Ivan on Tech is quite popular in the crypto YouTube community for his insights, especially from a technical point of views.
He does also have a sense of humour when it comes to crypto, and his latest creation is a collage song which he jokes “is fundamentally pampamental”.
What does Pumpamentals mean?
It’s essentially slang for getting the pump on a cryptocurrency as described by Urban Dictionary. The pump is when the price of the crypto goes up fast, often referred to as “mooning” or “going to the moon”.
Urban Dictionary definition of pumpamentals
Online Blockchain Education
Along with his YouTube channel, Ivan also runs online blockchain courses which teach beginners how blockchain works and how to become a blockchain developer. We recently also reported in the news that TAFE Queensland offering blockchain courses here in Australia.
As you may know already, Facebook made a decision on 18 February, 2021 to ban Australian news sites from publishing on Facebook effective immediately. Crypto News was no exception.
Update 26/02/2021: Our Facebook page is now back online.
The crypto news Facebook page may stilll be visible to you, but our publishing functions are disabled, and they have removed our cover image.
Facebook page missing Posts link and cover image
Why was it banned?
As quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald: “to even the playing field amid the market monopoly of Google and Facebook and to protect public interest journalism”. “Media companies say their content helps Google and Facebook make money by offering the reliable, fact-checked information users are looking for. The tech giants say the internet should stay free and that publishers benefit from the click-throughs from their sites. And, with the rest of the world watching Australia’s code closely, both companies fear it could trigger copycat regulation forcing them to pay for news all around the globe.”
What does this mean for you?
Not much really. Just follow us on our Twitter page or Telegram channel to get the latest crypto news stories. Hopefully Twitter doesn’t apply this ban too – that would be mayhem. This highlights the control that these huge centralised companies have on our society and may lead to decentralised social platforms becoming more popular over the coming years.
The Motley Fool announced on February 17th, 2021 that they would be allocating $5 million of their own cash to Bitcoin (BTC).
This investment is part of a campaign they are calling “10X” – which involves finding investment opportunities that they think will increase ten times in value over the next five years or so.
The announcement states that “Bitcoin will be a core holding in our 10X portfolio”. And specifies that they will be buying directly into Bitcoin (no ETFs) with the reasons why they bought BTC outlined in the tweet below.
Here’s why:
1. We believe it will store value more effectively than gold over the long term. 2. We believe it may become a medium for transactions, as/if pricing stabilizes in the decade ahead. 3. We believe it can act as a productive hedge against inflation.
This decision to invest in BTC however, has been highly controversial on Twitter with people are referring to an article they published back in 2013 where Sean Williams (a Fool since 2010) explains 10 reasons why Bitcoin is a terrible investment. It seems the article has been updated since with the new date showing as 2020.
Funnily enough, if they would have invested the $5 million when the article was written back in 2013, it would now be worth an estimated $2.5 billion dollars.
More Big Companies are Now Buying Bitcoin
Major companies are now starting to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets as the stimulus flooding continues and companies see Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation. The list of big companies publicly holding Bitcoin is growing which includes the likes of MicroStrategy, Paypal, Square, Tesla, Morgan Stanley, Greyscale, CoinShares, and now The Motley Fool. Who’s next?
For Bitcoin to get to the top it would need to overtake Gold, which has a 11 Trillion dollar market cap. That would take some doing – but who is to say it’s not possible, especially at the rate BTC it growing.
To surpass Gold, the price of bitcoin need to grow 10x and be worth over $500,000 per BTC – not taking into account any growth that Gold would have over the time period, which you expect it would.
Bitcoin Marketcap Trend
Bitcoin has a trend that previous highs get smashed by new highs, where the previous high appears a small bump in the chart. The trend continues so far…
Popular charting tool TradingView, just announced their Bitcoin Timeline which shows the big events that have happened to Bitcoin.
The timeline goes as far back as 2009 when Bitcoin started (although the chart starts at 2011). You can use your mouse/finger to swipe through the chart left/right and reveal more events.
A new technology called DeFi (Decentralized Finance) is trying to solve the participant risk problem in startup investing, which was a fatal flaw in ICOs. Hopefully we can now use technology to protect early investors.
You may have heard of ICOs during the 2017 crypto boom. Thousands of ICOs we’re started and abandoned as early investors lost their money.
Decentralized projects such as PAID Network and Polkadot are trying to innovate solutions that can allow people to participate in crowdfunding early technology startups with lower risk by introducing:
Decentralized escrow
Smart contracts to release funds at specific dates
Community voting to determine project milestones and audits
Return of funds to investors upon dispute resolutions
What is a DAICO?
DAICO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Initial Coin Offering. DAICOS may offer a most robust solution to protect investors and lower risk through community voting, reputation scoring and dispute resolutions.
Startup Crowdfunding Using Smart Contract Mediation
The PAID Token whitepaper mentions use cases for DAICOS to enable blockchain startups to launch crowdfunding on the PAID Network DAICO Platform, where the funds are locked in escrow smart contracts and released on set dates.
Community Voting To Access Funds
The PAID community investors can vote to release funds to the startup or raise issues, which the startup would need to rectify or the funds would get redistributed back to the token sale participants.
Ignition Platform
PAID’s Ignition platform will allow token holders the opportunity to participate in public token auctions. Blockchain-based token projects to offer their private and public auctions to participants, leveraging both PAID Network and Polkadot technology.
Ignition will initially support Ethereum based projects and then offer multi-chain through Polkadot. The project recently raised $150,000 in January 2021.
Polkastarter
Polkastarter is a protocol built for cross-chain token pools and auctions, enabling projects to raise capital on a decentralized, permissionless and interoperable environment based on Polkadot.
DeFi could revolutionize how we do global finance, but is an early technology that has not been fully tested and regulated. We have seen hackers take millions recently from DeFi platforms.
As always, be diligent when participating in early investment opportunities, do your own research and seek expert financial advice.
In a recent research paper published by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (regarded as the top 1% of all economic research departments worldwide 1), suggests that Decentralised Finance (DeFi) could potentially lead to a paradigm shift in the financial industry.
The research includes an in-depth, highly technical analysis of the main areas of DeFi technology including smart contracts, the use of stablecoins and opportunities and risks.
What is DeFi
The paper explains DeFi as “The term generally refers to an open, permissionless, and highly interoperable protocol stack built on public smart contract platforms, such as the Ethereum blockchain. It replicates existing financial services in a more open and transparent way. In particular, DeFi does not rely on intermediaries and centralized institutions.”.
DeFi may increase the efficiency, transparency, and accessibility of the financial infrastructure. Moreover, the system’s composability allows anyone to combine multiple applications and protocols, thereby creating new and exciting services.
Risks
DeFi also has certain risks, namely, smart contract execution risk, operational security, and dependencies on other protocols and external data.
DeFi Applications
The paper explains DeFi applications: “DeFi already offers a wide variety of applications. For example, one can buy U.S. dollar (USD)-pegged assets (so-called stablecoins) on decentralized exchanges, move these assets to an equally decentralized lending platform to earn interest, and subsequently add the interest-bearing instruments to a decentralized liquidity pool or an on-chain investment fund.”
DeFi Architecture
DeFi uses a multi-layered architecture, as seen below.
The paper then goes onto explain the following topics in great detail:
Decentralized Exchange Protocols
Smart Contract-Based Reserve Aggregation
Peer-to-Peer Protocols
Decentralized Lending Platforms
Collateralized Debt Positions
Decentralized Derivatives
On-Chain Asset Management
Conclusion
It’s great to see this type of research being done, as it explains everything in tremendous detail. And also takes into account both sides of the risks and potential use cases of DeFi in the future. Find out more about Economic Research at the St. Louis Fed.
[1] As determined by the citation ranking tracked by the independent, volunteer-run RePEc service
In a short interview with Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla tells us that there is a good chance that crypto is the future currency of earth.
Fate Loves Irony
In the video, he mentions “fate loves irony, and the most ironic outcome would be that the currency (Dogecoin) that was created as a joke actually becomes the world currency “.
According to Bitnodes, Australia is running 141 Bitcoin Core Nodes. Note that this is only around 1% of the total 9605 nodes running worldwide, with the majority of nodes running in USA and Germany.
Bitcoin Core is the simply the name of the current Bitcoin (BTC) computer program. A Bitcoin Core Node (Full Node) is a computer which runs the Bitcoin program (blockchain) and connects to the Bitcoin network to help verify transactions. The nodes work together worldwide to keep Bitcoin decentralised.
Who is Running Bitcoin Nodes in Australia?
You might be wondering, who is actually running the nodes here in Oz. Well according to Bitnodes tracker, there are nodes running all over the place with the majority of the nodes running in Sydney and Melbourne. It’s also quite interesting to see some of the Networks listed such as Telstra, TPG , Aussie Broadband and Amazon.
These are the coins i really like the look of in 2021. This is not financial or trading advice, I’m just sharing some information and thoughts on these projects that look interesting this year.
1. Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin is the first successful internet money based on peer-to-peer technology; whereby no central bank or authority is involved in the transaction and production of the Bitcoin currency.
The Price of BTC in 2020 went from US $7,000 to now $33,000 – Source: Coinmarketcap.com
The end of 2020 saw the start of the institutional money flowing into BTC with the Bitcoin marketcap rising from US $130 Billion to over US $500 Billion. With big players such as Paypal, Square Inc, MicroStrategy Inc and other institutions adding thousands of BTC to their holdings.
Ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain system that features its own cryptocurrency, Ether. ETH works as a platform for numerous other cryptocurrencies, as well as for the execution of decentralized smart contracts.
The Price of ETH in 2020 went from US $129 to now $1,090 – Source: Coinmarketcap.com
The recent developments of the ETH launchpad and Ethereum 2.0has certainly sparked the interest in Ethereum.
In 2020 we also saw the emergence of DeFi and it’s marketcap surpassing US $10 Billion which looks like a very interesting market with lots of exciting developments for 2021.
3. Chainlink (LINK)
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network which aims to connect smart contracts with data from the real world.
The Price of LINK in 2020 went from US $2 to now $14 – Source: Coinmarketcap.com
Chainlink provides is the missing link (pun intended) between the real world data and the virtual blockchain data. The smart contracts provided by other blockchains such as Ethereum will require real world data to execute. This is where Chainlink comes in to provide verifiable data to those networks through real world APIs.
Looking to 2021 as Chainlink continues to add to its growing number of partnerships and more blockchains to start to use its services and DeFi projects to use Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network.
4. Stellar (XLM)
Stellar is an open network that allows money to be moved and stored. When it was released in July 2014, one of its goals was boosting financial inclusion by reaching the world’s unbanked — but soon afterwards, its priorities shifted to helping financial firms connect with one another through blockchain technology.
The Price of XLM in 2020 went from US $0.04 to now $0.19 – Source: Coinmarketcap.com
Stellar was founded in the USA where some of the Ripple founders left and cloned the codebase and rewrote it. I’m quite impressed with the coding activity of Stellar seen on Github which if it continues, they should have a great 2021. Also looking forward to seeing what the partnership with IBM and blockchain cross-border payments can produce and possible banks launching stablecoins on the network.
5. OMG Network (OMG)
OMG Network, formerly known as OmiseGo, is a non-custodial, layer-2 scaling solution built for the Ethereum blockchain. As an Ethereum scaling solution, OMG Network is designed to allow users to transfer ETH and ERC20 tokens significantly faster and cheaper than when transacting directly on the Ethereum network.
The Price of OMG in 2020 went from US $0.6 to now $3.30 – Source: Coinmarketcap.com
Founded in Thailand in 2017, OMG is covering areas such as payments, loyalty points and banking/finance.
2021 could see OMG switch to Proof of Stake (POS) and working with ETH to scale transactions lowering transaction fees through the Plasma Network.
Closing Remarks
Obviously there are thousands of cryptos and projects that are trying to solve complex problems and improve all areas of our industries. The cryptocurrencies and tokens are starting to enter mainstream news now and i’m sure 2021 will see a lot more exposure for these awesome projects.
The Price of BTC in 2020 went from US $7,000 to now $33,000 The Price of ETH in 2020 went from US $129 to now $1,090 The Price of LINK in 2020 went from US $2 to now $14 The Price of XLM in 2020 went from US $0.04 to now $0.19 The Price of OMG in 2020 went from US $0.6 to now $3.30
I wonder how these will perform in 2021… Check back next year for an update!
