This Winter has been quite chilly, so I decided to warm myself up by attending BTC-Miami. This Crypto-Winter has been cold as hell too, so I needed a little pick me up to rationalize my obsession with HODLing.
Brief Thoughts/Takeaways:
-Charlie Shrem said some interesting things and was one of the few people there hot on EOS. I’m HODLing EOS myself so that was great to hear.
-“A bear market is when the best things are built.” -Brock Pierce
I tend to agree with this and the attendance this year was about a third of what it was at BTC-Miami 2018. Investing-wise, it hasn’t been a great year to HODL. However, it was nice to be at a conference where everyone was hyped on Blockchain/Crypto and there for the right reasons.
“You can’t have a free society w/ a central point of failure.” -Jeffrey Tucker
I agree with this (in this case, he was talking about the financial system). It was nice to see one of my personal heroes give a speech on the history of money/gold-backed currency/freedom/etc. It was just the boost I needed in the current zeitgeist of pathologically altruistic socialism and confiscation. He’s a great writer, thinker, and dancer. Do not challenge him to a dance-off. You will lose. You can quote me on that and make it immutable by putting it on the Blockchain.
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Top 3 Projects/Speeches of Day 1 BTC-Miami2019:
Elixxir:
This is a project that burst onto the scene in late 2018. They are led by David Chaum, an OG in the Crypto space, and widely considered the inventor of digital cash. Their payment and messaging Alpha-Net is up and running, and their Beta-Net is scheduled to launch Q2 of 2019.
Elixxir will be fast. They are saying it will have 10 second messaging and payments, from initiation to completion. It uses hash-based ownership which is faster than the digital signature method used in most blockchains. In addition, all per-transaction public key operations are pre-computed; only the hash functions are used in real time. This should take less than 1/20th the time of existing blockchains. They also will be doing concurrent cascading precomputations to increase speed. While only one block will be produced at a time, precomputations for the following 3-4 blocks have already started. This increases speed and allows them to scale as well.
Elixxir will be secure. Nodes are selected to work together using a decentralized randomized algorithm. Multiple nodes work as team, per block, in order to provide privacy. These teams are changed every block. There are several systems in place to punish dishonest nodes (including the loss of a node’s stake) and their robust security is immune to several of the most well-known attacks. Their consensus properties can handle a dishonest node, or even a majority of dishonest nodes. This, combined with the random team node mixing, makes this one of the safest blockchains I’ve researched.
Elixxir will give you transactional and communication privacy. They do this using an advanced mix network protocol called cMix. This also lowers real time cryptographic latency. I’m hot on any privacy focused project these days, and this is one of the best ones coming down the pipeline.
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SALT:
I’ve been hot on SALT for a while, but Caleb Slade’s speech really re-ignited my interest in the project. You can now collateralize 5 different cryptos and they’re now operational in 45 states and 9 countries. They’ve given out over $50 million in loans and they are one of the more stable companies out there. They have locations in Denver, The Philippines, and Mauritius. They have Cyber/Criminal Insurance and they don’t practice fractional-reserve banking. As a crypto-warrior, that last one is huge.
Salt’s Blockchain-based loans provide flexibility and service that many traditional brick-and-mortar banks don’t. There is no income verification, no credit check, and no origination fees. In addition, it’s very customizable. This is huge, especially for some of the emerging markets they operate in like Brazil.
They also provide tech solutions for businesses including Wallet Management, Lending Technology, and the Monitoring of digital assets.
I also believe they debuted Meerkat at BTC-Miami2019. With Meerkat, you simply type in your public address and your email and you can have your public address (BTC/LTC/ETH/DOGE) monitored for activity. I think this is a nice little service (provided for free) and a good way to give back to the Crypto Community. I expect more good things to come out of SALT in 2019 and beyond. The SALT BAE be sprinklin’ Crypto loans on you in the current year.
ANCHOR:
This is a new stable-coin. I usually don’t write/talk/research stable-coins, but this project at the conference really caught my Blockchain. As you may know, there are now several fiat-collateralized/gold-collateralized/crypto-collateralized/non-collateralized crypto coins. Anchor is none of these.
Anchor is pegged to the MMU (monetary measurement unit), an averaging of the GDP of the 190 largest countries’ economies. They plan to purchase sovereign debt to collateralize the project. This is one of the safest investments and usually guarantees returns of 3-4%. They seem to be serious about being a trustworthy project. They’ll have 20 large players as a board of validators. Their whitepaper was one of the best I’ve ever read-it’s clarity/detail/transparency is of a quality not seen that often. It looks like something BlocKade would have written or done a white-paper review consultation on. The mathematical formulae really provide a level of transparency rarely seen in the space.
The most unique thing about the project though is this MMU. They want it to be stable as a unit of purchasing power. This goes above and beyond being stable when compared to the $$$ or some other fiat currency. So, in actuality, the Anchor Coin could turn out to be deflationary. Quite the stable place to store your assets if you’re a HODL Warrior like myself.
The Anchor Coin is matched to the MMU using a hybrid token economy. The Anchor Coin is the intended currency and payment unit, and the Dock Token is used as a corrective. When Anchor Coin < MMU, the system contracts using the Dock Token. When Anchor Coin > MMU, the system expands using the Dock Token to issue new Anchor Coins. I thought this was a really great way to solve the stability issue while at the same time having a stable asset/coin that battles inflation.
Once they reach their first two funding rounds, the remaining rounds will be used exclusively to buy sovereign debt to back the ambitious project. I wish they would have been a little clearer on what the stability fee was, but if they have low overhead the interest accrued on the debt should cover a large portion of this and other operational costs. Look for big things from Anchor in 2019.
HODL for AMG Project Ones and Aston Martin Valkyries.
(This article was not investment advice. DYOR and HODL for Mars)
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