SydesJokes: June 2017

Friday, June 30, 2017

Thursday, June 29, 2017

There are at least three ways, though only one of them looks rational today. First, you could mine your own bitcoins. Second, you could buy some from an exchange. Third, you could buy shares in a fund that has invested in bitcoins.

Please note that answering your question is not a recommendation, and I am not qualified to give advice on investments. However, as electronic payments expert Dave Birch put it to me on Twitter: “one doesn’t invest in bitcoin, one gambles on bitcoin”.

The problem is that people can make money by buying things that are essentially worthless, such as used postage stamps, Beanie Babies, and (historically) tulip bulbs. Tulipmania operated on the “bigger fool” theory, also known among stock traders as “momentum investing”. For example, tulip bulb prices may be insane but they keep going up. I may be a fool to buy them, but I expect a bigger fool to buy them from me. Simply replace “buy low, sell high” with “buy high, sell higher”. This works until you run out of fools.

However, you can buy things that don’t depend on bigger fools appearing, such as land and gold. Their prices may vary dramatically, but over the long term, they retain real value. When tulip bulb prices were tumbling, everyone wanted to sell. When gold prices tumble, people with money look forward to an “investment opportunity”.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tpx3En

Source: The Guardian

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Bitcoin could reach $5 trillion in five years, predicts Novogratz

Famed investor Michael Novogratz, who recently said he has 10% of his money in Bitcoin and Ether, now states that digital currencies could reach a value of $5 trillion in five years — if the industry will be able to reach massive adoption.

“The Nasdaq got to $5.4 trillion in 1999, why couldn’t it be as big? There’s so much human capital and real money being poured into the space and we’re at the takeoff point. Pay your taxes, because nobody in that space pays taxes. It’s a bunch of libertarians. There really is a revolutionary spirit amongst the guys that are building this system.”

In order to obtain this value, companies will have to develop businesses and projects that are able to satisfy regulators, but right now bitcoin’s reputation is not going to the correct street as it is popularly perceived as a currency favored by black markets and hackers.

The cryptocurrency industry took a new reputational collapse a few days ago when a cyber attack spread around the world, disabling computers and demanding users pay $300 in cryptocurrency. Back in May, a similar thing happened with the WannaCry hack.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tprndB

Source: NewsBTC

Centralized State Digital Tokens ‘Can’t Compete With Bitcoin’: Max Keiser

Banks’ centralized digital tokens have come under fresh criticism from cryptocurrency experts and Max Keiser.

In a Twitter exchange yesterday, Keiser praised the perspective of computer scientist and Bitcoin enthusiast Datavetaren, who reiterated the vulnerabilities non-decentralized schemes face.

Datavetaren’s hacking example “demonstrates why centralization (single point of failure) prevents state actors from effectively competing with Bitcoin,” Keiser said.

Central banks in several countries have expressed particular interest in creating controlled digital tokens for a variety of uses.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tpWfKW

Source: CoinTelegraph

See How This Clean Tech Start Up Plans To Turn Electric Vehicles Into Virtual Power Plants

According to 2016 research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, electric vehicle (EV) sales will be close to 41 million by 2040 globally. The research also estimates that the EV growth will means that a quarter of the cars on the road by 2040 will be EV and by that date, those cars are expected to use 2,700TWh of electricity displacing 13 million barrels crude oil per day.

Nuvve, a clean tech start up in San Diego, has launched a pilot project with University of California San Diego (UC San Diego) to use idle electric vehicles as a collective energy storage reservoir. This will allow parked EV's to feed their energy back into the grid and be redeployed as needed by utility or grid companies. The total cost of the pilot is estimated at $7.9 million.

The company develops bi-directional electric vehicle charging technology which can draw electricity from electric vehicles plugged into charging stations and distribute that energy when needed. With the funding in place, the company says it will now install its vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging system in 50 new electric vehicle chargers at UC San Diego which has its own micro-grid. The company recently won a $4.2 million grant from the California Energy Commission and says its partners, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Hitachi are funding the remaining and $3.5 million. San Diego Gas & Electric is providing the technical services and resources to implement the technology on the campus.

"Bi-directional charging and discharging of over 1.5 million electric vehicles in California by 2020 has the potential to significantly balance in real time the grid’s supply-demand imbalance associated with variable renewable energy generation. Instead of paying Arizona to take California’s surplus renewable energy generation, we should have flexible charging for EV’s under an EV Happy Hour Tariff," said Byron Washom, UCSD Director of Strategic Energy Initiatives.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tprmq3

Source: Forbes

New York Preschools Accept Bitcoin and Ether for Tuition Payments

Two private preschools in New York City now accept bitcoin and two other cryptocurrencies for tuition payments, according to their co-founder.

Montessori Schools, based in the Flatiron and SoHo neighborhoods of Manhattan, began accepting bitcoin, ether and litecoin in June. Payments are accepted by way of an integration with digital currency startup Coinbase, which automatically converts the crypto payments to US dollars.

The preschools ascribe to the Montessori philosophy of education, an approach to learning developed in the early 20th century by Maria Montessori. According to online materials, tuition at the schools can run as high as $30,950 per annum – worth roughly 12.3 BTC at current prices.

Marco Ciocco, co-founder and chairman of the schools, told CoinDesk that the move to accept digital currencies for tuition payments began more than a year ago, following requests from parents. As more requests came in, Ciocco said, school officials started to seriously weigh how it could work.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tpc04N

Source: CoinDesk

Bitcoin Q&A: How is fungibility tied to privacy?

Published on 27 Jun 2017

Fungibility is simply that it doesn't matter where any given unit of currency came from; one unit is worth as much as any other unit. For example, it doesn't matter, upon presentation, the euro you hold was stolen two transactions ago. No one can say "I will take that euro but not that euro." This was settled as a matter of law in the 16th century. The reason we have fungibility is because otherwise the currency wouldn't work; if every time you received a euro, you had to open a database and check the provenance, currency wouldn't work. Not just because you would have to track a database that was perfect and always updated, but because no euro would be worth one euro. Every euro would be weighted by how liquid it is, whether you can use it and it will be accepted. Fungibility is understanding by law, practice, and technology that every unit is treated as indistinguishable. Bitcoin is somewhat fungible. You can trace the provenance of every coin; by custom we don't do that but we are beginning to see some companies do it, which is a problem. If accounts start being frozen because of where bitcoins came from three transactions ago, that's a problem. Fungibility is tied to privacy and anonymity. There are systems being made where you can't tell the amount being transacted, who the sender and receiver are. Banning technology, especially open-source technology, because criminals use it only usually affects the people who aren't criminals: the innocent and the idiots. People should be able to protect their money from predators, from corporations, from tyrannical governments.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tnpZZ1

Source: SydesJokes Blog

Burger King to Accept Bitcoin in Russia This Summer

Russian Burger King restaurants are due to start accepting Bitcoin as a payment method this summer, reports state on Wednesday.

According to local news resources, a Moscow branch of the burger chain has started piloting Bitcoin payments, with officials now confirming a nationwide rollout.

Uznay Vse states the unnamed branch accepted a Bitcoin transaction on Tuesday this week, which represents “the first official reports of Bitcoin payments for goods and services in Russia.”

Burger King has also begun the hunt for an IT professional able to implement the relevant software.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tl5Bb4

Source: CoinTelegraph

Poland’s Largest Food Delivery with 5000+ Restaurants Starts Accepting Bitcoin

Pyszne.pl is Poland’s largest service for ordering food online. In 2016, the site reported having approximately 883,000 active customers, 4.3 million orders, and an average order size of 9.55 euros. It has partnered with 5,062 restaurants, ranging from pizza, sushi, kebab, dumplings and other dishes, all of which offer delivery.

In 2014, Pyszne.pl was acquired by Takeaway.com, one of the largest online food ordering websites in the world. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Takeaway.com is active in 10 countries, has 28,800 restaurants, and 8.9 million active customers. Pyszne.pl is Takeaway.com’s fastest growing brand and the only one in Poland. In 2016, it grew 150% annually in terms of gross merchandise volume. Takeaway.com wrote:

"Poland [Pyszne.pl] continues to be our fastest-growing market delivering another year of triple-digit order growth…we have achieved twelve times order growth in Poland and cemented ourselves as the clear number one in a fast-growing market. Our brand is multiple times larger than the number two based on orders."

In addition, the company detailed, “Poland is also home to our fourth largest office,” which is located in Warsaw. “Our Polish business became our third largest market in 2016.”

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tkD4lM

Source: Bitcoin News

Bitcoin Shows What Banking Should Be: American Banker

American Banker, a daily trade newspaper that has been covering the financial sector since 1836, recently featured an analytical piece by its editor-in-chief Marc Hochstein entitled “How I missed the point of bitcoin,” to demonstrate how Bitcoin has shown what global banking should be.

In 2012, Hochstein noted in an article entitled “Lightning fast, dirt cheap: bitcoin shows what banking could be,” that a new peer to peer digital cash system has emerged. Five years ago, Hochstein praised the Bitcoin network’s ability to settle transactions with low fees and at fast speeds without the necessity and involvement of intermediaries or mediators.

The decentralized nature of Bitcoin remains identical but what has changed in Bitcoin is its fee and settlement speed. Due to the explosive growth of the Bitcoin network and its market, average Bitcoin transaction fees have increased beyond $2.5. In addition, at certain periods wherein the Bitcoin mempool, the holding area of Bitcoin transactions for the miners, is full of unconfirmed transactions, the confirmation of transactions can take hours.

However, Hochstein remains optimistic towards the core principles and functions of Bitcoin that include the settlement of transactions and transfer of data in a decentralized, transparent and fair manner. Although Bitcoin transactions can cost up to $2.5, scaling solutions such as the Bitcoin Core development team’s transaction malleability fix segregated witness (SegWit) are imminent.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tkAeNO

Source: CoinTelegraph

Bitcoin Regains 40% Crypto Market Dominance As Ethereum, Other Altcoins Plummet

Bitcoin’s crypto market dominance has recovered above 40 percent as Ethereum’s deep falls caused its presence to reduce sharply.

Data from Coinmarketcap shows an uptick of around two percent over the past 24 hours for Bitcoin, despite its price also slipping downwards.

Bitcoin’s share of the cryptocurrency market had bottomed out at as little as 37 percent last week amid Ethereum’s ICO frenzy.

The largest altcoin’s rapid losses over the weekend, which continue today, soon reversed the trend, however, Ethereum currently trading at around just $250.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tkKyoM

Source: CoinTelegraph

Donald Trump

Charles Darwin #Quote

The pharmaceutical industry does not create cures

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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Climate change could prevent food getting around the world

Climate change is bad news for basically every facet of human existence and now it's set to literally hit us in the gut by threatening global food supplies. According to a new report by leading think tank Chatham House, global warming is on course to produce more violent storms and increased flooding, affecting both crop yields and global trade routes.

The report, Chokepoints and Vulnerabilities in Global Food Trade, explains that while volatile weather will have a clear and direct impact on crops it will also affect important trade routes, restricting the global free flow of food on which we depend.

According to the report, international trade has allowed certain regions to specialise in particular types of food production, thereby boosting productivity and reducing costs.

But this system is now "coming under increasing strain", and the report's authors have called for an "emergency response mechanism" to deal with the growing risk of dwindling global food supplies.

Full story at http://engt.co/2s2ABst

Climate Change Could Threaten Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100

Charles Geisler, a sociologist at Cornell University, spent much of his career researching where poor people go when rich corporations swoop in and buy the land out from under their feet.

But his focus began to shift in 2005, after observing how storm surges tainted farmland in Bangladesh with salt water. Later that year, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, submerging communities once believed to be safe behind levees and dikes. As floodwaters inundated Vietnam’s Mekong Delta last year, Geisler’s new worldview came into sharp relief.

The rising sea, he surmised, is the one displacement force more powerful than greed.

Geisler began collating climate and demographic research, and came to a dire conclusion: By the year 2100, rising sea levels could force up to 2 billion people inland, creating a refugee crisis among one-fifth of the world’s population.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tl1aN6

Prime minister Modi could lecture Trump on climate change — India is leapfrogging the US on renewables

India's prime minister Narendra Modi is meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday, and the agenda could include climate change as the two prepare for the G-20 Summit in July.

In the wake of Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, Modi might have a thing or two to lecture the American president about. India is leapfrogging the US with ambitious renewable energy goals - and it's achieving them.

Following the US' departure from the Paris accord, countries like India, China, and the EU have "stepped up to fill the void the US left behind" John Coequyt, the Sierra Club's global climate policy director, told Business Insider on Monday.

India wants to get nearly 60% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2027, and the country is on track to exceed the goals it set in its commitment to the Paris deal.

Full story at http://read.bi/2tkU23t

Bigger hail might pummel the US as climate change gathers more force

Last month, hailstones as big as baseballs pounded the Denver area, knocking down power lines, damaging homes, and smashing through windshields “like tissue paper,” TheWashington Post reported. The hailstorm hit during rush hour, when lots of cars where on the road, and ended up being Colorado’s costliest catastrophe, totaling $1.4 billion in damages. But if climate change goes unchecked, we might see more of these extreme hailstorms in the future, according to new research.

A study published today in Nature Climate Change shows that in the second half of this century, North America could experience fewer hail days overall, but storms with larger hail might become more common, including hail that’s larger than 1.6 inches — exactly like the hailstorm that plummeted Denver. This is bad news across the board: hail can destroy crops, as well as homes and cars, leading to more insurance losses.

Predicting how hail will change due to global warming is very complicated. Hail forms during thunderstorms, when fast air currents carry water droplets up in the sky, where they freeze into hailstones. As more water freezes around them, these lumps of ice become too heavy and fall onto the ground as hail. Predicting such small-scale events is difficult. In this study, researchers used several models to simulate how hail might form and grow over North America between 2041 and 2070, if the world keeps warming up.

They found that while hail days in the summer and spring might decrease overall, storms with large hail — 0.4 to 1.6 inches — might become more common, especially in the central and northern plains of the US. Areas like eastern Colorado, Nebraska, and southern South Dakota might see an increase in hail that’s larger than 1.6 inches, the study says. Southeastern states like Florida, instead, could be lucky: they might experience fewer hailstorms and with smaller hail.

Full story at http://bit.ly/2tkY6kh

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Friday, June 30, 2017

What is Blockchain?

Thursday, June 29, 2017

How can I invest in bitcoin?

Bitcoin could reach $5 trillion in five years, predicts Novogratz

Centralized State Digital Tokens ‘Can’t Compete With Bitcoin’: Max Keiser

See How This Clean Tech Start Up Plans To Turn Electric Vehicles Into Virtual Power Plants

New York Preschools Accept Bitcoin and Ether for Tuition Payments

Bitcoin Q&A: How is fungibility tied to privacy?

Burger King to Accept Bitcoin in Russia This Summer

Poland’s Largest Food Delivery with 5000+ Restaurants Starts Accepting Bitcoin

Bitcoin Shows What Banking Should Be: American Banker

Bitcoin Regains 40% Crypto Market Dominance As Ethereum, Other Altcoins Plummet

Donald Trump

Charles Darwin #Quote

The pharmaceutical industry does not create cures

Superior Coin Ready To Lauch!

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Climate change could prevent food getting around the world

Climate Change Could Threaten Up To 2 Billion Refugees By 2100

Prime minister Modi could lecture Trump on climate change — India is leapfrogging the US on renewables

Bigger hail might pummel the US as climate change gathers more force