Showing posts with label Bitcoin. Show all posts

Sunday 24th July 2016

This morning I had the brilliant idea of putting together a team of writers then publishing our content on steemit.com

Steemit.com is a crypto currency related social network, very similar to reddit, with the difference that good content gets paid in actual money, albeit Steem dollars. Easily convertable to Bitcoin or Fiat.


So during my lightning fast brainstorm I came up with a name STEEM TEEM, and a idea of how we will divide our earnings from the platform. Firstly why is it better to collaborate on Steem?
Steem power gives the writer of a post more exposure similar to a higher google ranking. However steem power is not free, it can either be earned or bought. The thing about using a collective to publish your posts, is that you will have the visibilty of the group for each of your listings instead of just being one in an ocean of new posts each getting very few views. Its beneficial to have great writers, because that will bring more upvotes and in turn more steem power and in turn more visibility, can you see how the vicious cycle grows and grows?

So I decided quite quickly that the first 3 posts a writer donates to the STEEM TEEM will add exclusively to the steem power of the collective, After that the writer will keep 70% of the steem dollars earned, with the other 30% being divided between Crypto SI, Steem teem Shareholder (to be explored later) and more steem power, I really cant emphasise how important steem power is to visibility.



I thought also about selling upvotes when, the STEEM TEEM vote becomes powerful enough, this may take a while and has ethical implications, but all can be explored at a later date.

Shareholders, I thought of having an equity sale which can go towards purchasing steem power and reward the investors in the steem teem with a regular dividend (monthly) from a percentage of the money raised by our bloggers. This also gives the bloggers a chance to own a portion of the project if they can see a long term future for it.

I havent seen anything like this yet on steem, but its only a matter of time, the real challenge will be if its shunned on the platform or steps are taken to downvote collaborative posters. Its a small risk and worth taking in my opinion.

I currently have just over $1k worth of steem power, which is enough to get a small amount of traction, so I'm pretty much ready to get this project started tomorrow

If you'd like to recommend a blogger or vlogger to the STEEM TEEM, feel free to message me
cryptosixxx@gmail.com
or you can find me on twitter @crypto_si
instagram @mrcarlanthony

Let me know what you think of this musing in the comments below.

Sunday 24th July 2016 This morning I had the brilliant idea of putting together a team of writers then publishing our content on steemit.c...

How to become a Millionaire from Dash

So I've held the digital currency Dash, since it was called DarkCoin, and it's just gotten better and better. So I decided to do a little Math and give my 'research' a click baity title.

I've decided that Dash is actually better than Bitcoin in almost ALL aspects, expect for the mighty NETWORK EFFECT, however what if Dash had this network effect, what if one day Dash became as big as Bitcoin is right now, in terms of Market cap, namely $6bn at the time of writing (20th Jan 2016).

Lets see how we could become millionaires by investing in dash right now and allowing the value to just rise, as it inevitably will. (Dash shill much?)

So currently the market cap is 28.25 Million dollars, Whereas Bitcoin's marketcap is 6.213 Billion Dollars, So Bitcoin is roughly 220 times the size of Dash currently 219.920436102 to be precise.
This means that When Dash becomes the size of Bitcoin a mere 6billion, each Individual Dash Coin would be worth a staggering $1000 or $1009.43 to be exact, So if you had 1000 of them you would be a Millionaire!



Here's the interesting part, It costs 1000 Dash to Start your own masternode, which is an income producing asset, featured in my blog last year in this post, So not only would buying a masternode produce a steady income, it will also be the collateral for you to become a millionaire should Dash meet the underwhelming heights that Bitcoin has so far reached..... Money well invested if you ask me.


So how much will this investment cost me?

Well 1000 Dash at today's prices would cost you $4590, and produce a return of around 17.5% per year, not to be sneezed at :) plus in the back of your mind you will know that there's a decent chance you'll become a millionaire if Dash hits the Big Time.....Well more like Medium-Time, so what've you got to lose?

Happy St Duffield's Day!  

Follow on twitter for more great articles @crypto_si
and keep up with the development of the long awaited AdFete
Let me know your views in the comments section

How to become a Millionaire from Dash So I've held the digital currency Dash, since it was called DarkCoin, and it's just gott...

2016 in Bitcoin


I think Bitcoin's killer app is Equity Crowdfunding, I heard Vinay Gupta equate investing in a startup to buying a lottery ticket, so when investments can be a small as 10p then you have a nice place for people to gamble on companies legally. 

 My Predictions for 2016 :
1) Augur Becomes a BIG player despite Ethereum making little headway,
2) NXT becomes Bitcoin's main rival purely down to its asset exchange and products developed from it.
3 )Shapeshift.IO takes Bitcoin to a much bigger userbase by consolidating the value of Altcoins
4) The fiat world continues to print money
5) England get knocked out at the group stages of the Euros despite winnning all the qualifiers
6) Mainstream media tries to convince the west to go to a war with Russia. Nobody agrees
7) Banks are exposed of corruption in a huge scandal, nobody goes to jail
8) Counterparty continues to exist, People Continue to overlook it. Nobody cares
9) Someone decides to sell equity in a documentary via Blockchain tech.
10) Bitcoin price doubles slowly up to $500+ (takes a big jump when halving occurs)

 So there you have it, all these will become a reality, I'm going to try to produce videos next year, I've been planning it for some time now and never gotten around to it.

 Feel free to share your predictions in the comments section below.

2016 in Bitcoin I think Bitcoin's killer app is Equity Crowdfunding, I heard Vinay Gupta equate investing in a startup to buying a lo...


What is MIM? It's known by various acronyms, and it means Man In The Middle.

MIM is a type of scam which some clever idiot decided to attempt to use against me. I was quite lucky not to get caught out as it was only the local bitcoin feedback system that saved me from losing £2000.

So here's how it works,
   The scammer makes a request with me at the same time they contact someone else and offer to sell them something, they then tell their buyer to deposit the payment into my account, Once the money has been deposited into my account I will send the scammer Bitcoin thinking that everything is fine and it's just another trade, however the scammers buyer will never recieve the goods they have paid the scammer for, and when they go to the police to get some much deserved justice, they only have my bank details as evidence, I dont know what happens to me after that but I'd assume I would have to re-imburse the scammed buyer and try to get my Bitcoin back from the scammer, which as we all know is nigh-on impossible.

So how did I avoid it?
  I was fortunate that The LocalBitcoin Platform is very difficult to scam with, There were a few factors in the trade which raised my suspicion, firstly the scammers account was under 24hrs old, a big red flag. Secondly The scammer seemed very very keen to do the deal off the localbitcoins platform, and wanted the bitcoins released extremely quickly. Finally during the negotiations of the deal, an alert appeared above the users name stating that they had violated terms of service, Together all these factors are enough to alert a seller to be EXTRA vigilant, and usually it would spell the end of any negotiations for most traders. On this occasion I was too fast to hand over my bank details so the scammers buyer did actually deposit £2000 into my account, she had no clue what bitcoin was!

How did things end?
  My situation got particularly complicated because the scammers buyer actually paid the money to me, at this point I needed to find the buyer and return their money, When I asked the scammer for ID they sent me the victims passport so luckily I had enough information to actually find the victim and contact her, the problem was that she was not home when I called but I was convinced at this point she had been scammed. I then had to be certain that whoever came forward claiming to be the victim was indeed the victim and not the scammer.



How can this be avoided in the future?
  I'm not too sure it can be stopped fully, but I think a good way to protect yourself is to ask for the 'buyer' to send you a picture of the receipt used to deposit funds, and have this receipt say TO PURCHASE BITCOIN, surely no 'victim' will be silly enough to buy something and write something totally different on the receipt when requested to. In this situation personal ID is really no protection at all.

What is MIM? It's known by various acronyms, and it means Man In The Middle. MIM is a type of scam which some clever idiot decided to...

I am thinking of making a video to help people with lending techniques for both btcjam and bitlending club. They will be based on the techniques that I'm using which have been successful for me.

I had a conversation about it with someone on google hangouts just now, so though I would share my advice via my blog for the rest of you:



hi
yes, ok I was thinking of making a little video for youtube on the subject
my methods were initially to follow some of the top investors, then I started to follow everyone I invested in, spending 0.01 on each investment (1BTC total -100 loans)
Avoiding rep-loans and people with accounts less than 3months old
people who paid on the due day would be unfollowed and people who paid far in advance would be noted and I would continue to follow them. 
I then invest more in early payers and nothing in late payers, after 1-2 months of this I have a core investment base of about 50-60 borrowers, and when I get an email about their listings I invest in them. once per week I may look for new borrowers. 
I was hit by investing in people in ltcGear, so in future I will be wary of going too heavily into one loan type. I hope this helps.

--------------------------------------
This of course is just the tip of the Iceberg of my investing knowledge, so I will try to get a video together sometime this month, if there is anything in particular that any of you would like to learn about, dont hesitate to drop me a message and I will add it to my plans.

I am thinking of making a video to help people with lending techniques for both btcjam and bitlending club. They will be based on the techni...

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been looking into SWARM, and it's well worth investigating when you've finished reading about me and LBC of course.  I will actually blog about it next week infact, because it shouldn't go unreported,it's kinda a big deal :)

So, on with my tale of woe and joy. For this story In will not use the name of the seller on LBC because I don't want to ruin his business, despite the fact that me and this person had a dispute over a sale which lasted the best part of a week, It's important to note that I had conducted loads of trades with this person in the past.



What is LocalBitcoins.com? Basically it's a marketplace for Bitcoin only, think of it as an ebay where all you sell is Bitcoin(Btc) and you have various ways to buy or sell the scarce currency. I sell via Bank deposit and cash in my CryptoS.I HQ and I usually buy via the bank transfer option. I realise that some people want anonymity and this is not possible with bank transfer for obvious reasons. I don't want such anonymity. Different strokes.

On a wednesday evening I sent money to buy Bitcoin, I transferred online using my bank account and faster payments (UK ONLY), so the seller would of got the money within moments (2hrs maximum), Usually at this point the seller would release the bitcoins from 'ESCROW', and I would have them in my btc account on lbc. However on this occasion the seller did not reply. The following morning I chased the seller asking when he would release the Bitcoin and he replied that he had not recieved the payment. I messaged him a few mor time during the day asking him to re-check his account to be sure he hadn't overlooked the payment. I also verified the sort code and account number just in case I had sent it to the wrong place or he had given me incorrect details. Finally that night he replied to say he hadn't recieved the money.

At this point, the money had definately left my account so I was wondering where it had gone, however I was not worried at all about losing it because I have quite a lot of faith in LBC and more importantly in the people who use it and swear by it. The next day the seller opened a dispute, I had tried to open one incorrectly through the support page on the website. I attached screenshots from my online banking and he done the same. It's important to note that screenshots from your account contain a decent amount of information which could be used for identity theft, for this reason it's always good to use a seperate account for all your btc activity.......However I don't bother doing this :)

After looking through his screenshots I saw the payment showing clearly my payment being recieved into his account, by this point 3 days had passed since my initial payment, pretty standard for cheques I guess. We both had the chance to give dialogue and reasons that we felt we should win the dispute. and so the situation remained for a further 2 days, when LBC weighed in saying that the seller had 24hrs to respond else the dispute will be resolved in my favour. There was no reply from the seller and I was credited with the bitcoin the next day, 6 days after the opening of the dispute.

Now there are 2 ways to look at this, 1 way is that it shouldn't take 6 days to recieve Bitcoin, The other is that if this was a dispute using fiat currency and going through the courts it would likely take 6 months and cost a lot of money, this dispute process is free, and out of the hundreds of trades i've done on LBC this is the first one ever to go to dispute so I'm very pleased.

I thought I would blog so people have an idea of the dispute process and how it's actually worked out for me. Personally I've got plenty of faith in LBC, of course I don't leave loads of Btc on there as that's not advisable with any website regardless of how good they are!

Thanks for reading.

Hi guys, It's been a while since my last blog, well over a month, an loads has happened in the crypto-currency space. I've been look...

It's been a rough time for cryptos over the past few weeks, IRS and PBOC (peoples bank of China) have been leading the way with the bad news.

However, It's all kinda irrelevant if you ask me and all it does is slow down the speculation. As we all know the main thing is adoption and the network effect that widespread usage will have. Anyway enough beating of the drums. This update is just bringing to your attention the 2 great new websites which I've found with short half reviews on both.

MintPal



This new crypto/crypto exchange has been around for a few months and somehow went under my radar. But it's not for a lack of quality. Ok so the orderbook and liquidity are not ginormous, but the site is clearly growing rapidly and the interface...... it's beautiful and so intuitive. It's been a while since I last got to grips with a site so quickly. I didn't see 2 factor authentcation but signup was a piece of cake, all I needed was a valid email address. They trade over 41 coins and have a clever voting section for the mobb to add new coins. Clean graphs, easy deposits and understandable wallets make this one site I can see myself using for months to come. Sounds like an advert but I promise you it isn't!

FollowtheCoin



I'm not really into the whole MTV generation and cool fast talking news shows. However, this content seems to get to the point really quickly and give viewers an overview of whats happening. The content does kinda assume you have a little knowledge about the crypto-currency movement, and is clearly aimed at the younger audience. Of course there was nothing in the weekly round-ups that I hadn't already read somewhere else, but then I am a paid professional. The only thing I found a little annoying was the over excitement the presenters seem to have for just about everrrrything. I guess thats just a sign of the times and I'm getting old! All in all a great site, and I'm sure they will build a big following among the younger audience soon.

And with that I must end another blog post, I hope you check out these two sites as they are well worth a few minutes of your time.

Don't forget to follow us on twitter @ https://twitter.com/Crypto_SI

It's been a rough time for cryptos over the past few weeks, IRS and PBOC (peoples bank of China) have been leading the way with the bad ...

Ok, It's been a while since my last blog, Quite a lot has changed....... My grammar is still terrible and Bitcoin is still awesome. I am blaming my absence on my new addiction to Raspberry Pi. It's just a great piece of kit, and along with meshnet will change the world, mark my words! :)

Anyway the topic of today's blog is HullCoin, The new crypto-currency which may well be backed by a local authority. At this point reports suggest that Hullcoin is still just an idea in it's infancy, and bearing this in mind all we can do is speculate to the effects it may or may not have on the local economy.

 Hull is well known to people in the U.K for being cold, wet and poor mostly and it's this poverty that has allegedly inspired HullCoin. So the basic premiss is this: people set about undertaking voluntary tasks and are paid with HullCoin which they can then use to exchange for hot meals. This is just the starting model as I understand it, obviously in time more places will accept HullCoin and people will be able to pay rent, taxes and buy fuel with it.

The most exciting thing about this concept is that it empowers Hull to create value with it's homeless and unemployed, and the possibilities are huge, the first thing that springs to mind is what if they start building solar panels or processing Biofuel, then use this energy to raise the standard of living for the local people, and even sell the energy to neighbouring towns. They could get people to work building semi-permanent fixtures like hexayurts, and because the money used is not the watered down pound which is suffering from Q.E by Mr Carney, people would possibly get value for their work.

Of course this is all very far fetched and relies heavily on the dream that central government will not shut the project down once they realise that a local currency is a lot like local independence.

On a social level, I initially thought that paying for voluntary work would hinder drug abuse, as drug dealers don't usually accept crypto currency for illicit drugs. I then thought about Silk road and realised that criminals will adapt and when they do, HullCoin may well be the only type of money a drug dealer can accept that has already laundered itself, a quick trip to LocalBitcoins.com and you have your pounds sterling. So it's not a positive but it's no less of a hinderance than cash is. If Hull university then start offering some online courses paid for with HullCoin then things will really get interesting.

All in all it's a very very good idea as far as I can see, I had toyed with the idea of BedfordCoin long before reading about Hullcoin, and think that it may only be a matter of time till all regions have their own coins.

What can I see in the future? A local area adopts 2 things simultaneously, 1: a cryptocurrenty and 2: a rule on every individual only owning 1 property in that area, or maybe 2 or 3. It will be easy to enforce with the nature of blockchains and will stop the current capital based bullying of the lower classes. China have already implemented these capital restrictions in some areas.

On another note, I was looking through an old post, and I predicted BTC to go down to around $400 before the next upturn, I cannot remember the exact reasons why I made the predictions, but we are nearing $400 so lets see if I was right or not.

Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes peeled because the Cryptosi website will be up and running soon.

Ok, It's been a while since my last blog, Quite a lot has changed....... My grammar is still terrible and Bitcoin is still awesome. I am...


If your not glued to coindesk 24 hours a day like we are you may have missed the news that Barclays bank (Well known high street bogey men) are working with a newly formed exchange called Bit121 https://bit121.co.uk/


The first thing we noticed about the site is that it's in Barclays colours, trivial as it sounds it was not a good first impression, with the Libor scandal still fresh in my memory. However you never know if they may have decided to lead the way into the brave new world of digital currency, One thing's for sure Barclay's backing will add legitimacy to the people on main st, and this is only a good thing. Time will tell as to what happens next and to how close the relationship is between bit121 and Barclays. We assume that the company (bit121) have just been a bit clever with their marketing and they are not terribly close to Barclays at all, we will know when barclays blocks their accounts and you have to withdraw your Bitcoin to another wallet.


As always the moral of the story here is not to store too much Bitcoin or any crypto in a website wallet, only store what you are prepared to gamble, it's definately NOT a safe place to leave currency, regardless of who's backing the site (alledgedly).

And so onto China and the news that 3rd party payment providers are also not allowed to use Bitcoin. In a country which makes it's daily bread on denying human rights why are we not surprised, does it matter? Yes, because it will keep the Chinese people in economic slavery just a little while longer. We will keep away from political topics though and just focus on the currency. We are still to go critical in UK or USA so there is much more room for growth against FIAT and in general usage terms, which is what is being forgotten by new Bitcoin fans, It's value against the Dollar or Pound are not the most important factor. It's usability is much more important.


This brings us to Litecoin, We will definately analyse this in greater detail in our next post. We see it as the Mini-disc to Bitcoins Cassette tape. It's not going to dominate for long but if it succeeds Bitcoin even briefly then buying it now at $30 a coin would be a very shrewd investment. It's much more difficult to own Litecoin and use it, but that will be easily remedied in the future when developers start 'forking' (nerd speak for converting) Bitcoin software to work with Litecoin.


We will be opening our account with Bit121 and sending them the documents they need (assuming it will be driving licence and utility bill) today. We will let you all know how we find their service.

follow us on twitter: https://twitter.com/Crypto_SI
add us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crypto.si.1

Thanks for reading

If your not glued to coindesk 24 hours a day like we are you may have missed the news that Barclays bank (Well known high street bogey men)...

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