Bitcoin Q&A: 2FA and Secure Hardware
How secure is Google Authenticator? What are some hardware two-factor authentication options? When will these hardware security options become cheap enough for frontier markets?
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Black Holes ~ Spirit Science 24
What are black holes? This episode explores the many different possibilities because we still aren’t completely sure! Some scientific institutions describe them as giant vacuums in space.
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Bitcoin Q&A: Will Bitcoin Survive Global Government Intervention & Regulation?
Keywords/phrases: Will Bitcoin survive government intervention and regulation on a global scale? Lack of global collaboration/ agreement among governments on regulation. Policy of "if other currencies have a crisis first." Money is a form of speech.
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Cryptocurrency Explained: What is a Mnemonic phrase? [Understanding Bitcoin Ethereum Crypto Keys]
What is a cryptocurrency mnemonic phrase? How does it relate to a bitcoin or ethereum private key? Are they the same thing? Are seeds and mnemonics the same thing? Can someone guess my bitcoin private key or mnemonic? Watch this video to understand how mnemonic phrases work, why they're used in bitcoin, why they're considered secure. Hint: turn on closed captions to help you remember what's being taught.
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Bitcoin Q&A: Could Governments Take Over Exchanges?
What prevents governments from taking control of exchanges, just as they have seized gold in the past? They can take over centralised exchanges, but a significant number of people do not store their bitcoins on exchanges long-term (your keys, your money), so that would not enable them to control the network. They may come after people who they can see have bought bitcoin from exchanges, but that will just drive the entire economy underground. Rather than simply buying bitcoin with your bank account, you will have to barter or offer services and be paid in bitcoin. Anywhere that bitcoin is banned, the spread will increase. Premium prices and smuggling. Until the levels are equalized, the more it will continue to flow into a giant underground market. Foreign currency controls. Russian history. Bribery and corruption. Venezuela and India examples of Gresham's law. DEA agents stealing bitcoin from the Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht case. Making a mockery of the law. If breaking the law is the difference between feeding your kids or watching them starve, no one gives a damn about the law and nothing will stop them. Let them go after the exchanges, because they're going to create exactly the premium that's going to drive an enormous black market. "Black market" is just another word for 'unofficial' market.
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Ethereum Q&A: The ICO Token Explosion
The ERC20 Token Standard, Token Summit, the explosion of token ICOs on the Ethereum blockchain, and whether this activity is premature in terms of security (and securities). Every million dollars you put into any token built with ERC20 creates a million-dollar honeypot test on the Ethereum virtual machine, implementations of Geth and Parity, the ERC20 codebase, and whatever poorly-tested code you added for your particular DAPP. The killer app for Ethereum is DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), reinventing the modern corporation -- just not that way, as venture capital firms... The security needs to be tested first with $10k, not $10 million; gradually escalating. The trade-off of flexible smart contracts is that every contract has to be independently tested. What happens to a brand-new start-up with a whitepaper but no management experience that suddenly comes across millions of dollars? Soon, not many dollars. ICOs right now are the biggest reputational risk for Ethereum. Opening up crowdfunding to a global audience is an amazing application, when you have governance, but when you do it prematurely you blow up the launch pad. Sometimes lessons have to be learned the hard way. The market will teach them when they lose their money. The purpose of this early stage experimentation should be to test the security of the protocols, not attempt to get-rick-quick. If we don't remind investors of the risks, they will get a visit from the SEC, because one of the first rules is that you don't promote securities to the unaccredited public.
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Bitcoin Blockchain Misunderstanding - Andreas M. Antonopoulos
If you want early-access to talks and a chance to participate in the monthly live Q&As with Andreas, become an Andreas M. Antonopoulos patron here: https://www.patreon.com/aantonop​
Bitcoin Blockchain Misunderstanding - Andreas M. Antonopoulos
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Bitcoin Q&A: What Happens During a Fork?
What happens during a fork? What is a replay attack? What to know & what to do before a cryptocurrency fork. Imagine Jean-Luc Picard and a transporter malfunction...
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Ethereum Q&A: Light clients, EVM, and Mist
What can you do with Ethereum light clients (Metamask, MyEtherWallet, and MyCrypto)? What is the difference between the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) and the Mist browser?
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Bitcoin Q&A: Hyperbitcoinization
This is part of a talk which took place at the Bitcoin Open Blockchain (BOB) community event on October 29th 2017 at the mHUB innovation center in Chicago, Illinois: https://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Open-B...​
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Bitcoin Q&A: Can Cryptocurrencies Support Terrorism?
Can cryptocurrencies be used to support terrorist groups? First we'd have to displace their most important funding mechanisms, which are the US dollar and oil (some of which our governments gave to them directly). We live in a world where criminals use technology (money, telephones, shoes), but we don't ban those technologies just because criminals use them. Most of humanity will use them for food, sanitation, healthcare etc. It is a fake promise that we're going to stop terrorism by controlling everyone's money, because all it does is exclude billions of people from the global financial system.
https://27bbdcj7ucmqdy9aztwsrzkkfi.hop.clickbank.net/
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Bitcoin Q&A: What is Mining?
What is mining? Does it work as a business model? Mining - particularly regarding proof-of-work cryptocurrencies like bitcoin - provides industrial infrastructure via special purpose, high performance computing with application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to ensure security of the network. But the media don't describe it like that, because talking about the "dark web" gets more clicks and sells newspapers. The early internet was also described as an obscure technology only for geeks and criminals. People are afraid of change and we're still in the early days of cryptocurrencies.
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Bitcoin Q&A: Exchanges, Identity, and CoinJoins
Is Bitcoin anonymous if exchanges and some wallets require identities? Should we assume that our identity information will be leaked if we use KYC-ed wallets? Besides buying, what is a reliable way to acquire bitcoin? How can I set up a wallet without providing identity? Do you still recommend using CoinJoins? Could they become illegal?
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Bitcoin Q&A: Enterprise "Blockchain" Gentrification?
Will mainstream adoption affect the culture of crypto? Are enterprise "blockchain" projects signs of gentrification? Banks will train the developers for us. They can't ignore Bitcoin forever. Why is there so much development and marketing around private blockchains? Not all blockchains are created equal. Immutability is not a characteristic of all blockchains. Is proof-of-authority or committee-driven dynamics (i.e. standards war) in federated systems interesting?
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Bitcoin Q&A: Re-using Addresses
These questions are from the MOOC 9.3 and 9.4 sessions which took place on March 2nd and March 9th, 2018 respectively. Andreas is a teaching fellow with the University of Nicosia. The first course in their Master of Science in Digital Currency degree, DFIN-511: Introduction to Digital Currencies, is offered for free as an open enrollment MOOC course to anyone interested in learning about the fundamental principles.
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Bitcoin Q&A: Borderless Money
Are cryptocurrencies subject to the same border restrictions as foreign currency and cash? Where are bitcoins "located"? What happens when money is data? What are the geopolitical implications of borderless money? Bitcoins 'live' on the blockchain, on a global network, in "the cloud." When you make a transaction, bitcoin is not transmitted anywhere; it simply changes ownership. National "flag" money went from being a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account into a system-of-control for playing political games. It removes the power of central banks to take entire populations hostage under hyperinflation experiments. Therefore the framework of money transmission laws is obsolete and fatally undermined.
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Bitcoin Q&A: Iterating Nonces and the Block Reward
What is the nonce? Is it possible guess it on the first try? How is the nonce found in mining pools? When a miner wins the block reward, how does the block know which address to pay? When does a miner transmit a block to the network?
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Bitcoin Q&A: Trust, Promise of Value, and Intrinsic Utility
Keywords/phrases: With fiat currency systems, there is an entity/ institution people trust (ex. Federal Reserve for the US dollar); what do people trust in the Bitcoin system and where does its value come from? I don't think that most people who use dollars, euros, Swiss franks necessarily care about whether they trust the stewardship and management by central banks. Most people have no idea what the Swiss Central Bank is, they probably don't even know how money or monetary policy works. All they trust is that when they go to the supermarket the next day, someone will give them a dozen eggs. It's the anticipation of future value, not only that you believe that pieces of plastic and paper have value but the next person also believes it, long enough to feed you. What the central entity provides is a guarantee that the money hasn't been forged, which was especially important when the money was precious metals. Now it is a promise that within this jurisdiction, they are the buyer of last resort. The promise from central banks certainly isn't a promise not to print more. So why do people trust in Bitcoin or any of the other digital currencies out there? They believe that they will be able to use it tomorrow for goods and services; as long as this rolls forward, we have value. I get paid in bitcoin and I use it to live. I know it can't be forged or diluted because I've read the algorithms. Behind that, there is very large amounts of energy expenditure and computation to ensure that it is also 'rare.'
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Bitcoin Q&A: Incentivised Cybersecurity & Decentralization
Will traditional cybersecurity companies get involved in cryptocurrencies? Why should we transition to non-custodial models of security? Why is Bitcoin the Black Swan for a surveillance laden web?https://27bbdcj7ucmqdy9aztwsrzkkfi.hop.clickbank.net/
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Bitcoin Q&A: How Could a Hard Money Economy Respond to Crises?
Many in the crypto community appreciate Bitcoin because it can not be inflated. However, in tough times governments use money as a tool to stimulate recovery. How would economic stimulus work in a hard money economy? How well does financial stimulus work now and what would be the crisis relief options in a hard money economy?
https://27bbdcj7ucmqdy9aztwsrzkkfi.hop.clickbank.net/
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Bitcoin and the Banks - Five Stages of Grief by Andreas M. Antonopoulos
In this talk, Andreas examines the rise of "the blockchain" as an attempt by the banking status quo to dilute the disruptive potential of bitcoin by removing it's most interesting features.
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Consensus Algorithms, Blockchain Technology and Bitcoin UCL - by Andreas M. Antonopoulos
An academic lecture by Andreas M. Antonopoulos explaining the consensus algorithm, "Proof of Work", used by bitcoin and many other blockchains. Andreas is a UCL alum.
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