Spending Money

Over the course of my spring semester writing this blog, I have probably bored some people. I often go into very deep detail of what a coin has to offer, and why some are good and others are bad. I would imagine most people that read this blog are just interested in making money (who isn't though?). After looking at graphs and predication charts for hours (which I often do) I begin to daydream and wonder what would I even do if I made a lot of money off of virtual currency. In this tenth edition to my blog I wanted to name some things you can do with cryptocurrency and the random things you could buy.

First, I want to address the negative stigma of why people are not a fan of virtual currency. There are some things that you can buy on "the black market" that you would not necessarily want people to be able to buy. This market is on the deep web and the only form of accepted currency is crypto. Luckily it is not easy to access this. It requires a censorship circumvention tool to access blocked websites. Browsers like Tor are good for this. Using Tor, a person can access many sites that they wouldn't be able to using applications like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Firefox. Once on this web you can find many sites offering to sell many illegal things. For example, you can easily buy things like guns, drugs, credit card numbers, and passports. On a lighter note, someone can also buy fake college degrees, fake coupons for grocery stores, and even child spirits... yeah the ghost of dead kids. I'm not saying anything else on that.

So lets say you are not crazy and want to follow the rules. The following are just a few things you can buy with virtual currency.

1. The first thing I would buy with some of my crypto would be food. You can order a pizza on Pizza for Coins and have it delivered to your house. Nothing better then ordering Domino's at 2AM while working on a paper.

2. Let say you are too good for pizza. You made millions in cryptocurrencies and you want to celebrate buy taking you friends out to eat. You can pay at restaurants in Bitcoin. Using BitcoinRestaurants  you can locate the restaurants that accept Bitcoin. Out of the three in Pennsylvania, two of them are located in Philadelphia. 

3. How about a house? Using this site, you can view a listing of houses from all around world. All accepting Bitcoin, Etheruem, and Litecoin.

4. To go with your brand new house, you are going to need car to go along with it. Many car companies have the option to pay in virtual currencies. Most notably companies like Tesla and Lamborghini. You can even buy boats now.

5. Want to have an amazing funeral after your passing? Look no further, a funeral service company

in Minnesota accepts Bitcoin in exchange for their service. Not only that, they also offer a nice 3% discount if you use Bitcoin.

Tron's Big Plans

With about $167,700,000 USD trading every 24 hours, the cryptocurrency TRON (TRX) is becoming very popular in markets. TRON's goal of decentralizing the Internet is coming into play as the recently announced several different things and have plans for even more. The company is very involved in making sure that TRX is successful. The team consists of over 100+ members from around the globe consisting of 15 different countries/regions. Many of them have experience in Google, Alibaba, Tecent, and other well known companies. In my other blog about TRON you will find information about the leader, Justin Sun.

One of the biggest things that TRON recently launched was on March 31, 2018. It was it's test net to prepare for its main net coming later in May. What this means is that TRON is currently going through a process were it seeking to become independent from all other cryptocurrencies. Before TRX was based of the Etheruem's blockchain that I also wrote about in an earlier blog. With this test net launched they are preparing to run completely on their own blockchain.

Although TRX is not doing so well with the test run, that can completely change at the end of May. The all time high for the token was when it was $0.30. That did not last long. It quickly fell to around $0.05, and has been hovering around this much for about 3 months. I believe that once the weak hands sell majority of their TRX, investors will become interested and begin to buy way before the actual main net is launched.

The company also announced an interesting partnership with BitGuild. It is a company that is devoted to change the ways people play video games. The company has nearly 2 billion users and will help make that trading number of $167,7000,000 USD even greater. How BitGuild works is that when people acquire something in game like a weapon, that weapon can only be used in that game. BitGuild is making it so you can bring that weapon over into any game. Also they have a system were if you no longer want that weapon, you can safely trade it for something else. What happens when they partner is that you can possibly trade the weapon for TRX and have it transferred into your wallet without worry that you are being scammed

We all have probably used an ATM or at least seen one. For anyone who is not aware you can walk up to one with your bank card and pull cash straight from your accounts in less then a minute. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin also have ATMs similar to this but because they are virtual you do not physically receive anything. This is all being done by the company CoinFlip. Instead after inserting cash, the automatically transfer into your wallet. TRON is now the fourth one to be added onto these machines and it will surely help the amount of TRX that is traded. Currently there are 57 locations across the United States where these ATMs are located.

Currently at its lowest price, TRX would be a great buy before it takes off again. With the dedicated team behind it, success is not far behind. More partnership and ideas are in the work with weekly updates being put out by the development team.

Lets Talk About Forks

Today I want to hopefully teach you something about forks. No, I am not talking about the eating utensil you use to eat or salad, or the thing your mother yelled at you  for trying to put it in the electrical outlet when you were a kid. I'm talking about the forks of bitcoin. Bitcoin has had several forks since its creation like Super Bitcoin, Bitcoin Platinum, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Uranium, Bitcoin Gold, and many other along those premises. The two most successful one have been Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Cash. These are considered hard forks. It is when a single cryptocurrency splits and become two different versions. An old version and a new one. Allowing people to hold both as individual coins. Both selling at different volumes and different prices. When a cryptocurrency forks you are given the same amount of the new version to start. For example, if you had 5 Bitcoin in your wallet, after the split you would be rewarded with 5 Bitcoin Cash.

Currently the Bitcoin we all know and love so dearly is trading at around $8,000. Bitcoin Cash, the forth highest rated coin on the market is around $860. Bitcoin Gold is way below selling for just barely $50.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) split from Bitcoin (BTC) because of a disagreement on how to handle the scalability problem that they were facing for quite some time. The split came on August 1, 2017. With the split came three things that sets Bitcoin Cash apart. The first was the increase in the maximum block size to eight megabytes. Another thing that came from it was the modification of transaction signature hashing algorithms. Its added protection to the holder, and made things much simpler in terms of wallets, where bitcoin is stored. The final thing it added was the modification of the algorithm that determines a block's proof-of-work difficulty. This just made sure that all coins mined were real and not obtained unfairly.

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) was first launched on November 12th, 2017. It has a feature that protects the users for spending their coin accidentally. It is a lot easier to mine, meaning people with normal computers can compete in the market and not get pushed out of the way by people with $3000 dollar computers specifically designed just to mine. People also call these computers mining rigs.

Both the forks of Bitcoin have advantages over the original. Simply being the original plus more features. But the old saying is "if it isn't broken, why fix it?". The upgrades version provide faster transaction, something the original seriously lacks. They are all peer-to-peer electronic cash for the internet seeking to eliminate the need of banks to oversee transactions.

As I wrap up my blog, I just wanted to share something interesting I found when doing research instead of just talking all nerdy about virtual currency. Bitcoin was recently used in a very large purchase worth nearly $10 million. In return the customer was receiving a gold casting of the hand of former African president, Nelson Mandela. I guess if you have the money for it and nothing better to buy, why not?

Litecoin.... Is It a Scam?

Today we are going to talk about one of the first alt coins I ever invested in almost about a year ago. The coin was called Litecoin, it caught my attention because it was one of the very first coins on a popular iPhone app called Coinbase. Coinbase allowed the United States population to buy virtual currency with USD. Today it is still the easiest way to start getting into cryptocurrency. All that is required is an United States drivers license for identification and a debit or credit card linked to a bank. Litecoin was added to Coinbase when it was trading at around $22. Within that same week it steadily raised to $46. This is when I decided to invest around $100 into the coin. I instantly regretted my decision and everyday the price dropped more and more. In another post I talked about HODL, Hold On for Dear Life, and that is exactly what I did. Finally over the next month it started to increase in price. It increased all the way to about $120. I thought I was untouchable, however, in a short amount of time after that it began to fall. Afraid to lose my money again I sold at $95. This will probably be one of the stupidest things I have ever done, not only in my investments, but in my life. The reason why??? A month after I sold the price started to increase again.... and again.... and again. Litecoin reached it's all time high of $360 in earlier December. I still lose sleep because this will forever haunt me.

The only reason I can rest, is because something that the creator of the coin Charlie Lee did that came off as a little sketchy to me. Being the owner of the coin, he held a lot of the coin in his personal wallet. This shows that he is personally and fully invested into this project. However, in December around the same time Litecoin reached it's all time high, he decided to sell and donated all of his holdings. He did it to prove a point. His didn't want people thinking he was making money for himself. He had this to say on twitter, “Whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bad news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit. Some people even think I short LTC! So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence. I have always refrained from buying/selling LTC before or after my major tweets, but this is something only I know. And there will always be a doubt on whether any of my actions were to further my own personal wealth above the success of Litecoin and crypto-currency in general,” Personally, if I am investing in a company, I want the owner to be fully invested. I found this to be very strange and to this day I still wonder if Charlie Lee is actually a good guy or just trying to make his quick dollar and run. Since this the coin had dropped to about $180, losing half it value since December.

According to Binance, Litecoin (LTC) is one of the oldest cryptocurrencies in existence after Bitcoin, having launched in October 2011. It was developed by Charlie Lee, who remains involved with the coin to this day. Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin so shares many of the same characteristics but benefits from shorter block generation times of around 2.5 minutes, allowing transactions to clear faster. Litecoin also has lower transaction fees than Bitcoin and can be used as a digital currency on the web to pay for goods and services and to play at crypto casinos. The value of Litecoin has grown significantly, and the currency’s market cap now exceeds $2 billion. Part of Litecoin’s surge in popularity in 2017 has been attributed to the currency adopting a number of new features such as Segregated Witness and the Lightning Network, technology which allows the network to process more transactions.

Downward Slope for Crypto

Virtual currency is at an all time low for this year. With Bitcoin barely above $8k, people are starting to get worried with their money. This is a scary time for cryptocurrency because no one is exactly sure how much lower it will go. The constant fluctuating values makes it very scary for people to start investing at one day it can be up 4% and within 5 hours be down 7%. This forces people to sell because they don't want to lose any more money, however, this just decreases the price even more. I recommend if you invested in a coin or token and it starts to drop in value, hold. Or as the internet says HODL. Now meaning Hold On for Dear Life, was first used on a forum when a drunk investor was upset about the dropping prices of Bitcoin. It blew up and is now one of the most popular saying in the virtual currency industry. Prices reflect off a coins buy wall or sell wall. If investors begin to sell their wallets, prices will drop. On the other hand, if people start to rapidly buy it will increase.

If you recently search up anything having to do with virtual currency, you probably saw an advertisement on another website. For example, on YouTube I constantly have videos about Bitcoin since I search it so often. Due to many scams coming from this. Google announced on Wednesday that they would be banning cryptocurrency advertising. “Improving the ads experience across the web, whether that’s removing harmful ads or intrusive ads, will continue to be a top priority for us,” said Scott Spencer, director of sustainable ads at Google. This is both good and bad for cryptocurrency. The good that come from this is far better then the bad, because less people are going to get scammed. However, ads that are not scams will no longer be able to be put on the internet. This will affect the price, possibly is the reason why we are currently seeing a drop right now. 

Along with everything else, China is escalating its clampdown on cryptocurrency trading. The Chinese government is looking closely at online platforms and mobile apps that offer exchange-like services. China used to be the biggest market for bitcoin trading until last year where they banned it. It will be interesting to watch what else China has in plan for cryptocurrency. As the United States still has no regulation on it, will they plan to replicate China laws, or will they let it be. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that "legislative regulation of cryptocurrency will be definitely required in the future." Also South Korean officials said they were considering following China's lead, and shutting down cryptocurrency trading via exchanges.

I will continue to "HODL" as Bitcoin had been around for awhile and I believe it will stay around for years to come. I will agree it is currently scary with all the changes being made. However, ever since I was a young age I loved to make money, so as long as there is money to be made I will be there. I am sure there are many people who are exactly like me. I tell my mother all the time who doesn't understand anything about virtual currency, you cannot be afraid to lose money to make money.

A Shot at Ripple

The fidget spinner of virtual currency. It gets it nick name from the logo closely resembling a fidget spinner. Also just like a fidget spinner Ripple can out of no where and took the world by surprise. Ripple is the name for both the digital currency, XRP, and an open payment within that currency is transferred. Ripple is still in early stages of it life, also known as beta. Ripple is seeking to break people free of the "walled gardens". What that means is the credit card companies, banks, PayPal all often charge fees for their services. Ripple is looking to remove fees completely while also reducing processing time of those transaction. OpenCoin is the company behind Ripple that is seeking to make it a big success. They mention that the goal of Ripple is to build on the decentralized digital currency approach set by bitcoin and do many other advancements to it. 

Like many other things, Ripple is peer-to-peer. There is no need for a third party coming into the picture and make people pay fees. Chris Larsen is the CEO and has many plan for the future to make Ripple standout even more. Currently it is the 3rd highest rank coin in the market trading for about 90 cents. This is extremely low for the coin because at the start of the new year it reached its highest point at about $3.20. Moving forward, Ripple is no doubt in a very strong position, but hurdles still remain. For example, banks could adopt any number of competing cryptos for their purposes. In fact, once implemented, the Lightning Network will make Bitcoin as fast and efficient, if not more so, than Ripple. It is also possible that governments will seek to regulate how banks conduct blockchain transactions, which could easily interfere with Ripple’s goal of becoming the standard platform. Along with Ripple many other coins would also be heavily affected. In fact, the very crypto revolution is a potential challenge to Ripple’s business plan, as fiat could very well be replaced at some point. No matter what happens you can always check the current price of XRP here.

I don't usually encourage or tell people to invest their money into crypto unless they know a lot about it, but this coin is a safe bet. It has a great teaming backing it with a good open-source so that people can mine it. The market cap is under constant watch with only a 100 million going to be mined and the company itself holding half of that. The publicity on the coin is already huge, but still has huge room for improvement. Investing in this coin would be a safe place to increase your money. It is very safe to consider that Ripple is at turning point in virtual currency. It has huge potential to surpass Etheruem as the second highest rated. Ripple will change they way people look at virtual currency in years to come.

Bitcoin vs. Ethereum

Bitcoin has been around for a while is considered the grandfather of cryptocurrency. It is very well known as many other coins have a tendency to follow with it's gains and losses. If Bitcoin were to increase 5%, it is highly likely that other coins also find there way into the green growth. Ethereum has constantly been in the shadows of Bitcoin ever since it was first launched in 2015, which is six years after Bitcoin's launch. However, it is starting to separate it self from Bitcoin more and more everyday. Currently Ethereum is trading at around $910USD, which is 1/10 of a Bitcoin.

There are a couple differences between the two coins. One pretty big one is that it is much faster than the now outdated Bitcoin. Where Bitcoin transactions can take up to 10 minutes to clear, Ethereum seeks to have that done in just seconds. Also it is much cheaper to send Ethereum than it is Bitcoin. Personally being invested myself, I have had to send both Bitcoin and Ethereum many times. The first time I sent Bitcoin it took about 8 minutes to process. The worse part it also cost me about $10USD to send the value of about $125USD. Ethereum on the other had was a much better transfer. It took only about 10 seconds and only cost me $0.40. After that experience it made me learn the hard
way that Ethereum had an advantage in that sense.

Ethereum is an advancement based on the principle of blockchain that supports Bitcoin but with a purpose that does not come close to competing. Ethereum is a cryptocurrency which includes a programmable smart contract platform. Nicknamed the "next generation" or "Bitcoin 2.0", you will surely hear about it for years to come. All transactions in both are kept in public ledgers also known as the blockchain. Ethereum with it smart contracts, makes it so people can get paid regularly after completing a certain task. Similar to wages in a job.

The way to attain these coins is exactly the same. A computer uses it power to focus on confirming transactions that go onto the ledger. They difference is that Bitcoin is already at 2/3 of it marketcap. Meaning that once it is fully mined, no more can be attained. Ethereum in the other hand has been available for quite some time now and has only 1/2 of the marketcap for it mined. Like many things, the rarer, the more valuable. Prices are calculated to increase for both as they continue to be mine.