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He lectures on Legal Futures and Technology at the University of Malta. Here he writes on decentralisation. Decentralization is not a new concept. It has been used in strategy, management, and the government, for a long time. The word decentralization came into usage in the mid-1800s. Tocqueville would write that the French Revolution began with “a push towards decentralization” which ultimately resulted in “an extension of centralization.” According to him, both centralization and decentralization, share the same problem since they are defined by different people in different ways and not necessarily in an accurate way. It even finds place within European integration and the subsidiarity principle under Article5(3) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Protocol (No2) on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. In areas in which the European Union does not have exclusive competence, the principle of subsidiarity decentralizes the decision-making power to the Member States.
Ian Gauci is the Managing partner at GTG Advocates and Caledo.
Since the 1980s, developing countries have increasingly adopted various decentralized forms of governance. Decentralization in this instance could entail transferring certain powers and functions to agencies or councils, (‘deconcentration’), lower levels of government (‘devolution’), or semi-autonomous authorities (‘delegation’). There is also no standard model of decentralization.
Notions and visions espousing technology-driven decentralization and the accompanying democratization of socio-economical structures circulated with increasing ubiquity, from the Californian counterculture of the 1960s, 1970s, particularly in the German-speaking countries, where, given the influence of Bertolt Brecht’s radio theory and Hans-Magnus Enzensberger’s “Constituents of a Theory of the Media”, they were linked to the then new media. The inception of videocassette system, where individuals could record, share and listen to media they choose, at that time where public broadcasting by the state dictated what media could be consumed, heralded the end of the classic mass media and the advent of novel options for the public “to participate directly in essential decisions”.
The promise of decentralization emerged again with the internet and digital technology. These were meant to lead us to a decentralized society along with the eradication of central roles and hopes for equality, transparency and redistribution of powers in a more democratized society. The creation of dominant players like Google, Amazon and Facebook, control and use of DNS as well as ICANN’s control on domain names amongst other things tainted this vision. The inception of cloud technology also heralded a new era of decentralization, albeit the decentralization happened on the hardware part but not on the core control functions.
The shift to the digital economy and blockchain technology have however infused new hopes of decentralization, promising to transform finance, money and even governments through distributed trustless consensus, which allows to determine the validity of transactions without the need of any intermediaries in a transparent and secure way. With Bitcoin and the advent of blockchain technology, this model has changed and now the technology exists, which allows anyone to start a decentralized system and having to operate it with no single point of failure or single trusted authority.
Copious articles and literature abound heralding a libertarian and totally decentralized form of governance, devoid of any form of centralized elements, functions, and the decentralization of corrupt socio-economic structures solely through technology. However, the current debate on centralization versus decentralization often overlooks the complexity of the socio-technical ecology we inhabit, and the fact that it is ultimately dominated by human behaviour. It also gives little consideration to the possibility of an expansion, conversion, consolidation and cooperation or layering of existing socio-economic structures, instead of their total displacement. Regrettably people most of the time also conflate and confuse the terms disintermediation, distribution and decentralization.
Let’s clarify the definitions first and start with disintermediation. The latter can be explained with the aid of an example. Imagine that you want to send money to a friend in another country. You go to a bank who, for a fee, will transfer your money to another bank in that country. With blockchain technology, it is possible to send this money directly to your friend without the need for a bank. This way, the intermediary function carried by bank, is no longer required, and the you have
disintermediation
.
This leads us to, decentralization and distribution. Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Governments and other enterprises like banks and other private institutions have conventionally been based on a centralized paradigm whereby database or application servers are under the control of a central authority, such as a system administrator. In a distributed system, data and computation are spread across multiple nodes in the network and data is replicated across multiple nodes that users view as a single, coherent system. This means that the system is still centralized in nature. I had an interesting discussion with Professor Gordon Pace, who is a professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Malta, on the latter, who also gave me invaluable hints in the build-up of this article. According to him, although there are no hard and fast definitions, the critical difference between a decentralized system and distributed system is that in a distributed system, although the data and applications may reside across different computers there may still exists a central authority that governs the entire system; whereas, in a decentralized system, no such authority should exist.
A decentralized system is a type of network where nodes are not dependent on a single master node; instead, control is distributed among many nodes. Decentralization however may take different forms and can arise at different layers. There is Political Decentralization which touches on the delegation of political power (e.g. who can participate in the network and in what manner), authority and resources towards the software and platform, representative of and accountable to all the community which in turn should also empower them. Administrative Decentralization, which involves the delegation and transfer, from the central function to other players with certain capacities in planning and managing concrete affairs without losing its fundamental accountability to the central governance. Fiscal Decentralization which redistributes resources from the central governance towards other players, like master nodes and miners and the architectural layer of the blockchain, where for example you have digital assets being minted, registered and stored without any intended centralized intervention.
How does Blockchain and its promise of decentralization fit with the above forms of decentralization? I will not delve into an analysis on the difference between permissioned, private and hybrid blockchains, but will base my brief discussion on Bitcoin and Ethereum which are open and permission less and use consensus. Bitcoin and Ethereum both originate through open source projects and have features of decentralization infused in their DNA. However, when we start looking into the different and intricate layers making up the Blockchain we see a different picture. Let’s start with the political and decision-making power. Similar to other open source projects, there is a discrepancy between those who can provide input to the project (the users at large), the miners who own the nodes and partake in the consensus, the beneficiaries who simply own the digital assets stored on the Blockchain mechanism and the selected number of developers who have the power to decide based on their title and role, on any changes in the code and if these would carry a fee. So even though there are features of decentralization in the architecture (made of decentralized nodes) and the user is to a certain extent sovereign, there is still centralization at a political level. Mining on bitcoin, having started as a pure peer-to-peer activity and totally decentralized has also morphed into selected sophisticated mining pools becoming a centralized activity, with its own economies of scale and scope and with high barriers to entry. While the original design of Bitcoin was aimed at a fully decentralized Bitcoin, the power of developers outside the consensus mechanism, use of SPV Nodes, negative externalities morphing mining into a cluster of sophisticated mining pools as well as events in Bitcoin community revealed the true limits of decentralization in this system and the dominant human element and new forms of centralization.
Ethereum also has similar traits. The Ethereum flash crash in 2017, which was triggered by a single multimillion dollar selling order and the events that followed, as well as the infamous DAO incident illustrates how the decentralized nature of the Ethereum blockchain did not prevent the emergence of centralization at a higher level.
A study conducted in March 2018 with the title Decentralization in Bitcoin and Ethereum Networks, Adem Efe Gencer, Soumya Basu , Ittay Eyal, Robbert van Renesse and Emin Gün Sirer also reached the conclusion that Ethereum and Bitcoin are not fully decentralized. The study finds that Bitcoin has a higher capacity network when compared to Ethereum, is geographically more clustered than Ethereum, with many nodes likely residing in datacentres. Both have fairly centralized mining processes, however in Ethereum, the block rewards have less variance than Bitcoin’s and Ethereum has a lower mining power utilization than Bitcoin.
Despite having potential, the Blockchains cited above are not fully decentralized nor will they achieve absolute decentralization in one click, automatically, nor within a short period of time. As an ecosystem grows around a blockchain based system, we encounter terms and novelties like Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Decentralized Autonomous Corporations (DAC), Decentralized Autonomous Applications (DAPPs) as well as Decentralized Autonomous Societies (DASs) where an entire society can function on a blockchain with the help of multiple, complex smart contracts and a combination of DAOs and DAPPs running autonomously. This may develop with the advancement of society and imbued gradually, through complex processes, technological challenges and with the likelihood of new forms of centralization emerging along the way. One of these new forms of centralization will be autonomous code. Even though imbued with functionalities of decentralized nature like those available through Facebook or Google, and having the potential to change the fabric of our society, we need to ask, who will be in control and are we the victims of a delusional dream called decentralization?
This publication is provided for your convenience and does not constitute legal advice.
This publication is protected by copyright © 2019 GTG Advocates.
Total global money is growing at an increasingly faster rate. If we look at ‘broad money’ (M3) then this includes cash, checking accounts, saving accounts and digital forms of money too. In aggregate we are now globally
nearing $100 trillion according to The CIA Factbook thanks to the dependence of our central banks on quantitative easing measures as a means to stave off crisis. In fact, the
IMF reported back in June that our dependence upon QE is deepening as it continues to swell central bank balance sheets with observable step changes during the two crisis of our generation – The Global Financial Crisis 07-09 and Covid-19 20-??
G10 Central Bank Assets 2006-2020 Source: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) (2020) ‘
Global Financial Stability Update, June 2020’
Watching from a respectful social distance we observe
cryptocurrencies now exceeding $350 billion market capitalisation, with Bitcoin and the majority of the stateless alt coins not subject to any such debasing Q.E. interference. Small by comparison to the value of total global money but not going away either… Enter CBDC’s, or central bank digital currencies. They are the response of nation states to harness the benefits of blockchain enabled monetary platforms but perhaps more so to mitigate the risk of any meaningful potential cryptocurrency migration by citizens. If a nation state was to lose control of its money then governing with fiscal policies alone would perhaps be unworkable – hence, the strong rebuttal to any whiff of a challenge to the monetary monopoly of countries, such as that of the French & German Finance Ministers who in June last year scolded Facebook’s plans to launch its new Libra currency, stating that, “
no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations.’ CBDC’s vary by design and complexity but tend to be centralised in nature to enable state control whilst waiving the rights to anonymity. Good news for; shrinking the shadow economy, closing the tax gap and enabling effective money laundering controls but less so for users of cash in our societies.
Coronavirus has accelerated our march toward cashlessness. Indeed, cash is the ultimate permissionless system requiring no oversight, authorisation or transparency as to who has what and when is it transferred. Simply by holding physical cash then the issuing central bank ‘promises to pay the bearer’, (banknotes rather than gold now of course), but nonetheless thereby instilling confidence and by extension value. Despite the technical, legal and sociological challenges of launching a CBDC, how likely are citizens across the world to accept a reduction in these personal liberties currently afforded by hard cash in return for the benefits, or indeed mandated requirement, to adopt a ‘digital version’ of their existing fiat currency? Well, we may be about to find out.
The ECB announced a public consultation on the potential of a ‘Digital Euro’ earlier this month and has even recently
applied to register the trademark, which perhaps gives you a steer as to the eventual direction of travel post consultation.
WATCH his interview with AIBC News:
Despite such bullish moves by nation states and trading blocks to gain control of the narrative for the future of money it is not inevitable that their citizens will acquiesce. Indeed, the snooping powers that a CBDC will afford incumbent power are not too dissimilar to the varying track and trace app technologies presently being promoted across the world in the fight against COVID-19. Although it is conceded that there are potentially more personal detrimental effects to a citizen to opt in to track and trace app compared with a CBDC, the parallel between these technologies is still apparent. Commonplace is that both tracking apps and CBDC’s are new technologies which offer ‘the state’ greater transparency and knowledge of the actions, movements and transactions of their citizens. Nothing less than an erosion of your civil liberties if you choose to evaluate it that way. The
track and trace app download numbers by country would appear to corroborate this hypothesis with approximately 25 per cent of national populations voluntarily downloading track and trace apps presently being championed by their respective Governments. Some notable downloads by country and (% population), include; The UK’s ‘NHS COVID-19’ app 16 million (24%), Germany’s ‘Corona-Warn-App’ app 18 million (22%), Japan’s ‘Shingata Koronauirusu Sesshoku Kakunin Apuri’ app 15 million (12%) and Italy’s ‘Immuni’ app just 7 million (11%). These arguably poor participation rates could be addressed by offering a value incentive to nudge individuals to download the apps according to writers in
The Harvard Business Review. In contrast, we have seen
China take a much bolder approach pushing mainstream use and empowering the app and its associated Big Data to take charge of many previous freedoms and decisions of the individual. Travel history, national identity numbers, passport details and phone numbers may all be harvested allowing the app to decide whether you are; fine (green), you have been near somebody who is sick (yellow) or that you should stay at home (red). Similarly, China continues to be increasingly proactive in their development of the digital yuan CBDC known as the ‘Digital Currency Electronic Payment’ (DC/EP) by The PBOC (China’s Central Bank) in partnership with Alipay & WeChat who have world leading technological competences and reach. This strategy is not knee jerk according to The Financial Times but rather is
the continuation of research which began back in 2014, before almost any other central bank. Pilots have been running throughout this year in selected Chinese cities, having now processed in excess of 3.3 million transactions to date. Local government have even been offering lottery prizes for citizens who download the digital Rmb app with the effect that some 15 percent of Shenzhen’s population alone took part in such a lottery to win one of 50,000 red packets containing digital yuan. Overall, our economies and societies appear fragile. Healthcare and financial systems in particular may be facing systemic, if not significant, threats from COVID-19 and decentralised / non-sovereign corporate issued currencies, respectively. The personal liberties we have historically enjoyed in many democracies around the world frustratingly do not fit well with these meta level technological solutions which although painful seem essential. We may have to trade away what we hold most dear, our personal freedoms, in return for coordinated technological responses to help fight the global macro challenges of our time.
James McDowall at Malta AI & Blockchain Summit with Changpeng Zhao, Binance CEO
Sentinel’s lead developers and Head of Strategy James McDowall, recently took part in an ‘AMA’ (Ask Me Anything) hosted by Eric Su, head of the CryptoSmart Telegram group.Sentinel is a distributed Resources and Services marketplace with bandwidth as the first resource and dVPN as the first dApp or Service running on the Sentinel Network. There are additional services like Sentinel dChat aka Sentrix that utilise both storage and bandwidth on the Sentinel Network.Here’s the walk-through of the Sentinel Desktop App v0.1.0:
[av_video src=’https://youtu.be/Iaa7Jwd5sy8′ format=’16-9′ width=’16’ height=’9′]
Complete walk-through of the Sentinel Desktop App v0.1.0 fir Windows
and a sneak peek of the Sentinel Desktop App v0.1.1:
Here’s a preview of the Sentinel dChat: [av_video src=’https://youtu.be/T1H8exU6D7I’ format=’16-9′ width=’16’ height=’9′]
Preview of Sentinel dChat aka Sentrix, the second Service on the Sentinel Network after the dVPN
This is the first time that team behind Sentinel Network has engaged in an AMA. Below are the questions, answers and messages/replies by the team & other community members during the 60 minute session.
In simple terms the Sentinel Network is a blockchain based P2P driven ecosystem that has the key prerogative of allowing service providers to monetise on their bandwidth provision and to allow end-users to consume these services in a safe and trustless manner.Exchange of digital resources whether it is storage, computing power or bandwidth in a decentralised environment requires a sort of consensus. The fact is that a bandwidth user could report a different outcome from the service provider. The same way a bitcoin miner could report false work.Sentinel has developed the first bandwidth metering consensus system in active operation, essentially meaning that p2p bandwidth distribution in its decentralised network is fully confirmed by it’s consensus governance measures.On the Ethereum Rinkeby chain where the dVPN is operational there is a network of masternodes observing p2p tunnels and then inscribing the session usage metrics into an unpaid block on the chain. Users of the dVPN are prohibited from accessing the dApp until this block is satisfied.On the Tendermint network, Sentinel uses the bPOS validator network to act as the confirmation consensus for bandwidth usage. Not through the direct observation of tunnels but through the reporting of the usage logs & proofs to the network.
Yeah, its Sentinel’s own blockchain. It is not a fork of another project.Currently $SENT token is an ERC20 token and we will soon move to our native token on the Tendermint blockchain.Our own blockchain consensus is bBFT (bonded BFT) and is developed using Tendermint Core and the Cosmos SDK.You can check the live testnet here — https://explorer.sentinel.co
Sentinel was publicly launched in October 2017, before the time that any other project even proposed the name Sentinel. Regardless Sentinel branding continued while two other highly funded “Sentinel’s” were conceived afterwards. Both of the other Sentinel projects are less than 1/3 of their ICO values while Sentinel retains its $2M ICO mark — this is due to a number of reasons pertaining to true utility. Sentinel does not plan to change its branding as we believe that the name and branding is apt to the actual utility being provided on a daily basis, and we are confident that we will become the premiere ‘Sentinel’ within the next year.No. We never intended to rebrand. We have the ticker $SENT and we were the first to claim it. However, since we are a network, we plan to make Sentinel Network quite popular in future rather than just ‘Sentinel’ as a brand.
Had to choose our own blockchain as we could not power the consensus with shared security. We would not have had the control on governance as required. Also, we explored other engines but they all failed to live up to the standards and vision of Tendermint due to which we chose the same.Just did some googling and found some medium documentations for others here:https://medium.com/sentinel/sentinel-network-the-transition-to-tendermint-within-the-cosmos-network-9e0022bfb03cWow, the Sentinel team has quite a lot of documentation, great for education.
Multiple reasons:1) We have to make sure both Service Provider & Service User agree on consumption.2) We will not only incentivise people for doing a good job running nodes, but also need to penalise when they DON’T do a good job. Good here will be perfectly defined.3) The need to develop a network where governance can be shared, but each Service/dApp might have it’s own way to utilise the same.For example: dChat, a Service, might primarily use 2 resources — network and storage from independent resource providers. Although computing is used, it will be accounted for in the costs of the bandwidth and storage.
In simple words:
This is quite important for Sentinel Network as we are a network of multiple Services and Resources that run on the network — either on the Sentinel Public Network or as independent Private Networks.
Sentinel raised $2,000,000, that was used exclusively for the funding of development apart from initial exchanges. Sentinel is closely immersed in the Cosmos ecosystem and is assured sustenance due to its cooperation with other non-crypto and crypto blockchain projects working on Tendermint.As we have one of the world’s biggest Tendermint dev teams (highly proficient), there is a lot of value we provide to others that ensures our runway is much longer than was initially prepared for. We are determined to become an authority in terms of development competency on Tendermint/Cosmos and the blockchain space in general.
We will say the project is still in it’s initial phases with the dVPN being just one aspect of it.We will consider it a success when enterprises utilise Sentinel Network to run their own internal Private Networks & mainstream privacy conscious people all over the world that want to secure themselves start utilising the Services & Utilities running on the Sentinel Network
It is over 30 dedicated people working on different aspects of Sentinel NetworkdVPN – UI for Client, Backend, Tendermint, Cosmos SDK, OpenVPN, WireGuard, SOCKS5, Android, iOS, etcThe same with dChat, Relay Network and Private Net too.
Sentinel’s development team continues to show absolute perseverance regardless of market sentiment, currently ranking #67 on Crypto Miso (https://www.cryptomiso.com) and as high as top 50 over the past 6 months. Sentinel’s GitHub activity and code quality rivals that of high-cap networks.View the commits and releases at:https://github.com/sentinel-official/sentinel/ & https://github.com/sentinel-official/sentinel/releases/
We did take this feedback on board from the community and were recently listed on OKEX partner exchange Coinall.Coinall is somewhat a proving ground for OKEX. If Sentinel shows good volume and solid community traction we will be automatically upgraded to OKEX.One step at a time. We are confident.
Not really. We do not want to position ourselves that way.We want to make sure to position ourselves to be in the Network space primarily isolated networks.Why is that important?We aim to facilitate exchange of computing resources and run Services that are specific to a Private Net — for an organisation like IBM or your friendly startup in the hood — all need to protect themselves from external attacks (like a firewall) and secure their data. Right now, it is not possible unless there’s a lot of tech know-how by the guys doing this.We aim to make it happen in the easiest way possible.Apps will be developed by the Sentinel Team including dVPN (in alpha), dChat (under development), dVoIP (as both are supported by Matrix Server, a communication protocol) and more to be announced in the future.“Sentinel is just providing infrastructure not encouraging negative behavior”Agreed. The way I see it, cryptography was illegal and seen as a weapon once upon a time. Now though, it is standard. Tech advances all the time.We prefer to talk about security when referring to Sentinel rather than allowing bad people to do bad things, which they always will no matter what. dVPN helps people who interact with digital currency for example stay more secure and avoid being hacked. dVPN helps people who use public WiFi networks stay more secure and avoid sensitive data being stolen by hackers. Sentinel helps big companies keep sensitive information secure when traveling. The privacy vs security debate will rage on for ever more but I am very passionate about the peer to peer transaction of computing resources that only this technology allows and think it is a true breakthrough, which is why I became fascinated with Sentinel and want to see the technology spread to help people all over the world stay secure and safe whilst using the internet.The big thing for me that I like to explain to people when talking about Sentinel is that centralised VPNs are simply not secure. There are more and more reports of centralised VPN providers collecting and selling data or being forced or bribed to give it up. There is also no proof that your data is even being encrypted. With Sentinel’s open source code that anyone can view and trust, you know you’re safe and secure.Even Facebook recently have been providing a VPN, but what people are starting to wake up to is: “hang on, who is in control of my data? Who holds it? Who can access it? Who are they selling it to?”
Yes. Not only for incentivizing and penalizing nodes, but also has other use cases like locking of tokens in a pre-paid payment model for a service, bonding/delegating it to validators to power a specific Service (like dVPN or dChat) and the entire network as a whole.
We don’t focus on other projects, we focus on Sentinel.I think the filtration of the bear market was much needed and it has been harsh but fair to some of the pretenders in the space. The ‘failed project’ tokens will be delisted by exchanges as we have seen from many of the top exchanges recently and ultimately cease to exist. Markets are efficient by nature, as soon as there are no buyers left for a particular digital asset, there is no longer a market. In Sentinel’s case, the real working products, several use cases and ever-growing user-base ensures there will continue to be a market.We’d love you all to keep an eye on:Best place to do that would be the https://stats.sentinel.co Sentinel is one of the few dApps which experiences true utility with over 200-250GB in data consumption & thousands of unique users on a daily basis.We are exhibiting real utility, real users, real usage, and real pain points being solved.
Yep! That’s of course there and hence team mates choose to communicate selectively.Due to the nature of the product and the services offered, we believe it is best to associate as contributors than anyone else. We encourage active community participation and believe identity is not a factor when merit & diligence are being considered as metrics … you see, our traffic is coming in from places where people need it the most and hence we need to make sure we secure ourselves before we do that to the world.When you are building something that systematically and gradually breaking down billion dollar enterprises that thrives on centralised offerings and are subjected to centralised regulations, you have to ensure there are no single points of failure.The core principle that every line of code has to be open source and that each and every individual is free to run their node from it, we have then achieved the transparency that is needed.This, for me, is more powerful than any project that hides their core repository privately…“$SENT Android #dVPN User downloads from #GooglePlay show that the #Sentinel Network is being utilised in regions where there is a very high demand for solutions to unrestricted browsing.18.6k downloads within 5 months and thousands of active users. Let’s revisit this in 2020https://twitter.com/Sentinel_co/status/1096413158791659520#Iran #UAE”
Yeah! We believe in the ideology and believe in the concept of securing users. We are sure we will do it no matter what — bear or bull. All we care about is the tech that’s implemented. Be it blockchain, network layer, etc.We encourage users to try out Sentinel dVPN and check it out for yourselves.URLs:Website: https://sentinel.coGitHub Downloads: https://github.com/sentinel-official/sentinel/releasesMedium Blog: — https://medium.com/sentinelThank You for hosting us. We take this as an inspiration to do more such AMAs on our own channel and Reddit too.
Sentinel Network is a network layer that enables a true p2p and decentralised applications and resources marketplace. Sentinel enables anyone to create Public and Private networks that provide access to both free and incentivised, and also payment method agnostic (pre-paid/escrow/post-paid) services (dApps) & distributed resources, enabling its clients to become both producers and consumers in the network.Sentinel utilises locking, staking and multi-sig directly from Tendermint core and Cosmos SDK and aims to fully eliminate the disadvantages of previous generation protocols, that couldn’t scale due to limitations of the blockchain they share with other dApps or that have an unsustainable economic model that reduces usability or access to the product they offer.Follow us on Medium to stay up to date with the latest Sentinel announcements and developments.View exchanges for trading $SENT on the Sentinel website.Follow Sentinel ONLY ON Official Social Media platforms:Twitter | Telegram — Official Group | Telegram — Announcements only | Telegram Community Chats — Node Network Group, Chinese, Russian and Spanish
The advantage of the partnership is the transparency of the data provided. In addition, the deal will help enhance trust amongst the crypto community and provide clients with a greater level of confidence. There is also potential for greater client traffic as a result of the tie up between Currency.com and CoinMarketCap.
Electroneum is excited to announce the expansion of its global trading presence by partnering with BiKi, a Top 20 cryptocurrency exchange on CoinMarketCap. The crypto exchange provides a safe, stable, and effective digital assets platform for trading more than 150 cryptocurrencies and 280 trading pairs.
Cryptocurrencies have gained mainstream popularity in the financial community because of their capacity as a great investment vehicle.
For those new to the cryptocurrency game, a good way to test the investment waters is through Ripple or XRP.
More commonly known as XRP, it’s often cited as one of the most underrated cryptocurrency, even though it’s the third largest in the market.
But its centralised-decentralised nature also makes it more stable – making it a good investment for newbies as well as very careful investors.
Also, it’s currently selling for very cheap with a 300% projected return.
Which, even if you’re no seasoned investor, you can tell is bigger (much bigger!) than the estimated 56% return for more household name cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Got your attention now?
Here are more reasons why XRP is an excellent crypto asset that you should definitely buy XRP this year.
With about 100 banks currently testing the Ripple system and major exchanges offering it for selling, buying, and trading purposes, XRP is a highly accessible digital currency.
Analysts also predict that with the recent credit card outages due to hardware and software failures, alternative modes of payments like XRP will soon become the norm.
And in terms of scalability, a review of how Ripple used performance engineering to improve their product and achieving throughput gains of over 1000%.
Currently, the XRP Ledger is now able to handle and sustain a throughput of 1,500 transactions per second. Which is lightyears ahead of Ethereum’s 15 per second and Bitcoin’s 7 per second.
This means it can handle quick and secure transactions on a global scale much better than its more well-known competitors.
Comes at a lower price
Unlike other major digital assets, XRP is available at a comparatively low price – a really low price.
While Bitcoin is selling for thousands of dollars and Ethereum for hundreds, XRP will cost you less than a dollar to buy.
It’s relatively risk-free with a lot of room for ROI. Which makes it one of the best crypto coins to buy and invest in, especially if you’re a beginner.
Has great relationship with banks
Although cryptocurrency is gaining popularity in recent years, it doesn’t mean that banking systems and other major financial situations will cease to operate.
Currently, XRP is being widely adopted and accepted by a variety of banks such as Axis Bank, Akbank, SBI Remit, and Yes Bank among others.
This widespread acceptance of XRP by banks has become a bridge for the cryptocurrency to enter the world of traditional finance.
Not to mention, Ripple’s good relationship with financial institutions, makes XRP more likely immune to the changing regulations of cryptocurrency.
Has potential for a good ROI
Based on great public interest, experts are predicting a steady surge in the price of XRP in the coming years.
For example, if the current trading price of XRP is $0.20 and it’s believed to rise at $0.75 by the end of the year, your potential ROI will be over $300. This figure shows how much of a good investment XRP is.
Its partnership with banks and tech giants only makes it more appealing as other ways you could invest your capital. Which makes XRP an excellent alternative investment option for newbies.
Has major institutional investors
What’s great about having tech conglomerates like Google and Apple is that it conveys two important things – capacity for global scale and potential for real world application.
For this reason, buying XRP is a smart idea. Because if these giants are interested in the technology, it only means that we’ll soon see it in their own platform in action as a way of simplifying and securing payments for their global customer base.
Uses third generation Blockchain technology
While Bitcoin uses first-generation blockchain technology, Ripple, on the other hand, uses the better, faster third-generation version.
With this technology, Ripple was able to handle large scale transactions worth 4.6 billion XRP or about $1.6 billion within seconds – and at a lower cost..
So if you’re making money transfers on a regular basis, buying and using XRP for this purpose is a great idea.
Just remember to take the necessary precautions to keep your transactions secure. Consider different purchasing and storage options for redundancy.
Conclusion
If you don’t know which cryptocurrency is the perfect one to buy and invest in this year, XRP is a good low-risk option with a big potential for great ROI.
Undeniably, with a good tech team, major investors, and links to traditional financial institutions, XRP is slated to be one of the best investment options when it comes to cryptocurrency.
But, just like any investment, make sure you do your research before buying your first XRP coins.
A US district Judge has ruled that Craig Wright will have additional time to prove he could still be Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of the one and only Bitcoin. Specifically, the judge’s ruling comes in the ongoing legal battle between Craig Wright and the estate of late Dave Kleiman, Wright’s former associate.
SiGMA Group are delighted to be supporting the newly formed CryptoFireAlliance which aims to raise AUD$50m upwards from the global AI, blockchain, crypto, and DLT communities. Australia is burning and we all need to send funds, help and support to prevent further climate disaster in the region.
Details of the fundraising activity can be found at the Crypto Bushfire Fundraiser webpage, which states: “Australia is in the grips of an ongoing bushfire emergency. We’re challenging the global crypto community to unite and help out, and raise funds quickly to help fight those fires. Cryptocurrency funds raised will be converted into AUD and donated to the NSW Rural Fire Service Association (RFSA).”
You can support the firefighting efforts using a range of digital currencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP. Please transfer any funds you wish to donate to the appropriate address below.
HiveEx.com will convert funds raised into Australian dollars and donate them to the RFSA. (As this effort grows, they may look to add additional charities that can be supported for related causes).
As always, please double-check that you have entered the correct address before transferring any funds.
BTC: 3BVTfsVNnugTqhPmxZ5NLifSv5g5DCyA6p
ETH: 0xFf70AC142A9D359BdE8391D10cc017C77E6e397c
USDT (ERC20): 0xFf70AC142A9D359BdE8391D10cc017C77E6e397c
USDC (ERC20): 0xFf70AC142A9D359BdE8391D10cc017C77E6e397c
XRP: rJwEcbDJps4FW51i1NBPg21mKcrJG7f4ez
BCH: qquleg8r4mqfjkln6ffw85jefdnpdtzcwu55k40fs2
LTC: M8yUhFBbJH1yQ7CeNBhs9UkfvMuoGxMvKC (please note: M-address format)
DOGE: DTKX1xsaaqowjFjnNidLUxDNDyGMDAT2GS
More details about the fundraising activity and the companies supporting the initiative can be found at https://www.finder.com.au/crypto-bushfire-fundraiser
There’s also a video below from HiveEx explaining the charitable action:
Our video production team have been a busy crew in 2019, creating 100s of videos to keep you informed about the AI & blockchain sector. As well as having world class speakers giving insights and opinion at our two AIBC Summit events in Malta this year, we’ve also kept in touch with our leading selection of globetrotting AI and blockchain experts on our AIBC Summit Youtube channel. In addition, we’ve been interviewing our world-beating clients from the sector, getting the inside story on where the industry is headed in the next few years, and how they’re changing the world in the process. We’ve even got our very own Eman Pulis giving his unique insights on the world view, all so you can stay informed about the biggest and best stories in the industry. You can watch all the videos on our Youtube channel.
But do people know how they’re converging and the exciting possibilities that lie on the horizon? The biggest “block” to blockchain’s steady march towards widespread application and implementation is still uptake by the wider public. It’s crucial for the two industries to address the knowledge gap that separates the people behind the wheel from those in front of the screen.
As we meet and mingle in these amazing hubs of ideas and networking, we need to focus on making the technology accessible to the people who our business depends on, plus the future generations who will have a crucial role in shaping and developing it. Online casinos that use bitcoin as a payment method are easy to find nowadays.
The crypto revolution has enabled these outlets to incorporate money transfers involving bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into their user interface. And that’s a definite tick in the box for crypto fans who are enjoying the benefits of banking with crypto coins. However, these bitcoin casinos are using blockchain only for money transfers.
Users might still be thinking that that’s all there is to gambling with cryptocurrency – the convenience of placing a punt with a crypto wallet. But a true “blockchain casino” should fulfil a much broader variety of functions than what we currently have with online casinos that accept cryptocurrencies.
In this scenario, players can verify that the outcome of any casino game is legit in lieu of having to trust the centralized casino to present fair results. Although the process is still slow and cumbersome due to the technology being in its infancy, the concept of “provably fair” gaming is quickly spreading. A Short Comic Strip about “Provably Fair” Gaming.
Imagine you’re in a casino gaming floor with a string of vending machines connected to each other and regular slot machines scattered around. The vending machines are not controlled by the casino. They run independently of the establishment.
Before you start betting, you get a scratch card from the casino reception desk. This card has a secret number created by the casino behind its metallic strip. You can’t see it yet, but it’s there. And nothing and no one can meddle with it now, because it’s in your hands. This is the casino’s signature, key, fingerprint… Call it whatever you like.
Then you go to any one of the vending machines, which gives you another scratch card. But this one’s a bit special. It’s a “build-your-own” one, since you’re the star of the show in this set-up. It comes with a random number penciled on it, but you can erase it and write another number if you want to be extra sure it’s a totally random number.
And if that’s still not enough, you can rub it off again and pencil in a harder number. Repeat for as many times as you like. Once you’re happy with the randomness of it, the vending machine prints a metallic strip on top of your creation. That’s your scratch card with your secret number for the bet.
The machine reads what’s under the metallic strips. Thus, creates a new one combining both these values, plus an additional string of random numbers. By the way, all this activity isn’t just recorded by the vending machine you’re dealing with. It’s registered and stored by all the other vending machines connected to it, so anyone who’s using vending machine B can still see what vending machine A has been up to.
And because all of them are interconnected and there are others in other parts of the world which are also connected to this network, the system can never go down. So you take the super scratchcard and proceed to a slot machine to make your bet. The slot machine is programmed to generate a number for each spin, like a bet ID. This is shown on the slot machine’s screen.
Also, it pulls data from the casino reception desk about the secret number used for the scratch card, which becomes part of the bet ID. Plus data from the vending machine. This includes the number on the scratch card you created. Plus, the random number added to these. This is to form the super scratch card number. It’s finally time to scratch your supercard!
The numbers on the super scratch card and the bet ID on the slot machine screen have to match. What’s crucial is that the bet takes place after the casino hands you the scratch card with the secret number. So if the casino decides to cheat and modify the number given to you on the scratch card in the time it takes you to make a bet, it’ll change the bet ID shown on the slot machine.
You’d only have to look at the super scratch card in your hands to verify that the bet ID is false. This invalidates the bet. Meanwhile, the vending machines have been monitoring all this stuff in the background. With the power of all of them stacking the evidence in your favor (and the power being distributed amongst countless vending machines under no single ownership), you can get your invalid bet refunded from your vending machine straight away.
No need to walk up to the casino reception desk and demand a refund against their will. And here’s the key to the analogy: the vending machines are the blockchain, the casino reception desk is the traditional, centralized form of the casino we’re all used to, and the slot machine is a prototype of provably fair games in their current state. And you, sir or madam… are the iGaming superuser.