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Web 3.0 Tech

Use of Cryptocurrencies : sites to avoid

Written by : joel nzoda  on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

To compose this list of 8154 scams exploiting the reputation of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies , I have crossed several sources, in particular the testimonials of our readers and the lists of the  HYPERLINK “https://www.amf-france.org/Epargne-Info-Service/Proteger-son-epargne/Listes-noires”AMF , CryptoFR , the House of Bitcoin , buy1bitcoin.fr , warning-trading.com , adcfrance.fr , cryptoscambuster , scambitcoin.com , investment-scam.com and badbitcoin.org  HYPERLINK “https://badbitcoin.org/thebadlist/index.php”.

The list obtained by this merger is not exhaustive and may contain errors. If you would like to help me improve it by adding new sites or by alerting me to an abusive report, do not hesitate to contact me and/or leave your comments at the bottom of this article.

Below are both pyramid schemes, fake “bitcoin faucets” and a large number of scams related to investing in cryptocurrencies (fake exchanges, fake brokers) or “ mining ”.

Although it is obvious that some projects listed (for example) on Coinmarketcap are, to a greater or lesser degree, scams, I have chosen not to include cryptocurrencies in this list.

On the same subject, see also the thread devoted to fake exchange platforms on cryptoFR , the Scam Accusations ” section of the Bitcointalk forum and our advice for buying  HYPERLINK “https://bitcoin.fr/comment-acheter-des-bitcoins-sans-se-faire-escroquer/”bitcoins  HYPERLINK “https://bitcoin.fr/comment-acheter-des-bitcoins-sans-se-faire-escroquer/”without being scammed .

To search click cmd+F (on mac), or ctrl+F (on Windows) then type the name of the website in the search field.

  • 01crypto.com – 01crypto.net – 07ct.com – 0on.info – 0xbitcoincash.io
  • 1-9-90.com – 1-hash.com – 10×11.biz – 100-3x.com – 100-btc.com – 1000000satoshi.weebly.com – 1000eclats.c

Find out more / Bitcoin / cryptocurrencies : sites to avoid – bitcoin.fr

Most searched question

What is cryptocurrency?

What is bitcoin and how does it work?

Most searched queries

Ethereum price

Bitcoin price


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Web 3.0 Tech

How to buy cryptocurrencies?

Written by : Joel nzoda on  Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

You can buy via:

stock exchanges that automate the market and maintain accounts in euros for their clients.

In France, they must be backed by an institution with a payment service provider license (credit institution, electronic money institution or payment institution) issued by the ACPR.


– over-the-counter platforms that connect buyers and sellers. To limit thefts and scams, these platforms sequester the bitcoins exchanged and offer a system for evaluating players. 


DEXs (Decentralized Exchanges), over-the-counter platforms that replace the trusted third party with a smart contract.


brokers who act as intermediaries between stock exchanges and buyers. 


exchange counters: Brokers who sell bitcoins in a given physical space, often with support for novice customers.

The exchange fees are given here for information only from the information displayed by the exchanges and most often based on a bank transfer.

Afficher l’image source


Please note:
The fees only concern buyers and can be very different for sellers; – on the same platform, the overall cost can vary considerably depending on the volume traded, the trading mode (maker / taker ) and above all the means of payment , bank transfer being preferred for a lower cost. 


– there may be hidden charges such as withdrawal fees; – the reference price may vary from broker to broker.

Liquidity: For the largest exchanges I have added an indication (ranging from + to +++) on liquidity, this is an indication to take into consideration if you wish to trade large volumes at the best price.

 Learn more: Buy bitcoins – bitcoin.fr

Most searched question

What is cryptocurrency?

What is bitcoin and how does it work?

Most searched queries

Ethereum price

Bitcoin price

 

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Web 3.0 Tech

What do Cryptocurrency miners calculate?

Written by : joel nzoda on  Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Miners perform cryptographic hashes (two successive SHA256) on what is called a block header. For each new hash, the mining software uses a different random number called the nonce. The nonce is an integer value with 32 bits of memory allocated to it.

This means that it is limited to only around 4 billion possibilities, which with the network’s current hashing power is largely insufficient. We therefore add in the hash timestamp of the block in Posix time , constantly updated. Another variable element on which minors can play: the arrangement of transactions.

Including the block number, timestamp, nonce, block data and hash of the previous block, the hash produced will look like this:

93ef6f358fbb998c60802496863052290d4c63735b7fe5bdaac821de96a53a9a

This hash can be converted into a very long number. (It is a hexadecimal number, which means that the letters AF are the numbers 10-15). To make mining difficult, there is something called target difficulty.

To create a valid block, a miner must find a hash that is below the target difficulty. For example, if the difficulty is:

10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

any number that starts with a zero would be accepted and considered below target. Example:

0787a6fd6e0782f7f8058fbef45f5c17fe89086ad4e78a1520d06505acb4522f

If we decrease the target to:

01000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

we need a number starting with two zeros:

00db27957bd0ba06a5af9e6c81226d74312a7028cf9a08fa125e49f15cae4979

Because the target is a bulky number with many digits, a simpler number is usually used to express the current target. This number is called the mining difficulty. Mining difficulty is scaled to the first block created. Which means that a difficulty of 70,000 means 70,000 times more computing power than it took Satoshi Nakamoto to generate the first block, when he was the only miner and only using the CPU of a computer.Afficher l’image source

When mining a block, miners include a timestamp in the block. Since 2016, this ” timestamp ” allows the network to adjust to the passage of time by calculating the median time spent (MTP), that is to say the median of the timestamps of the last 11 blocks. To be valid, a timestamp cannot be more than two hours in the future relative to the node’s subjective time.

The difficulty changes every 2016 block. The network adjusts the difficulty so that the generation time of these 2016 blocks is 14 days, regardless of the computing power deployed.

Therefore, the difficulty follows the power of the network. The adjustment algorithm is as follows: if the time measured in the period of 2016 blocks is less than 20,160 minutes (expected time), then the difficulty increases to comply with the assumed computing power; if it is higher, then the difficulty decreases. Retargeting is limited to a factor of 4 (multiplication as division) to avoid instabilities.

Most searched question

What is cryptocurrency?

What is bitcoin and how does it work?

Most searched queries

Ethereum price

Bitcoin price

 

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Web 3.0 Tech

Here’s what you don’t know about cryptocurrency mining

Written by : joel nzoda on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Bitcoin transactions are secured. To this end, miners perform mathematical calculations for the Bitcoin network with their computer equipment.

As a reward for their services, they collect the newly minted bitcoins along with the fees from the transactions they confirm. It is halved approximately every four years. On May 11, 2020, this reward increased to 6.25 bitcoins per block.

Miners (or miners’ cooperatives ) are in competition and their income is proportional to the computing power deployed.

“To describe mining, one could use the example of a gigantic sudoku contest where participants start a new grid as soon as someone finds a solution, and whose difficulty adjusts so that on average a grid is resolved every ten minutes. Imagine a giant sudoku grid, with several thousand rows and columns. It would be quite easy to verify that a completed grid is well filled. But […] it will take a lot of work to finish it! The difficulty of the grids can be adjusted by changing their sizes […], but they can still be checked easily even if they are very large. The puzzles to be solved in the bitcoin network are based on cryptographic hashes and have the same characteristics as these sudoku grids: they are very difficult to solve but it is very easy to verify that a solution is correct, and their difficulty can be adjusted. –Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

Most searched question

What is cryptocurrency?

What is bitcoin and how does it work?

Most searched queries

Ethereum price

Bitcoin price

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Web 3.0 Tech

How to mine bitcoins? In Europe

Written by : joel nzoda on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Bitcoin mining is rarely a profitable business for individuals. Bitcoin ‘s popularity has generated huge competition which makes it inaccessible.

Most often only industrial sites manage to profit from this activity. Before you venture into this adventure, I invite you to read the (already old) testimony of Greg Ryder and to visit the space dedicated to mining on the Bitcointalk forum .

Note in passing the existence of companies that practice the “cloud mining and sell computing capacity to their customers who receive in exchange the fractions of mined bitcoins, after deduction of management fees. Be careful though, some services are often very disappointing, when it’s not just pure scams. In general, even if practiced seriously, cloud mining is rarely profitable.

Practiced on French (or European) soil, cryptocurrency mining is only recommended for people who have, for domestic purposes, their own green electricity generator (solar, wind, geothermal, hydraulic) without having the possibility of reselling production surpluses on the public network.

Another possibility to make mining rational in France is to use the heat produced to produce hot water, this is the proposal of the French startup WiseMining.

Most searched question

What is cryptocurrency?

What is bitcoin and how does it work?

Most searched queries

Ethereum price

Bitcoin price

 

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Web 3.0 Tech

UNDERSTANDING THE MERGE

Written by : Makongue Tobbo Gilles Camille on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

To understand the term Merge, it is important to master certain operating mechanisms of the Blockchain, such as the proof of work (Proof of work) and the proof of stake (proof of stake) algorithm consensus.

The proof of work: is a mechanism by which the different machines (represented by miners) on a blockchain network validate transactions on that network, through a consensus algorithm in this case the proof of work consensus algorithm. Proof of work is done using a set of machines (computers, CPUs, GPUs, Asics etc.) driven by humans called miners. A miner’s role is to secure the network by validating transactions as they appear on the blockchain.

Basically, each transaction corresponds to a mathematical equation whose solution is unknown, when a transaction is carried out on the Bitcoin network for example, the miner whose machine will have the greatest computational capacity will succeed in solving the mathematical equation hidden behind the transaction initiated, will be rewarded with an amount of crypto (Bitcoin) into his wallet. This process is called mining. 

Once the transaction has been validated by the winner (miner having validated the transaction) all the other machines (nodes) must validate and approve the transaction as well so that a copy of this transaction will be shared on all the machines involved in the mining process.

This mechanism makes it difficult or even impossible for a hacker to modify the content of the transaction. The hacker will have to modify the copy of that transaction at the same time on more that 50% of the miner’s machine that constitutes the whole network. 

Generally, several entities or people join forces and create what are called mining pools in order to have an important computing power in order to validate a large number of transactions faster. The proof of work remains one of the most secure computer systems in the world. although it has certain limitations such as high energy consumption, low transaction speed, and high transaction costs to name a few. 

It is important to recall that the Blockchain Ethereum has also been operating under proof of work since its creation in 2015 and wanted to change the consensus mechanism for ecological and scalability reasons. Several alternatives have been proposed to overcome this problem, but one of the most important ones remains the Proof of Stake consensus algorithm.

Proof of stake: validates transactions on the network using money staked in wallets. Here to validate transactions on the network, unlike having a machine (GPUs, ASICs) whose computing capacity must be huge, validators must store a require amount of crypto (money) in their wallet defined by the developers of the blockchain in question, so they can participate in securing the network by validating transactions. The higher the amount, the more likely the validator is to validate a transaction, and in return earn some reward (money in the form of crypto).

In order to prepare for the transition from proof of work to proof of stake, the developers of the Ethereum blockchain set up in December 2020 a network called Beacon Chain (Consensus Layer) which is a separate blockchain from the Ethereum mainnet, running in parallel but never having processed any transaction on the main network. The Beacon chain uses the proof of stake consensus algorithm.

The MERGE is simply the fuse of the main Ethereum network (main net) which works under the proof of work with the Beacon Chain which works under the proof of stake consensus. 

One of the objectives of MERGE is to reduce the significant energy consumption generated by proof work consensus algorithm. It is important to remember that The Merge is only the first step for a total migration from proof of work to proof of stake for the Ethereum Blockchain. There are several others steps such as:

Ø The Surge: whose objective will be to increase the number of transactions per second commonly called scalability so that the Ethereum network can reach the up to hundred thousand transactions per second. To carry out this step, the developers will use a network partitioning technique called sharding, which consists of dividing the network into several parts called shards, so that the transaction processing calculation will be shared among the network, therefore more digestible and faster.

Ø The verge: which will make it possible to set up the Verkle tree (an improvement of the Merkle tree) which will allow network participants to be validators without having to store a large amount of data on their machines (computers).

Ø The Purge: which will be a continuation and improvement of the previous step “the Verge”

Ø The Splurge: which will constitute a series of updates to the Protocol.

What we must remember from this important step (The Merge), the transaction costs will not be reduced, the transaction speed will not change either, since all these improvements will be integrated into the future steps listed above. On the other hand, what will change, will be the reduction in Energy consumption of nearly 99%, the issuance of tokens which will be reduced by 90% (the quantity of tokens in circulation will reduce), and the reward system as well.

I am a freelance Blockchain consultant, reach out to me and I would love to help you more on this future technology. 

Most searched question 

What does the Ethereum MERGE mean?

What happens if the MERGE fails?

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Merge into oracle

 

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Law Tech

Law and Technology: A symbiotic relationship

Written by Purushottam Anand on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Law is a tool of ‘social engineering’ which may be used to create, modify or mould social norms. Even the other way round is true as the society also induces introduction, amendment and repeal of laws to reflect the present state of the society. Technology in different forms has always been a part of our society and share a similar symbiotic relationship with Law. Sometimes Law requires innovation and change in the technology, while on other occasions, technology forces changes in law to appropriately regulate interaction of the society with a particular technology. It will be useful to consider one example from each of these categories to appreciate this symbiotic relationship between Law and Technology.

Illustration 1- Card Tokenization

RBI has introduced card tokenization which prohibits merchants from storing customer card details on their servers and mandates the adoption of card-on-file (CoF) tokenization as an alternative to card storage. Enforcing adoption of this new technology will safeguard customers from the security vulnerability of their card details getting stored and misused by the merchants. This will help the customer be safer while online shopping as the actual card details will not be shared with the merchant, instead, a token that is unique to each card, device and token requestor, would be used to verify the credentials. RBI’s push towards technology for implementation of regulations is a big step for a digital, advanced India. 

Illustration 2- Regulation of Cryptocurrencies

Technology advancements, if not backed by the law, remain dubious and reflect uncertainty amongst the masses. Blockchain technology has already revolutionized many sectors of our economy including finance, banking and logistics and supply-chain and has huge potential to change the way value is presently created and transferred through the Internet. Cryptocurrencies, which are based on Blockchain technology, have exponentially grown in popularity and adoption. Though cryptocurrencies are issued by decentralized communities and do not have backing from any government, common people, corporations and even the Governments of few countries seem convinced about the potential of this new technology. El Salvador has in fact declared Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, to be the legal tender in the country.   

Increasing adoption of this technology by society has forced Governments across the globe to come up with regulations around cryptocurrencies. Most of the countries in the world have either passed regulations or are at some stage of formulating regulations around cryptocurrencies. 

Thus, Law and Technology regularly interact, complement, and influence the progress and development of each-other in a symbiotic manner.

We, at Crypto Legal, assist Blockchain and Cryptocurrency related projects in navigating through the uncertain and complex regulatory regime. Though there is no specific legislation regulating cryptocurrencies in India; however, a cryptocurrency project needs to ensure compliance with all other laws and regulations which may relate to corporate law, banking and payment laws, tax laws and other laws which may apply to the business model of the project. For instance, we assisted a metaverse gaming company is structuring its gaming token and preparing agreement for sale of tokens ensuring that the project complies with applicable laws and at the same time offers incentives to the players in form of tokens.

The symbiotic relationship between law and technology mandates that regulatory regime for any emerging technology like cryptocurrency must evolve gradually through an iterative process between the regulators and the society/community.