Bitcoin's Trajectory - Crypto Academy S4W5 - Homework Post for @imagen

INTRODUCTION

Cryptocurrencies as we have them today, have a particularly clear and undisputed genesis. As can be seen, this is one beautiful feature of the blockchain industry, records are kept in details and they are quite immutable and secure.

Bitcoin stands out among thousands of cryptocurrencies and blockchains and occupies and central position in the grand scheme of digital currencies.

Almost every cryoto- inclined individuals has the knowledge that it all began with bitcoin. From the publishing of the white paper by the vague personality of Satoshi Nakamoto, to its official launch in 2009, a new era in world economics and finance was birthed. Presently, the market share controlled by cryptocurrencies is in large billions of dollars.

Till date, the prominence of bitcoin has not be rivaled. Even though a lot of alternative projects have been launched, some with even better functionalities, none of them, even the highly patronized ethereum has achieved half the market capitalization of bitcoin. In this lovely lesson, Prof. @imagen has taken a tour and overview of the amazing trajectory of bitcoin. The answers below are to further buttress my understanding of the lesson.

Number One: How many times has Bitcoin been "halved"? When is the next expected? What is the current amount that Bitcoin miners receive? Mention at least 2 cryptocurrencies that are or have halved.

Bitcoin halving, which refer to the process whereby the rewards for successfully mining a block and adding it to the blockchain is being reduced by half after a certain number of blocks have been formed over a period of time, takes place after every 210,000 blocks have been mined.

Bitcoin has been halved three times so far. The first halving was on November. 28, 2012. The second was on July 9, 2016. The third and the latest was on May 11, 2020 at about 3 p.m.
The next expected halving will take place at block 840,000. This is expected to happen in early 2024. The date is speculated as Thursday, 9th May, 2024, many others estimates puts it between February and June of 2024.

Currently, 703,945 blocks have been mined which it the lastest block height of bitcoin.

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At the start, bitcoin miners usually received 50 BTC after successfully mining a block. After the first halving in 2012, the mining reward was reduced to 25 BTC. After the second mining, the reward was reduced to 12.5 BTC.

Currently, after the third halving, the mining reward is 6.25 BTC.
When the next halving is effected, miners will get a mining reward of 3.125 BTC for every block successfully mined.

Other cryptocurrencies that have been halved or will be halved include:

• STEEM
• LITECOIN
• BITCOIN CASH
• RAVENCOIN
• VERTCOIN
• MONACOIN

Nunber Two: What are consensus mechanisms? How do Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Staking differ?

Blockchains have a great need to ensure decentralized and transparent transactions with reliable security as this affect their effectiveness and patronage. To attain this need, there is the need to have a means whereby transactions will be certified before being entered into the ledger (block) and this is where the concept of consensus mechanism comes in.

CONSENSUS MECHANISMS

Consensus mechanisms refer to the criteria stipulated and the protocols followed before a transaction is being filled into a blockchain as a valid transaction. As blockcain is decentralized, there has to be a means of getting users of a platform to reach and agreement before a transaction is being recorded into the blockchain.

Consensus mechanism can as well be described and the methodologies or set of rules that decides on the legitimacy of transactions by dictating how authentication and validation is being carried out by miners.

Consensus mechanisms state certain conditions that need to be met by nodes and validators (miners), before new blocks can be added to the blockchain. Simply put, consensus mechanisms refer to steps or requirements for verifying transactions in a blockchain.

PROOF-OF-WORK VS PROOF-OF-STAKE

Proof-of-work (PoW) Mechanism refers to a consensus mechanism which requires that miners which have full access to transactions can add blocks to the blockchain based on how fast they can solve the cryptographic algorithm with respect to their computing power and skills. That is, miners are required to show proof of some degree of work before being able to add blocks.

Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Mechanism on the contrary, allocates transactions to miners for verification and validation on the basis of how many units of a currency, that is the share of that particular cryptocurrency that they posses.
The opportunity to validate and enter transactions in a block is assigned to miners depending on how high a stake they have.

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PoW	PoS
Transactions here are dropped into an unconfirmed pool where miners can free access them and pick them up for validation and can win depending on his processing and hardware power.	PoS protocol assigns these transactions to miners. Not all miners have freedom to pick up transactions for validation unless with the requisite stake.
The system is highly decentralized as no one is in charge of distributing the transactions but anyone can access them. It more random and makes use of a mining rig or pool where any miner can pick from.	There is some form of control and it tends to be centralized in some ways. It uses a more deterministic model and does not support mining rig.
There is active competition among miners as they compete to solve cryptographic problems.	There is no competition. Validator's are chosen and allotted mining quotas.
The first successful miner earns the rewards	The rewards does not go to the first successful miner but rather the transaction fee goes to the block creator.
It more energy inefficient though there is greater freedom. It requires huge energy consumption	it is more energy efficient and has less freedom of selection. Miners are not chosen randomly.
In PoW, a miner is more concerned about investing in hardware. That is PoW depends on computer's processing power and speed.	In PoS, a validator's concern is how much he has invested in a blockchain.
The portion of stake controlled by a particular miner is not considered as a requirement for participation in the mining process	Consideration is given to how much stake either in ownership of native coin or voting power a miner posses before being assigned transactions for verification and validation.
More investment in time is needed to operate PoW	PoS requires less time and is much faster to run.
Miners need to spend more money in acquiring needed hardware as it requires specialized equipment. It is more expensive.	PoS is less expensive and more cost effective as standard server grade unit of computing power is more than.
It has the problem of demanding eternal resources of energy and computing power	It has the problem of potential monopoly and "nothing at stake" issue where a miner can stake for several transactions at the same time.

Number Three: Enter the Bitcoin explorer and indicate the hash corresponding to the last transaction. Show Screenshot.

I logged into the bitcoin block explore site to be able to carry our this assignment.

The block explorer tool opened up to the homepage. I then tapped at the menu option at the top right hand corner.

From the drop down menu, I was able to find the explore option which I clicked on.

The block explorer opened and displayed a variety of details. Here, I could find the list of hashes of lastest blocks. The list of latest transactions. The price, estimated hash rate the number of transactions and so on.

I then clicked on the hash of the last transaction and the summary was given as shown in the screenshots below.

All screenshots above are from one source

Number Four: What is meant by Altcoin Season? Are we currently in Altcoin Season? When was the last Altcoin Season? Mention and show 2 charts of Altcoins followed by their growth in the most recent Season. Give reasons for your answer.

Altcoin Season

In crytopcurrency world, a season is a reference to the past 90 days of activities. So, an altcoin season refers to a period of 90 days whereby 75% of the top 50 coins performed better than bitcoin. Altcoin season occurs once in a year once in three years. When the price of bitcoin has hit a peak price point, altcoins price will tend to subsequently move in an uptrend.

What happens is that traders and investors take their bitcoin returns and invest them in altcoins which happen to be more speculative and riskier but have the potential to generate huge profits.

Thus, an altcoin season is the period when investors choose to invest in alternative coins much higher than they invest in bitcoin thus triggering a significant rise in the value of these altcoins.

Is Altcoin Season On?

Generally, the agreement is that we are not yet in an altcoin season even though there have been some predictions in many quarters that the altcoin season is by the corner and some even opine that it had begun.

Some estimates put forward that the season will begin between later in the the year 2021 and early 2022.
The Altcoin Season Index which is used to estimate the season is at a very low point.

Thus, at the moment, the season is not yet on even though many digital assets have seen huge jumps in prices. The overall market capitalization of altcoins have risen to about 80% in the past two months. Many altcoins are witnessing prices at their all-time highs in recent time. Yet, the season is said to still be on the way.

Last Altcoin Season

A major altcoin season occured back in 2017 during the first half of the year between February and June during which period bitcoin market capitalization declined from a peak of 86.5% to 38%. Altcoins gained against bitcoin from around 25th February 2017. Bitcoin dominance was reduced rapidly from 86.5% to 38% between then a 19 June, 2017. Bitcoin dropped 48.5% in value of market capitalization which means that it lost about 56% of total market share to altcoins.

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Altcoins in the Most Recent Season

• Ethereum (ETH)
• Ripple (XRP)

Ethereum market price chart against Bitcoin during the altcoins season of 2017

Here we noticed Ethereum price climbing steadily and steeply against Bitcoin. From a low of 0.012394 on 25th February, 2017 to a peak of 0.148776 in July, 2017. This was an increase of 1, 100. 39%

Ripple market price chart against bitcoin during the altcoins season of 2017.

From this chart we see a gradual rise in price of Ripple token from the 25th of February, 2017. It rose from 0.00000343 to 0.000245 on 17 of May, 2017. The growth percentage of about 7,042.86.

These price hike shows great surge in market activities. This also took a period of up to three months clearly showing that it was an altcoin season.

Number 5: Make a purchase from your verified account of the exchange of your choice of at least 15 USD in a currency that is not in the top 25 of Coinmarket (SBD, tron ​​or steem are not allowed). Why did you choose this coin? What is the goal or purpose behind this project? Who are its founders / developers? Indicate the currency's ATH and its current price. Reason for your answers. Show Screenshots.

In answering this question, I decided to buy the NEO token with USDT (Tether US).

So, I first launched my Binance Exchange app.

I proceeded to the market area where I found series of cryptocurrency pairs.

I then used the search bar to find the desired pair.

Thereafter, I tapped on the pair and market price chart was displayed. Here, I picked the option to buy.

The interface to buy was opened and I picked the option of a limit order and then proceeded to type in my bid price for which I wanted to buy the pair and the order was summited.

You can find the details of the order below. The Transaction was successful.

Reasons for Picking NEO

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I picked NEO because of some of the interesting prospects and features that it posseses. NEO is oftentimes referred to as the "CHINESE ETHEREUM" because like Ethereum, it support smart contracts on its blockcain.

NEO is the native token of the NEO blockcain. The total supply of Neo is limited to 100,000,000 NEO. At the moment, approximately 70,538,831 NEO have been mined and distributed.

Recently, NEO blockcain M3 mainnet which triggered great moves in favour of the currency. With this launch, the price of the currency jumped up by over 150%.

NEO has a current rank of #49 on CoinMarketCap implying that it is among the top 50 coins presently among the thousands of currencies in circulation. NEO has recovered a whooping 66816.71% from its all time low price of $0.07229 in the past five years.

NEO continues to see tremendous growth on a daily basis. It 24 hour trading volume increased by 41.07% as at this time of writing.

The blockcain boast of having two functional tokens, NEO and GAS. NEO serves investment purposes while GAS is used to settle charges and pay for transaction fees on the network.

NEO takes a minimum of between 15 to 25 seconds to produce new blocks. With its optimized features, the network can support up 10,000 transactions in a second. Its GAS token can be divided into small units upto 0.00000001 unit.

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Goal and Purpose of NEO

The blockchain project has the goal to become the foundation for the next generation of digital technology and the internet. NEO's target is to support the integration of a variety of cryptocurrency assets in a new economy. This will make it possible for digitized payments, identities and assets to be carried out in the same ecosystem.

NEO is an open-source decentralized blockcain. It has as it's vision the development of a smart economy with a combination of blockcain technology and smart contracts in creating and managing digitized assets.

Already, its operability with a number of other networks like the Ethereum blockchain and Binance is a great upgrade. NEO operate an EcoBoost initiative which the design supports and makes it easy to create smart contracts as well as build decentralized applications on the blockchain.

Founders and Developers

The token was founded by Da Hongfei and Erik Zhang in 2014. It first has the name of ANTSHARES before it was rebrand three years later in June, 2017.

All-Time High

It achieved an all-time high of $196.45 four years ago on Jan 15, 2018. It has since reduced by 75.42% of that figure.

Current Price

As at the time of writing this assignment, the price is NEO is $48.51. This price has increased by 1.48% in the last 24 hours.

CONCLUSION

Visionary, is what we could term the idea and implementation of blockcain technology. With the initial aim to improve upon the deficiencies of the banking sector and fiat currency, digital currencies have now diffused into virtually all dimensions of human life. Sectors such as sports, entertainment, art, gaming and a lot more are experiencing serious growth in blockchain integration.

At all avenues where this blockchain conscept and boom is mentioned, bitcoin cannot be mentioned. In reality, all other subsequent projects developed have borrowed some ideas from bitcoin in one way or another. The significance of bitcoin cannot be downplayed.

As evidence, no cryptocurrency has been able to unseat it at top in terms of price, dominance, market capitalization, rank and other criteria for over a decade now.

The advent of other cryptocurrencies tagged altcoins has brought serious attention to the world of blockchain. There have been so many innovations and upgrade instilled into these alternative coins. Some of them have been quite successful while others have suffered great misfortune.

On the whole, bitcoin still stands out and outperforms most of these at the present time. So, we keep calm and observe the rapid evolution of the blockchain industry and see what the future has in stock. Wonderful lesson Prof. @imagen