Bitcoin Whitepaper Anniversary | Hodler's Digest

It's been a whole 10 years since Satoshi put quill to parchment and composed the bitcoin white paper. However, founder of bitcoin wallet startup Xappo Wences Kazaris thinks bitcoin is still at the early stages of development. Kazaris earned the nickname Patient Zero because of his role in boosting cryptocurrency's popularity in Silicon Valley. He compares the leading crypto to the Internet in 1992 and and says it will take several years before we can assess whether it is successful or not. Well, for now, the crypto market is relatively stable, while the stock market is the one that is volatile. However, there are major problems surrounding crypto itself. In the US a man faces five years imprisonment for trading over the legal amount on local bitcoins. And Charlie Schrem, AKA Bitcoin's first felon, is suspected of stealing thousands of bitcoin from Internet entrepreneurs. The Winklevoss twins. Meanwhile, in Russia, the government thinks blockchain sounds too much like a reference to prison, but that probably says more about them than about blockchain. Also this week, a potential exit scam on a Canadian exchange, the E Krona may hit Sweden Initiative Q and Coinbase raises the big bucks despite no IPO in sight Ladies and gentlemen, here's your weekly Hodler's Digest. Last Sunday, something very strange happened in the land of the moose and the beads. Canadian crypto exchange MapleChange suddenly announced that $6 million worth of Bitcoin had been stolen. Clients would not be refunded and they were shutting down their social media. Basically, they made like a maple tree and leaved. The crypto mounties, however, were suspicious. For them, it had all the classic signs of an exit scam. CEO of Binance CZ among them, set about dissuading crypto holders from trusting exchanges that don't offer cold wallets. Prominent analyst and cointelegraph contributor Joseph Young also said there is no incentive for using small exchanges. Use established exchanges that are regulated and transparent. Small exchanges also focus on maximizing profitability, not security or investor protection. A few hours later, Maple, like their compatriot Celine Dion took, decided both their heart and their Twitter activity would go on hitting back at the scam allegations. We have not disappeared guys. We simply turned off our accounts temporarily to think this solution through. We cannot refund everyone all their funds, but we will be opening wallets to whatever we have left so people can hopefully withdraw their funds. The fund launched a discord server for customers to issue refund requests and return some of the stolen crypto assets. However, the company declared that Bitcoin and litecoin funds, which made up the majority of the stolen amount, cannot be refunded. In the meantime, independent researchers uncovered and published the identities of those behind MapleChange and the attempt to hold them accountable. Joseph Young even got on board publishing the home addresses of these people, which caused him to be temporarily blocked from Twitter. He has since apologized. Sweden could be the first country to adopt a national centralized digital currency Riksbank, the Swedish central bank, is planning to launch the e? Krona in 2019 in response to a country where the majority of transactions are conducted via private banks that increasingly refuse to handle cash. So a battle is being waged between the private banks and the central banks. But who will win? Society or corporate interests? 85% of Swedish people from ages 16 to 74 bank online, compared to 51% of their EU counterparts. A recent report by the central bank revealed that only 13% of Swedes paid cash for their most recent purchases, compared to 39% in 2010. The Stockholm based SEB bank has 118 branches, only seven of which actually handle cash. Most private banks actually refuse to handle any cash at all. The E? Krona is touted as the answer to concerns that private banks don't offer secure payment systems. The centralized currency can be held on a card or or even on a mobile app. Following concerns that Sweden was moving too fast, Riksbank actually conducted a consultation about a cashless society, with their conclusion as the it is our opinion that all banks and other credit institutions that offer payment accounts shall be obliged to handle cash. Sweden might be the first, but it certainly won't be the last to adopt a centralized digital currency. And before these changes become permanent, serious questions need to be addressed. For example, a all transactions will be traceable. That means the government can keep a close eye on everything you do, and could potentially block payments and freeze accounts of anyone they choose. This means that ordinary citizens have to rely on the good nature of those in power not to take the draconian measures against them. If that sounds unrealistically dystopian, take a look at China's proposed social credit system, whose punitive actions include flight bans and throttled Internet speeds. Of course, Sweden is both literally and figuratively miles away from China, but the threat to personal freedoms is still there. As we move towards a cashless society, we have to ask ourselves if this is what we want, or if big banks and government are simply using a technique behavioral economists call nudging, where they make the alternative cash, for example, so difficult to be used that it becomes obsolete. It might be the case that Bitcoin and other cryptos are not entirely private, but nor entirely decentralized, but they are a hell of a lot more so than the E Krona or any other government and central bank batch digital currency that we will see in the future. We spoke about this to Ivan on tech developer and popular blockchain educator on YouTube.

We have a few private banks controlling the entire economy. You cannot even buy food nowadays without having a credit card. So you need to be a bank customer. So the central bank doesn't want that. They want to have digital cash so that you don't have to be a bank customer in order to do digital transactions. And so I do understand the development, I do understand why they're doing that. But at the same time, you realize that if the state controls digital cash and they can exclude you from digital cash whenever they want, what if you go to the wrong protest? What if you go to the wrong political party? Who knows what government we will have in the future? So in my view, it might put too much power in the hands of the government, because if you're not able to use the financial system because the government doesn't like you, you cannot buy food, you cannot buy gas, you cannot do any transactions at all. We might be in a distribution dystopian place. People still have a very high trust in the government and in the financial system. So that is why I think many Swedes do not ask the critical questions. They do not ask, you know what, maybe the government has too much power now. And so this is something that the Swedish society is vulnerable against a very powerful government because we're not critical enough. You go to the U.S. many people are very critical of central government. Swedish society is very digital. We like high technology, we like new technology. A lot of tech companies are from Sweden. So people are very positive towards new developments and they adopt new technology quickly. And so in that regard, I understand the argument that it might be the fact that the government is pushing and, you know, for them. It is of course better if everyone uses digital cash as well, because you can track everything. There is easier control. You control the entire system. But at the same time, I wouldn't say that the market is completely out of the picture. The market is a very, very strong force and people do not like physical cash.

Sounds like a cult. Could be a pyramid scheme. One thing is for sure, Initiative Q is definitely not a crypto. But that hasn't stopped people from Calling it the New Bitcoin, it was founded by entrepreneur Saar Wilf, whose payment security company was acquired by PayPal in 2008, and economist Lawrence White. The proposed payment network will use the currency Q currently worthless, but early adopters are being offered free queues in exchange for their email. The website currently boasts over 2 million signups or suckers. Who knows really? Queue is a private currency that uses a centralized database rather than blockchain to operate. However, Wilf promises should the project fail, no data will be sold, but instead destroyed. He promises honestly. Currently, the only way to acquire queues is via an invite email. Each person signed up can sign up five more people, which has led to accusations of a pyramid scheme, accusations that the founder was quick to deny. It might technically or more importantly legally not be a pyramid scheme, but it does certainly smell like one. For example, in the invitation email, it initially said early adopters could eventually stand to make $130k. The reward figure eventually dropped to 85k. The economist behind it, Lawrence White, is legit and a pretty serious guy who wants to see free banking and do away with the Federal Reserve. So perhaps it's not a get rich quick or a pyramid scheme, but it certainly seems a bit crazy.

The main thing that is confusing here is that when people see something that looks like offer of free money then that is like the biggest red flag you can have. Unfortunately, there is no other way for us to explain this. We want to change the payment system and the monetary system that requires. That's what I currently believe. The only way to do this is by issuing a new kind of money and the only way to get the world to adopt it is by distributing it freely to anyone who helps adoption of this system. So that's the only way this can work? It does. I know it sounds to people like very suspicious free money, but there's just no other way this can work.

A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change predicts that bitcoin usage will raise global temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius by 2033. It must be noted that in fact the transport and agriculture industry are the leaders when it comes to the production of harmful emissions like CO2, and the report has been met with some criticism. For example that the Bitcoin energy crisis has been hyperinflated, as it is based on the assumption that carbon emission derives from mining activity and will remain the same for the next 100 years.

In the IT world, things can change overnight, so that's why I'm very wary of these extrapolations you know, beyond a year or two and at any time, you know, people who try to extrapolate even 10 years with it, I think are almost always going to be wrong. It's irresponsible and reckless. Everyone agrees we should track new end uses and we should try to understand their emissions intensity. But let's get the numbers right. Let's not overestimate.

Bearish Trends in the market haven't scared away investors of late. In fact, quite the opposite. Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties, raised $15 million in a new funding round this week. Elsewhere, Coinbase announced a 300 million dollar funding round on Tuesday. The company, which is valued at $1.6 billion in the summer of 2017, is now worth about 8 billion. Coinbase will use the additional funds to accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Commenting on Coinbase's expansion, Asaph Hirji stated, we see Coinbase's growth as validation that the ecosystem will only continue to grow in size, influence and impact, ultimately ushering in a more open financial system for the world. Coinbase plans to build infrastructure between fiat and crypto in regulated markets around the world, as well as to offer more cryptocurrencies on its platform. The company also said it wanted to bring more institutional funds into the market despite rumors Coinbase was going public. Hearing said an IPO won't happen anytime soon. The expansion of Coinbase seems to reflect a broader phenomenon affecting the whole crypto exchange sector. On October 29, Bitstamp was acquired by NXMH, a Belgium based investment company and majority stakeholder of South Korea Korean crypto exchange Corebit. Earlier In October, South Korea's largest crypto exchange, BitHub, became a part of BK Global, a Singaporean consortium. Many see Coinbase's expansion is a sign that the crypto market is finally stabilizing. Speculative trading is declining and there is a growing interest in crypto from traditional finance. For many, Coinbase is becoming the main point of entry for the traditional finance into the crypto market. We asked Lauren Cohen, professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, to evaluate this new trend.

What you'll see is that this is the traditional finance companies and large storage managed companies even in the US are starting to get into this now. In the US it's a little trickier given regulatory uncertainty, but you have big players such as Fidelity that are making fairly large moves into the space. And so I do think it's only a matter of time until nearly every financial institution has some foot in this race and now what foot they're going to take is unclear, right? Whether they're going to do through partnerships, whether they're going to try to develop their own system, or whether they're going to acquire existing firms. I think there's still volatility left, right? To tell you that it's going to be straight line upward, I would be a fool. I certainly don't think that that's what's going to happen. But I think the trend is going to be upward. The trend is going to be upward in terms of adoption, and the trend is going to be upward in terms of solutions that are developed to enhance widespread adoption. That's both widespread adoption at the institutional and retail level.

This week saw dedications and celebrations of the anniversary of the Bitcoin white paper. It described a protocol, but symbolized a disruptive technology that would change the world. Here are some highlights. Of course, not everyone was so complimentary. On the eve of the anniversary, Mr. Jamie Demon himself was quoted as saying, I don't give a shit about Bitcoin. Post your white paper dedication in the comments below. And as always, like subscribe and Hodl cointelegraph Like subscribe and Hodl Sam.