After Trillions Printed Under QE, Politicians Now Say Deficits Don’t Matter

After Trillions Already Printed Under QE Politicians Now Say Deficits Don’t Matter

When quantitative easing (QE) was introduced, it was likened to a drug, with central banks making an emergency injection of money to resuscitate the global economy. Now it seems that some politicians have gotten addicted to this drug, going as far as to claim that government deficits don’t matter and the money printing can just continue unabated.

Also Read: Why Cryptocurrency Investors Are Renouncing Their US Citizenship

Central Banks Create Trillions Out of Thin Air With QE

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, central banks embarked on a gargantuan QE policy, expanding their balance sheets by many billions of dollars worth of government bonds and other financial assets each month. Now, more than a decade on, this policy is considered to be largely over but major central banks still hold trillions on the books. As of the end of April 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s balance sheet stood at $3.89 trillion, the European Central Bank’s balance sheet was $5.3 trillion and the Bank of Japan’s balance sheet was $5.1 trillion. These figures are respectively comparable to 18.5% of the GDP of the U.S., 40.3% of the GDP of the eurozone and 102.2% of the GDP of Japan.

As if the central banks’ massive balance sheets were not enough cause for concern for the public whose wealth they endanger, some politicians are also now claiming that government deficits don’t matter. Under the newly touted Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), actions to counter deficits such as cutting spending or raising taxes are only needed when inflation is out of control. Two obvious problems with this reasoning are that first, it is like saying that jumping out the window is not dangerous until you hit the ground, and second, that governments can simply lie about inflation being low.

If politicians tell people that deficits don’t matter and we shouldn’t try to balance the books now, how will they be able to convince the public of the need for harsh measures when inflation bites to prevent it becoming unsustainable and spiraling into hyper-inflationary territory? In many countries, when the government or central bank refers to inflation, they only factor in some consumer goods and services, thus overlooking assets bubbles developing in fields such as stocks and real estate. In fact, for most people, buying a house is the biggest purchase of their lives so ignoring real estate when calculating inflation makes it irrelevant as a measure for the burden on the average person. This has already caused the emergence of a generation of young people who can’t buy a home in many developed markets around the world while inflation has officially been flat for years.

After Trillions Printed Under QE, Politicians Now Say Deficits Don’t Matter

Modern Monetary Theory 101

Modern Monetary Theory takes the concept of fiat money to a logical extreme, describing currency as a public monopoly which the government is a price setter of and claiming that anything less than full unemployment is evidence that it is over-restricting the supply and needs to print more. When governments employ fiat currency, they have more flexibility in managing their own currency. Similarly, cryptocurrency offers a versatile means of transferring funds. Thus, people are more interested in conducting cryptocurrency trading through trading bots like Crypto Superstar. You can check the crypto superstar app opinion to know people thought about automatic crypto trading. Most leading economists reject the claims of MMT, including New Keynesian economists. Even Paul Krugman came out against it in 2011, admitting he wished he could agree with the theory but that “it’s just not right” and demonstrated how it can lead to hyperinflation. However, for politicians who wish to avoid taking unpopular austerity measures, the idea that governments should not worry about deficits because they can always print more money is just too seductive to pass up.

After Trillions Printed Under QE, Politicians Now Say Deficits Don’t Matter

The place where MMT is most heatedly debated right now is Japan, where, as noted above, the central bank’s balance sheet is already worth more than 100% on the country’s whole GDP due to QE. A strange mix of politicians, starting from the conservative side and stretching all the way to the Japanese Communist Party, are using the theory to justify their opposition to a sales tax hike needed to prevent a government deficit. The Japanese Finance Minister called this “extremely dangerous” and warned against Japan turning into a test site for MMT.

In the U.S., the theory is mainly gaining traction with the left wing of the Democrat party. For example, Stephanie Kelton, who is a leading contributor and advocate for MMT, served as an Economic Advisor to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. “There is no budget crisis in Japan,” Kelton told WSJ. “And there is no inflation problem, so why would you risk slowing consumer spending—and thus the economy—with a hike in consumption tax?”

What do you think about the claims of Modern Monetary Theory? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.


Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

The post After Trillions Printed Under QE, Politicians Now Say Deficits Don’t Matter appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Source: news.bitcoin.com/

Meteoric Crypto Recovery: Here’s What Triggered Bitcoin Price Above $8,000

By CCN: The bitcoin price has surged by seven percent in the past several hours from $7,300 to around $8,000 in major markets including the U.S., demonstrating a strong recovery from its abrupt drop to $6,400. On May 17, as CCN reported, the bitcoin price briefly plunged to $6,400 by more than 18 percent against the U.S. dollar. Market eating up an 18% bitcoin drop quickly is a sign of positive sentiment Analysts including Dovey Wan, a founding partner at Primitive, stated that the brief price drop of bitcoin on Friday was likely due to manipulation engaged by a single
The post Meteoric Crypto Recovery: Here’s What Triggered Bitcoin Price Above $8,000 appeared first on CCN
Source: www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Fix Windows 10 can't be restored after you install an update

Windows 10 administrators who install Windows 10 on a computer may receive a stop error when they attempt to restore the system after installing updates.
Updates may be installed automatically or manually after Windows 10 is installed on a device. These updates bring the operating system to the newest version and they may patch security issues and introduce other improvements.
Windows 10 users who run into issues after update installation may use System Restore to restore the system to an earlier version.
Microsoft notes that it may happen that Windows 10 cannot be restored to an earlier version and that users receive the Stop error (0xc000021a) instead.
Consider the following scenario:

You install Windows 10 on a clean computer.
You turn on system protection, and then create a system restore point that is named “R1.”
You install one or more Windows 10 updates.
After the updates have finished installing, you restore the system to the “R1” restore point.

In this scenario, the system is not restored to the “R1” restore point. Instead, the computer experiences a Stop error (0xc000021a). You restart the computer, but the system cannot return to the Windows desktop.
The cause
Windows stages the restoration of files that are in use during a system restore process. The information is saved to the Windows Registry and the restoration completes on the next start of the PC.
In this particular situation, Windows 10 loads the current drivers before restoration and that leads to a driver mismatch and the stop error. The restoration process is stopped because of that.
The fix

Microsoft proposes two fixes for the issue: the first explains how systems may be recovered that failed to start while the second suggests an option to avoid the issue completely.
If Windows 10 fails to start during recovery
Administrators need to enter the Windows Recovery Environment to fix the issue. The environment should be loaded automatically after several failed restarts.

Select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > More Recovery Options > Startup Settings > Restart Now.
The list of startup options is displayed. Select Disable Driver signature enforcement (F7).
Follow the instructions. Windows should be able to resume the system restore process and finalize it this time.

To avoid the issue altogether
Microsoft suggests that system restore is run using the Windows Recovery Environment and not through the Settings application.

Use Windows-I to open the Settings application.
Go to Update & Security > Recovery.
Select Restart Now under Advanced Settings.
When Windows restarts, select Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > System Restore.
Follow the instructions to select a system restore point and restore the system.

Ghacks needs you. You can find out how to support us here (https://www.ghacks.net/support/) or support the site directly by becoming a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ghacks)). Thank you for being a Ghacks reader. The post Fix Windows 10 can't be restored after you install an update appeared first on gHacks Technology News.
Source: ghacks.net

Crypto Markets Surge $18 Billion as Bitcoin Heads Back to $8K

The majority of BTC traders and investors were secretly hoping that Bitcoin price would correct all the way back down to $6k or lower. This would provide ample opportunity to accumulate for a bigger bull run later this year. Their hopes have been dashed this Sunday morning as Bitcoin surged again during Asian trading.

Bitcoin Price Sunday Surge of 9%
For the best part of the past day, Bitcoin price 00 has remained range-bound between $7,250 and $7,400. It broke out of this channel a couple of hours ago during the Asian session and surged 9 percent to hit $7,920 according to Coinmarketcap.com. Daily volume had trailed off by half over the past few days but had already started to ramp up this morning.
Just yesterday it appeared that Bitcoin was taking a breather, possibly poised to drop back to major support zones. A number of prominent analysts were eyeing $6,400 or lower for a possible retracement. At the time of writing, this looks unlikely as the bulls have taken control of the markets again.
CNBC got it completely wrong as usual by posting a head and shoulders chart implying that a big drop was imminent. The counter trading indicator did not go unnoticed by those on crypto twitter. Twitter crypto market analyst, Josh Rager, wrote:
.CNBC calling head & shoulders… And I really wanted to buy the dip down to low to mid $6ks. Was a clear counter indicator as Bitcoin is starting to pump.
The next move for BTC is likely to be above $8,000 again with huge resistance at $8,200 where it reached during the week. Rager added that a close above this price on the daily/weekly would be very bullish with the next targets being upwards of $9,000. He specified $9,600 adding;
There will be resistance along the way and could take more than a few days even if the daily/weekly closes above $8216. Weekly volume looks amazing.

$BTC - Weekly Chart
To clarify, why $9600 is because this is viewpoint from higher time frame charts
There will be resistance along the way and could take more than a few days even if the daily/weekly closes above $8216
Weekly volume looks amazing pic.twitter.com/6xM6zmwrd9
— Josh Rager (@Josh_Rager) May 19, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
$18 Billion Added to Crypto Cap
Bitcoin’s Sunday surge has resulted in over $18 billion being added to crypto market capitalization as it pumps from an intraday low of $228 billion to $246 billion.
Total market cap 24 hours - Coinmarketcap.com
Total market cap has remained over $200 billion for the past seven days. It is the first time since early November that this has happened.
As a result, the altcoins are all in the green at the moment with big gains of over 7 percent for Bitcoin Cash, Binance Coin, and Dash. Ethereum, EOS, Litecoin, Stellar, Monero, and IOTA are all making over 4 percent at the time of writing.
Is Bitcoin going to $9,600 or will it bounce off resistance at $8,200? Add your thoughts below.

Images via Shutterstock, Coinmarketcap.com
The post Crypto Markets Surge $18 Billion as Bitcoin Heads Back to $8K appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.
Source: bitcoinist.com

Impressive! Resilient Bitcoin Price Moves Higher as Crypto Stars Align

By CCN: The bitcoin price stumbled toward the end of the week but it looks like the bulls have gotten it together. BTC is now moving higher by nearly 7% to approximately $7,800 at last check on CoinMarketCap. The price had fallen as low as approximately $7,000 on Friday, and some traders have been calling for the bottom to fall out. It seems as though that won’t happen, at least not today. Even though the reversal came suddenly and seemingly disrupted some weekend plans, nobody on Crypto Twitter was complaining. BTC on the move again. — Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) May
The post Impressive! Resilient Bitcoin Price Moves Higher as Crypto Stars Align appeared first on CCN
Source: www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Apple’s Tim Cook Finds His Inner Tesla in Speech to Gen Z Graduates

By CCN: At a commencement speech at Tulane University in New Orleans, Apple CEO Tim Cook had some harsh words for the parents of Tulane’s class of ’19. During his speech at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Cook said: “In some important ways, my generation has failed you.” He added: “We have spent too much time debating, we have been too focused on the fight, and not focused enough on progress.” Cook made a reference to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005: “You don’t need to look far to find an example of that failure…Here today, in this very place,
The post Apple’s Tim Cook Finds His Inner Tesla in Speech to Gen Z Graduates appeared first on CCN
Source: www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com

In my last article, I explained how to prove ownership of a specific address by signing a message with a public and private key pair. That’s just one way of proving ownership and verifying a valid signature, as BCH users can also anchor a document to the chain using the Bitcoin Cash protocol’s Script language. This particular walkthrough aims to teach you how to create notarized proofs using Notary.Bitcoin.com.

Also Read: Putting an End to the Bitcoin Store of Value Fallacy

Upload a File or Document to the BCH Chain and Prove Ownership Using Notary.Bitcoin.com

Proof of ownership or proof of existence is a technique that can be used by anyone via the Bitcoin Cash protocol in order to certify the integrity of a variety of proofs. Our last guide covered the basics on how a person can prove ownership of a specific BCH address and tether a unique message and digital signature to the address as well. However, there are other methods available that allow people to record various things like a document or file. The BCH chain allows you to add raw data to a transaction using an opcode called OP_Return. Our website hosts a service called Notary.Bitcoin.com that allows people to tether the hash of a signature and file within the blockchain’s recorded data. Similarly to how the private key allows someone to prove ownership of an address, a private key can also correspond with the owner’s signature and the hash of the file held in the BCH blockchain.

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com
Notary.Bitcoin.com lets anyone anchor a document hash to the BCH chain and verify the integrity of the document afterward.

This attribute allows for some unique possibilities so anyone can certify a document, contract, and date of publication at any time in a permissionless fashion. To demonstrate how to use Notary.Bitcoin.com, I decided to upload a Rich Text File (RTF) to the BCH chain which contains the abstract introduction to the Bitcoin white paper.

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com
Creating an RTF in order to upload the file hash to the BCH chain.

After creating the RTF, I simply selected ‘Choose file’ located in the Get Started section, which allows you to either upload or drag a file into the window. The file is never uploaded to the Bitcoin.com server as privacy is our top priority. After the file is uploaded, a new screen will appear which shows the document timestamp, and the document hash but the data will not be broadcasted to the BCH chain until 0.00005 BCH is paid to the address shown.

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com
In order to add the document hash to the BCH chain, simply pay 0.00005 BCH and wait for one confirmation.

From here I fired up the Badger Wallet located in my Chrome browser and sent the 0.00005 BCH to the address supplied by Notary.Bitcoin.com. After that, the service told me that my transaction was pending and that it needs one blockchain confirmation in order to be etched into the BCH chain. After the transaction is confirmed, Notary.Bitcoin.com will provide a document hash, server timestamp, the blockchain broadcast time, and the blockchain confirmation time. The upload will also appear in the recent documents registered and the recent anchors section on the notary page.

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com
After the transaction is confirmed the blockchain confirmation will be timestamped and Notary.Bitcoin.com will provide a txid which can be verified on any BCH block explorer.

Notarized Proofs on the Bitcoin Cash Blockchain for Less Than 5 Cents

After you test Notary.Bitcoin.com service and get an understanding of how it works by tethering a notarized document to the BCH chain you can verify the document as well to certify the file’s integrity. Instead of selecting the Notarize tab, simply select the Verify tab and again you just upload or drag the file that was tied to the BCH chain into the window. The service will tell you whether or not the document has been notarized on the BCH chain and Notary.Bitcoin.com will redirect you to the document proof page. When the process is complete, the service also provides a transaction ID (txid) which can be queried on any BCH blockchain explorer.

Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com
The Bitcoin.com Block Explorer verifying the validity of the recent document hash of the RTF.

The simplicity of tying a document to the BCH chain makes it so anyone can certify ownership and this includes businesses, journalists, whistleblowers, and artists who decide to share and create unique content. Just like our previous article which shows anyone how to prove ownership of a specific BCH address, Notary.Bitcoin.com is very easy to understand and allows anyone to prove ownership of a document or file for only 0.00005 BCH (which is less than 5 cents).

If you missed our guide called How to Prove Ownership With a Bitcoin Cash Address and Digital Signature, check it out now.

What do you think about signing and verifying an uploaded document or file with Notary.Bitcoin.com? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.


Image credits: Shutterstock, Notary.Bitcoin.com, Jamie Redman, and Pixabay.


Enjoy the easiest way to buy Bitcoin online with us. Download your free Bitcoin wallet and head to our Purchase Bitcoin page where you can buy BCH and BTC securely.

The post Anchor a Document or File to the BCH Chain With Notary.Bitcoin.com appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Source: news.bitcoin.com/

BIP070 Bitcoin Payments Are Being Bulldozed for Political Reasons

The Political Reasons Why Important Bitcoin Payments Plumbing Is Being Bulldozed

Bitcoin Core wants to distance itself politically from the former project leader Gavin Andresen, the payment protocol BIP070 he was involved with, and from the BCH-friendly payment processor Bitpay. The attempts to remove software associated with Gavin Andresen are now having real-world effects on the security of bitcoin payments.

Also read: How to Prove Ownership With a Bitcoin Cash Address and Digital Signature

Bitpay Forced to Remove BIP070

Bitpay keeps getting criticized for implementing a payment protocol requirement for wallet apps looking to send money to a Bitpay BTC or BCH address. Bitpay quite suddenly implemented the requirement without much debate and no public negotiations with other community members.

Bitcoin Payments Are Being Bulldozed for Political Reasons

The initial instinctual reaction among many BTC and BCH users was that “no (single) private company should be allowed to make demands about mandatory changes to all BTC and BCH wallet apps because that would mean that software change decisions would be decided in a centralized manner which would be unacceptable for a currency that’s supposed to be decentralized.” But that reasoning only works superficially and stops working if you spend some time to think more deeply about it, and here’s why:

The Payment Protocol was not created by Bitpay. It was created by the individuals (independent from Bitpay) Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn back in July 29, 2013, long before Bitpay announced on Nov. 28, 2017 that they would start requiring wallet apps to use the Payment Protocol when sending money to Bitpay. Many major BTC wallet apps had already implemented Payment Protocol support independently from Bitpay – “If you are using the BitPay, Copay, Mycelium, Bitcoin Core, Airbitz, or Electrum wallets for your bitcoin payments, nothing will change. These true bitcoin wallets all already ‘speak’ Payment Protocol” – and before Bitpay made their announcement that they would start requiring Payment Protocol compatibility in the coming months.

The major reason why Bitpay announced they would start demanding Payment Protocol compatibility from all wallet apps that would like to send money to Bitpay was that they started getting a lot of customer support requests from their users who had accidentally sent money to them with a transaction fee so low that their transaction either got delayed for days, sometimes weeks or even rejected by the BTC network, typically after a several weeks long delay.

The Payment Protocol would remove the ability for the Bitpay customer to choose the transaction fee and give that decision to Bitpay instead. Bitpay would specify a transaction fee high enough that they would be reasonably confident that they would eventually receive the money in a reasonably timely manner, thus heavily reducing the number of customer support tickets generated.

Bitpay did not try to start centrally controlling “the rules of Bitcoin.” They just saw a harmless way to reduce their customer support department costs and announced their necessary requirement to accomplish that goal more efficiently.

The Bitcoin Core project added a “deprecation warning” message for their BTC wallet in their documentation site on Nov. 22, 2018:

Bitcoin Payments Are Being Bulldozed for Political Reasons

(Screenshot created from here, Archived versions; Deprecation warning, Archived versions here and here.)

No clarification has been given on why the BIP070 Payment Protocol is now considered “deprecated and will be removed in a later version of Bitcoin Core” because “The protocol has multiple security design flaws and implementation flaws in some wallets,” at least not on the Bitcoin Core documentation site since Nov. 22, 2018 until May 7, 2019. Maybe it’s just a matter of their documentation being poorly updated or maybe it’s because BIP070 actually works well enough to not have to be deprecated.

The latter reason seems more likely because Bitcoin Core (BTC) advocates have been politically hostile against Bitpay and especially so after Bitpay announced that they have started supporting BCH in addition to BTC.

This seems to be a political move to signal that Bitcoin Core should make the important decisions about how payments should be made and not a BCH friendly company such as Bitpay.

BIP070 was authored by two BCH friendly individuals (“Satoshi’s second in command” and former Bitcoin Core project leader Gavin Andresen and Bitcoin XT founder Mike Hearn) whereas the now suggested Payment Protocol BIP021 was co-authored by the well-known Bitcoin Core and small base blocksize limit advocate and developer Matt Corallo.

Bitpay could’ve chosen to mandate the significantly older Payment Protocol BIP021 (created Jan. 29, 2012) instead of mandating the newer Payment Protocol BIP070 (created July 29, 2013). For whatever reasons, Bitpay chose the newer standard BIP070. Bitcoin Core implemented support for BIP070 all the way back on March 19, 2014 as can be read in their release notes: “Add payment request (BIP 0070) support.”

It’s odd that the Bitcoin Core project implements the newer standard BIP070 and then many years later deprecates the newer standard in Bitcoin Core and starts suggesting that everyone should be using the much older standard BIP021 that even Bitcoin Core themselves did not choose initially. It’s odd unless you consider the politics between the competing Bitcoin variant currencies, BTC and BCH, in which case the events start making sense again.

Bitcoin Core wants to distance itself politically from BIP070, the former BCH-friendly Bitcoin Core project leader Gavin Andresen, and the BCH-friendly Bitpay payment processor company. Bitcoin Core advocates state the reasons as being: “The protocol has multiple security design flaws and implementation flaws in some wallets,” without clarifying those reasons, when in fact their reasons are clearly politically motivated as has been argued in this article.

The currently most widely accepted, supported and endorsed BTC and BCH Payment Protocol BIP070 works well enough for now (see graph below), even though mandating its use was decided by the BCH-friendly payment processor company Bitpay and not by the current project leader of the now BTC maximalist Bitcoin Core project. It makes sense to keep endorsing and supporting BIP070 at least until a better standard has been developed and its merits have been well argued and thoroughly debated within the BTC and BCH communities. The older BIP021 standard does not seem to be better than the newer BIP070 standard.

Bitcoin Payments Are Being Bulldozed for Political Reasons
Source: Bitpay

The best counterargument to enforce the use of BIP070 for wallet apps was arguably given by Andreas Antonopoulos, and Bitpay motivated their enforcement convincingly in this excellent summary: “Near the end of the video, Andreas pointed out that people are using third parties to unwrap the BIP-70 protocol to get to the BIP-21. This creates additional security concerns for BitPay users by introducing additional trusted parties. This point is not only valid, but, if our sole and primary motivation for enforcing BIP-70 was about security, would present a compelling case to roll-back enforcement until more of or all of the Bitcoin ecosystem adopted Payment Protocol. But as we said before, BIP-70 is not only about security for BitPay, but about usability. And the usability of cryptocurrency is not just about the short-term success of BitPay, but also the long-term success of cryptocurrency.”

Andreas talks about “The BIP-70 controversy.” He reads a question that was submitted by one of his viewers. The viewer says “Samurai wallet for example does not support BIP-70 and refuses to implement that feature. Could you explain why BIP-70 is controversial in itself and why Bitpay implements a non-universal BIP? Do users have a role to play in this controversy?”

It’s easy to understand why the Samurai wallet team refuses to implement and support BIP-70. They endorse the Bitcoin Core (BTC) currency above all and consider any other competing cryptocurrency, BCH especially, as “an attack on Bitcoin.”

The Samurai wallet team tweeted that they approve of Bitcoin Core advocates “viciously attacking” Bitcoin Cash advocates and that Bitcoin Cash advocates are “lunatics” and “frauds.” That’s a pretty strong choice of words to describe a group of people that have a difference of opinion regarding how Bitcoin should scale.

“Bitcoin will not bend the knee for you, your business, or anyone else. Bitcoin will not compromise. That’s a feature not a bug. You lunatics forked yourself off, now you can deal with the consequences and the ‘vicious attacks’.” And then this comment: “Forking is not the issue. That is exactly what they should have done. The ongoing narrative that ‘BCH is Bitcoin’ is the problem and should be ‘viciously attacked’ or at least highly ridiculed. If you don’t call out fraud, you yourself are a fraudster.”

It’s About Politics, Not Technology

It should not come as a surprise then that the Samurai wallet team refuses to support the BIP-70 technology that the Bitcoin Cash-friendly payment processor Bitpay started requiring from all wallet app providers. It’s about politics, not about technology. Andreas too has become a Bitcoin Core advocate so it’s not a surprise that he omits mentioning that the Samurai wallet team is not a typical example of a politically neutral wallet team. He just pretends that the person who asked the question in his video is right about the Samurai wallet team being politically neutral.

Andreas Antonopoulos further says (regarding Bitpay’s choice to make the use of BIP070 mandatory for all of their customers) at 6:04 in his video that: “From a certain perspective I think that makes sense. However it’s created a lot of pushback … leading in fact to the emergence of alternatives and competitors to Bitpay with projects such as BTCpay Server.”

Notice how Andreas says it’s the reason and not a reason that people started competitors to the Bitpay company. That’s not a very honest description of the events now, is it? Bitpay requiring BIP070 is just one reason among many reasons that people started competing companies. The two most major reasons are that 1) people start competing companies in growing ecosystems all the time, and 2) Bitpay was one of the earliest and most influential community members that publicly advocated raising the base blocksize limit for the Bitcoin currency before Bitcoin split into Bitcoin Core (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) on Aug. 1, 2017. This is what Stephen Pair (co-founder and CEO of Bitpay) wrote all the way back on Jan. 7, 2016 about Bitpay’s political stance regarding the blocksize limit debate:

“Miners need a simple, but adaptive consensus rule for determining the block size limit. Of all the ideas we’ve examined, the one that seems most appealing is a simple adaptive limit based on a recent median block size. To determine the block size limit, you compute the median block size over some recent sample of blocks and apply a multiple. For example, you might set the limit to 2x the median block size of the last 2016 blocks … At BitPay, we will experiment with this approach. We will perform back testing to analyze what impact various settings might have on historic blocks. We will also analyze behavior under extreme circumstances and critique it from a game theoretic perspective. You can follow our work with our fork of the bitcoin client: https://github.com/bitpay/bitcoin. If our findings convince us that it is the best approach for Bitcoin, we will work to convince others (most importantly, miners) as well. In the meantime, if miners reach a consensus on a temporary bump in the fixed limit, you’ll be able to spend those coins at any BitPay merchant.”

As you can see, it’s no wonder Bitcoin Core advocates view Bitpay as being a very influential and important competitor to the scaling roadmap that the Bitcoin Core team fought and keeps fighting for.

Interestingly, it just so happens that Amaury Sechet (project leader of Bitcoin ABC) is advocating a very similar long-term solution to deciding the base blocksize limit for Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin ABC stands for “Adjustable Blocksize Cap” and Bitcoin ABC’s base blocksize limit previous increases from 1 MB to 8 MB, and then to 32 MB have been merely short-term solutions while the long-term solution is still being researched and worked on. Amaury (“Deadalnix” on Github) wrote this on Jan. 6, 2019, almost exactly three years after the above mentioned Bitpay blog post:

“Given the goal of keeping the system secure without running while keeping the [base blocksize] limit above actual use, I would chose the parameter of the adjustment using the largest value of these two computations:

1/ the median block size of the last 11 block multiplied by 2.

2/ the average block size over a large duration (I’m not sure what’s a good value at this time).

Rationale: We want to avoid the usage to run into the block size. To do so, it is important to adapt quickly in case of rapid change in usage. We also desire to keep multiplier small as we want to reduce the attack surface. It follows that a small window (11) and a small multiplier (2) fits the bill best. 11 is considered safe from manipulation and used for other computation like MTP for that reason.”

Notice the striking similarity between Bitpay’s and Amaury’s preferred long-term solutions to the base blocksize limit for BTC and BCH. Great minds seem to think alike. It’s no wonder that Bitpay announced (March 28, 2018) that they would support BCH in addition to BTC for their payment services: “BitPay Merchants Can Now Accept Bitcoin Cash Payments.” Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is simply more Bitcoin than “Bitcoin.”

Where do you stand on this debate? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.

This post was written by Tomislav Dugandzic, independent bitcoin cash (BCH) user and currency speculator.

OP-ed disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the content. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Github, Bitpay, Stephen Pair (Twitter).


Do you want to dig deeper into Bitcoin? Explore past and present cryptocurrency prices through our Bitcoin Markets tool and head to our Blockchain Explorer to view specific transactions, addresses, and blocks.

The post BIP070 Bitcoin Payments Are Being Bulldozed for Political Reasons appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Source: news.bitcoin.com/

Arnold Schwarzenegger Falls for Snapchat but Should Investors Pile In?

By CCN: Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of “The Terminator” (and nothing else lately), found himself the victim of an assault at an event in South Africa. While attending “Arnold Classic Africa” in Johannesburg, which features a wide array of sporting events and physical activities, the 71-year-old “Last Action Hero” was filming participants when he received a flying kick to the back by an unknown assailant. The actor fell forward as the perpetrator was immediately tackled by security while yelling, “Help me!” “Oy, My Back!” Don’t Interrupt a Cyborg’s Snapchat with Physical Violence Schwarzenegger was later escorted off the premises by a
The post Arnold Schwarzenegger Falls for Snapchat but Should Investors Pile In? appeared first on CCN
Source: www.cryptocoinsnews.com

Finally, Analyst Explains Why Financial Institutions Love Ripple Despite All The Controversy Surrounding XRP

Since inception, Ripple has made its goal public; to reinvent, and take over the financial sector paying special attention to cross-border remittance. So far, the company has come up with technological innovations that make remittance faster, cheaper and more efficient than SWIFT’s technology (the gold standard for traditional cross-border remittance). While the company has been able to convince some financial institutions to use its technology and has gotten endorsement from major players including the World Bank, Ripple hasn’t made many friends in the cryptocurrency industry.
Continue reading Finally, Analyst Explains Why Financial Institutions Love Ripple Despite All The Controversy Surrounding XRP at Smartereum.
Source: smartereum.com