In the early days of cryptocurrencies, the MtGox case was often brought up as a cautionary tale among crypto-enthusiasts. Specifically, MtGox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange to undergo a hack where most funds were stolen. How can you trust Bitcoin if these things may happen? This argument, which is very often used against cryptocurrencies, is somewhat misleading both for non-users and new users. In fact, poor understanding of the MtGox events is often behind the lack of Bitcoin education and generally, of lack of understanding crypto currencies.

The MtGox Scandal

So what was MtGox and what did really happen? At the beginning of 2014, MtGox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world; its dominance was 70%. As such, its dominance was far more than today's biggest exchanges. It seemed to be destined to become the undisputed giant of this sector. Furthermore, the exchange is Japanese, as many suspect Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin) might have been. However, in February...

The Macro View: Coronavirus & Dying Sovereign Currencies

We are currently watching the creative destruction and decline of the US empire before our very eyes. In enduring the onslaught of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, the US is facing “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. What's more, the nation is pulling out all the stops in hopes of making America great again. 

However, there are dark clouds looming on the horizon. unlimited QE, tepid growth, a worsening trade war with China, a possibility of a COVID-19 coronavirus resurgence in the fall, the highest unemployment rate in history, unfunded pension liabilities, deflation, hyperinflation, and the list goes on. With the unprecedented printing of money currently taking place, the average person may now well be asking themself “why should I pay taxes if money can be printed out of thin air”?

Not since Machiavelli, who wrote “The Prince” in the 16th...

The word "cryptocurrency" has two components to it - "cryptography" and "currency." As you can imagine, cryptography is at the heart and soul of cryptocurrency. Asymmetric and symmetric encryption are the two main cryptography methods, and this guide breaks them both down. Read on for a fascinating insight into the world of cryptographic encryption! 

What is Cryptography? Asymmetric vs. Symmetric encryption

Cryptography constructs and analyzes protocols to prevent outside parties from reading confidential information. Cryptography utilizes mathematics, physics, communication, information technology, and computer science. Aside from cryptocurrencies, cryptography is widely used in fields like computer passwords, military comms, and electronic commerce.

The goal of cryptography is to convert plaintext to ciphertext and back. Plain text is just a standard text written in any human-understandable language, like English, and it is easy to decode. On the other hand, the ciphertext is...

Being wealthy does not consist merely of owning vast amounts of either "stuff" or of units of value that others feel great desire, or even "FOMO", for. Holding ten thousand tickets to the most popular concert in the world does not constitute wealth. Why is that the case, if these tickets are so desirable and, therefore, are in high demand? Simply because wealth is based on future desirability and future demand too, not only on today's. As a matter of fact, in this simple example, even if receiving these tickets as a gift, who wouldn't go crazy trying to dump them today immediately? Who wouldn't want to move as quickly as possible to another asset different that these tickets, some type of reserve of value that could preserve the present degree of desirability? 

Caring about the value is critically more important than caring about the asset evidently. The asset where one stores value is like the ground where one builds the house of one's dreams. One will want the most solid...

The Etherum ecosystem thrives off of several decentralized solutions to faults in traditional financial systems. Among such solutions, its DeFi (decentralized finance) ecosystem has become a breeding ground for innovation that exceeds the expectations of existing systems. 

What is DeFi?

DeFi is the ecosystem of financial applications that operate on blockchain networks. Digital assets may be acquired through DeFi products available on these applications. Examples of DeFi products include:

• Decentralized exchanges
• Tokenization platforms
• Derivatives
• Prediction markets

Digital assets in the DeFi ecosystem may or may not represent assets in the real world. A significant proportion of the assets derive their value from the execution of smart contracts, which can mirror financial instruments in traditional markets. 

Photo Source: Stably

Smart contracts provide the infrastructure for many decentralized finance technologies, allowing for the implementation of decentralized...

There is a veritable plethora of different online academies and blockchain schools that offer blockchain courses. This guide breaks down everything from ”what is an online blockchain school” to why they are needed, and some of the top picks. Read on to learn more about blockchain courses - what are you waiting for?

Blockchain School Demand

Online learning has never been more important. The outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is responsible for shifting much of traditional education online. As such, millions of students around the world are realizing that online academies often provide even better learning tools than their own high schools, colleges and universities.

This is because online academies have already perfected the art of e-learning and online education. The past months have seen online academies surge in popularity. However, there is one particular type of online learning that is now facing a perfect storm of beneficial circumstances: online...

Game theory blockchain applications can help you understand how decentralized cryptoeconomic systems work without falling victim to internal disintegration and cheating. Game theory is a study of mathematical models of strategic interaction and decision-making between rational decision-makers. 

While game theory can be both cooperative and non-cooperative, we will be looking exclusively into the latter since a decentralized, cryptoeconomic environment is, by design, a trustless and non-cooperative one.

Your typical game theory model has three components:

• Players: The ones who make all the decisions. Eg. A company’s board of directors.
• Strategies: The decisions that the company will make to further its agenda.
• Payoff: Outcome of the strategies that have been made by the players.

First devised by John von Neumann and Osker Morgenstern in 1944, game theory was a significant breakthrough in the study of oligopoly markets. 

What is Oligopoly?

Market structure is the...

 IOTA, which stands for Internet of Things Application, is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) from the IOTA Foundation. Put exceedingly simply, IOTA is a cryptocurrency technology for facilitating transactions. As such, this is reminiscent of other cryptocurrencies, which have quickly made names for themselves over the past few years.

However, one of the main obstacles cryptocurrencies have to overcome is their scalability issue. As crypto becomes more popular, the networks that support them - basically the blockchains - need to become more resilient and support larger volumes. This is absolutely necessary in order to avoid rising fees and slowing transaction times.

There are already numerous solutions to boost the scalability of various blockchains. Some of the most well-known scalability solutions are technological solutions such as the Lightning Network or Sharding. IOTA is taking a different route to solve the scalability issue, however. 

Instead of relying on a...

A recent report from the San Francisco recruitment firm Hired suggests that the average blockchain developer salary is as high as between $150,000 and a whopping $175,000 a year. Moreover, the Californian recruitment firm notes this means blockchain developers get a substantial payday premium when comparing to software engineers.

In fact, reports find that blockchain developer salaries are more comparable to those specializing in artificial intelligence (AI). AI and blockchain are often put into the same category, seeing as they’re both relatively new technologies displaying massive potential.

Moreover, one reason for the recent blockchain developer salary rise is the exploding demand. Numerous high-profile companies are already looking into blockchain technology and are trying to attract blockchain developer talent. One way to stay competitive is by offering a high blockchain developer salary.

Blockchain developer salaries are surging

However, this surge in blockchain...

Over the last year, the term “DeFi” has caused quite a stir in the decentralized community. Many in the community believe that DeFi, or decentralized finance, can completely turn the global economy on its head by making the finance sector transparent and more easily accessible.  The DeFi movement leverages decentralized networks to transform old financial products into trustless and transparent protocols that run without intermediaries:

• The pitfalls of traditional finance.
• What is DeFi, and why do we need it?
• DeFi use-cases and applications.

DeFi has a unique opportunity to craft a unique niche for itself in the space. There are currently 1.7 billion people around the world who don’t have access to essential financial services. However, with a simple internet connection, they will be able to access smart contracts and experience immense financial growth and security with DeFi. So before we look into the nitty-gritty of this revolutionary system, let’s...