antonio’s realized gain? 61) In April 2009 of this year, Emma acquired a machine for $50,000 for use in her business. The machine is classified as 7-year property. Emma elects out of bonus depreciation and does not 62) During the current year, a corporation sells equipment for $300,000 that it had purchased and 63) Susie owns a ranch in Wyoming, which Pat offers to purchase. Susie is not willing to sell the ranch 64) A married person who files a separate return can claim a personal exemption for his or her spouse if the spouse is not the dependent of another and has 65) Ricky has rented a house from Sarah since last year. The rent is usually $800 per month, but Sarah reduced the monthly rent down to $600 for all 12 months this year in exchange for Ricky 66) Alex is a calendar-year sole proprietor. He began business on December 1 of this year. He uses 67) Bianca is beneficiary of an $80,000 insurance policy on her father’s life. Upon his death, she may 68) Nonrefundable tax credits 69) Paul makes the following property transfers in the current year: $22,000 cash to his wife, $34,000 cash to a qualified charity, $120,000 house to his son, and $3,000 computer to an unrelated friend. 70) Which of the following best describes the weight of a revenue ruling? 71) Which of the following statements is true? A corporation’s fiscal year generally ends on the last day of the month. 72) One consequence of a property distribution by a corporation to a shareholder is 73) Joshua owns 100% of Steeler Corporation’s stock. Joshua’s basis in the stock is $8,000. Steeler 74) In computing the ordinary income of a partnership, a deduction is allowed for 75) Which of the following would terminate a Subchapter S election? 76) The function of auditing is 77) Auditing is based on the assumption that financial data are verifiable. Data are verifiable when two 78) Statement on Quality Control Standards No. SP180 Principles of Public Speaking Directions: Be sure to save an electronic copy of your answer before submitting it to Ashworth College for grading. Unless otherwise stated, answer in complete sentences, and be sure to use correct English, spelling and grammar. Sources must be cited in APA format. Your response should be four (4) double-spaced pages; refer to the “Assignment Format” page for specific format requirements. Create a complete preparation outline using the outline template below for a persuasive speech. You may choose from one of the topics below. Why banning the use of cell phones while driving should be mandatory nationwide 2. What I see as the biggest challenges young adults face today 3. Increased dependence on technology in the U.S. Bullying in schools. Gun laws in the U.S. State the general purpose, specific purpose, and central idea clearly and in the appropriate form. Limit your key points to no more than three and supporting statements with resources to no more than two per key point. State your key points and supporting materials in complete sentences. Summarize key points of introduction with a call for action in your conclusion. Based on your submitted outline, begin writing the first draft of your speech while studying the next lesson. In Lesson 7, you will study how to write the components of your speech. The outcome of this process is a final written speech to be submitted as your final assignment in Lesson 7. Orion Corporation Balance Sheet Year0 Cash $400 Accounts Payable `$ 150 Accounts Receivable 250 Accrued Wages 1,000 Inventory 1,200 Notes Payable 500 Net fixed Assets 6,000 Common Stock 3,200 Retained Earnings 3,000 Totals Assets $7,850 Total Liabilities $ Equity $ 7,850 Orion Corporation has just developed a new type of microchip. Orion expects sales will quadruple, from $5,000 in year0 to $20,000 in year1 (next year). This is expected to result in a net income of $4,000 in Year 1. Orion pays 80% of their net income in dividends. Orion has a plenty of excess capacity and believe that they will not need any additional fixed assets to achieve the increase in sales for year1. Will Orion need any additional funding for year1? Will Orion Need any additional funding for YEAR1? If so how much? If not how much excess do they have? Show all work. This paper will be written according to APA Paper style. 3 – 4 Pages Question: Bryson’s is a mid-sized hotel chain that is entering a competitive market. The chain needs to differentiate its service from that of competitors, positioning itself as a hotel chain with excellent service at an affordable price. How can it achieve this using internal marketing? Answer in complete sentences, and be sure to use correct English, spelling and grammar. Sources must be cited in APA format. Your response should be four (4) double-spaced pages; refer to the “Assignment Format” page located on the Course Home page for specific format requirements. BP GULF OF MEXICO OIL SPILL. Energy Law Journal, 32.1, 57-79. Retrieved from Respond to the following: 1. In your own words, provide an overview of the events and implications of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Explain the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, including why it was enacted, its general provisions, and OPA 90′s effectiveness in terms of containing a major spill. Why did it take BP so long to stop the spill? Which type of control would have been most helpful to BP in averting the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Provide one (1) supporting fact to support your response. Research the subject of the Enron and Arthur Andersen relationship. Discuss your findings in terms of the application of ethics in the various decisions made by the Enron and Arthur Andersen teams. How did bounded ethicality play a role in these decisions? Recently, the American International Group (AIG), a global insurance and financial services organization, accepted billions of dollars from the United States Government in order to remain solvent and in operation. After receiving this money, the organization decided to pay over $160 million in bonuses. Discuss the ethical problems associated with this decision. Could in-group favoritism play a role in this decision? If you were the CEO, what decision would you have made? Read the case Fairness in Punishment. Discuss the Decatur School Board’s decision to adopt a “no tolerance on school violence” in terms of fairness. How did implicit attitudes, perhaps, influence the school board’s decision to punish such a disproportionate number of African-American students? Bernard Madoff, a once highly regarded member of the Wall Street community, recently pleaded guilty of running a $50 billion ponzi scheme. Research the driving forces behind his seemingly unethical behavior and discuss your findings. How did favoritism and bounded ethicality come into play in this case? Part A For Part A of this assignment, choose a movie, book, or television show that depicts a character or character(s) suffering from mental illness. Write a paper analyzing a character’s illness in terms of one or more of the theoretical perspectives (e.g., biological, psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, biopsychosocial) presented in the text. Describe the character’s diagnosis in terms of the DSM-IV. Make sure to include two (2) criteria that the character meets. Describe one (1) perspective(s) of mental illness that best explains the development of the character’s symptoms, along with two (2) facts to support your position. Describe any treatment received by the character. Describe two (2) reasons that you would recommend similar or different treatment. If the character did not receive treatment, describe the type of treatment you would recommend with two (2) supporting facts. Suggested movies include: • Beautiful Mind (2001). • Girl, Interrupted (1999). • Fatal Attraction (1987). • Sybil (1977). • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). • Play Misty for Me (1971). Suggested television shows include: • Wilfred. • Perception. Part B For Part B of this assignment, go online to the following Web page: Take a tour through the slide show, which shows actual footage of the Stanford Prison study. After viewing the slideshow, respond to the following questions. Your response should be one (1) page in length. Describe one (1) factor that prevented “good guards” from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards. Describe one (1) reason why prisoners try to work within the arbitrary prison system to effect a change in it (e.g., setting up a Grievance Committee), rather than trying to dismantle or change the system through outside help. Describe two (2) factors would lead prisoners to attribute guard brutality to the guards’ disposition or character, rather than to the situation. Was it ethical to conduct this study? Provide two (2) reasons to support your position. Which of the following are the sites within the human body where carbon dioxide and oxygen are exchanged? Which of the following describes the most important reason for repeating an experimental investigation? Lithium has an atomic number of 3 and a mass number of 7. Which of the following is the number of protons in a lithium atom? Which of the following molecules contains the fewest covalent bonds? When salt (NaCI) is added to water, it disassociates into Na• and Cl-ions. Which of the following types of chemical bond is present in a salt molecule? An example of active immunity is the transfer of 7. Which of the following classes of biological molecules include enzymes? Which of the following parts of the circulatory system carries oxygenated blood? Which of the following genetic terms describes an observable trait of an individual? Mutations during which of the following processes in animals will affect offspring of succeeding generations? Which of the following will happen if mRNA fails to be translated? Which of the following is the balanced equation for photosynthesis in plant cells? For this one, the formats of the answers are messed up. The balanced formula is 6Co2+6H20+Energy = C6H12O6+6O2. Looking at the answers I think B is the one with the correct formula but cannot be sure. A 3C0+ 3H0 + Energy –)-CH120 + 30 2 266 2 B. 6C0+ 6Hp + Energy–)-CHp + 60 2 616 2 C. CH0 + 30–)-3C0+ 3H0 + Energy 6126 2 2 2 D. CHp + 60–)-6C0+ 6Hp + Energy 616 2 2 13. Which of the following classes of biomolecules are frequently responsible for bringing about cell differentiation? Which of the following is the pH when the concentrations of hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions in an aqueous solution are equal? Which of the following structures is present in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells? Which of the following is the purpose of valves in the venous circulatory system? Which of the following cellular organelles is the site of translation during protein synthesis? In an experiment, a researcher counts the number of oxygen bubbles produced by water plants placed under different colors of light. The researcher finds that water plants placed under white light release more oxygen bubbles than water plants placed under red light. Which of the following statements is best supported based on the observation? When normal atmospheric conditions are present, water is constantly being cycled between liquid and gaseous states by which of the following pairs of processes? A scientist has noted a possible relationship between a certain chemical substance found in fish and the occurrence of kidney failure in humans. Which of the following preliminary steps should the scientist take before conducting a controlled experiment? In the digestive tract, mouth is to bolus as A. Stomach is to chyme. Gallbladder is to insulin. Small intestine is to carbohydrate. Esophagus is to peristalsis 22. A test is performed to see if applying fertilizer to rose bushes increases the number of flowers on bushes. Which of the following best relates to the hypothesis for this experiment? One neutron is added to the nucleus of an atom of carbon-12. In which of the following ways has the atom been changed? Plant~Deer~Tiger The first step in the energy chain that created the bonds of proteins in the tiger’s muscle cells in the food chain shown above is the 25. Which of the following chemicals is insoluble in water? C6(benzene) H6 B. HCI {hydrochloric acid) C. NH3 (ammonia) D. NaHC03 (sodium bicarbonate) 26. Which of the following nitrogenous bases is found exclusively in DNA? Both digestion and absorption happen in which of the following parts of the digestive system? Which of the following tissues would send a message to the brain indicating that someone has touched something hot? Which of the following describes the classification of humans? Cellular respiration of glucose is an example of which of the following? A student conducts an investigation in which she dissolves 1 gram (g) each of several substances in 50 milliliters (ml) of water. She has 12 identical plastic cups of water. She places 1 g of salt in three cups, 1 g of sugar in three cups, and 1 g of baking soda in three cups. Three cups contain only water. She places all the cups in a freezer and records the temperature in each cup every 15 minutes for 4 hours. Which of the following is the best way for the student to display the results of this investigation? In pea plants, the allele for tall (T) is dominant to the allele for short (t). Which of the following is the percent of offspring that will be tall if a heterozygous plant (Tt) is crossed with a homozygous tall plant? True or False. Justify for full credit. (25 pts) (a) If there is no linear correlation between two variables, then these two variables are not related in any way. (b) If the variance from a data set is zero, then all the observations in this data set are identical. (c), where is the complement of A. (d) In a hypothesis testing, if the P-value is less than the significance level α, we reject the null hypothesis. (e) The volume of milk in a jug of milk is 128 oz. The value 128 is from a discrete data set. Refer to the following frequency distribution for Questions 2, 3, 4, and 5. Show all work. Just the answer, without supporting work, will receive no credit. The frequency distribution below shows the distribution for checkout time (in minutes) in UMUC MiniMart between 3:00 and 4:00 PM on a Friday afternoon. What percentage of the checkout times was less than 3 minutes? In what class interval must the median lie? Explain your answer. Calculate the mean of this frequency distribution. Calculate the standard deviation of this frequency distribution. (Round the answer to two decimal places) A random sample of STAT200 weekly study times in hours is as follows: 6. Find the sample standard deviation. (Round the answer to two decimal places) (10 pts) 7. Find the coefficient of variation. Are any of these study times considered unusual based on the Range Rule of Thumb? Show work and explain. If the card selection is without replacement, what is the probability that the first card is an ace and the second card is also an ace? (Express the answer in simplest fraction form) (10 pts) 10. If the card selection is with replacement, what is the probability that the first card is an ace and the second card is also an ace? (Express the answer in simplest fraction form) (10 pts) 11. Are A and B independent when the selection is with replacement? Why or why not? (5 pts) There are 1000 juniors in a college. Among the 1000 juniors, 200 students are taking STAT200, and 100 students are taking PSYC300. There are 50 students taking both courses. What is the probability that a randomly selected junior is taking at least one of these two courses? What is the probability that a randomly selected junior is taking PSYC300, given that he/she is taking STAT200? UMUC Stat Club must appoint a president, a vice president, and a treasurer. There are 10 qualified candidates. How many different ways can the officers be appointed? Mimi has seven books from the Statistics is Fun series. She plans on bringing three of the seven books with her in a road trip. How many different ways can the three books be selected? Determine the expected value of x. Determine the standard deviation of x. (Round the answer to two decimal places) Consider the following situation for Questions 18, 19 and 20. Show all work. Just the answer, without supporting work, will receive no credit. (5 pts) Mimi just started her tennis class three weeks ago. On average, she is able to return 20% of her opponent’s serves. Assume her opponent serves 8 times. Let X be the number of returns that Mimi gets. As we know, the distribution of X is a binomial probability distribution. What is the number of trials (n), probability of successes (p) and probability of failures (q), respectively? Discuss your thoughts and feelings about ethics and fairness in managerial decision-making. Do you believe we are becoming a less ethical nation? Why or why not? Consider the last time you had to negotiate something. How do you perceive yourself as a negotiator? What cognitive mistakes have you made in the past and how could you have avoided these mistakes? Question 1 Recently, General Motors and the United Auto Workers had to sit down and negotiate a change in the labor agreement in order to keep the company from going bankrupt. Consider what might have gone on during these negotiations and discuss how framing might have been used, and what issues might have been discussed, in order to reach an acceptable agreement. Question 2 Eventually, the United States and Iran will have to sit down and negotiate the use of nuclear power. Discuss the issues that could be involved in such a negotiation. What cognitive mistakes might be made by the negotiators in this case? How could these mistakes be overcome in order to reach an acceptable agreement? Question 3 Discuss the four ways, outlined in Chapter 9, in which contingent contracts can improve the outcomes of negotiations for both sides. Question 4 Assume that you are part of a mediation team that has been brought in to help overcome an impasse between negotiators who are deliberating the use of embryonic stem cells for a research project. The decision makers are polarized along ethical and religious lines. Since this is a potentially emotional issue, what would you do in order to break this impasse? How could the fixed pie concept come into play in this situation? Apply the following in 350 to 500 words for each scenario: j. Power must be evil because it can corrupt people. If the theory of evolution is true, as scientific evidence overwhelmingly suggests, a human being is nothing more than an ape. Low grades on a college transcript are a handicap in the job market, so teachers who grade harshly are doing students a disservice. Evaluate each argument, using the 4-step process described on p. 218, regarding soundness of reasoning (truth and validity). • Explain your assessment and add alternative argumentation where necessary. 4-step process 1. State your argument fully, as clearly as you can. Be sure to identify any hidden premises and, if the agument is complex, to express all parts of it. Examine each part of your argument for errors affecting truth. (To be sureyour examination is not perfunctory, play devil’s advocate and challenge the argument, asking pointed questions about it, taking nothing for granted.) Note any instances of either/or thinking, avoiding the issue, overgeneralizing, oversimplifying, double standard, shifting the burden of proof, or irrational appeal. In addition, check to be sure that the argument reflects the evidence found in your investigation (see Chapter 8) and is relevant to the pro and con arguments and scenarios you produced earlier (see Chapter 9). Examine your argument for validity errors; that is, consider the reasoning that links conclusions to premises. Determine whether your conclusion is legitimate or illegitimate. If you find one or more errors, revise your argument to eliminate them. The changes you will have to make in your argument will depend on the kinds of errors you find. Sometimes, only minor revision is called for—the adding of a simple qualification, for example, or the substitution of a rational appeal for an irrational one. Occasionally, however, the change required is more dramatic. You may, for example, find your argument so flawed that the only appropriate action is to abandon it altogether and embrace adifferent argument. On those occasions, you may be tempted to pretend your argument is sound and hope no one will notice the errors. Resist that hope. It is foolish as well as dishonest to invest time in refining a view that you know is unsound. Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines. 42)Which of the following is a reason to conduct nonexperimental research? 43)Which of the following is a type of nonexperimental research? 44)Which of the following is the defining feature of correlational research? 45)Coding of participant behaviors is generally an important part of which of the following? 46)Qualitative research is meant to do which of the following? 47)Which of the following is a common data collection method in qualitative research? 48) Data analysis in qualitative research is most likely to include which of the following? 49)What are the two main characteristics of survey research? 50) “Is there anything else you would like to tell us about?” is an example of an open-ended item. 51) Closed-ended items provide a set of response options for respondents to choose from. 52) A researcher who stands in a shopping mall and approaches anyone who looks to him like they would complete a survey is using random sampling. 53) Researchers are most likely to use open-ended items under which of the following conditions? 54) Survey research tends to use which of the following? 55)What is the best way to address the problem of nonresponse bias? 56)What are the two main functions of the introduction to a survey questionnaire? 57) High-level APA style consists of rules about grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting. 58)An APA-style abstract is usually about two pages long. 59) Which of the following presents the major sections of an APA style empirical research report in the correct order? 60)The two broad themes of high-level APA style writing are that it is _____ and _____. 61)Which of the following is an example of a low-level rule of APA style? 62) The title of an APA style research report should generally be which of the following?A)typed in all capital letters 63) The literature review of an APA style introduction section should do which of the following? 64) Below you will find names of various research methods and examples of research studies. Identify which method best describes each of the research study examples. 65) Situation: A researcher is interested in whether taking vitamin C has an effect on the number of colds people get. If she wants to determine whether taking vitamin C actually reduces the number of colds people get, what type of research procedure should she use? What procedures would she follow in setting up the study? (hint: what are the components of scientific research?) 3. What could she select for independent and dependent variables? Do you think a control group would be important? What kind of condition could she use with a control group? 66) Traumatic Brain Injury Linked to Criminal Behavior in Youth: Young offenders are more likely to have suffered a traumatic brain injury compared with the rest of society, according to new research. Is the study above: CORRELATIONAL or EXPERIMENTAL? If the study is correlational, is the correlation: POSITIVE or NEGATIVE? If the study is experimental, the independent variable is ___________ and the dependent variable is _________________. Can the authors of the study claim that traumatic brain injuries cause people to commit violent crimes? Why or why not? 67) Meditation May Change Brain Structure: Meditation causes structural changes in the brain associated with memory, empathy, and stress, according to new research. Researchers, whose 1. Is the study above: CORRELATIONAL or EXPERIMENTAL? If the study is correlational, is the correlation: POSITIVE or NEGATIVE? If the study is experimental, the independent dependent variable is ___________ and the dependent variable is ______________. Can the authors of the study claim that meditation caused the observed change in brain structure? Why or why not? (be specific). A shipping company calculates charges based on parcel’s weight and distance to be shipped. The weight charges are: 0 to 10 pounds $0.75 per pound 10 to 15 pounds $0.85 per pound 15 to 20 pounds $0.95 per pound over 20 pounds NOT ALLOWED Distance charges are: 0 to 50 miles $0.07 per mile 50 to 100 miles $0.06 per mile 100 to 200 miles $0.05 per mile 200 to 500 miles $0.04 per mile over 500 miles NOT ALLOWED Create a program to compute the total charge based on the two schedules above. Your program should ask the user for the parcel’s wight and distance to be shipped. Then it should compute and add the two charges into the final one to be displayed. IMPORTANT: Your program should display an ERROR for values that are not allowed for either weight, miles, or both. Not allowed values are negative or over the limit from the two schedules. Your program will be tested for such values. Sample run: Welcome to Shipping Company! Please enter the weight in pounds of your package: 2.5 Please enter the distance in miles to be shipped: 56 Your total charge is: $5.24 The total is computed as follows: 2.5 * 0.75 + 56 * 0.06, where of course the weight and miles are variables and not numbers. Hint: Your program should have two series of if/else if statements: one to determine charge by weight and the other for charge by miles. In the end add and display the two charges or an error message for invalid input. Required: If Illinois buys from an outside supplier, the facilities that Iowa uses to manufacture these units will remain idle. What will be the impact on the Mississippi Company if Illinois buys from the outside supplier? (Omit the 3.) Which of the following statements is (are) false? (A) From an organization’s viewpoint, transfer prices have no effect on total profits assuming the transfer occurs between the two responsibility centers. (B) A transfer price is the value assigned to the transfer of goods, or services between divisions within 5.) When there is no intermediate market, 6.) A division can sell externally for $40 per unit. Its variable manufacturing costs are $15 per unit, and its variable marketing costs are $6 per unit. What is the opportunity cost of transferring internally, assuming the division is operating at capacity? 7.) Chipper Division of Acme Corp. Sells 80,000 units of part Z-25 to the outside market. Part Z-25 sells for $40, has a variable cost of $22, and a fixed cost per unit of $10. Chipper has a capacity to produce 100,000 units per period. Jones Division currently purchases 10,000 units of part Z-25 from Chipper for $40. Jones has been approached by an outside supplier willing to supply the parts for $36. If Acme uses a negotiated transfer pricing system, what is the maximum transfer price that should be charged for this transaction? 8.) Avery Corporation has two divisions, A and B, which are both organized as profit centers; Division A produces and sells widgets to Division B and to outside customers. Division A has total costs of $35, $20 of which are variable. Division A is operating significantly below capacity and sells the widgets for $50. Division B has received an offer from an outsider vendor to supply all the widgets it needs (20,000 widgets) at a cost of $45. The manager of Division B is considering the offer but wants to approach Division A first. What is the minimum transfer price from Division A to Division B? 9.) Some managers prefer to use cost rather than market price in controlling transfers between divisions. If cost is to be used, then it should be 1.) The master budget at Windsor, Inc., last period called for sales of 85,000 units at $23.0 each. The costs were estimated to be $10.0 variable per unit and $650,000 fixed. During the period, actual production and actual sales were 93,000 units. The selling price was $22.8 per unit. Variable costs were $12.4 per unit. Actual fixed costs were $650,000. Required: Prepare a flexible budget for Windsor. (Input all amounts as positive values. Omit the 2.) The following data reflect the current month’s activity for Sills, Inc.: Variable overhead is applied based on standard direct labor-hours allowed. Required: Compute the labor and variable overhead price and efficiency variances. (Do not round your intermediate calculations. Input all amounts as positive values. Indicate the effect of each variance by selecting “F” for favorable, “U” for unfavorable, and “None” for no effect (i.e., zero variance). Omit the 3.) Data-2-Go manufactures and sells flash drives. The company produces only when it receives orders and, therefore, has no inventories. The following information is available for the current month: Prepare a flexible budget for Data-2-Go. (Input all amounts as positive values. Do not round your intermediate calculations. Round your answers to the nearest dollar amount. Omit the 4.) Information on Canyon Chemical’s direct materials costs follows: What were Canyon Chemical’s direct materials price and efficiency variances? (Input all amounts as positive values. Indicate the effect of each variance by selecting “F” for favorable, “U” for unfavorable, and “None” for no effect (i.e., zero variance). Omit the Requirement 2: (Appendix) Prepare the journal entries to record the purchase and use of chemical Y using standard costing. (Omit the 5.) Stoker Corporation applies fixed overhead at the rate of $0.60 per unit. For May, budgeted fixed overhead was $483,720. The production volume variance amounted to $3,900 unfavorable, and the price variance was $10,300 unfavorable. (a) What was the budgeted volume in units for May? (b) What was the actual volume of units produced in May? (c) What was the actual fixed overhead incurred for May? Quarterly Sales Statistics Write a C++ program that randomly assigns (with the maximum value of 5000) four quarterly sales figures for six divisions of a company. The figures should be stored in a two-dimensional array. Once the figures are assigned, the program should display the following data for each quarter: • A list of the quarterly sales figures by division. • Each division’s increase or decrease from the previous quarter (this will not be displayed for the first quarter.) • The total sales for the quarter. • The company’s increase or decrease from the previous quarter (this will not be displayed for the first quarter.) • The average sales for all divisions that quarter. • The division with the highest sales for the quarter. • The division with the lowest sales for the quarter. The program should be modular, with functions that calculate the statistics above. Note: In the real world, the program should let the user enter sales figures, and input validation must be included for not accepting negative and “junk” values. Amazing Digital Clock There is a belief that if at any time a person takes a look at a digital clock, and if the digits of the hours and minutes add up equally for the two parts, it is a good time, or actually a lucky time that will predict or is a forecast that whatever you were thinking/ wishing at that instant, might come true. For example, 12:03, 12:30, 4:04, 4:13, or 4:31 are considered as lucky times. Besides that, there are three other special times that also carry specific meanings: • If all digits are the same, like 4:44, or 5:55. It predicts you might win a lottery. • If all digits are in ascending order, like 3:45, or 4:56. It predicts all dreams will come true. • If all digits are in descending order, like 3:21, or 6:54. It predicts challenging road is ahead. Write a C++ program that asks the user to enter a time in the format HH:MM, then the program will tell if the time is a lucky time or just a normal time. And then, if the time carries a specific meaning, as described above, the corresponding meaning will be displayed along. Allow your program continuously run as long as the user wishes to test it with other times. You’re not allowed to hardcode exactly the entered time and its corresponding meaning. Input validation: Don’t accept unreasonable time, which must be rejected and asked for another one. Limit the hours from 1 to 12, and minutes from 1 to 59. Required output: Enter a time (HH:MM): 12:56 12:56 is a normal time. COSC 175.101 Lab 3 (Selection: Single- and Double-Selection if Tests) You will need to create complete, working C++ solutions for the following problems. Be sure to apply all the standards and best practices covered to date. Use all naming and style conventions and make sure you choose the most appropriate data types for your variables. The step-by-step instructions provided previously are not included, but if you need a refresher, take a look at the previous labs and their solutions, posted in Blackboard. For all problems, read the verbiage carefully and make sure that you clearly understand the algorithm to apply based on the inputs and outputs you dissect out. Also take time up front to analyze the problem thoroughly to decide which of the three forms of if tests to use (single-selection or double-selection). There is ONE form that is most appropriate for each of these problems. Write a program that obtains an integer value from the end user named iValue. Then, using an “if” test, determine whether the value is not equal to zero. If so, displayNot Equal to 0 Input capture dialog sample: Enter an integer value: 14 Write a program that obtains an integer value from a customer that represents the number of photocopies to be printed. Then, calculate and display the total job cost. Your “if” test will determine whether or not there are more than 50 copies involved. Base your calculations on these rates: the cost for up to and including 50 copies is $0.07 per copy. Copies in excess of 50 copies cost $0.04 per copy, plus the cost of the first 50 at the $0.07 rate. Example: 56 copies would cost.07 x 50 +.04 x 6 = $3.50 + $0.24 = $3.74. Input capture dialog: Enter the number of photocopies to print: 56 Sample output. Apply formatting functions as needed to ensure two digits to the right of the decimal point: Total cost: $3.74 Write a program that obtains the number of hours a non-exempt employee worked during a one-week pay period, along with their regular hourly pay rate. Calculate and display the other values in the output shown below based on these two inputs. Your “if” test should determine whether or not overtime applies (more than 40 hours) or not; if it does, the rate is 1.5 times their regular hourly rate. Include your calculations in the appropriate part of the “if” block. The input capture dialog should proceed like this (numbers are samples only): Enter regular hourly pay rate: 15.5 Enter total hours worked: 47.5 Construct your calculations and output to generate the listing in the examples shown below. Toyota engineers would like to know the standard deviation in gas mileage of the 2012 Toyota Sienna. They calculated the gas mileage of 24 randomly selected 2012 Siennas 24 28 27 24 28 20 23 26 26 25 26 19 23 25 20 28 25 21 24 25 24 25 24 20 (a) Determine the sample standard deviation. (b) Determine a 97% confidence interval for the standard deviation of all 2012 Toyota Siennas. (c) State your final confidence interval result in a sentence that interprets the result within the context of the situation. Listed on the right are the measured radiation emissions (in W/kg) corresponding to a sample of different types of cell phones. Use a 0.1 significance level to test the claim that cell phones have a mean radiation level that is less than 1.00 W/kg. Different cell phones radiation emissions 0.38 0.55 1.54 1.55 0.92 0.96 1.00 0.86 (a) Give the null and alternative hypotheses for this situation in mathematical notation. (b) Based upon a 10% level of significance, determine the critical value(s) associated with this hypothesis test. (c) Determine the sample’s test statistic. (d) Do you reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis? (e) State a final conclusion regarding the results of the hypothesis test. Make sure your statement is specific to context of this problem and involves supporting or rejecting the claim (or not supporting / not rejecting it). In a poll, 790 adults were asked to identify their favorite seat when they fly on a plane, and 431 of them chose a window seat. Use a 0.01 significance level to test the claim that the proportion of adults who prefer window seats is greater than 50%. (a) List the null and alternative hypotheses for this test. (b) Determine the value of the sample’s test statistic. (c) Determine the P-value. (d) Do you reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis? (e) Write a final interpretive sentence (like in part (e) of problem #5). Self-reported heights and measured heights of twelve males aged 13 – 18 are shown in the table to the right. At the 5% significance level, is there sufficient evidence to support the claim that there is no difference between the average reported heights and the measured heights of males aged 13 -18? All measurements are in inches. Note: Hypothesis testing method work must be shown for credit on this problem. Reported Height Measured Height 67 67.9 72 70.5 62 63.1 69 68.3 72 71.9 63 63.2 67 64.5 65 62.4 56 55.6 63 64.2 75 69.1 70 68.1 8. At the right, give an example of a paired data set (with at least 5 pairs) that demonstrates a strong (but not perfect) positive linear correlation. X y Use the following situation to answer questions 10 to 16: x = Weight y = Price The table lists weights (in carats) and prices (in dollars) of six diamonds (all of which have the same cut, color, and clarity). Is there a linear correlation between weight and price? 0.3 510 0.4 1151 0.5 1343 0.5 1410 1.0 5669 0.7 2277 10. Produce a scatterplot of this paired data at the right. Determine the sample’s correlation coefficient r and the coefficient of determination r2. Then explain statistically whether or not the correlation in these two variables is significant. “All mathematical models are wrong, but some are useful.” This quote cautions against overgeneralizing results. For what numeric interval of weights is our trend line equation useful? Would our trend line equation be useful for diamonds with a different cut, color, or clarity than those in the sample? The project will consist of an 1) outline and 2) a 10-page project paper. The 10 pages include only the text, with everything else extra. You are expected to run a spell checker against the paper. More than 12 pages is not expected. As a matter of fact, it will not help you to include more. Supporting diagrams or pictures are welcome, but they do not need to be fancy. The project will be a subset of a network design that still requires you to think about media, hardware, and protocols for either home use or to support a small office. You will write the outline and paper from the point of view of a network designer, and you will try to solve one of these two problems. Problem 1 I am sitting in front of my Intel PC, which is running a Windows XP (or later) operating system, and I am using my Internet Explorer Web browser to access an ISP of your choice. I am doing this at 56 kbs modem speeds, but I want to join the broadband revolution. You will hook my PC up to some broadband access method. You will describe the overall design; describe specific vendor hardware that makes up the design; describe the transmission media; and describe the protocols within the design (note that this includes TCP/IP and HTTP). The three approved solutions for this problem are cable TV, DSL, or wireless. For DSL, you should describe the solution from my PC to the DSLAM or the first ATM switch. For cable or wireless, you should describe access from my PC to where they hook up to the ISP. Problem 2 I want to set up an Ethernet LAN for my small office of 10 people. The parameters are similar to those of Problem 1, except you will be connecting to a LAN. General: For either problem, your design should include the link from my PC or office workstation to the Internet Service Point (ISP) access point within the vendor’s network. You will have to research one of these solutions and then write your paper. For the DSL solution, you should go to one of the DSLAM vendors, such as Lucent; select a DSLAM; and then describe it. For the cable, wireless, or LAN solutions, you will have to describe how the network components work in general. You will need to include descriptions on the home or office components, as well as an overview of their networks. Project Grading The project will be graded on the following elements: Outline – Create first then use it to develop your project paper. Paper introduction (10%) overall design or high-level description (20%) hardware (10%) transmission media (10%) protocol description (10%) lessons learned (10%) grammar/syntax and length (20%) references (10%) Submitted papers that show evidence of plagiarism will be given a score of zero. There should be no spelling or grammatical mistakes; the construction should be logical and easy to read. A reference list should be provided at the end of the paper. A minimum of two outside references should be used. Financial Forecasting. Small Motors Inc, which is currently operating at full capacity, has sales of $29,000, current assets of $1,600, current liabilities of $1,200, net fixed assets of $27,500, and a 5 percent profit margin. The firm has no long-term debt and does not plan on acquiring any. The firm does not pay any dividends. Sales are expected to increase by 6.5 percent next year. If all assets, short-term liabilities, and costs vary directly with sales, answer the following questions? Hint: (Additional Financing Required = Projected assets –projected liabilities-current equity-projected increase in retained earnings) a. What is the amount of projected total assets? What is the amount of projected total liabilities? What is the current equity? What is the projected increase in retained earnings? How much additional equity financing is projected to be required for next year? The cost-plus pricing approach establishes a cost base and adds a markup to this base to determine a target selling price. Sales volume plays a large role in determining per unit costs in the cost-plus pricing approach. In time-and-material pricing, the material charge is based on the cost of direct materials used and a material loading charge for related overhead costs. A negotiated transfer price should be used when an outside market for the goods does not exist. The absorption-cost approach is consistent with generally accepted accounting principles because it defines the cost base as the manufacturing cost. In most cases, prices are set by the 45. All of the following are correct statements about the target price except it 46. Target cost is comprised of 47. Is using the target cost approach on a new product. Information gathered so far reveals: 48. In cost-plus pricing, the markup consists of cost-plus pricing and applies a markup percentage of 60%, what is the sales price per suit? Bellingham Suit Co. Has received a shipment of suits that cost $200 each. If the company uses 50. Why does the unit selling price increase when expected volume is lower than budgeted volume? In time-and-material pricing, a material loading charge covers all of the following except 52. The labor charge per hour in time-and-material pricing includes all of the following except 53. Dudly Drafting Services uses a 45% material loading charge and a labor rate of $20 per hour. How much will be charged on a job that requires 3.5 hours of work and $40 of materials? All of the following are approaches for determining a transfer price except the 55. The transfer price approach that is often considered the best approach because it generally provides the proper economic incentives is the 56. The transfer price approach that will result in the largest contribution margin to the buying division is the 57. Transfers between divisions located in countries with different tax rates 58. A benefit of budgeting is that it provides definite objectives for evaluating performance. A budget can be a means of communicating a company’s objectives to external parties. The budget itself and the administration of the budget are the responsibility of the accounting department. The flow of input data for budgeting should be from the highest levels of responsibility to the lowest. Budgets can have a positive or negative effect on human behavior depending on the manner in which the budget is developed and administered. The budget is developed within the framework of a sales forecast. The master budget reflects management’s long-term plans encompassing five years or more. If a monthly cash budget is prepared properly, there will never be a cash deficiency at the end of any month. If budgets are to be effective, there must be 67. An unrealistic budget is more likely to result when it 68. A master budget consists of 69. The starting point in preparing a master budget is the preparation of the 70. Doe Manufacturing plans to sell 6,000 purple lawn chairs during May, 5,700 in June, and 6,000 during July. The company keeps 15% of the next month’s sales as ending inventory. How many units should Doe produce during June? Lorie Nursery plans to sell 320 potted plants during April and 240 units in May. Lorie Nursery keeps 15% of the next month’s sales as ending inventory. How many units should Lorie Nursery 72. Pell Manufacturing is preparing its direct labor budget for May. Projections for the month are that 33,400 units are to be produced and that direct labor time is three hours per unit. If the labor cost per 73. The cash budget reflects 74. Which one of the following items would never appear on a cash budget? The primary benefits of budgeting include all of the following except it 76. A static budget is one that is geared to one level of activity. A static budget is changed only when actual activity is different from the level of activity expected. A flexible budget is a series of static budgets at different levels of activities. Flexible budgeting relies on the assumption that unit variable costs will remain constant within the relevant range of activity. Management by exception means that management will investigate areas where actual results differ from planned results if the items are material and controllable. A distinction should be made between controllable and noncontrollable costs when reporting information under responsibility accounting. Select a current product with which you are familiar, and pitch a new Integrated Marketing Communication plan (IMC) to your client. Create a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation of 8-10 slides that includes the following components: • Identify any considerations you will need to employ to build and maintain the brand and customer loyalty. • Create a print ad and a video broadcast for the product featuring your new strategy (Youtube TM, video, or power point storyboard is acceptable). In this project you will perform the physical design and implementation using SQL Data Definition Language (DDL) and proceed with populating the Mom and Pop Johnson Video Store database via Data Manipulation Language (DML) SQL commands. The ERD and detailed documentation from Project 1 will be supplied for your entry point for those who need it. Project 2 Details: 1. Create Oracle database tables using SQL Data Definition Language (DDL) for each table listed in Project 1. Make sure that entity and referential integrity are enforced by declaring a primary key for each table (these may be composite keys) and declaring all appropriate foreign keys. Your CREATE TABLE statements must show integrity constraints, as appropriate, for NOT NULL, UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY, REFERENCES, and CHECK constraints. Be sure to save your script used to create these tables as yournameproject2step1.sql. You should test your script to make sure it runs without error. Provide two examples of SQL DML (i.e., “INSERT”) commands that fail different table integrity constraints you set up in one of your table. Explain why the statements fail. Be sure to save your script used to as yournameproject2step2.sql. You can include comments in the SQL script describing why the insert statements failed. Populate each of your tables with at least five valid rows of data each and show the SQL you used. Populate other tables in your database, as necessary, to satisfy referential integrity. Be sure to save your script used to create these records as yournameproject2step3.sql. You should test your script to make sure it runs without error. Write SQL to perform the following queries and updates. Be sure to save your script used to create these records as yournameproject2step4.sql. You should test your script to make sure it runs without error: a. Retrieve all of your customers’ names, account numbers, and addresses (street and zip code only), sorted by account number. Retrieve all of the videos rented in the last 30 days and sort in chronological rental date order. Produce a list of your distributors and all their information sorted in order by company name. Update customer names to change their maiden names to married names. You can choose which records to update. Delete customers from the database. You can choose which records to delete. Submissions: 1. You should submit your four SQL scripts satisfying each of the steps above. Feel free to compress the files using WinZip and save as YournameProject2.zip. Submit in your WebTycho portfolio in the Project 2 area before the due date. Please contact the instructor before the due date if you have any questions or concerns. You are an administrator for the Contoso Corporation. The Contoso Corporation has two (2) large sites. The corporate office is in New York and the manufacturing site is in Cleveland, Ohio. In addition, the Contoso Corporation has five (5) smaller sites. At the Corporate site, you currently have eight (8) physical Hyper-V hosts that host approximately one hundred twenty (120) virtual machines. The virtual machines are running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012. The servers are needed to host email, various databases, file services, print services, and a point-of sales-application. The virtual machines are stored on a centrally located storage area network (SAN) that has multiple power supplies, and use redundant array of independent disks (RAID). Over the last three (3) years, you have had two (2) power failures that caused the servers to go down at the corporate office. Recently, during one (1) of these incidents, files on one (1) of the servers were corrupted. It was later discovered that the backup could only partially restore the data files, but could not restore the server itself. The servers must remain available and reliable. As the administrator, you must ensure that you can recover from a failure or problem quickly with minimum loss. Write a three to five (3-5) page paper in which you: Develop a continuity plan / disaster recovery plan for Contoso Corporation in which you address the following: Suggest an approach that provides redundancy (failover) for all mission critical functions in the event of a disaster including power failure. Consider the following in your approach: Essential Infrastructure; Email; Database; File Services; Print Services; Point-of-Sale Applications; Power Redundancy Solutions. Identify the changes that should be made to the backup procedures in order to address the problem with the server backups. Outline the necessary actions that Server Administrators must verify for proper operation of servers in the event of a failover. Provide a plan for returning all services back to the primary systems once the crisis has passed. Examine the pros and cons of moving part of the data center to the Cleveland office and housing it there on a permanent basis. Provide your recommendation for the stated action. Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements: Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions. Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length. The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are: Demonstrate the ability to describe, manage, and configure load balancing and failover clustering. Demonstrate the ability to configure and manage backups to include role-specific and online or cloud environments. Demonstrate the ability to recover servers to include files and volumes. Use technology and information resources to research issues in advanced network infrastructure environments. Write clearly and concisely about advanced network infrastructure topics using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions. Can you figure out the rule? Did you see the exponents pattern? Why do you make people look stupid? How do you investigate hypotheses? Do you seek to confirm your theory - looking for white swans? Or do you try to find black swans? I was startled at how hard it was for people to investigate number sets that didn't follow their hypotheses, even when their method wasn't getting them anywhere. In the video I say 'when people came to Australia.' By which I meant, 'when Europeans who believed all swans were white came to Australia.' I did not mean any offence to Indigenous Australians who were already in Australia at that time. Please accept my apologies for the poor phrasing if you were offended by it. This video was inspired by The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb and filmed by my mum. Partly my motivation came from responses to my Facebook videos - social media marketers saying 'Facebook ads have worked for me so there can't be fake likes.' Just because you have only seen white swans, doesn't mean there are no black ones. And in fact marketers are only looking for white swans. They think it was invalid of me to make the fake Virtual Cat page: 'well of course if it's a low quality page you're going to get low quality likes.' But my point is this is black swan bait, something they would never make because their theory is confident in the exclusive existence of white swans. In this video I look at one of the biggest errors found in the Quran - a verse stating that the Sun sets here on Earth in a muddy spring. I look at common apologist arguments & show how they fail in their efforts to spin the blatant error. Please share this video far & wide. It will hopefully help intellectually honest Muslims to look further & question beliefs they were indoctrinated in since birth. Many thanks go to the incredible Sye Ten Atheist for helping animate some of the video to help me out. Please go over & subscribe to his channel if you haven't already. You can follow me on my social media links: Twitter - Facebook - Google Plus - If you wish to support me and help me dedicate more time to this channel, my patreon link is: References / sources: Egyptian mythology on sun travelling on boat, setting on Earth, travelling through underworld: Quranic verse (18:86) - Muhammad Pickthall translation: Islamic apologist websites trying to explain problem away: This site is perhaps the most absurd of the lot. They seem to make things up as they go along, changing the meaning of Arabic words entirely, going way off topic at times, shouting 'miracle' every 10 seconds, they also claim people in East Asia have their particular eye structure because of the Sun over there being different somehow. It's quite a laughable page if you have the time to read it. This apologist argument doesn't bother trying to argue much, they just claim it's a mistranslation! A mistranslation that somehow all Arabs for 450 years after Mohamed also misunderstood in native Arabic! This page outright lies to its readers in the hope they won't double check its claims. The dishonesty here is pretty astonishing and shameful. The page claims that early tafsirs backed the current position that it was only setting this way from DhulQarnayn's viewpoint, they then go on to ignore ALL tafsirs written in the first 450 years. They make a mention of a tafsir that was written between the 5th and 6th centuries of the Islamic calendar. They don't give you the date of the tafsir, its author died in 516 AH according to this page But they say this tafsir quotes somebody who lived hundreds of years before him, saying he also thought it wasn't literal and use the date of the time this alleged person lived instead of the date of the tafsir as they do for the others. This problem has been shared millions of times on Twitter/Facebook with the claim '99% fail' to solve it and that only a genius could find the correct answer. If 9 = 72, 8 = 56, 7 = 42, 6 = 30, 5 = 20, then 3 =? In this video I explain what many people believe to be the correct answer. I also show how this answer is logical for other patterns seen in the puzzle. My blog post on this video (with links to sources) If you like my videos, you can support me at Patreon: Connect on social media. I update each site when I have a new video or blog post, so you can follow me on whichever method is most convenient for you. My Blog: Twitter: Facebook: Google+: Pinterest: Tumblr: Instagram: Patreon: Newsletter (sent only for big news, like a new book release): If you buy from the links below I may receive a commission for sales. This has no effect on the price for you. My Books 'The Joy of Game Theory' shows how you can use math to out-think your competition. (rated 3.8/5 stars on 31 reviews) 'The Irrationality Illusion: How To Make Smart Decisions And Overcome Bias' is a handbook that explains the many ways we are biased about decision-making and offers techniques to make smart decisions. (rated 5/5 stars on 2 reviews) 'Math Puzzles Volume 1' features classic brain teasers and riddles with complete solutions for problems in counting, geometry, probability, and game theory. Volume 1 is rated 4.4/5 stars on 13 reviews. 'Math Puzzles Volume 2' is a sequel book with more great problems. (rated 5/5 stars on 3 reviews) 'Math Puzzles Volume 3' is the third in the series. (rated 3.8/5 stars on 4 reviews) '40 Paradoxes in Logic, Probability, and Game Theory' contains thought-provoking and counter-intuitive results. (rated 4.3/5 stars on 12 reviews) 'The Best Mental Math Tricks' teaches how you can look like a math genius by solving problems in your head (rated 4.7/5 stars on 4 reviews) 'Multiply Numbers By Drawing Lines' This book is a reference guide for my video that has over 1 million views on a geometric method to multiply numbers. (rated 5/5 stars on 3 reviews) http://amzn.to/XRm7M4. Some of you have asked to purchase the Amazon violin! Click here if you can't afford $285k: Buy 'Hallelujah' on iTunes! Buy 'Thunderstruck' on iTunes! Buy 'Hallelujah' Sheet Music! MY GEAR HERE (Loop Pedal, Shoulder Rest, Pickup, Rosin etc.) Why are some violins so expensive??? I went into Peter Prier and Sons in Salt Lake City, where I put to the test a violin I bought off of Amazon for $62, and an antique Italian violin for $285,000. Scroll down for answers on what makes these instruments worth so much. The first song I play is Hallelujah, and the second is AC/DC 'Thunderstruck'. BOOKING: [email protected] SUBSCRIBE: FACEBOOK: INSTAGRAM: TWITTER: WEBSITE: Thank you to Daniel Prier! Supply and Demand: One reason the value of an antique Italian violin is so dear is because there are so few of them left, and they are no longer being made. Simple economics dictates that when there is a demand but little supply, value increases. The Quality: Musicians have long believed that the antique Italian violins are superior to other violins in quality and sound. It’s believed that cooler temperatures from the 1200s to the mid 1800s contributed to a denser tree bark, making the wood that was used in constructing these instruments of a higher quality and offering a better acoustic. They’re Fashionable: Owning an old Italian is a status symbol in the world of music, thus increasing its legend, value and price. The Condition and History of the Instrument: Any of these violins are between 100-300 years old, making it an historical icon as well as an instrument. If the instrument is also in excellent condition, the value increases. Vincenzo Panormo (1794) - $130,000 More on Panormo: My favorite: Giuseppe Scarampella - $185,000 More on Scarampella: Carlo Antonio Testore (1700) - $285,000 For more info on Carlo Antonio Testore: ROB LANDES is an award-winning violinist who started playing the violin at 3 years in Orem, Utah. Born to a large musical family, Rob gave his first solo recital at 10 years old, performed in the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on the Disney Channel with the Disney Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra, and founded a piano trio that performed actively throughout his teenage years. Rob has won first prize at numerous music competitions and has soloed with the Utah Symphony, Utah Valley Symphony, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, BYU Philharmonic, and BYU Chamber Orchestra. As a first violinist of the BYU Chamber Orchestra, Rob performed in more than twenty cities throughout central and southern Europe, and as concertmaster of the orchestra, gave a concert to a sold-out audience in New York’s Carnegie Hall. Rob was awarded full scholarships to attend Brigham Young University and Rice University where he earned a Bachelor’s in Music and Master’s in Music, respectively. While studying at Rice, Rob began covering rock and pop music, and upon returning to Salt Lake City after graduation, began playing with a looper pedal which he uses to create intricate and stunning arrangements of today and yesterday’s most popular music Rob recently won the award for 'Best Instrumental' at the Utah Music Awards for his rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'. For video production or music inquiries from record label ARK Studios Media Group please email [email protected]. My reaction to THE HAWKS TRYING TO SNAP THE CELTICS 9 GAME WINNING STREAK!!! THANKS FOR A MILLION SUBSCRIBERS! Drop a like if you enjoyed fam;) Click Here To Subscribe! Checkout My Other Channel! ● FOLLOW YA BOY ON TWITTER ● INSTAGRAM Comment more vid ideas below! Link to original video: *Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for 'fair use' for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS*. Read this too: More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓ EXTRA ARTICLE BY TONY: The sum of all natural numbers (from 1 to infinity) produces an 'astounding' result. ANOTHER PROOF & EXTRA FOOTAGE: MORE: NY Times article on this: Tony Padilla and Ed Copeland are physicists at the University of Nottingham. They talk physics at our sixty symbols channel: Grandi's Series: 1-1+1-1. Read more about divergent series: We also here that Chapter XIII of Konrad Knopp's book, 'Theory and Application of Infinite Sequences and Series', is very good if you can get your hands on it. Support us on Patreon: NUMBERPHILE Website: Numberphile on Facebook: Numberphile tweets: Subscribe: Numberphile is supported by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI): Videos by Brady Haran Brady's videos subreddit: Brady's latest videos across all channels: Sign up for (occasional) emails: Numberphile T-Shirts: Other merchandise: https://store.dftba.com/collections/numberphile. When you are interested in buying this puzzle please support me by using the affiliate link below. If you click the link and buy a puzzle, I will receive a commission from the seller. The commission will be not charged to you! In that way, you can support me buying new puzzles that I will present here on my channel. Puzzlemaster: SiamMandalay: Puzzlemax (different version): US2: EU: 1:49 Solution Subscribe for further puzzle reviews, recommendations and solutions. Follow Michael Stevens: Sources and MORE stories below! Link for all dot net and sql server video tutorial playlists Link for slides, code samples and text version of the video This is a very common SQL Server Interview Question. There are several ways of finding the nth highest salary. By the end of this video, we will be able to answer all the following questions as well. ►Help Veedi Reach 10,000 Subscribers►Join Veedi Gamers ►♛ For more on the top & best games, go to: Amazon App Download (free): ►Play Store link: App Store (iTunes) link: 'Brain It On!' Top 10 YouTube Shows You Need to Watch Subscribe: // TIMESTAMPS BELOW ----------------------- CHECK OUT WATCHMOJO'S NEW BOOK, The 10-Year Overnight Success: An Entrepreneur's Manifesto, LINKS BELOW! These are the YouTube shows you need to watch! Whether you're into react videos from the Fine Brothers, food experiments with the Good Mythical Morning crew, or more serious news shows like The Philip DeFranco Show we have you covered! Watch as WatchMojo counts down the very best YouTube shows. The 10-Year Overnight Success: An Entrepreneur's Manifesto: How WatchMojo Built The Most Successful Media Brand On YouTube PAPERBACK: KINDLE: If you've never used the Kindle App before, now's your chance to CHECK it out for FREE! CLICK: 00:45 #10. How It Should Have Ended 01:39 #9. The Philip DeFranco Show Philip DeFranco 02:56 #8. Good Mythical Morning Rhett and Link 04:04 #7. Blue Rooster Teeth 05:10 #6. DeathBattle ScrewAttack 06:19 #5. Game Theory The Game Theorists 07:41 #4. Everything Wrong With CinemaSins 08:53 #3, #2 & #1???? WatchMojo's Social Media Pages Get WatchMojo merchandise at WatchMojo’s ten thousand videos on Top 10 lists, Origins, Biographies, Tips, How To’s, Reviews, Commentary and more on Pop Culture, Celebrity, Movies, Music, TV, Film, Video Games, Politics, News, Comics, Superheroes. Your trusted authority on ranking Pop Culture. This video has been updated! Visit: Music used with permission from Adrian Holovaty (Support us on Patreon! Www.patreon.com/amoebasisters We take pride in our AWESOME community, and we welcome feedback and discussion. However, please remember that this is an education channel. Here is YouTube's community guidelines and YouTube's policy center: We also reserve the right to remove comments with vulgar language. Our FREE resources: GIFs: Handouts: Comics: Connect with us! Website: Twitter: Facebook: Tumblr: Pinterest: Instagram: Visit our Redbubble store at We have YouTube's community contributed subtitles feature on to allow translations for different languages. YouTube automatically credits the different language contributors below (unless the contributor had opted out of being credited). We are thankful for those that contribute different languages. If you have a concern about community contributed contributions, please contact us. Watch my FIELD DAY video, “Home Sweet Whittier”: And subscribe to FIELD DAY!! Jake and Kevin will be doing field days soon!! A detailed look at my 9.2 lb 2017 Ultralight Backpacking Gear List (warm weather & 3-season) Gear lists at For an easier to read list of my backpacking gear, with itemized weights and descriptions, you can view my full blog post as well as download PDF and CSV format copies of this list on my website here: Below is a simplified list of the backpacking items shown in the video (without weights or descriptions) along with links for details and current pricing. Backpack Backpack – ULA Ohm 2.0 Pack Cover – Dutchware Argon Shelter Hammock Body – Dutchware Half-Wit Hammock Suspension – Dutchware Dyneema Beetle Buckle Tarp – Hammock Gear Cuben Hex Tarp Tent spike – Titanium Ground Cloth – Tyvek, long 3' 6' - I forgot to show this in the video. I like to place this under my hammock for organizing gear, keeping my feet dry when changing / getting out of the hammock and for wrapping around my pack to keep it dry during windy rain storms. A 3'x3' square can get the job done as well for half the weight. Breakout Session Link: “What if you knew what the markets were going to do before they did it? What if you knew the ultimate destiny of stocks, real estate, and gold and silver?” That’s how Mike Maloney began his presentation at the Gold & Silver Summit in San Francisco last week. His 56-minute talk is now available by video (below) with just-released bonus features. Mike tells the audience upfront that not only do we know what’s coming, but we can profit from it. “We were left with a roadmap that we can turn into a treasure map.” It’s an exciting proclamation, though not everything coming will be pleasant. So what is this roadmap? And how do we turn it into a treasure map? To get those answers, we have to go back to 2002, to a speech made on a frosty night in Washington D.C “I Told You What We Were Going To Do—and We Did It” You’ll recall that Ben Bernanke was the head of the US Federal Reserve in 2002. He made a speech at the National Economist Club, titled “Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Here.” The presentation was posted on the Fed’s website. It is this speech that became Mike’s roadmap—and that’s because virtually everything then-chairman Bernanke said the Fed would do, they did. It’s actually quite remarkable when you compare his statements with the subsequent actions the Fed carried out. Their Roadmap is Our Treasure Map Because global central bankers continue to print money, drive interest rates lower, run up debt levels, and spend more money than they bring in, we are headed for an even greater crisis than what we experienced in 2008. And because we know the roadmap central bankers are using, we know how to invest. As Mike says, “Gold and silver are the only financial assets that come with a central bank guarantee.” The guarantee isn’t something printed on a coin or bar; the guarantee is that central banks will never stop creating currency. The next crisis will force central bankers to repeat all of the steps above. They’ll pull out the roadmap Ben wrote in 2002 and implement the same strategies.And those strategies from central banks will drive gold and silver to gain more in purchasing power than any other asset. This is a brief moment in history where we know exactly how to position our portfolios. Get more detail from Mike in his bonus features. Mike covers a number of critical topics, including Russia, Bitcoin, WWE (his term for nations attacking each other via electronic means), the long-term outlook for gold, and others. Watch the bonus features from his breakout session now: If you enjoyed watching this video, be sure to check out the Hidden Secrets of Money website at It’s a world-leading educational series by Mike Maloney, the bestselling author of the Guide to Investing in Gold & Silver. As Mike explains in the series and his book, we live in an economic system that is made complicated by design. Basically, it’s set up so most people don’t even try to understand it. In Mike’s videos, he breaks down these concepts using easy-to-follow analogies, real pages from history, and animations that tie it all together. And be sure to follow Mike on social media to stay up to date on his latest news and posts: Facebook: Twitter: Mike Maloney is also the founder of GoldSilver.com (which was one of the first websites ever to sell bullion online. It is well known for outstanding customer service and its competitive prices. If you’re a fan of Mike’s YouTube channel and need help buying gold and silver, his team is standing by to answer all your questions and make it easy. You can find out more at http://tinyurl.com/jlypdzc. When you first think of the word “Mining” what comes to mind? Let’s go with the most prized one, Gold! Bitcoin mining is the digital form of mining gold. Back in the age of discovering gold, many miners relied on pure luck to make their fortune. When gold was first discovered, there was an influx of miners all pushing and shoving away to claim their nuggets. Then as time went by and most of the gold was discovered, it was so much harder for miners to find more, they had to dig deeper, needing stronger equipment as time went on. Fast forward to 2017, and we have Bitcoin Mining! What most people don’t realise, is that Bitcoin miners play a pivotal role in fueling the whole Bitcoin currency, keeping it secure and operating: Fast forward to 2017, and we have Bitcoin Mining! What most people don’t realise, is that Bitcoin miners play a pivotal role in fueling the whole Bitcoin currency, keeping it secure and operating: “The job of keeping the Bitcoin system running and preventing cheating is left to a volunteer workforce known as Bitcoin miners. They crunch the numbers needed to verify every transaction. Added to this is an ever-growing math task known as “proof of work,” which keeps the miners honest. The calculations are so intense that miners use specialized computers that run hot enough to keep homes or even office buildings warm through the winter. The incentive for all this effort is built into Bitcoin itself. The act of verifying a 10-minute block of transactions generates 25 new Bitcoins for the miner. This is how Bitcoins are minted.” – John Bohannon: Science contributing correspondent When Bitcoin was first invented it was easy for users to merely operate from their home computers to mine a few Bitcoins daily. Now that Bitcoin trading has grown in popularity over the years, competition is fierce. More advanced companies have started to get involved, which means more expensive qualified ASIC miners and advanced hardware are required to make your bitcoin trading successful. There is no denying the risk involved to earn a profit as a miner has increased considerably since its invention. Let’s break it down in easy to understand steps Step 1: Calculate if Bitcoin will be profitable for you This step is your deciding factor and one that will make or break your profitability. Bitcoin mining is both a risky and competitive sport. It also requires a large start-up investment in the form of expensive mining hardware. All miners need this hardware to successfully mine their own bitcoins. On top of this is the monthly electricity cost to run your hardware for the required 24hrs/7 days a week. Realistically you only start making a real profit AFTER you have broken even, paying off your start- up costs and making more bitcoins then you pay for electricity or any machine maintenance each month. If you don’t have the financial patience, then Bitcoin mining is not the route you should be taking. • Pros: Once you are set up with your tools, you can focus on the fun aspect of mining! • Cons: It’s impossible to accurately calculate your profit due to the fickle nature of the bitcoin price, electricity costs and how well you will do mining monthly. Here are 2 important tips to take note of: The first 6 months for most miners run smoothly and their profits look fantastic. It’s after the 6-month mark when things get more complicated and a decline in your profit is likely to rear its ugly head. Most computer hardware comes with a short warranty. It’s important to factor in the additional expenses for maintenance and spare parts. Which brings us to this spanner in the works. Beware: The ‘Bitcoin Difficulty’ can affect your profit This not so pretty measure ‘Bitcoin Difficulty’ has a sneaky way of undermining your profits. To give you an idea of what we mean, imagine this scenario: You are busy mining and find that Bitcoin Blocks (Definition: Files where data related to the Bitcoin network is recorded forever within the ledger, also known as the Block chain) are being mined faster than every 10 minutes. Suddenly the hash rate (Definition: The speed at which a calculation is processing bitcoin code to find a Block) increases and multiple blocks land up being mined, but only up to a certain point, thanks to the ‘Bitcoin Difficulty’ factor that comes in and adjusts things. Its role is to keep the pace of a bitcoin being generated at no less than 10 minutes. So, in essence, the ‘Bitcoin Difficulty’ factor is constantly being adjusted to make it harder to mine bitcoins, which in turn decreases your profitability rate. Step 2: Get a Bitcoin wallet Ok so you have done your calculations. You worked out you can afford the hardware start-up costs and monthly expenses. Now you want to get mining already. Before you do, you need to have a safe place to store the bitcoins you collect, this place is called a Bitcoin wallet. A Bitcoin wallet is a “digital wallet” (the same as if you had a bank account) where you can receive, keep and send the bitcoins you mine. There are 2 types of wallets: You can choose to download a wallet for your computer or one for your phone. This option allows you to control your bitcoins completely. Click here for wallets available A third-party hosted web wallet. For this option, you need to trust over your bitcoins to someone else. Once you have a wallet, you can set up unique addresses (like an email account) and private keys (password) for transactions. This password is very important for trading because it shows mathematical proof of who the owner of the transaction is. Step 3: Find a Bitcoin mining pool A mining pool is cool. Cool because it allows you to join a group of like-minded miners, put all your bitcoins into one pool, increasing the hashing power, verifying blocks faster together, to ultimately make more bitcoins at a given time. The profits are then shared. It’s a great idea for beginners to join a mining pool because then they get to work with professional, established miners while at the same time learn the skills of the trade. Learn more on which mining pools to join. Step 4: Get the hardware: A mining machine for your computer The mining hardware is your foundation to mine bitcoins successfully. Where can I buy these machines, how much do they cost and how do I know they are quality machines? These are all great questions and to help you we have compiled a list of the top 3 hardware machines out there available to South Africans either locally or ordered online from abroad. Make sure to do your homework, shop around, search online, you might pick up a great second hand deal along the way. Just make sure you buy from a reputable seller. Step 5: Ready, set, mine! What is cloud mining? Bitcoin mining is the process through new bitcoins get created while the transactions on the blockchain are being verified by the miners. The mining machines are solving complex mathematical problems in order to decide the validity of a transaction which requires either GPU, CPU or ASIC hardware to run continuously. If somebody wants to join the cryptocurrency mining business but does not necessarily want to deal with the noise and heat the mining hardware can cause. Ultimate Guide to Bitcoin Cloud Mining. From a company providing bitcoin cloud mining. Bitcoin News Magazine has. Cloud mining contracts with very. Dec 15, 2017 - Genesis Mining is a company aiming to help mine bitcoin as the process gets more expensive and energy-intensive. 'Futures contracts are a big milestone for the cryptocurrency market because professionally managed money will begin greater sophistication to the marketplace,' said Streng. So where.Missing. May 17, 2017 - Bitcoin.com Pool Cloud Mining offers the highest profit contracts in the cloud mining industry, due to 110% block reward and competitive contract prices. Additionally, our cloud mining contracts provide 100% guaranteed uptime and stable hashrate. Contracts are for sale now, ranging from 1 month to. The difference between bitcoin and ethereum mining contracts and. Genesis Mining is the biggest provider of Ethereum Cloud Mining. Besides Crypto-News. If they want to forget all the maintenance involved with the mining rigs, cloud mining is the best opportunity to still enjoy the benefits of participating in mining. During the cloud mining activity, clients can purchase hashing power from a provider in exchange for certain daily or monthly fees. After the contract is started, the earnings from the mining – that is running on the mining rigs of the cloud mining provider – benefits directly the client’s account. About Cloud Mining Companies There are many cloud mining providers on the market who offer wide range of services. Prospective clients however must be very careful when choosing the right provider as there are several scammer working on the market whose only goal is to build a ponzi scheme or directly steal bitcoins. When looking for possible cloud mining providers it is advisable to always check their ‘About’ section on the website. This page can tell a lot about the company, especially if there is no information on the site. If somebody is trying to hide themselves from the public on a market where trust is one of the main principle of the industry, it should be a warning sign that the company might not be providing legitimate services. Many providers just list general mission statements and nothing specific about the background of the firm, such as owners, founders or executive officers. It also worth doing a quick search whether the cloud mining names are coming up on and forums as unsatisfied customers are usually very loud in terms of complaining. The mining facility is the heart of a cloud mining company. This is where they can buy the client’s trust or loose it forever. Due to security reasons, the cloud mining providers never disclose the exact location of the farms, to protect the equipment from damages and theft. However if the company doesn’t even provide the city where the mining rigs are located, that should be again a red flag, that the hardware, which should provide the cloud hashing power, doesn’t even exist. As proof, providers often post pictures of the facility, these images worth careful examination. The pictures can tell a lot about the environment of the farm, like whether the heating is adjusted regularly and the electricity supply is sufficient. They can also provide information on the overall scale of the cloud mining business as the more machines they have, the more hashing power they can sell over the cloud. If the rigs are not organized and cables are hanging everywhere, it is not certain the provider can guarantee 100% uptime. As when a mining rig goes wrong, it can take a lot of time to fix it, if the rig is not even reachable. Causion: The term cloud mining company is often abused by bitcoin high yield investment programs, which are nothing more than online scam sites. Those website interfaces trick peole into thinking they’d be serious investment companies, making their money basically with cloud mining or crypto trading. But that’s mostly not true as they use to be ponzi schemes which only live from user deposits and only as long as new users make new deposits, so the older users can get parts of those new deposits as their “return on investment”. Those Bitcoin HYIP sites mostly only last for a couple of weeks till they are again offline. Here is an running at the moment. So stay away from them – those are no real cloud mining firms. Services Provided by Cloud Mining Companies Cloud mining providers are usually specified for bitcoin mining under SHA256 algorithm. However there are some company on the market who offers services for other altcoins under scrypt and X11 algorithms as well. Depending whether the provider has it’s own pool, they can restrict the free selection of mining pools to their own pool only. This can significantly reduce the earnings from the mining activity if their pool is not profitable enough. The pool fees are around 1-2% and the payouts can be share based (PPS) or pay par last N share based (PPLNS). It also worth checking the security level of the platform, since significant amount on money can be stored on the website, in terms of the mined coins. Using CloudFlare to protect the site from DDoS attacks is the minimum. It is advisable to use two factor authentication whenever it is possible and try to reduce the amount of mined coins in the wallet on the platform. Have them stored rather in cold bitcoin wallets. The registration process gives a first impression about the security measures of the site. If no captcha is asked for and the email confirmation includes the password given are strong signs that the service provider probably doesn’t care much about safety and security. Beside cloud mining at some platforms users can also sign up for special features • offers cloud SETI program to run the PC power to find aliens in the space. • and are running automining option which means, the miners are automatically adjusted to always mine the most profitable altcoin available in order to maximize earnings. • At clients can buy and sell hashpowers. • At there is a possibility to buy old mining rigs for bargains. • and pays interest on bitcoin deposits. Fees and Pricing Schedule The pricing of the cloud mining contracts consist of two elements. One is the regular charge for the contract to obtain the cloud mining service. This fee can be one time fee or paid regularly. The other element of the pricing is the maintenance fee that should cover the electricity and cooling costs of the mining rigs and deducted daily from the earnings. Hashnest and Bitsrapid on the other hand opted to remove maintenance fees and they have built it intp the contract prices. The pricing range of cloud mining is very wide. The cheapest bitcoin cloud mining contract on the market costs 0.99 USD per GH/s. The average price of the contracts are around 5-15 USD per GH/s. Some provider offers better unit prices if more hashing power is purchased, others just price bigger contracts just like small ones. It is important to understand that the higher price does not necessarily mean better service, so prospective clients should always examine thoroughly the services of the providers as a whole, not just their prices. Also you should take a look into other options to get your crypto currency – you can just or you can User Experience Understanding the bitcoin mining process can be a difficult job due to the process’s technical nature. However the providers can ease the decision making of their prospective clients by offering detailed guides on their services. Many providers does not disclose the price of the contracts before registration on their landing page. In case users does not want to sign up right away, it worth checking the FAQ section and the Terms and Conditions pages to see whether it has information on the prices and fees. A transparent, easy to use platform can build trust and direct many future clients to the cloud mining providers. Overall Conclusion Participating in cloud mining is a great way to earn some side income as well as a fun way to obtain cryptocurrencies. Prospective clients however must pay attention to where they sign up to cloud mining services as there are many scammers and ponzi scheme available online. For those wanting to invest in hyip or ponzi schemes: Think twice if its worth the risk, all hyips / ponzis are scams where only the early adopters win and all others lose. If you enjoy the thrill, try a instead and test-drive your trading skills. How to decide for a cloud mining company? We gathered some cloud miners based on the most important criterias. • Low fraud risk:,,, • Low fees:, • Multiple algortithms are available:,,, • Referral program:,,. Download, discussion, pool settings: Zcash, Bitcoin Gold, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bytecoin, Monero, FantomCoin, QuazarCoin, DigitalNote. Zcash Mining calculator. Here is a rudimentary mining calculator. It is based upon averages of the pools when you request it. New cloud mining contracts! Zcash GPU Miners Before the launch of Zcash, the Zcash Company launched a contest to produce the best open source GPU miner. Thanks to this contest, there are a few miners out there. We'll try to link the most used / best ones here. SilentArmy Linux only; license: MIT 2016, Marc Bevand SILENTARMY is a Zcash miner for Linux written in OpenCL with multi-GPU support. The Stratum protocol is implemented for connecting to mining pools. It runs best on AMD GPUs but has also been reported to work on other OpenCL devices such as Xeon Phi, Intel GPUs, and through OpenCL CPU drivers. (Nvidia GPUs are not currently supported due to an issue.) nheqminer Linux, Windows; licence: MIT 2016, NiceHash Nicehash's GPU Zcash mining software. NiceHash, established in April 2014, describe themselves as 'the most advanced crypto currency cloud mining, hash rental service and multipool'. Zcash CPU Miners Although most of the profit is going to be made mining with your GPU, you can also mine with your CPU. Most of the software mentionned above can be run also for CPU mining. You'll probably need to run the software two times. Zcash 1 Zcash = 0.040175 BTC 1 Zcash = 458.62 USD Hashrate: Sol/s. The world of cryptocurrencies is growing at an accelerated pace. The crypto market cap continues to grow with record breaking volumes. The basis for creating value in the crypto world is the mining process for major and veteran coins – with Bitcoin leading them. While the coins of the “old world” as we all know, were and still are issued by centralized bodies such as banks and governments, and are created as printed bills or banknotes, the process of creating money in the world of crypto is decentralized. The decentralization is done using the blockchain technology. Blockchain, is a type of a ledger that confirms transactions and lives in a distributed-fashion in the cloud. In other words, a group of computers around the world holds copies of the order books and for any given change in it, all the copies are updated. When a majority of the computers authorize a transaction, the money is securely transferred and added to the next block which will be written. In 2009, Bitcoin was one of the first applications of the blockchain. Since the invention of money, the problem of centralization has always existed. Although it was temporarily solved in the era of the gold rush, when every ordinary man could mine gold and generate money, since then, banks and credit companies took control over the money, shifted over to working with credit, and practically cut off the connection to gold itself and created a monopoly on printing money. Bitcoin returned the possibility of generating money for everyone. It is no coincidence that the process of generating cryptocurrencies is called “Mining”. What is the mining process? The blockchain allows the transfer of funds in a decentralized manner, while security and fraud-prevention are carried out by encryption, hence the name crypto, as cryptography is the discipline of encryption. Encrypting and verifying a transaction requires work. Computers which do this kind of work, which is basically solving a mathematical puzzle, get to write the next block in the chain, and are rewarded with coins for it – this is practically the mining operation. The more miners a network has, the stronger it is and the faster and more secure it is. Meet the Mining Pools As solving these mathematical puzzles had become difficult, mining pools are being used. A mining pool is a joint effort between miners, so that even a miner with a relatively small amount of processing power can enjoy the reward, without having to solve the whole mathematical puzzle by himself, as it requires a lot of computing power (Hash rate). In the early days of Bitcoin, it was possible to mine Bitcoin with a standard processor of a personal computer (CPU mining). Afterwards, as the network grew bigger, the difficulty of solving these puzzles grew too, and it was no longer possible to mine using a CPU. For this reason, people shifted to using powerful “gamers” graphics card processes (GPU mining), as their design solves those puzzles much faster than a CPU. The next step was to shift over to ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits which are basically dedicated machines built for the sole purpose of mining). Today, Bitcoin’s network is so heavy, that nobody can mine Bitcoin by themselves. As an individual miner’s power is relatively small, he will probably not be able to solve any puzzle before other more powerful miners do and new puzzles are issued, resulting in wasted work which practically gives zero income (in theory, an individual can solve a puzzle by themselves, but with Bitcoin the chances of success are smaller than winning the lottery). For this reason, miners started to work in groups, which are called pools. A pool of miners unites the calculation power of a workforce of small miners in order to obtain a significant mining power (aka hash rate), thus increasing the chance of solving a puzzle and getting the reward for it. Each miner in the pool, gets a “share” of the reward, according to the amount of power he contributed to the pool. What’s Worth Mining Nowadays? Today the blockchains of Bitcoin and Ethereum are so heavily loaded, that even participation in a mining pool has become unprofitable, as the amount of resources invested in mining (electricity bills) usually exceeds the return. For this reason, the mining guide we are presenting today is a Zcash mining guide. Mining Zcash Zcash, or ZEC, is a currency that developed from Bitcoin, with the addition of anonymity. While in Bitcoin’s blockchain, anyone can see the transactions between all the addresses and see each address’s balance, with Zcash it is possible to make transactions without revealing the balance of a wallet (which represents an address). To date, Zcash is the 17th most valued cryptocurrency, in terms of market cap ($500 million), and it shows a relatively high volume ($60 million a day). Although Zcash is already a mature coin, it is still not coming close to the load and size of Bitcoin’s and Ethereum’s chains, so, in most cases, mining it is more profitable. In 2016 when Zcash came into the world, it was very profitable to mine it. Due to the fact that there were only 12 Zcash coins in circulation, the price went up to the astronomical price of 3000 Bitcoins for one Zcash coin! Before we begin, it is important to note that the responsibility of mining rests only with the miners themselves. Caution is required when running a computer and using high power for a long period of time. We have never heard of case where a miner burned a house down, but computers can certainly smoke. In addition, no one is guaranteed to see profits due to fluctuations in exchange rates and a change in mining difficulty level and performance. The following explanation is about how to mine Zcash (very profitable currently at the moment as of writing this article) in a pool called miningpoolhub. It is possible to mine many other coins through this pool, but you need to download other mining software to do so. It is important to know, that mining on a personal computer is supposed to be done for the purpose of learning. In order to generate profit and achieve massive cooling as well, it is better to build or purchase dedicated mining machines. 7 steps guide on how to mine Zcash ZEC 1.Resources: Get a strong (and better than one) video card for profitable mining. Mining with a laptop, cell phone or an old video card (more than a year old) will not pay off. Registration for a mining pool Visit website, fill out the details and confirm the email sent: Choose a 4-digit pin code which will be used in each update. Enter the site and select Zcash on the left side – Click on “wallet” and enter your ZEC wallet address. Click on “Update Account”. Mining Software: Download the most appropriate version for your computer. An executable file (mine.bat) must be created and the following content should be inside it: exe -cd 0 -t 4 -l us-east1.zcash.miningpoolhub.com:20570-u USER.rig9 -p x The word “USER” must be replaced with the username you chose for miningpoolhub. The word rig1 does not need to be replaced unless you want to mine with more than one mining machine. Turn on mining and monitors of miningpoolhub Click on “workers” and choose one of the jobs (Account’s default jobs) according to your card. Run the file you have created (mine.bat). Make sure that there are no errors and that a message approving your worker has been received. If you did not get this message, it means you did something wrong. After the program starts running you will see that the worker (called the miner) is added to the “workers” screen. On the site, click “Dashboard” to see data about the mining (it will take some time until you see something; it is updated according to the work that the mining machine does). Withdrawing the coin to your wallet: After you have accumulated a certain amount and you wish to withdraw it, click “wallet” and then “cash out”. Verify the amount and wallet address first. Within a few minutes, the amount will be sent to your wallet. It is recommended that you install applications such as MSI Afterburner in order to control the card’s fan. In its default mode, the power is low and it allows the card to reach a temperature of 70-80 degrees Celcius (normal when playing occasionally but not healthy when it comes to a machine running 24-hours a day). It is advisable to put the fan regularly on a certain percentage so that the heat of the card is about 60 degrees (note that during the day the house is warmer and the temperature will rise accordingly). You can estimate how much profit you will get, by checking on. The site shows the value of the currency and its estimated value in dollars for a certain processing power (you can also enter electricity costs). Other mining pools There are some other mining pools. One of them is. 2Miners is a mining pool for ZEC mining as well as for all Ethash and Equihash coins. For all of them, SOLO mining option is available. Other features include monitoring bots (free of charge) for any amount of rigs as well as block notification bots. 2Miners have implemented the unique Nicehash ports for rented hashpower fully compatible with Nicehash stratum. Their servers, with DDOS protection, are located in EU, US and ASIA servers are planned soon. Special thanks to Deddi Dayag who helped in preparing the article and the mining guide. Impartial reviews of the most reliable and trusted Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin Cloud Mining Platforms. Start mining today! • • 2017-11-23 • The sole reason most cryptocurrencies can function is due to mining. There are two things which your reward is based off of. Pros and Cons of Mining vs. However, if you invested that amount into a currency calculztor, that currency will most likely be worth nothing. Another benefit is that in case the currency you are mining drops in value, you can easily swap to another coin and regain your profits that way. Take Ethereum for example. One year ago and with a small mining operation, it was very easy to mine 1 or 2 Ethers a day, while at the time it was only worth a couple of dollars. Even though currency mining seems to be an easy get rich quick scheme, it does not come without risk, the main risk being: Another risk to watch out for is if you have young children or small animals. They could easily break your rig by accident, either by throwing something at it or giving it a static shock. The next risk, while not severe, is power. Mining computers draw a lot of power, and depending the size of the rig, they can easily nicehash calculator eth upwards of 1, watts. Depending on where niceash live this could mean that you are mining at a loss everyday. You can check the DAG size for some popular coins using this website. In conclusion, while there are many risks, all can easily be avoided by nivehash implementing standard safety procedures, or by making sure that your rig will last a long time by buying the best parts you can. But all in all, while you will receive a great amount of rewards for mining, you can also lose a lot of money if your rigs break down due to misfortune or just plain old bad luck. Economics of Mining Getting started with mining is relatively simple, especially if you already have a desktop PC with a graphics card. Building a mining rig is the main cost, as these can cost thousands of dollars. To find out how much you will spending on power each month, you can use this simple website linked below. Here you can input how many watts your computer will be using, and the website will tell you how many kWh that is per month http: Take your monthly power cost away from the value of the amount of the currency you mine to find your monthly profits. Though most mining calculators include this calculation for you, it can be very useful to find the exact amount you will be spending on power. Here is our formula for working out monthly profit: M is the value of the amount of coins you mine per day, this can be found through sites like coingecko where it will tell you how much your crypto is worth. W is the amount you will be spending on kWh every month. This will then give you P which is your monthly profit. You can also find your daily profit by inputting your daily mined crypto into M and daily power usage in for W, the same can be done for weekly calculations. To find your real profit however, you first need to pay back the first investment into your mining rig. To find out how long this will take, you must use this formula: This depends on what you use for the first calculation. After you pay back the rig, every cent you make will go towards your total profit. The difference between PoW and PoS is that PoS does not require graphics cards, nor does it require a very powerful system at all. Another benefit of PoS is that the computers are not very expensive, nor do they draw lots of power, making PoS a far greener alternative to PoW. There are also no block rewards in PoS, thereby making the transaction fees the only reward. Proof of Work is where you have to run powerful computers that have high hash rates. Both of these types of mining have a difficulty factor to them where the more miners there are on the network, the lower the chance you have of mining a block. In other words, the lower your reward is. Here is a good website which has lots of information on the major cryptocurrencies, including their difficulties, block times, and block reward. If you want to check when the last block was mined, and who mined it, you can use this website for Bitcoin, and this one for Ethereum. Mining works by connecting to the blockchain and verifying transactions by verifying new blocks in the blockchain. By doing this they are securing the network and preventing errors from happening such as double spending. The miners put these blocks through a process by applying a mathematical nicehash to it, turning the numbers into a shorter, random looking sequence of numbers. Each hash is unique and changing even a single character in the hash changes it completely. Here is an excellent video which explains what your computers do when its mining that uses pen and paper as an example This method is extremely inefficient so do not expect calculator make a profit off of it. You simply choose the currency you would like to mine then input your hash rate along with the wattage of your system and power cost, then the website will show you what your profits are every day, along with the amount of the currency you will mine. Everyday new miners join the network, which in turn increases the difficulty. My Crypto Buddy The My Crypto Buddy calculator is another useful calculator which has the option to include difficulty into the calculations. This leads to a problem. Though it is still useful to know that your mining income will decrease every month due to difficulty. This calculator also includes the mining pool fee. Coin Warz The Coin Warz calculator is another useful calculator, though more complicated than the rest, it comes with some quite unique features, such as allowing to input your hardware cost. The calculator will then use this information to estimate how long it will take to pay back your computer. Luckily I have compiled a list of sites which have this information. So for example if we have a single AMD Radeon R9 X GPU available that is capable of producing around 24 MHS worth of hashrate when mining Ethereum and we enter that value in eht calculator we are going to get an estimation of about 4. Another benefit is that in case the currency you are mining drops in value, you can easily swap to another coin and regain your profits that way. We are giving BTC rewards for the best information received. Another option are dedicated mining cards. Submissions that are mostly about some other cryptocurrency or alternative mining pools belong elsewhere. The miners put these blocks through a process by applying a mathematical formula to it, turning the numbers into a shorter, random looking sequence of numbers. A third useful feature is that it shows you how much you can trade your mined coins for in Bitcoin, which is useful if you think Bitcoin is only going to go up in price. You can use this calculator for about different coins making it quite useful when trying to find out what your other mining options are. The reason being that you simply fill in your graphics cards models and the site will calculate the power draw, hash rate, and the most profitable coin for your set up. The site will even show you the best exchange to sell your coins on. Additionally, the site will also apply a reasonable overclock to the cards making your results even more accurate. This site is still extremely useful for finding the most profitable coin to mine, making it my preferred calculator. Your graphics card is not listed on the What To Mine website, this can be a tricky process. Luckily I have compiled a list of sites calxulator have this information. I will also explain which coins are the best to mine with each card. This card also has an external nicehas connector, so you will not be able to plug this nicehash calculator eth any old desktop computer. This card is an excellent performer when it comes to gaming, so if you decide to sell your rig, you should be able to sell these cards for a great This is caluclator to its extremely low price and excellent hash rate performance. Like the RX s s, these cards can also be very hard to find at reasonable prices. Pagos calculator nicehash eth This list is purely based on my opinions, as well as the price of the cards and the raw performance nicehash calculator eth. Though there are other cards which are great for mining, such as GTX Ti or RX Vega 64 which I did not include due to their high costthese cards on the list are just my recommendations. Another option for mining is ASICs. ASICs are devices made specifically for mining, and when compared graphics cards, ASICs perform much better and have a much lower performance to the power draw ratio. Option are dedicated mining cards. These cards are made specifically for miners and offer a hash rate and efficiency bump over their gaming orientated counterparts, without the need for you to do much nicehash calculator eth overclocking and undervolting. Eth nicehash calculator shows If nicehash calculator eth are confident in the success of cryptocurrency however, and are willing to take the risk, these cards are an excellent option. Different Types of Mining Though this article has primarily been focused on graphics card mining, there are other types of mining. Cloud mining and ASIC mining are just two examples. I will also be talking about the difference between mining in pools and solo mining here. Pool mining is where you join with a group of other miners and every miner contributes to mining blocks. The difference between this and solo mining is nicehash calculator eth your payouts are more consistent. Solo mining is hard, especially if you are running a small rig because nicehash calculator eth will most likely not find a block for a very long time unless you get very lucky. You can use the Coin Warz calculator to estimate how long it will take you to mine a block by yourself. You will get your payments consistently, unlike solo mining where it may take a very long time to get your payout. I recommend the Ethermine. You can also check if your rig is online here, as well as how much crypto you have mined. Cloud Mining Cloud mining is definitely the easiest way to start mining, as you can purchase a mining contract whenever you like. You do not need to setup a rig nicehash calculator eth even have an internet connection, calculqtor company which hosts the miners will do this all for you. Another negative is that you will not be able to sell the rigs, and will not be able to cancel the contracts. However if you do decide to start cloud mining, one of the largest companies for this is Genesis Mining. Nice Hash is another cloud mining company which unlike Genesis does not lock you into a contract and allows you to cancel any time you want, making this an excellent option. Nice Hash also allows nicehash calculator eth to sell your hashing power for Bitcoins, so you can set your own mining rig to mine on the Nice Hash servers and earn Bitcoins. However, this can turn out to be less profitable than mining an altcoin by yourself. Nicehash Miner Pros & Cons - Is Nicehash Miner Profitable? You can check the DAG size for some popular coins using this website. Do not use URL calculator services: Your bitcoins were stolen and we are working with international law agencies to identify the attackers and recover the stolen funds. Advertently or inadvertently posting a wallet address for seeking donations or requesting hashing power towards a wallet address without prior checks and approval from the mod team is a bannable offense. This nicehash calculator eth due to its extremely low price and excellent hash rate performance. One of my favorite communities is Reddit, and although Reddit has a vast array of sub-communities, or subreddits, there are some for mining. A useful multi-wallet application which I recommend is the Jaxx Blockchain Wallet. You can use this code: My personal recommendation is to keep full control of nicehash calculator eth wallets and not in the exchanges since exchanges can be hacked and you run the risk of losing your coins forever. You should also keep your coins in an offline storage for maximum security. A useful multi-wallet application which I recommend is the Jaxx Blockchain Wallet. W is the amount you will be nicehasn on kWh every month. Additionally, the site will also apply a reasonable overclock to the cards making your results even more accurate. You can check the DAG size for some popular coins using this website. You can use this code: Luckily I have 'nicehash calculator eth' a list of sites which have this information. You can also check if your rig is online here, as well as how much crypto you have mined. This card also has an external power connector, so you will not be able to plug this into any old desktop computer. New to BitCoin and interested in learning more? You can store many different types of coins here including popular ones such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This wallet also gives you full control of your private keys in case you want to move your wallet out of Jaxx. The Jaxx wallet also has mobile apps which allows you to take your cryptos with you anywhere. The Ledger Nano S is another useful multi-wallet, however it is a hardware wallet, so you will have to spend an extra portion of your budget on this. Mining Communities Mining can often be a quite strenuous process that is not error free. So if you are setting up your own miner, it can be useful to interact with some communities in order to get proper guidance. Earlier today the NiceHash went into maintenance mode and it has continued for hours, something that does not normally happen with the service, sparking rumours about a hack. A bit later the official confirmation has been posted that the rumored hack has indeed happened, below is a quote of the official statement released by NiceHash with more details to follow soon hopefully Official press release regarding the NiceHash security breach Unfortunately, there has been a security breach involving NiceHash website. We are currently investigating the nature of the incident and, as a result, we are stopping all operations for the next 24 hours. Importantly, our payment system was compromised and the contents of the NiceHash Bitcoin wallet have been stolen. We are working to verify the precise number of BTC taken. Clearly, this is a matter of deep concern and we are working hard to rectify the matter in the coming days. In addition to undertaking our own investigation, the incident has been reported to the relevant authorities and law enforcement and we are co-operating with them as a matter of urgency. We are fully committed to restoring the NiceHash service with the highest security measures at the earliest opportunity. We would not exist without our devoted buyers and miners all around the globe. We understand that you will have a lot of questions, and we ask for patience and understanding while we investigate the causes and find the appropriate solutions for the future of the service. We will endeavour to update you at regular intervals. While the full scope of what happened is not yet known, we recommend, as a precaution, that you change your online passwords. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this may have caused and are committing every resource towards solving this issue as soon as possible. With the release of their version 2 of NiceHash Miner there are two different versions of the software available now. The old branch version 1 is now called NiceHash Miner Legacy and it is intended for more advanced users while the new NiceHash Miner 2 is for people that are new to crypto mining and just want an easy to use GUI. NiceHash Miner is essentially a profit switching mining tool that chooses the most profitable algorithm based on your mining hashrate and sells your hashrate for that particular algorithm. NiceHash Miner 2 does not contain third party miner software, it uses the miners being developed in house by NiceHash such as for example, while the NiceHash Miner Legacy still relies on the best performing third party miners for some algorithms. The Legacy version includes miners from Claymore, EWBF, Tpruvot and others in order to maximize performance for particular algorithm. This does however make it a bit more complicated for setting up many different miners thus the advanced users target. We just gave a try of the latest NiceHash Excavator 1.2.10 alpha miner () that includes new algorithms and some performance improvements. It has been a while since we have played with last, so there are some changes that we wanted to try out. Excavator supports both AMD and Nvidia GPUs and works with some of the more popular mining algorithms, though performance wise it may not be the fastest on all of them. Nvidia CUDA supported algorithms: equihash, pascal, decred, sia, lbry, blake2s, daggerhashimoto AMD OpenCL supported algorithms: daggerhashimoto, equihash, pascal, sia, decred More notable is the performance improvement from the latest for Nvidia GTX 1060 and GTX 1070 GPUs that has also apparently been implemented in Excavator, so you might want to try that as well and see what results you are going to get if you are mining coins using the (Ethash) Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm such as Ethereum and others. Below you can find a 64-bit Windows binary that you can download and try will all of the supported algorithms, just modify the sample config files provided. Do note that Nvidia supports two more algorithms that have not yet been implemented on AMD GPUs! Copyright ©2014-2018 - - All About BTC, LTC, ETH mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies. This is a blog for crypto currency miners and users of Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), ZCash (ZEC) and many others. If you find helpful and useful information you can support us by donating altcoins or Bitcoin (BTC) to: 1AxbMZwtcmCByrHiaWwhse5r6ea1YgBwk1 ETH: 0x8d785ff337046444d8afbac169bcb7c0adfb3266 - LTC: LPYFPK7dL1uEtwrAteLmxs7w8Je446gAAJ - ZEC: t1gg5rWxeMBMsyDRMrq5PJdFLiWQ86LGggi. (this results are based on my R7 370s tests, but there is a new ethOS update and that will significantly increase the hashrate) In fact, according to statistics, Nvidia is generally less suited for Zcash mining than AMD. It is not yet confirmed whether Nvidia will make the effort to optimize their GPUs for Zcash mining. As for now, if you have Nvidia GPUs in your rig, you might want to switch to a different algorithm than Zcash. There is a tool that might help you to keep your rig mining for the most profitable coin. CryptoCompare offers a useful calculator for both Ethereum (ETH) and Zcash (ZEC). It also supports other coins such as Monero (XMR), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC) and DigitalCash (DASH). This calculator is easy to use, and you only should pay close attention to the hashrate you set for your GPU. Different GPUs have different hashrates for each of the algorithms, and it is crucial to set it as precisely as possible. The results of the comparison might be surprising. In fact, some miners report that they ended up rolling back to Ethereum Classic, since their GPU ended up giving more profit with Ethash than with anything else. Zcash Mining calculator. Here is a rudimentary mining calculator. It is based upon averages of the pools when you request it. New cloud mining contracts! Here is a quick list of the latest CPU and GPU miners available for mining the Zcash (ZEC) that uses the Equihash algorithm used by the coin. Since most pools and miners are based on Stratum mining support you should be able to use them on almost all mining pools with support for ZEC. What you should be looking for is what works best on your hardware in terms of stability and what provides you with the optimal hashrate in order for you to maximize your profit. CPU mining is still viable as GPU miners are yet to be further optimized to be able to provide significantly higher hashrates, though you should know that the days of the CPU mining of ZEC are probably numbered. Because of the that Zcash has implemented the block reward is still growing, so even with price going down and the total network hashrate going up the overall profit for mining and selling Zcash remains pretty stable and most importantly pretty high compared to other crypto coins at the moment. Because of that it is a wise decision to mine and sell Zcash at the moment until the end of the slow start of mining when the block reward will stabilize at the maximum level of 12.5 ZEC and that should provide a more stable price per coin than at the moment. Mining ZEC coins now and keeping the coins may result in them loosing significant value at least in short term, though in long term it might still be a viable option, so consider what to do carefully. Best CPU miners for Zcash: – (also supports CUDA and OpenCL)* Best AMD OpenCL miners for Zcash: – Best Nvidia CUDA miners for Zcash: – (also supports CPU and OpenCL)* * The nheqminer is available with hardcoded pools from nicehash, suprnova and other mining pools supporting Zcash, so make sure you download the correct version for the pool you are going to be mining. Genoil’s latest ZECMiner is pretty much the fastest public OpenCL miner (Windows binaries only) for Zcash at the moment, though there are some stability issues with cards dropping to 0 Sol/s and the miner crashing. The situation improves with each new version, but the miner is still not that good stability wise. The latest Nheqminer supports OpenCL mining, but is slower than ZECMiner, even though stability wise it is better it is much better for CPU and CUDA mining though. Hopefully soon there will be other faster GPU miners that will offer more stability and features along the improved mining speeds, but for now you will need to do with what is currently available. Other Similar Publications: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •. Bspus I´m mining to nicehash selling my CPU power, I just discovered that the best way is to download the oficial miner and then run it, it will run the benchmark and you can start mining zcash with it there is a option to see how is your progress go to nicehash site, then getting started, download the very left side software, install, run and you´l see for yourself. Or you go to the nicehash, go to the miner/seller drop down then my miner option then input the btc address you´re using and voila you will get a very nice web interface with your current results. To add when i try to add a pool and or worker on the nicehash site it wants me to enter in the details of a server and i mean i dont get that. Why doesnt it just provide me with me and then allow me to type my worker and then press add and then its done, why the bloody pain. Anyways, i then went ahead and entered in a (what i thought was a valid pool server as per a website i used which was pertaining to zhash or equihas, and then it told me it is invalid) i dont understand why it just doesnt give a list of servers, which i did actually see on another page there but the thing is it wants me to set up the worker and i need to do all that pain. I am taking steps backwards here, i dont know what i am doing. Copyright ©2014-2018 - - All About BTC, LTC, ETH mining as well as other alternative crypto currencies. This is a blog for crypto currency miners and users of Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), ZCash (ZEC) and many others. If you find helpful and useful information you can support us by donating altcoins or Bitcoin (BTC) to: 1AxbMZwtcmCByrHiaWwhse5r6ea1YgBwk1 ETH: 0x8d785ff337046444d8afbac169bcb7c0adfb3266 - LTC: LPYFPK7dL1uEtwrAteLmxs7w8Je446gAAJ - ZEC: t1gg5rWxeMBMsyDRMrq5PJdFLiWQ86LGggi. By Ian Demartino Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, And to all the freaks and geeks on the Internet for being the world’s greatest teachers. CONTENTS Foreword Keywords Who’s Who SECTION I: WHAT IS BITCOIN? Chapter 1: Bitcoin 101: Blockchain Technology Chapter 2: A Practical Guide on How to Buy, Save, and Spend Bitcoins Chapter 3: Precursors, History and Creation, Satoshi’s White Paper Chapter 4: Who Runs Bitcoin? Chapter 5: What Gives Bitcoin Its Value? Nov 16, 2017 - REVIEW OF MARITIME TRANSPORT 2017. Vessel groupings used in the Review of Maritime Transport. Malaysia and nickel ore mine closures in the Philippines. However, trade in some other minor bulk. E-commerce, cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, three-dimensional printing (also. Start mining Ethereum with cloud mining services. Ethereum mining is a concept that allows users to buy a share of cloud mining power in a data center. Chapter 6: Bitcoin: Anonymous or Pseudonymous? Chapter 7: Bitcoin and the Criminal Element Chapter 8: Mt. Gox: Bitcoin’s Defining Moment? Chapter 9: Other Bitcoin Scams and Common Tactics SECTION II: HOW TO INVEST IN BITCOIN Chapter 10: How to Buy Bitcoin with a Bank Account, Cash, or PayPal Chapter 11: Working for Bitcoin Chapter 12: Mining Chapter 13: HODL! Chapter 14: Day Trading Chapter 15: Altcoin Trading and Pump-and-Dumps Chapter 16: Peer-to-Peer Lending Chapter 17: Investing in Other Commodities Using Bitcoin SECTION III: WHAT CAN BITCOIN DO FOR ME? Keywords altcoin: Short for “alternative cryptocurrency”; another cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. There are more than a thousand altcoins currently in existence; most are nearly exact copies of more successful cryptocurrencies, but some very innovative ones have been produced as well. ASIC: Application-specific integrated circuit. A piece of hardware designed to do one thing and one thing only. In the cryptocurrency world, it mines for a specific algorithm (SHA256, Scrypt, etc.). BFGMiner: The second most-popular Bitcoin-mining software. Bitcoin/ bitcoin: Bitcoin with a capital B refers to Bitcoin the system, the network or the currency as a whole; bitcoin with a lowercase b refers to individual bitcoins, as in, “I have five bitcoins.” Bitcoin-Qt: Also called Bitcoin Core, it is the primary implementation of Bitcoin and what all other wallets and services are based on. If wallet A sends wallet B five bitcoins and then wallet B sends five bitcoins to wallet C, it is easy enough to assume wallet A was sending wallet C five bitcoins using wallet B as an intermediary. Combining several Bitcoin users’ transactions makes it more difficult to track but not impossible. If wallet A, wallet B, and wallet C send bitcoins to a mixing service (wallet D) and then pass that money onto wallets E and F but don’t want outside sources knowing who sent what to whom, simply sending their bitcoin to wallet D is not enough. If wallet A puts two bitcoins, wallet B puts six bitcoins, and wallet C puts nine bitcoins into the CoinJoin wallet—and then two bitcoins are sent to wallet E in one transaction, another six are sent to wallet E in a second transaction, and nine bitcoins are sent to wallet F—then we can safely assume that wallet A sent two bitcoins to wallet E, wallet B sent six to wallet E and wallet C sent nine to wallet F. By Paul Vigna, Michael J. By Nathaniel Popper Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Central Intelligence Agency Coinapult, 174, 338 Coinbase ( Bitcoin service). See also Ehrsam, Fred about the founding and operation, 203–204, 211–213 investment by Andreessen Horowitz, 293–295 maintaining private keys, 281 regulation of virtual currencies, 271 regulatory compliance, 236–237 response to Mt. By Dominic Frisby Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, And you can pay for things with them via electronic banking, by cheque, credit card, or in cash. But where on earth do you get bitcoins? There are three ways. You can get paid in bitcoins. You can buy bitcoins. And last of all (the very unconventional bit), you can make bitcoins. Yes, you can, literally, create money. You earn bitcoins by doing or selling something in exchange for bitcoins – just as you would earn normal money. If I do this job for you, you pay me in bitcoins. You buy bitcoins just as you would buy and sell foreign currency – from the Bitcoin equivalent of a bureau de change, known as a Bitcoin exchange, or directly from an individual. You hand over your dollars, pounds or whatever currency you’re using and you receive bitcoins. To create bitcoins, you run the Bitcoin software on your computer. It’s called ‘mining’ – more on that later. Accessed June 16, 2014. ‘ Bitcoin Forum.’ Bitcoin Forum –Index. Accessed June 16, 2014. Here’s What Warren Buffett Is Saying.’ CNBC. March 14, 2013. Accessed June 16, 2014. ‘ Bitcoin Project Milestones’. Bitcoin Project Milestones. Accessed June 16, 2014. ‘ Bitcoin Wiki.’ Bitcoin. Accessed June 16, 2014. ‘ BitcoinTalk.’ BitcoinTalk.com. Accessed June 16, 2014. Branwen, Gwern. ‘ Bitcoin – worse is better.’ Gwern.net. July 20, 2010. Branwen, Gwern. ‘Silk Road: theory & practice.’ Gwern.net. Brito, Jerry. ‘Online cash Bitcoin could challenge governments, banks.’ Time. April 16, 2011. What actually happens when you send an email through Gmail to, say, someone with a Yahoo address is that a Google server reaches out to a Yahoo server and transmits a text file; then the Yahoo server says to its user, ‘you’ve got mail’. So, a protocol is an agreed system by which information is shared across a network. Bitcoin – with a capital ‘B’ – is another protocol. The function of the protocol is to send and receive payment information. With Bitcoin, your computer reaches out to another user’s computer, gives it some binary gibberish proving you control X number of coins at this address and want them to increase the balance at that address. The unit of money on the Bitcoin protocol is the ‘ bitcoin’ (with a small ‘b’). As the dollar is the unit of money on the US banking network, so bitcoin is the unit of money on the Bitcoin system. So, Bitcoin is two things – a protocol and a unit of money. How do you get bitcoins? Using dollars or pounds is easy. You get paid in them. They’re in your bank account (hopefully). By Andreas M. Antonopoulos Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, That’s the essence of a master-slave relationship. ' Bitcoin is fundamentally different because in bitcoin, you don’t owe anyone anything and no one owes you anything. It’s not a system based on debt.' Bitcoin is fundamentally different because in bitcoin, you don’t owe anyone anything and no one owes you anything. It’s not a system based on debt. It’s a system based on ownership of this abstract token. Absolute ownership. We have an expression in the United States, which is “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” In bitcoin, possession is ten-tenths of the law. If you control the bitcoin keys, it’s your bitcoin. If you don’t control the bitcoin keys, it’s not your bitcoin. You’re back to a master-slave relationship. 'In bitcoin, possession is ten-tenths of the law. If you control the bitcoin keys, it’s your bitcoin. If you don’t control the bitcoin keys, it’s not your bitcoin.' There is a beautiful site called bitcoinobituaries.com where you can read the pronouncements of the death of bitcoin since 2009 — regularly, like clockwork every three to six months, major newspapers, scientists, etc., saying, 'That’s it. Bitcoin is dead.' In fact, this has now become an amazing recruitment opportunity because all you have to do is wait for people to hear that bitcoin died, the CEO of Bitcoin was arrested, or bitcoin was shut down by Putin, and then, four months later, someone says, 'You know there are some interesting new applications on bitcoin.' And they go, “ Bitcoin is still there?' “ Bitcoin is still there” is the marketing slogan of this community. If we can just keep doing “ bitcoin is still there,” people are surprised, they’re confounded. It doesn’t match their expectations. It’s not possible that bitcoin is still there because very serious people with very serious titles, working for very rich companies, told them that bitcoin was not going to be there. When people hear that message, maybe the next day they come to one of these meetups and they meet a dentist who owns bitcoin, an architect who owns bitcoin, a taxi driver who uses bitcoin to send money back to their family—normal people who use bitcoin to give themselves financial power and financial freedom. Every time that message is broken by cognitive dissonance, bitcoin wins. All bitcoin really has to do is survive. So far, it’s doing pretty well. Currencies Evolve In the new network-centric world, currencies occupy evolutionary niches. They evolve, like species, based on the stimulus they have from their environment. Bitcoin is a dynamic system with software developers that can change it. The question is, in which direction will bitcoin evolve? Which environmental niche will it attempt to fit in? And how will that be affected by the actions of the powerful? If they attack bitcoin, it evolves to defend itself against predators, just like any species. By Melanie Swan Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Broader Perspective blog, March 2, 2014. 108 Prisco, G. “ Bitcoin Governance 2.0: Let’s Block-chain Them.” CryptoCoins News, updated October 13, 2014. 109 Hofman, A. “Couple to Get Married on the Bitcoin Blockchain at Disney Bitcoin Conference.” Bitcoin Magazine, September 23, 2014. Bitcoin-blockchain-disney- bitcoin-conference/. 110 Marty, B. “Couple Make History with World’s First Bitcoin Wedding.” PanAm Post, October 7, 2014. 111 Ploshay, E. “A Word from Jeffrey Tucker: Bitcoin Is Not a Monetary System.” Bitcoin Magazine, January 3, 2014. 112 McMillan, R. PayPal had been known for being on the edge of financial innovation, but it then became more corporate focused and lost the possibility of providing early market leadership with regard to Bitcoin. By Chris Clark Amazon: — — —,,,,, doi=10.1.1.83.7634 [18] Nick Szabos, 'Bit gold,' December 27, 2008. [19] 'Protocol specification,' Bitcoin Wiki, May 5, 2013. Bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#Addresses [20] Leslie Lamport, Robert Shostak, Marshall Pease, 'The Byzantine Generals Problem,' ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 4 (3) (1982): 382401. [21] 'Why was 21 million picked as the number of bitcoins to be created?' Bitcoin Stack Exchange, March 7, 2013. Bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/8439/why-was-21-million-picked-as-the-number-of- bitcoins-to-be-created [22] 'Technical background of Bitcoin addresses,' Bitcoin Wiki, March 14, 2013. Bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_ Bitcoin_addresses [23] 'Why are Bitcoin addresses hashes of public keys?' Bitcoin Stack Exchange, May 8, 2012. [24] Raulo, 'Optimal pool abuse strategy,' February 4, 2011. Notes 1Monetary inflation is a sustained increase in the supply of money, which typically results in price inflation. If you are a business owner and just want to accept bitcoins, you can fill your wallet by publishing a Bitcoin address and requesting that customers send funds to that address. Mining, the means by which bitcoins are initially put into circulation, provides another way of obtaining bitcoins. When mining, you get paid bitcoins to run a computer that processes transactions for the bitcoin network. Mining will be discussed more in Chapter 9. * * * Figure 2.2: The 'Receive coins' tab of the Bitcoin-Qt client where you can manage your addresses. * * * 2.3 Sending Payments Once you have bitcoins in your wallet, you will be able to see the balance in your wallet on the Overview tab of the Bitcoin client. You can then use the Bitcoin client to send funds to any other Bitcoin user. All you need is one of their addresses. Bitcoin Stack Exchange, May 8, 2012. Bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/3600/why-are- bitcoin-addresses-hashes-of-public-keys [24] Raulo, 'Optimal pool abuse strategy,' February 4, 2011. Bitcoin.atspace.com/poolcheating.pdf Notes 1Monetary inflation is a sustained increase in the supply of money, which typically results in price inflation. It is a serious risk factor for fiat currencies because governments often produce money excessively, causing perpetual price inflation. By Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Early adopters have tended to hold on to bitcoin as they hold on to gold, hoping that its value will increase in the long run, and therefore treating bitcoin as an asset rather than as a medium of exchange. According to economic theorists, low or no inflation motivates holders to hoard rather than spend their bitcoin. Still, if more trusted bitcoin exchanges facilitate consumers’ movement in and out of bitcoin, then the frequency and volume of trading could increase. If more merchants accept bitcoin as a medium of payment, then people who’ve been sitting on bitcoins may start to use their store for purchases, thereby freeing up more bitcoins. If merchants begin to issue bitcoin-denominated gift cards, then more people should be exposed to cryptocurrencies and become more comfortable transacting in bitcoin. And so, hypothetically, people will have fewer reasons to hoard bitcoin. And so, hypothetically, people will have fewer reasons to hoard bitcoin. Advocates of the bitcoin protocol argue that, because bitcoins are divisible to eight decimal places—the smallest unit is called a Satoshi, worth one hundredth of a millionth of a bitcoin—the smallest denominations will buy more if demand for bitcoin increases. There’s also the possibility of tweaking the protocols to allow for greater divisibility, say, picopayments (trillionths of a bitcoin) and to remine stranded bitcoin after a period of dormancy. A fifth dimension is high latency: for the bitcoin blockchain network, the process of clearing and settling transactions takes about ten minutes, which is far faster end to end than most payment mechanisms. But clearing transactions at the point of sale instantaneously is not the issue; the real problem is that ten minutes is simply too long for the Internet of Things where devices need to interact continuously. Buying Art Through the Bitcoin Blockchain: How It Works To purchase the piece, Don opened his bitcoin wallet app. He used it to create a message that specified the amount of bitcoin representing the purchase price of the piece, designated Artlery’s public key as the recipient of that bitcoin, and used his private key to “sign” or authenticate the message. Don double-checked all the fields because, unlike traditional payment methods, there was no reversing this bitcoin transaction. Then he broadcast the message not to his Canadian bank but to the entire network of computers running the full bitcoin blockchain. Some people refer to these computers as nodes, where some nodes are donating their processing power to solve the math problem associated with creating a block. As we’ve explained, the bitcoin community refers to them as miners and to their problem-solving work as mining, as in gold mining. By Alec Ross Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, As of the 2014 holiday season: Jillian Kumagai, “More Than 21,000 Retailers Accept Bitcoin Payments,” Mashable, November 15, 2014, bitcoin-retailers-infographic/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link; Jon Matonis, “Top 10 Bitcoin Merchant Sites,” Forbes, May 24, 2013, bitcoin-merchant-sites/; Benzinga, “What Companies Accept Bitcoin?” Nasdaq, February 4, 2014, bitcoin-cm323438; Jonas Chokun, “Who Accepts Bitcoins?” Bitcoin Values, bitcoins-payment-companies-stores-take- bitcoins.html. On October 31, 2008, a research paper: Benjamin Wallace, “The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin,” Wired, November 23, 2011, bitcoin/. It called for the creation: Satoshi Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” Bitcoin, November 1, 2008, It called for the creation: Satoshi Nakamoto, “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” Bitcoin, November 1, 2008, bitcoin.org/ bitcoin.pdf. Banks must be trusted: Joshua Davis, “The Crypto-Currency,” New Yorker, October 10, 2011, The goal is for 21 million: “How Does Bitcoin Work?” Economist, April 11, 2013, bitcoin-work. At that point, no more: Alice Truong, “Top 10 Bitcoin Myths Debunked,” CoinDesk, June 4, 2013, bitcoin-myths-debunked/. Bitcoin, as a global payment system: Marc Andreessen, “Why Bitcoin Matters,” New York Times, January 21, 2014, bitcoin-matters/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0. Prominent economist Nouriel Roubini sent out a string of tweets attacking the notion that Bitcoin is a currency. As Roubini tweeted: “Apart from a base 4 criminal activities, Bitcoin is not a currency as it is not a unit of account or a means of payments or store of value.” He went on to explain his rationale in further tweets: “ Bitcoin is not a unit of account as no price of goods and services is set in Bitcoin unit nor it ever will. So it isn’t a currency.” “ Bitcoin isn’t a store of value as little wealth is in Bitcoin and no assets in it. Also given price volatility it is a lousy store of value.” “ Bitcoin isn’t means of payment as few transactions in Bitcoin. And given its volatility all who accept it convert it right back into $/€/¥.” Roubini went even further, calling Bitcoin a scam and a fringe movement: “So Bitcoin isn’t a currency. It is btw a Ponzi game and a conduit for criminal/illegal activities. By Chris Skinner Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Nevertheless, I have invested in Bitcoins and suggest you do too, as it is very likely that they will be a major store of value for years to come in the near term. Bitcoin’s timeline[29] 2008–2009 In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto posted a paper describing the Bitcoin protocol on the internet. In 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence with the release of the first open source Bitcoin client and the issuance of the first Bitcoins. 2010 The prices for the first Bitcoin transactions were negotiated by individuals on the Bitcointalk forums. One notable transaction involved a 10,000 BTC pizza. On 6 August, a major vulnerability in the Bitcoin protocol was spotted. Transactions weren't properly verified before they were included in the transaction log or 'block chain' which allowed for users to bypass Bitcoin's economic restrictions and create an indefinite number of Bitcoins On 15 August, the major vulnerability was exploited. The most recent attempt to provide a good alternative that gained significant traction is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital currency designed to be controlled through encryption rather than a centralised authority. Operating in exactly the same way as cash, Bitcoins are fully exchangeable as an anonymous form of currency in real-time across the internet and, shortly, at Point-of-Sale. The core features of Bitcoin are that they can be: Sent to anyone with a Bitcoin address; Accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection; Anybody can start buying, selling or accepting Bitcoins regardless of their location; Completely distributed with no bank or payment processor between users (this decentralization is the basis for Bitcoin’s security and freedom); and Transactions are free (for now, this will change). Bitcoin is a fully encrypted, digital currency which, when you have some, can be used globally as easily as cash. In late-2011, the exchange rate of Bitcoin crashed from over $30 in June to below $2 in October. In January 2012, Bitcoin was featured as the main subject within a fictionalized trial on the CBS legal drama The Good Wife in the third season episode ' Bitcoin for Dummies'. The host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer, played himself in a courtroom scene where he testifies that he doesn’t consider Bitcoin a true currency, saying “There’s no central bank to regulate it; it’s digital and functions completely peer to peer.” In October 2012, BitPay reported having over 1,000 merchants accepting Bitcoin under its payment processing service. 2013 In February 2013, the Bitcoin-based payment processor Coinbase reported selling $1 million in Bitcoins in a single month at over $22 per Bitcoin. In March, the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for 'decentralized virtual currencies' such as Bitcoin, classifying American 'Bitcoin miners' who sell their generated Bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations. By Jamie Bartlett Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, No one person or group is in charge of Bitcoin: everyone is. Bitcoin was introduced to the world in 2009 via a public post on an exclusive emailing list for cryptographers. It quickly developed a following, and soon became the currency of choice for the online drugs market Silk Road. A growing number of people started to exchange Bitcoin for dollars, which pushed its exchange rate from under $0.001 in October 2009 to $100 in April 2013. In October that year, a US Federal Reserve spokesman hinted that Bitcoin might one day become a ‘viable currency’, and the following month the value of a single Bitcoin jumped to over $1,000. Millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin are now traded every day. In some parts of the world you can live almost entirely on Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s dramatic rise to prominence resulted in an explosion of investment, exchange companies, and even ATM machines. Although Amir’s technical know-how and experience are admired, his ideals and motivations have put him on the fringes of what has become an increasingly respectable Bitcoin community. Dark Wallet has pitted itself directly against organisations seeking to capitalise and control Bitcoin and its market. ‘Many prominent Bitcoin developers are actively in collusion with members of law enforcement and seeking approval from government legislators,’ reads the Dark Wallet blurb. ‘We believe this is not in Bitcoin users’ self-interest, and instead serves wealthy business interests that make up the self-titled Bitcoin Foundation.’ In a 2014 interview with Newsweek, the chief Bitcoin Foundation scientist, Gavin Andresen, said that he thinks of Bitcoin as ‘a just-plain-better, more efficient, less-subject-to-political-whims money. Not as an all-powerful black-market tool that will be used by anarchists to overthrow the System.’ He is frequently offered lucrative jobs in the tech sector, but lives instead in what he calls a ‘techno-industrial colony’ in Calafou, Spain. He’s been working on Bitcoin software day and night for over four years now, and arguably knows more about this strange new currency than almost anyone else alive. He is here to tell us about his latest Bitcoin project – something he calls the ‘Dark Wallet’. The reason Amir and so many others like him are excited by Bitcoin is that it’s a form of internet money with potentially far-reaching consequences. A Bitcoin is nothing more than a unique string of numbers. It has no independent value, and is not tied to any real-world currency. Its strength and value come from the fact that people believe in it and use it. Anyone can download a Bitcoin wallet on to their computer, buy Bitcoins with traditional currency from a currency exchange, and use them to buy or sell a growing number of products or services as easily as sending an email. Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Visa has been around, in one form or another, since 1958; if besting a completely unknown competitor by a mere factor of 3,000 is all that it has to show for its half-century head start, that doesn’t strike me as saying a great deal. 19.Zack Whittaker, “Hackers can remotely steal fingerprints from Android phones,” ZDNet, August 5, 2015. 20.Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan, “ Bitcoin Is Not Anonymous,” An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System (blog), September 30, 2011, anonymity-in- bitcoin.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/ bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html. Bitcoin Project. “Protect your privacy,” undated, bitcoin.org/en/protect-your-privacy. 22.An additional complication has to do with the distinction between ASICs and general-purpose computing engines. Unlike the processors in smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktop machines, by definition, an ASIC-based mining rig is optimized for one and only one task: mining Bitcoin. When its utility in this role is at an end, it is useless for anything else. Such devices have among the shortest utilization cycles of any commercial information-processing hardware, at significant environmental cost. 24.Charles H. London: Penguin, 2008. 5Cryptocurrency 1.It’s important to note that blockchain operations aren’t really distributed in the sense generally meant by “distributed computation,” in which different chunks of a large problem are farmed out to a network of independent processors, and later annealed. The Bitcoin blockchain, by contrast, is replicated identically across all of the network’s nodes. The trade-off is that all of these copies are verifiably identical with one another, at the cost of other advantages of true distributed processing, chiefly speed. 2.As is customary among Bitcoin enthusiasts, in what follows I’ll simply refer to this party—whatever their actual number, gender or nationality—as a presumptively Japanese, presumptively male individual named Satoshi. 3.Satoshi Nakamoto, “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” October 31, 2008, Bitcoin.org/ bitcoin.pdf. 4.Very carefully. Joshua Davis notes, in an article for the New Yorker, that the highly regarded security consultant Dan Kaminsky made strenuous efforts to attack the Bitcoin codebase, and found his gambits anticipated and countered at every turn. “Banking Blockade,” June 28, 2011, wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html. 7.Hashcash, hashcash.org. 8.David Chaum, “Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments,” Advances in Cryptology Proceedings of Crypto 82, 1983, pp. 9.See Dolartoday, dolartoday.com/indicadores/. 10.In practice, this is not a trivial undertaking. By February 2016, the full Bitcoin blockchain had grown to the point that it weighed in at some 60GB; it took almost a full day for me to download, at typical residential data-transmission speeds, and occupied more or less the entire memory my laptop had available. Bitcoin Project. “Some things you need to know,” undated, bitcoin.org/en/you-need-to-know. 12.My account here is deeply indebted to Chris Pacia’s tutorial, which despite the rather patronizing title is the only one of many Bitcoin explainers I’ve come across that explores this stage of the process in such detail, chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/ bitcoin-mining-explained-like-youre-five-part-1-incentives/. 13.Among the Bitcoin community, the collapse of the Mt Gox exchange is legendary. See Yessi Bello Perez, “Mt Gox: History of a Failed Bitcoin Exchange,” CoinDesk, August 4, 2015. 14.Jose Pagliery, “The Tipping Point of Bitcoin Micropayments,” CoinDesk, November 15, 2014. 15.Gulliver, “Booking flights with Bitcoin: Taking off,” Economist, February 26, 2015. 16.17.Pete Rizzo, “Is Bitcoin’s Merchant Appeal Fading? Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Chapter 12 THE DREAM OF DECENTRALIZING ALL THE THINGS 278 “practical men, who believe themselves”: John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1936), 383–84. 278 “Indeed,” Keynes wrote: Ibid. 279 On October 31, 2008: Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 41. 279 a short paper titled “ Bitcoin”: Satoshi Nakamoto, “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” October 31, 2008, bitcoin.org/ bitcoin.pdf. 283 “the steady addition of a constant amount”: Ibid. 285 Laszlo Hanyecz: Bitcoinwhoswho, “A Living Currency: An Interview with ‘Jercos,’ Party to First Bitcoin Pizza Transaction,” Bitcoin Who’s Who (blog), January 30, 2016, bitcoin-pizza-transaction. Gox, a Tokyo-based firm: Yessi Bello Perez, “Mt Gox: The History of a Failed Bitcoin Exchange,” CoinDesk, August 4, 2015, 286 that the exchange “had weaknesses” in its system and that “bitcoins vanished”: Robert McMillan, “The Inside Story of Mt. Spode, “The Great Cryptocurrency Heist,” Aeon, February 14, 2017, 305 “In [minority members’] view”: Ibid. 305 “Ethereum Classic”: Ibid. 306 “The Resolution of the Bitcoin Experiment”: Mike Hearn, “The Resolution of the Bitcoin Experiment,” Mike’s blog, January 14, 2016, bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.rvh0ditgj. 306 “It has failed because the community has failed”: Ibid. 306 the performance of the Bitcoin system suffered: Daniel Palmer, “Scalability Debate Continues as Bitcoin XT Proposal Stalls,” CoinDesk, January 11, 2016, bitcoin-xt-proposal-stalls. 306 Chinese exchanges accounted for 42%: Nathaniel Popper, “How China Took Center Stage in Bitcoin’s Civil War,” New York Times, June 29, 2016, bitcoin-china.html. 306 an estimated 70% of all Bitcoin-mining gear: Danny Vincent, “We Looked inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine,” BBC News, May 4, 2016, 308 “a kid in Africa with a smartphone”: Brandon Griggs, “Futurist: We’ll Someday Accept Computers as Human,” CNN, March 12, 2012, 309 “The Nature of the Firm”: R. Gox, a Tokyo-based firm: Yessi Bello Perez, “Mt Gox: The History of a Failed Bitcoin Exchange,” CoinDesk, August 4, 2015, bitcoin-exchange. 286 that the exchange “had weaknesses” in its system and that “ bitcoins vanished”: Robert McMillan, “The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin’s $460 Million Disaster,” Wired, March 3, 2014, bitcoin-exchange. 286 approximately $470 million in Bitcoins: Robin Sidel, Eleanor Warnock, and Takashi Mochizuki, “Almost Half a Billion Worth of Bitcoins Vanish,” Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2014, 286 $27 million in cash: Jake Adelstein and Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky, “Behind the Biggest Bitcoin Heist in History: Inside the Implosion of Mt. Gox,” Daily Beast, May 19, 2016, bitcoin-heist-in-history-inside-the-implosion-of-mt-gox.html. 287 By January 2015 the processing capability: Michael J. By William Mougayar Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, On a cold early January 2014 evening, Vitalik came down the stairs at Bitcoin Decentral in an old narrow building on Spadina Avenue, an hour prior to the start of one of the weekly Toronto Bitcoin Meetups, organized by Anthony Di lorio. I spoke to him for the first time, trying to understand something that was described to me, as “beyond Bitcoin.” For six months prior to that, I had been trying to understand Bitcoin, and this Ethereum technology was news to me. Soon after my conversation started, the room was filling with people entering the building, ready for the Meetup to start. There was a special buzz around because Vitalik had just published his white paper1 on a new blockchain platform that was supposed to be better than Bitcoin, and destined to become the next big thing. Curious and intrigued, I proceeded to bombard Vitalik with questions about Ethereum and its architecture. Cryptographic proof is the trusted method that blockchains utilize to confirm the validity and finality of transactions between parties. The blockchain will redefine the role of existing intermediaries (if they accept to change), while creating new intermediaries, therefore it will disrupt the traditional boundaries of value. The blockchain has ten characteristics, and they all need to be understood in a holistic manner. Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, bitcoin.org/en/ bitcoin-paper. Bitcoin “maximalism” refers to the opinion that solely supports Bitcoin at the expense of all other blockchain or cryptocurrency related projects, because maximalists believe we only a need a single blockchain, and single currency in order to achieve desired network effects benefits. The Untapped Potential of Corporate Narratives. Banks should not only see the blockchain as a cost savings lever. It is very much about finding new opportunities that can grow their top line. WHY CAN'T THERE BE A GLOBAL BANK? To a skeptic, it sounds like a rhetorical question, given that Bitcoin was destined to become the underpinning nerve for a new type of global financial system that is borderless. Bitcoin’s vision is a globally decentralized money network with users at the edges of it. We should ask the question—since Bitcoin is global and universal, why is not there a truly global Bitcoin bank? This is a tricky question, because Bitcoin’s philosophy is about decentralization, whereas a bank is everything about centrally managed relationships. However, a global bank with no restrictions on borders or transactions would be interesting to users that want to conduct global transactions wherever they are in the world with the same ease as using a credit card. Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand to Money That Understands Us (Perspectives) by David Birch,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Whether this is true or not, there is no clear evidence that Bitcoin (despite the media attention) is being used at all. While the public debate around Bitcoin has, from the earliest time, focused on the supposed anonymity of the payment system and therefore its use for black market purchases (Greenberg 2011), detailed analysis of data from the Bitcoin system by the Federal Reserve has shown that it has barely been used at all for payments for goods and services (let alone for guns and drugs), and further that the pattern of circulation of Bitcoins and the dynamics of the exchange rate are consistent with low usage of Bitcoin for retail transactions (Badev and Chen 2014). Despite the widespread interest, Bitcoins do not seem to be gaining much traction in the ‘real world’ of payments. Bitcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer means of exchange. To return to Mervyn King’s point about money being a ‘particular historical institution’ (King 2016b), there is no reason why money should continue to work the way it does in response to continuing technological change, and no reasonable person would expect it to. Is Bitcoin the future of money? If Bitcoin is not money now, might it be the future of money? I think not: Bitcoin is not the future of money, and the future of money is not Bitcoin. Why the interest then? A reasonable conjecture is that the interest in Bitcoin points to a latent demand for change and, usefully, generates and focuses debate about current monetary structures (Jansen 2013). Much of the interest isn’t, therefore, specifically in Bitcoin, to my mind, but rather in the feasibility of an alternative to the state-issued, interest-bearing fiat currency money system that has been in place for the last forty years. If that interest helps to facilitate debate about what society wants from money in the future, that is very helpful, but it does not imply that Bitcoin satisfies whatever requirements might emerge from that process. Bitcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer means of exchange. If you have a Bitcoin, which is just a string of numbers, you can send that Bitcoin (or a subdivision of it) to anyone else. (If you want to understand how Bitcoin works, a good place to start is the original paper on the topic: ‘ Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system’ by ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’.) I’m no expert on cryptography but there’s no reason I know of to question the basic idea: use a computationally difficult challenge to create strings of bits that it’s hard to make but easy to copy, then use digital signatures for transactions. I get my Bitcoin (a string of bits) and then to transfer them to you I add a digital signature and send them to you. Every time we do a transaction, we tell (essentially) everybody else that the bits now belong to you. The closest analogy to this – one that I used in my previous book – is the stone currency of the island of Yap in the South Pacific, as described by Milton Friedman (Friedman 1991). By Nigel Dodd Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, This is a transaction database shared by all nodes participating in the system. 25 But unlike credit and debit card transactions, where the bank or card company manages the ledger, Bitcoin ledgers consist of block chains. 26 See 27 For example, on April 15, 2013, an Asus laptop was available for 6.2271 BTC, which the website states was equivalent to US$629 (see 28 See “Bitcoin takes an important step toward becoming part of every web browser on the planet,” accessed May 10, 2013. 29 Around 70 percent of items sold on Silk Road are drugs; other items include erotica, books, and fake IDs. 30 See bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html. 31 See bitcoin/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto. 32 See 33 One version of Bitcoin malware used Skype to turn infected computers into “slaves” of a Bitcoin generator (see bitcoining). 34 The December 2013 crashes were linked to new Chinese government restrictions on Bitcoin transactions, see “China Bans Banks from Bitcoin Transactions,” Financial Times, December 5, 2013. China has the largest market in Bitcoins. Other major falls in Bitcoin’s value occurred from June 8 to 12, 2011 (when the price fell by 68 percent), on January 17, 2012 (36 percent), from August 17 to 19, 2012 (51 percent), between March 6 and 11, 2013 (33 percent), and on April 10, 2013 (61 percent). See Forbes’s “An illustrated history of Bitcoin crashes,” bitcoin-crashes/. 35 The total value of all Bitcoins in the world exceeded $1 billion for the first time in March 2013. 36 See Slate, “Fool’s Gold,” bitcoin_is_a_ponzi_scheme_the_internet_currency_will_collapse.html. 37 “ Bitcoin Is No Great Mystery,” see bitcoin-is-no-great-mystery.html, accessed April 15, 2013. 38 Sociologically, on the other hand, the image we have of the “average” Bitcoin user is rather predictable. According to a Bitcoin users’ survey that ran between February and April 2013 (with 1,087 responses), the “average” Bitcoin user is overwhelmingly male (95.2 percent) (for a discussion of Bitcoin and gender, see Scott 2014), 32.1 years old, libertarian or anarchocapitalist (44.3 percent), nonreligious (61.8 percent), with a full time job (44.7 percent), and is in a relationship (55.6 percent). This is one potential weakness of the system resulting from the hard limit on Bitcoin supply. The other failing—much more widely discussed—is an inevitable function of its success, that is to say, its proneness to bubbles and crashes. Since its launch, the Bitcoin network has grown rapidly to become the most widely used alternative money system. Various retailers of material goods, music download websites, game providers, gambling sites, software providers, and high-profile online businesses such as WordPress, Reddit, Namecheap, and Mega, accept Bitcoins. The bitcoinstore.com sells a wide range of consumer goods.27 There are Bitcoin gift cards, dedicated payment system and debit cards, and a series of exchanges (such as Bitcoin-Central and Bitcoin-24.com) in which Bitcoins can be traded for major currencies in real time. By Douglas Rushkoff Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Satoshi Nakamoto, “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” bitcoin.org, October 31, 2008. Pedro Franco, Understanding Bitcoin: Cryptography, Engineering and Economics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2014). Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies (Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, 2014). Franco, Understanding Bitcoin. Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin. Rob Wile, “The Chinese Are in Love with Bitcoin and It’s Driving the Digital Currency’s Prices into the Stratosphere,” businessinsider.com, October 29, 2013. Rebecca Grant, “A Single Bitcoin Was Worth $10 a Year Ago—Today It’s Worth $1,000,” venturebeat.com, November 27, 2013. Robert McMillan, “The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin’s $460 Million Disaster,” wired.com, March 3, 2014. It is addressing the problem of how people can transact securely without a central mediator and do so anonymously. And Bitcoin is most assuredly secure. For the record, the much-publicized bitcoin robberies and cyberattacks have been on some of the bitcoin exchanges and online wallet systems—one of them adapted from a gaming Web site that was never intended to secure banking records.36 Even so, they have nothing to do with the Bitcoin blockchain itself, which is, for all intents and purposes, impenetrable. Bitcoin’s failure to overcome our business culture’s bias for hoarding and scarcity may be a temporary setback, or it could prove to be a fundamental flaw in the way the system was designed. The Bitcoin blockchain generates an arbitrarily limited supply of bitcoins. It may have been meant to counteract what sometimes seems like the profligate pumping of money into the economy by central banks. This is a money system that works through protocols—digital handshakes between peers—instead of establishing security through central authorities. Bitcoin is based on a database known as the “blockchain.” The blockchain is a public ledger of every bitcoin transaction ever. It doesn’t sit on a server at a bank or in the basement of a credit-card company’s headquarters; it lives on the computers of everyone in the Bitcoin network. When bitcoins are transacted, an algorithm corresponding to that transaction is “published” to the blockchain. The algorithm is just a description of the transaction itself, as in “2 bitcoins came from A and went to B.” Instead of a list of users and their bitcoin balances, the ledger simply lists the transactions in chronological order. It doesn’t follow people, it follows the money. It’s not a record of how much you have as much as a record of where the money came from and where it is going to.30, 31 To get a transaction into the ledger, two users must first agree to the exchange. American Kingpin by Nick Bilton,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, And so, for a year, the idea sat on a shelf in Ross’s mind. That was, until now. Ross had come across a technology that had recently emerged called Bitcoin. It was being billed as a new form of digital cash that was, from the research he had done, completely untraceable. Anyone in the world could use it to buy and sell anything without leaving digital fingerprints behind. The people (or person) who had created this new technology were anonymous, but the idea was simple: While you needed dollars to buy things in America, pounds in England, yen in Japan, or rupees in India, this new Bitcoin currency was meant to be used all around the world and specifically on the Internet. And just like cash, it was untraceable. To get some Bitcoins, you could exchange them online in the same way you could go to the airport and exchange dollars for euros. And there, for sale on the Silk Road, were the magic mushrooms Ross had grown a few months earlier, listed for sale as if he were hawking a used bicycle or a box of Girl Scout cookies on Craigslist. He then explained how to buy Bitcoins, the currency needed to buy drugs on the site. It was like buying coins at a video arcade. You exchanged your cash for tokens, and then you got to play. Just as at an arcade, at the end of the day, no one knew who had used those tokens because they all looked the same. ( Bitcoin wasn’t just meant for illegal purchases, either; you could use the digital cash to buy things on dozens of legitimate Web sites around the world.) “Give me your credit card,” Ross said as he navigated to an online Bitcoin exchange, where Julia could interchange her real dollars for digital gold. They typed in her credit card information and watched as the page loaded. Unlike seizing some contraband at a port or orchestrating a controlled delivery in the street to arrest someone, online drugs were a true Wild West with no existing protocols. It took several layers of approval, numerous meetings, and copious paperwork before Jared was finally allowed to commence his binge-shopping on the Amazon of drugs. Then there was the challenge of buying the Bitcoins. He was allocated $1,001 for his shopping excursion. So he took the cash, deposited it in a bank, then went to a Bitcoin exchange Web site where he could swap the dollars for Bitcoins. It wasn’t as easy as picking up drugs with cash on the street or finding a used bicycle on Craigslist, but it was still surprisingly painless considering what he was buying. During his first expedition to the Silk Road, Jared had three goals. The first was to trace drugs back to their dealers. The second was to match listings on the Web site to actual physical drugs and packaging, enabling him to build a profile of what mail from the Silk Road looked like, as he had done with the khat back at Customs and Border Protection. By Arun Sundararajan Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, The right place to start is by understanding Bitcoin. Understanding Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Exchange In the simplest possible terms, bitcoin is a digital currency. (I refer to the currency using lowercase “b,” and the platform, technology, or ecosystem using uppercase “B.”) You can acquire bitcoin by exchanging it for your dollars, euros, or yen, by providing someone with a product or service that they pay you for in bitcoin, or by “mining” bitcoin (more on this later). Your acquisition and subsequent possession of this bitcoin exists as one or more entries in a public ledger (the blockchain) in which you are identified by a secure anonymized “key.” Each time you use your bitcoin, the new transaction is recorded as yet another entry in the ledger. A lot of the attention paid to Bitcoin has focused on its success in creating currency without a government backer, about how bitcoin value measured in traditional money fluctuates a lot over time (although its exchange rate has stabilized considerably in 2015), and perhaps also about the use of bitcoin for commerce that many governments consider illegal. A lot of the attention paid to Bitcoin has focused on its success in creating currency without a government backer, about how bitcoin value measured in traditional money fluctuates a lot over time (although its exchange rate has stabilized considerably in 2015), and perhaps also about the use of bitcoin for commerce that many governments consider illegal. Instead of rehashing those topics, I focus here on thinking about Bitcoin as one of many applications of a new set of enabling technologies. I also discuss two other related applications: OpenBazaar and La’Zooz. Through this discussion, some of the key elements of the economics and technology of decentralized peer-to-peer marketplaces will become more transparent. Bitcoin Many of the critical pieces of a decentralized peer-to-peer market are part of Bitcoin. Let’s say that you want to send your friend Clay digital money. Furthermore, a ledger that has to be distributed across every client can grow awfully large over time, and scalability of blockchain-based applications remains an open question. Payment systems like Bitcoin, because of the way they delay settlement, may need to be rebuilt to handle the real-time payments that credit cards and mobile payment systems like PayPal manage with ease today. Part of the solution to both of these challenges will come from the creation of a greater fraction of “off-the-book” transactions, but this creates a new layer of intermediation. Off-the-book transactions also create new risks. Some of you may recall Mt.Gox, the exchange that held its users’ bitcoin in its own centralized Bitcoin accounts while maintaining a parallel off-the-blockchain system of keeping track of which users had how much bitcoin. Mt.Gox ceased operations in 2014 following the 2013 loss of the equivalent of $450 million of its users’ bitcoin because of what appeared to be a hacker having gained access to its Bitcoin accounts. By Robin Chase Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Michael Carney, “GitHub CEO Explains Why the Company Took So Damn Long to Raise Venture Capital,” pando.com, June 20, 2013, 20. “Benevolent Dictator for Life,” Wikipedia, 21. “Crypto-Currency Market Capitalizations,” 22. “Who Controls the Bitcoin Network?,” Bitcoin website, bitcoin.org/en/faq#who-controls-the- bitcoin-network. Bitsmith, “Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine,” The Coinsman, August 11, 2014, www.thecoinsman.com/2014/08/ bitcoin/inside-chinese- bitcoin-mine. “Government as Impresario: Emergent Public Goods and Public Private Partnerships 2.0,” talk given by Nicholas Gruen as part of a luncheon series at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, January 14, 2014, 25. Some platforms are of little (or no?) value until they get big enough. Bitcoin figured out how to cross this chasm and how to finance this crossing. The size of the reward for publishing/mining declines over time, going from high to low. Cleverly, Bitcoin paid people who took the most risk—who participated in the beginning—more Bitcoins for mining than to people who did this same task later. Paying more early on attracts people when the platform has the least value. The reward structure effectively borrows value from the future (when an established Bitcoin currency will have value) to finance the infrastructure building of the nascent and risky idea (when there is very little value). This is genius. Lastly, because what the Bitcoin people have earned will only be valuable if the whole Bitcoin enterprise succeeds, these early participants have every incentive to spread the good word and do what they can to make sure that it does. All of the transactions on the public ledger are there for all to see, and open source. In the potentiality of block-chain visionaries, the most useful programs, contracts, and methods will be the ones that are most copied, eventually becoming standards. The Bitcoin.org website explains how this is accomplished with Bitcoin: Nobody owns the Bitcoin network. [It] is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world. While developers are improving the software, they can’t force a change in the Bitcoin protocol because all users are free to choose what software and version they use. In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.22 While the block-chain protocol has necessarily evolved over the last six years, the evolution is driven by consensus, with the most suitable and widely adopted changes being the ones that win out over the alternatives. The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory by Kariappa Bheemaiah,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Miners who do these two functions—verifying the transaction and recording it on the blockchain—are then rewarded with bitcoins for their effort. This is how bitcoins are “mined.” Since the number of bitcoins is fixed to 21 million, it is like mining the bitcoins out of a reservoir. Hence the term miner. Although these series of operations seem relatively straightforward, they include elements of cryptography, computer science, game theory, and classical economics. The above breakdown is certainly not enough to pierce the complexities of how blockchains work, but is portrays how this decentralized and distributed value exchange system works. More importantly, it helps us realize that the for the first time since the inception of banking, we now have a system to help us transact without the aid of banks. Just as TCP/IP led to the creation of more subject-specific protocols, the advent of bitcoin has led to the creation of other value exchange protocols. References Chapter 2 Table A-1 provides a list of books that offer technical and/or business application insights. All books have been referred to in the writing of this book Table A-1. Technical and business reference list Name Author Area of focus Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies Andreas Antonopoulos Technical book that gives readers an understanding of how bitcoin works. Useful for computer scientists and advanced readers. Understanding Bitcoin: Cryptography, Engineering and Economics Pedro Franco Technical book that gives readers an understanding of how bitcoin works and the economic implications of the technology. Useful for students, business persons, and advanced readers. Value Web Chris Skinner General book that offers a holistic view of how FinTech and Blockchain firms are using technology to create a new internet of value. While the purpose of the book it to shed more light on the implications of the widespread use of Blockchain technology, the growing diversity within the currency space cannot be fully excluded from the discussion. As the blockchain gains more traction in formal financial circles, its first manifestation in the form of Bitcoin is increasingly being excluded from the dialogue. This seems to be contrary to the symbiotic link between the two. What is more surprising is the fact that this tendency to separate bitcoin from blockchain is a repeat of what happened when the Internet first came into existence. As banks try to harness the power of the blockchain by creating private blockchains, we find ourselves witnessing the same execution of events as when private companies tried to create intranets instead of simply using the Internet. Whether you are a fan of the bitcoin or the blockchain or both, having a nuanced or biased view on the subject needs to be developed using the scientific method. By Pieter Hintjens Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, If a large attacker were to control more than half of the verification network, they could generate unlimited BitCoins and destroy the currency by inflation. It depends on conventional broadband, so is vulnerable to surveillance. BitCoin transactions are public and individual BitCoin holders' transactions can be identified. It depends on a 'digital wallet' held on a computer, which is vulnerable to malware attacks and physical seizure. The history of money on the Internet and the power of the banking industry suggest that BitCoin will come under serious attack in coming years. We can expect to see the same attacks that we've seen often before: Financial blockades, prosecutions, and technical attacks on BitCoin exchanges. Association of BitCoin users with terrorists and child pornographers. Surveillance of BitCoin transactions to break expectations of anonymity. Cut down one Napster, and a dozen spring up in its place. Better, the Spider calculates, to buy time and find a way to control BitCoin, and make a profit from it. BitCoin is a surprisingly strong model in some ways, yet it still has several vulnerabilities. It will depend on exchanges for converting BitCoin to other currencies until it gains (if it ever does) a sufficient internal market. BitCoin transactions -- the blockchain -- are essentially public, and it's been shown that you can tie transactions back to individual identities. Lastly, and most importantly, the whole system depends on a distributed network of 'miners,' who recalculate transactions, and in the process generate new BitCoin. BitCoin depends on its miners to remain honest. If an attacker controls 51% or more of the miners, they can generate bogus transactions and crash the currency. The same year that e-gold died, its successor popped up in the form of BitCoin, the first credible crypto-currency. While e-gold based its denomination on the tangible value of gold coins, BitCoin is backed by nothing more than mathematics. This has led people to accuse it of being a pyramid scheme, destined for collapse. BitCoin works by 'mining' new coins as a side effect of doing the cryptographic bookkeeping for other people, processing the so-called 'transaction chains.' In the beginning, when transaction chains were short, they were easy to process, and people could mine thousands of coins on their PCs. Today, as chains are long, it takes more effort to mine coins. Every year, the number of coins that can be mined falls, so at some point there will be no new BitCoins. The BitCoin design and open source software was written by a prudently anonymous team calling themselves 'Satoshi Nakamoto.' By Kenneth S Rogoff Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Another major concern under a Bitcoin currency standard (or any digital currency) is inflation. It is true that the supply of bitcoins has been capped at 21 million coins, a limit that is expected to be reached sometime in the twenty-second century. Some people worry that this cap will eventually imply deflation, if world growth continues but the supply of bitcoins is fixed. They should be much more worried about inflation than about deflation. Because Bitcoin does not have a monopoly on the underlying technology, imitators can appear, and indeed they already have. Over time, Bitcoin 1.0’s first-mover advantage may fade, especially if Bitcoin 2.0 or Bitcoin 3.0 offers a superior mechanism (e.g., much lower maintenance costs and more surefire anonymity). If so, the problem will be inflation, not deflation. Can the government really copy the new technologies to create a superior clearing mechanism for its own electronic currency? Already, markets are forming to exploit this capacity, for example, in applications surrounding Ethereum.4 That distributed-ledger technology could in theory someday produce a superior currency, however, hardly means that the world is already there in practice. One problem is that the value of Bitcoin 1.0 fluctuates wildly (figure 14.1), so it hardly fulfills the function of a stable store of value. In principle, it could become more stable if it gained more widespread monetary acceptance. Figure 14.2 shows that the price of gold in terms of dollars was much more stable under the gold standard, even in real (purchasing-power) terms. Whether this could happen without a government that aimed to stabilize the value of Bitcoin 1.0 is at best a conjecture. Figure 14.1: Market price of bitcoins (US dollars). Source: Blockchain.info. Figure 14.2: Real gold price (US dollars). Source: 1850–1920, National Mining Association; 1921–2015, Bloomberg. Another major concern under a Bitcoin currency standard (or any digital currency) is inflation. The basic idea, in a nutshell, is to create a system in which diverse private-sector individuals (or entities) are incentivized to maintain independent ledgers of transaction trees (or blockchains), and new transactions cannot clear the books without achieving a critical mass of third-party acceptance. A fair dose of encryption technology is also included, and in Bitcoin, for example, individuals are allowed to use aliases with passcode-protected accounts to make it difficult to determine their identities. A lot of truly fascinating science supports the different systems, and one can find many excellent treatments.2 Governments around the world have already begun regulating cryptocurrencies more aggressively. In the United States, Bitcoin wallets must now comply with anti-money-laundering rules, and the Internal Revenue Service has begun to issue rulings on how Bitcoin earnings should be taxed. The European Union, too, is in the process of intensifying its regulations. Where governments have the greatest leverage is in regulating how financial institutions interact with cryptocurrencies. By Mike Power Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, A new kind of currency is making official control of this area even harder. Bitcoin is an electronic cash system, produced using cryptography. It is a peer-to-peer currency, made by users, meaning that no central authority issues money or tracks transactions. For every legal bitcoin user, selling web design services or carrying out coding jobs for which they are paid in the currency, there are many more using bitcoins to buy drugs on the Silk Road. Bitcoin is today the preferred choice of hundreds of online drug dealers. You can buy bitcoins using cash or other currencies in hundreds of ways, with varying levels of anonymity. Using bitcoins can be, depending on how you use them, almost completely anonymous. Originally, bitcoins were produced by ‘miners’ – a figurative term for computer owners who donated their processor time to the project and were rewarded with coins for their efforts. Liberty Gold is a virtual metal-backed currency from Costa Rica, purchasable automatically from anonymous servers with Western Union cash payments, whereby participants swap the transaction number for invisible currencies which they can then swap into other currencies. You could for a short period in 2011 even buy bitcoin by SMS: users would buy a simcard from Poland, or Belgium, or one of a dozen other countries, charge it with cash, send a text and receive their coins to their handset. ‘Mixing’ services too, can tumble the coins in and out of thousands of other bitcoin transactions and accounts, making a dense web of mathematics even denser still. When most investigators can’t even understand the basics of encryption, the likelihood that they or a jury member will reach an understanding of bitcoin is minimal. And when most small-scale drug transactions are small, under £100, who’s watching? The answer, so far, is that no one has been busted using evidence from the bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin addresses, where you receive and store coins, are randomly generated strings of letters and numbers, and there’s no ID check system – and you can create another in moments. The system was then flooded with speculators, forcing MtGox to limit withdrawals to US$1,000 worth of bitcoins a day to stem the flow and prop up the dollar-value of the currency.6 Network analysts Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan of University College Dublin wrote a 2012 paper baldly titled ‘ Bitcoin is Not Anonymous’. In it they demonstrated what the high-tech coining community knew – that the blockchain recorded all transactions. Reid posted in a comment thread following the release of his paper, ‘You don’t get anonymity automatically from the system. A lot of people out there think you do.’7 But the determined user can retain anonymity easily enough in the US at least, by entering a bank and paying cash into an exchanger’s account, for bitcoins are now traded just as dollars and euros are. (They now have a value that is decided by the market. The total bitcoin market capitalization stood at £72 million in November 2012 – with around 10 million coins valued by the secondary market at around £7.50 each.). The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks by Ann Pettifor,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, It helps create activity – artistic, scientific, practical or therapeutic. The bitcoin mania Bitcoins have introduced millions of people to a currency that appeared from nowhere and is, apparently, ‘cryptographic proof’. Whereas private banks can create money by a stroke of the keyboard, the creation of bitcoins involves vast amounts of computer processing power. This power is capable of deploying a complicated algorithm that approximates the effort of ‘mining’ coins.24 The bitcoins so mined have become the new gold and bit-coiners the new goldbugs. This new currency (which claims to be a commodity) is a form of peer-to-peer exchange. Its life began in the murky world of Silk Road, an online black market on the deep web, and has generated a great deal of excitement. It was created by an unknown computer scientist – the first bitcoin miner. It is now used for international payments, but also for speculative purposes. Like other virtual currencies, bitcoin has theoretical roots in the Austrian school of economics. Its advocates are keen followers of Friedrich von Hayek, and cite as inspiration his book, Denationalisation of Money, in which he calls for the production, distribution and management of money to be left to the ‘invisible hand’, so as to end the oversight of regulatory democracy.25 There are two things striking about this new currency. First, its creators (who are computer programmers) have apparently ensured that there can never be more than 21 million coins in existence. (Although bitcoins can be divided into smaller units: the millibitcoin, microbitcoin and satoshi. Satoshi is the smallest amount, representing 0.00000001 bitcoin, one hundred millionth of a bitcoin.) Bitcoin is therefore like gold: its value lies in its scarcity. One commentator notes that ‘bitcoin was conceived as a currency that did not require any trust between its users’.26 Equally, its scarcity means that, unlike the endless and myriad social and economic relationships created by credit, the capacity of bitcoin to generate economic activity is limited (to 21 million coins). The currency’s architects deliberately limited the amount of bitcoins in order ostensibly to prevent inflation. In reality, the purpose is to ratchet up the value of bitcoins, most of which are owned by originators of the scheme. In this sense, bitcoin miners are no different from goldbugs talking up the value of of a finite quantity of gold, from tulip growers talking up the price of rare tulips in the seventeenth century, or from Bernard Madoff talking up his fraudulent Ponzi scheme. However, some have hyped up the technology used by bitcoin – blockchain, a distributed database or ledger – and argued that it could revolutionise the distribution of wealth and provide transparent accounts of transactions. By Matt Ridley Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Then, on 18 August 2008, a month before the financial crisis broke in earnest, a new domain name was registered anonymously: bitcoin.org. Two weeks later, somebody with the user name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’ posted a nine-page paper outlining an idea for a peer-to-peer electronic cash system called bitcoin. The bitcoin system went live a few months later, on the day the British government reported its second bailout of the banks, an event referred to by Satoshi, who quoted a headline from The Times in his announcement of bitcoin’s birth. A month later Satoshi announced on the Peer-to-Peer Foundation website: ‘I’ve developed a new open source P2P e-cash system called Bitcoin. It’s completely decentralised, with no central server or trusted parties, because everything is based on crypto proof instead of trust. Give it a try, or take a look at the screenshots and design paper.’ His motivation was clear. Bitcoin was designed to maintain its value without any precious-metal backing, without any centralised issuer, and without any intrinsic value. The price shot up in the wake of the financial crisis in Cyprus in 2013, when private depositors woke up to the fact that their conventional money was not safe in banks, because the government of Cyprus announced that it would seize over 40 per cent of all savings over $100,000. As investors around the world digested the arbitrary power of governments, bitcoin’s price rose from about $120 in September 2013 to almost $1,200 in December of that year. It has since slowly declined. At the time of writing, about $6 billion worth of money is held in bitcoins. But it is still a long way from taking over as the world’s reserve currency. It does not yet work as a unit of account. The volatility and bubble-like behaviour of bitcoins are not encouraging for a world reserve currency, and nor is its relatively small supply. It is also still not easy to get many traders, even online, to accept bitcoins. The first bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, collapsed in a pile of fraud. Moreover, bitcoins have proved very popular with drug dealers, especially via an online exchange called Silk Road. It is hard to get your head around how bitcoin works. One of the pithiest explanations I have come across is in a recent launch by Ethereum, a business built to follow up on bitcoin: ‘The innovation provided by Satoshi is the idea of combining a very simple decentralised consensus protocol, based on nodes combining transactions into a “block” every ten minutes, creating an ever-growing blockchain, with proof of work as a mechanism through which nodes gain the right to participate in the system.’ If you think that’s hard to understand, you are not alone. I have yet to come across a description of blockchain technology in English, as opposed to mathematics, that is really clear. In outline, I know that bitcoin is effectively a public ledger – a compendium of transactions, stored by bitcoin users all over the world. Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World by Jamie Bartlett,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Afghanistan—and then a similar experience working in Libya with rebels fighting Gaddafi—turned her into a fully committed anarchist who thought state power was the root of most of the world’s problems.17 In 2013 a former US military employee told her about bitcoin, and she immediately thought that it was a way to circumnavigate the state entirely. Bitcoin, which was invented in 2009, is digital cash, just a string of numbers. Anyone can download a bitcoin wallet or QR code on to their computer or phone, buy bitcoins with traditional currency from a currency exchange and use them to buy or sell a growing number of products and services as easily as sending an email. Transactions are secure, fast and free, with no central authority controlling value or supply, and no middlemen taking a slice. You don’t even have to give your real name to start up an account. Bitcoin wrestles control of the money supply away from the state. There is a cap on the total number of bitcoins that can ever be produced: 21 million. New bitcoins are not minted by any central authority. New bitcoins are not minted by any central authority. Instead, anyone who dedicates their computing power to verifying the transactions competes to earn a very small number of new bitcoins each time they do so (this is called ‘mining’). As more bitcoins are created (approximately 14 million have been created so far), the remaining bitcoins require more computing power to mine.* The last bitcoin is expected to be mined around 2140. It wasn’t bitcoin itself that excited Susanne, but the way bitcoin stored information. It works because a copy of every transaction between users is stored on a public, chronologically ordered database, called the ‘blockchain’.18 A copy of that database is hosted on thousands of computers, and new transactions can only be added to that database once they’ve been verified by other computers that check them. Many people assume bitcoin to be completely decentralised, but if a miner, or a group of miners, controlled over half the computing power that works on verifying the transaction, it could feasibly force a change on the blockchain transaction list however it wished, create a fork of the blockchain, and all the other computers would start to work on the new version (the protocol is written so that all computers work from the longest blockchain). In bitcoin, a few large pools can register most of the new bitcoin blocks, which could push them to the 51 per cent threshold for mining power: which could result in a takeover. Indeed, in 2014 one mining rig took over 51 per cent of bitcoin’s hashing power for twelve straight hours. One of bitcoin’s goals was to be a free system, independent of anyone’s control. With small pools, no one has this kind of control. There is also an environmental problem. With no other way to establish whether miners are bona fide, the bitcoin architecture forces them to do a lot of hard computing; this ‘proof of work’, without which there can be no reward, insures that all concerned have skin in the game. By Marc Goodman Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, The system is designed to ensure no more than twenty-one million Bitcoins are ever generated, thereby preventing a central authority from flooding the market with new Bitcoins. Most people purchase Bitcoins on third-party exchanges with traditional currencies, such as dollars or euros, or with credit cards. The exchange rates against the dollar for Bitcoin fluctuate wildly and have ranged from fifty cents per coin around the time of its introduction to over $1,240 in November 2013. People can send Bitcoins to each other using computers or mobile apps, where coins are stored in “digital wallets.” Bitcoins can be directly exchanged between users anywhere in the world using unique alphanumeric identifiers, akin to e-mail addresses, and there are no transaction fees. Anytime a purchase takes place, it is recorded in a public ledger known as the “blockchain,” which ensures no duplicate transactions are permitted. Bitcoin is the world’s largest crypto currency, so-called because it uses “cryptography to regulate the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities.”,” io9, March 26, 2012. 47 “I will sell my kidney”: Dan Bilefsky, “Black Market for Body Parts Spreads in Europe,” New York Times, June 28, 2012. 48 “Donate a kidney”: Denis Campbell and Nicola Davison, “Illegal Kidney Trade Booms as New Organ Is ‘Sold Every Hour,’ ” Guardian, May 27, 2012. 49 At least one seventeen-year-old: “9 on Trial in China over Teenager’s Sale of Kidney for iPad and iPhone,” CNN, Aug. 50 In a deeply disturbing report: European Cybercrime Centre, “Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Online,” Oct. 51 Organized criminal networks: Paul Gallagher, “Live Streamed Videos of Abuse and Pay-per-View Child Rape Among ‘Disturbing’ Cybercrime Trends, Europol Report Reveals,” Independent, Oct. 16, 2013; Paul Peachey, “Number of UK Paedophiles ‘Live-Streaming’ Child Abuse Films Soars, Warns CEOP,” Independent, July 1, 2013. 52 In one incident: Ann Cahill, “New Age of Cybercrime: Live Child Rapes, Sextortion, and Advanced Malware,” Irish Examiner, Feb. 53 The system is designed: “How Does Bitcoin Work?,” Economist, April 11, 2013. 54 Bitcoin is the world’s largest: Nick Farrell, “Understanding Bitcoin and Crypto Currency,” Tech Radar, April 7, 2014. 55 Because Bitcoin can be spent: Joshua Brustein, “ Bitcoin May Not Be So Anonymous, After All,” Bloomberg Businessweek, Aug. 56 There are now more than seventy: Alan Yu, “How Virtual Currency Could Make It Easier to Move Money,” NPR.org, Jan. 57 Hackers have been able to steal: Robin Sidel, Eleanor Warnock, and Takashi Mochizuki, “Almost Half a Billion Worth of Bitcoins Vanish,” Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2014. 58 Beyond crypto currencies: Marc Santora, William K. Rashbaum, and Nicole Perlroth, “Liberty Reserve Operators Accused of Money Laundering,” New York Times, May 28, 2013. 59 Known as the “PayPal”: United States Attorney’s Office of Southern New York, “Liberty Reserve Information Technology Manager Pleads Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court,” United States Department of Justice press release, Sept. 60 The popularity of Darkcoin: Andy Greenberg, “Darkcoin, the Shadowy Cousin of Bitcoin, Is Booming,” Wired, May 21, 2014. 61 Operating under the motto: Andy Greenberg, “ ‘Dark Wallet’ Is About to Make Bitcoin Money Laundering Easier Than Ever,” Wired, April 29, 2014. 62 One such CaaS company: James Vincent, “Irish Man Arrested as ‘the Largest Facilitator of Child Porn on the Planet,’ ” Independent, Aug. 63 Hundreds of crime-trepreneur purveyors: Kevin Poulsen, “FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack,” Wired, Sept. 64 The trend is accelerating: Solutionary, an NTT Group Security Company, Security Engineering Research Team (SERT) Quarterly Threat Intelligence Report, 2013, 8, 65 For example, the hackers: Ibid. 66 Today, using the distributed computing power: “Cybercriminals Today Mirror Legitimate Business Processes,” 4. 67 This means that anyone: Simson Garfinkel, “The Criminal Cloud,” MIT Technology Review, Oct. 68 “private organisation”: Misha Glenny, DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops, and You (New York: Knopf, 2011), 203. 69 China’s Hidden Lynx: Danny Yadron, “Symantec Fingers Most Advanced Chinese Hacker Group,” Digits (blog), Wall Street Journal, Sept. 70 Off duty, however: Kim Zetter, “State-Sponsored Hacker Gang Has a Side Gig in Fraud,” Wired, Sept. 71 Staffed 24/7: Kim Zetter, “Cops Pull Plug on Rent-a-Fraudster Service for Bank Thieves,” Wired, April 19, 2010. 72 As a result, less skilled criminals: Ablon, Libicki, and Golay, “Markets for Cybercrime Tools and Stolen Data,” 4. 73 Vendors offer one-stop shopping: Forward-Looking Threat Research Team, “Deepweb and Cybercrime,” 9; Ablon, Libicki, and Golay, “Markets for Cybercrime Tools and Stolen Data,” 4. 214 As an example: Taylor Armerding, “Dark Web: An Ever-More-Comfortable Haven for Cyber Criminals,” CSO Online, March 28, 2014. 74 Over the years: Donna Leinwand Leger and Anna Arutunyan, “How the Feds Brought Down a Notorious Russian Hacker,” USA Today, March 5, 2014. 75 When they did: Dan Raywood, “New Version of Bugat Trojan Was Payload in LinkedIn Spam and Not Zeus,” SC Magazine UK, Oct. 76 Once it found it: Robert McMillan, “New Russian Botnet Tries to Kill Rival,” Computerworld, Feb. 77 Like its rival Zeus: Kurt Eichenwald, “The $500,000,000 Cyber-Heist,” Newsweek, March 13, 2014. 78 The tool, perhaps one of the world’s most popular: Gregory J.., a trend that is accelerating thanks to new forms of illicit finance that greatly facilitate its clandestine business operations. Dark Coins Bitcoin’s got its issues. But it is not competing with perfection. DAN KAMINSKY, SECURITY RESEARCHER Technology is enabling new forms of money, and the growing digital economy holds great promise to provide new financial tools, especially to the world’s poor and unbanked. These emerging virtual currencies are often anonymous and none have received quite as much press as Bitcoin, a decentralized peer-to-peer digital form of money. Bitcoins were invented in 2009 by a mysterious person (or group of people) using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto, and the coins are created or “mined” by solving increasingly difficult mathematical equations, requiring extensive computing power. The system is designed to ensure no more than twenty-one million Bitcoins are ever generated, thereby preventing a central authority from flooding the market with new Bitcoins. By Parmy Olson Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Another more direct route, which Topiary often used, was to simply transfer money between a few different Bitcoin addresses: Bitcoin address 1 → Bitcoin address 2 → Bitcoin address 3 → Liberty Reserve (a Costa Rican payment processor) account → Bitcoin address 4 → Bitcoin address 5 → second Liberty Reserve account → PayPal account → bank account. If even the hint of a thought occurred to him that there weren’t enough transfers, he would add several more paths. Then on Monday, June 6, Topiary checked the LulzSec Bitcoin account. Holy shit, he thought. He was looking at a single, anonymous donation of four hundred Bitcoins, worth approximately $7,800. It was more money than Topiary had ever had in his life. He went straight into the core group’s secure chat room. “WHAT THE FUCK guys?!” he said, then pasted the Bitcoin details. “NO WAY,” said AVunit. Topiary started requesting donations for LulzSec and used Twitter and Pastebin to provide the thirty-one-digit number that acted as the group’s new Bitcoin address. Anyone could anonymously donate to their anonymous account if he converted money into the Bitcoin currency and made a transfer. Bitcoin was a digital currency that used peer-to-peer networking to make anonymous payments. It became increasingly popular around the same time LulzSec started hacking. By May, the currency’s value was up by a dollar from where it had been at the start of the year, to $8.70. A few days after soliciting donations, Topiary jokingly thanked a “mysterious benefactor who sent us 0.02 BitCoins. Your kindness will be used to fund terror of the highest quality.” He used Twitter to drop hints about whom LulzSec would hit next. They started private messaging Topiary with their unique Bitcoin addresses so he could send them their shares. Topiary had no intention of keeping quiet about the money or cutting a bigger slice for himself. Everyone was funneling the money through various accounts to keep it from being traced. Who knew if the donation had come from the Feds or opportunistic military white hats? “Guys be safe with the Bitcoins please,” said AVunit. “Let it flow through a few gateways.Use one bit to get out of financial trouble and then sit on the rest.” “Okay, beginning the sends,” Topiary said. “All of you are now $1,000 richer.” “Excuse me while I light up a victory cigar,” said Pwnsauce. “I’m just going to stare at it,” said Kayla. “Let it grow as Bitcoin progresses.” So volatile and popular was the value of the Bitcoin crypto currency that by the following day one Bitcoin had risen to $26 in value, making their big donation worth $11,000. By Brett King Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Instead of enabling merchants to process credit card payments from Visa or MasterCard, Bitcoin bypasses the system entirely in favour of device-to-device transactions using near-field communications technology. Bitcoin’s new currency doesn’t require a third-party processor or a plug-in dongle. Because of this, Bitcoin can afford to charge users much less per transaction. At the moment, the average Bitcoin transaction fee is 0.99 per cent, while Square and PayPal’s processing apps charge 2.75 per cent and 2.7 per cent per swipe of your credit card. Like any currency, Bitcoins can also be exchanged for US dollars through a processing service. As of 11 April 2011, the going rate was round $4.90 per Bitcoin. In Africa, where inflation is out of control, many merchants are choosing to hang on to their Bitcoins so that they don’t have to push around wheelbarrows full of $100-billion notes. They’re looking at a rival currency to hold their assets, and it isn’t always the US dollar or euro. There’s been a lot of discussion around the fact that Bitcoin’s anonymity enables the facilitation of illegal activities, money laundering and the like. Admittedly it is well suited to such abuse only because it is a totally open and community-regulated currency. However, suspicious transactions will still get flagged by the traditional banking system when cash is put into or taken out of the Bitcoin economy. So what’s holding Bitcoin back from shaking up the global economy and becoming a true rival currency, especially in the digital payments space? Security is the main concern. Unlike your credit card or existing bank accounts in the system, Bitcoin currently provides no protection or compensation in the event of fraud. Recently, a hacker managed to raid several Bitcoin accounts around the world and got away with $228,845.20 While current technology would enable tracking of IP activity around trades and the flow of Bitcoins, in the current instance of fraud, the weak link was the Bitcoin exchange, which didn’t have the monitoring tools in place to track the hack. “Increasingly, these virtual economies are leading to real money trades,” notes Hunter, one of a handful of academics closely following this trend. Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. It uses peer-to-peer technology to operate, with no central authority, managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is also the name of the open-source software that enables the use of this innovative virtual currency. Over the past few years, the peer-to-peer currency it has created has gained a surprising foothold in the global market. There are now multiple Bitcoin-processing apps for Android and the iPhone, as well as an online payment system similar to PayPal. Instead of enabling merchants to process credit card payments from Visa or MasterCard, Bitcoin bypasses the system entirely in favour of device-to-device transactions using near-field communications technology. By Tom Wainwright Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, The effect is to make a user’s web-browsing history as good as untraceable, which is handy if you are a political dissident, spy, investigative journalist—or drug dealer. Then there is the problem of how to pay. For this, there is Bitcoin. The world’s foremost digital currency system, Bitcoin works without a central bank, instead relying on networks of computers to generate new “coins” by performing complex mathematical operations in a process known as mining. Setting up a Bitcoin account is a bit of a hassle, but not particularly complicated and, like the TOR browser, the currency is perfectly legal to use. Bitcoin’s value is ludicrously volatile: its price shot up from less than $15 at the beginning of 2013 to nearly $1,000 in November of that year, before falling back to $300 by the end of 2014. But online shoppers can live with this because, like TOR, Bitcoin provides them with a cloak of anonymity. The combination of untraceable browsing and anonymous payments has enabled an online criminal market to flourish. Others, apparently including Evolution, vanish when the people running them decide to pull a fast one. (Evolution’s managers are thought to have made off with some $15 million in Bitcoin payments kept in escrow when the site mysteriously vanished in 2015.) And all such sites depend on Bitcoin and TOR, both of which could be pulled from under their feet if the governments of the world decided to ban them. There is no sign of that for now. Germany’s finance ministry has recognized Bitcoin as a currency, meaning its users can be taxed. In the United States, the Winklevoss twins, the nearly men of the dotcom boom who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg had stolen the idea for Facebook from them, have poured money into creating a Bitcoin exchange. Most democratic governments have so far been reluctant to outlaw the TOR browser, on the basis that it has legitimate uses as well as nefarious ones. One academic study of the goods for sale on the original Silk Road estimated that about one-fifth of all its listings were aimed at dealers, and that these “business-to-business” transactions accounted for between 31 percent and 45 percent of the site’s trades by value.3 If that is the case, even drug users who buy their supplies “offline,” from a dealer or friend, may well be buying a product that was traded online at an earlier stage in the supply chain. Measuring the total value of the online drug economy is hard, not least because Bitcoin’s price is so volatile. The FBI originally estimated that the Silk Road had done $1.2 billion in business during its two and one-half years online. But it later scaled down this rough calculation: the estimate had been made when Bitcoin’s value was near its peak, whereas much of the Silk Road’s business was done when the digital currency was less valuable. The FBI did a revised estimate, using the currency’s varying value at the time that each different trade was made, and came up with the much lower figure of $200 million. By Jamie Bartlett Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,, A decentralised world that is both private and impossible to censor. Back in 2009, in an obscure cryptography chat forum, a mysterious man called Satoshi Nakamoto invented the crypto-currency Bitcoin.fn3 It turns out the real genius of Bitcoin was not the currency at all, but the way that it works. Bitcoin creates an immutable, unchangeable public copy of every transaction ever made by its users, which is hosted and verified by every computer that downloads the software. This public copy is called the ‘blockchain’. Pretty soon, enthusiasts figured out that the blockchain system could be used for anything. Armed with 30,000 Bitcoins (around $12 million) of crowdfunded support, the Ethereum project is dedicated to creating a new, blockchain-operated internet. Ethereum’s developers hope the system will herald a revolution in the way we use the net – allowing us to do everything online directly with each other, not through the big companies that currently mediate our online interaction and whom we have little choice but to trust with our data. The first thing that strikes you on signing up on these market sites is how eerily familiar they all feel – they’re just like eBay or Amazon. Every one of the thousands of products on offer has a detailed description, a photograph and a price. All products and vendors are rated out of five by buyers, who also provide detailed written feedback. There are customer service buttons and shopping carts and free-package-and-delivery and one-off specials. I, like thousands of others, placed an order; paid with bitcoin; and waited for my product to arrive in the post. Which it did, bang on time. The hardest thing is deciding what to buy, since there is an unbelievable choice of products on offer. The Silk Road 2.0 (which was closed by the FBI and other police forces in late 2014) was an anonymous market for anything, with few exceptions, which meant wares stretched from the mundane to the bizarre: listings I spotted on one visit included a complete box-set of The Sopranos and a hundred-dollar Marine Depot Aquarium Supplies voucher. I became the moderator of an infamous trolling group and spent weeks in forums dedicated to cutting, starving or killing yourself. I explored the labyrinthine world of Tor Hidden Services in search of drugs, and to study child pornography networks. I witnessed online wars between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists on popular social media sites, and signed up to the latest porn channels to examine current trends in home-made erotica. I visited a Barcelona squat with anarchist Bitcoin programmers, run-down working men’s clubs to speak to extreme nationalists, and a messy bedroom to observe three girls make a small fortune performing sexually explicit acts on camera to thousands of viewers. By exploring and comparing these worlds, I also hoped to answer a difficult question: do the features of anonymity and connectivity free the darker sides of our nature? And if so, how? The Dark Net is not an effort to weigh up the pros and cons of the internet. By Joshua Cooper Ramo Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Today, the most talked-about model for an all-digital currency is Bitcoin, a system based on the algorithmic creation of money mined from computation much as gold was once mined from the hills of California. Bitcoin’s most appealing property is that it is not controlled by any government. It is meant to be free from political pressures, from the influence of central bankers, and from the risk of national default. If you’re an Indonesian farmer or an Estonian cabdriver, the thinking goes, better to store your money in BTC than local cash. Bitcoin is easy to keep and transmit, and Bitcoin transactions can be made anonymously—which has attracted drug lords and tax evaders and bred a Bitcoin-fueled black-market economy too. Bitcoin or something like it will have a role in our future, but another kind of digital currency will appear too, and it will form itself into a kind of gateland. Bitcoin or something like it will have a role in our future, but another kind of digital currency will appear too, and it will form itself into a kind of gateland. Instead of being anonymous, backed only by algorithms, and unlinked to a government, as Bitcoin is, this currency will be built for reliability, not mystery. Bitcoin transactions are cloaked in secrecy; this new currency will be transparent, traceable. Bitcoin is free from government interference; this digital currency will be backed by a major government and tied intimately into policy and credit. Imagine that the United States began to issue Bitdollars—traceable, controllable digital currency backed by the security of America’s economic position. While many people might still prefer Bitcoins (or Bitrubles or Bityuan), the answer to the question What’s your safety currency? Won’t change much just because you put the prefix “Bit” in front of it. If you look at a kid with a phone and think strong, you have a feeling for the potential of a network. If you look at an angry, barely educated terrorist wannabe and think junior varsity, you don’t. And, as a result, you may be about to have a very unpleasant surprise. A friend who controls the largest secure Bitcoin vault in the world put it to me once this way: “Platforms mattered once; now it is protocols.” His point was that the pipes and rules connecting the varied systems of our world fundamentally affect the distribution of power. The rules of the Bitcoin block chain or the implications of an addressing protocol such as IPv6 reveal something about how we’ll all connect in the future. They are examples of how the pulling pressure of networks will become operational. Try this: Ball up your right hand into a fist. Take your left hand and open the fingers wide. By Kevin Kelly Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, sizable bag rental business: Emily Hamlin Smith, “Where to Rent Designer Handbags, Clothes, Accessories and More,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 12, 2012. Phone app, such as M-Pesa: Murithi Mutiga, “Kenya’s Banking Revolution Lights a Fire,” New York Times, January 20, 2014. Has $3 billion in circulation: “ Bitcoin Network,” Bitcoin Charts, accessed June 24, 2015. 100,000 vendors accepting the coins: Wouter Vonk, “ Bitcoin and BitPay in 2014,” BitPay blog, February 4, 2015. Six times an hour: Colin Dean, “How Many Bitcoin Are Mined Per Day?,” Bitcoin Stack Exchange, March 28, 2013. Knowledge-Based Trust: Hal Hodson, “Google Wants to Rank Websites Based on Facts Not Links,” New Scientist, February 28, 2015. Tools are extensions of our selves: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). And some admirable characters championing human rights were looking for a money system that would work outside of corrupt or repressive governments, or in places of no governance at all. What they together came up with is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a fully decentralized, distributed currency that does not need a central bank for its accuracy, enforcement, or regulation. Since it was launched in 2009, the currency has $3 billion in circulation and 100,000 vendors accepting the coins as payment. Bitcoin may be most famous for its anonymity and the black markets it fueled. But forget the anonymity; it’s a distraction. The most important innovation in Bitcoin is its “blockchain,” the mathematical technology that powers it. The blockchain is a radical invention that can decentralize many other systems beyond money. When I send you one U.S. Dollar via a credit card or PayPal account, a central bank has to verify that transaction; at the very least it must confirm I had a dollar to send you. When I send you one U.S. Dollar via a credit card or PayPal account, a central bank has to verify that transaction; at the very least it must confirm I had a dollar to send you. When I send you one bitcoin, no central intermediary is involved. Our transaction is posted in a public ledger—called a blockchain—that is distributed to all other bitcoin owners in the world. This shared database contains a long “chain” of the transaction history of all existing bitcoins and who owns them. Every transaction is open to inspection by anyone. That completeness is pretty crazy; it’s like every person with a dollar having the complete history of all dollar bills as they move around the world. Six times an hour this open distributed database of coins is updated with all the new transactions of bitcoins; a new transaction like ours must be mathematically confirmed by multiple other owners before it is accepted as legitimate. By David Wolman Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, It may be tempting to belittle alternative currencies as limited, unrealistic, or maybe a little hippie-ish, but they do work, so long as they don’t run into a counterfeiting problem, and so long as the supply of this money is intelligently controlled so as to avoid inflation (or worse). That’s why Bitcoin’s algorithmic approach to steering the money supply is captivating, although wild fluctuations in its value in the summer of 2011 suggest to some that The Economist is correct: “ Bitcoin is technically sophisticated. As a monetary system, it looks primitive.”7 Alternative currencies are at a disadvantage due to their limited connection to the banking system. Credit is money too, after all, but there aren’t really loans out there denominated in Ven or Bitcoin, let alone Kilowatt Cards. Nevertheless, nothing but perception makes the issuing authority of the U.S. Government more legitimate than the Ithaca HOURs Circulation Committee. Projects like Hub Culture, Bitcoin, and Superfluid are trying to blend the interconnectivity of social networks with alternative currency models (although who knows if they’ll still be around by the time you read this). At Superfluid, users trade in Quids, which, as the website explains, are not dollars. “They’re placeholders for favors.” Hub Culture’s currency, Ven, is an attempt to bridge the divide between virtual currencies and real-world goods and services. People in the network transact in the “local” currency, which is priced from a basket of major sovereign currencies, commodities, and carbon futures. Your Ven can be exchanged for one of the major national currencies based on the same floating exchange rates that govern the value of world currencies against one another. Bitcoin has captured peoples’ imaginations because the money supply is determined by an algorithm, not bureaucrats or economists, and there is a cap to the number of Bitcoins that can be created: 21 million. Bitcoin has captured peoples’ imaginations because the money supply is determined by an algorithm, not bureaucrats or economists, and there is a cap to the number of Bitcoins that can be created: 21 million. Two related experiments are the Wuffie Bank and Serios. Wuffie has tried to set up a currency based on reputation, as determined by an algorithm that measures the influence we have on others via our social networks. Serios is a currency of attention, based on the idea that in the age of information overload, an incoming e-mail loaded with 100 Serios is of more value than one loaded with just five Serios. Or think about the “Like” button on Facebook: when someone clicks this button on an article, product, or online video, she is assigning a tiny additional value that wasn’t there before.5 In the summer of 2011, the publishers of Longshot magazine decided that instead of making readers use a conventional paywall, they would ask for payment in U.S. Dollars or by sharing the site with others via social media. By Steve Sammartino Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, The ratio is still on the money, even today, which is something we can’t claim for state-backed or fiat currency because none of the fiat currencies in the world are backed by the gold standard any more. A new globally networked commercial economy needs a currency to match. Step forward crypto currencies such as bitcoin, which are the next evolution in how we trade. Bitcoin Bitcoin was the first fully implemented and distributed crypto currency. It works in much the same way as other emerging crypto currencies. Crypto currencies are simply decentralised electronic cash systems. The ‘money’ is created by using peer-to-peer networking, digital signatures and cryptography to generate a currency. Bitcoins are mined out of a digital network by computers plugged into a system trying to figure out a 64-digit code that unlocks 50 bitcoins at a time. The money, or bitcoins, is generally traded within the system by using specific peer-to-peer software. It’s a lot like BitTorrent client software. It’s a lot like BitTorrent client software. All transactions are stored on a publicly distributed database so that the record of transaction is with everyone plugged into the system, rather than in a central storage location. It creates a form of decentralised stability and control in transactions, although the currency itself is highly volatile. A key difference with bitcoin is that the owner of each bitcoin stash is anonymous. The major advantages of bitcoin There’s a cap on the amount that will ever be in circulation (21 million) so it can’t be devalued by inserting more into the economy. There’s no centralised control agency that can destabilise the currency through its economic systems. It’s pan global and not controlled by a government (like gold). It’s digitally native and suits the future of commerce. It can transfer across borders without financial interruptions and fee gouging by existing finance systems. Yes, banks don’t own currency, but the reason crypto currencies such as bitcoin are emerging is because of the banks themselves. Their opportunistic fee-taking is a counter move to the lower cost transaction (of all things) world we’re moving towards. Taking advantage of the system they feed off enables new systems to emerge. Banks haven’t provided simplified systems for modern-day digital trade and the net result is that this will eat into one of their revenue streams, another hardly noticeable leak in the industry bucket. It’s a form of system hacking, if you like. Unstable yet permanent Yes, bitcoin and crypto currencies are unstable and risky, but they’re in many ways no less stable than other stores of money. While bitcoin fluctuates wildly, its overriding direction is for more users, more traders who accept it and importantly its increasing value on the long-term trajectory. By Julia Angwin Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, For instance, if I created: “How Spamgourmet Works,” So I started using: MaskMe, Abine, Inc., I hoped to buy bitcoins: “FAQ— Bitcoin,” accessed August 21, 2013, bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_get_ bitcoins.3F. Bitcoins can be used on: Adrian Chen, “The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable,” Kotaku.com, June 1, 2011, In May 2013, Kashmir Hill: Kashmir Hill, “Living on Bitcoin for a Week: The Journey Begins,” Forbes.com, May 1, 2013, bitcoin-for-a-week-the-journey-begins/. A digital cash start-up, E-gold: United States Department of Justice, “Digital Currency E-Gold Indicted for Money Laundering and Illegal Money Transmitting,” press release, April 27, 2007, I decided to try to find a more anonymous currency. I hoped to buy bitcoins, a virtual digital currency that was all the rage in the hacker community. But I couldn’t find a place that would let me buy bitcoins with a credit card. They all wanted my bank account number or a wire transfer—apparently because people often call their credit card company complaining that they didn’t receive their virtual coins. Bitcoins can be used on online “black markets” that can sell drugs and weapons. However, some brick-and-mortar businesses have started accepting bitcoins. In May 2013, Kashmir Hill, a reporter for Forbes, lived for a week only on bitcoins—subsisting mostly via a food delivery service in San Francisco that accepted the currency. However, all Bitcoin transactions are logged and publicly viewable. People’s names are not attached to their transactions, but a determined investigator could likely identify people behind certain Bitcoin transactions. People’s names are not attached to their transactions, but a determined investigator could likely identify people behind certain Bitcoin transactions. This was not the anonymity I was seeking. * * * The deeper I looked at anonymous digital transactions, the less I liked them. They seemed to be havens for criminals. In 2007, a digital cash start-up, E-gold, was charged with money laundering. The indictment said the company knew that its services were used by identity thieves, child pornographers, and other criminals. The following year the company and its owners pleaded guilty to money laundering. And in 2013, federal prosecutors shut down the anonymous online currency exchange Liberty Reserve, charging that it was a $6 billion money-laundering operation for child pornographers and other criminals. By Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Quicken and Quickbooks have both had a major impact on traditional accounting firms. Now, similar to Mint for personal finance, Wave Accounting offers 100-percent-free small business accounting, although its real business model is to mine the data buried within those transactions. A little further out, the Bitcoin phenomenon continues to unfold. The smartest five VCs we know are all building or investing in between fifteen and twenty Bitcoin companies each. These investments could prove to be unimaginably disruptive. In fact, Salim believes Bitcoin to be the single biggest technology-enabler of the above list. Leading Bitcoin investor Brock Pierce frames it thusly: While the Internet is a medium for open communication—on top of which a layer of secure transactions has been attempted with great difficulty—the block chain itself is an ultra-low-cost infrastructure of secure, guaranteed transactions over which all manner of applications can be laid (currency being just one of them). CFO – Chief Financial Officer The finance function, although historically very conservative and cautious, is about to face radical disruption from several technologies, including AI (Deep Learning), sensors and Bitcoin (the underlying block chain protocol in particular). Key Opportunity Implications and Actions AI accounting Automatic A/P, A/R software-enabling automatic reminders and payment, automatic tax management, and AIs watching for errant behaviors in transaction flows. Taxation without borders Governments are getting their act together regarding tax havens, which will likely continue to face ever-closer scrutiny in the coming years. Digital payment solutions More than 60,000 merchants already accept Bitcoin, which we predict will hit Wall Street in late 2014 and will most likely be mainstream by 2016. This is in addition to the growing impact of Square and PayPal. We see a consistent set of steps around disruptive innovation comprising the following: Domain (or technology) becomes information-enabled Costs drop exponentially and access is democratized Hobbyists come together to form an open source community New combinations of technologies and convergences are introduced New products and services appear that are orders of magnitude better and cheaper The status quo is disrupted (and the domain gets information-enabled) We are seeing this evolution occur in drones, DNA sequencing, 3D printing, sensors, robotics and, certainly, Bitcoin. In each domain, an open source, networked community has sprung up, delivering an accelerated stream of innovation exactly in line with the steps listed above. The reason “Disruption is the New Norm” is that democratized, accelerating technologies, combined with the power of community, can now extend Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma to an unstoppable force. Beware the “Expert” The old saw that an expert is “somebody who tells you why something cannot be done” is truer than ever before. By Nicco Mele Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, A host of alternative currencies are blossoming on the Internet, and one in particular—an open-source project called Bitcoin—appears to be gaining steam. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority, allowing anyone to send “money” (the Bitcoin currency) to anyone, anywhere, at any time, and beyond the reach of governments. Bitcoin enlists participants in the community to manage transactions and issue money; the network, rather than a central bank, collectively creates the money. Lest you think Bitcoin is a nerd pipe dream, many companies—even large, publicly traded ones like LaCie—accept Bitcoin as payment.10 In the opinion of the tech entrepreneur and journalist Jason Calacanis, “ Bitcoin is a P2P currency that could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.”11 Recently, Bitcoin has faced significant setbacks, but it is a promising opening salvo in the advent of alternative, postgovernment currency. Joshua Holland, The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy: And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America (Hoboken: John Wiley, 2010), 105. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, The Groundswell, (Cambridge: Harvard Business Press, 2008). Bitcoin-p2p-currency-the-most-dangerous-project-weve-ev.html 12. Lest you think Bitcoin is a nerd pipe dream, many companies—even large, publicly traded ones like LaCie—accept Bitcoin as payment.10 In the opinion of the tech entrepreneur and journalist Jason Calacanis, “Bitcoin is a P2P currency that could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.”11 Recently, Bitcoin has faced significant setbacks, but it is a promising opening salvo in the advent of alternative, postgovernment currency. It’s possible now to build some of the structures parallel to the government with very little start-up cost—like revenue collection, for example. As people find the current system of government slow and frustrating, they’ll increasingly turn to the casual opportunities offered by radical connectivity to accomplish many of the same goals, even to the point of using alternative money like Bitcoin. An astonishing range of tools exist that complement and in some ways could replace government if given the opportunity. The Limits of Small The groundswell is exciting, but is it an unmitigated good thing? In some ways, it makes effective governance more difficult. At a meeting of mayors from around the country that I attended, I kept hearing a common refrain: they were drowning in the volume of direct contact with constituents. By Andrew Keen Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Distributed capitalism equals ubiquitous capitalism. That’s the evolutionary logic of networked economics. In the financial market, Bitcoin already has its own trading indexes where hundreds of millions of dollars are speculated on the electronically networked currency. Digital money like Bitcoin represent a peer-to-peer alternative to centrally controlled currencies like the US dollar or Swedish krona, an alternative in which middlemen and thus banks and banking fees are eliminated. The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy by Mervyn King,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, In principle, two parties engaged in a transaction could instead settle directly by a transfer of money from one electronic account to another in ‘real time’. A step in that direction was the creation of bitcoin – a ‘virtual’ currency launched in 2009, allegedly by one or more individuals under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. Ownership of bitcoins is transferred through bilateral transactions without the need for verification by a third party (necessary in all other current electronic payment systems). Transactions are verified by the use of a software accounting system accessible to all users.35 The supply of bitcoins is governed by an algorithm embodied in the software that runs the system (with a maximum number of twenty-one million). If you can persuade someone to accept payment in bitcoins, then you can use them to buy ‘stuff’. The price of bitcoins in terms of goods and services, or currencies such as the dollar, is determined in the market. The price of bitcoins in terms of goods and services, or currencies such as the dollar, is determined in the market. Without any public body setting the standard for bitcoins as a unit of account, their price is highly volatile – less than $1 when launched, a peak of over $1100 in December 2013, and back to below $400 in late 2015.36 With no one standing ready to redeem them in terms of any other commodity or currency, bitcoins are a highly speculative investment. They have no fundamental value: their price simply reflects the value that bitcoins are expected to have in the future. The integrity of the algorithm determining the supply of bitcoins is vital. An indication of what can go wrong when confidence in that process is lost is the fate of a related venture, the auroracoin, a digital currency in Iceland. As an alternative to government-issued paper money, auroracoins were circulated in Iceland by a private entrepreneur in March 2014 through a ‘helicopter’ drop to every citizen listed on the national ID register. The increase of cybercrime is analysed in the 2014 US State of Cybercrime Survey, www.pwc.com/cybersecurity 35 This system, effectively a public ledger of all current and past transactions, is known as the block chain technology. 36 Similar huge swings in prices can be seen in related digital currencies, for example Scotcoins in Scotland. 37 38 Although, unlike cash, transactions with bitcoins leave a permanent record in the software accounting system, leading commentators such as Brito and Castillo (2013) to describe them not as anonymous but pseudonymous. Money stored as bitcoins can also be stolen by hackers or lost through carelessness, just as cash is vulnerable to theft or loss. 39 Yermack (2013) provides data on the relative volatilities of the prices of bitcoins, gold and the major currencies. The volatility of bitcoins is an order of magnitude higher than the other currencies. 40 Economies of this kind have been discussed by Fama (1980), Hall (1983) and Issing (1999). 41 On money as a unit of account see Doepke and Schneider (2013). 42 Magna Carta, chapter 35, translation of the original Latin of 1215. 43 Hayek (1976). By James Rickards Amazon: — — —,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Among them are the rise of alternative currencies and of virtual or digital currencies such as bitcoin. Digital currencies exist within private peer-to-peer computer networks and are not issued by or supported by any government or central bank. The bitcoin phenomenon began in 2008 with the pseudonymous publication of a paper (by Satoshi Nakamoto) describing the protocols for the creation of a new electronic digital currency. In January 2009 the first bitcoins were created by Nakamoto’s software. He continued making technical contributions to the bitcoin project until 2010, at which point he withdrew from active participation. However, by that time a large community of developers, libertarians, and entrepreneurs had taken up the project. By late 2013, over 11.5 million bitcoins were in circulation, with the number growing steadily. The value of each bitcoin fluctuates based on supply and demand, but it had exceeded $700 per bitcoin in November 2013. By August 2013, total student loans backed...: “The Rolling Student Loan Bailout,” Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2013, “the test of a first-rate intelligence...”: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1936; reprint New York: New Directions, 2009). The bitcoin phenomenon began in 2008...: Satoshi Nakamoto, “ Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” November 1, 2008, bitcoin.org/ bitcoin.pdf. The history of barter is mostly a myth: David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House, 2011), pp. 11 was not a failure of intelligence or coordination...”: Thomas L. Friedman, “A Failure to Imagine,” New York Times, May 19, 2002, The value of each bitcoin fluctuates based on supply and demand, but it had exceeded $700 per bitcoin in November 2013. Bitcoin’s long-term viability as a virtual currency remains to be seen, but its rapid and widespread adoption can already be taken as a sign that communities around the world are seeking alternatives to the dollar and traditional fiat currencies. Beyond the world of alternative currencies lies the world of transactions without currencies at all: the electronic barter market. Barter is one of the most misunderstood of economic concepts. A large economic literature is devoted to the inefficiencies of barter, which requires the simultaneous coincidence of wants between the two bartering parties. If one party wanted to trade wheat for nails, and the counterparty wanted wheat but had only rope to trade, the first party might accept the rope and go in search of someone with nails who wanted rope. Bitcoin is the currency of the future & Genesis Mining is the largest cloud mining company on the market. Mine bitcoin through the cloud, get started today! The minimum order is 1 Ghs b) Payment systems by Bitcoin. BTCStorm Bitcoin and $ Cloud Mining Free 30 Ghs. Mining hardware Mining software. Bitcoin Press Release: ZeusHash is giving away over 30 TH/s of Bitcoin cloud mining power to over 2000 new ZeusHash customers for 4 days ONLY between October 16th and. Bitcoin Mining Guide - Getting started with Bitcoin mining • Overview - Table of Contents • • • • • • • • • • You will learn (1) how bitcoin mining works, (2) how to start mining bitcoins, (3) what the best bitcoin mining software is, (4) what the is, (5) where to find the best bitcoin mining pools and (6) how to optimize your bitcoin earnings. Bitcoin mining is but if you try then this is probably a good shot. How Bitcoin Mining Works Before you start mining Bitcoin, it's useful to understand what Bitcoin mining really means. Bitcoin mining is legal and is accomplished by running SHA256 double round hash verification processes in order to validate Bitcoin transactions and provide the requisite security for the public ledger of the Bitcoin network. The speed at which you mine Bitcoins is measured in hashes per second. The Bitcoin network compensates Bitcoin miners for their effort by releasing bitcoin to those who contribute the needed computational power. This comes in the form of both newly issued bitcoins and from the transaction fees included in the transactions validated when mining bitcoins. The more computing power you contribute then the greater your share of the reward. Step 1 - Get The Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware Purchasing Bitcoins - In some cases, you may need to purchase mining hardware with bitcoins. Today, you can purchase most hardware on. You also may want to check the. How To Start Bitcoin Mining To, you'll need to acquire bitcoin mining hardware. In the early days of bitcoin, it was possible to mine with your computer CPU or high speed video processor card. Today that's no longer possible. Custom Bitcoin ASIC chips offer performance up to 100x the capability of older systems have come to dominate the Bitcoin mining industry. Bitcoin mining with anything less will consume more in electricity than you are likely to earn. It's essential to mine bitcoins with the best bitcoin mining hardware built specifically for that purpose. Several companies such as Avalon offer excellent systems built specifically for bitcoin mining. Best Bitcoin Cloud Mining Services. Another option is to purchase in Bitcoin cloud mining contracts. This greatly simplifies the process but increases risk because you do not control the actual physical hardware. Being listed in this section is NOT an endorsement of these services. There have been a tremendous amount of Bitcoin cloud mining scams.: Hashflare offers SHA-256 mining contracts and more profitable SHA-256 coins can be mined while automatic payouts are still in BTC. Customers must purchase at least 10 GH/s.: Genesis Mining is the largest Bitcoin and scrypt cloud mining provider. Genesis Mining offers three Bitcoin cloud mining plans that are reasonably priced. Zcash mining contracts are also available.: Hashing24 has been involved with Bitcoin mining since 2012. They have facilities in Iceland and Georgia. They use modern ASIC chips from BitFury deliver the maximum performance and efficiency possible.: Minex is an innovative aggregator of blockchain projects presented in an economic simulation game format. Users purchase Cloudpacks which can then be used to build an index from pre-picked sets of cloud mining farms, lotteries, casinos, real-world markets and much more. Minergate Review: Offers both pool and merged mining and cloud mining services for Bitcoin.: Hashnest is operated by Bitmain, the producer of the Antminer line of Bitcoin miners. HashNest currently has over 600 Antminer S7s for rent. You can view the most up-to-date pricing and availability on Hashnest's website. At the time of writing one Antminer S7's hash rate can be rented for $1,200. Bitcoin Cloud Mining Review: Currently all Bitcoin Cloud Mining contracts are sold out. NiceHash Review: NiceHash is unique in that it uses an orderbook to match mining contract buyers and sellers. Check its website for up-to-date prices.: Start cloud mining Bitcoin with as little as $10. Eobot claims customers can break even in 14 months. MineOnCloud Review: MineOnCloud currently has about 35 TH/s of mining equipment for rent in the cloud. Some miners available for rent include AntMiner S4s and S5s. Bitcoin Mining Hardware Comparison Currently, based on (1) price per hash and (2) electrical efficiency the best Bitcoin miner options are. Avalon6 • 3.5 Th/s • 0.29 W/Gh • 9.5 pounds • No • $499.95 • • 0.1232 Step 2 - Download Free Bitcoin Mining Software Once you've received your bitcoin mining hardware, you'll need to download a special program used for Bitcoin mining. There are many programs out there that can be used for Bitcoin mining, but the two most popular are CGminer and BFGminer which are command line programs. If you prefer the ease of use that comes with a GUI, you might want to try EasyMiner which is a click and go windows/Linux/Android program. You may want to learn more detailed information on the. Step 3 - Join a Bitcoin Mining Pool Once you're ready to mine bitcoins then we recommend joining a. Bitcoin mining pools are groups of Bitcoin miners working together to solve a block and share in its rewards. Without a Bitcoin mining pool, you might mine bitcoins for over a year and never earn any bitcoins. It's far more convenient to share the work and split the reward with a much larger group of. Here are some options: For a fully decentralized pool, we highly recommend. The following pools are believed to be currently fully validating blocks with Bitcoin Core 0.9.5 or later (0.10.2 or later recommended due to DoS vulnerabilities): • • • • Step 4 - Set Up A Bitcoin Wallet The next step to mining bitcoins is to set up a Bitcoin wallet or use your existing Bitcoin wallet to receive the Bitcoins you mine. Is a great Bitcoin wallet and functions on many different operating systems. Are also available. Bitcoins are sent to your Bitcoin wallet by using a unique address that only belongs to you. The most important step in setting up your Bitcoin wallet is securing it from potential threats by enabling two-factor authentication or keeping it on an offline computer that doesn't have access to the Internet. Wallets can be obtained by downloading a software client to your computer. For help in choosing a Bitcoin wallet then you can. You will also need to be able to buy and sell your Bitcoins. For this we recommend: • - European exchange with same-day SEPA and can buy with credit cards • - The largest European exchange with same-day SEPA • - Get help finding a Bitcoin exchange in your country. • - This fantastic service allows you to search for people in your community willing to sell bitcoins to you directly. But be careful! • is a good place to start when buying bitcoins. We strongly recommend you do not keep any bitcoins in their service. Step 5 - Stay Up To Date With Bitcoin News Staying up to date with Bitcoin news is important for your bitcoin mining profits. If you want general Bitcoin news then we recommend the section. There is the and these are the 5 most recent articles: • • • • • • • • • • [WARNING] - 1 August 2017 the BIP 148 UASF will occur. This could greatly impact your earnings as a Bitcoin miner by mining either the legacy or BIP 148 chain. To prepare we recommend reading this. Other Languages Arabic - Burmese - Chinese (Cantonese) - Chinese (Mandarin) - Dutch - French - German - Georgian - Greek - Hindi - Indonesian - Italian - Japanese - Korean - Lao - Norwegian - Polish - Portuguese - Russian - Spanish - Swedish - Tagalog - Thai - Turkish - Vietnamese. Mining apps • – A GUI based miner for Windows, Linux and Android. EasyMiner acts as a convenient wrapper for the built in CG & BFGminer softwares. • – Modular FPGA/GPU miner in C • – This is a multi-threaded multi-pool GPU, FPGA and with ATI GPU monitoring, (over)clocking and fanspeed support for bitcoin and derivative coins. • – A GUI frontend for Windows(Poclbm, Phoenix, DiabloMiner) • – Bitcoin Miner for ZTEX FPGA Boards • – Run Miners as a Windows Service. • – Python/OpenCL GPU miner () • – more efficient version of () • – Java/OpenCL GPU miner () • – remote RPC miner () • – miner • – miner • – miner • – Python miner, reference implementation • – mining pool software • – a miner that makes use of an FPGA Board • – A proof of concept Adobe Flash Player miner. Is Bitcoin Cloud Mining Profitable - Ethereum Mining Gpu Comparison get sha256 BTC mining contracts here 10% Off Code: 5510B64A Bitcoin is definitely a globally currency that employs an open ledger procedure to track record deals being sent in anyone to another. All of this happens without central lender in the centre and it's also not governed through government, controlling system, individual business, or person. Related: hashflare free hashflare is legit scrypt cc hashflare hashflare.oi hashflare strategy. CryptoCompare needs javascript enabled in order to work. Follow these instructions to activate and enable JavaScript in Chrome. PC • To the right of the address bar, click the icon with 3 stacked horizontal lines. • From the drop-down menu, select Settings. Best Bitcoin Mining Comparison. Hashflare vs Genesis Mining. Bitcoin Cloud Mining Comparison List. On the other side, by now Mining Rig Rentals. Want to buy mining bitcoin hardware or ethereum mining graphics cards or GPU. Ethereum cloud mining contracts Prices are. Mining Calculators. • At the bottom of the page, click the Show advanced settings link. • Under the Privacy section, click the Content settings button. • Under the JavaScript heading, select the Allow all sites to run JavaScript radio button. • Finally, refresh your browser. MAC • Select Chrome from the Apple/System bar at the top of the screen. • Select Preferences. From the drop-down menu. • In the left-hand column, select Settings from the list. • At the bottom of the page, click the Show advanced settings link. • Under the Privacy section, click the Content settings button. • Under the JavaScript heading, select the Allow all sites to run JavaScript radio button. • Finally, refresh your browser. Despite the controversy that trailed its release, and it being considered as a risky investment, has just announced that has entered the list of its mining contracts. Though some exchanges have put the first permissionless decentralized cryptocurrency that allows users to completely hide not only the value of their transactions, but also their identity to trade on their platforms. However, while a few cloud mining sites agreed to offer mining services for the currency, the best way to acquire the new currency is by mining until enough tokens become available on exchanges. Mining ZCash According to BitClub’s Joby Weeks, Zcash has been one of the most anticipated projects in the digital currency industry in the past year. He says to Cointelegraph: “They have assembled a dream team of top cryptographers and security experts who came together to build the most secure and private Blockchain imaginable.” Hashflare in its announcement says: “While many consider Zcash a censorship-free solution to Bitcoin publicity issues, we are also evaluating it as another crypto-investment mining possibility.” Currently, the annual ROI of Zcash mining equals 200%, and we are ready to launch the presale of mining contracts for $4.20 per 0.1 H/s. The launch of mining will occur before 21.11.16, however, the total amount of hardware for Zcash mining is limited. Each contract will last for 1 year (from activation) and will not have any additional fees. Genesis Mining and Toomim Brothers have offered similar and limited number of varying contracts too. A word of caution When asked if he considers ‘cautious’ as the best word of advice for anyone seeking to get involved in ZCash, Weeks said: “Yes. There are bugs to work out still. That’s why they had a slow start for the first 34 days. Instead of buying Zcash coins, I have been buying mining hardware to mine the coin. If the coin goes bust, I can point the power back over to mine ETH or whatever else.” But he doesn’t think the coin is likely ‘go bust’ because, “The smartest minds in the crypto space are working on the project.” A Fintech consultant,, noted on his Twitter page that Zcash is an experiment and experiments frequently don’t produce the expected or hoped-for an outcome. He stressed on the watchword: Caution. One of his tweets says: “There's a lot of hype and excitement about Zcash, but also, major risks. The New crypto could prove susceptible to as-yet-undreamed-of attacks.” Hashflare shares a similar view. Its states: “We consider Zcash a high-risk high-reward investment solution and recommend you to look through the idea, team, and technical aspects of the cryptocurrency on the Zcash official website.” Follow us. We will update you once both the options enabled. Zcash price in Indian rupee, Zcash mining, Zcash cloud mining. Bitcoin mining profit calculator. In this guide, we'll show you how to mine your digital treasure in the most profitable way. Obviously, the big money is going into costly bitcoin ASICs. If you are already in that position, you probably know how the process works and are intending to mine bitcoin. However, those of you on a more moderate budget are probably. We will update you once both the options enabled. Zcash price in Indian rupee, Zcash mining, Zcash cloud mining. Bitcoin mining profit calculator. Yuval Jacobson Last Updated On Jan 17, 2018 @ 11:26. The world of cryptocurrencies is growing at an accelerated pace. The crypto market cap continues to grow with record breaking volumes. The basis for creating value in the crypto world is the mining process for major and veteran coins – with Bitcoin leading them. Mine the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Dash, Litecoin, Zcash, Ethereum, & more based on the sha256, x11 & scypt algorithm. Check out our pricing plans today! In using this website you are deemed to have read and agreed to the following terms and conditions: The following terminology applies to these Terms and Conditions, Privacy Statement and Disclaimer Notice and any or all Agreements: 'Client', “You” and “Your” refers to you, the person accessing this website and accepting the Company’s terms and conditions. 'The Company', “Ourselves”, “We” and 'Us', refers to our Company. “Party”, “Parties”, or “Us”, refers to both the Client and ourselves, or either the Client or ourselves. 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Should you buy and hold, day trade, mine at home, start a bitcoin exchange, I can practically go on forever about ideas for making money from Bitcoin. But one idea seems to catch the eye of most of my blog readers more than any other – cloud mining. For those of you who are unfamiliar with cloud mining, it’s basically “renting out” computing power from a company with a mining farm so you can participate in the latest gold rush of Bitcoin mining. Ever since Bitcoin became popular back in 2013, the difficulty to mine increased drastically. This meant you needed to buy expensive hardware, find a place to store it and of course cool it (since Bitcoin miners tend to heat up quickly), only to exchange it with an even more expensive piece of hardware after 6 months, since the difficulty went up yet again. The Promise of Cloud Mining Enter cloud mining. A magical solution to solve your Bitcoin mining problems. No need to buy expensive hardware, find storage space, pay electricity bills or take care of cooling. All you need to do is “chip in” with a larger company on their mining expenses and in return you will get a portion of the earnings. When you deal with cloud mining you rent out GH/s or TH/s, which measure how much computing power you will be able to mine with. But is this really worth the money you spend on it? I have to admit I was never a big fan on mining myself, it always seemed too technical and I preferred to just go ahead and buy my Bitcoins. But since I got so many emails lately asking me to look into cloud mining I decided to put it to the test. In order to see if a mining contract is worth your money, you basically need to calculate how much money you will make from the money you invest. Just like any other investment, you want to check your ROI. To accomplish this I’m going to use a, which is a small piece of software that does all of these calculations for me. So armed with my mining calculator off I go to test the profitability of cloud mining: Our first stop is probably the most reputable cloud mining company today, “Genesis Mining”. Founded at the end of 2013, Genesis Mining is a company of 10 employees registered in Bermuda. The company used to offer Bitcoin mining contracts and Altcoin mining contracts but it seems that today they only offer the former. I’m not sure why this is, but one assumption could be that it’s related to the decline of most altcoins in the past year. Prices start from $22.49 per 0.05 TH/s and all the way up to $19,500 for 50 TH/s. The interesting part about this pricing model is that unlike other cloud mining companies, there’s only a one-time fee and not a monthly fee. Having said that, if you take a closer look at their pricing page, you’ll see that it states, “ For lifetime contracts as long as the contract is profitable, a small maintenance fee is deducted”. It took me a while to, but it appears that Genesis Mining deducts 0.0015 USD per 1 GH/s on a daily basis for mining Bitcoins. We will keep that in mind in our calculations. Now let’s see how profitable we can become using Genesis Mining. We’ll start out using the lowest price possible and just get 0.05TH/s. At the current difficulty and exchange rate we would be making about $3.59/month, or $0.1196 a day. Let’s not forget to deduct the fees that would be $0.0015 * 50GH/s = $0.075 daily (this is 62.6% of the total profit!). So this brings us to exactly $0.046 daily, or $1.338 monthly. This means we will break even after 16 months. Not sure I’m willing to wait that long to get my 20 bucks back. If I take a look at purchasing 1 TH/s for $419, I get a monthly profit of $26.44 which basically gives me the same outcome since the fees are calculated linearly. Moreover, there is one thing that is missing from this equation. Wellactually two things. We have no idea what the Bitcoin exchange rate will be in five months or a year from now, nor what the mining difficulty will be. This is what makes cloud mining a bit risky. I mean if Bitcoin booms again, we can cover our whole investment in just one month, but if it goes the other way around.you get the point. Same thing goes for the mining difficulty. Source: Blockchain.info It seems that the difficulty is evening out lately, but it’s mainly due to the fact that so is Bitcoin’s exchange rate. These two parameters tend to be in a positive correlation to one another. Meaning if one goes up so does the other. But they have a negative effect – a higher exchange rate makes you richer, while a higher difficulty rate makes you poorer. But Is It Legit? But here comes the really interesting part: Some people consider cloud-mining companies to just be elaborate Ponzi schemes. Meaning there are no huge mining farms located in some remote location and no major mining operations. Some people believe this is just a way of luring in customers and using their money to pay out the customers who came before them. In on BitcoinTalk and Reddit I found some interesting perspectives on this. I won’t name specific companies but I will review several of the claims made: • Companies bait you in as a customer using attractive prices when they start out and then change their pricing or fees after they’ve hooked you in. “ They are still trying to attract new customers to buy at roughly the same price we paid initially at the rate it is going we are on track to reach negative returns. At which point our contracts would be cancelled after 10 days of negative returns. Meanwhile we are locked into these contracts with no option to sell. Please stay clear of this service!” ~ BitcoinTalk user • Other than the initial payment for the mining power there are hidden fees which consume most of your profit. “Last November I invested just over 1 btc since then I earn daily 1/3 of what I should be making, from my investment, the other 2/3 are fees. And for as for roi, its going be a very, very long time seeing I am earning less then 5 cent a day @ 60 gh/s.” ~ BitcoinTalk user • Almost a year ago a question was asking, “Do mining contracts ever make sense?” This question was answered by Gavin Andresen, the chief scientist of the Bitcoin foundation, who stated: “ No, they make no sense. I suspect many of them will turn out to be Ponzi schemes.” ~ Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation I have yet to find any positive comment, post or thread about cloud mining that seems unbiased. A lot of these cloud mining programs supply referral programs which give people an incentive to sign other people up (another characteristic of many Ponzi schemes). In conclusion, I guess cloud mining still hasn’t proved itself to be a legit and profitable answer to generating a profit through Bitcoin. In my opinion, most of these companies are just Ponzi schemes in disguise and the few who may be legit will take you a long time to profit from. However, in the event of another boom in Bitcoin’s price I may just as well be eating my hat. In the meantime, I’d bet on buying the currency and not mining it. At Genesis-Mining you will never get your ROI. Allow me to expand your calculations with my very own ROI calculator, which takes into account difficulty increase every 14 days, and MOST importantly it takes into account block halving, wich ABSOLUTELY nobody else takes into account. Let’s assume a 1 TH/s at their current price of 419 USD and maintenance fees of 0.0012USD per GH/s, which is 1.2 USD daily (36USD/month, fixed, forrrreverrrr). Let us also assume that the recent spike on the exchange rate will hold forrrreverrrr too (we cannot predict exchange rates, but let us be optimistic here). At Genesis-Mining you will never get your ROI. Allow me to expand your calculations with my very own ROI calculator, which takes into account difficulty increase every 14 days, and MOST importantly it takes into account block halving, wich ABSOLUTELY nobody else takes into account. Let’s assume a 1 TH/s at their current price of 419 USD and maintenance fees of 0.0012USD per GH/s, which is 1.2 USD daily (36USD/month, fixed, forrrreverrrr). Let us also assume that the recent spike on the exchange rate will hold forrrreverrrr too (we cannot predict exchange rates, but let us be optimistic here). Assumptions and “fixed forever” ? Well I think a lot of people get into their own mining and cloud mining with some knowledge that with the current situation they may be lucky to get a ROI however many would be prepared to watch ongoing “theoretical” losses in the hope that the value of BTC will be $3000 or $1000000 each one day. As long as you haven’t put your life savings into it, better to put your beer and smoke money into this and then if it turns into a future bonanza, what was all that crap about “never get Read more ». Is the only way to profit from this actually buying low BTC and selling high? It seems then that once again this innovative product has lent itself to scumbag cloud mining ‘providers’ looking to profit off unsuspecting users of their wares! On the other extreme, trading BTC/USD on a currency trading platform is probably about the riskiest thing one can ever do! Problem is, BTC is not a trading currency to buy and sell at a profit, it is ultimately an asset one must accumulate as the new way of transacting seamlessly without banks involved. Just about every review of cloud mining is filled with techno jargon and multi decimal fractional numbers, but I have yet to find a single miner giving a real and honest ROI percentage straight up and devoid of all the geek speak and bullshit. There certainly appears and will always remain to appear to be an awful lot everybody is desperately trying to hide in amongst all the smoke and mirrors and until some one starts speaking plain financial English no one can be blamed for doubting the integrity and real viability of cloud mining! |
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