Happy Birthday, Bitcoin Whitepaper!!
Happy Birthday Bitcoin Whitepaper!
On October 31st 2008, on the Metzdowd Cryptography mailing list, someone named Satoshi Nakamoto released a whitepaper titled:
Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.
He said:
“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”
And a financial revolution was born.
The mailing list was filled with cypherpunks and visionaries who had long sought a digital currency that couldn’t be shut down or censored. It became clear that bitcoin might be the answer, and that it provided the first ever working solution to the infamous Byzantine Generals’ Problem — something that had hitherto plagued theorists and computer scientists.
How fitting it is that Satoshi, under the guise of pseudonymity, chose Halloween to publish, stating the need for a digital payment system “based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.”
This revolutionary concept would change the world, leading to all kinds of distributed trust mechanisms that we have only begun to see take shape. The release of the bitcoin whitepaper might be the biggest step towards freedom we’ve seen in the last 100 years.
So this Sunday make sure you take the time to celebrate the 13th anniversary of the start of this financial revolution. May we all celebrate the freedom and self-sovereignty that has been put into our hands.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Doge, Shiba Inu, & Floki do Tricks for Treats
The cryptoverse is quite used to parody coins created just to get a laugh. Every once in a while, one of these digital jokes breaks through the threshold and suddenly lands in the arena with the big boys. That was certainly the case with dogecoin this year, a coin created in 2013 to make fun of other cryptocurrencies — it increased by over 12,000% in May this year from the start of the year. The meteoric rise came after a series of doge-related tweets from Elon Musk leading up to his appearance on Saturday Night Live. It has since settled, sitting at a >5000% increase since the start of the year.
But it seems that we have a new meme-king in the top 10. A literal parody of a parody, Shiba Inu coin, was created in August 2020 and describes itself as the “dogecoin killer”. The SHIB token, which is Ethereum-based (unlike dogecoin), surpassed DOGE in market cap this week, and the two coins have been switching back and forth between numbers 9 and 10 on coincap. Business Insider has even begun reporting on newly minted SHIB billionaires.
Meanwhile another meme-contender might be on the horizon, with “Floki” ads apparently being plastered over the London Transportation System. Floki is a coin named after Elon Musk’s Shiba Inu, and the ads read:
“Missed Doge? Get Floki”
While this meme-frenzy may seem enticing, Elon Musk’s own words of caution might be needed here:
“As I’ve said before, don’t bet the farm on crypto! True value is building products & providing services to your fellow human beings, not money in any form.”
Beware of FOMO: Meme coins are hilarious and fun, but understand the risks involved, and don’t bet more than you’re willing to lose.
NYT Thinks We Might Have An Inflation Problem
Hide your wife! Hide your kids! The New York Times has officially reported that inflation... might be a problem.
We all took time to collectively facepalm this week when the NYT reported that the 2008 level-high hikes in inflation we are experiencing in the US may cause a threat to the President’s spending agenda. With the current inflation level at 5.4%, the government’s official position has been to say “don’t worry about it” and “this is transitory”. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to realize that printing absurd amounts of money might devalue the money already in existence, but up until this week the gray lady, mouthpiece of the state extraordinaire, has been ignoring this fact. Glad they’re finally catching up — and if the NYT is even reporting on it, then you know things must be bad.
They also reported that President Biden’s approval ratings have dipped from 56% to 42% — this seems to be one of the focuses of the piece, rather than the millions of people hurting from the dwindling purchasing power of their savings.
And yet the money-printing continues. Even discussions about potentially “tapering” the printing next year won’t mean and end to it: It will mean that they will start to decrease the rate of their printing.
It is reported that the President has weekly zoom chats with his team to discuss solutions to this ongoing crisis, but maybe we can help:
STOP PRINTING MONEY.
Helium, Dish, and the Decentralized Internet
Comcast and Optimum had better make room! Helium, the DeFi internet network, announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with DISH in hopes to build a user-powered, 5G wifi network. They have ordered 3.5 million Helium hotspots, and plan to onboard DISH customers.
The Helium network works by running on a Long Range Wide Area Network (aka LoRaWAN); an open source technology that specifically operates on unlicensed frequencies that vary country to country. People set up hotspots that provide wireless coverage, and are rewarded with HNT (the helium native token) through their new Proof-of-Coverage mechanism.
The main objective behind the creation of the Helium network is to incentivize the creation of physical and decentralized wireless networks.
Soon after the partnership announcement, a job posting was listed on DISH’s LinkedIn page reading, “DISH Wireless is building a next-gen 5G network to disrupt the wireless industry and fuel innovation in transportation, health care, education, sustainability, city management, and agriculture”.
Helium CEO Amir Haleem said of the exciting news, “Using Helium Network’s technology and blockchain-based incentive model, DISH is a pioneer in supporting an entirely new way to connect people and things. … [The 5G] hotspots will be deployed by customers, creating opportunities for users, partners and the entire ecosystem”.
Sounds like an interesting step towards a more decentralized internet!
FATF Guidelines Finally Released
The Financial Action Task Force, an international organization that standardizes financial surveillance rules amongst member nations, has finally released their guidance document on crypto surveillance. The verdict? It could be worse.
The definitions of what virtual assets (VAs) and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) are have been somewhat clarified, and a new paragraph explains that people who “merely provide ancillary infrastructure” which includes “verifying the accuracy of signatures” won’t be party to the surveillance obligations. Furthermore, the document removes references to those who are just “facilitating” or “governing” transfers, and (thanks to feedback from groups like Coin Center) instead focuses on those with “control of [Virtual Assets].” It also removes ridiculously vague language like “doing business development” from the list of potentially surveillance-qualifying activities.
The hotly debated Travel Rule, which requires that financial institutions pass on transaction information when transferring business from one financial institution to the next, has been slightly clarified, stating that “fees paid to miners and validators are not subject to travel rule originator and beneficiary information collection”.
There is, however, still much left to be desired in the FATF guidance. As Coin Center said, “it remains far too vague and verbose to actually create reasonably clear and narrow limits for surveillance obligations.”
For example there’s still vague language around multi-sig arrangements: While a person who “maintains unilateral control of their assets at all times” is apparently not a qualifying service for surveillance, the document equivocates, saying “it could still fall under [the definition of VASP] where it actively facilitates the transfer.” What “actively facilitates” means is anyone’s guess.
DeFi is also defined ambiguously: “Any party [that] profits from the service or has the ability to set or change parameters” is still treated as potentially included in the definition of VASP. The guidance also says that anyone creating automated tools must “take appropriate measures to manage and mitigate these risks in an ongoing and forward-looking manner … prior to the launch or use of the software or platform”. Coin Center wondered whether this means that coders are considered VASPs, and must therefore seek permission before writing a smart contract: Surely this would violate the US’s free speech rights under the constitution.
While the document is an improvement from the draft we saw earlier in the year, which the crypto community strongly pushed back against, the language is still written very loosely in order to be later defined as needed. Cavalier terms like “actively participate” and “may qualify” leave much to the imagination.
Although the FATF is informal organization without the power to create laws in its member countries, it does wield a tremendous amount of power in the form of blacklists and sanctions against non-compliant countries. Crypto regulation and surveillance is definitely heating up around the world.
The G̶o̶l̶d̶e̶n̶ Diamond Age of the Metaverse has arrived
The day we all knew was coming has arrived — Mark Zuckerberg has announced his intention to take over the universe. At least, the Metaverse. In a groundbreaking announcement made at the Facebook Annual Conference on Thursday, he officially launched the new brand name for his company: Meta. He said that focusing on one product (Facebook) “just doesn’t encompass everything we do” and that “it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future. … We believe the Metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet.”
The term “Metaverse” was coined by science fiction writer, Neal Stephenson, in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, and is a future version of the internet consisting of shared virtual and augmented realities, where avatars walk around and interact in a virtual world as they would in real life. Last week Facebook announced it was hiring 10,000 more people to work on their Metaverse project.
It’s worth noting that Facebook is on the cutting edge of tech, and a lot of the technology developed by Facebook is widely used throughout Silicon Valley. If their next major play is on the Metaverse, then it’s likely a direction we should all be looking in.
And they’re not the only ones betting big in that area. This week we also learnt more about Gamestop’s own metaverse plans, when they posted a job listing looking to build out an Ethereum-based Web 3 arm.
Facebook representatives themselves have reiterated that the metaverse won't be owned or run by any one company:
"Like the internet, its key feature will be its openness and interoperability. Bringing this to life will take collaboration and cooperation across companies, developers, creators and policymakers."
But we’ll see just how interoperable these current walled gardens become. There is also the big elephant in the room that is privacy. As excited as I am to see resources piled into metaverse development (so that I might be able to live out my Snow Crash and Sword Art Online dreams), I’m not sure whether Facebook is a company that I would trust with all that data.
By Will Sandoval, NBTV Associate Producer, and Naomi Brockwell.