What are Bitcoin covenants, and how do they work? – Cointelegraph

Various prominent Bitcoin experts, including Adam Back, Jimmy Song and Andreas Antonopoulos, have raised some concerns over the implementation of restrictive covenants, in particular with the BIP119.

In particular, Antonopoulos has voiced concerns over "recursive covenants" that the new update could convey, thereby deteriorating the network. A recursive covenant occurs when a programmer restricts a transaction, but he does it in a way that restricts another transaction after that, starting a domino effect resulting in future limitless recursive covenants.

While locking up where a Bitcoin can be spent is advantageous to ensure more security, it also provides grounds for censorship, and control by governments, which would hinder the very existence of Bitcoin. Authorities could potentially force exchanges to withdraw only to covenants with some control over the coin.

While this same risk already exists, since governments can ask exchanges to send only to addresses with a taproot spend path or multi-sig controlled by them, could the implementation of covenants facilitate malicious purposes where it would make it easier for governments to enforce a sort of on-chain KYC? 

Covenants might interfere with Bitcoin’s fungibility — the ability of each Bitcoin to be identical in function and quality.

While useful for security and scalability, covenants would change the properties of specific Bitcoin units, essentially creating different types of digital currency, distinct according to what could be spent or where it could be sent. 

As a result, those who oppose the change argued that limiting how you can spend your Bitcoin would ultimately limit Bitcoin’s use as a digital currency, with inevitable consequences in its value.

There are strong opinions on covenants' pros and cons; however, debates are healthy and necessary to improve a decentralized and leaderless network. Ultimately, the final decision will be down to the users and node operators who will download the software that better reflects their viewpoint.

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Why you should approach Bitcoin price with caution – FXStreet

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Is Bitcoin Really A Hedge Against Inflation? – Bitcoin Magazine

This is an opinion editorial by Jordan Wirsz, an investor, award-winning entrepreneur, author and podcast host.

Bitcoins correlation to inflation has been widely discussed since its inception. There are many narratives surrounding bitcoins meteoric rise over the last 13 years, but none so prevalent as the debasement of fiat currency, which is certainly considered inflationary. Now Bitcoins price is declining, leaving many Bitcoiners confused, as inflation is the highest its been in more than 40 years. How will inflation and monetary policy impact bitcoins price?

First, lets discuss inflation. The Federal Reserves mandate includes an inflation target of 2%, yet we just printed an 8.6% consumer price inflation number for the month of May 2022. That is more than 400% of the Feds target. In reality, inflation is likely even higher than the CPI print. Wage inflation isnt keeping up with actual inflation and households are starting to feel it big time. Consumer sentiment is now at an all-time low.

Why isnt bitcoin surging while inflation is running out of control? Although fiat debasement and inflation are correlated, they truly are two different things that can coexist in juxtaposition for periods of time. The narrative that bitcoin is an inflation hedge has been widely talked about, but bitcoin has behaved more as a barometer of monetary policy than of inflation.

Macro analysts and economists are feverishly debating our current inflationary environment, trying to find comparisons and correlations to inflationary periods in history such as the 1940s and the 1970s in an effort to forecast where we go from here. While there are certainly similarities to inflationary periods of the past, there is no precedent for bitcoins performance under circumstances such as these. Bitcoin was born only 13 years ago from the ashes of the Global Financial Crisis, which itself unleashed one of the greatest monetary expansions in history up until that time. For the last 13 years, bitcoin has seen an environment of easy monetary policy. The Fed has been dovish, and anytime hawkishness raised its ugly head, the markets rolled over and the Fed pivoted quickly to reestablish calm markets. Note that during the same period, bitcoin rose from pennies to $69,000, making it perhaps the greatest-performing asset of all time. The thesis has been that bitcoin is an up and to the right asset, but that thesis has never been challenged by a significantly tightening monetary policy environment, which we find ourselves at the present moment.

The old saying that this time is different, might actually prove to be true. The Fed cant pivot to quell the markets this time. Inflation is wildly out of control and the Fed is starting from a near-zero rate environment. Here we are with 8.6% inflation and near-zero rates while staring recession straight in the eyes. The Fed is not hiking to cool the economy It is hiking in the face of a cooling economy, with already one quarter of negative gross domestic product growth behind us in Q1, 2022. Quantitative tightening has only just begun. The Fed does not have the leeway to slow down or ease its tightening. It must, by mandate, continue to raise rates until inflation is under control. Meanwhile, the cost-conditions index already shows the biggest tightening in decades, with almost zero movement from the Fed. The mere hint of the Fed tightening spun the markets out of control.

There is a big misconception in the market about the Fed and its commitment to raising rates. I often hear people say, The Fed cant raise rates because if they do, we wont be able to afford our debt payments, so the Fed is bluffing and will pivot sooner than later. That idea is just factually incorrect. The Fed has no limit as to the amount of money it can spend. Why? Because it can print money to make whatever debt payments are necessary to support the government from defaulting. Its easy to make debt payments when you have a central bank to print your own currency, isnt it?

I know what youre thinking: Wait a minute, youre saying the Fed needs to kill inflation by raising rates. And if rates go up enough, the Fed can just print more money to pay for its higher interest payments, which is inflationary?

Does your brain hurt yet?

This is the debt spiral and inflation conundrum that folks like Bitcoin legend Greg Foss talks about regularly.

Now let me be clear, the above discussion of that possible outcome is widely and vigorously debated. The Fed is an independent entity, and its mandate is not to print money to pay our debts. However, it is entirely possible that politicians make moves to change the Feds mandate given the potential for incredibly pernicious circumstances in the future. This complex topic and set of nuances deserves much more discussion and thought, but Ill save that for another article in the near future.

Interestingly, when the Fed announced its intent to hike rates to kill inflation, the market didnt wait for the Fed to do it The market actually went ahead and did the Feds job for it. In the last six months, interest rates have roughly doubled the fastest rate of change ever in the history of interest rates. Libor has jumped even more.

This record rate-increase has included mortgage rates, which have also doubled in the last six months, sending shivers through the housing market and crushing home affordability at a rate of change unlike anything weve ever seen before.

30-year mortgage rates have nearly doubled in the last six months.

All of this, with only a tiny, minuscule, 50 bps hike by the Fed and the very beginning of their rate hike and balance sheet runoff program, merely started in May! As you can see, the Fed barely moved an inch, while the markets crossed a chasm on their own accord. The Feds rhetoric alone sent a chilling effect through the markets that few expected. Look at the global growth optimism at new all-time lows:

Despite the current volatility in the markets, the current miscalculation by investors is that the Fed will take its foot off the brake once inflation is under control and slowing. But the Fed can only control the demand side of the inflationary equation, not the supply side of the equation, which is where most of the inflationary pressure is coming from. In essence, the Fed is trying to use a screwdriver to cut a board of lumber. Wrong tool for the job. The result may very well be a cooling economy with persistent core inflation, which is not going to be the soft landing that many hope for.

Is the Fed actually hoping for a hard landing? One thought that comes to mind is that we may actually need a hard landing in order to give the Fed a pathway to reduce interest rates again. This would provide the government the possibility of actually servicing its debt with future tax revenue, versus finding a path to print money to pay for our debt service at persistently higher rates.

Although there are macro similarities between the 1940s, 1970s and the present, I think it ultimately provides less insight into the future direction of asset prices than the monetary policy cycles do.

Below is a chart of the rate of change of U.S. M2 money supply. You can see that 2020-2021 saw a record rise from the COVID-19 stimulus, but look at late 2021-present and you see one of the fastest rate-of-change drops in M2 money supply in recent history.

In theory, bitcoin is behaving exactly as it should in this environment. Record-easy monetary policy equals number go up technology. Record monetary tightening equals number go down price action. It is quite easy to ascertain that bitcoins price is tied less to inflation, and more to monetary policy and asset inflation/deflation (as opposed to core inflation). The chart below of the FRED M2 money supply resembles a less volatile bitcoin chart number go up technology up and to the right.

Now, consider that for the first time since 2009 actually the entire history of the FRED M2 chart the M2 line is potentially making a significant direction turn to the downside (look closely). Bitcoin is only a 13-year-old experiment in correlation analysis that many are still theorizing upon, but if this correlation holds, then it stands to reason that bitcoin will be much more closely tied to monetary policy than it will inflation.

If the Fed finds itself needing to print significantly more money, it would potentially coincide with an uptick in M2. That event could reflect a monetary policy change significant enough to start a new bull market in bitcoin, regardless of whether or not the Fed starts easing rates.

I often think to myself, What is the catalyst for people to allocate a portion of their portfolio to bitcoin? I believe we are beginning to see that catalyst unfold right in front of us. Below is a total-bond-return index chart that demonstrates the significant losses bond holders are taking on the chin right now.

The traditional 60/40 portfolio is getting destroyed on both sides simultaneously, for the first time in history. The traditional safe haven isnt working this time around, which underscores the possibility that this time is different. Bonds may be a deadweight allocation for portfolios from now on or worse.

It seems that most traditional portfolio strategies are broken or breaking. The only strategy that has worked consistently over the course of millennia is to build and secure wealth with the simple ownership of what is valuable. Work has always been valuable and that is why proof-of-work is tied to true forms of value. Bitcoin is the only thing that does this well in the digital world. Gold does it too, but compared to bitcoin, it cannot fulfill the needs of a modern, interconnected, global economy as well as its digital counterpart can. If bitcoin didnt exist, then gold would be the only answer. Thankfully, bitcoin exists.

Regardless of whether inflation stays high or calms down to more normalized levels, the bottom line is clear: Bitcoin will likely start its next bull market when monetary policy changes, even if ever so slightly or indirectly.

This is a guest post by Jordan Wirsz. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Is Bitcoin Really A Hedge Against Inflation? - Bitcoin Magazine

Not All Bitcoin Bear Markets Are The Same – Bitcoin Magazine

This is an opinion editorial by Anthony Feliciano, a Bitcoin event organizer and contributor to Bitcoin Magazine.

On Wednesday, June 15, 2022, the Federal Reserve announced a 75 basis point hike to interest rates and possibly another 75 basis point hike in July. Friday, June 17, bitcoin saw a massive sell-off along with the rest of the crypto markets, shedding billions in total market capitalization. A first for bitcoin happened as well we dipped below the previous cycle's all-time high of $19,756. Bitcoin dipped to ~$17,000, not once but twice, before rebounding to $20,000 levels by Sunday. This had many people talking about the R word for the economy and another crypto winter like that which occurred from January 2018 to December 2020.

Not all bear markets are the same.

I say not all bear markets are the same because we are presented with an unique opportunity. During the last crypto winter, I took a different approach when it came to Bitcoin I went down the rabbit hole. Now if you are just an investor in bitcoin and looking to make money, then yes, you don't like these times. I would suspect there is a very high percentage that is more of the investor than going down the rabbit hole. For those who are peering over the edge looking into the rabbit hole, if we truly get another crypto winter then this bear market is the time to fall into the rabbit hole.

A little over four years ago, I fell into the rabbit hole. My god, what a bumpy, rocky, uneven descent it was into Bitcoin projects. The projects you hear and see today are far different to what we had in 2017 and 2018. Now if you, like me, aren't a coder, and your eyes glaze over looking at the blinking cursor in the terminal, then you probably would have turned around, climbed out and kicked all the dirt back into the hole. Despite not being a coder, I decided to stick it out anyway; a glutton for punishment, I guess, but grateful that I decided to keep going and smoothing those bumps down into smoother, more manageable pathways.

I first decided that I was going to start by making my own Lightning Network (LN) node a few years back. I give a brief overview of a few projects in the article I previously wrote, DIY Bitcoin Nodes. I chose RaspiBlitz as my node, for no particular reason versus other projects I just picked one and decided to build. With a plethora of options inside the RaspiBlitz suite, I learned a lot about Electrum, how to run it properly connected to your own node versus public nodes, and JoinMarket to enhance my privacy when moving around UTXOs between wallets.

Then came an obsession with privacy, in particular smartphones. I used to root my cell phones back in the early 2010s, ran a lot of custom ROMs again I am no coder, so I bricked a few phones in the process. This led to learning about a de-Google phone project called GrapheneOS, so I now have a backup phone that has no sim, was never registered and has been de-Googled. But what is key is that I am able to download many Bitcoin project APK files to this device while still managing to have a working UI that connects with my LN node over Tor. Think of it as a bug out phone, with none of the spyware and all the abilities to interact with your LN node and Bitcoin network.

Now we come to where I am at today, trying to help onboard merchants to accept bitcoin as payments, which is a different type of struggle in its own right. Imagine walking in cold to a brick-and-mortar store and talking to the owner about the ability to accept bitcoin payments, after the last two years of stress they had to deal with. You get the picture. Again, I worked through it, which led to this taking place back in January 2022: the First Successful CryptoBeerKings LN Event.

Even if we are about to enter a recession and/or another crypto winter, there is one thing I learned that doesn't stop: development. Developers are going to continue to develop for the Bitcoin network no matter what. If they didn't stop in 2018, they are certainly not going to stop in 2022. If you are a burgeoning developer yourself, then this is an even better time for you than last cycle, because the coding and tools have become more refined. If you find yourself on the other side of the coin like myself, then applications are the way to go. Take some time to learn about some of the projects out there and how to use them in your everyday Bitcoin rabbit hole life. This is an opportune time to hone your craft, no matter your skill level or what interests you the most. If you can listen to the Bitcoin ethos and fade the noise, I guarantee by the time the next cycle comes about, you will come out of your rabbit hole bright-eyed and ready.

This is a guest post by Anthony Feliciano. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Not All Bitcoin Bear Markets Are The Same - Bitcoin Magazine

Central Bank of Morocco to introduce Bitcoin and crypto regulation bill – Finbold – Finance in Bold

Morocco is joining the list of countries aiming to formally control the crypto sector by reportedly working on a final regulatory framework to guide the market.

The countrys central bank, Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM), is designing a crypto regulation outlook in consultation with a global financial institution, Bitcoin News reported on June 27.

According to BAMs governor Abdellatif Jouahri the institution has engaged with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank on specific benchmarks.

Notably, the IMF has been central in calling on countries to regulate the crypto sector while issuing warnings on the dangers of legalizing assets like Bitcoin. For instance, the institution has urged El Salvador to drop Bitcoin as legal tender stating that the move threatens the countrys economy.

Initial hints indicate that the regulation will likely not ban cryptocurrencies but will seek to promote innovation in the sector while protecting consumers. Some of the pain points Morocco seeks to address will be money laundering and anti-terrorism financing.

Previously, BAMs governor Abdul Latif Al Jawhari had noted that adopting cryptocurrencies in the country was a matter of when not if.

Currently, we cannot adopt cryptocurrencies given the lack of regulatory and legislative frameworks both nationally and internationally. The G20 and many countries stress the importance of having a crypto regulatory framework as well as a regulatory framework for CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), said Jawhari.

In a recent press release, BAM acknowledged that the countrys cryptocurrency sector is increasingly popular. However, the bank has maintained that users must be cautious of the risks associated with the sector.

Interestingly, the country banned Bitcoin trading in 2017, but the assets popularity has grown with the general increase in value in recent years. The popularity meant that the government could no longer ignore the growing prominence.

As of 2021, the country reportedly ranked fourth behind Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya in crypto trading volume across Africa.

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Central Bank of Morocco to introduce Bitcoin and crypto regulation bill - Finbold - Finance in Bold

Billionaire Mark Cuban Reveals Reason He Owns Bitcoin, Names Catalyst That Will Push BTC to New Heights – The Daily Hodl

A Shark Tank investor is laying out what he thinks must happen for Bitcoin (BTC) to take off as the better version of gold.

In a new interview with the Bankless podcast, billionaire Mark Cuban says BTC faces a problem of relative lack of utility and resulting lack of mainstream popularity.

Part of the challenge for Bitcoin is, even with the Lightning Network, improving and becoming more popular. Theres not enough utility, but thats the same problem gold has. Nobody needs gold jewelry. People like gold jewelry and want it, but they dont need it. So theres a utility issue with Bitcoin but, that said, like gold, its a good store of value.

The billionaire then explains why he keeps BTC in his portfolio and what he thinks is bound to push Bitcoin to new highs.

Its a better store of value when youre trying to be diverse in your portfolio, and thats why I own it. Because I think even though I have no idea where itll go, I have no idea how low it will go, but I do know that once there are applications with smart contracts not on Bitcoin but across crypto that regular people use and figure out, just like streaming was a better version of getting audio and video than traditional media was when theres better reason to use crypto applications, thats when it takes off.

Cuban also says Bitcoin works as a type of digital gold.

I always analogize Bitcoin as its a better version of gold. Its a digital version of gold and I truly believe that.

I

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Sergey Nivens/Nikelser Kate

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Billionaire Mark Cuban Reveals Reason He Owns Bitcoin, Names Catalyst That Will Push BTC to New Heights - The Daily Hodl

One of the most prominent crypto hedge funds just defaulted on a $670 million loan – CNBC

Bitcoin rallied to a record high of nearly $69,000 at the height of the 2021 crypto frenzy. In 2022, it's moved in the opposite direction.

Nurphoto | Getty Images

Prominent crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has defaulted on a loan worth more than $670 million. Digital asset brokerage Voyager Digital issued a notice on Monday morning, stating that the fund failed to repay a loan of $350 million in the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDC, and 15,250 bitcoin, worth about $323 million at today's prices.

3AC's solvency crunch comes after weeks of turmoil in the crypto market, which has erased hundreds of billions of dollars in value. Bitcoin and ether are both trading slightly lower in the last 24 hours, though well off their all-time highs. Meanwhile, the overall crypto market cap sits at about $950 billion, down from around $3 trillion at its peak in Nov. 2021.

Voyager said it intends to pursue recovery from 3AC (Three Arrows Capital). In the interim, the broker emphasized that the platform continues to operate and fulfill customer orders and withdrawals. That assurance is likely an attempt to contain fear of contagion through the wider crypto ecosystem.

"We are working diligently and expeditiously to strengthen our balance sheet and pursuing options so we can continue to meet customer liquidity demands," said Voyager CEOStephen Ehrlich.

As ofFriday, Voyager said it had approximately$137 millionin U.S. dollars and owned crypto assets. The company also noted that it has access to a $200 million cash and USDC revolver, as well as a 15,000 bitcoin ($318 million) revolver from Alameda Ventures.

Last week, Alameda (FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's quantitative trading firm) committed $500 million in financing to Voyager Digital, a crypto brokerage. Voyager has already pulled $75 million from that line of credit.

"The default of 3AC does not cause a default in the agreement with Alameda," the statement said.

CNBC did not immediately receive a comment from 3AC.

Three Arrows Capital was established in 2012 by Zhu Su and Kyle Davies.

Zhu is known for his incredibly bullish view of bitcoin. He said last year the world's largest cryptocurrency could be worth $2.5 million per coin. But in May this year, as the crypto marketbegan its meltdown, Zhu said on Twitter that his "supercycle price thesis was regrettably wrong."

The onset of a new so-called "crypto winter" hashurt digital currency projects and companies across the board.

Three Arrow Capital's problems appeared to begin earlier this month after Zhu tweeted a rather cryptic message that the company is "in the process of communicating with relevant parties" and is "fully committed to working this out."

There was no follow-up about what the specific issues were.

But theFinancial Timesreported after the tweet that U.S.-based crypto lendersBlockFiand Genesis liquidated some of 3AC's positions, citing people familiar with the matter. 3AC had borrowed from BlockFi but was unable to meet the margin call.

A margin call is a situation in which an investor has to commit more funds to avoid losses on a trade made with borrowed cash.

Then theso-called algorithmic stablecoin terraUSDand itssister token luna collapsed.

3AC had exposure to Luna and suffered losses.

"The Terra-Luna situation caught us very much off guard,"3AC co-founder Davies told theWall Street Journalin an interview earlier this month.

Three Arrows Capital is still facing a credit crunch exacerbated by the continued pressure on cryptocurrency prices.Bitcoinhovered around the $21,000 level on Monday and is down about 53% this year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve has signaled further interest rate hikes in a bid to control rampant inflation, which has taken the steam out of riskier assets.

3AC, which is one of the biggest crypto-focused hedge funds, has borrowed large sums of money from various companies and invested across a number of different digital asset projects. That has sparked fears of further contagion across the industry.

"The issue is that the value of their [3AC's] assets as well has declined massively with the market, so all in all, not good signs," Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, told CNBC.

"What's to be seen is whether there are any large, remaining players that had exposure to them, which could cause further contagion."

Already, a number of crypto firms are facing liquidity crises because of the market slump. This month, lending firm Celsius, which promised users super high yields for depositing their digital currency, paused withdrawals for customers, citing "extreme market conditions."

Another crypto lender, Babel Finance, said this month that it is "facing unusual liquidity pressures" and halted withdrawals.

CNBC's Ryan Browne contributed to this report.

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One of the most prominent crypto hedge funds just defaulted on a $670 million loan - CNBC

BIS Says Crypto Weaknesses Have Materialized Following Market Sell-Off Featured Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the global body for central banks, claims the weaknesses in crypto that were pointed out before have pretty much materialized. BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens opined: You just cannot defy gravity At some point, you really have to face the music.

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has warned that a perceived danger of decentralized digital money is materializing.

The BIS explained in its Annual Economic Report, published Tuesday, that the crypto market sell-off and the collapse of cryptocurrency terra (LUNA) and algorithmic stablecoin terrausd (UST) are indicators of a structural problem in crypto.

Structural flaws make the crypto universe unsuitable as the basis for a monetary system: it lacks a stable nominal anchor, while limits to its scalability result in fragmentation. Contrary to the decentralisation narrative, crypto often relies on unregulated intermediaries that pose financial risks, the BIS report reads.

Agustin Carstens, the BIS general manager, said in an interview with Reuters Tuesday that any form of money ultimately lacks credibility without a government-backed authority that can use reserves funded by taxes. He opined:

I think all these weaknesses that were pointed out before have pretty much materialized.

The BIS executive continued: You just cannot defy gravity At some point, you really have to face the music.

Carstens does not believe that the crypto market meltdown will cause a systemic crisis in the way that bad loans triggered the global financial crash. He detailed:

Based on what we know, it should be quite manageable. But, there are a lot of things that we dont know.

The BIS executive proceeded to talk about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In a report published in May, the BIS said that nine out of 10 central banks worldwide are exploring their own digital currencies.

This is a topic that has been on the G20 agenda for quite some time, Carstens further told the news outlet, adding that there is a good chance for this to move forward. He pointed out that some countries have already conducted real life trials with their central bank digital currency.

Carstens believes there will be international standards for CBDCs in the next couple of years, noting that 12 months is probably too short.

This week, the BIS Innovation Hub announced that its Eurosystem Centre projects will explore cryptocurrency markets. Citing that The collapse of many stablecoins and decentralized finance (defi) lending platforms has highlighted the difficulty in assessing their risks and economic potential, the BIS described: The projects goal is to create an open-source market intelligence platform to shed light on market capitalizations, economic activity, and risks to financial stability.

What do you think about the comments by BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens? Let us know in the comments section below.

A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Appsmith Raises $41 Million to Scale Open Source Platform that Speeds Critical Internal App Development – Business Wire

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Appsmith, the first open-source low code software helping developers build internal tools, today announced that it has raised $41 million in Series B funding led by global software investor Insight Partners, with participation from Accel, Canaan, OSS Capital, and angel investors including Jeff Hammerbacher, co-founder of Cloudera, and Abhinav Asthana, co-founder of Postman.

Every enterprise needs to create custom internal applications a slow, repetitive, expensive process that requires work to build the user interface, write integrations, code the business logic, manage access controls and ultimately deploy the app. Often, these internal applications take a backseat to customer-facing applications. Appsmith enables software engineers to build internal apps often 10 times faster.

Software development is becoming critical to more and more businesses, but there are simply not enough developers to meet our growing global needs, said Nikhil Sachdev, managing director at Insight Partners. Low code tools like Appsmith are compelling options because they enable companies to deliver more developer productivity and faster time to market. With its open-source approach and great momentum achieved in a short amount of time, Appsmith is clearly a favorite among developers.

The funding follows dramatic growth in users since the $10.5 million Series A round in October 2021 led by Canaan and including Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing the total funding to $51.5 million. The company plans to continue building out its open source software while delivering support services as well as a paid version of the software with additional security features needed by enterprises.

This funding round was done to support the demand that were seeing for our open source platform to build internal apps that are mission critical and not customer-facing so they often get deprioritized, said Abhishek Nayak, co-founder and CEO of Appsmith. As a result, companies of all sizes from many different industries rely on Appsmith as an easy way to build custom apps to solve this problem.

Since being introduced less than two years ago, Appsmiths open source software has more than 10 million downloads, more than 18,000 stars (up 12x since 2021) on Github and is used at over 10,000 organizations. Last year, the company introduced more than 150 enhancements, including major features like JS Editor, version control, and 30-plus new widgets and variations. In total, 184 features were released. A full list can be viewed here. Appsmith also now has more than 18,000 community members with 192 contributors.

Appsmith is the first open-source low code software that helps developers build internal and CRUD (create, read, update and delete) type applications quickly, usually within only hours. Software engineers build the user interface with pre-built components, code the business logic by connecting application programming interfaces (APIs) along with any database, then test and deploy a web application where users are authenticated using a dashboard. Companies dedicate anywhere from 10% to 40% of their engineering resources to these internal tools, like for example a customer support dashboard.

About Appsmith

Appsmith was founded in 2019 with the mission to enable backend engineers to build internal web apps quickly with a low code approach. Taking an open source software approach provides anyone with access to the software and the opportunity to get involved in the community. The company has offices in San Francisco and Bengaluru, India. For more information visit https://www.appsmith.com

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Appsmith Raises $41 Million to Scale Open Source Platform that Speeds Critical Internal App Development - Business Wire

GPT-3 Training Programmers for the Present (and the Future) – hackernoon.com

I wrote a paper in Spanish and asked "someone else" to rewrite it

When I asked it to translate the article, it decided the title was not good enough.

So it changed it to present AND future

Scary, isn't it?

Let's move on.

So this is the original paper rewritten by GPT-3:

// Translate this into English and convert it to a technical article:

The current market is looking for programmers to stack bricks (1) using their trendy languages. Such professionals are trained in specific tools that have very short life cycles and then become obsolete.

There are currently alternatives to carry out computer developments using intelligent people, capable of making their own decisions and participating in the creative process.

The programmers of the future will have to be excellent and declarative (2). Professionals who know about algorithms and complexity and who know-how

Most developers in the world are making changes to old systems or have to use complex preexisting libraries or frameworks that they have little control over and few opportunities to modify. (3)

In today's software industry, it is very unlikely to find the need to develop from scratch, with a completely blank page.

The specific lifespan of a programmer age along with the fashionable language. This period of time is usually less than a decade, so the industry discards professionals as obsolete before ten years of training. (4)

In the last decades, they were fashionable as supposed silver bullets (5), languages like Visual Basic, C ++, Java, Php, Perl, Javascript, Ruby, Python, and GoLang.

Some of them are already ceasing to be used, leaving their place for new fashions. (6)

The general concepts (which Frederick Brooks calls essential (7)) are better absorbed in our first academic stage. We must focus on forming these concepts so that professionals can easily migrate from one technology (which Brooks calls accidental) to another technology (also accidental and, therefore, quickly obsolete).

By 2021 there are already numerous alternatives to artificial intelligence and machine learning, capable of carrying out low-level programming and algorithmic tasks (8) (9).

Modern virtual machines (those that interpret the high-level language in which we program and that exist, for example, in web browsers) optimize the code for us. (10)

As technology advances, low-level programmers will no longer be required in the same way that no one is looking for librarians today (11). Similar to what happens with other automatable and obsolete professions. (12)

Our profession is still based on teaching low-level imperative programming as if we were facing the problems of the 1960s or 1970s when the specialized hardware was punch cards and open tape machines.

We educate our students to carry out absurd and obsolete algorithmic optimizations, very close to the language of machines and very far from the modeling of entities of the problem that we are representing in our computer solution.

We train professionals to understand how a computer works and to lower themselves to speak in its language, forming low-level mental models and trying to reason in the algorithmic way in which a Turing machine processes.

However, today we can develop semantic models with several layers of abstraction above as we approach declarative mental models we move away at the same time from the computable abstractions of machines. The most declarative programming languages allow us to reason and infer rules about our models. Against this trend, our students write their instructions based on ones and zeros.

Moore's law (14) tells us about the speed of change of the hardware and its exponential growth in processing power. With respect to software, we grow linearly limited by the realities of many decades ago and the inertia of trainers. In analogy with Malthusian economic theory (15) we need to catch up with the hardware curve to be able to release all our potential before the machines do it for us.

The lack of abstraction and understanding of reality is a symptom of an inertial mentality, based on the time restrictions of processors and storage of the 60s and 70s. These restrictions are limited today to very specific domains and are not representative of the problems we have to solve today as software engineers in most of our jobs. (16)

We need to train generalists, but not theorists. People who understand the basics and foundations of software engineering and can adapt to accidental implementations based on current tools, but also to future ones that we do not yet know today.

Concepts such as software design, life cycle models, teamwork and building a shared theory (17), continuous integration and deployment or architecture, are much more important than learning to minimize CPU usage, to use React, the Vue framework, or the Keta library.

"It is very difficult to make predictions, especially about the future". This phrase, attributed to the great Niels Bohr, tells us that we should be careful when trying to anticipate the future.

Paraphrasing the 2004 Turing Award (18) Alan Key, said: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it".

We do not know for sure what the path of machine automation will be, but we can predict that the most creative and engineering part of our profession should be one of the last bastions to fall before automation.

The next generation of software developers will have to focus their skills on design, modeling the real world, and creating abstractions that evolve along with the problem domain to avoid building obsolete and legacy software (19).

This strategic approach is not limited only to development careers. In data science there are similar problems: data scientists focused on optimizing existing algorithms instead of training generalist professionals, able to understand the academic and commercial problems of our country with a battery of solutions and good criteria to determine which to choose in each situation. They should be trained to model the real problem and evaluate different possible solutions.

Data science professionals have an incredible variety of tools to adjust their models. We are still far from finding the second "super algorithm" (20) capable of solving specific problems with a generic solution. Our future professionals have the only general-purpose computer that can reasonably solve various specific problems: Their brilliant minds.

Our responsibility is to feed and stimulate those brains with real problems and not with toy solutions that computers solve (already in 2020) much more efficiently.

Paradoxically, wasting our brains by asking them to perform low-level optimizations for machines is the worst way to optimize our most expensive resource.

Historically, we have privileged the development of very specific and theoretical tools. This is very common and desirable in science because theoretical advances usually precede concrete implementations and uses by decades.

However, in software development, discoveries and findings are mostly found in the private sector before academia. Our professionals must be trained in methodology and concepts above accidental trendy technologies and languages. This generates tension between the market that wants "implementers expert in a tool" to discard them when it fulfills its fashion cycle of 5 or 10 years.

Our professionals should not be disposable or recyclable. We must train them in techniques and they must keep themselves constantly updated, as happens in other professions such as medicine, physics, or biotechnology.

In addition to "soft" skills such as construction and teamwork (since software arises from a collective activity) (17), we must teach design and prototyping techniques to validate our high-level solutions.

As for software, it is imperative to teach solution design, focusing on the behavior of our models and, paraphrasing Donald Knuth (21), the historical author of most of the algorithms we use today, avoiding premature optimizations because we want to play a game that machines dominate much better than us.

Training talent is an accessible option for any country with a good academic level, such as Argentina.

Investing in training excellent software engineers is a strategic decision and an opportunity for take-off that has already been exploited by many other countries such as Estonia, Ireland, Israel and India. The Sadosky Foundation is currently working in this direction. (22)

In Argentina, we have excellent teachers, a good level of English, an unbeatable time zone to dialogue with USA and Europe, and a culture compatible with the most developed countries.We need to prioritize information technologies and, within them, train intelligent and declarative engineers rather than mechanized programmers and low-level optimizers.

Our professionals must have basic knowledge of programming, algorithms, complexity, and databases.

Above all, they must learn to make designs based on continuous integration and continuous deployment models, with automated tests, using agile techniques such as Test-Driven Development. (23)

The software produced must be declarative and based on the desired behavior (and specified in the automated functional tests); we must stop thinking in the reigning paradigm of the 60s and 70s, based on data types and file and string manipulations, to focus on high-level models that accompany the simulation of any aspect of the real world that we want to represent to solve a certain problem. (24)

The techniques of design based on behavior are agnostic with respect to the accidental technology of fashion and this allows an engineer trained with these concepts 30 years ago to be able to make concrete developments even today.

Unfortunately, such a situation is not replicated by programmers who dominated some fashionable language, which practically has no use and that makes them not find good options in the labor market. The paradox is that a trade with full employment discards these professionals for not having been able to adapt. (25)

The change, currently, is even more vertiginous. Technologies last much less and obsolescence stalks us, unless we are intelligent and broad, and have the appropriate training.

This is an opinion piece. As future work to support the current thesis, we should carry out a quantitative study including figures on employee turnover (25), average time in each job according to age and studies completed, etc.

To do this we must use techniques related to the social sciences under a multidisciplinary approach.

The future has already arrived. We don't have much idea of what a programmer's job will be like in 5 or 10 years, but we have strong indications that it will not be related to writing algorithms based on data structures. We must train professionals who quickly understand a real-life problem and know how to build simulators with very small conceptual leaps, so that they can evolve alongside the problems we are solving today.

Part of the ideas in this article was born from the teaching work in the Software Engineering course in the Computer Science degree at the Faculty of Exact Sciences, University of Buenos Aires.

The translation is accurate and beautiful.

I have checked it with Grammarly and Hemmingway app and found just a few grammatical mistakes.

As an example:

Este es un artculo de opinin. Como trabajo futuro para apoyar la presente tesis deberamos realizar un trabajo cuantitativo incluyendo cifras de rotacin de empleados (25), tiempo promedio en cada trabajo segn la edad y los estudios realizados etc.Para ello debemos utilizar tcnicas relacionadas a las ciencias sociales bajo un enfoque multidisciplinario.

Translates in GPT-3 as:

This is an opinion piece. As future work to support the current thesis, we should carry out a quantitative study including figures on employee turnover (25), average time in each job according to age and studies undertaken etc.To do this we must use techniques related to the social sciences from a multidisciplinary perspective.

While Google Translate yields:

This is an opinion article. As future work to support this thesis, we should carry out quantitative work including employee turnover figures (25), average time in each job according to age and studies carried out, etc.For this we must use techniques related to the social sciences under a multidisciplinary approach.

I used text-davinci-002 model with Temperature 0 (Randomness) and Maximum Length 2000 tokens

What is your opinion on this article?

I think that this article makes some valid points about the future of programming and the need for programmers to be adaptable to change. I agree that the industry is moving towards more automated solutions and that this will eventually lead to a decrease in the need for programmers. However, I think that there will always be a need for programmers who are able to understand and solve complex problems.

(Scary Again!!)

I will definitively, keep using GPT-3 to write technical articles to improve them.

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Read more from the original source:
GPT-3 Training Programmers for the Present (and the Future) - hackernoon.com