Crypto

We are the generation that was born in the era of 9/11, the dot-com bubble, the real estate bubble, Putin and Trump, Brexit and Catalonia — the forthcoming largest wave of unemployment due to the introduction of AI and robots; You can forbid us everything and take everything away from us.

But, to be honest, we have nothing. The previous generation fucked everything up before us. The new-generation blockchain/crypto/ICO entrepreneurs are becoming the new rock-stars in the eyes of modern society.

And if thousands of investors only see profit (or bubble) in those, millions of unbanked customers and “Snapchat generation” see Hope and Changes.The new entrepreneurs picked up the flag of a social revolution fallen from the hands of rock-musicians.

Hendrix, Morrison, Cobain and Winehouse made it to a “Club 27” — for the new rock-stars 27 is the average age of a startup’s founder.

Blockchain developers and the rest of the new wave examples – all of them are building their own, not copying old Forbes billionaires. The great empires are built on this social class: these people have a wild hair up their ass – they are restless and they never let anyone sleep.

They are more than just successful entrepreneurs – they are new rock-stars.

Also listen: [e27 Podcast] ICOs will co-exist with venture capital, says Datum CEO Roger Haenni

Do you call us a “bubble”? Ok, then we are The Bubble Generation.

Blockchain/crypto/ICO – our new rock-and-roll. Vitalik Buterin is our new Kurt Cobain. Stop blaming blockchain/crypto/ICO community — or better join us! We aren’t going to cheat anyone over – but we can be wrong (because you can’t do anything new without making mistakes!).

In order to make fewer mistakes and our mistakes not to be so dramatic, we need help from you, from other bankers and regulators around the world! We are not against rules and regulations – we are just for creating new ones (with your help? or resistance?) because the old rules do not fit the new economy.We are open and we want to communicate.

Without communication and with harsh criticism and pressure, this (huge in its size!) industry will move from the current “gray” zone not to “white”, but to “black” one. And then this underground will really become a Big Problem! For everyone.

We need more open-minded experts (and female-leaders too!) like IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. It’s time for the world’s central banks and regulators to get serious about digital currencies.

Global financial institutions are taking risks by not understanding emerging financial tech products that are already starting to shake up the financial system, according to Lagarde. “I think that we are about to see massive disruptions.

” “I think we should just be aware of not categorizing anything that has to do with digital currencies in those speculation, ponzi-like schemes,” she said. “It’s a lot more than that as well.”If people so actively took up defending their rights and freedoms, as they do ICO, then we would live in a marvelous new world.

Let’s try to fix it by trying to formulate the questions that concern us, the problems that we would like to be solved, and the principles on the basis of which we see that it is possible to find consensus and dialogue.

We don’t want to fight, we want to build.Some have likened the Bitcoin/Ethereum/ICO craze to Tulip Mania, believing that the bubble is getting ready to burst.

But what was Tulip Mania?

One of the curiosities of the 17th Century tulip market was that people did not trade the flowers themselves but rather the bulbs of scarce and sought-after varieties. The result, as Dash points out, was “what would today be called a futures market”.

Also read: Where will the ICO fever lead?

Tulips even began to be used as a form of money in their own right: In 1633, actual properties were sold for handfuls of bulbs. As people heard stories of acquaintances making unheard-of profits simply by buying and selling tulip bulbs, they decided to get in on the act – and prices skyrocketed.

Things came to a head during the winter of 1636-37, when tulip mania reached its peak. Some bulbs even changed hands up to 10 times during the course of a single day. And then, overnight, the tavern trade disappeared. In early February 1637, the market for tulips collapsed.

This was because most speculators could no longer afford to purchase even the cheapest bulbs. Demand disappeared, and flowers tumbled to a tenth of their former values. The result was the prospect of financial catastrophe for many. Disputes over debts rumbled on for years.

Today the tulip continues as a mainstay of the country’s economic life

… but it plays a much more important role as the cornerstone on which Holland’s leadership as the largest purveyor or plants and seeds in the world is built.It all takes place at FloraHolland, the world’s largest flower auction, where today more than half of the world’s flowers move from grower to distributor and then on to you, the retail customer.

It is indeed Holland’s “Wall Street for Flowers.”Royal FloraHolland is a showcase for Dutch expertise in logistics. More than 12 billion plants and flowers — including more than 90% of Holland’s own output — change hands each year at Royal FloraHolland’s four marketplaces throughout the country.

The contribution to Holland’s economy is profound: More than 250,000 jobs are the product directly and indirectly of the flower markets. The country continues to be the largest player with a 52% share in global exports of flowers and plants. Some 77% of all flower bulbs traded worldwide come from the Netherlands, the majority of which are tulips.

“I do not believe the introduction of motor-cars will ever affect the riding of horses,” said Mr. Scott-Montague, MP, in the United Kingdom in 1903.

Ok, bubble, in which term is your brain capable of seeing the horizon and in what prospects are you able to look at the picture?

As the saying goes: You need to have the courage to lose sight of the horizon in order to discover new lands.

Discover more stories like this on e27 here: https://e27.co/stop-blaming-blockchain-crypto-ico-community-rather-join-help-20171017/

How should investors think about cryptocurrency as part of a broader diversified portfolio? I spent most of the past four years working for the University of Chicago endowment where we had to consider into which "bucket" investments would fall.

Is cryptocurrency best thought of as venture capital? Absolute return? A potential inflation hedge like gold or real estate? An average investor may not be bound by the buckets above, but should still carefully consider the role cryptocurrency plays in the context of a complete portfolio.

Some investors view cryptocurrencies primarily as currencies or commodities that may appreciate in value as they compete with fiat currencies or gold. For these investors, a passive investment or an index hugging manager may provide an attractive investment that is best thought of as similar to a commodity allocation.

A more active manager may add alpha to this approach by identifying those cryptocurrencies most likely to win the competition to become censorship resistant money or “digital gold." In addition to hoping for both a positive return and a low correlation to the existing portfolio, these investors may also anticipate that the investment will act as an inflation hedge, or at least a currency depreciation hedge similar to gold.

Other cryptocurrencies are best thought of as equity in an open-source software project. For example, to compete with Amazon Web Services, developers have created open-source decentralized file storage systems that incorporate a cryptocurrency to pay for storage space.

The value of these cryptocurrencies are ultimately connected to the usage value of the network, and a successful network may produce an attractive return to the holders of the cryptoasset.

Accessing this opportunity set can be done via investment managers that invest in exchange-listed cryptoassets, or in venture capital style funds that try to identify successful projects earlier in their life cycle with lower entry prices.

Lastly, as in all other asset classes, opportunities exist for market makers, arbitrageurs, and quantitative traders.

While cryptocurrencies bring many unique challenges and risks, short-term trading strategies from traditional asset classes can generally be applied to cryptocurrency.

All of these investment approaches share one major similarity – unusually high barriers to entry that may explain the exceptional returns of the past seven years to both active and passive investment. Storing cryptocurrency is currently difficult from both a technological and regulatory perspective.

Exchanges present unusual levels of counterparty risk. The newness of most investment managers in the space makes due diligence difficult. And the relatively small total market capitalization and lack of scale available to some of these strategies makes them unattractive to many existing traditional investment managers and large institutional investors.

For many investors, underwriting these unusual risks is difficult. The risks are real - high volatility, counterparty risk, complexity, operational and security challenges - but... continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/apaul/2017/10/09/how-does-cryptocurrency-fit-into-a-portfolio/#18718e7f...

Bitcoin has many cousins and competitors. None have grown more popular than Ethereum, a global computer network with its own virtual currency, called Ether.

What is Ethereum?


Ethereum is a global computing network operating according to rules defined by Ethereum software. Those rules allow the Ethereum network to be programmed to complete certain types of computing tasks, with every computer on the network completing the task in parallel to ensure it is done correctly. Generally the tasks involve money.

The creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has likened it to a global smartphone that can be programmed to operate according to the apps built on top of it. The apps are called Dapps because they are run by a decentralized network of computers.

Mr. Buterin says he chose the name because it refers to “the hypothetical invisible medium that permeates the universe and allows light to travel.” He announced Ethereum in late 2013, but it didn’t go into operation until 2015. Continue reading the main story



Ethereum is not a virtual currency?


The Ethereum network has its own virtual currency, Ether. In the simplest sense, Ether are needed to pay the other computers on the network to complete tasks. It isn’t free to use the network.People have also decided to buy and hold Ether, betting that it will become more valuable as more people want to use the network and need Ether to pay for the network’s computing power.


What does Ethereum have to do with Bitcoin?


Mr. Buterin was a Bitcoin aficionado, and he was inspired by its success. But he set out to build something that could do more than Bitcoin: He wanted to build a system that would make it possible to program more complex financial transactions. Photo






Racks of servers at a facility in China “mining” Bitcoins and Ether. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times The shared records of the Ethereum network — of every transaction and computation it has ever performed — are known as a blockchain, just as the shared records of all Bitcoin transactions are known as a blockchain.

But Ethereum’s blockchain database is totally independent of Bitcoin’s blockchain.

Why would you want to use this network?

Let’s say two companies want to conduct a complicated financial transaction, like settling a stock option. Neither company trusts the other company to conduct the transaction on its computers. Both companies could hire a third party, like a stock exchange, to conduct the transaction, which is what they generally do today.

But that forces them to trust that third company and to pay that company fees. With Ethereum, they can conduct the transaction on a shared computer that allows them both to check the records, ideally saving on fees.As this example suggests, Ethereum has proved attractive to financial companies that have to complete lots of complicated financial transactions with competitors they don’t trust.

Many banks are looking at how Ethereum could be used as a central operating system for various trading markets, replacing today’s exchanges and middlemen. JPMorgan Chase has even created its own version of Ethereum, known as Quorum.Other companies, like Samsung and Toyota, have experimented with Ethereum as a way to keep track of products moving through supply chains that involve many players.

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Kim Si-wan, advisor at Coinone, an offline cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, explaining virtual currency market trends. Credit Jean Chung for The New York Times Dozens of large companies around the world came together this year to create the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

The group is working to develop versions of the Ethereum software that are battle tested enough to be used in a corporate setting.

Does that mean the world’s biggest companies will corner the market on Ether?

The versions of the Ethereum software that companies are building will most likely be used to set up private networks that would be totally separate from the public Ethereum network and that would not use the Ether currency. Some people, though, are betting that these private networks will eventually be plugged back into the public network.


How do you buy Ether?

Just as with Bitcoin, you can buy Ether from people who already own them on virtual currency exchanges. Most large countries have exchanges where a variety of virtual currencies can be bought with the local currency.

How are Ether created?

Just as with Bitcoin, Ethereum are “mined,” or created by computers joined into the Ethereum network. These computers are in a race to...continue reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/01/technology/what-is-ethereum.html