When people think of cryptocurrencies and tokens, the first thing that comes to mind is a reliable means of exchange to replace that dollar you have in your pocket. The problems below, while not unique, may change how you think.

We are currently working with a 2nd tier Big Three supplier that buys about $500k in aluminum alloy every year, and ships at regular intervals to Toluca, Mexico. The aluminum does not have to be DFARS, but does need to be certified. The customer has continuing problems with import material, but the reduced price offsets the amount of scrap material. Things like air pockets, hard spots, and fissures spring up randomly in the metal. Over a 2 year period, the customer tracked yields and confirmed price savings.

After the product is complete, it is shipped to Mexico where the manufactured goods are installed in sub-assemblies, and then shipped back to the United States for final installation.

Exactly 45 days after the initial shipment, the customer is paid by bank wire.

Over the past year, their bank has collected over $5000 in fees, and ‘lost’ the most recent payment in transfer. Numerous emails over the next 4 weeks were just a bunch of finger pointing, and swift code errors. $30,000 is still missing. The supplier is not worried, but inconvenienced.

Now it would seem Bitcoin could solve the problem here, but there are actually two problems and Bitcoin does not offer a solution to either.

Problem #1, suspect material. The customer has created value by evaluating material yields. This documentation has value to many other material buyers, but the customer has no way to incentivize it. Iota can change that. Even if Iota has no purchasing power for the customer, Iota tokens can allow the customer to trade for other valuable data. You can read more about Iota’s partnership with Microsoft, that is working on this now: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cryptocurrency-iota-rallies-after-launch-of-data-marketplace.html

Problem #2, is the money transfer. Of course, Bitcoin would work, but the problems is the end users CFO, lawyers, and share holders would never allow a decentralized product to transfer money from customer to supplier. At least not at this stage of adoption. This is where Ripple can step in and offer a safe, fast, and traceable means of exchange that would never lose $30,000.

We recently looked over Iota and Ripple white papers, which can be found here:

https://iota.org/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf
https://ripple.com/files/ripple_solutions_guide.pdf

We are not computer science engineers, so the papers are a tough read, but it is clear that Iota and Ripple will offer solutions, and value, in the near term that companies are looking for.

There is an equal divide right now in every sector of the economy on whether Bitcoin is a bubble.  Millionaires and Billionaires are all chiming in.  These are some pretty smart people, and they still can’t agree.

So what does  the retired MLB player Frank Thomas have to do with Bitcoin and Tulips?

That’s easy!

1990 was Frank’s rookie year.  In 1991, a company called Upper Deck started to produce a premium baseball card to compete with Topps.  Early in 1991 you could buy a Frank Thomas Upper Deck rookie card for $1.00.  By 1994, the price had soared to $200, and perfect examples were selling for $400.  The problem was, that in 1994, nobody knew how many rookie card were printed, and there was no regional interaction to compare prices.  Prices were dictated, in part, by a magazine called Beckett.

Then, in 1995, a company called Ebay emerged, and instead of trading, and selling, the cards at memorabilia events, it could be done online.   Within a year, the price collapsed as the true market price was discovered.  Today, good examples can be found for $2.00.

Moving on to Dutch Tulips in the 1600’s, it’s almost embarrassing to think that a desperate Billionaire trying to save his bank has to resort to comparing Bitcoin to Tulips.  In the 1600’s the Dutch population was about 1.5 Million according to Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1600

We are pretty sure that there was no internet, phone service, or Ebay back then.  So, the price was dictated by an elite group that was only a small percentage of that 1.5 Million people.  If there was an Ebay, people from other countries would have entered the market, and it would have self regulated just like the market regulated the price of the Frank Thomas rookie card in 1995.

Bitcoin on the other hand is no longer isolated to a small group of tech individuals.  The market has become global, and aside from price manipulations at individual exchanges, the demand, and therefore price, is self regulating.  Its use as a method of exchange is also becoming integrated into society on a daily basis.  Bitcoin ATM’s are popping up everywhere, and new companies are opening up to the option almost as frequent.

Maybe the next time a Billionaire decides to call Bitcoin a bubble, he should consider that he makes more money in 1 day than a Foxconn employee makes in 5 years.  So shouldn’t he be more concerned that his wealth is a bubble, and not worry about the Bitcoin he doesn’t own?

-Coin Monkey

 

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BTC:  1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

 

 

 

 

Last month, rumors were flying that Amazon was going to accept Bitcoin.

That didn’t happen!

But, here are some interesting things to note.

First, Amazon owns more than 25,000 domains.  You can see the list here:

https://whoisology.com/amazon.com

In that list is the domain amazonbitcoin.com.

Now if you go the the URL: http://amazonbitcoin.com

You will note that Amazon is tracking the traffic to that domain.

If you take other domains from that list of 25,000, like iftime.com, they are not tracking them.

So why does Amazon have the domain amazonbitcoin.com resolving, and why are they tracking the traffic?

-Coin Monkey

 

Please consider a small donation to keep Coin Monkey going.

BTC:  1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

 

 

Two days ago, the cryptocurrency market cap went from $330 Billion to about $280 Billion in less than a day.  You can see in the chart above, the top 7 coins all got slammed.  In fact, of the top 50 coins, only Tether was up, and that was only by .01c.  Of course Tether is a whole other story.

Two days later, the market cap has returned to $320 Billion.

So what happened?

Reports are that a whale had a huge sell order at $11,400 for Bitcoin, and within an hour, the price had dropped to $9200.

So how can 1 person have create a $50 Billion swing in the whole crypto space?

The problem is that because of the decentralized nature of cryptos, and specifically Bitcoin, the coins are traded on many exchanges, in many different currencies.  There are more than 20 Bitcoin exchanges, and the prices can vary by up to $1000 on any given day.  You can track the exchange prices here:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

Bitcoin might trade $5-10 Billion a day, but that is spread out among all of the exchanges.  With the largest exchanges trading about $1 Billion/Day, a trader(whale) with $100 Million deposit could easily manipulate the single exchange, and cause a ripple effect in all of the other exchanges and other cryptos.

At prices above $10,000 per Bitcoin, you better be comfortably with swings of $2000 in short periods of time.

-Coin Monkey

 

 

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BTC:  1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

 

Bitaddress.org is currently the most popular Bitcoin paper wallet generator.  The code is open source, and no flaws have been found over the past few years.

Bitaddress gives you the option of auto generating private keys,  using a  ASCII character string to generate the key, or using what is know as a brain wallet, a group or combination of words and numbers that only you know.

Take a look at this wallet generated in 2015:

1EWgdF8mXDGgsa93EuvtUEt6VHxJeZbKNb

SHA256 private keys are almost impossible to hack, but the creator of that wallet made the mistake of using a brain wallet with the phrase:

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

As you can see, the funds were withdrawn immediately.  We’re not sure if the owner withdrew them, or if they were stolen.

Either way, it is a good reminder that your brain wallet should not be a common phrase.

Stay tuned next week to find out how we cracked other brain wallets using a perl script.

-Coin Monkey

 

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BTC:  1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

 

Over the next 2 weeks, a couple of events are going to happen the could have a big impact on Bitcoin and possibly Bitcoin Cash.

First, it looks like difficulty is going to adjust down by about 10%.  Miners have pulled hash power away from Bitcoin, and moved it to Bitcoin Cash and other alt coins.  The resulting loss of hash power has created a situation where instead of blocks being mined every 10 minutes, they are being mined every 12 minutes per Bitcoin Wisdom:

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty

So, either hash power is going to move back to Bitcoin over the next 12 days, which will probably reduce the Bitcoin Cash hash power, or difficulty will go down.  If difficulty goes down, miners will get a 10% bonus every day for the next 2 weeks after that.

Second, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange(CME) is going to start trading Bitcoin Futures.  The CME already has their official quote page up:

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoin.html

Futures should be live on December 11th pending regulatory approval.

Keep an eye out, over the next 2 weeks, for these events.

-Coin Monkey

 

Please consider a small donation to keep Coin Monkey going.

BTC:  1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj

https://blockchain.info/address/1Q6LB3dQCswJj3ky6N3ZkEZCiCbuciwErj