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Summary: Everyone knows that when you give your assets to someone else, they always keep them safe. If this is true for individuals, it is certainly true for businesses.
Custodians always tell the truth and manage funds properly. They won't have any interest in taking the assets as an exchange operator would. Auditors tell the truth and can't be misled. That's because organizations that are regulated are incapable of lying and don't make mistakes.
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First, some background. Here is a summary of how custodians make us more secure:
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Previously, we might give Alice our crypto assets to hold. There were risks:

• Alice might take the assets and disappear.
• Alice might spend the assets and pretend that she still has them (fractional model).
• Alice might store the assets insecurely and they'll get stolen.
• Alice might give the assets to someone else by mistake or by force.
• Alice might lose access to the assets.

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But "no worries", Alice has a custodian named Bob. Bob is dressed in a nice suit. He knows some politicians. And he drives a Porsche. "So you have nothing to worry about!". And look at all the benefits we get:

• Alice can't take the assets and disappear (unless she asks Bob or never gives them to Bob).
• Alice can't spend the assets and pretend that she still has them. (Unless she didn't give them to Bob or asks him for them.)
• Alice can't store the assets insecurely so they get stolen. (After all - she doesn't have any control over the withdrawal process from any of Bob's systems, right?)
• Alice can't give the assets to someone else by mistake or by force. (Bob will stop her, right Bob?)
• Alice can't lose access to the funds. (She'll always be present, sane, and remember all secrets, right?)

See - all problems are solved! All we have to worry about now is:

• Bob might take the assets and disappear.
• Bob might spend the assets and pretend that he still has them (fractional model).
• Bob might store the assets insecurely and they'll get stolen.
• Bob might give the assets to someone else by mistake or by force.
• Bob might lose access to the assets.

It's pretty simple. Before we had to trust Alice. Now we only have to trust Alice, Bob, and all the ways in which they communicate. Just think of how much more secure we are!
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"On top of that", Bob assures us, "we're using a special wallet structure". Bob shows Alice a diagram. "We've broken the balance up and store it in lots of smaller wallets. That way", he assures her, "a thief can't take it all at once". And he points to a historic case where a large sum was taken "because it was stored in a single wallet... how stupid".
"Very early on, we used to have all the crypto in one wallet", he said, "and then one Christmas a hacker came and took it all. We call him the Grinch. Now we individually wrap each crypto and stick it under a binary search tree. The Grinch has never been back since."
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"As well", Bob continues, "even if someone were to get in, we've got insurance. It covers all thefts and even coercion, collusion, and misplaced keys - only subject to the policy terms and conditions." And with that, he pulls out a phone-book sized contract and slams it on the desk with a thud. "Yep", he continues, "we're paying top dollar for one of the best policies in the country!"
"Can I read it?' Alice asks. "Sure," Bob says, "just as soon as our legal team is done with it. They're almost through the first chapter." He pauses, then continues. "And can you believe that sales guy Mike? He has the same year Porsche as me. I mean, what are the odds?"
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"Do you use multi-sig?", Alice asks. "Absolutely!" Bob replies. "All our engineers are fully trained in multi-sig. Whenever we want to set up a new wallet, we generate 2 separate keys in an air-gapped process and store them in this proprietary system here. Look, it even requires the biometric signature from one of our team members to initiate any withdrawal." He demonstrates by pressing his thumb into the display. "We use a third-party cloud validation API to match the thumbprint and authorize each withdrawal. The keys are also backed up daily to an off-site third-party."
"Wow that's really impressive," Alice says, "but what if we need access for a withdrawal outside of office hours?" "Well that's no issue", Bob says, "just send us an email, call, or text message and we always have someone on staff to help out. Just another part of our strong commitment to all our customers!"
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"What about Proof of Reserve?", Alice asks. "Of course", Bob replies, "though rather than publish any blockchain addresses or signed transaction, for privacy we just do a SHA256 refactoring of the inverse hash modulus for each UTXO nonce and combine the smart contract coefficient consensus in our hyperledger lightning node. But it's really simple to use." He pushes a button and a large green checkmark appears on a screen. "See - the algorithm ran through and reserves are proven."
"Wow", Alice says, "you really know your stuff! And that is easy to use! What about fiat balances?" "Yeah, we have an auditor too", Bob replies, "Been using him for a long time so we have quite a strong relationship going! We have special books we give him every year and he's very efficient! Checks the fiat, crypto, and everything all at once!"
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"We used to have a nice offline multi-sig setup we've been using without issue for the past 5 years, but I think we'll move all our funds over to your facility," Alice says. "Awesome", Bob replies, "Thanks so much! This is perfect timing too - my Porsche got a dent on it this morning. We have the paperwork right over here." "Great!", Alice replies.
And with that, Alice gets out her pen and Bob gets the contract. "Don't worry", he says, "you can take your crypto-assets back anytime you like - just subject to our cancellation policy. Our annual management fees are also super low and we don't adjust them often".
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How many holes have to exist for your funds to get stolen?
Just one.
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Why are we taking a powerful offline multi-sig setup, widely used globally in hundreds of different/lacking regulatory environments with 0 breaches to date, and circumventing it by a demonstrably weak third party layer? And paying a great expense to do so?
If you go through the list of breaches in the past 2 years to highly credible organizations, you go through the list of major corporate frauds (only the ones we know about), you go through the list of all the times platforms have lost funds, you go through the list of times and ways that people have lost their crypto from identity theft, hot wallet exploits, extortion, etc... and then you go through this custodian with a fine-tooth comb and truly believe they have value to add far beyond what you could, sticking your funds in a wallet (or set of wallets) they control exclusively is the absolute worst possible way to take advantage of that security.
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The best way to add security for crypto-assets is to make a stronger multi-sig. With one custodian, what you are doing is giving them your cryptocurrency and hoping they're honest, competent, and flawlessly secure. It's no different than storing it on a really secure exchange. Maybe the insurance will cover you. Didn't work for Bitpay in 2015. Didn't work for Yapizon in 2017. Insurance has never paid a claim in the entire history of cryptocurrency. But maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe your exact scenario will buck the trend and be what they're willing to cover. After the large deductible and hopefully without a long and expensive court battle.
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And you want to advertise this increase in risk, the lapse of judgement, an accident waiting to happen, as though it's some kind of benefit to customers ("Free institutional-grade storage for your digital assets.")? And then some people are writing to the OSC that custodians should be mandatory for all funds on every exchange platform? That this somehow will make Canadians as a whole more secure or better protected compared with standard air-gapped multi-sig? On what planet?
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Most of the problems in Canada stemmed from one thing - a lack of transparency. If Canadians had known what a joke Quadriga was - it wouldn't have grown to lose $400m from hard-working Canadians from coast to coast to coast. And Gerald Cotten would be in jail, not wherever he is now (at best, rotting peacefully). EZ-BTC and mister Dave Smilie would have been a tiny little scam to his friends, not a multi-million dollar fraud. Einstein would have got their act together or been shut down BEFORE losing millions and millions more in people's funds generously donated to criminals. MapleChange wouldn't have even been a thing. And maybe we'd know a little more about CoinTradeNewNote - like how much was lost in there. Almost all of the major losses with cryptocurrency exchanges involve deception with unbacked funds.
So it's great to see transparency reports from BitBuy and ShakePay where someone independently verified the backing. The only thing we don't have is:

• ANY CERTAINTY BALANCES WEREN'T EXCLUDED. Quadriga's largest account was $70m. 80% of funds are in 20% of accounts (Pareto principle). All it takes is excluding a few really large accounts - and nobody's the wiser. A fractional platform can easily pass any audit this way.
• ANY VISIBILITY WHATSOEVER INTO THE CUSTODIANS. BitBuy put out their report before moving all the funds to their custodian and ShakePay apparently can't even tell us who the custodian is. That's pretty important considering that basically all of the funds are now stored there.
• ANY IDEA ABOUT THE OTHER EXCHANGES. In order for this to be effective, it has to be the norm. It needs to be "unusual" not to know. If obscurity is the norm, then it's super easy for people like Gerald Cotten and Dave Smilie to blend right in.

It's not complicated to validate cryptocurrency assets. They need to exist, they need to be spendable, and they need to cover the total balances. There are plenty of credible people and firms across the country that have the capacity to reasonably perform this validation. Having more frequent checks by different, independent, parties who publish transparent reports is far more valuable than an annual check by a single "more credible/official" party who does the exact same basic checks and may or may not publish anything. Here's an example set of requirements that could be mandated:

• First report within 1 month of launching, another within 3 months, and further reports at minimum every 6 months thereafter.
• No auditor can be repeated within a 12 month period.
• All reports must be public, identifying the auditor and the full methodology used.
• All auditors must be independent of the firm being audited with no conflict of interest.
• Reports must include the percentage of each asset backed, and how it's backed.
• The auditor publishes a hash list, which lists a hash of each customer's information and balances that were included. Hash is one-way encryption so privacy is fully preserved. Every customer can use this to have 100% confidence they were included.
• If we want more extensive requirements on audits, these should scale upward based on the total assets at risk on the platform, and whether the platform has loaned their assets out.

There are ways to structure audits such that neither crypto assets nor customer information are ever put at risk, and both can still be properly validated and publicly verifiable. There are also ways to structure audits such that they are completely reasonable for small platforms and don't inhibit innovation in any way. By making the process as reasonable as possible, we can completely eliminate any reason/excuse that an honest platform would have for not being audited. That is arguable far more important than any incremental improvement we might get from mandating "the best of the best" accountants. Right now we have nothing mandated and tons of Canadians using offshore exchanges with no oversight whatsoever.
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Transparency does not prove crypto assets are safe. CoinTradeNewNote, Flexcoin ($600k), and Canadian Bitcoins ($100k) are examples where crypto-assets were breached from platforms in Canada. All of them were online wallets and used no multi-sig as far as any records show. This is consistent with what we see globally - air-gapped multi-sig wallets have an impeccable record, while other schemes tend to suffer breach after breach. We don't actually know how much CoinTrader lost because there was no visibility. Rather than publishing details of what happened, the co-founder of CoinTrader silently moved on to found another platform - the "most trusted way to buy and sell crypto" - a site that has no information whatsoever (that I could find) on the storage practices and a FAQ advising that “[t]rading cryptocurrency is completely safe” and that having your own wallet is “entirely up to you! You can certainly keep cryptocurrency, or fiat, or both, on the app.” Doesn't sound like much was learned here, which is really sad to see.
It's not that complicated or unreasonable to set up a proper hardware wallet. Multi-sig can be learned in a single course. Something the equivalent complexity of a driver's license test could prevent all the cold storage exploits we've seen to date - even globally. Platform operators have a key advantage in detecting and preventing fraud - they know their customers far better than any custodian ever would. The best job that custodians can do is to find high integrity individuals and train them to form even better wallet signatories. Rather than mandating that all platforms expose themselves to arbitrary third party risks, regulations should center around ensuring that all signatories are background-checked, properly trained, and using proper procedures. We also need to make sure that signatories are empowered with rights and responsibilities to reject and report fraud. They need to know that they can safely challenge and delay a transaction - even if it turns out they made a mistake. We need to have an environment where mistakes are brought to the surface and dealt with. Not one where firms and people feel the need to hide what happened. In addition to a knowledge-based test, an auditor can privately interview each signatory to make sure they're not in coercive situations, and we should make sure they can freely and anonymously report any issues without threat of retaliation.
A proper multi-sig has each signature held by a separate person and is governed by policies and mutual decisions instead of a hierarchy. It includes at least one redundant signature. For best results, 3of4, 3of5, 3of6, 4of5, 4of6, 4of7, 5of6, or 5of7.
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History has demonstrated over and over again the risk of hot wallets even to highly credible organizations. Nonetheless, many platforms have hot wallets for convenience. While such losses are generally compensated by platforms without issue (for example Poloniex, Bitstamp, Bitfinex, Gatecoin, Coincheck, Bithumb, Zaif, CoinBene, Binance, Bitrue, Bitpoint, Upbit, VinDAX, and now KuCoin), the public tends to focus more on cases that didn't end well. Regardless of what systems are employed, there is always some level of risk. For that reason, most members of the public would prefer to see third party insurance.
Rather than trying to convince third party profit-seekers to provide comprehensive insurance and then relying on an expensive and slow legal system to enforce against whatever legal loopholes they manage to find each and every time something goes wrong, insurance could be run through multiple exchange operators and regulators, with the shared interest of having a reputable industry, keeping costs down, and taking care of Canadians. For example, a 4 of 7 multi-sig insurance fund held between 5 independent exchange operators and 2 regulatory bodies. All Canadian exchanges could pay premiums at a set rate based on their needed coverage, with a higher price paid for hot wallet coverage (anything not an air-gapped multi-sig cold wallet). Such a model would be much cheaper to manage, offer better coverage, and be much more reliable to payout when needed. The kind of coverage you could have under this model is unheard of. You could even create something like the CDIC to protect Canadians who get their trading accounts hacked if they can sufficiently prove the loss is legitimate. In cases of fraud, gross negligence, or insolvency, the fund can be used to pay affected users directly (utilizing the last transparent balance report in the worst case), something which private insurance would never touch. While it's recommended to have official policies for coverage, a model where members vote would fully cover edge cases. (Could be similar to the Supreme Court where justices vote based on case law.)
Such a model could fully protect all Canadians across all platforms. You can have a fiat coverage governed by legal agreements, and crypto-asset coverage governed by both multi-sig and legal agreements. It could be practical, affordable, and inclusive.
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Now, we are at a crossroads. We can happily give up our freedom, our innovation, and our money. We can pay hefty expenses to auditors, lawyers, and regulators year after year (and make no mistake - this cost will grow to many millions or even billions as the industry grows - and it will be borne by all Canadians on every platform because platforms are not going to eat up these costs at a loss). We can make it nearly impossible for any new platform to enter the marketplace, forcing Canadians to use the same stagnant platforms year after year. We can centralize and consolidate the entire industry into 2 or 3 big players and have everyone else fail (possibly to heavy losses of users of those platforms). And when a flawed security model doesn't work and gets breached, we can make it even more complicated with even more people in suits making big money doing the job that blockchain was supposed to do in the first place. We can build a system which is so intertwined and dependent on big government, traditional finance, and central bankers that it's future depends entirely on that of the fiat system, of fractional banking, and of government bail-outs. If we choose this path, as history has shown us over and over again, we can not go back, save for revolution. Our children and grandchildren will still be paying the consequences of what we decided today.
Or, we can find solutions that work. We can maintain an open and innovative environment while making the adjustments we need to make to fully protect Canadian investors and cryptocurrency users, giving easy and affordable access to cryptocurrency for all Canadians on the platform of their choice, and creating an environment in which entrepreneurs and problem solvers can bring those solutions forward easily. None of the above precludes innovation in any way, or adds any unreasonable cost - and these three policies would demonstrably eliminate or resolve all 109 historic cases as studied here - that's every single case researched so far going back to 2011. It includes every loss that was studied so far not just in Canada but globally as well.
Unfortunately, finding answers is the least challenging part. Far more challenging is to get platform operators and regulators to agree on anything. My last post got no response whatsoever, and while the OSC has told me they're happy for industry feedback, I believe my opinion alone is fairly meaningless. This takes the whole community working together to solve. So please let me know your thoughts. Please take the time to upvote and share this with people. Please - let's get this solved and not leave it up to other people to do.
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Facts/background/sources (skip if you like):

• The inspiration for the paragraph about splitting wallets was an actual quote from a Canadian company providing custodial services in response to the OSC consultation paper: "We believe that it will be in the in best interests of investors to prohibit pooled crypto assets or ‘floats’. Most Platforms pool assets, citing reasons of practicality and expense. The recent hack of the world’s largest Platform – Binance – demonstrates the vulnerability of participants’ assets when such concessions are made. In this instance, the Platform’s entire hot wallet of Bitcoins, worth over $40 million, was stolen, facilitated in part by the pooling of client crypto assets." "the maintenance of participants (and Platform) crypto assets across multiple wallets distributes the related risk and responsibility of security - reducing the amount of insurance coverage required and making insurance coverage more readily obtainable". For the record, their reply also said nothing whatsoever about multi-sig or offline storage.
• In addition to the fact that the $40m hack represented only one "hot wallet" of Binance, and they actually had the vast majority of assets in other wallets (including mostly cold wallets), multiple real cases have clearly demonstrated that risk is still present with multiple wallets. Bitfinex, VinDAX, Bithumb, Altsbit, BitPoint, Cryptopia, and just recently KuCoin all had multiple wallets breached all at the same time, and may represent a significantly larger impact on customers than the Binance breach which was fully covered by Binance. To represent that simply having multiple separate wallets under the same security scheme is a comprehensive way to reduce risk is just not true.
• Private insurance has historically never covered a single loss in the cryptocurrency space (at least, not one that I was able to find), and there are notable cases where massive losses were not covered by insurance. Bitpay in 2015 and Yapizon in 2017 both had insurance policies that didn't pay out during the breach, even after a lengthly court process. The same insurance that ShakePay is presently using (and announced to much fanfare) was describe by their CEO himself as covering “physical theft of the media where the private keys are held,” which is something that has never historically happened. As was said with regard to the same policy in 2018 - “I don’t find it surprising that Lloyd’s is in this space,” said Johnson, adding that to his mind the challenge for everybody is figuring out how to structure these policies so that they are actually protective. “You can create an insurance policy that protects no one – you know there are so many caveats to the policy that it’s not super protective.”
• The most profitable policy for a private insurance company is one with the most expensive premiums that they never have to pay a claim on. They have no inherent incentive to take care of people who lost funds. It's "cheaper" to take the reputational hit and fight the claim in court. The more money at stake, the more the insurance provider is incentivized to avoid payout. They're not going to insure the assets unless they have reasonable certainty to make a profit by doing so, and they're not going to pay out a massive sum unless it's legally forced. Private insurance is always structured to be maximally profitable to the insurance provider.
• The circumvention of multi-sig was a key factor in the massive Bitfinex hack of over $60m of bitcoin, which today still sits being slowly used and is worth over $3b. While Bitfinex used a qualified custodian Bitgo, which was and still is active and one of the industry leaders of custodians, and they set up 2 of 3 multi-sig wallets, the entire system was routed through Bitfinex, such that Bitfinex customers could initiate the withdrawals in a "hot" fashion. This feature was also a hit with the hacker. The multi-sig was fully circumvented.
• Bitpay in 2015 was another example of a breach that stole 5,000 bitcoins. This happened not through the exploit of any system in Bitpay, but because the CEO of a company they worked with got their computer hacked and the hackers were able to request multiple bitcoin purchases, which Bitpay honoured because they came from the customer's computer legitimately. Impersonation is a very common tactic used by fraudsters, and methods get more extreme all the time.
• A notable case in Canada was the Canadian Bitcoins exploit. Funds were stored on a server in a Rogers Data Center, and the attendee was successfully convinced to reboot the server "in safe mode" with a simple phone call, thus bypassing the extensive security and enabling the theft.
• Over $200m has been stolen impersonating users of cryptocurrency platforms by one group alone. Here's a list of 10 social engineering attacks against corporate companies. Here's an even larger case. While verification methods are improving, so are methods of identity theft and social engineering. We now have sim swapping and deep fake videos to contend with. Hackers have massive database sets of personal information they can utilize. As the sums at stake increase, so to will the level of effort criminals are willing to undertake. Obscurity for an insecure system will only postpone an attack until the "jackpot" is large enough.
• The very nature of custodians circumvents multi-sig. This is because custodians are not just having to secure the assets against some sort of physical breach but against any form of social engineering, modification of orders, fraudulent withdrawal attempts, etc... If the security practices of signatories in a multi-sig arrangement are such that the breach risk of one signatory is 1 in 100, the requirement of 3 independent signatures makes the risk of theft 1 in 1,000,000. Since hackers tend to exploit the weakest link, a comparable custodian has to make the entry and exit points of their platform 10,000 times more secure than one of those signatories to provide equivalent protection. And if the signatories beef up their security by only 10x, the risk is now 1 in 1,000,000,000. The custodian has to be 1,000,000 times more secure. The larger and more complex a system is, the more potential vulnerabilities exist in it, and the fewer people can understand how the system works when performing upgrades. Even if a system is completely secure today, one has to also consider how that system might evolve over time or work with different members.
• By contrast, offline multi-signature solutions have an extremely solid record, and in the entire history of cryptocurrency exchange incidents which I've studied (listed here), there has only been one incident (796 exchange in 2015) involving an offline multi-signature wallet. It happened because the customer's bitcoin address was modified by hackers, and the amount that was stolen ($230k) was immediately covered by the exchange operators. Basically, the platform operators were tricked into sending a legitimate withdrawal request to the wrong address because hackers exploited their platform to change that address. Such an issue would not be prevented in any way by the use of a custodian, as that custodian has no oversight whatsoever to the exchange platform. It's practical for all exchange operators to test large withdrawal transactions as a general policy, regardless of what model is used, and general best practice is to diagnose and fix such an exploit as soon as it occurs.
• False promises on the backing of funds played a huge role in the downfall of Quadriga, and it's been exposed over and over again (MyCoin, PlusToken, Bitsane, Bitmarket, EZBTC, IDAX). Even today, customers have extremely limited certainty on whether their funds in exchanges are actually being backed or how they're being backed. While this issue is not unique to cryptocurrency exchanges, the complexity of the technology and the lack of any regulation or standards makes problems more widespread, and there is no "central bank" to come to the rescue as in the 2008 financial crisis or during the great depression when "9,000 banks failed".
• In addition to fraudulent operations, the industry is full of cases where operators have suffered breaches and not reported them. Most recently, Einstein was the largest case in Canada, where ongoing breaches and fraud were perpetrated against the platform for multiple years and nobody found out until the platform collapsed completely. While fraud and breaches suck to deal with, they suck even more when not dealt with. Lack of visibility played a role in the largest downfalls of Mt. Gox, Cryptsy, and Bitgrail. In some cases, platforms are alleged to have suffered a hack and keep operating without admitting it at all, such as CoinBene.
• It surprises some to learn that a cryptographic solution has already existed since 2013, and gained widespread support in 2014 after Mt. Gox. Proof of Reserves is a full cryptographic proof that allows any customer using an exchange to have complete certainty that their crypto-assets are fully backed by the platform in real-time. This is accomplished by proving that assets exist on the blockchain, are spendable, and fully cover customer deposits. It does not prove safety of assets or backing of fiat assets.
  • If we didn't care about privacy at all, a platform could publish their wallet addresses, sign a partial transaction, and put the full list of customer information and balances out publicly. Customers can each check that they are on the list, that the balances are accurate, that the total adds up, and that it's backed and spendable on the blockchain. Platforms who exclude any customer take a risk because that customer can easily check and see they were excluded. So together with all customers checking, this forms a full proof of backing of all crypto assets.
  • However, obviously customers care about their private information being published. Therefore, a hash of the information can be provided instead. Hash is one-way encryption. The hash allows the customer to validate inclusion (by hashing their own known information), while anyone looking at the list of hashes cannot determine the private information of any other user. All other parts of the scheme remain fully intact. A model like this is in use on the exchange CoinFloor in the UK.
  • A Merkle tree can provide even greater privacy. Instead of a list of balances, the balances are arranged into a binary tree. A customer starts from their node, and works their way to the top of the tree. For example, they know they have 5 BTC, they plus 1 other customer hold 7 BTC, they plus 2-3 other customers hold 17 BTC, etc... until they reach the root where all the BTC are represented. Thus, there is no way to find the balances of other individual customers aside from one unidentified customer in this case.
• Proposals such as this had the backing of leaders in the community including Nic Carter, Greg Maxwell, and Zak Wilcox. Substantial and significant effort started back in 2013, with massive popularity in 2014. But what became of that effort? Very little. Exchange operators continue to refuse to give visibility. Despite the fact this information can often be obtained through trivial blockchain analysis, no Canadian platform has ever provided any wallet addresses publicly. As described by the CEO of Newton "For us to implement some kind of realtime Proof of Reserves solution, which I'm not opposed to, it would have to ... Preserve our users' privacy, as well as our own. Some kind of zero-knowledge proof". Kraken describes here in more detail why they haven't implemented such a scheme. According to professor Eli Ben-Sasson, when he spoke with exchanges, none were interested in implementing Proof of Reserves.
• And yet, Kraken's places their reasoning on a page called "Proof of Reserves". More recently, both BitBuy and ShakePay have released reports titled "Proof of Reserves and Security Audit". Both reports contain disclaimers against being audits. Both reports trust the customer list provided by the platform, leaving the open possibility that multiple large accounts could have been excluded from the process. Proof of Reserves is a blockchain validation where customers see the wallets on the blockchain. The report from Kraken is 5 years old, but they leave it described as though it was just done a few weeks ago. And look at what they expect customers to do for validation. When firms represent something being "Proof of Reserve" when it's not, this is like a farmer growing fruit with pesticides and selling it in a farmers market as organic produce - except that these are people's hard-earned life savings at risk here. Platforms are misrepresenting the level of visibility in place and deceiving the public by their misuse of this term. They haven't proven anything.
• Fraud isn't a problem that is unique to cryptocurrency. Fraud happens all the time. Enron, WorldCom, Nortel, Bear Stearns, Wells Fargo, Moser Baer, Wirecard, Bre-X, and Nicola are just some of the cases where frauds became large enough to become a big deal (and there are so many countless others). These all happened on 100% reversible assets despite regulations being in place. In many of these cases, the problems happened due to the over-complexity of the financial instruments. For example, Enron had "complex financial statements [which] were confusing to shareholders and analysts", creating "off-balance-sheet vehicles, complex financing structures, and deals so bewildering that few people could understand them". In cryptocurrency, we are often combining complex financial products with complex technologies and verification processes. We are naïve if we think problems like this won't happen. It is awkward and uncomfortable for many people to admit that they don't know how something works. If we want "money of the people" to work, the solutions have to be simple enough that "the people" can understand them, not so confusing that financial professionals and technology experts struggle to use or understand them.
• For those who question the extent to which an organization can fool their way into a security consultancy role, HB Gary should be a great example to look at. Prior to trying to out anonymous, HB Gary was being actively hired by multiple US government agencies and others in the private sector (with glowing testimonials). The published articles and hosted professional security conferences. One should also look at this list of data breaches from the past 2 years. Many of them are large corporations, government entities, and technology companies. These are the ones we know about. Undoubtedly, there are many more that we do not know about. If HB Gary hadn't been "outted" by anonymous, would we have known they were insecure? If the same breach had happened outside of the public spotlight, would it even have been reported? Or would HB Gary have just deleted the Twitter posts, brought their site back up, done a couple patches, and kept on operating as though nothing had happened?
• In the case of Quadriga, the facts are clear. Despite past experience with platforms such as MapleChange in Canada and others around the world, no guidance or even the most basic of a framework was put in place by regulators. By not clarifying any sort of legal framework, regulators enabled a situation where a platform could be run by former criminal Mike Dhanini/Omar Patryn, and where funds could be held fully unchecked by one person. At the same time, the lack of regulation deterred legitimate entities from running competing platforms and Quadriga was granted a money services business license for multiple years of operation, which gave the firm the appearance of legitimacy. Regulators did little to protect Canadians despite Quadriga failing to file taxes from 2016 onward. The entire administrative team had resigned and this was public knowledge. Many people had suspicions of what was going on, including Ryan Mueller, who forwarded complaints to the authorities. These were ignored, giving Gerald Cotten the opportunity to escape without justice.
• There are multiple issues with the SOC II model including the prohibitive cost (you have to find a third party accounting firm and the prices are not even listed publicly on any sites), the requirement of operating for a year (impossible for new platforms), and lack of any public visibility (SOC II are private reports that aren't shared outside the people in suits).
• Securities frameworks are expensive. Sarbanes-Oxley is estimated to cost $5.1 million USD/yr for the average Fortune 500 company in the United States. Since "Fortune 500" represents the top 500 companies, that means well over $2.55 billion USD (~$3.4 billion CAD) is going to people in suits. Isn't the problem of trust and verification the exact problem that the blockchain is supposed to solve?
• To use Quadriga as justification for why custodians or SOC II or other advanced schemes are needed for platforms is rather silly, when any framework or visibility at all, or even the most basic of storage policies, would have prevented the whole thing. It's just an embarrassment.
• We are now seeing regulators take strong action. CoinSquare in Canada with multi-million dollar fines. BitMex from the US, criminal charges and arrests. OkEx, with full disregard of withdrawals and no communication. Who's next?
• We have a unique window today where we can solve these problems, and not permanently destroy innovation with unreasonable expectations, but we need to act quickly. This is a unique historic time that will never come again.

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Thoughts?

This document was originally written for my dad, an intelligent guy who was utterly baffled about the cryptocurrency world. The aim was to be extremely concise, giving a broad overview of the industry and some popular coins while staying non-technical. For many of you there will be nothing new here, but recognize that you are in the 0.001% of the population heavily into crypto technology.
I've reproduced it for Reddit below, or you can find the original post here on my website. Download the PDF there or hit the direct link: .PDF version.
Donations happily accepted:

ETH: 0x4e03Bf5CCE3eec4Ddae4d3d6aAD46ca4f198AeD6 BTC: 1GqWMZRRygRJJWYYTWHkAVoRcgyQHjgBMZ XMR: 42Y1S1KBoPk381kc7hA68zaiC78BxMoCADjLrFcTdWiE7ejhZc49s1t9i7P2EmTnHsLDiKoSUiogCbLVHXRJxjrCT4WG8ic XRB: xrb_1bpzh745s9kzk8ymfnks3jtdi65ayumdstokzd4yw4ohu3fopxmiocjcntcu 

Background

This document is purely informational. At the time of writing there are over 1000 cryptocurrencies (“cryptos”) in a highly volatile, high risk market. Many of the smaller “altcoins” require significant technical knowledge to store and transact safely. I advise you to carefully scrutinize each crypto’s flavor of blockchain, potential utility, team of developers, and guiding philosophy, before making any investment [1] decisions. With that out of the way, what follows are brief, extremely high-level summaries of some cryptos which have my interest, listed in current market cap order. But first, some info:
Each crypto is a different implementation of a blockchain network. Originally developed as decentralized digital cash, these technologies have evolved into much broader platforms, powering the future of decentralized applications across every industry in the global economy. Without getting into the weeds, [2] most cryptos work on similar principles:
Distributed Ledgers Each node on a blockchain network has a copy of every transaction, which enables a network of trust that eliminates fraud. [3]
Decentralized “Miners” comprise the infrastructure of a blockchain network. [4] They are monetarily incentivized to add computing power to the network, simultaneously securing and processing each transaction. [5]
Peer-to-peer Cryptos act like digital cash-- they require no third party to transact and are relatively untraceable. Unlike cash, you can back them up.
Global Transactions are processed cheaply and instantly, anywhere on Earth. Using cryptos, an African peasant and a San Francisco engineer have the same access to capital, markets, and network services.
Secure Blockchains are predicated on the same cryptographic technology that secures your sensitive data and government secrets. They have passed seven years of real-world penetration testing with no failures. [6]

Bitcoin (BTC)

The first cryptocurrency. As with first movers in any technology, there are associated pros and cons. Bitcoin has by far the strongest brand recognition and deepest market penetration, and it is the only crypto which can be used directly as a currency at over 100,000 physical and web stores around the world. In Venezuela and Zimbabwe, where geopolitical events have created hyperinflation in the centralized fiat currency, citizens have moved to Bitcoin as a de facto transaction standard. [7]
However, Bitcoin unveiled a number of issues that have been solved by subsequent cryptos. It is experiencing significant scaling issues, resulting in high fees and long confirmation times. The argument over potential solutions created a rift in the Bitcoin developer community, who “forked” the network into two separate blockchains amidst drama and politicking in October 2017. Potential solutions to these issues abound, with some already in place, and others nearing deployment.
Bitcoin currently has the highest market cap, and since it is easy to buy with fiat currency, the price of many smaller cryptos (“altcoins”) are loosely pegged to its price. This will change in the coming year(s).

Ethereum (ETH)

Where Bitcoin is a currency, Ethereum is a platform, designed as a foundational protocol on which to develop decentralized applications (“Dapps”). Anyone can write code and deploy their program on the global network for extremely low fees. Just like Twitter wouldn’t exist without the open platform of the internet, the next world-changing Dapp can’t exist without Ethereum.
Current Dapps include a global market for idle computing power and storage, peer-to-peer real estate transactions (no trusted third party for escrow), identity networks for governments and corporations (think digital Social Security card), and monetization strategies for the internet which replace advertising. Think back 10 years to the advent of smartphones, and then to our culture today-- Ethereum could have a similar network effect on humanity.
Ethereum is currently the #2 market cap crypto below Bitcoin, and many believe it will surpass it in 2018. It has a large, active group of developers working to solve scaling issues, [8] maintain security, and create entirely new programming conventions. If successful, platforms like Ethereum may well be the foundation of the decentralized internet of the future.

Ripple (XRP)

Ripple is significantly more centralized than most crypto networks, designed as a backbone for the global banking and financial technology (“fintech”) industries. It is a network for exchanging between fiat currencies and other asset classes instantly and cheaply, especially when transacting cross-border and between separate institutions. It uses large banks and remittance companies as “anchors” to allow trading between any asset on the network, and big names like Bank of America, American Express, RBC, and UBS are partners. The utility of this network is global and massive in scale.
It is extremely important to note that not all cryptos have the same number of tokens. Ripple has 100 Billion tokens compared to Bitcoin’s 21 Million. Do not directly compare price between cryptos. XRP will likely never reach $1k, [9] but the price will rise commensurate with its utility as a financial tool.
In some sense, Ripple is anathema to the original philosophical vision of this technology space. And while I agree with the cyberpunk notion of decentralized currencies, separation of money and state, this is the natural progression of the crypto world. The internet was an incredible decentralized wild west of Usenet groups and listservs before Eternal September and the dot-com boom, but its maturation affected every part of global society.

Cardano (ADA)

Cardano’s main claim to fame: it is the only crypto developed using academic methodologies by a global collective of engineers and researchers, built on a foundation of industry-leading, peer-reviewed cryptographic research. The network was designed from first-principles to allow scalability, system upgrades, and to balance the privacy of its users with the security needs of regulators.
One part of this ecosystem is the Cardano Foundation, a Swiss non-profit founded to work proactively with governments and regulatory bodies to institute legal frameworks around the crypto industry. Detractors of Cardano claim that it doesn’t do anything innovative, but supporters see the academic backing and focus on regulation development as uniquely valuable.

Stellar Lumens (XLM)

Stellar Lumens and Ripple were founded by the same person. They initially shared the same code, but today the two are distinct in their technical back-end as well as their guiding philosophy and development goals. Ripple is closed-source, for-profit, deflationary, and intended for use by large financial institutions. Stellar is open-source, non-profit, inflationary, and intended to promote international wealth distribution. As such, they are not direct competitors.
IBM is a major partner to Stellar. Their network is already processing live transactions in 12 currency corridors across the South Pacific, with plans to process 60% of all cross-border payments in the South Pacific’s retail foreign exchange corridor by Q2 2018.
Beyond its utility as a financial tool, the Stellar network may become a competitor to Ethereum as a platform for application development and Initial Coin Offerings (“ICOs”). The theoretical maximum throughput for the network is higher, and it takes less computational power to run. The Stellar development team is highly active, has written extensive documentation for third-party developers, and has an impressive list of advisors, including Patrick Collison (Stripe), Sam Altman (Y Combinator), and other giants in the software development community.

Iota (IOT)

Iota was developed as the infrastructure backbone for the Internet of Things (IoT), sometimes called the machine economy. As the world of inanimate objects is networked together, their need to communicate grows exponentially. Fridges, thermostats, self-driving cars, printers, planes, and industrial sensors all need a secure protocol with which to transact information.
Iota uses a “Tangle” instead of a traditional blockchain, and this is the main innovation driving the crypto’s value. Each device that sends a transaction confirms two other transactions in the Tanlge. This removes the need for miners, and enables unique features like zero fees and infinite scalability. The supply of tokens is fixed forever at 2.8*10^15, a staggeringly large number (almost three thousand trillion), and the price you see reported is technically “MIOT”, or the price for a million tokens.

Monero (XMR)

The most successful privacy-focused cryptocurrency. In Bitcoin and most other cryptos, anyone can examine the public ledger and trace specific coins through the network. If your identity can be attached to a public address on that network, an accurate picture of your transaction history can be built-- who, what, and when. Monero builds anonymity into the system using strong cryptographic principles, which makes it functionally impossible to trace coins, [10] attach names to wallets, or extract metadata from transactions. The development team actively publishes in the cryptography research community.
Anonymous transactions are not new-- we call it cash. Only in the past two decades has anonymity grown scarce in the first-world with the rise of credit cards and ubiquitous digital records. Personal data is becoming the most valuable resource on Earth, and there are many legitimate reasons for law-abiding citizens to want digital privacy, but it is true that with anonymity comes bad actors-- Monero is the currency of choice for the majority of black market (“darknet”) transactions. Similarly, US Dollars are the main vehicle for the $320B annual drug trade. An investment here should be based on the underlying cryptographic research and technology behind this coin, as well as competitors like Zcash. [11]

RaiBlocks (XRB)

Zero fees and instantaneous transfer make RaiBlocks extremely attractive for exchange of value, in many senses outperforming Bitcoin at its original intended purpose. This crypto has seen an explosion in price and exposure over the past month, and it may become the network of choice for transferring value within and between crypto exchanges.
Just in the first week of 2018: the CEO of Ledger (makers of the most popular hardware wallet on the market) waived the $50k code review fee to get RaiBlocks on his product, and XRB got listed on Binance and Kucoin, two of the largest altcoin exchanges globally. This is one to watch for 2018. [12]

VeChain (VEN)

Developed as a single answer to the problem of supply-chain logistics, VeChain is knocking on the door of a fast-growing $8 trillion industry. Every shipping container and packaged product in the world requires constant tracking and verification. A smart economy for logistics built on the blockchain promises greater efficiency and lower cost through the entire process flow.
Don’t take my word for it-- VeChain has investment from PwC (5th largest US corporation), Groupe Renault, Kuehne & Nagel (world’s largest freight company), and DIG (China’s largest wine importer). The Chinese government has mandated VeChain to serve as blockchain technology partner to the city of Gui’an, a special economic zone and testbed for China’s smart city of the future. This crypto has some of the strongest commercial partnerships in the industry, and a large active development team.

1. “Investment” is a misnomer. Cryptos are traded like securities, but grant you no equity (like trading currency).
   
2. The weeds for Bitcoin: basic intro (1:36), non-technical explanation (5:24), Bitcoin 101 – Andreas Antonopoulos (23:51).
   
3. It is impossible to double-spend or create a fake transaction, as each ledger is confirmed against every other ledger.
   
4. Some utility token blockchains use DAG networks or similar non-linear networks which don’t require mining.
   
5. In practice, these are giant warehouses full of specialized computers constantly processing transactions. Miners locate to the cheapest electricity source, and the bulk of mining currently occurs in China.
   
6. Centralized second-layer exchange websites have been hacked, but the core technology is untouched.
   
7. This effect has been termed "bitcoinization".
   
8. The Ethereum roadmap shows moving from a Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus model.
   
9. At $2.62 per XRP token, Ripple already commands a $100B market cap.
   
10. After a January 2017 update.
    
11. Monero uses ring signatures while Zcash uses ZK-SNARKs to create anonymity. Both have pros and cons.
    
12. Note: all signs point to this crypto being renamed “Nano” in the coming weeks: nano.co.
    

Anti-bitfinex campaign going on, this is something that people should be concerned about.
But before we begin I need to say that this is my own thought and research and I have to admit that I am using bitfinex, I'm making most of my income thanks to using their platform and that it might not look like my post here is unbiased but I seriously think that everyone should be, when it comes to such discussion.
This year has been crazy, since the bloomberg post from january, which you can see under this paragraph, I've seen nothing but bullshit being thrown at bitfinex and it's starting to look like a serious campaign going on against it, some of the most serious accusations I've seen are:
The post here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/crypto-exchange-bitfinex-tether-said-to-get-subpoenaed-by-cftc
Before editing: https://web.archive.org/web/20180130181009/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/crypto-exchange-bitfinex-tether-said-to-get-subpoenaed-by-cftc
Now, that article was because of a subpoena issued in december, people argue there is no posts about it whatsoever during that period that it happened, yet it did happen almost 2 months later, here's what a subpoena means for those wondering, wikipedia source.
A subpoena (/səˈpiːnə/; also subpœna) or witness summons is a writ issued by a government agency, most often a court, to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. ... subpoena ad testificandum orders a person to testify before the ordering authority or face punishment.
Before the january post there has been another post that was posted on december which you can see here: https://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-tether-break-silence-go-media-offensive/
Now, as we all know, the information requested by the subpoena was never disclosed thus neither you or bitfinexed know about it's inside content, all that we're left with is speculation from a guy that has been attacking bitfinex ever since he created his account and media following his tweets to earn a buck thanks to the "drama".
Now, if we leave all the drama behind and we focus on using logic more than we focus on getting a conspiracy hat and searching for what I like to call "dead bodies", we would have a more stable and friendly environment.
Bitfinex'ed is a guy on Twitter that has been constantly manipulating all sort of news to ridiculous levels and has been accepting so called "donations" for his work, in other words, he's getting paid to keep on spitting bullshit.
For those that do not know about how shit twitter is: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-twittefalse-news-70-percent-more-likely-to-spread-on-twitter-study-idUSKCN1GK2QQ
Some examples from him are:
His manipulated tweet here; https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/965769881869324288
What really happened here; https://twitter.com/DamelonBCWS/status/965873904421146624
His tweet; https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/969979463860654081
What really happened;
Only bitfinex knows for real, I won't even link anything here unless it's serious and an announcement from bitfinex themselves, everything else is pure speculation, unbacked accusations and FUD spreading.
The anti-bitfinex campaign fudsters;
The first one we have the most obvious one: u/targetpro
He's been spreading all the bitfinex'ed links, acts childish whenever a strong arguments goes against his unbacked accusations, all his posts are simply calling out users "shills" for not being anti-bitfinex and using formatted text in order to look more "professional" when talking, who needs to be professional when we're on social media discussing topics, or is this a business for him?
Looks like he's got a chance and he's taking it, his posts are like this: https://i.imgur.com/de9Z0OS.png
Why would someone simply not post for two years and them come back two years later and start throwing shit at bitfinex and tether like mad?
If we look at his comments, you'll see how manipulated all these comments are, take a look at Tethecomments/7ub4wm/the_first_30000000_tether_tokens_have_been/dtjgoml/ for example and see how he changes the discussion in order to benefit himself and how he uses sarcasm to create doubt and also fear regarding tether, a currency used by MANY exchanges.
Next one is also a really obvious anti-bitfinex fudster: u/crypt0c0iner
His only posts are against bitfinex, either trying to make it look like he is having a bad experience with bitfinex but, if you take a look at his posts, you'll see that he has NOT A SINGLE post made requesting a ticket but all the posts are either attacking bitfinex, or talking about gold bars.
Are you seriously going to listen to a guy that made this post?
Monero/comments/7wsz9z/did_i_delete_my_monero/
u/crypt0c0ineposts/
Now, those people may just be getting paid, but the ones who are funding the campaign are much bigger.
Take a look at this article: https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/02/23/poland-central-bank-youtube-anti-cryptocurrency/
If the Poland Central Bank pays people to spread anti-crypto videos and posts, do you still think that it's impossible that a anti-bitfinex campaign is going on?
Following the bitfinex'ed logic, let's draw a few lines here and there and see who would profit the most from the FUD spread around.
As bitfinex was getting attacked with no serious arguments but just "speculation" other exchanges were getting lots of positive attention.
See here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/worlds-largest-crypto-exchange-sees-exponential-growth-despite-market-lows
Also: https://cointelegraph.com/news/major-cryptocurrency-exchange-bittrex-to-add-usd-trading-reopen-new-user-sign-ups
Those are just two exchanges of all the major ones, and all you see is positive articles unlike bitfinex, which has actually progressively had great news such as:
ETHFinex with a Nectar Token added: https://blog.ethfinex.com/launching-the-ethfinex-nectar-token-a43fff527151
EOSFinex, a high-performance decentralized exchange built on EOS: https://medium.com/bitfinex/announcing-eosfinex-69eea273369f
Segwit adoption: https://twitter.com/bitfinex/status/965983482152407041
They even got in a fees reduce battle against binance;
See here: https://twitter.com/bitfinex/status/969255478550319105
Binance here: https://twitter.com/binance_2017/status/969271254959222784
And again bitfinex here: https://twitter.com/bitfinex/status/969628107723476993
This is starting to look like an obvious clash of titans but there still are a lot of dirty cards to be exposed.
Let's also not forget about the most obvious one: https://www.influencive.com/trueusd-launches-bittrex-exchange-aims-provide-legally-backed-stablecoin/
The post above talks about a copy-paste USDT token but backed by an exchange that had been accused of having an on-going scam, what a lovely coincidence that as soon as tether gets a bunch of negative comments a true new coin comes out and aims to hit that market that is now vulnerable.
Now that we know other parties are interested in exploiting this market I suggest we take a deeper look into tether, which is, as we all know, the first of it's kind and that surely isn't easy.
Most of the drama around has been because of no audit release, yet if we look at it a little bit and we use logic, we will soon understand why.
Tether is a company that issues tokens per request, thus you deposit fiat into one of the banks and get USDT which you can later on deposit to most of the exchanges, binance being the one that holds the most at this moment according to: https://wallet.tether.to/richlist
Now, if we look for some news we see that they had stopped business relationship with Friedman LLP for valid reasons, which others have used to gain sensationalism, although the company gave valid points when finishing their business relations.
Now Tether is looking for another auditor which can actually fullfil their needs, of course, that won't be easy, we have to remember that we're talking about a first-timer here and nobody was prepared for this.
My only conclussion on this is that hypocrisy has hit some of the highest levels and we haven't yet hit the top.
UPDATE
So I got a little curious about bitfinex'ed account and started tracking his bitcoin wallet movements, see here the wallet: https://blockchain.info/address/15kYzB3h8ASNoJf4NyVJ4X3ub5TzcMcgBW
You can check it's his wallet by checking his twitter profile.
After looking at the transactions, the last one worth 1~ BTC has ended up in binance's hot wallet: https://blockchain.info/es/address/1NDyJtNTjmwk5xPNhjgAMu4HDHigtobu1s
BitcoinMarkets/comments/7xhwni/anyone_know_why/du8eehp/
This post is facts I've been able to find on my own and you should draw your own conclussion, and most importantly, keep your mind open.

In my first shitshow post i told you guys about the paradigm shift. Then i talked about the importance of nonprofits in said shift and that no privately owned company will play an important role in it. I then digged out some possible third VC that IOTA has, in response to shit being talked online about IOTA.
Then verge pumped because of a Tweet that you need to donate for a partnership...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1PM-p3860
 
Verge is a 1B Cryptocurrency while IOTA is about 2B.. it does make you wonder how that can be. Now before we start to dig into things let me make it clear that i have no formal education on finance or economics. If you do, you probably should skip this one. Also, if you invest based on this Thread, it is only fair that you lose all your money because you are a dumbass.
 
It's almost impossible to value cryptos. "There is no Fundamentals" - is what a legacy market guy would tell you. As we learned in one of my other posts, the IF itself doesn't even need to issue public financial statements (which in my opinion it should do).
What we can do however compare different ledgers and or research projects against each other. So let's go back to Verge. Verge is a Shitcoin. IOTA is not. If you agree with that you come to the following conclusion: Either the altcoin market will still have to fall about 95% in value to follow common sense or IOTA is highly undervalued. Or maybe IOTA is a bit overvalued and others have to fall more or.... you get my point.
 
First things first: Bitcoin is here to stay. It is not an altcoin and it won't be one for a long time. Bitcoin can exist as a store of value alone - it does not need the "buying coffee" use case bitcoin maximalists can't shut up about.
https://twitter.com/MacroScope17/status/961622167048859648
 
If you are using Bitcoin to provide a negative before telling people why IOTA can do everything better you are lost in the woods. I know this is a very popular narrative among IOTA aficionados and this might be hard for you to hear.
Yes, having a DAG without mining is wonderful - but using energy to secure a public ledger is not the dumbest thing in the world. As of now, IOTA is nowhere near being called immutable. This will take time.
If you are relatively new to cryptos in general, most likely joined last year or during this years peak - do not fall into that line of thinking. That for IOTA to grow, Bitcoin needs to vanish. Try to think for yourself. And read the following Article:
https://medium.com/@vijayboyapati/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1
 
SHUT UP ABOUT BITCOIN. Okey, jesus. I'm sorry. I needed to make this point so i can talk shit about "Blockchain" and how it all ties together.
As a non-developer, after a while, "Blockchain" is probably the most boring, stagnant tech i can think of. It's almost as boring as Smartphones only getting a tiny bit bigger and shatter more easily when you drop them. Imho, "Bitcoin" is the only interesting thing about "Blockchain".
Today, "Blockchain" is so irrelevant that in 2018 Vitalik Buterin still publishes Text on centralized servers which are, big surprise, NOT censorship resistant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website) https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin
"As of June 2017, Medium has been blocked in Egypt along with more than 60 online media websites in a crackdown by the Egyptian government."
   
Amazing.
 
Friendly reminder ETH was supposed to be THE web 3.0. Most people seem to ignore that or they never figured because of what they are presented with. Sure there is a roadmap, sharding this and that, but if i'm getting excited about future theoretical improvements on a protocol, im excited about IOTA. Simple.
 
With this in mind: The EU is at it again!
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/european-countries-join-blockchain-partnership
"In the future, all public services will use blockchain technology. Blockchain is a great opportunity for Europe and Member States to rethink their information systems, to promote user trust and the protection of personal data, to help create new business opportunities and to establish new areas of leadership, benefiting citizens, public services and companies. The Partnership launched today enables Member States to work together with the European Commission to turn the enormous potential of blockchain technology into better services for citizens".
 
This circlejerk from politicians is about 4 years too late. One can only hope that by "Blockchain" they simply use it as the buzzword it has degenerated into.
It is however nice to see the EU is starting to befriend distributed ledgers, they even fund privacy research on the chain: It will use blockchain technology to create tools that will give people ownership of the data which they and the devices they own generate, in order to respond to concerns about losing control of personal information on the internet.
they go on and say that:
Currently, four pilot projects are being developed in Amsterdam and Barcelona, focused on the themes of the Internet of Things, open democracy and the sharing economy.
 
Ok so.. Blockchain and IoT? Sure bro.
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/blockchain-give-people-more-control-about-their-data
 
Lets go one step back. How much money does the EU spend on research for this in total and how does it compare to the IOTA Foundation?
22 European countries plan to have allocated a total of 380M Euro by the end of 2020.
Let's compare this to the IF. Get ready for some quick maffs.
the IF received 5% of the total supply as donations. In addition to that the Ecosystem fund holds another 21T (correct?!). At the current price, ignoring VC hoarding, ignoring lawyers, salaries etc. the IF is worth about 220M Dollar .
Ya know. Plus minus tens of millions.
In my very humble opinion: those countries probably are well advised to get in contact with the IF (if they aren't already).
 
So. What if the price of 1 Miota drops to 50Cents? The Ecosystem Fund would still value 10M to support innovation around the tangle. This holds up very well versus the 2 years 5M program the EU has going, building tools for privacy on top of Blockchain.
It should peak everyone's interest how this plays out. And how much the IF is involved here.
So.. is a 2B Market Cap still absurd for IOTA? I really hope it is NOT. Because the current MC gives the IF the possibility to rival the research incentives of 22 European countries.
 
Why did i go on about Bitcoin in the beginning. You see: as long as IOTA is traded against Bitcoin, you have two different $ prices attached to it. If 1 Miota is worth 17k satoshi, the price of satoshis dictates the price of Iota. One often ignored fact is that Binance overtook Finex in volume the past few weeks (ignoring the fact here that most volume on Binance is fake). But still, in a market where (as of today) Bitcoin has 44% Market Share and IOTA a measly 1%, it is naive to think any kind of "decoupling" will happen anytime soon unless these numbers change. The best MIOTA can do is to outperform Bitcoin with a steady uptrend. This would be best case scenario.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/#markets  
The available funds of the IF, especially the Ecofund, is in direct correlation to the bitcoin price - if you like it or not. So lets be careful what we wish for.

Sup-sup Monteros! :-)
Here is report from XMR.RU-team!
I want to thank you for your support and your donations. The following articles were translated into Russian and posted not only on XMR.RU but also on Bitcointalk, Forum.Bits.Media, Golos.io, Steemit, Medium and Facebook:

• Monero’s hard fork results in Binance and Bittrex reducing withdrawal fees to 0.0001 XMR
• The Reality of the Post-Bitcoin Era
• The Monero Moon (Issue 8)
• How to mine Monero using GPU (NVIDIA)? (own article-manual by Mr. Pickles)
• How to mine Monero using GPU (AMD)? (own article-manual by Mr. Pickles)
• Continued funding for Surae for another quarter, September October November 2018
• The Monero Moon (Issue 9)
• How to restore your Monerujo wallet on a different phone
• One Ring Signature To Rule Them All
• Sarang: Funding for October-December 2018
• The Monero Moon (Issue 10)
• Mastering Monero (now in Russian!)
• The Monero Moon (Issue 11)
• RFC documents for the Tari protocol
• Introduction to Tari Labs University
• Why Hackers Love Monero More Than Bitcoin
• What are Monero nodes and how they work in Monerujo
• Monero [XMR] price crashes by over 10%; reaches its all-time low for the year (but still, don't buy it! :P )
• Who Is Ezekiel Osborne (Zeke Echelon) Claiming to Be Monero’s (XMR) Co-Founder?
• Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH] and Monero [XMR] could be at risk due to new malware on macOS
• Monero Lead Developer Calls Ethereum an “Idiotic and Unscalable Idea”
• Monero’s UI/UX designer speaks about decentralization and entry into inner circle of XMR community
• Researcher behind Monero’s crypto system awarded prestigious prize
• Monero Outreach To Promote XRM in Venezuela - Monero (XMR) News. Thursday, November 8th
• Local Monero breaks barriers, is now available in Spanish
• Monero [XMR] will be ‘cracked down’ by Feds soon, says Nouriel Roubini
• Monero Activity Halves After Hard Fork
• Monero [XMR] lead developer speaks about Lightning implementation
• US: Crypto Initiative Donates Monero to Bail Out Immigrants in ICE Detention
• Monero Community Praises Bitcoin’s Brainpower Strength and Sees Adoption as Strong 10 Years In
• Monero [XMR]’s fluffypony says, “The trick to privacy is to be lost in the crowd”
• Кошелек Monero Edge обновлен и теперь поддерживает Bulletproofs
• Monero vs Zcash: The Race to Anonymity
• The First-Ever Monero (XMR) Mobile Wallet Monerujo Launched Its Beta

--
Who we are?
Group of Monero enthusiasts from Ukraine and Russia.
What are we doing?
We spread the word about Monero for the whole CIS.
You can support us, so we can translate more interesting stuff about Monero.
XMR: 42CxJrG1Q8HT9XiXJ1Cim4Sz18rM95UucEBeZ3x6YuLQUwTn6UWo9ozeA7jv13v8H1FvQn9dgw1Gw2VMUqdvVN1T9izzGEt
BTC: 1FeetSJ7LFZeC328FqPqYTfUY4LEesZ5ku
Here you can see for what all donations are spent on. ;-)
​
Cheers! :-)
​

Note: You can read this on GitHub, Medium or old Reddit to see the 207 links.

Development

The biggest announcement of the month was the new kind of decentralized exchange proposed by @jy-p of Company 0. The Community Discussions section considers the stakeholders' response.
dcrd: Peer management and connectivity improvements. Some work for improved sighash algo. A new optimization that gives 3-4x faster serving of headers, which is great for SPV. This was another step towards multipeer parallel downloads – check this issue for a clear overview of progress and planned work for next months (and some engineering delight). As usual, codebase cleanup, improvements to error handling, test infrastructure and test coverage.
Decrediton: work towards watching only wallets, lots of bugfixes and visual design improvements. Preliminary work to integrate SPV has begun.
Politeia is live on testnet! Useful links: announcement, introduction, command line voting example, example proposal with some votes, mini-guide how to compose a proposal.
Trezor: Decred appeared in the firmware update and on Trezor website, currently for testnet only. Next steps are mainnet support and integration in wallets. For the progress of Decrediton support you can track this meta issue.
dcrdata: Continued work on Insight API support, see this meta issue for progress overview. It is important for integrations due to its popularity. Ongoing work to add charts. A big database change to improve sorting on the Address page was merged and bumped version to 3.0. Work to visualize agenda voting continues.
Ticket splitting: 11-way ticket split from last month has voted (transaction).
Ethereum support in atomicswap is progressing and welcomes more eyeballs.
decred.org: revamped Press page with dozens of added articles, and a shiny new Roadmap page.
decredinfo.com: a new Decred dashboard by lte13. Reddit announcement here.
Dev activity stats for June: 245 active PRs, 184 master commits, 25,973 added and 13,575 deleted lines spread across 8 repositories. Contributions came from 2 to 10 developers per repository. (chart)

Network

Hashrate: growth continues, the month started at 15 and ended at 44 PH/s with some wild 30% swings on the way. The peak was 53.9 PH/s.
F2Pool was the leader varying between 36% and 59% hashrate, followed by coinmine.pl holding between 18% and 29%. In response to concerns about its hashrate share, F2Pool made a statement that they will consider measures like rising the fees to prevent growing to 51%.
Staking: 30-day average ticket price is 94.7 DCR (+3.4). The price was steadily rising from 90.7 to 95.8 peaking at 98.1. Locked DCR grew from 3.68 to 3.81 million DCR, the highest value was 3.83 million corresponding to 47.87% of supply (+0.7% from previous peak).
Nodes: there are 240 public listening and 115 normal nodes per dcred.eu. Version distribution: 57% on v1.2.0 (+12%), 25% on v1.1.2 (-13%), 14% on v1.1.0 (-1%). Note: the reported count of non-listening nodes has dropped significantly due to data reset at decred.eu. It will take some time before the crawler collects more data. On top of that, there is no way to exactly count non-listening nodes. To illustrate, an alternative data source, charts.dcr.farm showed 690 reachable nodes on Jul 1.
Extraordinary event: 247361 and 247362 were two nearly full blocks. Normally blocks are 10-20 KiB, but these blocks were 374 KiB (max is 384 KiB).

ASICs

Update from Obelisk: shipping is expected in first half of July and there is non-zero chance to meet hashrate target.
Another Chinese ASIC spotted on the web: Flying Fish D18 with 340 GH/s at 180 W costing 2,200 CNY (~340 USD). (asicok.com – translated, also on asicminervalue)
dcrASIC team posted a farewell letter. Despite having an awesome 16 nm chip design, they decided to stop the project citing the saturated mining ecosystem and low profitability for their potential customers.

Integrations

bepool.org is a new mining pool spotted on dcred.eu.
Exchange integrations:

• Huobi Pro added DCBTC and DCETH pairs.
• OKEx gradually rolled out trading DCR to BTC, ETH, USDT and OKB and added a page for Decred (note a bunch of N/As for ICO-related stats).
• Singapore-based DragonEx announced a DCETH pair.
• Netherlands-based Bitvavo recently added EUR to DCR conversion
• OOOBTC announced DCUSDT pair.
• Changenow announced the option to buy DCR with fiat.

Two OTC trading desks are now shown on decred.org exchanges page.
BitPro payment gateway added Decred and posted on Reddit. Notably, it is fully functional without javascript or cookies and does not ask for name or email, among other features.
Guarda Wallet integrated Decred. Currently only in their web wallet, but more may come in future. Notable feature is "DCR purchase with a bank card". See more details in their post or ask their representative on Reddit. Important: do your best to understand the security model before using any wallet software.

Adoption

Merchants:

• NeverFiat marketplace now accepts Decred. Notably it utilizes GloBee and recently announced Lightning support for Bitcoin.
• Crypto and Tech Gear integrated Decred and has a branded mouse pad for sale, as well as other merch.
• TokenPride: "We are seeking feedback on the general setup of our payment processor. We have tried to make it simple and user friendly. 10% of all purchases made in Decred will be donated to the Decred Development fund - and we will be releasing original Decred designs in the future".

BlueYard Capital announced investment in Decred and the intent to be long term supporters and to actively participate in the network's governance. In an overview post they stressed core values of the project:

There are a few other remarkable characteristics that are a testament to the DNA of the team behind Decred: there was no sale of DCR to investors, no venture funding, and no payment to exchanges to be listed – underscoring that the Decred team and contributors are all about doing the right thing for long term (as manifested in their constitution for the project).
The most encouraging thing we can see is both the quality and quantity of high calibre developers flocking to the project, in addition to a vibrant community attaching their identity to the project.

The company will be hosting an event in Berlin, see Events below.
Arbitrade is now mining Decred.

Events

Attended:

• Meetup in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
• Meetup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (photo)
• Campus Party in Brasilia, Brazil. @girino, @Rhama and @matheusd talked about Decred. Matheus was interviewed by a TV channel. Check this quick report about the event, click "Show newer" to continue reading. (photos: 1 2 3)
• Blockchain Connect Conference in Silicon Valley, USA. (photo)
• Zcon0 in Montreal, Canada. @jz represented Decred.
• Blockchain Summit in London, UK. This was not a full blown presence with stand but rather investigation of opportunities by @kyle and @Ani. The resulting detailed report is a good example of a document advising to stakeholders whether it is worth spending project funds.

Upcoming:

• Meetup in Berlin, Germany on July 18. @jz will give a talk and Q&A about Decred and chat with Ele from @oscoin about incentivizing developers. Hosted by BlueYard Capital.
• O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, USA on July 18-19. People wishing to attend this developer focused event can use Decred25 discount code when registering to save 25%. For any questions join #event_planning and contact @Jesiki, she can also invite you to any gatherings in the area.

Media

stakey.club: a new website by @mm:

Hey guys! I'd like to share with you my latest adventure: Stakey Club, hosted at stakey.club, is a website dedicated to Decred. I posted a few articles in Brazilian Portuguese and in English. I also translated to Portuguese some posts from the Decred Blog. I hope you like it! (slack)

@morphymore translated Placeholder's Decred Investment Thesis and Richard Red's write-up on Politeia to Chinese, while @DZ translated Decred Roadmap 2018 to Italian and Russian, and A New Kind of DEX to Italian and Russian.
Second iteration of Chinese ratings released. Compared to the first issue, Decred dropped from 26 to 29 while Bitcoin fell from 13 to 17. We (the authors) restrain ourselves commenting on this one.
Videos:

• Can Decred Crack the Top 10? on Cheddar with @lukebp_ (cheddar.com, twitter)
• Decred Assembly - Ep20 - Governance: Driving the Future (youtube)
  @cburniske and @traceagain discuss the importance of governance protocols being foundational and problems with delegated proof of stake
  
• @phenrikand from @ApolloCapitalAU chats with @joshuam_ at @YBFVentures (youtube, tweet)
  

  This is an in depth exploration of one of the most interesting projects in the space. (@ApolloCapitalAU)
  

• Decred Review (Russian, youtube)
  

Audio:

• Unchained Podcast with Fat Protocols author @jmonegro of @placeholdervc, hosted by @laurashin (audio and links at unchainedpodcast.co, audio on itunes, twitter threads: @laurashin @ljxie)
  

  "I think that developers in the future are going to base their decision on where to build on the basis of governance and community. And so I look for good governance mechanisms and strong communities in blockchains." (@decredproject)
  

Featured articles:

• What is on-chain cryptocurrency governance? Is it plutocratic? by Richard Red (medium)
• Apples to apples, Decred is 20x more expensive to attack than Bitcoin by Zubair Zia (medium)
• Decred cryptocurrency guide (wikicryptocoins.com)
• Introduction to Decred by Smith + Crown (smithandcrown.com)
• Investment Reseach on Decred by @ResearchPaper (medium)
• Decred Proposes a DEX Without a Blockchain (coinjournal.net)
• Why You Should Keep an Eye on Decred by Daniel Frumkin (investinblockchain.com)
• Understanding Decred: Decentralized Governance and Decision Making on the Blockchain (blockgeeks.com)
• Decred short and to-the-point review by Timur Badretdinov (longcaller.com)
• Continued presence in the Proof of Work newsletter

Articles:

• What is Decred? (Turkish, coin-turk.com)
• EOS, Cardano, Decred Receive Top Ratings by Weiss Ratings (cryptoslate.com)
• Is it really interesting to invest in Decred? (Spanish, okdiario.com)
• Decred Seeking to Create Binance and EtherDelta Hybrid as New Exchange Model (icoexaminer.com)
• Decred Makes Bold Move with Upcoming Decentralized Exchange (cryptovest.com)
• Crypto Review: Decred Is On Fire to Smash All-Time High $120, While the Entire Market Bleeds (cryptorecorder.com)
• Decred Receives Top Score From Weiss Ratings (cryptodaily.co.uk)
• Decred Announces Upcoming Decentralized Exchange (coins.online)
• Decred’s Vision for a New Type of Decentralized Exchange (DEX) (btcmanager.com)
• Decred Flies Up With New Announcement (cryptodaily.co.uk)
• Decred Proposes a New Kind of Exchange (cryptodisrupt.com)
• Asian Cryptocurrency Trading Update: Decred Creeps Up in Sideways Market (newsbtc.com)
• Decred – The sleeper hit of 2018 and a long-term hold for the patient investors (captainaltcoin.com)
• Decred – CoinPayments Blog (coinpayments.net)
• Decred: Pay Attention to What’s Happening With This Coin (cryptovest.com)
• What is Decred? Why is it Going up During a Bear Market? (satoshi.blog)
• Decred Once Again in the Spotlight with OKEx, HuobiPro Listings (cryptovest.com)
• New Kind Of Decentralized Exchange (DEX) Concept By Decred (bitcoinexchangeguide.com)
• State of Cryptocurrencies: Summer 2018 (hackernoon.com)
• Price Analysis: Decred Plunges by 17% Over The Past 7 Days (investinblockchain.com)
• Decred Coin Review & Guide 2018 (abitgreedy.com)
• What makes Decred different and better from other cryptocurrencies? (cxihub.com)

Community Discussions

Community stats: Twitter followers 40,209 (+1,091), Reddit subscribers 8,410 (+243), Slack users 5,830 (+172), GitHub 392 stars and 918 forks of dcrd repository.
An update on our communication systems:

• Matrix chat logs are now viewable on the web with the exception of some channels that are not bridged. The new web logs means our chats are now fully public and indexed by search engines.
• Slack had an outage on Jun 27 that disturbed communications for a few hours, discussions continued on Decred's bridged platforms.

Jake Yocom-Piatt did an AMA on CryptoTechnology, a forum for serious crypto tech discussion. Some topics covered were Decred attack cost and resistance, voting policies, smart contracts, SPV security, DAO and DPoS.
A new kind of DEX was the subject of an extensive discussion in #general, #random, #trading channels as well as Reddit. New channel #thedex was created and attracted more than 100 people.
A frequent and fair question is how the DEX would benefit Decred. @lukebp has put it well:

Projects like these help Decred attract talent. Typically, the people that are the best at what they do aren’t driven solely by money. They want to work on interesting projects that they believe in with other talented individuals. Launching a DEX that has no trading fees, no requirement to buy a 3rd party token (including Decred), and that cuts out all middlemen is a clear demonstration of the ethos that Decred was founded on. It helps us get our name out there and attract the type of people that believe in the same mission that we do. (slack)

Another concern that it will slow down other projects was addressed by @davecgh:

The intent is for an external team to take up the mantle and build it, so it won't have any bearing on the current c0 roadmap. The important thing to keep in mind is that the goal of Decred is to have a bunch of independent teams on working on different things. (slack)

A chat about Decred fork resistance started on Twitter and continued in #trading. Community members continue to discuss the finer points of Decred's hybrid system, bringing new users up to speed and answering their questions. The key takeaway from this chat is that the Decred chain is impossible to advance without votes, and to get around that the forker needs to change the protocol in a way that would make it clearly not Decred.
"Against community governance" article was discussed on Reddit and #governance.
"The Downside of Democracy (and What it Means for Blockchain Governance)" was another article arguing against on-chain governance, discussed here.
Reddit recap: mining rig shops discussion; how centralized is Politeia; controversial debate on photos of models that yielded useful discussion on our marketing approach; analysis of a drop in number of transactions; concerns regarding project bus factor, removing central authorities, advertising and full node count – received detailed responses; an argument by insette for maximizing aggregate tx fees; coordinating network upgrades; a new "Why Decred?" thread; a question about quantum resistance with a detailed answer and a recap of current status of quantum resistant algorithms.
Chats recap: Programmatic Proof-of-Work (ProgPoW) discussion; possible hashrate of Blake-256 miners is at least ~30% higher than SHA-256d; how Decred is not vulnerable to SPV leaf/node attack.

Markets

DCR opened the month at ~$93, reached monthly high of $110, gradually dropped to the low of $58 and closed at $67. In BTC terms it was 0.0125 -> 0.0150 -> 0.0098 -> 0.0105. The downturn coincided with a global decline across the whole crypto market.
In the middle of the month Decred was noticed to be #1 in onchainfx "% down from ATH" chart and on this chart by @CoinzTrader. Towards the end of the month it dropped to #3.

Relevant External

Obelisk announced Launchpad service. The idea is to work with coin developers to design a custom, ASIC-friendly PoW algorithm together with a first batch of ASICs and distribute them among the community.
Equihash-based ZenCash was hit by a double spend attack that led to a loss of $450,000 by the exchange which was targeted.
Almost one year after collecting funds, Tezos announced a surprise identification procedure to claim tokens (non-javascript version).
A hacker broke into Syscoin's GitHub account and implanted malware stealing passwords and private keys into Windows binaries. This is a painful reminder for everybody to verify binaries after download.
Circle announced new asset listing framework for Poloniex. Relevant to recent discussions of exchange listing bribery:

Please note: we will not accept any kind of payment to list an asset.

Bithumb got hacked with a $30 m loss.
Zcash organized Zcon0, an event in Canada that focused on privacy tech and governance. An interesting insight from Keynote Panel on governance: "There is no such thing as on-chain governance".
Microsoft acquired GitHub. There was some debate about whether it is a reason to look into alternative solutions like GitLab right now. It is always a good idea to have a local copy of Decred source code, just in case.
Status update from @sumiflow on correcting DCR supply on various sites:

To begin with, none of the below sites were showing the correct supply or market cap for Decred but we've made some progress. coingecko.com, coinlib.io, cryptocompare.com, livecoinwatch.com, worldcoinindex.com - corrected! cryptoindex.co, onchainfx.com - awaiting fix coinmarketcap.com - refused to fix because devs have coins too? (slack)

About This Issue

This is the third issue of Decred Journal after April and May.
Most information from third parties is relayed directly from source after a minimal sanity check. The authors of Decred Journal have no ability to verify all claims. Please beware of scams and do your own research.
The new public Matrix logs look promising and we hope to transition from Slack links to Matrix links. In the meantime, the way to read Slack links is explained in the previous issue.
As usual, any feedback is appreciated: please comment on Reddit, GitHub or #writers_room. Contributions are welcome too, anything from initial collection to final review to translations.
Credits (Slack names, alphabetical order): bee and Richard-Red. Special thanks to @Haon for bringing May 2018 issue to medium.

Period: 29.86 days

	Submissions	Comments
Total	1000	60667
Rate (per day)	33.49	2014.59
Unique Redditors	728	13668
Combined Score	403062	287813

Top Submitters' Top Submissions

1. 23089 points, 2 submissions: jrs0080
   
   1. Whoever put this up deserves a medal (22960 points, 320 comments)
   2. It’s Official... 13th December is The Best Day to Own Bitcoin!!!! (129 points, 30 comments)
2. 22608 points, 10 submissions: bitchari
   
   1. Value is always in the eyes of the beholder (10970 points, 554 comments)
   2. We did it!! BTC ✌️ (4328 points, 346 comments)
   3. Uncomfortable truths!! (3222 points, 471 comments)
   4. "rat poison" returns!! (1547 points, 239 comments)
   5. Really!! (806 points, 127 comments)
   6. A picture is worth a thousand words! Found this on Twitter (805 points, 88 comments)
   7. German Bank Allows Users To Transfer Loans Anywhere In The World Using Bitcoin "see no bank, hear no bank, speak no bank" is their motto (392 points, 30 comments)
   8. “We need to take a moment and respect this generation’s interest in this new instrument (bitcoin),” CFTC Chairman. https://www.ccn.com/we-need-to-respect-this-generations-interest-in-bitcoin-cftc-chairman/ (328 points, 28 comments)
   9. You may define what Bitcoin is to yourself. You may not define what Bitcoin is to others without their consent. https://t.co/6vVRhoVTZm (113 points, 18 comments)
   10. Bill Gates doesn't like bitcoin. Really?!! He did not believe in the internet either! (97 points, 47 comments)
3. 14875 points, 2 submissions: ltc-
   
   1. What a time to be alive! (14748 points, 470 comments)
   2. I modified a thing. (127 points, 22 comments)
4. 10913 points, 1 submission: InteractiveLedger
   
   1. This is NOT OK. Upvote for visibility (10913 points, 1557 comments)
5. 10876 points, 1 submission: PineappleFund
   
   1. Farewell from the Pineapple Fund (10876 points, 611 comments)
6. 10387 points, 1 submission: EMC2_trooper
   
   1. I see it every day. (10387 points, 296 comments)
7. 9081 points, 1 submission: normcrypto
   
   1. You knew this was coming... one of my faves last year (9081 points, 128 comments)
8. 8749 points, 4 submissions: StoneHammers
   
   1. exceedingly efficient (7945 points, 207 comments)
   2. As I was saying (423 points, 20 comments)
   3. Too Damn High (194 points, 56 comments)
   4. Dear Bitcoin ATM makers please disclose your fees in clear understandable language prominently on the face of your machines. (187 points, 53 comments)
9. 7663 points, 1 submission: joe4c
   
   1. Sir this seat is reserved for people with disabilities... (7663 points, 526 comments)
10. 6865 points, 1 submission: Dark_Dantex
    
    1. It’s over 9000!!!!!! (6865 points, 429 comments)
11. 6741 points, 1 submission: Weaselbrott
    
    1. Everyone on Bitcoin right now waiting to press "submit" on their well-crafted 10K memes (6741 points, 134 comments)
12. 6553 points, 1 submission: chickenmalaitikka
    
    1. Rekt (6553 points, 85 comments)
13. 5352 points, 1 submission: LouisOfTokyo
    
    1. I took a trip with some friends to a sleepy rural town in Japan, hours outside of Tokyo. We entered a cafe and were surprised to see that they accepted bitcoin. Here is my friend buying a chocolate cake. (5352 points, 303 comments)
14. 5340 points, 3 submissions: Pascalboyart
    
    1. Thanks a lot for your bitcoin donations on my street art piece in Paris, already 130$ received 🙏🙏🙏 (3909 points, 178 comments)
    2. Street art piece in Paris with a QR code for bitcoin donations (728 points, 63 comments)
    3. We did it ! Thanks to all the redditors, it came most from you guys 👏🙏🙏🙏 (703 points, 71 comments)
15. 5118 points, 2 submissions: TipToeTiger
    
    1. Crypto Rider - A free game I made about racing on Bitcoin and other crypto's historical price graphs! (more info in comments) (5052 points, 309 comments)
    2. Thank You message to bitcoin from Crypto Rider team! (Message in comments) (66 points, 12 comments)
16. 5021 points, 1 submission: UniqueUsername642
    
    1. This is Cryptocurrency (5021 points, 372 comments)
17. 4820 points, 2 submissions: tinaclark90
    
    1. I've made some free Bitcoin Icons (4731 points, 246 comments)
    2. Very Soon in Vegas (89 points, 15 comments)
18. 4558 points, 2 submissions: boobooyoudo
    
    1. Amazon filed a patent to de-anonymize Bitcoin transactions and sell the data to law enforcement (4501 points, 711 comments)
    2. Near Field Technology could help bring lightning Bitcoin payments to retail. (57 points, 7 comments)
19. 4222 points, 1 submission: sparty_postgrad
    
    1. The answer on Jeopardy today! (4222 points, 174 comments)
20. 4209 points, 2 submissions: installeris
    
    1. 17000000 Bitcoins Have Been Mined! 4 millions to go! Happy anniversary day! (3735 points, 271 comments)
    2. The Irony (474 points, 37 comments)
21. 3850 points, 1 submission: SingularityNerd
    
    1. Hilarious satire protest outside Consensus, the website says Genesis Mining put it on. #bankersagainstbitcoin (3850 points, 183 comments)
22. 3673 points, 1 submission: sebastianstan21
    
    1. Current scenario (3673 points, 130 comments)
23. 3632 points, 1 submission: awice
    
    1. WOW, this just happened on Jeopardy! last night. (3632 points, 363 comments)
24. 3630 points, 1 submission: -All-Day-
    
    1. Ayy lmao (3630 points, 60 comments)
25. 3617 points, 1 submission: JJKirsch
    
    1. Fake or Fork (3617 points, 354 comments)
26. 3435 points, 2 submissions: tedand
    
    1. CoinMarketCap should remove Bitcoin dot com website from Bitcoin's page (3135 points, 200 comments)
    2. Bitcoin.com is first result in Google for "buy Bitcoin", selling "Bitcoin Cash" instead (300 points, 168 comments)
27. 3429 points, 1 submission: universaleric
    
    1. Sh..should we get the "it's over 9000" memes ready? (3429 points, 204 comments)
28. 3404 points, 1 submission: eragmus
    
    1. Erik Voorhees: “Roger - please stop referencing me to back up your opinion that Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin. It isn't. Bitcoin is the chain originating from the genesis block with the highest accumulated proof of work. The Bitcoin Cash fork failed to gain majority, thus it is not Bitcoin.” (3404 points, 402 comments)
29. 3354 points, 7 submissions: ayanamirs
    
    1. Satoshi Nakamoto about bitcoin.com (2332 points, 327 comments)
    2. Roger Ver is a well-known scammer. (451 points, 129 comments)
    3. Coinbase has become an unreliable and even dangerous service, subject to arbitrary, non-transparent actions as it merged with the US banking sector and started to provide information on its customers to the US government. It has become everything that Bitcoin was designed to stop - @Wikileaks (313 points, 145 comments)
    4. Electrum 3.1.3 release! (96 points, 24 comments)
    5. I'm so glad bitcoin don't have a central man on the top. (71 points, 23 comments)
    6. Fees are low, use this opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs! (58 points, 7 comments)
    7. The segwit adoption doesn't increase anymore. We need to do something. (33 points, 33 comments)
30. 2819 points, 4 submissions: Mikeross14
    
    1. Cracks me up everytime (2161 points, 70 comments)
    2. Baby Saver offers to buy this sub (270 points, 270 comments)
    3. Marvel referencing cryptocurrency in one of its latest comics! (261 points, 21 comments)
    4. You want to help Bitcoin but can't code? Do a simple thing then, call out all the scammers and call out everyone who supports these scammers. Make Crypto free from these scums. Simple. (127 points, 37 comments)
31. 2795 points, 4 submissions: Fly115
    
    1. Bitcoin.com has fixed it's webpage after lawsuit (1642 points, 572 comments)
    2. Microsoft + Bitcoin Lightning Network. Decentralized Identity proof of concept to be shown off at Consensus 2018. Seems big (721 points, 104 comments)
    3. A major announcement at #consensus2018 that did not seem to get a lot of airtime @LedgerHQ announcing an institutional custody solution in partnership with @Nomura and @GABIjersey. Addresses a major issue for institutional investors (242 points, 16 comments)
    4. Segwit Adoption - Steady growth to 35% (190 points, 70 comments)
32. 2590 points, 1 submission: dustincrypto
    
    1. Bitcoin going mainstream in Las Vegas (2590 points, 109 comments)
33. 2567 points, 3 submissions: edlund10
    
    1. Nick Szabo retweeted: "⚠️ If you are new to #bitcoin then please be aware that bitcoin .com is a fraudulent website. ⚠️ This website is run by Roger Ver who is a known serial scammer. ⚠️ The current main scam is the promotion of #bcash which is a fake version of bitcoin." (1906 points, 302 comments)
    2. Exactly 5 years ago Wired wrote "The world’s most popular digital currency really is nothing more than an abstraction. So we’re destroying the private key used by our Bitcon wallet." The loss is currently worth $124,453.58 (568 points, 134 comments)
    3. Warren Buffet vs. Bitcoin, 5 years chart, logarithmic scale (93 points, 52 comments)
34. 2556 points, 1 submission: SchnitzelBoss
    
    1. Coinmarket cap removed Bitcoin.com from Bitcoin's website list. (2556 points, 159 comments)
35. 2549 points, 1 submission: bajanboost
    
    1. CEO of Binance actually gives a f***. This is the exact moment he was introduced to the Bermuda Shorts by the Bermuda Development Agency; A formal dress code in the country (2549 points, 125 comments)
36. 2518 points, 2 submissions: Bitcoin_21
    
    1. WikiPedia's Bitcoin page removed the Bitcoin dot com explorer, because it misleads its users. (2083 points, 153 comments)
    2. Please report the bitcoin ,com wallet to the iOS app store for fraud. (435 points, 122 comments)
37. 2403 points, 1 submission: TomasEddison
    
    1. Guy on CNBC says $100USD bill is used for far more illicit activity than bitcoin. (2403 points, 183 comments)
38. 2316 points, 7 submissions: Suberg
    
    1. 600+ Bitcoin Users Seek Lawsuit Against Bitcoin.com & CEO Roger Ver for Fraud (1094 points, 298 comments)
    2. Bitcoin Lightning Network Matures With Record 2000 Nodes, $150K Capacity, 7000 active channels (500 points, 172 comments)
    3. Bitcoin.com Fraud Lawsuit Group Gaining Steam With Over 1000 Members (322 points, 184 comments)
    4. Tom Lee: Bitcoin Price Increase Coming After Consensus Conference (155 points, 46 comments)
    5. Russia's 'CIA' Memo Admits Telegram Was Blocked Because Crypto Is 'Uncontrollable' (151 points, 13 comments)
    6. Bitcoin Price Historically Surges With Consensus Conference, Data Shows (47 points, 26 comments)
    7. IMF's Lagarde: Bitcoin 'Could Have a Significant Impact on How We Save' (47 points, 11 comments)
39. 2274 points, 9 submissions: TheGreatMuffin
    
    1. The CEO of Binance, a company with $200M yearly revenue, at a press conference (810 points, 103 comments)
    2. Goldman Sachs to Open a Bitcoin Trading Operation - NYTimes (498 points, 54 comments)
    3. Kraken's response to the NYAG enquiry (413 points, 117 comments)
    4. Jameson Lopp: "Today I've learned that a lot of data sources are incorrectly reporting the total bitcoin supply. We haven't actually hit 17M BTC yet; you can follow along in realtime at [link]" (141 points, 23 comments)
    5. Bitcoin was the 9th most viewed Wikipedia article in 2017, coming in just behind the entry for the United States. (h/t @lopp) (120 points, 18 comments)
    6. Samourai and goTenna Enable Bitcoin Transactions Without Internet Access (100 points, 16 comments)
    7. A German online bank uses Bitcoins to transfer loans (93 points, 35 comments)
    8. Huawei Is About to Give Chinese Users Easier Access to Bitcoin (62 points, 14 comments)
    9. Bitcoin Threat Model - extensive security review of possible threats to bitcoin as cryptocurrency (by JW Weatherman) (37 points, 11 comments)
40. 2225 points, 1 submission: awesomedan77
    
    1. WARNING: HitBTC stole 5Btc deposit, even after I provided everything they asked for 2+ months! (2225 points, 486 comments)
41. 2170 points, 1 submission: ronnnumber
    
    1. 45% of investors... (2170 points, 227 comments)
42. 2041 points, 1 submission: YnotHaTony
    
    1. Truth about Bitcoin mining (2041 points, 136 comments)
43. 2017 points, 9 submissions: Miladran
    
    1. Nasdaq is open to becoming cryptocurrency exchange, CEO says (966 points, 104 comments)
    2. BREAKING: Coinbase Just Bought One of Bitcoin's Biggest Startups (278 points, 103 comments)
    3. Bitcoin buy orders are >90% of the market for the first time since March 2017 (176 points, 28 comments)
    4. Telegram CEO Is Using Bitcoin to Help Bypass Russia's App Ban (173 points, 11 comments)
    5. Sell gold, buy bitcoin? The ultimate global safe haven debate has begun (128 points, 56 comments)
    6. Lambos are coming (117 points, 53 comments)
    7. Bitcoin gets boost from IMF head (71 points, 7 comments)
    8. Is PayPal driving people towards Bitcoin? (60 points, 83 comments)
    9. NASDAQ-Powered Cryptocurrency Exchange Platform to Launch in June (48 points, 9 comments)
44. 1997 points, 1 submission: trainrekt23
    
    1. Found this today on the campus of my uni (1997 points, 225 comments)
45. 1991 points, 1 submission: kynek99
    
    1. Here is the bitcoin.com owner who created Bitcoin Cash to scam people and show real Bitcoiners a middle finger. (1991 points, 408 comments)
46. 1847 points, 1 submission: sha256art
    
    1. Fasten your seat belts (1847 points, 107 comments)
47. 1822 points, 1 submission: 127fascination
    
    1. Australia Bans Cash For All Purchases Over $10,000 Starting July Of 2019 (1822 points, 531 comments)
48. 1788 points, 5 submissions: coinmoon_com
    
    1. ‘Bitcoin’ was the 9th most read article on Wikipedia in 2017. Lets make it number 1 this year. Spread the word! (632 points, 35 comments)
    2. Bitcoin has worked non stop for 9 years. Without any days off, scheduled maintenance or severe issues. Let that sink in for a minute. (599 points, 226 comments)
    3. FORBES: Gold used to be money, and it was great money for its times. But Bitcoin's now the new flight capital. (286 points, 37 comments)
    4. 15 Claims Against Lightning, Answered (164 points, 12 comments)
    5. Bitcoin could replace cash in 10 years - Business Insider (107 points, 59 comments)
49. 1694 points, 1 submission: BitMarKas
    
    1. New Ledger features! (1694 points, 42 comments)
50. 1635 points, 6 submissions: _smudger_
    
    1. Today the 17th Million bitcoin will be mined (1070 points, 130 comments)
    2. Bitcoin to hit $50,000 by year-end, says BitMex CEO (158 points, 92 comments)
    3. Lightning + NFC? The New Plan to Bring Bitcoin to Retail (152 points, 45 comments)
    4. Vaultoro Becomes The First Exchange To Implement Bitcoin Lightning Network Payments (116 points, 6 comments)
    5. How to build your own portable plug-in Lightning node! (95 points, 5 comments)
    6. Bitcoin’s Recent Institutional Demand Is Unprecedented, Says Futures Market CEO (44 points, 6 comments)
51. 1581 points, 1 submission: CoolStoryBroLol
    
    1. Bitcoin accepted at my dentist's office (1581 points, 210 comments)
52. 1524 points, 1 submission: paintedfrog
    
    1. Found a helpful infographic. Could be handy to respond with this when people forget what Bitcoin is called... (1524 points, 294 comments)
53. 1504 points, 1 submission: NikolaosKost
    
    1. Lawsuit from over 600 Bitcoin Users against Bitcoin.com and CEO Roger Ver (1504 points, 338 comments)
54. 1497 points, 1 submission: 3hrdrive
    
    1. In Australia there is currently an investigation into banks and their practices, and the results are frightening (1497 points, 124 comments)
55. 1423 points, 4 submissions: chek2fire
    
    1. Everyone must report this Bitcoin mobile wallet asap.Is a fraud (554 points, 174 comments)
    2. Roger Ver and Bitcoin.com do a social attacks to Bitcoin (506 points, 313 comments)
    3. Blockchain.info. 8 months and still no segwit support. They are more lazy than sub-saharan public sector (288 points, 58 comments)
    4. They said: "Segwit is not a scaling solution".... (75 points, 59 comments)
56. 1420 points, 10 submissions: DesignerAccount
    
    1. Witness the future: Paying for coffee with LN in real life - Brisbane Airport (377 points, 144 comments)
    2. Bitcoin transaction fees in sat/b have not been so low since 2011!!! (173 points, 65 comments)
    3. PSA: Stop spelling the Bitcoin fraudulent site correctly - It only helps them as search engines pick it up. Use: bitcoin,com | bitcoin .com | bitcoin (.) com | bitcoindotcom | ... (153 points, 52 comments)
    4. "The bitlicense is a creature so foul, so cruel that not even Kraken possesses the courage or strength to face its nasty, big, pointy teeth." --- Kraken CEO: Exchange Won't Answer New York AG's Inquiry (141 points, 11 comments)
    5. Ready for work. (140 points, 69 comments)
    6. World Debt Hits Record $164 Trillion <-- That's WHY bitcoin. (133 points, 121 comments)
    7. Goldman Hires Head Cryptocurrency Trader (99 points, 4 comments)
    8. Chilean Anti-Monopoly Court Orders Banks To Re-Open Crypto Exchange’s Accounts (71 points, 3 comments)
    9. Hilarious: Lighting TESTNET app renamed Bitcoin Cash TESTNET!! (68 points, 23 comments)
    10. UNICEF Is Mining Crypto to Raise Funds for Children (65 points, 6 comments)
57. 1381 points, 1 submission: girlpearl
    
    1. At the Gramatik show last night in Boston (1381 points, 63 comments)
58. 1358 points, 3 submissions: zappadoing
    
    1. someone put a BTC-symbol on to the swiss federal bank! (1212 points, 84 comments)
    2. Bitcoin boosted as IMF boss Christine Lagarde praises cryptocurrency and suggests it could transform the way people save and invest (101 points, 8 comments)
    3. The Zurich bakery where you can't pay with cash (but bitcoins are fine) (45 points, 9 comments)
59. 1337 points, 8 submissions: frankreddit5
    
    1. My daughter just informed me that someone told her "#Bitcoin is a worthless scheme" & that the US dollar has, quote, "one 'brick' of gold in a vault for every dollar there is."..There's so many things wrong with both of these statements that all I can do is sit here and facepalm (582 points, 184 comments)
    2. Here's my Bitcoin Starry Night art on Canvas! (250 points, 26 comments)
    3. I think it turned out sick! (whitepaper on metal) (122 points, 22 comments)
    4. It's funny to me when people say that #Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme or a bubble. The real ponzi scheme is the money system created by the Federal Reserve. And that's the real bubble, too. It's time for monetary reform; it's time for people to take back what is theirs. #BuyBitcoin (118 points, 39 comments)
    5. Argentina raises interest rates to 40% (80 points, 52 comments)
    6. my Satoshi Whitepaper art on 3/4" thick birch wood, treated with a high-gloss coating. (73 points, 16 comments)
    7. my Bitcoin Phoenix artwork (on metal) (70 points, 12 comments)
    8. my Bitcoin Astronaut art presented on a metal panel. It looks almost like an LCD TV in person! Image in comments. (42 points, 9 comments)
60. 1200 points, 4 submissions: hodlerenfin
    
    1. Starting tomorrow Monday April 23, 2018 I will ask everywhere I spend my fiat, if they take Bitcoin even if I know they don’t. (609 points, 234 comments)
    2. Sad day today will be the last day we’ll see bitcoin below 9k.🙃 (275 points, 170 comments)
    3. Charlie Shrem on Twitter (162 points, 56 comments)
    4. I think at least everyday, wherever we spend fiat we should ask if they take Bitcoin. Even if we know they don’t. (154 points, 60 comments)
61. 1196 points, 5 submissions: LegendsRoom
    
    1. Bitcoin dethroning Gold as a store of value. (349 points, 116 comments)
    2. Remember! with Banks, "only deposit what you can afford to lose!" (287 points, 121 comments)
    3. Remember! with Banks, "only deposit what you can afford to lose!" (287 points, 130 comments)
    4. Banking panic and chaos in UK, as customers locked out of accounts for 5 days running.. (155 points, 44 comments)
    5. UK Bank crippled, as customers panic, accounts emptied. (118 points, 41 comments)

Top Commenters

1. TheBoyChris (2416 points, 4 comments)
2. HODLTID (1954 points, 6 comments)
3. Marcion_Sinope (1679 points, 303 comments)
4. CONTROLurKEYS (1626 points, 204 comments)
5. SuperGoxxer (1542 points, 284 comments)
6. gonzobon (1428 points, 41 comments)
7. technicallycorrect2 (1322 points, 29 comments)
8. gbitg (1314 points, 4 comments)
9. Bipolar_Chihuahua (1279 points, 3 comments)
10. conv3rsion (1275 points, 1 comment)
11. GolferRama (1167 points, 164 comments)
12. HeyZeusChrist (1098 points, 51 comments)
13. BCashBCashBTrash (1094 points, 381 comments)
14. WhyDontYouTryIt (1019 points, 401 comments)
15. jagan1355 (1016 points, 7 comments)
16. HelloImRich (973 points, 50 comments)
17. TheGreatMuffin (955 points, 141 comments)
18. LegendsRoom (906 points, 59 comments)
19. Kalin101 (859 points, 59 comments)
20. Hanspanzer (845 points, 317 comments)
21. TipToeTiger (797 points, 57 comments)
22. themonkier (782 points, 16 comments)
23. ducksauce88 (779 points, 179 comments)
24. EMC2_trooper (762 points, 23 comments)
25. Cryptolution (756 points, 223 comments)
26. Timeforadrinkorthree (751 points, 3 comments)
27. tranceology3 (750 points, 132 comments)
28. biologischeavocado (741 points, 52 comments)
29. MuD_D (740 points, 1 comment)
30. BitcoinAlways (732 points, 286 comments)
31. Explodicle (716 points, 246 comments)
32. fenstabeemie (715 points, 1 comment)
33. harreh (709 points, 1 comment)
34. BashCo (669 points, 81 comments)
35. zomgitsduke (654 points, 92 comments)
36. bluethunder1985 (643 points, 124 comments)
37. dontshillmexrp (643 points, 3 comments)
38. jakesonwu (641 points, 90 comments)
39. bitsteiner (639 points, 148 comments)
40. eintnohick (627 points, 4 comments)
41. devonthed00d (624 points, 8 comments)
42. bitmaincash (623 points, 114 comments)
43. fomotheclown (623 points, 114 comments)
44. Black_RL (620 points, 15 comments)
45. castorfromtheva (619 points, 24 comments)
46. hsjoberg (612 points, 18 comments)
47. pepe_le_shoe (602 points, 196 comments)
48. a33b (602 points, 1 comment)
49. inchhigh314 (597 points, 28 comments)
50. Bitcoin_21 (577 points, 100 comments)
51. Cykablast3r (571 points, 10 comments)
52. bitusher (567 points, 87 comments)
53. mustbemoney (564 points, 63 comments)
54. typtyphus (562 points, 105 comments)
55. gta3uzi (556 points, 145 comments)
56. StopAndDecrypt (544 points, 80 comments)
57. bossman-CT (542 points, 1 comment)
58. IceColdInferno (534 points, 1 comment)
59. outofofficeagain (532 points, 85 comments)
60. fruitlessbanana (531 points, 9 comments)
61. harrapino (526 points, 1 comment)
62. suninabox (522 points, 159 comments)
63. NimbleBodhi (511 points, 27 comments)
64. pilotavery (508 points, 172 comments)
65. Let_It_Steep (508 points, 5 comments)
66. DeucesCracked (504 points, 71 comments)
67. SpoekplumpeN (502 points, 142 comments)
68. MrRGnome (498 points, 68 comments)
69. Kanye_B_redpillin (497 points, 9 comments)
70. robinwindy (495 points, 259 comments)
71. absurdparadox (485 points, 8 comments)
72. Iruwen (469 points, 57 comments)
73. Bitcoin_Acolyte (459 points, 32 comments)
74. ToddVonToddson (458 points, 1 comment)
75. crptdv (450 points, 10 comments)
76. djLyfeAlert (447 points, 83 comments)
77. BucketSnail (443 points, 1 comment)
78. BenTG (435 points, 5 comments)
79. Mikeross14 (431 points, 39 comments)
80. Utoko (429 points, 112 comments)
81. LouisOfTokyo (428 points, 13 comments)
82. pwuille (418 points, 17 comments)
83. DartmouthBG (416 points, 26 comments)
84. Natanael_L (411 points, 23 comments)
85. flipsfordayz (410 points, 11 comments)
86. raumi75 (408 points, 25 comments)
87. boxhit (402 points, 27 comments)
88. bluepuma90 (400 points, 3 comments)
89. StoneHammers (391 points, 35 comments)
90. AussieBitcoiner (390 points, 28 comments)
91. TheRedStoner (385 points, 36 comments)
92. 127fascination (384 points, 5 comments)
93. PineappleFund (383 points, 4 comments)
94. The-Physicist (382 points, 153 comments)
95. BcashLoL (382 points, 137 comments)
96. ketefocko (379 points, 1 comment)
97. ThisIsABeginning (376 points, 22 comments)
98. randiwulf (375 points, 6 comments)
99. SpaceDuckTech (374 points, 66 comments)
100. cdecker (373 points, 39 comments)

Top Submissions

1. Whoever put this up deserves a medal by jrs0080 (22960 points, 320 comments)
2. What a time to be alive! by ltc- (14748 points, 470 comments)
3. Value is always in the eyes of the beholder by bitchari (10970 points, 554 comments)
4. This is NOT OK. Upvote for visibility by InteractiveLedger (10913 points, 1557 comments)
5. Farewell from the Pineapple Fund by PineappleFund (10876 points, 611 comments)
6. I see it every day. by EMC2_trooper (10387 points, 296 comments)
7. You knew this was coming... one of my faves last year by normcrypto (9081 points, 128 comments)
8. exceedingly efficient by StoneHammers (7945 points, 207 comments)
9. Sir this seat is reserved for people with disabilities... by joe4c (7663 points, 526 comments)
10. It’s over 9000!!!!!! by Dark_Dantex (6865 points, 429 comments)

Top Comments

1. 2313 points: TheBoyChris's comment in This is NOT OK. Upvote for visibility
2. 1951 points: HODLTID's comment in Whoever put this up deserves a medal
3. 1309 points: gbitg's comment in Value is always in the eyes of the beholder
4. 1275 points: conv3rsion's comment in Farewell from the Pineapple Fund
5. 1220 points: technicallycorrect2's comment in Amazon filed a patent to de-anonymize Bitcoin transactions and sell the data to law enforcement
6. 1219 points: Bipolar_Chihuahua's comment in This is NOT OK. Upvote for visibility
7. 1014 points: gonzobon's comment in exceedingly efficient
8. 987 points: jagan1355's comment in This is NOT OK. Upvote for visibility
9. 740 points: MuD_D's comment in The answer on Jeopardy today!
10. 715 points: fenstabeemie's comment in Truth about Bitcoin mining

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