Reports from Zimbabwe suggest that an individual by the name of Martin Mhlanga, who is the mastermind behind the Cryptoshares bitcoin pyramid scheme, has disappeared along with over $6 million in investor funds. In addition to Mhlanga’s disappearance, the individuals thought to be managing Cryptoshares’ social media channels have similarly vanished.
Unrealistic Cryptoshares Promises
As one local report explains, Mhlanga had successfully used a series of unrealistic promises to lure many unsuspecting people into investing. For instance, the report explains that many of the victims had been lured into investing by claims that initial Cryptoshares investors were receiving a monthly membership payment of $2,000. Investors were also promised a payout that is double the amount of the initial investment.
Believing that they too would be in line to receive the same monthly payment, some of Mhlanga’s victims are thought to have sold their properties just so they could raise the required money. Others are thought to have borrowed the required initial investment from banks.
However, once September 1 — the day investors were supposed to receive their payout — rolled around, it dawned on many Cryptoshares investors that they had been scammed. In fact, as one Twitter user, Tendai Tomu points out, the early signs that the company was collapsing were seen towards the end of August when Cryptoshares was having problems paying investors.
While the report suggests that some Cryptoshares investors have reported this fraud to law enforcement, many in Zimbabwe’s crypto space insist such a move will not yield much. They point to other bitcoin pyramid schemes like Bitcoin Interchange, which similarly collapsed after fleecing many investors.
Stolen Funds Cannot Be Recovered
Meanwhile, on Twitter, some users like Tendai Tomu are adamant that victims of this latest crypto pyramid scheme will never recover their funds. Tomu said:
Sad indeed! I don’t think the funds will be returned because remember he was paying early investors with deposits from new ones so the equation will never balance. The best people can do is to learn from this.
Others like lawyer Prosper Mwedzi have suggested reporting the fraud to cryptocurrency exchanges. However, still others insist such scams will recur unless more is done to educate people about the basics of investing.
South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb said it will deny access to foreigners unable to verify their identities via mobile phone. The decision comes as the trading platform moves to comply with the country’s updated regulations coming into force later this month.
Korean Exchange Bithumb Prepares to Register Under New Rules
Foreign nationals who do not pass mobile phone identity verification will not be able to use services provided by Bithumb, one of South Korea’s four largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The platform made the announcement this week as it prepares to follow new, stricter rules for the Korean crypto sector by Sept. 24.
The country’s revised Special Funds Act took effect on March 25 and will be enforced after a six-month grace period. It requires domestic crypto exchanges to register with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission (FSC). They also have to cooperate with local banks on the implementation of the real-name accounts system.
Although Bithumb’s Sept. 1 notice is addressed to “foreigners living abroad,” it also states that foreign nationals “residing in Korea” who cannot verify their identity via mobile phones cannot use the platform. According to the Korea Herald’s report on the matter, the traders should perform the procedure through “Korean mobile phones” and “regardless of where they live.” The publication also notes that Bithumb has already stopped onboarding foreigners without alien registration cards.
The exchange further warned affected users they should withdraw their assets, without specifying any dates. According to the notice, services will be terminated “within 2021 (when customer confirmation becomes mandatory).” The trading platform promised to notify users again “when customer verification is mandatory and policy changes are made.”
The English-language Korean daily quoted a Bithumb official who said the company was taking final steps before applying for registration with the Financial Intelligence Unit, South Korea’s main anti-money laundering body. In July, Bithumb terminated its trademark agreements with two coin trading platforms operating overseas under its brand name.
On Friday, the country’s largest digital asset exchange, Upbit, became the first platform to register with the FIU. Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit are working to propose a “travel rule” solution to meet another of the new regulatory requirements, the newspaper added.
The sale of the DOG tokens representing ownership of the legendary Doge meme non-fungible token (NFT) raked in USD 45m in a recently completed auction. Meanwhile, current DOG token prices on decentralized exchanges values the NFT at USD 500m.
The famous NFT, which was purchased by the digital art collective PleasrDAO for USD 4m in June, was last Wednesday put up for sale again, albeit in tokenized form representing shared ownership of the digital art piece. The sale started off as an auction of 20% of the total token supply, which is now sold out with ETH 11,942 (USD 45.5m) raised from 1,796 buyers.
After the auction, tokens were made available for trading on decentralized exchanges like Sushiswap and Uniswap. And with each token currently (as of 09:33 UTC) changing hands for USD 0.03002, the total value of the tokenized NFT becomes an astonishing USD 503m, per data from fractional.art.
DOG token listing. Source: fractional.art
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The Doge NFT to USD Chart
Source: coinmarketcap.com
The massive valuation of the NFT means that the implied value of the art piece has risen over 100 times in US dollar terms over the course of just three months – another indication that the NFT market is on fire at the moment.
And while it’s important to note that the NFT itself would not necessarily sell for this amount if it was put up for sale in one piece, the valuation shows that a strong demand for fractionalized NFTs exists in the market. Given that top digital art pieces often sell for millions of dollars, fractionalizing them in the form of freely tradable ERC-20 tokens is another way for ordinary investors to get some exposure to the growing space.
Tokenized with the help of fractional.art, the Doge NFT’s owner, PleasrDAO, has said that 25% of the token supply will be kept as a community fund, while 55% will remain with PleasrDAO “as the main custodians” of the NFT.
“The DAO has no intention to sell this ownership and if that changes it will be communicated ahead of time,” the art collective wrote in a blog post announcing the sale, promising to avoid measures “resulting in downward price pressure.”
The PleasrDAO art collective is made up of several prominent investors in the crypto space, including Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly Capital, Su Zhu of Three Arrows Capital, as well as Andrew Kang and Marc Weinstein of Mechanism Capital, among others.
Litecoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to enable instant, near-zero cost payments that can be done between people or institutions anywhere across the world. Litecoin is probably most well-known for using a similar mathematical code to Bitcoin, but with four times as much supply and four times the processing speed.
Charlie Lee, a former Google employee and engineering director at Coinbase, released Litecoin in 2011 . To compare, Bitcoin was created in 2009 by an unknown person or group of individuals called Satoshi Nakamoto.
Lee designed Litecoins be a compliment to the original cryptocurrency, not to be a replacement or even a competitor. That’s why it is sometimes referred to as “Bitcoin’s little brother.” Lee has said that he wanted to create the “silver” to Bitcoin’s “gold.”
Because Litecoin can create blocks in 2.5 minutes (as opposed to Bitcoin’s 10), the transaction time is also faster. Thus, Litecoin is often considered a “lighter,” faster version of Bitcoin.
What is Litecoin Used For?
Litecoin advertises itself as a “cryptocurrency for payments—based on blockchain technology.” Its primary focus is to act as a medium for transacting payments without a bank or other third-party intermediary.
Litecoin uses a very similar technology to Bitcoin, but with the ability to conduct transactions faster than Bitcoin. How much faster?
According to Litecoin, it takes two-and-a-half minutes to “process a block” compared to Bitcoin’s ten, making the currency four times faster than bitcoin. The tradeoff is that a transaction done in litecoins may not be as secure as a transaction done in bitcoins.
But of course, many people are interested in Litecoin as a potential long-term holding, not just as a means to process transactions. Similar to making a purchase of any type of currency, the hope is that the new currency will increase in value relative to base currency.
Therefore, many speculators looking into a cryptocurrency like litecoin are generally speculating that the currency will build relative wealth over time. However, there are always risks with speculative plays like currency.
How Does Litecoin Work?
In order to understand how litecoin works, it is good to first have a base knowledge of the underlying technology of blockchain. With blockchain, information is coded and stored in a block, and each block strung together creates a chain. The chain of information acts as litecoin’s transaction ledger.
With litecoin, miners are awarded with 25 new Litecoins per block they mine, an amount that gets halved roughly every four years (every 840,000 blocks).
Litecoin has a cap of 84 million Litecoins in total—four times as many units as Bitcoin. Similar to Bitcoin, Lee designed Litecoin to have the majority of coins mined in the first two decades. As of this writing, there are over 63 million Litecoins.
With record heat waves, draughts, floods, and other extreme weather events becoming increasingly common across the world, there’s growing interest in green technology and its widespread implementation. For those of us in the world of fintech, however, the issue of whether cryptocurrencies have a positive or negative net effect on the environment remains a polarizing one.
Environmentalists, on the one hand, argue that Bitcoin (for example) is an ecological disaster due to the high energy consumption required to mine it. According to the Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index run by Cambridge University’s Centre for Alternative Finance, bitcoin mining uses more energy each year than Malaysia or Sweden.
Whichever side of the coin you happen to find yourself, cryptocurrencies and the tech that underlies them can be both eco-friendly and profitable. Let’s take a brief look at five of the more interesting examples.
You might be surprised to learn that Hedera Hashgraph, a decentralized public network used for in-app payments and micropayments, is one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency networks. Powered by hashgraph consensus, its proof-of-stake public network is characterized by incredibly low bandwidth consumption, among other things, with HBAR being its native, energy-efficient cryptocurrency. It’s also led by the Hedera Governing Council, which consists of up to 39 term-limited organizations and enterprises, such as Google, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, and LG, among others.
Hedera Hashgraph has teamed up with Power Transition, a cloud-based software and hardware platform that enables peer-2-peer energy trading and microgrid management, to produce and develop sustainability projects, which include providing more efficient energy to homes and apartments in the UK as well as reduced charging costs at EV charging stations by up to 50% by using Hedera Token Service as its payment rail.
According to the green website LeafScore, “Power Transition estimates that the Hedera Hashgraph platform is 250,000 times more energy efficient than Bitcoin, using just 0.001 kilowatt hours per transaction, compared to 250 kWh for Bitcoin (Digiconomist puts it at 950 kWh), 55 kWh for Ethereum, and 0.003 for Visa.”
SolarCoin (SLR)
Founded in 2014, SolarCoin is designed to be 50 times more carbon efficient than bitcoin. They’ve even coined their own neologism, Solarity, to refer to the point at which the price of 1 SolarCoin (SLR) equals the bid price for 1MWh of solar PV (photovoltaic) generation.
Unlike energy-thirsty bitcoin mining, Solarcoins are given to participating owners of solar power systems according to how much electricity they generate rather than based on the energy that they consume via mining. The systems of the respective owners then send information about energy generation to the SolarCoin Foundation, a global solar energy reward program now in over 100 , typically through a monitoring system or platform. For every megawatt hour created, generators receive one coin. Generating your own electricity via solar energy and earning money
Or, as the platform puts it, their mission is “to accelerate solar energy uptake and the global energy transition to a low-carbon source of energy. Solarcoin is designed to act as a free global solar energy incentive for the next 40 years.” Incentivizing solar electricity production by rewarding generators with solar coins, which in turn reduces the cost of electricity production–sounds like a win-win proposition.
BitGreen (BITG)
Founded in 2017 as an energy-efficient alternative to Bitcoin, BitGreen uses a low-energy Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm as part of their proprietary protocol. Their focus on sustainability is realized via incentivizing environmentally-friendly choices in a manner similar to SolarCoin’s approach. By using bikeshare programs, volunteering, or supporting sustainable vendors and charities, for example, users are rewarded for decisions that reduce their carbon footprint(s).
In addition to their native coin, BitGreen Mobile, which will launch this autumn (2021), isa mobile-first wallet where users can discover greener opportunities as well as connect with partners to earn and spend rewards in BitGreen. As BitGreen writes on its website, “The world is full of inspiring individuals looking to heal our home, push back against global warming and injustice, and help shape a brighter future.” If they can manage to achieve a mere fraction of their lofty goals, then the world will be that much greener as a result.
Chia (XCH)
Bram Cohen, inventor of BitTorrent, set up the Chia Network in 2017. A blockchain and smart transaction platform, Chia allows its users to take advantage of available hard drive space to run the decentralized network. Rather than proof-of-work (such as Bitcoin), the Chia Network relies on Proof of Space and Time, which means that users who store a certain amount of data over a certain period of time can earn Chia’s token XCH (itself a response to the extreme energy use required to mine cryptocurrencies).
Chia’s blockchain transaction platform is called Mainnet and can be downloaded directly from their website, while Chialisp is their newly developed smart contract programming language (reference smart transactions currently available are atomic swaps, authorized payees, recoverable wallets, multisig wallets, and rate-limited wallets). In addition, XCH, which has been referred to as the greenest cryptocurrency, can be mined on Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. For those of you interested in the platform’s finer points, Chia’s Green Paper provides an immersive micro perspective.
Algorand (ALGO)
Algorand is the brainchild of MIT professor and 2012 Turing Award winner Silvio Micali, who set up the world’s first pure proof-of-stake blockchain-based cryptocurrency platform in 2017 (the test network was launched in 2019). The platform itself supports smart contract functionality and its native cryptocurrency is ALGO.
In terms of its eco-conscious credentials, Algorand does not involve mining. According to their website, “The energy required to run a node in the network is negligible, and can be done on a device as simple as a Raspberry Pi. Compared to other blockchains, digital asset creation and transactions on Algorand result in magnitudes less CO2 emissions, with initial analysis demonstrating around 2 million times less.”
In fact, on 22 April 2021, Algorand announced that its blockchain is entirely carbon neutral. Not one to rest on their (green) laurels, the platform partnered with ClimateTrade, a leader in CO2 emissions transparency and traceability, in order to become the greenest blockchain with a carbon-negative network.
In order to do so, Algorand and ClimateTrade will implement a sustainability oracle which will notarize Algorand’s carbon footprint on-chain for each epoch (a set amount of blocks). With its advanced smart contracts, Algorand will then lock the equivalent amount of carbon credit as an ASA (Algorand Standard Asset) into a green treasury so that its protocol keeps running as carbon-negative. There are 10 billion ALGO and distribution will continue until 2030.
Final thoughts
I know what you’re thinking–no mention of Cardano (Ada), IOTA (MIOTA), Stellar (XLM), Nano (NANO), Power Ledger (POWR), or even lightweight Mina ($MINA). Heresy, you say? Well, with over 4,000 cryptocurrencies on offer, and more in the offing each day, any list will be incomplete by definition
With an increased use of renewable energy, more energy-efficient protocols, and carbon footprint offsetting, we are bound to see new, more sustainable, eco-friendly cryptocurrencies and the digital infrastructure(s) on which they are created and run.
At the moment, the price of the Dash cryptocurrency on the Changelly today 03.09.21 is 268.09$. The daily trading volume was 182 556 000.00$. The price change was 0.0158302%
You can take part in cryptocurrency trading on the Changelly exchange
CryptoApa doesn’t predict the dash rate. If you need the latest forecasts of the dash rate against the usd, contact appropriate specialists.
At the moment, the price of the Ethereum (ETH) cryptocurrency on the Changelly today 03.09.21 is 3 794.54$. The daily trading volume was 16 155 000 000.00$. The price change was 0.326044%
You can take part in cryptocurrency trading on the Changelly exchange
CryptoApa doesn’t predict the ethereum rate. If you need the latest forecasts of the ethereum rate against the usd, contact appropriate specialists.
Decentralized applications (dApps) are digital applications or programs that exist and run on a blockchain or P2P network of computers instead of a single computer, and are outside the purview and control of a single authority.
DApps can run on a P2P network or a blockchain network. For example, BitTorrent, Tor and Popcorn Time are applications that run on computers that are part of a P2P network, whereby multiple participants are consuming content, feeding or seeding content, or simultaneously performing both functions.
In the context of cryptocurrencies, dApps run on a blockchain network in a public, open source, decentralized environment and are free from control and interference by any single authority.
For example, a developer can create a Twitter-like dApp and put it on a blockchain where any user can publish messages. Once posted, no one—including the app creators—can delete the messages.
At the moment, the price of the Litecoin cryptocurrency on the Changelly today 03.09.21 is 213.33$. The daily trading volume was 1 149 000 000.00$. The price change was 0.458106%
You can take part in cryptocurrency trading on the Changelly exchange
CryptoApa doesn’t predict the litecoin rate. If you need the latest forecasts of the litecoin rate against the usd, contact appropriate specialists.
Bitcoin mining is performed by high-powered computers that solve complex computational math problems; these problems are so complex that they cannot be solved by hand and are complicated enough to tax even incredibly powerful computers.
The result of bitcoin mining is twofold. First, when computers solve these complex math problems on the Bitcoin network, they produce new bitcoin. And second, by solving computational math problems, bitcoin miners make the Bitcoin payment network trustworthy and secure by verifying its transaction information.
When someone sends bitcoin anywhere, it’s called a transaction. Transactions made in-store or online are documented by banks, point-of-sale systems, and physical receipts. Bitcoin miners achieve the same thing by clumping transactions together in “blocks” and adding them to a public record called a blockchain. Nodes then maintain records of those blocks so that they can be verified into the future.
When bitcoin miners add a new block of transactions to the blockchain, part of their job is to make sure that those transactions are accurate. In particular, bitcoin miners make sure that bitcoin is not duplicated, a unique quirk of digital currencies called double-spending.
Rewarding bitcoin miners
With as many as 300,000 purchases and sales occurring in a single day, verifying each of those transactions can be a great deal of work for miners. As compensation for their efforts, miners are awarded bitcoin whenever they add a new block of transactions to the blockchain.
The amount of new bitcoin released with each mined block is called the block reward. The block reward is halved every 210,000 blocks (or roughly every four years). In 2009, it was 50. In 2013, it was 25, in 2018 it was 12.5, and in May of 2020, it was halved to 6.25.
Bitcoin successfully halved its mining reward—from 12.5 to 6.25—for the third time on May 11, 2020.
This system will continue until around 2140. At that point, miners will be rewarded with fees for processing transactions that network users will pay. These fees ensure that miners still have the incentive to mine and keep the network going. The idea is that competition for these fees will cause them to remain low after halvings are finished.
These halvings reduce the rate at which new coins are created and, thus, lower the available supply. This can cause some implications for investors because other assets with low supply—like gold—can have high demand and push prices higher. At this rate of halving, the total number of bitcoin in circulation will reach a limit of 21 million, making the currency entirely finite and potentially more valuable over time.
Verifying Bitcoin transactions
In order for bitcoin miners to actually earn bitcoin from verifying transactions, two things have to occur. First, they must verify one megabyte (MB) worth of transactions, which can theoretically be as small as one transaction but are more often several thousand, depending on how much data each transaction stores.
Second, in order to add a block of transactions to the blockchain, miners must solve a complex computational math problem, also called a proof of work. What they’re actually doing is trying to come up with a 64-digit hexadecimal number, called a hash, that is less than or equal to the target hash. Basically, a miner’s computer spits out hashes at different rates—megahashes per second (MH/s), gigahashes per second (GH/s), or terahashes per second (TH/s)—depending on the unit, guessing all possible 64-digit numbers until they arrive at a solution. In other words, it’s a gamble.
Bitcoin mining analogy
Because bitcoin mining is essentially guesswork, arriving at the right answer before another miner has almost everything to do with how fast your computer can produce hashes. Just a decade ago, bitcoin mining could be performed competitively on normal desktop computers. Over time, however, miners realized that graphics cards commonly used for video games were more effective, and they began to dominate the game. In 2013, bitcoin miners started to use computers designed specifically for mining cryptocurrency as efficiently as possible, called application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). These can run from several hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, but their efficiency in mining bitcoin is superior.
Today, bitcoin mining is so competitive that it can only be done profitably with the most up-to-date ASICs. When using desktop computers, graphics processing units (GPUs), or older models of ASICs, the cost of energy consumption actually exceeds the revenue generated. Even with the newest unit at your disposal, one computer is rarely enough to compete with what miners call mining pools.
A mining pool is a group of miners who combine their computing power and split the mined bitcoin between participants. A disproportionately large number of blocks are mined by pools rather than by individual miners. Mining pools and companies have represented large percentages of Bitcoin’s computing power.
