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Cryptocurrency as Money — Store of Value or Medium of Exchange?
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts generally have a great appreciation for the Austrian school of economics. This is understandable since Austrian economists have always argued for the merit of privately produced money outside government control. Unfortunately, an erroneous understanding of the development and functions of money has emerged and become increasingly dominant among at least some proponents of bitcoin — a narrative that is at odds with the basics of Austrian monetary theory.
In this view, which can perhaps be traced to Nick Szabo’s essay emphasizing collectables, the primary and predominant function of money is as a “store of value,” or this function is on par with the medium-of-exchange function. According to this view, a commodity must first “transmit value” over time. It can then be used as a medium of exchange before finally becoming established as a unit of account.
This account gets the emergence and function of money backwards: the primary and indeed sole essential function of money is as a medium of exchange. Its status as a “store of value” (more on this phrase below) is incidental, while the function of a unit of account is nonessential, as there have been many money commodities throughout history that were never used as units of account. Read More
How to Tell if a Crypto Project Is a Scam
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), crypto scams have cost people more than $1 billion since 2021.
Investors new to crypto are more susceptible to scams. Staying up to date with the latest forms of fraud and manipulation is important to avoid financial loss.
Following a set of simple due diligence routines will help users distinguish bad projects from legitimate ones.
Phemex, a well-established cryptocurrency exchange, periodically reviews its listed assets to make sure users are protected from rug pulls or exit scams.
The crypto industry is known for continuously innovating. Projects come up with different ways of solving real-world problems. Quite often, these solutions attain a level of complexity that can be confusing to the average user.
Don’t Be Left Holding the Bag:
Scammers are also coming up with more sophisticated schemes to take advantage of the less experienced, from traditional price manipulation to inserting bugs in applications that manage and store digital assets.
In crypto, a classic way of tricking users is through what is commonly known as a “rug pull,” a scheme through which scammers create a new coin and promote it aggressively, relying on fake or exaggerated claims.
The intention is to increase the token’s price by promising easy gains. Scammers are careful enough to generate fictitious trading volume during a set period of time and give the impression that the project is sustainable in the long run (a factor that differentiates a rug pull from a “pump and dump.“) Read More
Visa And FTX Partnership Will Enable Debit Cards In 40 Countries
Payments leader Visa is teaming up with crypto exchange giant FTX to launch debit cards in 40 countries, with the main focus on Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
The debit cards will link to customer accounts on the FTX exchange and will enable them to spend the digital currency they have on the platform as if it were an ordinary bank account.
An article on CNBC quotes Visa CFO Vasant Prabhu in an interview who stated that there is still a lot of interest in crypto:
“Even though values have come down there’s still steady interest in crypto. We don’t have a position as a company on what the value of cryptocurrency should be, or whether it’s a good thing in the long run -- as long as people have things they want to buy, we want to facilitate it.”
Both Visa and its big competitor Mastercard have been forging relationships with crypto companies such as FTX. Visa has more than 70 crypto partnerships. Besides FTX it has also partnered with the likes of fellow exchange giants Coinbase and Binance. Read More
Solana Co-Founder Says 'Long-Term Fix' to Network Outages Is in the Works
Anatoly Yakovenko shared what he believes will finally solve Solana’s biggest problem.
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko knows that Solana’s outages concern its users. But a solution for the network could be on the horizon.
“This has been the biggest challenge for us, and the number one priority,” Yakovenko told Decrypt on the most recent episode of the gm podcast.
The young proof-of-history, proof-of-stake hybrid blockchain has had five major outages since its launch in 2020. Out of those five, three have occurred this year—each one the result of either bugs in Solana’s code or the network becoming overwhelmed by artificial traffic from bots.
Yakovenko believes Firedancer, a second Solana client announced back in August, will be a “long-term fix” because it will have its own separate software development team. Web3 firm Jump Crypto is developing Firedancer in partnership with the Solana Foundation.
Jump Crypto hopes Firedancer will dramatically scale Solana, allowing it to handle more transactions in a more efficient manner within the next one to two years.
“Because it's a separate team, the probability of them having the same bugs in their code as ours becomes virtually zero,” Yakovenko said. Read More
HVC is poised to triumph in the crypto economy.
Markethive is a monolithic blockchain project currently operating as a social network, an entire inbound marketing platform with email, blogging, and digital media capabilities that broadcast to the vast internet. It’s a complete Market Network and the first of its kind.
Markethive is predominantly a free system where users can access a platform that can cost more than $2,500 offered by other marketing platforms. There are, of course, upgrades that open up more tools and monetization opportunities, the first being the Entrepreneur One Loyalty Program, and coming soon is the Premium Upgrade.
The many domains Markethive has and its autonomous cloud systems that ensure its sovereignty and longevity make it untouchable and immune from the tech giants’ rule and biased agenda. But can still remotely infiltrate the social media platforms and reach the multitudes either locked in or looking for an alternative meritocratic medium.
In other words, wherever you go, Markethive is there, anywhere and everywhere, delivering its message via its community of entrepreneurs to a far-reaching audience. This next-generation social market media is poised in the wings, and when the time is right, it will emerge as a shining light to lift people up and bring financial sovereignty and hope in this gloomy and uncertain world.
The video platform, conference rooms, the unique four specific news feeds currently in development, and many other projects and incentives add to the credibility and need for an ecosystem in the social media and digital marketing space. Read More
Killing more worthless projects would be a win for crypto
When blockchain projects show their technology has something to offer that traditional internet doesn’t, big investors will get on board.
“If you aren’t thinking about owning a cryptocurrency for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”
Such a philosophy is common among investors who are enthusiastic about blockchain’s potential to dominate Web3 as it becomes the infrastructure of the new internet. Yet, if you swap “cryptocurrency” with “stock,” you get a Warren Buffett quote — word-for-word. Of course, Buffett would never say such a thing about cryptocurrency because he thinks it’s worthless.
So do a host of other heavy hitters, ranging from Buffett’s close ally Charlie Munger to gold’s poster boy Peter Schiff. Add to the list J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, and even Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren — a progressive Democrat not known for agreeing with billionaires.
The cryptocurrency industry clearly has a PR problem, for which it can partially blame itself. Read More
How to mint an NFT on Solana SolSea?
Solana SolSea is an alternative to well-established NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. It is more appealing to NFT creators, with low costs, speed and a friendly interface.
The allure of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) has been growing in popularity recently, and for a good reason. Nonfungible tokens are a new form of asset that can represent anything from digital art to game items and are stored on the blockchain ledger. This implies that NFTs are unique, immutable and transparent.
People collect NFTs for a variety of reasons, including art appreciation, value speculation and as part of playing games like Decentraland or Cryptokitties that are based on blockchain technology.
There are many possible reasons that NFTs have become popular, and different people will have different reasons for investing in them. Ethereum has become the go-to network for creating these tokens, with the ERC-721 token standard being the most common in the space. However, this led to severe network congestion, heavy fees, and slow transaction processing times. Consequently, other blockchains have begun to offer their own solutions for NFTs.
One such solution is the Solana blockchain, which provides a high throughput that can process thousands of transactions per second. Solana launched its own NFT standard, called SolSea, which allows for the quick and easy creation of NFTs. This guide will show you how to mint NFTs on Solana — specifically, on SolSea, the network’s largest NFT marketplace. Read More
Decentralized exchange Uniswap v3 gets ‘Warp’ed’ onto StarkNet
Ethereum-native projects like Uniswap that are written in Solidity can now be “transpiled” to StarkNet via Nethermind’s new Warp project
Ethereum development company Nethermind has announced it has “transpiled and compiled” decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap v3 on “Warp” — a project designed to allow Ethereum users to swap tokens on the more scalable Ethereum layer-2 network StarkNet.
The milestone was announced by team lead Jorik Schellekens in an Oct. 9 Medium post.
Nethermind describes Warp as a “Solidity to Cairo Transpiler,” which enables Ethereum-based projects written in Solidity to transition its codebase onto StarkNet, allowing them to capitalize on cheaper fees.
Transpiling is the process of taking source code written in one programming language and transforming it into another language that has a similar level of abstraction.
In this case, Warp transpiles Solidity code to Cairo — the programming language used to write applications on StarkNet.
The Warp plugin is still technically under development, according to Schellekens, but he added that Nethermind will soon have “Uniswap’s entire test suite running against a Uniswap implementation deployed on StarkNet.” Read More
What is Yearn.finance (YFI) and how does it work?
One of the fastest-growing DeFi projects, Yearn.finance has spawned a range of core products that provide passive earnings on crypto assets.
Launched in July 2020, Yearn.finance has emerged as one of the major players in the emerging decentralized finance (DeFi) space that provides services such as staking, lending aggregation and yield generation on the Ethereum blockchain. Boasting the most user-friendly crypto trading services that are being meted out autonomously, the project uses its native ERC-20 Yearn Finance (YFI) cryptocurrency to incentivize those who lock their crypto tokens in Yearn.finance contracts through any of the supported platforms such as Balancer and Curve DeFi.
With all of its protocols operating on the Ethereum blockchain, Yearn.finance is managed through developers that act in accordance with governance proposals voted for by YFI holders. Crafted with the vision of simplifying the process of investing in DeFi products, the Yearn.finance platform also offers its users the ability to invest in other DeFi protocols in addition to earning a percentage of the platform’s fees in proportion to their YFI holdings. Read More
Disclaimer: These articles are provided for informational purposes only. They are not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other advice.
