Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions Remain the Achilles Heel of Mass Cryptocurrency Adoption.

Friends, although total Bitcoin (or Cryptocurrency) energy consumption is unlikely to usurp global energy availability anytime in the foreseeable future, technologists and entrepreneurs alike who are staking their futures on second and third gen Cryptocurrencies must address this issue if the crypto sector is to grow and flourish. What is the root cause? Many experts point to trust-minimizing consensus has been enabled by the proof-of-work algorithm. Users in a network send each other digital tokens. The decentralized ledger gathers all the transactions into blocks. However, care should be taken to confirm the transactions and arrange blocks. While one could write a dissertation on the PoW algorithm, the preeminent challenge is to either reconstruct or replace the current algorithm with a mechanism which both mitigates trust minimizing censuses building and greatly reduces the computing energy requirements for performing a viable PoW alternative algorithm. And yes, a future Nobel Prize in Economics or Physics likely awaits the savant who solves this dilemma. How close are we to resolving this matter? Our estimate is 6-10+ years. Let us know your comments! Lawrence, Cryptocurrency Academy (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)

Can Basis Provide the Price Stability with a Viable Peg and an Algorithmic Central Bank Needed to Succeed?

Friends, lack of price stability, a legitimate peg and an algorithmic central bank with fixed currency supply have been major shortcoming of first gen cryptocurrency leaders Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Enter Basis … a second generation cryptocurrency purpose-built to overcome these limitations and offer greater accountability to the economies of developing nations. Basis addresses currency expansion and contraction via a three-token system including Base Shares, Basecoin and Base Bonds. Initially Basis will be pegged to the US dollar using simple supply and demand to manage the price of its currency. When too many people want Basis, the protocol increases the supply of the currency. It does the opposite when demand is weak. Basis is backed by an impressive list of investors and advisors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh, hedge fund manager Stan Druckenmiller, Bain Capital Ventures and respected VC Andreessen Horowitz. Only time will tell if Basis will succeed. Our key takeaway is that Basis does represent a highly credible move beyond the “wild west” of first gen cryptocurrencies and deserves a serious look as a viable payment method. Let us know your comments! Lawrence, Cryptocurrency Academy (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)

Taking a Fresh Look at Cryptocurrency Wallets

Friends, many newcomers to Cryptocurrency trading ask the fundamental question of which Wallet is best for me? There are a myriad of Wallets on the market today including Jaxx, TLDR, Trezor, KeepKey, Nano Ledger S, MyEtherWallet, Coinbase, and Electrum to name a few. Whether software, hardware or paper Wallets the central issue is what are your needs and goals for a Crypto Wallet? And yes, as second and third generation Cryptocurrencies come to market we are likely to see new Wallet genres emerge. Key factors here include are your trading one (or more Cryptocurrencies), how many transactions do you plan to make over the next month, year or beyond, and what are your security requirements. Your answers to these questions will generally guide you to the Wallet category and even brand that will fulfill your needs. TechWorm offers up three guidelines that will help you make the best choice: First, Hot Wallets – Web Wallets and Self-Hosted Wallets – are connected to the Internet and are considered less secure. Second, always create a seed phrase or private key back-up (electronic, paper, etc.) And third, use Cold Storage Wallets which are not Internet-connected for storing large numbers of keys … and in turn larger values of Cryptocurrencies. Hope this helps. Let us know your comments! Lawrence, Cryptocurrency Academy (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)

Assessing the Impact of Hard and Soft Forks in Blockchain Adoption

Friends, hard and soft forks create significant uncertainty, as they have the potential to fragment the power of the Blockchain network into lots of variants. They are also likely to be necessary, as without the capacity to update the Software, the Blockchain is unlikely to be future proof. Hard forks create a fork in the Blockchain: one path follows the new, upgraded Blockchain, and the other path continues along the old path. Generally, after a short period of time, those on the old chain will realize that their version of the Blockchain is outdated or irrelevant and quickly upgrade to the latest version. Hard fork can be implemented to reverse transactions (e.g. the DAO decentralized autonomous organization for Bitcoin or Ethereum), add new functionality, correct important security risks found in older versions of the software, to add new functionality, or to reverse transactions. Thus, should Blockchain hard forks be viewed with skepticism or as a tool for enhancing the integrity and quality of the given Blockchain? Share your comments with us today! Lawrence, Cryptocurrency Academy (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)

The US and China are on the move to establish Blockchain standards

Friends, on March 12, 2018 China announced the establishment of a national Technical Standardization Committee for Blockchain. Such cryptographic ledgers operate in an ecosystem consisting of the following actors. A ledger node modifies an instance of a cryptographic ledger based on the current configuration of the ledger. The ledger node tracks a set of pending ledger events that are candidates for being written to the ledger and writes them to the ledger when it believes consensus has been reached. A ledger agent may be used by any system that communicates over HTTP to instruct a ledger node to perform a specified action on the ledger. China’s initiative comes in the wake of the US NIST Blockchain Technology Overview published in January 2018. With the world’s two largest economies ‘generally’ moving in the same direction how does this bode for Blockchain adoption – growth or endless bureaucracy? And which other sovereign states such as the UK and Australia are prepping standards of their own? And finally, which international entity – e.g. IEEE or ISO – will serve to harmonize these standards I the months and years to come? Share your comments with us today! Lawrence, Cryptocurrency Academy (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)

Do Mining Pools Enable Individual Miners to Effectively Compete Against Institution Cryptocurrency Miners?

Friends, mining pools allows cryptocurrency investors to pooling of resources by miners, who share their processing power over a network, to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block.  In the context of cryptocurrency mining, a mining pool is the pooling of resources by miners, who share their processing power over a network, to split the reward equally, according to the amount of work they contributed to the probability of finding a block. Mining pools are groups of miners who pool their resources together in order to generate blocks more quickly. Miners then receive more regular rewards than they would mining solo, as rewards are shared among members. Eligius, Kank CKPool, F2Pool, Slush Pool and AntPool are some of the most common mining pools … each with their own pros and cons. Membership fees can range from 0.00% to 3.00% and the reward or incentive categories include Pay-per-Share (PPS), Proportional, Score based and Pay per Last N Shares (PPLNS). Are mining pools a good fit for your circumstances? Share your comments with us today! Lawrence, Cryptocurrency Academy (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)

Can ModulTrade’s Value Ecosystem Level the Playing Field for SMEs to Participate in the Blockchcain Arena?

Friends, ModulTrade is a marketplace where SMEs can efficiently trade globally and directly without banks intermediation. Their ecosystem is based on the MSP (multi-platform-side), which aims to create value through network effects five: Marketplaces or Two Sided Networks, Channel partners  aka Three Sided Networks, Communications networks, Content networks and Local networks. (Note: See MIT’s paper on Network Effects). Opportunities for SMEs in global markets and value chains are very large: it exposes them to the buyer/customer base is great, as well as the opportunity to learn from large companies and of involved and persist in the up and coming sectors of the global market. ModulTrade will continue with its pre-sale offering MTR, the ModulTrade token architected on Ethereum, with up to 10mln MTR available during this period. Followed by a further 40mln during the main sale, and a soft cap of 15,000 ETH. Bottom line: Will the MVE truly enable SMEs to successfully trade directly and globally without back intermediation? Share your comments with the Cryptocurrency Academy today. Lawrence (https://cryptocurrencyacademy.blogspot.com)