A collection of stories exploring the halving of the Bitcoin mining reward and the implications for the wider community. 

Everything you need to know about the halvening

Bitcoin Halvening

A wrap up of news covering the announcement of Facebook's cryptocurrency, Libra.

The latest news on Facebook's Libra

Facebook's Libra

Tether has a big impact on the crypto market. But there are a lot of questions—and speculation—surrounding it. Here are our takes on its latest developments.

Analysis and quick takes on Tether

A spotlight on Tether

Introducing: Tokenize all the Things

What Is Tokenization?

Talking tokens with Adam B. Levine

How LTBCoin kickstarted the token revolution (and why you've never heard of it)

How Ujo helps fans own a slice of their favorite musicians

Hoodies, sneakers and bricks? How streetwear could benefit from crypto tokens

Listen: A new kind of crypto sale - The Asset Token Onboarding

How crypto helps sell CBD

Why Treum is so interested in getting high

Luc Falempin: How trying to buy stocks led to building a securities token machine

Collectible cats: How Alan Carr helped bring tokenization to the masses

How crypto is helping set gamers free

BUIDL: A 10-step guide to tokenizing an asset

The world is built on a giant $256 trillion pile of assets. Everything from property to art, to stocks to oil. Blockchain wants to change all that. This collection explores the industries being disrupted, by whom, and what that means for both consumers and enterprises.

We've delved deep into the tokenized world to uncover the people, the projects and the potential of this technology to change capital forever.

Blockchain’s promise of a more liquid world

Tokenize all the Things

Telegram, one of the largest messaging platforms in the world—and used by many in the crypto industry—is launching its own blockchain platform. But it's up against a deadline: October 31. Will it deliver the GRAM cryptocurrency on time or will it be forced to backtrack on its ambitious plans?

Insights on Telegram's upcoming blockchain platform

Telegram's crypto play

Crypto Capital has worked with major exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, BitMEX and Bitfinex. But it was never really a bank, and two of its founders have been arrested by the FBI. We dig deep into it here.

Insights into the shady Panamanian bank that has been underpinning the crypto industry to this day.

The Crypto Capital Scandal

The Ethereum community gathered in Osaka, Japan, for its fifth developer-focused conference. Here are all the highlights and everything you need to know.

Breaking news and features live from Devcon's fifth conference.

Devcon 5

The largest crypto exchange in the world is expanding to the US. We track its major developments as it gears up for launch. Will the exchange survive or suffer in the harsher regulatory climate?

The latest on Binance's push into America

Binance in the USA

Decrypt's coverage of all the events taking place at Blockchain Week in and around New York City.

Decrypt's coverage of NYC Blockchain Week events

New York Blockchain Week: 2019

Jeff Benson

Lightning Labs CEO and co-founder Elizabeth Stark revealed today that the financial software company had raised $10 million in Series A funding to level up its payments system and expand its developer network, which already stands at more than 4,000. She also said Lightning Loop, a paid product for managing liquidity on the network, had moved into beta. 

The Lightning Network is an application layer on top of Bitcoin that allows people to make and receive payments quickly and cheaply off-chain. Lightning Labs is a software company dedicated to building on that network. It was founded by Stark and current CTO Laolu Osuntokun in 2016.

> Lightning Labs is scaling!
> 
> Announcing our $10M Series A to fuel LN development, and the Lightning Loop beta release, a product making it easier send/receive #bitcoin instantly.
> 
> With 4000 developers and 30+ startups, the next decade of Lightning is on 🔥https://t.co/3P4gVm89OV
> 
> — Lightning Labs⚡️ (@lightning) February 5, 2020

The lead financier in the Series A round was Craft Ventures. The full list of investors is quite long, with M13, Ribbit Capital, RRE Ventures, and Slow Ventures at the forefront. The founders of Pfeffer Capital, Stone Ridge, and First Round Capital also chipped in.

Lightning Labs previously secured $2.5 million in seed funding from notables such as Litecoin's Charlie Lee and Twitter's Jack Dorsey. Craft co-founders Bill Lee and David Sacks joined as well. This round will more firmly entrench Craft's involvement; managing director Brian Murray will join Lightning's board.

 The Lightning Network's amazing progress this year

Sam Lessin of Slow Ventures, indicated why it was ready to do business: "Lots of people talk about the 'internet of money' as an opportunity, but few teams have any sort of concrete plan around how to get there like Lightning Labs." 

Lessin et al should be happy, though not surprised, to see today's beta release. The addition of Loop to Lightning Lab's product line, which already includes its LND platform, gives the company a product it can charge money for. Startups like Fold have built their applications on top of Lightning Labs' platform. Loop may help them speed up their operations.

Loop is split into two functions: Loop In and Loop Out. The former helps people move currency from the Bitcoin network off-chain so they can make payments on the Lightning Network. Loop Out allows the people and businesses who receive such funds to get them quickly into on-chain accounts at exchanges or other spots. In short, it's a liquidity system so that people have enough money in their accounts.

In the release, Stark teased that Loop "is the first of several 'blue sky' Lightning products" the company is building. We'll see what it can cook up before a Series B.


bitcoin

business

cryptocurrency

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

finance

Startups

Technology

Bitcoin is the world's first peer-to-peer cryptocurrency. It was invented by a mysterious inventor Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 and is regarded as the first digital currency to fix the double spend problem.

Bitcoin

Insights into the biggest events shaping the crypto industry.

News

Lightning Labs is leveling up its Bitcoin-based payments system and expanding its developer network with investments from Craft Ventures and others.

Frank Cardona

Ripple continues its push into the cross-border payments market. Yesterday, the firm behind the XRP Ledger announced a partnership with International Money Express, a leading remittance services firm in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Intermex, listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange as IMXI, is one of the largest remitter service providers in the world. It services 100,000 payer locations across 17 countries, and which processes more than 30 million transactions per year, according to the company’s own figures. 

 Ripple led crypto-startup investments in Q4 2019 despite general downturn

The partnership is especially focused on the Mexico-US corridor. Mexico received $36 billion dollars in remittance payments last year, the third highest in the world, according to the World Bank. 

After a successful funding round in 2019 for Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) product, Intermex hopes to leverage the Ripple network to instantly send transactions for a fraction of the typical cost. According to the World Bank, the average global remittance transaction costs 6.82% of the amount sent, much higher than its target for below 3% by 2030. 

“We are pleased to have begun the partnership with the Ripple team, and look forward to implementing new solutions on RippleNet and ODL to help drive growth and deliver greater efficiency,” said Intermex’s CEO Bob Lisy in a statement.

Last year, Ripple partnered with another leading international remittance service, MoneyGram, a deal which also focused on the Mexico-US remittance corridor. Ripple’s other partnerships include firms like goLance, Viamericas, and FlashFX. Its ODL product is being used in additional prominent corridors with the United States, such as the Philippines, Australia, and Europe.

Ripple’s cryptocurrency, XRP, is the third largest by market cap. Over the last month, the price of XRP has surged over 24 percent. While it is still nowhere near its all-time high of $3.84 per coin, Ripple’s continued expansion across the globe with prominent cross-border payment providers is a positive sign for XRP holders.


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XRP is a type of cryptocurrency designed to help banks move money more quickly, and cheaply than existing methods. It is largely spearheaded by Ripple, a for-profit company based in San Francisco.

Ripple's deal with Intermex sets up the remittance services company to use RippleNet and XRP to speed up transactions across the US-Mexico border.

Robert Stevens

Bitspark, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency remittances company that served the Asia-Pacific markets, announced on Monday that it will shut down on March 4, 2020. Despite “excellent performance” from a recent product, the co-founders blame a botched restructuring, made worse by the coronavirus outbreak and the Hong Kong protests.

After March 4, account logins will be disabled for 90 days and customers will have to email Bitspark, which first launched as a cash-to-Bitcoin exchange in 2014, if they want to withdraw their crypto. 

 Death of privacy: Dash Core Group CMO slams Hong Kong’s phone seizures

In a twitter thread, Maxine Ryan, the company’s former COO describes her version of events: “As of a month ago, I made the decision to step down from my position as COO of Bitspark,” said Ryan. 

> This is an unfortunate reality Bitspark has had to face.
> 
> While this isn’t easy to say, as of 4th of March, Bitspark will no longer be operating and providing its services.
> 
> These announcements, especially in the #crypto space, always causes distress. 1/ https://t.co/YX7g7sWq1n
> 
> — Maxine Ryan (@MaxieRyan) February 3, 2020

“This naturally caused a need to restructure the company which unfortunately landed this result,” she wrote. Despite 400% month-on-month growth for a new product, Cash Point, which turns shops into mini OTC desks, performance wasn’t consistent enough, and internal shareholders decided to can the company.

“While the HK protests and now virus epidemic haven't affected us much, it hasn't helped either,” wrote CEO George Harrap in a blog post.

The coronavirus is the epidemic that swept through China. In a matter of weeks, it has infected tens of thousands and killed hundreds. It’s also battered the Asian markets that Bitspark served.

The Hong Kong protests have roiled the city for months now; the protestors are angry at the Chinese government’s demand that it should extradite alleged criminals from the country upon request. It’s also made things tough for Hong Kong’s economy. 

Neither Ryan’s thread nor Harrap’s blog post makes clear the link between the geopolitical events and the closure of their company. 

 

bitspark

Blockchain

coronavirus

Hong Kong

Bitspark, a Hong-Kong-based Bitcoin remittances company that served the Asia-Pacific markets, announced on Monday that it will shut down on March 4.

Transparent has gone from stealth to Series A.

Transparent Financial Systems, a cryptographic settlement solutions company for businesses, announced today that it had secured $14 million in Series A funding. 

Pantera Capital led the round. Square, the Jack Dorsey-founded mobile payment company, joined in, as did Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group. Additional funders included CMT Digital, Future\Perfect Ventures, and IDEO Colab Ventures.

 Square secures patent for a new 'cryptocurrency payment network'

Not much is yet known about Transparent. A blog post dated today, February 5, is titled "Hello World" and states that Transparent wants to help companies lower risks and costs related to USD settlements. It also indicates that it's been kicking around since 2018, when it split off from Vulcan Inc., the late Paul Allen's philanthropic organization. 

Little wonder then that the Seattle-based firm's seed financing, worth $8 million, came from Vulcan Capital, a for-profit impact investment wing interested in "clean" and sustainable investments. As part of the Series A deal, Pantera and Future\Perfect will take places alongside Vulcan on Transparent's board. 

However, all eyes are on Square, which may be positioned to not just profit off of Transparent's tech but also use it. Last year, it filled out its Square Crypto team with hires from Google, Facebook, and Lightning Labs. And if there were any doubts about its desire to get into Bitcoin, in January it won a patent for converting fiat payments into digital currency.

Mike Brock, in charge of Strategic Development for Square's Cash App, gave the standard endorsement of cryptocurrency's underlying technology in the press release: “Square believes that blockchain represents a path towards a more robust, safe, and empowering future for all participants in the economy—from individuals to businesses.”


jack dorsey

square

Jack Dorsey's Square and other big names are biddding for a chance to fund crypto startup Transparent, which spun off from Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. in 2018.

Daniel Phillips

Since June 2019, the popular American electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has seen its stock price rise up in what commentors are calling a bubble. But the bubble may have just popped.

In the last month alone, Tesla stocks (TSLA) have doubled, climbing from $450 to as much as $991 earlier today. This is a rise of 450% since June last year when they were valued at $180. Much of this recent growth came following the announcement of the Tesla CyberTruck, which went on to secure more 250,000 pre-orders in the space of a week.

As it stands, TSLA now sits at just $872, after seeing $100 (or almost 10%) cleaved from its value following a flash crash that occurred just hours ago. Perhaps we just hit peak Tesla.

As is common with any asset experiencing such meteoric growth, market analysts and investors have already begun drawing parallels with Bitcoin (BTC), since both Tesla and Bitcoin have now demonstrated parabolic price action followed by a sudden crash.

This parabolic growth briefly saw Tesla's market capitalization exceed that of Bitcoin. However, the sudden crash has sent its market capitalization falling back to $159 billion, while Bitcoin's gained 3.2% to reach almost $172 billion today. Bitcoin now has a great market cap than Tesla again.

> At its peak today, Tesla's market value of $175 billion was $5 billion higher than the value of all Bitcoin.$TSLA $BTC pic.twitter.com/MblSMSbqQ3
> 
> — Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) February 5, 2020

Bitcoin was largely dismissed as a bubble by famous economists back when its price shot up to $20,000 before heading back down south. However, after falling to lows of $4,000, it has since risen back up to $9,450 and is threatening to break $10,000 once again.

Bitcoin breaks 500 million transaction milestone
While Bitcoin's price may have dropped since 2017, more people continue to use the network than before. It took eight years before 250,000 transactions had been processed on the Bitcoin network. It then took just three years before this number hit 500,000—which happened today—showing a rapid increase in the number of transactions being made daily.

But if hitting Bitcoin's market cap stopped Tesla's stock prices from blowing out of proportion, perhaps Bitcoin _is _Elon Musk's safe word.


cybertruck

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price

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Is the Cybertruck the next beanie baby? Image: Shutterstock.

As the Tesla bubble pops, Bitcoin is back to having a bigger market cap.

In the last month alone, Tesla stocks (TSLA) have climbed from $450 to as much as $991 earlier today—more than doubling its value in under a month.

Will Heasman

Two major venture capitals—Samsung Venture Investment Corp (SVIC) and Salesforce Ventures (SV)—have backed Digital Asset, creator of the smart contract language DAML, in the second closing of its Series C funding round.

The two prominent VCs led the second round of financing, pledging an undisclosed amount of capital. SVIC—the investment arm of tech conglomerate, Samsung—  typically invests in future centric business models, boasting a current $2.2 billion under management.

"We strongly believe that Digital Asset's model to embed DAML in partner platforms fundamentally changes the entire blockchain market," said an SVIC spokesperson.
[Samsung makes crypto investment]Samsung's home in San Jose, California. Image: Shutterstock.
According to a Digital Asset press release, the funds will be used to "enhance the DAML developer experience" and further the adoption of the DAML smart contract language across a range of industries.

In its first funding round back in December, the blockchain startup managed to net $35 million. The initial Series C round observed investments from such finance monoliths as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan, as well as Jefferson River Capital and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Beyond another successful funding round, the firm highlights the addition of Susan Hauser—a 28-year Microsoft veteran and advisor to Digital Asset—to the company's board of directors.

"During my time as an advisor to Digital Asset, I quickly learned how transformative smart contracts could be for a variety of use cases and across industries. We are going to see adoption of smart contracts—and languages like DAML—take off in the near future," noted Hauser.

Samsung Galaxy phones to support Tron via Blockchain Keystore app
Digital Asset tasks itself with instilling the DAML smart contract technology into its partner's product offerings. Since being founded back in 2014, The firm has partnered with a variety of high-level businesses, including alliances with Hyperledger Sawtooth, Hyperledger Fabric, Corda, and Amazon's QLDB.

With a fresh bout of funding, Digital Asset's goal of generating critical mass for smart contract language may soon come to fruition.


samsung

smart contract

Salesforce were part of the investment round. Image: Shutterstock.

Samsung Venture Investment Corp has led Digital Asset’s second funding round, to help boost smart contract adoption.

Samsung Venture Investment Corp has led Digital Asset’s second Series C funding round, to help boost smart contract adoption.

Stephen Graves

These days, ride-sharing app Uber seems to be facing criticism from all sides.

In California, the legislature has passed the AB5 gig worker law to make companies treat workers as independent contractors instead of full employees. Uber’s responded with Project Luigi, a scheme to let drivers set their own prices; critics suggest it will force them into a  “race to the bottom” on pricing. In London, Uber's lost its license to operate as it was deemed “not fit and proper” as a license holder; the company has appealed the decision. In December last year, its stock price dropped 2% on the news that around 6,000 sexual assault cases took place in its cars over the previous two years.

Could decentralized ride-sharing apps, with their promise of greater control for drivers and users, topple the incumbent ride-sharing giants like Uber and Lyft?

“There's a huge potential not only for a decentralized ride-sharing app, or a blockchain based company, but a company who can work more ethically for the betterment of this whole ecosystem,” Firdosh Sheikh, CEO of decentralized ride-sharing app Drife, told _Decrypt_.

CAN BLOCKCHAIN FIX RIDE-SHARING?

The ride-sharing industry’s a tempting target for disruptors. Many have sprung up around the world, making bold claims about using decentralized technologies such as blockchain to give drivers and users a greater degree of control.

Drife is one such app. Built on the EOS blockchain, it concluded a round of its IEO in November last year, and is currently gearing up for the roll-out of its public test app, ahead of its planned launch in India. Like other decentralized ride-sharing projects, it claims to be “giving back the power to the value creators”; its business model is built on taking zero commission from drivers. “We believe when there’s a driver who spends 14 to 16 hours behind the wheel, he deserves to take back all the income to his home,” said Sheikh. “For him, it's about his livelihood.” Instead, Drife will charge drivers an annual fee for access to the app.

Drife plans to use blockchain for governance and incentivisation, removing the need for a central authority; drivers can stake Drife’s DRF token through the app, with drivers who stake more getting a higher chance of being selected for rides. Riders can also stake the token, for unspecified “additional benefits.” “We are working on making personalized smart contracts where every driver and rider can customize the application as per their needs and requirements, which is not present in the current ecosystem,” said Sheikh. 

Another project aiming to shake up the world of ride sharing is Arcade City. It’s a decentralized network that enables riders and drivers to connect directly with each other; drivers can charge what they want, work when they want and build up their own base of repeat customers. Drivers self-organise in peer-to-peer “guilds”, tokenized using the ERC-20 Arcade Token (ARCD); they keep 100% of fares booked on a peer-to-peer basis, or pay a 10% fee on fares booked through the gamified Arcade City app. Arcade City also plans to offer ride-sharing insurance and payment processing in future.
[Arcade City app]Arcade City is planning its return to the Philippines (Image: Arcade City)
Founder Christopher David conceived the idea for Arcade City while working as an Uber driver, after finding that Uber’s terms and conditions wouldn’t let customers exchange contact information with drivers. “I was thinking that a disintermediated Uber would be much desired by other drivers like myself who wanted to be true entrepreneurs,” David explained to _Decrypt_. “I should have the freedom to exchange contact information and to build up my own recurring customer base, like every other type of service provider. Like hairdressers; they build regulars, it's a source of stable income for them.”

First launched in Austin, Texas in 2016, Arcade City has experienced pushback from the authorities; the police in Austin launched sting operations against Arcade City drivers, while it was blocked from operating in the Philippines following its attempt to launch in the country in 2017. It also endured a hard fork in 2017, with rival Swarm City branching off to set up its own decentralized marketplace. It’s targeting a February 14 launch date for its app, and aims to relaunch in the Philippines, with support for California “sooner rather than later.”

“AB5 has already put thousands of freelancers out of a job,” David said. “In California particularly, we're positioning Arcade City as a gig marketplace for freelancers of any sort to connect peer-to-peer with no middleman.” 

He added that Arcade City has done best when corporations and governments clash, causing consumers to lose out. “Like when 10,000 rideshare drivers were put out of a job in 2016 in Austin, that's what launched our flagship Austin network,” he said. “Ditto in the Philippines.”

DECENTRALIZATION ON ITS OWN ISN’T ENOUGH

Those challengers who dream of taking on the likes of Uber and Lyft have a bumpy road ahead of them. “Just saying that you're going to decentralize ride sharing isn't enough,” John Wolpert, group executive of enterprise mainnet at Consensys, told _Decrypt_. And he should know; before joining ConsenSys (which funds an editorially independent _Decrypt_), he was the CEO of ride-sharing app Flywheel. The key problem for ride-sharing apps, he argued, is aggregating supply and demand on a timely basis. “You have zero time slip; if somebody hails a car they need it right now. And when the driver doesn’t get a consistent stream of new rides from a service right away, they quickly wind up discarding it.”

 You have to find some way of aggregating supply and demand without having a company do that for them

Drivers need to be organized, or there won’t be a coordinated market for their services, Wolpert explained. “Somebody has to get paid to do that. In fact, it's extraordinarily expensive to do that—so somebody's going to want 20% and an expectation of returns to put up the capital. You have to find some way of aggregating supply and demand without having a company do that for them.”

Sheikh argued that the shift from a centralized model to a fully decentralized one can’t happen all at once. “If I say I'll remove everything and let drivers be on their own, the driver will get confused because they were dependent upon a third party doing all this stuff for them,” she said. Instead, there has to be a planned transition. 
[Drife app]Drife is built on the EOS blockchain (Image: Drife)
Initially, Drife plans to put payments and ride allocation on a blockchain platform, but, “You cannot eliminate the whole concept of middleman funders in the ride hailing space at one go; you have to go step by step,” said Sheikh. “We as a company will be a escrow for both driver and rider initially. With time, the idea is that the drivers will have all the awareness that they need to run their whole business on their own and won't need anybody else to control things.”

 If we've got to be teaching our drivers about private key management, we've lost them

Another issue is that there’s still a long way to go before decentralized technologies are user-friendly enough for the non-technical user. “One criticism I have of the hardcore decentralists who are putting forward sometimes dogmatic arguments about why things should be done in a purely decentralized, encrypted way: that's great if people can actually fucking use it,” said David. “If we've got to be teaching our drivers about private key management, we've lost them.”

Despite the challenges ahead, Arcade City’s ambitions don’t stop at disrupting ride-sharing; as David pointed out to _Decrypt_, it’s Arcade _City_, not Arcade _Rides_. “We view this as the one stop shop for peer to peer everything,” he said. “We’re already playing in deliveries. Eight percent of our Austin network ride requests are already deliveries, but we want to do home share; anything where this same type of communal organization can help to disintermediate, we want to be playing in all of that.”


Christopher David

Decentralized ride-sharing apps are springing up to tackle Uber and Lyft (Image: Shutterstock)

Deep dives into Web 3.0, future and present.

Features

Could decentralized ride-sharing apps, with their promise of greater control for drivers and users, topple incumbent ride-sharing giants like Uber and Lyft?

Adriana Hamacher

Just like the explorers of a bygone age, Jack Dorsey came away entranced when he visited Africa for the first time last year. The Twitter and Square CEO is a big Bitcoin fan and investor—and during his visit, he declared that the continent was the future of Bitcoin.  

Atsu Davoh, founder of Ghana-based cross-border transaction app Bitsika, was one of those Dorsey sought out during his recent visit there. “He was humble and very curious,” Davoh said. 

And Dorsey is coming back, with other investors in his wake, because Africa is compelling, see—and especially so for crypto. The continent’s very specific challenges and its enthusiastic workforce are the key ingredients cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin need to succeed. Fragmented infrastructure means that Africans pay the highest remittance costs in the world, and are the second highest unbanked population, but these could prove to be opportunities in the right hands. Does Africa have the potential to lead the way on blockchain adoption? 

HOW IS CRYPTO AND BLOCKCHAIN ADOPTION PROGRESSING IN AFRICA?

Ray Youssef certainly thinks so. The CEO of peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace Paxful, Youssef credits the continent with teaching him about Bitcoin’s true use cases. “Africans have had peer-to-peer financial systems in place for thousands of years,” he said.

Approximately 45% of Paxful’s three million subscriptions are from Africa. Sending money in traditional ways is so onerous for many that it’s easier to get on a plane and deliver it yourself, said Youssef.

Cryptocurrencies are used as a store of value, for speculation and, increasingly, as a medium for borderless trade across countries, said Philip Agyei Asare, CEO of remittance platform, BTCGhana, which was founded in 2015. 

“African crypto is like the Wild West, there are no legal hurdles or regulations,” said Bitsaka’s Davoh. “Governments don’t know that much about crypto so they let people do whatever they want to do.” 

> Very lucky to have had drinks with @jack @paraga @michaelmontano. Long Bitcoin. Long @BitSikaAfrica pic.twitter.com/lVITGJgOLb
> 
> — Atsu Davoh (@atsudavoh) November 11, 2019

He claims to know someone who processed $30 million in Bitcoin over-the-counter transactions in one year. Nigeria has a big population and the best programmers, but is also more politically unstable than Ghana, he added.

NATIONAL DIGITAL CURRENCIES, STABLECOINS AND SCHOOLS

Africa’s major economies, South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, are all keeping an eye on cryptocurrency. Ghana and South Africa are also among those exploring the potential of national digital currencies.
[Africa cryptocurrency regulation]Crypto regulation in Africa. (Source: Baker and Mckenzie)
Among the continent's more liberal crypto states is Senegal, where rapper Akon has started constructing the world’s first “crypto city.”

But the project has come under fire. Improving education is a more pressing need, many believe.

“The greatest national resources in Africa are above the ground, not below it,” said Paxful’s Youssef. “It’s the people—so driven, so ambitious, and just looking for a way to make a difference.” 

In 2017, Paxful began a push to build 100 schools with Bitcoin.

 Africa has the world’s youngest population; 60% of the continent is under 25.

AFRICAN PROJECTS TO MEET AFRICAN NEEDS

Africa’s unique qualities make it ideally suited as a giant sandbox for blockchain and crypto development—from blockchain commodity exchanges in Nigeria, to boosting agricultural yields and establishing land rights in Kenya. Cardano is prominent among blockchain platforms working with African governments to address local needs, and training developers.
[Uganda students Cardano ]Students graduating from IOHK's coding academy in Ethiopia. (Image: IOHK)
“Africa missed the first, second and third industrial revolutions, but we have a real opportunity to be a part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” said Bitange Ndemo, who heads Kenya’s Blockchain and AI Taskforce.

The so-called “Leapfrogging” theory holds that it’s now irrelevant that Africa failed to develop current-generation IT infrastructure because next-generation services—5G, AI and the Internet of Things—can now be built without having to worry about the costs of overhauling legacy infrastructure.

In Kenya, birthplace of the M-Pesa, the digital revolution is transforming everyday life, paving the way for the application of emerging technologies like blockchain. Kenya’s startup scene is thriving, and the government is working on a trusted identity platform, and exploring biometrics for transaction verification. 

Much of Africa’s digital revolution is due to the explosion in mobile phones, now commonplace even in the continent's poorest countries. Close to 10 percent of GDP in transactions are made with mobile money—the highest proportion in the world. UK blockchain platform Electroneum is tapping into this trend, and has also teamed up with an NGO to create “a crypto ETN village” in an as-yet-undisclosed location, a spokesperson told _Decrypt_. 

 Electroneum CEO: why we’re launching a mobile phone

Africa is also on the cutting edge of crypto innovation; Many believe 2020 could be the continent’s year of the stablecoin. Bitsika is currently developing its own ABCD stablecoin, and Nigerian Bitcoin exchange NairaEx is also working on one backed by the national currency, the Naira. 

AFRICA: A BIG PLACE

In a continent comprised of 54 countries and and 1.2 billion people, there’s plenty of disparity in how technology is used, something that also applies to blockchain and crypto. 

Take the M-Pesa. Touted as digital currency for the entire continent, its success in Kenya wasn’t replicated in South Africa, and there’s no definitive answer as to why. 

There’s also a huge disparity between Cape Town, South Africa, where you can now buy a pad near the city’s university complex with bitcoin, and Zambia, where cryptocurrency is illegal. But what Africa’s countries have in common is that across the continent, startup founders have grown up in an era of digital transformation—mobile, YouTube and the M-Pesa. That makes the continent a perfect crucible for the next wave of innovation, in crypto and blockchain.

“Jack said the future of crypto is in Africa, and I totally agree,” said Davoh. “If you just look at the freedom we have here, the talent and the attention we’re getting from outside—and the role and purpose these solutions serve—this is the perfect place. When I look at all the exciting companies being built here, I think that very, very soon, we’ll see a crypto valley happening in Africa.”


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In Africa, close to 10 percent of GDP in transactions occur through mobile money—the highest proportion in the world. IMAGE: Shutterstock

Twitter’s Jack Dorsey calls Africa the future of Bitcoin. Local startup founders agree; is the continent set to play host to “Crypto Valley”? 

Esat Dedezade

Today is the thirteenth Data Privacy Day, and the Internet is awash with horror stories of data breaches, hacks and privacy violations. A few decades ago, the notion of sharing personal information online would have filled most people with horror. Today, the opposite is true.

New smart lightbulb? Download the app, and sign up with your info. Cat’s birthday? Snap a selfie for all the world to see, before asking your always-listening smart speaker to sing Happy Birthday. For better or for worse, the torrent of information we share has increased exponentially, as more and more businesses adopt the surveillance capitalism model. Even your antivirus software could be selling your web browsing history.

Things, however, are beginning to change.

In recent years, the issue of privacy has come to dominate tech news headlines. From high profile hacks and data leaks to unscrupulous business practices, focused tracking, and even election meddling and disinformation campaigns, our perception of what we share online and who we should share it with, is shifting. 

New laws like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have been introduced to dish out harsher penalties to companies lax in their data practices. To date, we’ve seen 199 fines totalling €116,644,629, with Google forking out the largest single fine of €50,000,000. We’re seeing an increasing focus on ensuring that our data is not only safe, but used in fairer ways, while holding companies accountable with stricter standards.

As regulations bite and privacy breaches continue to hit the headlines, privacy is increasingly becoming a hot-button issue for consumers—and new products and services are cropping up to help address their concerns. 

PRIVACY IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The list of data breaches grows daily. Last year, the personal information of 210 million Facebook users, including phone numbers, was left exposed on unprotected servers. This year, a study found that dating apps Tinder, OKCupid and Grindr were sharing data such as GPS location and sexuality. The same report also found that most of the apps that were studied lacked clear information about what users are consenting to, with little to no in-app settings to help control what you’re sharing.

Here are the 7 largest data breaches in history
The world of cryptocurrency hasn’t escaped unscathed, either; crypto exchanges including Poloniex and Coinmama have both seen data breaches in which users’ email addresses and passwords were exposed.

And the amount of data that’s being gathered is only set to grow. Last year, Facebook came under fire for harvesting the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or permission. It claimed it was an accident, before deleting the data. Recordings from Amazon’s Echo smart speakers are routinely passed to human annotators for review, in order to better train its software algorithms.

 Explaining what the Clearview scandal means for your privacy

Even our faces are now considered fair game. The _New York Times _revealed the actions of Clearview—a company that uses AI facial recognition software to scrape billions of images from social media. It’s used by 600 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to match pictures of suspects with their social media profiles.

HOW COMPANIES ARE PUTTING PRIVACY FIRST

Just over a week into January, none other than Mark Zuckerberg himself addressed the issue of data privacy as part of a New Year Facebook post: “Platforms like Facebook have to make tradeoffs on social values we all hold dear—like between free expression and safety, or between privacy and law enforcement, or between creating open systems and locking down data and access,” he wrote, adding that governments should establish clearer rules around elections, harmful content, privacy and data portability.

Zuckerberg’s comments came in the wake of a 2018 scandal in which the personal data of millions of Facebook users was harvested by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and used to target political advertising, highlighted in the 2019 Netflix film The Great Hack. This week, Facebook released Off-Facebook Activity, a tool that lets users track what information the company’s receiving about their activity on other websites.

Facebook’s not the only company that’s making noises about user privacy. This month, Apple headed to Las Vegas for its first official appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in 28 years; the representative it chose to send was its senior director for global privacy, Jane Horvath. Previously the global privacy counsel at Google, her mere presence at CES is a reflection of the importance the Cupertino tech behemoth places on privacy.

When asked if the tech industry is doing enough to protect our privacy, Horvath responded by stating that “I don’t think we can ever say we’re doing enough. We should always be doing more. Things are changing, there’s no way to say that at this point in time we’ve reached a panacea.”

Apple may tout its privacy credentials in its advertising, but soon after its CES appearance, _Reuters_ revealed that Apple dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in its iCloud service, after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations.

NEW COMPANIES TACKLING ONLINE PRIVACY

The current privacy landscape may be enough to make you consider a new life involving tinfoil and a Faraday cage, but there is hope. 

Increased consumer awareness is driving calls for safer practices and regulation. Hot on the heels of Europe’s GDPR, California’s new Consumer Privacy Act introduced the the most sweeping, comprehensive data privacy law in the US.

Now, California residents are able to ask companies to delete their data, or refrain from selling it—a substantial improvement over the previous environment, in which companies weren’t even legally required to tell you what data they’d collected.

These new regulations are creating niches for privacy-focused companies to set out their stalls. UK app Mine lets users see what businesses hold personal and financial information on them, streamlining the cumbersome process of sending out GDPR data deletion requests into a single click. “Regulations are great, but without the proper tools to make control easier for the average person, they’re less effective,” Mine co-founder and CEO Gal Ringel tells _Decrypt_. “Mine isn’t a tool to scare people. Our mantra is that stopping sharing isn’t the solution—we want to empower people to have a choice online so that they can start to understand what companies have their data, so that they can exercise their rights at the click of a button.”

 Rich Stoked">VIRTUALLY EVERYONE IS NOW AWARE OF THE DANGERS OF UNCONTROLLED DATA COLLECTION

Beyond tools and software, you can also buy devices designed to protect your entire home from online snoopers and intrusion. Touted as “the first convenient privacy product for everyone,” Winston is a hardware filter that connects to your router, stopping ads and tracking across all devices connected to your home network—from consoles and smartphones, to laptops and tablets. “Virtually everyone is now aware of the dangers of uncontrolled data collection,” Winston CEO Rich Stoked tells _Decrypt_. But, he says, people are still unaware of just how severe some of the examples are. “The company that watches out quickly and accurately you enter information into web forms, or the fact that your ISP sees when you plug in medical devices into your network; all this data is for sale,” he says.

DECENTRALIZATION TO THE RESCUE?

The blockchain and crypto community’s ideological commitment to decentralization means that, unsurprisingly, it takes the idea of data privacy to heart. After all, what better illustrates the perils of centralization than a mega-corporation’s silo of user data, a single point of failure in the system that’s a huge and tempting target for hackers?

Crypto projects like Brave Browser are already helping to secure users’ privacy; the privacy-focused browser blocks online tracking by default, and rewards users for watching privacy-respecting ads with the Basic Attention Token (BAT) cryptocurrency. Users can then allocate their BAT earnings to the websites they visit the most, or use it to tip websites and creators directly. Last November, Brave hit 10.4 million monthly active users, doubling its user base year-on-year. “The privacy wave will continue to rise,” Brave co-founder Brendan Eich told _Decrypt_, predicting that established players stuck in surveillance capitalism business models will start to come under pressure from users demanding a “privacy-by-default approach.”

Elsewhere, crypto users are keeping their transactions under wraps using dedicated privacy coins such as Zcash and Monero, which employ technologies like zk-SNARKs and ring signatures to mask transactions.

Other projects are exploring novel technologies like multiparty computation to keep data secure; the latter promises to revolutionize fields like medical research by enabling computations to be run on decentralized, encrypted data, with the results verified on the blockchain’s immutable ledger. 

"Without getting into technical details, zero-knowledge proofs allow stakeholders to prove _that_ things existed or took place, without revealing _what_ data led to that knowledge," Dr. Robert M. Learney, lead technologist for blockchain at UK technology innovation center Digital Catapult, told _Decrypt_. "With multiparty computation, groups can collectively build models to gain insights from their data without revealing the underlying data to everyone involved."

These techniques won't just empower consumers to take control of their data; they'll enable a new data-driven economy to flourish, by freeing companies of the need to keep their proprietary data in silos. "Companies have been told for the longest time that ‘data is gold’—and as we know, people like to hoard gold," Learney said. "But unfortunately it’s not really gold, it’s more like blood—it’s only useful if it’s flowing and being used."

Even the creator of the World Wide Web is getting in on the act. Tim Berners-Lee’s startup Inrupt envisions a new model for the web, in which people store their data in a personal data POD, providing permissioned access to different levels of the data at their discretion. Users could have a personal profile, a jobseeker profile and a simple age verification profile, allowing different companies and organisations to access one profile’s data—but not the others. Decentralized ID network Blockstack provides a possible model for how this could work; a single user ID gives you access to an array of decentralized applications (dapps) like productivity suite Graphite Docs and the Recall photo vault, which let you keep your encrypted data on the decentralized Gaia storage network.

For the time being, though, it’s up to us to keep our personal data secure. “Under the growing threat of fines and new privacy laws, tech companies have been forced into emphasizing how they now give us “transparency” and “control” over our data,” Ashish Singhal, CEO and co-founder at CoinSwitch.co, tells _Decrypt_. “Yet on the thirteenth Data Privacy Day, we are still living in a time where the entirety of the burden of protecting one’s data lies with the consumer.”


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Blockchain could be the solution to our data privacy woes (Image: Trismegist san)

Today is Data Privacy Day, and the Internet is awash with horror stories of data breaches and hacks. Could blockchain be the key to securing our privacy?

Melanie Kramer

Cryptocurrencies, utility tokens, security tokens and more…digital assets and their classifications are evolving right alongside cryptographic and blockchain technology. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs are another example of the fast-paced change in the industry. In this guide we explore what they, how they work, and how they're being used. 

WHAT ARE NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS?

Non-fungible tokens contain identifying information recorded in their smart contracts. It’s this information that makes each different and as such, they cannot be directly replaced by another token. They cannot be swapped like for like, as no two are alike. Banknotes, in contrast, can be simply exchanged one for another, if they are the same value, there is no difference to the holder.

Bitcoin meanwhile, is a fungible token. You can send someone one Bitcoin and they can send one back, it would still be one Bitcoin. The value might change depending on the time between exchanging Bitcoin, but it's essentially the same. You can also send or receive any part of a Bitcoin, measured in Satoshi, as fungible tokens are divisible.

Non-fungible tokens are not divisible, in the same way as you cannot send someone part of a concert ticket. Part of a concert ticket wouldn’t be worth anything on its own and would not be redeemable.

CryptoKitties collectibles were some of the first non-fungible tokens. Each blockchain-based cat is unique, if you sent someone a CryptoKitty it would be a completely different one if you were sent one in return, unless they returned the exact same one.

The unique information of a non-fungible token, like a CryptoKitty, is stored in its smart contract and immutably recorded on the token’s blockchain. CryptoKitties are Ethereum ERC-721 tokens, they use Ethereum’s protocols and the Ethereum blockchain.

In late 2018, one player was so desperate to move to a "better location" in the virtual game Decentraland that they were ready to say goodbye to 2,800,000 MANA in order to purchase a land piece in-game. At the time of the deal, that was equivalent to over Ξ1000 or $215,200. 

WHAT MAKES NFTS SO SPECIAL?

Non-fungible tokens have unique attributes, they are usually linked to a specific asset. They can be used to prove the ownership of digital items like game skins right through to the ownership of physical assets.

Other tokens are fungible, in the same way as coins or banknotes. Fungible tokens are identical, they have the same attributes and value when exchanged.

HOW ARE NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS USED?

As well as for crypto-collectibles like CryptoKitties, non-fungible tokens can be used for digital assets that need to be differentiated from each other in order to prove their value, or scarcity.

Another example of a non-fungible token is Decentraland’s LAND token. Decentraland is a blockchain-based virtual world, similar to Second Life. Each LAND token represents a parcel of virtual land in Decentraland identified by its virtual world coordinates.

SuperRare is another blockchain project creating non-fungible tokens that allow digital artists to link a token to an image or GIF they have created. A token represents ownership of the digital art and allows the creator to also retain and record their copyright and IP. The tokens, and hence the art, can be bought and sold just like physical artwork.

Non-fungible tokens are not traded on standard cryptocurrency exchanges, instead they are bought or sold on digital marketplaces like Openbazaar or Decentraland’s LAND marketplace.

HOW DO NFTS WORK? 

Tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum-based ERC-20 tokens are fungible. Ethereum’s non-fungible token standard, as used by CryptoKitties and Decentraland, is ERC-721. Non-fungible tokens can also be created on other smart-contract enabled blockchains with non-fungible token tools and support. Though Ethereum was the first to be widely used, NEO, EOS, and TRON, now have NFT standards.

Non-fungible tokens and their smart contracts allow for detailed attributes to be added, like the identity of the owner, rich metadata or secure file links. The potent of non-fungible tokens to immutably prove digital ownership is an important progression for an increasingly digital world. They could see blockchain’s promise of trustless security applied to the ownership or exchange of almost any asset.

As is the challenge of blockchain to date, non-fungible tokens, their protocols and smart contract technology is still being developed. Creating decentralized applications and platforms for the management and creation of non-fungible tokens is still relatively complicated. There is also the challenge of creating a standard. Blockchain development is fragmented, many developers are working on their own projects. To be successful there may need to be unified protocols and interoperability.

THE FUTURE

Predominantly, non-fungible tokens are being implemented in gaming and crypto collectibles. For gaming, non-fungible tokens could be used to represent in-game items like skins, potentially allowing them to be ported to new games or traded with other players.

Their potential however is much wider with possible application to copyright and intellectual property rights, ticketing and the sales and trading of video games.

Non-fungible tokens add potential to the creation of security tokens, the tokenization of both digital and real-world assets. Physical assets like property could be tokenized for fractional, or shared, ownership. If these security tokens are non-fungible the assets ownership is completely traceable and clear, even if only tokens representing part ownership are sold.

Further application of non-fungible tokens could be certification such as for qualifications, software licensing, warranties, and even birth and death certificates. The smart contract of a non-fungible token immutably proves the identity of the recipient or owner and could be stored in a digital wallet for ease of access and representation. One day, our digital wallets could contain proof of every certificate, license, and asset, we own.


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Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, contain identifying information recorded in their smart contracts. It’s this information that makes each different.

Many new stablecoins have emerged over the past 18 months in the cryptocurrency space. Their development has partly been inspired by the need to fill a potential stablecoin void, as the first and most commonly utilized stablecoin Tether faces concerns. There is, of course, also ongoing impetus in the cryptocurrency space to develop less-volatile tokens which will be used more widely. Below we take a closer look at Maker, the governance token at the heart of MakerDAO. 

WHAT IS MAKER?

The Maker (MKR) token was created by MakerDAO and its primary purpose is to support the stability of MakerDAO’s DAI token and enable governance for the Dai Credit System. Holders of MKR make key decisions on the operation and future of the system.

MakerDAO has two tokens, MKR and DAI. The DAI is a stablecoin designed to provide an alternative to more volatile cryptocurrencies, as well as a new type of financial system. The MKR meanwhile, is used to keep the DAI stable. Traditional stablecoins use reserves of fiat currencies or even gold to peg a cryptocurrency to the value of these real-world assets to keep it stable. But that has proved problematic. MakerDAO uses the MKR token to act as a counterweight to price fluctuations. 

 Some stablecoins gain their lower volatility by being backed by fiat currencies and physical assets. Other stablecoins can be controlled through blockchain-based mechanisms or algorithms to maintain a required value.

WHAT MAKES IT SO SPECIAL? 

The MKR token helps to keep its partner stablecoin DAI at the same value as $1. MKR can be created and destroyed in response to DAI price fluctuations in order to maintain DAI’s dollar-equivalent value. DAI uses a system of collateralization (essentially insurance), whereby holders act as part of the controlling mechanism to help manage the network.

DAI is issued when buyers purchase a smart contract based collateralized debt position (CDP) which behaves much like a loan. CDPs are bought with Ether (ETH) and DAI is given in return. ETH acts as the collateral to the loan, in much the same way as a house acts as collateral for a mortgage loan.  The system means that individuals can, in essence, obtain a loan against their ETH holdings. When the loan is repaid the DAI is “burned” or destroyed. Fees occur in MKR along the way.

The MKR token is a solution for a scenario where the price of ETH falls too quickly for the DAI system to handle. If the collateral system is not enough to cover the value of DAI then MKR is created and sold to the market to raise additional collateral.

The Maker Platform, formerly known as MakerDAO is the protocol and governance framework for DAI and also MKR. The platform is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) on the Ethereumblockchain.

 Smart contracts are simply computerized code which contains, and can perform, a set of instructions.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH MAKER?

Holders of MKR gain voting rights in the Maker platform’s continuous approval voting system. MKR holders vote on things like the collateralization rate of CDPs. For participating they gain MKR fees as a reward. These holders are incentivized to vote in a way that benefits the system. If the system works well MKR’s value is maintained or increases. Poor governance would devalue MKR.

MKR is an ERC-20 token, constructed using Ethereum’s protocols. It can be stored in ERC-20 wallets and is tradeable on a number of exchanges.

WHO CREATED MAKERDAO?

MakerDAO was founded in 2014, in California, by developer and entrepreneur Rune Christensen. Its core management and development team is 20 strong. After three years in development, MakerDAO finally launched the stablecoin DAI.

MakerDAO hope to create both a reliable stablecoin in DAI and a system of fair credit for everyone. Opening a collateralized debt position (CDP) using Ether means DAI can provide liquidity against crypto-assets.

A BRIEF HISTORY

 	* 2014 – Maker DAO founded
 	* August 2015 – MKR token launched
 	* December 2017 – DAI stablecoin launched on the Ethereum mainnet
 	* October 2018 – DAI becomes the first cross-chain ERC-20 token on Wanchain
 	* September 2018 – Kraken lists MakerDAO's Dai.
 	* October 2019 – Ledn uses MakerDAO to disburse loans to the unbanked.
 	* December 2019 – Maker Foundation transfers control of MKR to Maker Governance.

THE FUTURE

MakerDAO’s efforts to create a stablecoin without concerns over reserve-backing are credible. With the collateralization mechanisms and the further failsafe of MKR, MakerDAO has a system to protect the value of its stablecoin DAI which could lead to its wider use.

As a further failsafe, MakerDAO has an emergency process called “global settlement.” Should something go wrong with MakerDAO’s system, a group of individuals holds settlement keys. These can be used to trigger a settlement where collateral held in CDPs is released to DAI owners in the equating value of Ether.

MakerDAO also works hard on transparency, it shares its regular meeting recordings online. As DeFi or decentralized finance became one of the biggest success stories in 2019, MakerDAO, and its MKR token are in the front line of this growing industry. 


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A 3-minute guide to the governance token - Decrypt

The Maker (MKR) token was created to support the stability of MakerDAO’s DAI token and enable governance for the Dai Credit System.

Ki Chong Tran

There’s only one Mona Lisa, only so many Picassos, a limited supply of gold on Earth. The inventor of Bitcoin believed scarcity could create value where there was none before. The Halving also known as the Halvening is due to occur sometime in May 2020. To understand it, we must understand the theory behind Bitcoin’s supply. Below we explore more. 

A BIT ABOUT BITCOIN

Bitcoin is revolutionary because it proved–for the first time–how something that was completely digital could be scarce. This limited supply is one of the primary reasons the price of Bitcoin has gone from being worth nothing 10 years ago to being priced at $20,000 per coin at its peak. 

PROBLEM

Fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar were initially created with firm rules–to create one U.S. dollar, the U.S. government needed to have a certain amount of gold in their reserves. This was known as the GOLD STANDARD. Over time, these rules eroded as modernizing economies, during bouts of extreme financial certainty–like the Great Depression and World War II–printed more money to help stimulate struggling economies. This change in tac is precisely the kind of thing Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to avoid. He/she/they had seen that this devaluation of fiat money could have disastrous effects, and so, with code, prevented any single party to be able to print more Bitcoin. 

WHAT IS THE HALVING?

The Bitcoin code is embedded with a hard supply limit of 21 million coins. New Bitcoin is created through mining as block rewards. Miners do the work of maintaining and securing the Bitcoin ledger and as a reward; the system sends them new Bitcoin.

However, about every four years, the mining reward is halved–hence “the Halving.” Each halving reduces the rate of new Bitcoin entering into the supply until no more new Bitcoins are created at all in the year 2140.

WHO INVENTED THE HALVING?

The Halving was programmed into Bitcoin’s code by Satoshi Nakamoto. This extremely simple mechanism of reducing the total supply over time is one of the main reasons why Bitcoin is the world’s most valuable crypto asset. As Nakamoto wrote in the Bitcoin whitepaper: “the network is robust in its unstructured simplicity.” 

 The first million Bitcoins were mined by Satoshi Nakamoto 10 years ago. Since then, about 85% of the total supply has been mined and only about 3 million more Bitcoins will ever be created.

A BRIEF HISTORY

 	* 2009 – Bitcoin mining rewards start at 50 BTC per block
 	* 2012 – The first Bitcoin Halving reduces mining rewards to 25 BTC
 	* 2016 – In the second Halving, mining rewards go down to 12.5 BTC
 	* 2140 – The 64th and last Halving occurs and no new Bitcoin will ever be created

WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT IT?

If a person, group, or government is trusted to set up the money supply, they must also be trusted to not mess with it. Bitcoin is supposed to be decentralized and trustless–no one in control and no one to trust. Since Bitcoin is not controlled by any one person or group, there must be hard-set rules about how many Bitcoin gets created and how they are released. 

By writing a total supply and Halving event into the Bitcoin code, the monetary system of Bitcoin is essentially set in stone and practically impossible to change. This “hard cap” means Bitcoin is a kind of “hard money” like gold, which has a total supply that is also practically impossible to change. 

WHAT HAPPENS TO MINERS?

Miners must use precious resources to maintain the Bitcoin network, but what happens when their rewards are halved? Since the Halving reduces mining rewards, the incentive for miners to work on the Bitcoin network would also be reduced over time, which would mean fewer miners and less security for the network. In order to compensate miners properly into the future, the price of Bitcoin or the transaction fees must go up to meet miner’s demands.

HOW DO YOU TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HALVING?

According to the laws of supply and demand, the dwindling Bitcoin supply will inevitably lead to increasing Bitcoin demand, leading to a rise in prices. The best way to take advantage of this is of course by buying Bitcoin. As the leading and most popular crypto asset, Bitcoin can be easily purchased on nearly any crypto exchange as well as mainstream products such as the Cash App. Historically, after previous halving events, the price of Bitcoin did go up, but not necessarily straight away. Many Bitcoin watchers are hoping the same happens again.

THE FUTURE

The Halving may have a huge impact on Bitcoin’s price according to some “experts.” Cryptocurrency-focused research company, Digital Asset Research created a prediction model setting Bitcoin at over $60,000 after the next Halving in May 2020. A German bank went even further and predicted a price of $90,000 per Bitcoin after May 2020. But the truth is, no one knows for sure. 

It has been argued that since the Halving is well-known and highly predictable, the event has already been calculated into Bitcoin’s price by most investors. 

_DISCLAIMER: THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET. _


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A 3-minute guide to the event - Decrypt

The Halving also known as the Halvening is a slashing of the rewards miners receive while processing transactions on bitcoin.

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