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I thought it would be really cool to have an ultimate guide for those new to crypto currencies and the terms used. I made this mostly for beginner’s and veterans alike. I’m not sure how much use you will get out of this. Stuff gets lost on Reddit quite easily so I hope this finds its way to you. Included in this list, I have included most of the terms used in crypto-communities. I have compiled this list from a multitude of sources. The list is in alphabetical order and may include some words/terms not exclusive to the crypto world but may be helpful regardless.
2FA
Two factor authentication. I highly advise that you use it.
51% Attack:
A situation where a single malicious individual or group gains control of more than half of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power. Theoretically, it could allow perpetrators to manipulate the system and spend the same coin multiple times, stop other users from completing blocks and make conflicting transactions to a chain that could harm the network.
Address (or Addy):
A unique string of numbers and letters (both upper and lower case) used to send, receive or store cryptocurrency on the network. It is also the public key in a pair of keys needed to sign a digital transaction. Addresses can be shared publicly as a text or in the form of a scannable QR code. They differ between cryptocurrencies. You can’t send Bitcoin to an Ethereum address, for example.
Altcoin (alternative coin): Any digital currency other than Bitcoin. These other currencies are alternatives to Bitcoin regarding features and functionalities (e.g. faster confirmation time, lower price, improved mining algorithm, higher total coin supply). There are hundreds of altcoins, including Ether, Ripple, Litecoin and many many others.
AIRDROP:
An event where the investors/participants are able to receive free tokens or coins into their digital wallet.
AML: Defines Anti-Money Laundering laws**.**
ARBITRAGE:
Getting risk-free profits by trading (simultaneous buying and selling of the cryptocurrency) on two different exchanges which have different prices for the same asset.
Ashdraked:
Being Ashdraked is essentially a more detailed version of being Zhoutonged. It is when you lose all of your invested capital, but you do so specifically by shorting Bitcoin. The expression “Ashdraked” comes from a story of a Romanian cryptocurrency investor who insisted upon shorting BTC, as he had done so successfully in the past. When the price of BTC rose from USD 300 to USD 500, the Romanian investor lost all of his money.
ATH (All Time High):
The highest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency in its entire history. Alternatively, ATL is all time low
Bearish:
A tendency of prices to fall; a pessimistic expectation that the value of a coin is going to drop.
Bear trap:
A manipulation of a stock or commodity by investors.
Bitcoin:
The very first, and the highest ever valued, mass-market open source and decentralized cryptocurrency and digital payment system that runs on a worldwide peer to peer network. It operates independently of any centralized authorities
Bitconnect:
One of the biggest scams in the crypto world. it was made popular in the meme world by screaming idiot Carlos Matos, who infamously proclaimed," hey hey heeeey” and “what's a what's a what's up wasssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuup, BitConneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect!”. He is now in the mentally ill meme hall of fame.
Block:
A package of permanently recorded data about transactions occurring every time period (typically about 10 minutes) on the blockchain network. Once a record has been completed and verified, it goes into a blockchain and gives way to the next block. Each block also contains a complex mathematical puzzle with a unique answer, without which new blocks can’t be added to the chain.
Blockchain:
An unchangeable digital record of all transactions ever made in a particular cryptocurrency and shared across thousands of computers worldwide. It has no central authority governing it. Records, or blocks, are chained to each other using a cryptographic signature. They are stored publicly and chronologically, from the genesis block to the latest block, hence the term blockchain. Anyone can have access to the database and yet it remains incredibly difficult to hack.
Bullish:
A tendency of prices to rise; an optimistic expectation that a specific cryptocurrency will do well and its value is going to increase.
BTFD:
Buy the fucking dip. This advise was bestowed upon us by the gods themselves. It is the iron code to crypto enthusiasts.
Bull market:
A market that Cryptos are going up.
Consensus:
An agreement among blockchain participants on the validity of data. Consensus is reached when the majority of nodes on the network verify that the transaction is 100% valid.
Crypto bubble:
The instability of cryptocurrencies in terms of price value
Cryptocurrency:
A type of digital currency, secured by strong computer code (cryptography), that operates independently of any middlemen or central authoritie
Cryptography:
The art of converting sensitive data into a format unreadable for unauthorized users, which when decoded would result in a meaningful statement.
Cryptojacking:
The use of someone else’s device and profiting from its computational power to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge and consent.
Crypto-Valhalla:
When HODLers(holders) eventually cash out they go to a place called crypto-Valhalla. The strong will be separated from the weak and the strong will then be given lambos.
DAO:
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It defines A blockchain technology inspired organization or corporation that exists and operates without human intervention.
Dapp (decentralized application):
An open-source application that runs and stores its data on a blockchain network (instead of a central server) to prevent a single failure point. This software is not controlled by the single body – information comes from people providing other people with data or computing power.
Decentralized:
A system with no fundamental control authority that governs the network. Instead, it is jointly managed by all users to the system.
Desktop wallet:
A wallet that stores the private keys on your computer, which allow the spending and management of your bitcoins.
DILDO:
Long red or green candles. This is a crypto signal that tells you that it is not favorable to trade at the moment. Found on candlestick charts.
Digital Signature:
An encrypted digital code attached to an electronic document to prove that the sender is who they say they are and confirm that a transaction is valid and should be accepted by the network.
Double Spending:
An attack on the blockchain where a malicious user manipulates the network by sending digital money to two different recipients at exactly the same time.
DYOR:
Means do your own research.
Encryption:
Converting data into code to protect it from unauthorized access, so that only the intended recipient(s) can decode it.
Eskrow:
the practice of having a third party act as an intermediary in a transaction. This third party holds the funds on and sends them off when the transaction is completed.
Ethereum:
Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based platform that runs smart contracts and allows you to build dapps on it. Ethereum is fueled by the cryptocurrency Ether.
Exchange:
A platform (centralized or decentralized) for exchanging (trading) different forms of cryptocurrencies. These exchanges allow you to exchange cryptos for local currency. Some popular exchanges are Coinbase, Bittrex, Kraken and more.
Faucet:
A website which gives away free cryptocurrencies.
Fiat money:
Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it, such as the US dollar or UK pound.
Fork:
A split in the blockchain, resulting in two separate branches, an original and a new alternate version of the cryptocurrency. As a single blockchain forks into two, they will both run simultaneously on different parts of the network. For example, Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork.
FOMO:
Fear of missing out.
Frictionless:
A system is frictionless when there are zero transaction costs or trading retraints.
FUD:
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt regarding the crypto market.
Gas:
A fee paid to run transactions, dapps and smart contracts on Ethereum.
Halving:
A 50% decrease in block reward after the mining of a pre-specified number of blocks. Every 4 years, the “reward” for successfully mining a block of bitcoin is reduced by half. This is referred to as “Halving”.
Hardware wallet:
Physical wallet devices that can securely store cryptocurrency maximally. Some examples are Ledger Nano S**,** Digital Bitbox and more**.**
Hash:
The process that takes input data of varying sizes, performs an operation on it and converts it into a fixed size output. It cannot be reversed.
Hashing:
The process by which you mine bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency, by trying to solve the mathematical problem within it, using cryptographic hash functions.
HODL:
A Bitcoin enthusiast once accidentally misspelled the word HOLD and it is now part of the bitcoin legend. It can also mean hold on for dear life.
ICO (Initial Coin Offering):
A blockchain-based fundraising mechanism, or a public crowd sale of a new digital coin, used to raise capital from supporters for an early stage crypto venture. Beware of these as there have been quite a few scams in the past.
John mcAfee:
A man who will one day eat his balls on live television for falsely predicting bitcoin going to 100k. He has also become a small meme within the crypto community for his outlandish claims.
JOMO:
Joy of missing out. For those who are so depressed about missing out their sadness becomes joy.
KYC:
Know your customer(alternatively consumer).
Lambo:
This stands for Lamborghini. A small meme within the investing community where the moment someone gets rich they spend their earnings on a lambo. One day we will all have lambos in crypto-valhalla.
Ledger:
Away from Blockchain, it is a book of financial transactions and balances. In the world of crypto, the blockchain functions as a ledger. A digital currency’s ledger records all transactions which took place on a certain block chain network.
Leverage:
Trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment.
Liquidity:
The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
of the coins.
Margin trading:
The trading of assets or securities bought with borrowed money.
Market cap/MCAP:
A short-term for Market Capitalization. Market Capitalization refers to the market value of a particular cryptocurrency. It is computed by multiplying the Price of an individual unit of coins by the total circulating supply.
Miner:
A computer participating in any cryptocurrency network performing proof of work. This is usually done to receive block rewards.
Mining:
The act of solving a complex math equation to validate a blockchain transaction using computer processing power and specialized hardware.
Mining contract:
A method of investing in bitcoin mining hardware, allowing anyone to rent out a pre-specified amount of hashing power, for an agreed amount of time. The mining service takes care of hardware maintenance, hosting and electricity costs, making it simpler for investors.
Mining rig:
A computer specially designed for mining cryptocurrencies.
Mooning:
A situation the price of a coin rapidly increases in value. Can also be used as: “I hope bitcoin goes to the moon”
Node:
Any computing device that connects to the blockchain network.
Open source:
The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC:
Over the counter. Trading is done directly between parties.
P2P (Peer to Peer):
A type of network connection where participants interact directly with each other rather than through a centralized third party. The system allows the exchange of resources from A to B, without having to go through a separate server.
Paper wallet:
A form of “cold storage” where the private keys are printed onto a piece of paper and stored offline. Considered as one of the safest crypto wallets, the truth is that it majors in sweeping coins from your wallets.
Pre mining:
The mining of a cryptocurrency by its developers before it is released to the public.
Proof of stake (POS):
A consensus distribution algorithm which essentially rewards you based upon the amount of the coin that you own. In other words, more investment in the coin will leads to more gain when you mine with this protocol In Proof of Stake, the resource held by the “miner” is their stake in the currency.
PROOF OF WORK (POW) :
The competition of computers competing to solve a tough crypto math problem. The first computer that does this is allowed to create new blocks and record information.” The miner is then usually rewarded via transaction fees.
Protocol:
A standardized set of rules for formatting and processing data.
Public key / private key:
A cryptographic code that allows a user to receive cryptocurrencies into an account. The public key is made available to everyone via a publicly accessible directory, and the private key remains confidential to its respective owner. Because the key pair is mathematically related, whatever is encrypted with a public key may only be decrypted by its corresponding private key.
Pump and dump:
Massive buying and selling activity of cryptocurrencies (sometimes organized and to one’s benefit) which essentially result in a phenomenon where the significant surge in the value of coin followed by a huge crash take place in a short time frame.
Recovery phrase:
A set of phrases you are given whereby you can regain or access your wallet should you lose the private key to your wallets — paper, mobile, desktop, and hardware wallet. These phrases are some random 12–24 words. A recovery Phrase can also be called as Recovery seed, Seed Key, Recovery Key, or Seed Phrase.
REKT:
Referring to the word “wrecked”. It defines a situation whereby an investor or trader who has been ruined utterly following the massive losses suffered in crypto industry.
Ripple:
An alternative payment network to Bitcoin based on similar cryptography. The ripple network uses XRP as currency and is capable of sending any asset type.
ROI:
Return on investment.
Safu:
A crypto term for safe popularized by the Bizonnaci YouTube channel after the CEO of Binance tweeted
“Funds are safe."
“the exchage I use got hacked!”“Oh no, are your funds safu?”
“My coins better be safu!”
​
​
Sats/Satoshi:
The smallest fraction of a bitcoin is called a “satoshi” or “sat”. It represents one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin and is named after Satoshi Nakamoto.
Satoshi Nakamoto:
This was the pseudonym for the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.
Scalability:
The ability of a cryptocurrency to contain the massive use of its Blockchain.
Sharding:
A scaling solution for the Blockchain. It is generally a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Shitcoin:
Coin with little potential or future prospects.
Shill:
Spreading buzz by heavily promoting a particular coin in the community to create awareness.
Short position:
Selling of a specific cryptocurrency with an expectation that it will drop in value.
Silk road:
The online marketplace where drugs and other illicit items were traded for Bitcoin. This marketplace is using accessed through “TOR”, and VPNs. In October 2013, a Silk Road was shut down in by the FBI.
Smart Contract:
Certain computational benchmarks or barriers that have to be met in turn for money or data to be deposited or even be used to verify things such as land rights.
Software Wallet:
A crypto wallet that exists purely as software files on a computer. Usually, software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources.
Solidity:
A contract-oriented coding language for implementing smart contracts on Ethereum. Its syntax is similar to that of JavaScript.
Stable coin:
A cryptocoin with an extremely low volatility that can be used to trade against the overall market.
Staking:
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
Surge:
When a crypto currency appreciates or goes up in price.
Tank:
The opposite of mooning. When a coin tanks it can also be described as crashing.
Tendies
For traders , the chief prize is “tendies” (chicken tenders, the treat an overgrown man-child receives for being a “Good Boy”) .
Token:
A unit of value that represents a digital asset built on a blockchain system. A token is usually considered as a “coin” of a cryptocurrency, but it really has a wider functionality.
TOR: “The Onion Router” is a free web browser designed to protect users’ anonymity and resist censorship. Tor is usually used surfing the web anonymously and access sites on the “Darkweb”.
Transaction fee:
An amount of money users are charged from their transaction when sending cryptocurrencies.
Volatility:
A measure of fluctuations in the price of a financial instrument over time. High volatility in bitcoin is seen as risky since its shifting value discourages people from spending or accepting it.
Wallet:
A file that stores all your private keys and communicates with the blockchain to perform transactions. It allows you to send and receive bitcoins securely as well as view your balance and transaction history.
Whale:
An investor that holds a tremendous amount of cryptocurrency. Their extraordinary large holdings allow them to control prices and manipulate the market.
Whitepaper:
​
A comprehensive report or guide made to understand an issue or help decision making. It is also seen as a technical write up that most cryptocurrencies provide to take a deep look into the structure and plan of the cryptocurrency/Blockchain project. Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to release a whitepaper on Bitcoin, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in late 2008.
And with that I finally complete my odyssey. I sincerely hope that this helped you and if you are new, I welcome you to crypto. If you read all of that I hope it increased, you in knowledge.
my final definition:
Crypto-Family:
A collection of all the HODLers and crypto fanatics. A place where all people alike unite over a love for crypto.
We are all in this together as we pioneer the new world that is crypto currency. I wish you a great day and Happy HODLing.
-u/flacciduck
feel free to comment words or terms that you feel should be included or about any errors I made.
Edit1:some fixes were made and added words.

I remember in 2017 there were epic stories of people making fortunes from free crypto-giveaways – for example, the nano faucet gave people fantastic wealth if they held on all year. Then there were things like the various bitcoin forks – great if you cashed in.
Now in 2020 there seems to be another uptrend in terms of the ability to get “free crypto” – in various ways. Overtime this can build up to quite a lot.
This year I have:

1. Coinbase earn – I’ve done almost all of these and have had a few referrals. I think I earned maybe $200 or so all up, cashed in BTC, and that BTC is probably around $400
2. Reddit moons – I have earned 3100 moons, sold for roughly $220
3. Uniswap – My free 400 tokens are still held, so they are worth maybe $1200
4. Binance Coin – lots of staking and lottery compensation payments here – for example, I recently sold my Flamingo, Venus and Alpha tokens – maybe $30;
5. Hex – Yes I know it’s a scam, but I think I bit have a decent little payout in a month when my 90% locked tokens open (won’t say how much as that will reveal my BTC wallet holdings);
6. Swissborg – A fun little “guess the bitcoin app” that has $50 worth of tokens in it now;
7. Brave Browser – I’ve earned like $20 from that this year (insert: “Its not much but its honest work gif”);
8. Uniswap Pools etc – Hard to calculate this one but I’m earning some really great fees and Uni from pooling WBTC and WETH – about 0.5% return a week. Was also previously staking Uni / ETH - I made $1000 in fees but mostly gobbled up by impermanent loss.
9. Honeyswap – Every 48 hours, I log-in to get free honey from the faucet – around $40 or so;
10. Survey – I did a phone survey for a local project and got given $100 of free tokens;
11. Livepeer – No idea what this is but I sold two airdrops for around $20;
12. Nexus Mutual – Probably the king here. Invested $1200 worth. Received a 58% dividend on the first day of staking (say $700) which I reinvested. That $700 is now $8000 or something ridiculous (and itself earning rewards), plus another 13 NXM (So another $416 on top).
13. And then lots of rats and mice rewards from things like staking Celsius, staking Tezos referral rewards etc. I even have 3000 of that damn Pi coin thing but don’t know where that is going.
14. And to top it off a free ledger nano for participation in a private group on FB
15. (EDIT: I forgot to mention I am currently winning a "pick four" crypto competition that I entered in January where you pick four cryptos and the winner takes the pot. I picked BTC, FTX, SNX and CEL - so that might be another $200 to add to my collection!)

So in all, that is an entire bitcoin just for doing a bunch of crazy stuff. Who said it was difficult to join the 21 million club?
So for some people that might be considered a decent pay package for a full time job! What other opportunities do you guys have where you have passive income coming from crypto? Am I missing any obvious ones here?

Smart contracts (origins in 80s, 90s vs. 2013 ETH and 2020s Cardano)
We had a pretty interesting product update. We laughed, we cried, we all learned a little bit. Two and a half hours lots of stuff and I hope this gives you guys a good window into all the things that are happening. There's an enormous amount of complexity in Cardano and Goguen is no different. In fact that one slide showing all the interlocking dependencies and the moving pieces for it and just the sheer volume of things that are going on is, is an indication of not only the quality of the team but also the commercial reality of being a smart contract platform. In 2020 when I co-founded Ethereum our reference material was paper. We looked at things that Nick Szabo and people from the 1990s and 1980s wrote about and whether you were a Ricardian contract fan or you had programmed in Eiffel or you understood things like FpML basically it was an open field which gave us kind of a freedom to just do whatever we wanted to do but it also didn't give us a commercial reality of who's going to buy it? Who's going to use it? What do you need to do? The expectations in 2020 are vastly different from the expectations in 2013 and the reality is that there are massive deficits with Ethereum as designed today which is why Tezos exists and Algorand exists and why ETH2 is being constructed . It's why there are so many different players from Polkadot and others on down who have deep and detailed opinions about the things we need to do. If the ICO revolution hadn't happened, there was no notion of an ERC20 token and we were in a just different world.
We didn't have DeFi, any of these things and now in 2020 if you are to be competitive and build great things and actually invite real use and utility at a scale of millions and billions of people or government or Fortune 500 you need to have real good answers about a lot of different threats and things. For example, Marlowe, what it does is it leverages 20 years of history from domain experts like Willi Brammertz and over 30 years of history in domain-specific language (DSL) design from professor Simon Thompson and his team and it puts them together. It says for the first time ever we're going to have semantical clarity between the entrepreneur, the developer, the writer and the financial services infrastructure whether that be the banker, the insurance agent, the exchange, whoever that might be. Up until the totality of human history till today we have never had that semantical clarity. All four of those actors speak different languages and what we're doing with Marlowe as a DSL is an example of how you can unify and create a common language and experience between all of them today.
Marlowe, DSL, Glow, Plutus, IELE
Right now, you guys can go to the Marlowe playground and you can start using it and start building things and start having that semantical clarity and work with us and over a period of six months or so that will continue to evolve. Templates will evolve, applications will be constructed and those applications will work their way into Cardano applications and eventually they'll become cross-platform and work on things like (Hyperledger) fabric and other such things as we see industry and commercial adoption but it requires a starting point and Marlowe has evolved over a four year period through the hard labors of so many people to actually give us a great starting point. You can visually look at contracts and talk about their design. You can write them in JavaScript, you can write them in the Marlowe programming language. There's a Haskell side to things and you can see the power of this approach because of its design. You can prove things are correct, you can use theory that has existed for over 40 years like SAT solvers and reachability to actually show that you're not going to have a parity bug and that's just one example of one DSL of which many more will come. The point of DSLs is to give clarity to people in the industry. For example if we get into the health business and we start talking about medical records that will become a DSL to broker their movement and that same clarity and semantical unification will occur between doctors and hospitals, patients, governments, regulators and business professionals and they will now have a common language. So, Marlowe is an entry point and it's an example of how to build a DSL and evolve a DSL and bring the right people to the table.
When we look to things like Glow, from MuKn, this is an example of a team that's highly motivated and intrinsically across blockchain. When we look to the future and we say what happens when Bitcoin gets smart contracts? What happens when ETH2 comes out? What happens when people want to build cross-blockchain applications? Wouldn't it be nice to have a unification language and that's what Glow is basically all about. By strategic investments in that ecosystem, what Glow does for us is it ensures that we won't be left behind that Cardano has that and all Cardano infrastructure can benefit from that and Glow in turn will benefit from its embedding in our ecosystem. More users, more technology and ultimately because Cardano's the best. If you deploy in that direction it's the best experience. When you look to Plutus, Plutus is the unification language, it's the conductor of the orchestra and it pulls all of these things together and there were a lot of design requirements with Plutus that were quite hard from a theory viewpoint. We really cared a lot about resource determinism. We wanted to make sure that it was always predictable or at least as predictable as it can be to know how much it costs to do things because at the end of the day this is not a science experiment. These are not toys back in 2013. We had the luxury with Ethereum of just seeing what happened and the market makes strategic investments and they have to know how much their operating cost is going to be for their business model. We designed Plutus so that it would be one of the best programming languages on a long arc agenda of being a very practical on and off chain language to unify all the Cardano ecosystem. There are many objects in the ecosystem to operate, manipulate, instruments of value like native assets, identity, smart contracts onto themselves, DAOs, off chain infrastructure and you need a conductor that's capable of living in between all of these things and you need certainty that the code you're writing is going to work.
This is why we based it on an ecosystem that has 35 years of history and we as a company have invested millions of dollars in that ecosystem to modernize it and bring it into the 21st century especially for things like Windows support and working with partners like Tweag WebAssembly support, working on projects like compilation to JavaScript so that we can share that's there and our commitment is going to continue beyond that we are a founding member of the Haskell foundation working with Simon Peyton Jones and we're going to ensure that Haskell has compilation to ARM and that all of the technology that's required to keep that language competitive and actually make the language even more competitive will happen. It's very nice that Plutus is deeply ingrained in that ecosystem and that makes it a perfect conductor language. In the coming months we're going to talk a lot more about our relationship decay in IELE. If you live in the imperative object-oriented world and you want to do things a bit differently than the way things are done in the Haskell functional world then it makes sense to have an option that has the same principles as us which is why we reached out to Grigore years ago and established a commercial relationship with him. It's been the privilege of my career finding a way to resurrect that relationship so in the coming months we're going to talk a lot about how IELE fits into the Cardano ecosystem and the value it's going to bring in addition to the value of Marlowe, Glow, and Plutus.
Native assets
One of the single most important things about all of this is the native asset standard. One of the things we did not anticipate when we created Ethereum is just how pervasive the user's ability to issue an asset would be. We figured this would be an important thing, it's why we put it on a T-shirt back in the Miami conference in January of 2014 and we realized that from the color coin's project in the master coin project and one of the most important things is that we have the ability to issue not just a utility token but non-functional assets, security tokens and a litany of other instruments that hold value. Some ephemeral, some permanent, some with flexible monetary policies, some with fixed monetary policies, some from a central issuer, some from a decentralized issuer, some managed by a foundation, some managed by the community, some managed by fixed code that's immutable and the point of the native asset standard in the ERC20 converter is to establish a co-evolution of the technology and the commercialization of the technology. What we've been doing with ERC20 converter is using that as a way to create a conversation with those who want to migrate or build on Cardano and thinking through how are we going to create practical standards with our native assets. We already have enormous advantages with this standard over Ethereum. In particular the fact that your assets you issue on Cardano are treated the way that ADA is treated whereas in Ethereum you're a second-class citizen or ETH is treated differently from smart contracts. This first class citizen approach means that your assets will have the same governance access layer, to portfolio access and infrastructure that ADA itself has. Easier listing experiences, easier time with hardware wallets, easier time with wallet software. In general better user experience, faster transactions, lower transaction costs and then eventually for higher value tokens even the possibility of paying transaction fees over the long term in the native asset itself as if you were your own cryptocurrency.
Goguen rollout
You just simply cannot do this with the design of Ethereum and Ethereum 2. It's a huge advantage we have in our ecosystem and it's one that will become more pervasive over time now Goguen has already started. As a launch agenda the very first update to enable some Goguen era functionality was the metadata standard which meant that you could go from just moving ADA around to actually a whole litany of applications in the identity space and in the metadata space some of which we're aggressively negotiating on in commercial deals which we'll announce at a later date. The rollout of Goguen in terms of the system as we mentioned in the presentation will be principally done for the first iteration over a series of three hard fork combinator (HFC) events. The first of which is beginning this year in November December time frame and that's going to lay a lot of the foundations that will enable us to get to the second hard fork combinator event which will occur in Q1 of next year and we'll announce that specific date likely at the next product update and then the third one will happen shortly thereafter. They have to be spaced this way because it's just simply too cumbersome on our developers and also our partners such as wallet infrastructure and exchanges to try to do too much too quickly and furthermore there's an enormous amount of work as you've noticed on that slide to roll out Goguen. You have to do two things at once, you have to deploy the infrastructure but then you also have to populate the infrastructure and what's nice about the way that we've done things as you now see with the Marlowe playground the population of that infrastructure is occurring now today and with the ERC20 converter and the mint test net that's coming.
That's going to occur in November which means that that gives people time to start building and playing on our ecosystem in a safe sandbox so that when they deploy it to the mainnet they do it right the first time and they don't make an existential failure as we have seen with the DeFi space because at the end of the day once you go live you have a huge adversarial surface and everybody in the world is going to try to break the things you've done. It's very important that you do it right which means that you need time as a commercial partner and an application deployer to do it correctly. Parts of Goguen are indeed shipping this year, some have already shipped and we'll have another HFC event at the end of next month or early in December and throughout the first quarter of next year and likely the second quarter will complete the other two HFC events which will roll out full support for native assets, extended UTxO, the Plutus infrastructure and the Marlowe infrastructure. In the meantime we're also working on strategies about how we can ensure best integration of Glow and IELE into the Cardano ecosystem and as you've noticed there are three parallel teams that are working very hard. The Shelley team continues to upgrade the Shelley experience. Just today we've received a lot of concerns over for example the state pool ranking in Daedalus. Let me be very clear about something. There's no problem with the ranking software, the problem is the k parameter. It needs to be increased and the fact that things are getting grayed out is an indication that the ranking parameter is actually working right for the first time. So, k needs to go up but there are consequences of that and we need to improve the software to reflect those consequences but it is my goal to get k to 1000 before ideally d hits 0 because we really do want to have over a 1000 well-functioning stake pools but by no means is that the end of the story.
Improvements + project Catalyst
We need partial delegation and delegation portfolios. We need means for stake pool operators to communicate effectively and efficiently with those who delegate to them. We need improvements in SMASH. We need an identity center, we need a litany of improvements to Daedalus itself. Right now, today, there are more than four companies working full-time at doing just these things in addition to the Goguen updates that are occurring right now. That research thread and that development thread will continue. We've already seen seven CIPs including CIPs related to the reward function. We take them very seriously, we review them and there's enormous amount of discussion about how to create a fair and balanced system and we appreciate this feedback. It's a process and we ask for patience and we also remind people that we launched Shelley just at the end of July and despite that the ecosystem has more than doubled in size and it's been growing at an incredible pace and it's only going to continue and we're only going to see our best days ahead of us. Good things are coming down the pipe and it's becoming a much more holistic ecosystem from in performance improvements, to usability improvements, to better overall software for everyone.
There's no greater example of that than what we've been able to accomplish in the last three months for the exchanges in general. We're really proud of what we've done with the Adrestia stack and we're really proud of working with great partners like Binance and Bittrex throughout the last few months and we've had some certain challenges there but as a result of overcoming those challenges we have left behind an incredible enterprise grade listening experience that continues to get faster, continues to get higher quality and is secure and reliable 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we'll continue investing heavily to ensure that that only gets better for all of those partners whether they be an external wallet or their infrastructure like an exchange operator. We've had a lot of wins also on the governance side with the Voltaire Catalyst project. We have seen huge wins in participation going from small focus groups to now over 3500 people every single day coming into cardano.ideascale.com competing for 2250000 worth of ADA with fund2. That's just the beginning and every six to eight weeks that's going to increase in scale, in terms of the money and people, the quality... When we ask what is our developer acquisition strategy that's a major part of it because people know that there's money to be made in building on Cardano and that you have the right incentives to go realize your dreams and add value so just as these frameworks like the Marlowe playground and the Plutus playground and other such things like Glow come online and IELE come online the ability to build will be matched by the ability to discuss what to build and fund? What to build through a community driven process that includes greater and greater inclusivity. For example the next fund will include a voting center built right into Daedalus in addition to the cell phone application that we've already launched to vote and we will continue refining that experience relentlessly that's one of our fastest moving teams and I will remind you we are doing this in parallel to the Shelley workstream and the Goguen workstream that we showed you guys today. Finally there's Basho, not the next hard fork combinator event but HFC#3 which we anticipate in Q1 2021.
Sidechains, Hydra
I would like to include a sidechain protocol that allows the movement of value between independent systems through some form of blocking mechanism. We are currently examining and designing a protocol that we think fits very nicely into the way that our system works with mild modifications to the ledger rules. If that and should this be successful then that helps with one of the pillars of Basho interoperability and then the other pillar is scalability. Rob is hard at work working with technical architects and scaling up a team to start de-risking the Hydra protocol and others are hard at work evolving the science behind the Hydra protocol. We have seen great progress on all fronts to de-risk Hydra's roll-out and what's so beautiful about Hydra is it is our belief that the majority if not all of Hydra can be implemented in Plutus. As Plutus rolls out we have a natural constituency to run this infrastructure. The stake pool operators and we have a natural way without an HFC event or special accommodation of rolling out Hydra.
It's not really needed at this level of scaling capacity. We have an enormous throughput already 10 times greater than Ethereum as it is today and room to make it a hundred times greater than what Ethereum is today without Hydra. However as we de-risk this infrastructure solidify the protocols and get out all the kinks. What's so beautiful about it is that we will be able to when the time comes the community can roll out multiple implementations of Hydra so that there is diversity and there will be a natural group of actors to run those channels as we have seen for example with the Bolt spec and the Lightning ecosystem on Bitcoin. The contrasting difference between Lightning and Bitcoin and Hydra and extended UTxO and Cardano is we designed Cardano for Hydra.
Bitcoin was not designed for Lightning and as a consequence it's always more difficult for them to try to make meaningful progress whereas us there's no friction in that relationship. It just fits very nicely through so the roadmap is coming together and Cardano 2020 has definitely started to evolve into quite a mature ecosystem and what's really exciting is we're going from an ecosystem of potential to one of reality and instead of asking what could we do we're showing people what has been done and people are actually doing things every day.
Our commercial team is inundated with requests for coordination and cooperation and deployment. I get numerous emails every single day, well intended to very serious about people wanting to build on the platform and we're really excited about that. We're going to keep this steady systematic relentless march as you saw with the enormity of the news today. It's business as usual and it'll be exactly the same in November only there'll be more and every month. The velocity increases, we burn down the remaining story points to get these things done and things are happening very quickly and we just keep releasing and releasing and releasing and it's a very different time than it was even six months ago.
Community rules
What's so reassuring is we continue to have the best community in all the cryptocurrency space. It's the final point but it's one that I'm most proud of. You see people get to decide where they want to live, what infrastructure they want to deploy, on who they want to work with and when you have a welcoming warm and friendly community that is constructive and productive and their job is to help you get to where you need to go you want to work with those people. When you have a destructive or toxic community that's exclusive hierarchical and not invented here in their mentality people don't want to work with that community. Money can't buy that. I don't care if you have a bank account with four billion dollars or you're a central bank. You can't buy character and you can't buy culture, you have to make it and you have to earn it and if we've accomplished anything over these last five years from the 90 papers now and the million plus lines of code and the incredible releases that have happened and continue to happen we accomplished the greatest thing of all: we built a community to rival that of bitcoin's. I believe with that community we can realize the dream in the coming years of Cardano becoming the financial operating system.
For those who don't have one and giving open prayer and free economic identity to those who need it I am astounded by just how easy it is to roll these things out. They're super hard and complex under the hood but they just feel right and fit right and all the pieces are starting to come together in just the right way and I'm astounded by the fact that when we roll them out community members are there to receive them and take them to the next level.
Thank you all for attending the product update at the end of the month. This was a real good one, just as good as the Shelley one and we are now in the Goguen era with the first HFC event coming in the end of November and we're going to keep pushing them out. Every single one of them will add more capabilities and I encourage everyone to check out the Marlowe playground start building with it. Today things are happening really fast when the mint comes online at the end of November. Start playing around with that, start talking about the multi-token standard. If you're interested in a project our commercial division divisions always' open and you're going to see more and more progress from all entities in this ecosystem and some potentially major announcements before you can think it. Thanks guys it was a good day and thanks to the entire team that made all this happen I'm real proud of all of you.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5wADba8kCw

1. SUMMARY

Decentr is a protocol designed to make blockchain/DLT mainstream by allowing DeFi applications built on various blockchains to “talk to each other”. Decentr is a 100% secure and decentralised Web 3.0 protocol where users can apply PDV (personal data value) to increase APR on $DEC that users loan out as part of of our DeFi dLoan features, as well as it being applied at PoS when paying for stuff online. Decentr is also building a BAT competitor browser and Chrome/Firefox extension that acts as a gateway to 100% decentralised Web 3.0

Allows DeFi Dapps to access all Decentr’s dFintech features, including dLoan, dPay. Key innovation is that the protocols is based on a user’s ability to leverage the value of their data as exchangeable “currency”.

1. KEY CONCEPTS

• Decentr is building foundational chain-agnostic protocols that will support “true” 100% DeFi Dapps, a 100% secure and decentralised, user-centric alt economy. DeFi dApps inter-connected by Decentr can talk to each other and share PDV (personal data value) of their users. PDV is best described as a personalized “exchange rate” (in a sense social reputation where more effort leads to more rewards and NOT more capital to more rewards. ) between currencies that users apply at point-of-sale to make the cost of goods and services cheaper online. PDV is applied to the APR users earn on $DEC (native token) that they hold that they loan out as part of the investing pool. PDV will also allow uncollateralized loans on their dLoan platform, and also on platforms like Aave and Compound.
• Decentr will implement ZKsync to get super cheap and super fast transactions across the ETH network. It is also working with HoloChain and Tomochain to allow connect their DeFi ecosystem to the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. Decentr has DEEP TIES and a PARTNERSHIP with Holochain: https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/decentr-holochain-ama-29d662caed03
• Decentr is also building a browser and Chrome/Firefox extension - a gateway that “transitions” Web 2.0 into a 100% decentralised Web 3.0 via their suite of decentralised dFintech and dCommunications features. The browser adds a 100% decentralised “user layer” to current blockchain protocols so that applications built on blockchain can actually “talk to each other”. The browser uses encryption all the time and the power of blockchain to keep private keys safe. Browser will offer a more robust and innovative type of blockchain storage and caching that is much faster than VPN or TOR. It will allow surfing .onion addresses as well as the regular ones. >>BAT browser 400m marketcap, DEC marketcap 4m<<
• Decentr is researching a hardware application, powered by Decentr software, that would greatly enhance current IoT networks. It’s called a “Smart Chip Node” (SCN) and will adhere to 4G LTE standards (with in-built 5G capability), which means connectivity between devices will match or exceed current speed and connectivity, dramatically improving stability and coverage of standalone devices, such as a laptop or tablet, as well as IoT devices, such as home routers and modems.
• Decentr uses Coinbase API to optimise integrated implementation of the user layer and Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) to allow users to leverage cloud-based solutions to build, host and use their own blockchain apps. Tierion’s technological infrastructure, the Chainpoint Proof protocol, will come into play whenever a user adds something in Tierion’s data store. Hyperledger Fabric and R3 Corda private blockchains are used as an immutable transaction database for data transfers, including the following tech: R3 Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Ansible, Bitbucket Pipelines, AWS, Node.JS, GoLang, Kotlin and CouchDB.
• Implements a system of layered security protocols based on a radically-new software architecture that combines Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)4 and Sobol sequencing with a n-dimensional chain as part of AI-enhanced, platform-wide community consensus mechanism — a mechanism that assigns mutually agreed value to data and user security protocol upgrades (further encouraging enhanced data integrity) by deploying a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) protocol.
• Decentr has a very STRONG supportive community. This includes the Chad Gang STRONG Community: https://t.me/decentrtrading, Community News Channel: https://t.me/chadnews. Community Built Uniswap trade tracker: https://t.me/dectrades, Community built wallet holder tracker: https://t.me/DEC_WALLETS_COUNT
• Bank of England has reached out to Decenr to discuss the potential of a UK CBDC upon hearing about the potential of their tech. Decentr is consistent with their own R&D into a "dGBP" and they requested a top-level document for review >> Decentr created this proposal: https://decentr.net/files/Decentr_Consultancy_Doc_UK_CBDC.pdf

​

1. REVENUE MODEL

A fee is charged for every transaction using dPay whereby an exchange takes place between money (fiat and digital) and data, and vice versa, either as part of DeFi features or via a dApp built on Decentr. They are launching pilot programmes in the following industries:

1. Banking/PSP Industry: On Product launch, due to Decentr’s powerful PSP connections (including the worlds #2 PSP by volume), a medium-scale pilot program will be launched, which will seed the network with 150,000 PSP customers in primarily the Spanish/LAC markets, generating revenue from day one.
2. “Bricks and Mortar” Supermarket/Grocery Industry: Decentr aims to ensure the long-term competitiveness of “bricks and mortar” supermarkets against online-only grocery retailers, such as Amazon, by a) building secure tech that allows supermarkets to digitise every aspect of their supply chains and operational functions, while b) allowing supermarkets to leverage this incredibly valuable data as a liquid asset class. Expected revenue by Year 5: $114Mn per year.
3. Online Advertising Industry: Decentr’s 100% decentralised platform credits users secure data with payable value, in the form of PDV, for engaging with ads. The Brave browser was launched in 2012 and in 8 years has reached over 12 million monthly active users, accented by as many as 4.3 million daily active users.
4. TOKEN $DEC AND SALE

Decentr recently complete their token sale on a purchase portal powered by Dolomite where they raised $974,000 in 10 minutes for a total sale hardcap of 1.25M. The $DEC token is actively trading on multiple exchanges including Uniswap and IDEX. Listed for free on IDEX, Hotbit, Hoo, Coinw, Tidex, BKex. Listed on CoinGecko and Coinmarketcap. Listed on Delta and Blockfolio apps.
➡️ Circulating supply: 61m $DEC.
➡️ Release schedule and token distribution LINK -> NO RELEASE UNTIL 2021.

• Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/decentmarkets
• Coingecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/decentr

➡️Contract Address - 0x30f271C9E86D2B7d00a6376Cd96A1cFBD5F0b9b3
➡️Decimals - 18, Ticker - DEC
➡️Uniswap link: https://uniswap.info/pai0x3AEEE5bA053eF8406420DbC5801fC95eC57b0E0A
⭐️ HOW TO BUY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iloAiv2oCRc&feature=youtu.be
$DEC Token utility:

A tradeable unit of value that is both internal and external to the Decentr platform.A unit of conversion between fiat entering and exiting the Decentr ecosystem.A way to capture the value of user data and combines the activity of every participant of the platform performing payment (dPay), or lending and borrowing (dLend), i.e a way to peg PDV to tangible/actionable value.Method of payment in the Decentr ecosystem.A method to internally underwrite the “Deconomy.

1. NOTABLE SUPPORTERS

Simon Dedic - chief of Blockfyre: https://twitter.com/scoinaldo/status/1283787644221218817?s=20https://twitter.com/scoinaldo/status/1283719917657894912?s=21
Spectre Group Pick : https://twitter.com/SPECTREGRP/status/1284761576873041920https://twitter.com/llluckyl/status/1283765481716015111?s=21
Patrons of the Moon/Lil Uzi: https://t.me/patronsofthemoon/6764
CryptoGems: https://twitter.com/cryptogems_com/status/1283719318379925506?s=09t
tehMoonwalker pick who is a TOP 5 influencer per Binance:https://twitter.com/tehMoonwalkestatus/1284123961996050432?s=20https://twitter.com/binance/status/1279049822113198080
Holochain was one of their earliest supporters and they share a deep connection (recently an AMA was conducted in their TG group): https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/decentr-holochain-ama-29d662caed03

1. UPCOMING NEWS

• Partnership with worlds #2 PSP by volume: https://t.me/chadnews/27
• Roadmap UPDATE coming. Rich James has CONFIRMED that the MVP will be released in 2020.
• Blockfyre Report coming
• CryptoDiffer AMA coming up.
• CryptoDaku AMA coming up.
• Series of CEX exchange listing starting this week: https://twitter.com/bitcoin_brown/status/1285502234156032007?s=19

--------------------------------------------

1. RESOURCES:

Website: https://decentr.net
Telegram: https://t.me/DecentrNet
Medium: https://medium.com/@DecentrNet
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DecentrNet
Whitepaper: https://decentr.net/files/Decentr_Whitepaper_V1.4.pdf
Technical Whitepaper: https://decentr.net/files/Decentr_Technical_Whitepaper_Data_As_Economic_Currency.pdf
Recent Articles:
⚡️- https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/decentr-token-sale-metrics-and-distribution-483bb3c58d05
⚡️- https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/how-decentrs-defi-dloan-function-benefits-dec-holders-97ff64a0c105
⚡️- https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/3-vertical-revenue-streams-decentr-is-targeting-4fa1f3dd62de
⚡️- https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/brave-browser-the-good-the-bad-and-the-fundamentally-misguided-8a8593b0ff5b
⚡️- https://medium.com/@DecentrNet/how-decentrs-dfintech-replaces-swift-sct-inst-clearing-house-and-other-payment-solutions-78acacbb4c3f
Chad Gang STRONG Community: https://t.me/decentrtrading
Community News Channel: https://t.me/chadnews
Recent Uniswap trades: https://t.me/dectrades
Wallet holder tracker: https://t.me/DEC_WALLETS_COUNT

Reviewing the top 50 cryptos as of 09/15/2020 revealed some interesting items to note. Of the 50, only 7 have negative ROI. Algorand has the second highest only to be bested by ZCash.
Bitcoin ROI 7,877.04%
Ethereum ROI 9000%
Tether ROI 0.08%
XRP ROI 4,069.93%
Polkadot ROI 87.20%
Bitcoin Cash ROI -57.41%
Binance Coin ROI 9000%
Chainlink ROI 7,138.70%
Crypto.com Coin ROI 753.54%
Litecoin ROI 1,038.67%
Bitcoin SV ROI 86.21%
Cardano ROI 335.74%
EOS ROI 163.89%
TRON ROI 1,282.96%
USD Coin ROI -0.33%
Tezos ROI 440.90%
Stellar ROI 2,560.94%
Stellar ROI 2,560.94%
Monero ROI 3,532.85%
Neo ROI 9000%
UNUS SED LEO ROI 9.44%
yearn.finance ROI 3,411.23%
NEM ROI 9000%
Huobi Token ROI 221.13%
Cosmos ROI -22.64%
UMA ROI 1,023.37%
VeChain ROI -14.13%
Aave ROI 3,941.56%
IOTA ROI 9000%
Dash ROI 9000%
Dai ROI 2.57%
Wrapped Bitcoin ROI 208.08%
Ethereum Classic ROI 593.27%
Zcash ROI -98.60%
Ontology ROI -68.73%
OMG Network ROI 568.78%
TrueUSD ROI 0.12%
Maker ROI 1,982.73%
THETA ROI 242.81%
Synthetix Network Token ROI 942.33%
Compound ROI 55.26%
Algorand ROI -89.10%
OKB ROI 288.81%
FTX Token ROI 284.56%
Basic Attention Token ROI 46.2%
Dogecoin ROI 403.98%
Kusama ROI 2,271.36%
BitTorrent ROI 181.38%
0x ROI 300.37%
Celo ROI 211.42%
NXM ROI 515.36%
What does this say? To me, it says that this coin was not only overhyped, it was and is completely overvalued as of this date. It has a near -90% ROI. In my opinion, that means early investors didn’t get what they were expecting, the pre-ICO team was way off base, and the valuation was done by persons inexperienced with the crypto space. It’s hard to see how the miss could have been so far off.
77% (approx.) of eligible buyers took advantage of the early refund process. This says a lot about confidence of returns. The auction schedule has changed which now favors early backers/relay nodes in a questionable manner. And there is no information as to the next auction which leaves relay nodes as one of the few mechanisms by which large amounts of coins are introduced into the market.
Billions of coins still need to enter the market and the process is to hold off on auctions and allow relay nodes and founders to stabilize the price via timing of the introduction of coins. In short, managed demand for a product that does not have the retail demand to move the price to near introduction price.
Wrapped Bitcoin had a 6 month head start and an almost 300% difference in ROI. as far as Zcash, we won’t go there. But it is interesting to note that it uses some of Micali’s work and Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn did reference prior works by Micali re: the Goldwasser-Micali-Rivest Signature Scheme.
I may have to amend my prediction of ETH displacement by several years since it’s very unclear now as to when all coins will be in the market. Think about it, would you invest in a 401k that had a ROI of near -90% ? This isn’t FUD. Where most coins provided a reasonable valuation, Algorand for some odd reason had this ridiculous valuation which exposes the inexperience relative to the crypto space. “Let’s hire some folks, tell them what we FEEL it’s worth, and get some people to market it. Oops looks like we seriously overvalued this thing.”
Schedule the auctions back to the original timeline. Let the price be dictated by the market as it needs to be. This will generate the needed demand and the price/valuation will be corrected by market forces and not a select group. Sure some will lose, but some will gain in the sell off. There is no way to moon if a select group regulates the influx of coins without a competing mechanism.
This is not financial advice. Do your own research. This post is for entertainment purposes only.

I have been here for many previous altcoin seasons (2013,2017 etc) and wanted to share knowedle. It's a LOOONG article.
The evaluation of altcoins (i.e not Bitcoin) is one of the most difficult and profitable exercises. Here I will outline my methodology and thinking but we have to take some things as a given. The first is that the whole market is going up or down with forces that we can't predict or control. Bitcoin is correlated with economic environments, money supply increases, safe havens such as Gold, hype and country regulations. This is an impossible mix to analyze and almost everyone fails at it. That's why you see people valuing Bitcoin from $100 to $500k frequently. Although I am bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin and decentralization and smart contract platforms, this is not the game I will be describing. I am talking about a game where you try to maximize your BTC holdings by investing in altcoins. We win this game even if we are at a loss in fiat currency value. To put it another way:

If you are not bullish in general on cryptocurrencies you have no place in investing or trading cryptocurrencies since it's always a losing proposition to trade in bubbles, a scientifically proven fact. If on the other hand you are then your goal is to grow your portfolio more than you would if holding BTC/ETH for example.

Bitcoin is the big boy

How the market works is not easily identifiable if you haven't graduated from the 2017 crypto university. When there is a bull market everything seems amazingly profitable and things keep going up outgrowing Bitcoin by orders of magnitude and you are a genius. The problem with this is that it only works while Bitcoin is going up a little bit or trades sideways. When it decides to move big then altcoins lose value both on the way up and on the way down. The second part is obvious and proven since all altcoins from 2017 are at a fraction of their BTC value (usually in the range of 80% or more down). Also, when BTC is making a big move upwards everyone exits altcoins to ride the wave. It is possible that the altcoin market behaves as an inversed leveraged ETF with leakage where in a certain period while Bitcoin starts at 10k and ends at 10k for example, altcoins have lost a lot of value because of the above things happening.

We are doing it anyway champ!

OK so we understand the risks and just wanna gambol with our money right? I get it. Why do that? Because finding the ideal scenario and period can be extremely profitable. In 2017 several altcoins went up 40x more than BTC. But again, if you don't chose wisely many of them have gone back to zero (the author has first hand experience in this!), they have been delisted and nobody remembers them. The actual mentality to have is very important and resembles poker and other speculative games:
A certain altcoin can go up in value indefinitely but can only lose it's starting investment. Think about it. You either lose 1 metric or gain many many more. Now that sounds amazing but firstly as we said we have the goal to outperform our benchmark (BTC) and secondly that going up in value a lot means that the probability is quite low. There is this notion of Expected Value (EV) that poker players apply in these kind of situations and it goes like that. If you think that a certain coin has a probability let's say 10% to go up 10X and 90% probability it goes to zero it's an even bet. If you think that probability is 11% then it's a good bet, a profitable bet and you should take it. You get the point right? It's not that it can only go 10X or 0X, there is a whole range of probability outcomes that are too mathematical to explain here and it doesn't help so much because nobody can do such analysis with altcoins. See below on how we can approximate it.

How to evaluate altcoins

A range of different things to take into account outlined below will form our decision making. Not a single one of them should dictate 100% of our strategy.

Basics

It's all about market cap. Repeat after me. The price of a coin doesn't mean anything. Say it 10 times until you believe it. I can't remember how many times I had conversations with people that were comparing coins using their coin price instead of their market cap. To make this easy to get.

If I decide because the sky is blue to make my coin supply 100 Trillion FoolCoins with a price of $0.001 and there is another WiseCoin with a supply of 100 Million and price of $1 then FoolCoins are more expensive. - Alex Fin's Cap Law

Fundamental analysis

This is done usually in the stock world and it means that each company has some fundamental value that includes it's assets, customers, growth prospects, sector prospects and leadership competence but mostly centered in financial measures such as P/E ratios etc. Valuation is a proper economic discipline by itself taught in universities. OK, now throw everything out of the window!.
This kind of analysis is impossible in vague concepts and innovations that are currently cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was frequently priced at the fictional price of gas when all financial systems on earth run on the platform after decades (a bit of exaggeration here). No project is currently profitable enough to justify a valuation multiple that is usually equal to P/E in the thousands or more. As such we need to take other things into account. What I do is included in the list below:

• Check Github. You need to make sure there is active development for the platform and it's a very bad sign if the project is either keeping the code closed source or even worse there is simply no development. No projects are "complete".
• Check Website. If the website is written in bad English the Chinese google translate type it means that they are not serious enough to produce an unbreakable decentralized project. If you can't write English you can't change the world, period. That's a deal breaker.
• Check Team's Linkedin. Numerous projects have either fake Linkedin accounts or the team is comprised mainly by unexperienced employees that are even shown to be working in other companies currently.
• Check backers. Projects that have Binance, Coinbase or Silicon Valley VC funds backing them are way more legit but way more overpriced too!

Relative valuation

One of my favorite ways to value altcoins that is based on the same principle in the stock market is to look at peers and decide what is the maximum cap it can grow to. As an example you take a second layer Ethereum solution that has an ICO and you want to decide if you will enter or not. You can take a look at other coins that are in the same business and compare their market caps. Thinking that your coin will outperform by a lot the top coins currently is overly optimistic so I usually take a lower valuation as a target price. If the initial offering is directly implying a valuation that is more than that then there is no room to grow according to my analysis and I skip it. Many times this has proven me wrong because it's a game theory problem where if many people think irrationally in a market it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But since there is opportunity cost involved, in the long run, getting in initial offerings that have a lot of room to grow will pay off as a strategy.

Sector prospects

In 2017 the sexiest sector was platforms and then coins including privacy ones. Platforms are obviously still a highly rated sector because everything is being built on them, but privacy is not as hot as it used to be. In 2018 DEXes were all they hype but still people are massively using centralized exchanges. In 2020 Defi is the hottest sector and it includes platforms, oracles and Defi projects. What I am saying is that a project gets extra points if it's a Defi one in 2020 and minus points if it's a payment system that will conquer the world as it was in 2017 because that's old news. This is closely related to the next section.

Hype

Needless to say that the crypto market is a worse FOMO type of inexperienced trigger happy yolo investors , much worse than the Robinhood crowd that drove a bankrupt company's stock 1200% after they declared bankruptcy. The result is that there are numerous projects that are basically either vaporware or just so overhyped that their valuation has no connection to reality. Should we avoid those kind of projects? No and I will explain why. There are many very good technically projects that had zero hype potential due to incompetent marketing departments that made them tank. An example (without shilling because I sold out a while back) is Quantum Resistant Ledger. This project has amazing quantum resistant blockchain, the only one running now, has a platform that people can build tokens and messaging systems and other magnificent stuff. Just check how they fared up to now and you will get the point. A project *needs* to have a hype factor because you cannot judge it as normal stocks that you can do value investing like Warren Buffet does where a company will inevitable post sales and profitability numbers and investors will get dividends. Actually the last sentence is the most important: No dividends. Even projects that give you tokens or coins as dividends are not real dividends because if the coin tanks the value of the dividend tanks. This is NOT the case with company stocks where you get dollars even if the company stock tanks. All that being said, I would advice against betting on projects that have a lot of hype but little substance (but that should be obvious!).

How to construct your portfolio

My strategy and philosophy in investing is that risk should be proportional to investment capital. That means that if you are investing 100K in the crypto market your portfolio should be very different than someone investing 1K because 10% annual gains are nothing in the latter while they are very significant in the former. Starting from this principle each individual needs to construct a portfolio according to how much risk he wants to take. I will emphasize two important concepts that play well with what I said. In the first instance of a big portfolio you should concentrate on this mantra: "Diversification is the only free meal in finance". In the case of a small portfolio then this mantra is more important: "Concentrate to create wealth, diversify to maintain wealth". Usually in a big portfolio you would want to hold some big coins such as BTC and ETH to weather the ups and downs explained in previous paragraphs while generating profits and keep progressively smaller parts of your portfolio for riskier investments. Maybe 50% of this portfolio could be big caps and 10% very risky initial offerings. Adapting risk progressively to smaller portfolios makes sense but I think it would be irrational to keep more than 30% of a portfolio no matter what tied to one coin due to the very high risk of bankruptcy.

Conclusion

The altseason is supposedly coming every 3 months. Truth is that nobody can predict it but altcoins can be profitable no matter what. Forget about maximalists who are stuck in their dogmas. Altcoins deliver different value propositions and it makes sense because we are very far from a situation where some project offers everything like Amazon and we wouldn't even want that in the first place since we are talking about decentralization and not a winner takes all and becomes a monster kind of scenario! Some last minute advice:

• Stay out of paid telegram/discord pump groups. They are deadly for your wallet.
• Avoid jumping on overhyped coins that have pumped massively during the last days without any very important news.
• Don't keep coins in obscure exchanges for too long or you will get burned with certainty.
• Stop thinking that your coin will 1000x and overtake Bitcoin!

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