Some Long-Term Speculations I'm Excited About: AcademyToken, CryptoHunt, and RavenCoin (Part 3)

in cryptocurrency •  7 years ago  (edited)

This is a continuation of part 2 here.

This is not financial advice! I'm just doing this for entertainment purposes and telling my personal story on my blog. Please don't make financial decisions based on what you hear from me!

Raven Coin

To start talking about RavenCoin, I need to back up to this Wired article from 2014:

I read that article after being involved in Bitcoin for over a year. The first line says it all:

Patrick Byrne says the zombie apocalypse is coming, and there's one thing that can save us: bitcoin.

I learned how Patrick Byrne created https://www.deepcapture.com/ in an attempt to expose the corruption he was seeing first hand in the Wall Street space as he navigated the IPO process for his company. Read the Wired article for more details.

I remember him as a mavrick who gets it and understands how corrupted the system is and how much change is required.

Fast forward to 2018, and I read this article:

That really got my attention. The interesting thing to me in regards to RVN is the X16R mining algorithm it uses. It's supposed to be an ASIC resistant algorithm to help with the mining centralization problem we see with Bitcoin today. From the white paper:

The X16R hashing algorithm consists of 16 hashing algorithms operating in chain fashion with the ordering dependent on the last 8 bytes (16 nibbles) of the hash of the previous block.

This means it should be difficult to create an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) for this algorithm. The team is committed to "breaking" any ASICs that are ever developed for it.

Raven is a digital peer to peer network for the facilitation of asset transfers. Accoring to the white paper:

Raven is the reference implementation for X16R, which defines the number of algorithms, the specific hashing algorithms used, the order of the algorithms, and the order of and bytes used from the previous block hash.

So when I heard it's live and available on Crypto Bridge (which is just another BitShares front end like OpenLedger or Rudex), I took a big gamble and bought some. You can get to the trading pair here: https://wallet.crypto-bridge.org/market/BRIDGE.RVN_BRIDGE.BTC

Someone was asking me earlier how to purchase this coin so I put together step-by-step instructions I thought you may benefit from as well:

  1. Sign up here: https://wallet.crypto-bridge.org/?r=luke-stokes You may need some BitShares in order to trade, so if you're stuck, let me know. Not sure if my referral link will work there, but hey, worth a shot, right?
  2. Click Deposit/Withdraw (you may need to log in here)
  3. Select BTC from the "PLEASE SELECT THE COIN YOU WOULD LIKE TO DEPOSIT:" drop down.
  4. Click the COPY ADDRESS button to copy the BTC address under the Deposit instructions header.
  5. Send your BTC.
  6. Once you BTC clears (3 confirmations, I think?), navigate to https://wallet.crypto-bridge.org/market/BRIDGE.RVN_BRIDGE.BTC or find it by clicking Exchange and searching for the market pair you want.
  7. If you want to buy, buy. If not, don't. It's up to you. This isn't financial advice.

You can also mine it, of course, but I'm not currently a miner, so I'll leave that to others to explain.

I've speculated on some things before, but this is probably my craziest one yet. Please, don't think this is a get-rick-quick thing. This is a long-term speculation that could very well go to zero. If you're looking for a pump and dump, please look elsewhere.

You can read more about this project from this Medium post which has been shared online by Bruce Fenton:

This coin and project are an experiment. We are simply working on ideas and writing code. If people choose to contribute, fork or run this code, we hope it will be beneficial.

I've been following Mr. Fenton for quite some time (probably since I got involved in early 2013), and I've learned a lot from him about bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. My understanding of his desire for a more decentralized, free world also gets me excited about this project having his support. He shared this online:

Which links to this meetup video with Bruce Fenton talking about Raven Coin:

About 45 minutes in, there was a question about performance and governance which reminded me again why I like DPOS so much.

He understands the importance of Cypher Punk (as I've talked about before). In the video he talks about never mentioning price or exchanges, because they are focused on writing code. That's pretty cool, because that mentality is how this entire cryptocurrency space came to be.

That said... We also can't completely ignore the importance of financial incentives because those incentives are what keep miners mining which secures a blockchain. This project is so early and so speculative, that it is quite possible there will be no value here for a long time (or if ever), but it is interesting to see a listing on cryptocoincharts already (though nothing on coinmarketcap yet):

As I said above, it's currently trading on CryptoBridge (which is just BitShares):

This blockchain is ten times faster than Bitcoin with 1 block per minute instead every ten minutes and though it does have 1MB blocks, they said they are open to increasing those without concern.

Anyway, this is me, putting myself out there on an obscure project being supported by some people I think are really interesting. I'm not suggesting you buy it because this isn't financial advice, but I did want to spread the word a bit on something I think is interesting.

I hope you find it interesting as well.


Luke Stokes is a father, husband, programmer, STEEM witness, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in. Visit UnderstandingBlockchainFreedom.com

I'm a Witness! Please vote for @lukestokes.mhth

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

When people talk about coins, and what they like and hate about them, it is that part I especially like.. just like you did.

For some reason most shillers have cavemen attitude when explaining things: "buy this coin. It's going to moon"

You ask them why they think that... or why it is a good coin... they just say "cuz bro... its gonna moon"

...sigh

Anyway, good job @lukestokes

Thanks. :)

I was talking with my son this morning about the cryptocurrency markets and he's like, "Dad, it's still mooning. It's just that the moon is beneath us right now."

That kid is smart.

Dude, I've now read two of your articles, and I have to say that they're both awesome! They're informative enough so you get the basic idea of the crypto your talking about, but at the same time, they are entertaining to read because they're not filled with technical jargon that I can read from the cryptos whitepaper if I really wanted to research the coin.

I am a starting writer (my native language isn't English) and I really hope I can keep on learning stuff from your articles/writing style, and implement some of it to my own posts :)!

Keep up the great work!

Thanks man! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope you continue getting value out of what I post.

As you have mentioned, the people behind this project are worth looking and so is their project. Only half a billion mined so far and 21 billion total supply. If the hashing algorithm makes it decentralized, the supply augments that decentralization. Although we have seen massive rise in big supply coins in the recent bull run, coins with big supply tend to be stable in price action in my opinion. One of the reasons SBD shot up to $18 was its very low supply as compared to other listed coins. Steem is quite the opposite.

Interesting project nonetheless and worth throwing some spare btc at, if affordable for long-term.

I've always liked Patrick Byrne. He's always struck me as a freedom fighter and someone that has seen there corruption that exists in the system and wants to change it. Ravencoin will debonair be an interesting experiment. Thanks for the helpful post on how to buy it.

Anything sitting on Bitshares is super intriguing to me as well.

I watched Omar Bam's video of Mr. Byrne's talk at this year's North American Bitcoin Conference, and it was very exciting indeed. Hearing a captain of industry call out the corruption in a public setting, as opposed to drunk at a bar, is very rare!

Thanks for sharing, cheers!

I read a bit about this coin maybe a week or so ago. Then forgot about it hah. Thank you for the reintroduction hopefully I will buy some for speculative purposes this time.

I really hate BTS. I do not want to buy a token to trade other tokens. Wish I could just pay the fee out of the tokens I am buying or selling..

Why do you hate BTS?

In all honesty I have not looked into BTS as a speculation itself. Really just frustrated with BTS exchanges. I will eventually need to sell some Steem for other crypto's and thought Openledger may be the perfect option to avoid blocktrades or centralized exchanges. Alas this is not so because I need to first buy BTS to use as the fee of for example Steem to Bitcoin. :/ I am fine paying exchange fees I just wish I could pay the fee in Steem or other crypto's I already hold.

The fees on BitShares are tiny compared to other exchanges. What's your BitShares user name? I'll send you some.

Thanks for the offer. I bought 1 steem worth through blocktrades. :-). Didn't realize how many bts i would need for each trade (indeed tiny). I see now that trades are very cheap. Will test the withdrawal process as well, hopefully 15 bts will last a while. Time to try out the platform. Cheers!

Sir i create a account here and thanks for step-by-step instructions
Screenshot_20180307-221801.png

Did you just include a screenshot of most of your password? You'll want to change that.

Actually it's something which is quite useful to us and I'd like to thank u for sharing ur thoughts with us and with this many people will want to give it a try!!
I myself after reading this will definitely want to give it a try!!
Once again thanks and lots of love from me!!
Cheers n have a nice day ahead!!

awesome blockchain ravencoin post thanks for shearing

@lukestokes you are doing a great job for changing the world, that's an amazing step and about your achievement you have done alot that will help people like us to learn alot from you, if there is one institution that the media views as beyond criticism, it is the media itself. So it is perhaps unsurprising that there are few stories about the “deep capture” of the nation’s major news organizations. More surprising is that mainstream journalists (because they are meek, constrained by their bureaucracies, or simply do not have the time) have refrained from publishing serious investigations and commentary about the “deep capture” of our nation’s other institutions...

While Ravencoin is not the first ASIC resistant coin, Overstock’s interest in it is particularly intriguing and may lend it much needed support when it comes to development and subsequent adoption.

From what I understand the others like X11 failed. Do you know of some that are really resistant right now?

Just generally asking: Why needs a game a coin? Pokemon Go disrupted the world and didn´t need a coin for it, right? Also, when they already started in Q1 2016(!), how could the team survive so far, which startup capital did they have and why the ICO comes so late in the game (3 months prior final game release)? To me, these timeline questions are serious. Sorry, I don´t want to create FUD.

Can you ask that on the post about CryptoHunt? Thanks.

This raven looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing it @lukestokes. I only know few coins but let's give this new tech a try.

Thanks ... Great

really interesting post @lukestokes

I take it i have to come back tomorrow for this master plan :)

I believe i read Raven are going to hard forks every so often and change the code dynamics to ensure that asic mining platforms wont be able to mine, or if they can it will be for a very short time frame.
There are so many ico coming out on a daily basis. Not that i am complaining its a goof way to generate revenue on earn.com, however Its difficult to know which are a) legit and b) worth investing in. Thanks for your opinions on these ones.

I have no master plan, it was just a 3 part series because the first post got too long, and I had to leave for the night. :)

this great information I appreciate your crytocrrency news..

I know that you're generally not a huge ICO fan/participator, so I'm sure Academy will kill it. Good luck with this one brother!

Salam kenal I am from Aceh Indonesia 😀