Category Archives: Bitcoin

This needs to happen before Peter Schiff will buy Bitcoin (BTC)

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Schiff explains what it would take for him to change his mind on Bitcoin.

Samuel Wan September 16, 2021 at 2:00 am UTC 2 min read

Its no secret that gold-bug Peter Schiff loathes Bitcoin.

But, to his credit, he still ponders the arguments and is active in debating the issue.

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This needs to happen before Peter Schiff will buy Bitcoin (BTC) - CryptoSlate

Popular crypto analyst Nicholas Merten of DataDash is looking for three key components to fuel Bitcoins bull run towards new all-time highs.

In a recent Bitcoin update, Merten tells his 470,000 YouTube subscribers that Bitcoin (BTC) has been trading near a key level of ascending support and resistance around $43,500 that he wants to see the top crypto asset hold before establishing new highs.

The first thing we wanna see here is multiple retests of this previous line of resistance in order to solidify as support

It always tends to be that we test a certain range of support multiple times. And the reason for this is because its a test between whos in charge. Is it the bulls or the bears? Is it the buyers in this case? Are they buying more than the sell-side? Or vice versa, is the sell-side pressure outweighing any potential new buyers coming in?

As for the second step, he wants to see Bitcoin begin forming higher lows and higher highs after it solidifies new support levels.

Step number two is setting in higher lows and higher highs. Now, this can happen simultaneously with testing the support range, but its usually going to happen afterward because were gonna be testing this line multiple times.

Lastly, Merten is looking for a breakout past Bitcoins previous all-time high of $64,000 to see further continuation.

The third step, which I know might seem kind of obvious, is not only inevitably breaking past the broader-term relative highs, but eventually setting up the stage and continuing trend number two of setting those higher lows and higher highs where we eventually break above the previous all-time highs.

And the reason Im talking about this third step as a quite significant one is because its not an easy challenge. Breaking through all-time highs can generally take a pretty long period of time.

He flashes back to November 2020 when Bitcoin was trading just under its previous 2017 all-time high of $20,000, highlighting that BTC went through multiple pullbacks for about a month before finally breaking out.

As for the future, Merten is predicting the end of this year or the beginning of 2022 for BTC to climb towards new all-time highs.

Generally speaking, were looking for a potential breakout above those previous all-time highs in December of 2021, or January of 2022. I think thats a reasonable time frame.

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Here Are Three Things That Must Happen for Bitcoin To Make New All-Time Highs, According to Crypto Analyst ... - The Daily Hodl

Its been a good month for Bitcoin believers. The currency of the future or is it the future of currency? became legal tender in El Salvador.

Some might dismiss as a publicity stunt the embrace of a digital currency by a country where only a third of the population has internet access. Some Salvadorans took to the streets to protest. But lets not minimize this moment. Esperanto, the language of the future, never managed to become an official language in any country.

Bitcoin, for the uninitiated, is a technology that purports to solve a host of problems with old-fashioned national currencies. It is designed to safeguard wealth against the depredations of inflation, public authorities and financial intermediaries.

Unfortunately, it doesnt work. Some products become popular because theyre useful. Bitcoin is popular despite being mostly useless. Its success rests on the simple fact that the value of a Bitcoin has increased dramatically since its introduction in 2009, making some people rich and inspiring others to hope they can ride the rocket, too.

Its not really a virtual currency at all. Its virtual gold, a vehicle for speculative investment made possible by some interesting technical innovations. Its the absurd apotheosis of our financialized economy, an asset unmoored from any productive purpose. In the beginning were bonds and then synthetic bonds and then Bitcoin.

The popularity of Bitcoin and its hundreds of imitators is also a product of understandable confusion and uncertainties. In this era of technological disruption, its hard to tell which parts of human life might be improved by the internet, and those who didnt foresee the rise of, say, Amazon should be hesitant to write off the future of Bitcoin.

But its worth being clear about what Bitcoin is right now.

The supply of Bitcoin is capped by design, which is meant to prevent inflation. That doesnt mean the value of Bitcoin is stable. Sometimes it goes up, which is a nice benefit not generally available with traditional currencies. On the other hand, sometimes the value goes down just as fast as during a bout of hyperinflation. El Salvador, which is requiring businesses to accept Bitcoin, has promised to make it possible to rapidly convert it into real money. Thats not exactly the hallmark of a useful currency.

The rigidity of Bitcoins design also makes it dangerously impractical as a replacement for national currencies. It is part of a long tradition of trying to prevent politicians from making bad economic policy decisions by preventing them from making any decisions. The gold standard is an older example of this disastrous concept.

The security of Bitcoin is greatly overstated. It can be lost. Indeed, by some estimates, 20 percent of all the Bitcoin in existence is no longer accessible because the passwords have been lost or forgotten. In 2018, more than 100,000 people lost the Bitcoin and other virtual currencies they had entrusted to a Canadian company, Quadriga, after the founder died suddenly, leaving behind no record of the password to the companys virtual vault.

Bitcoin also can be seized or stolen. During World War II, the German government relied on a code called Enigma that its mathematicians insisted was impossible to break. The British famously broke it, basically by figuring out the password. Thats also how the federal government apparently recovered part of a Bitcoin ransom payment worth several million dollars from hackers who took down the Colonial Pipeline and blackmailed its owners this year.

Perhaps most important, Bitcoin is difficult and expensive to use as a currency. To the extent any people manage to use it, they mostly rely on a growing infrastructure that looks a lot like the traditional financial system. El Salvador hired a financial firm to create digital wallets for its citizens which are basically what used to be called bank accounts.

Virtual currencies, much like pickup trucks, are marketed for off-road use. But the reality is that the vast majority of users choose to stay on the streets and highways.

Its possible, but hardly evident, that this new infrastructure will improve upon the existing financial system for example, by making it cheaper to move money across borders. But that hasnt happened yet. For now, the people using Bitcoin are basically a bunch of cosplay libertarians participating in a game of make-believe on the playgrounds of the nanny state.

Most Bitcoin holders, of course, dont even see it as a currency. Theyre in it to get rich, which is the one service that Bitcoin has managed to deliver.

There are reasons to worry about this, too. Bitcoin mining is an environmental disaster, requiring vast amounts of electricity more than the nation of Finland.

Speculative frenzies divert resources and attention from productive investments.

And the bigger the bubble, the greater the damage when it pops.

But until this month, I wasnt all that worried about Bitcoin. The current frenzy is sometimes compared to other famous bubbles, like the Dutch tulip craze of the 17th century. One key commonality is that both involve a relatively small group of investors with money to burn. Most Dutch didnt buy tulips; most Americans dont own Bitcoin.

If politicians start taking Bitcoin seriously, however, that would be reason for greater concern. It is a pleasant illusion that the problems in the financial system can be solved by replacing it rather than doing the hard work of fixing it. That kind of escapism makes for entertaining chatter on the internet. National leaders really should know better.

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Opinion | Bitcoin in El Salvador Shows the Fantasy Is Getting Real - The New York Times

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Bitcoin was trading 3.33% higher on Tuesday morning nearing $46,000 per coin.

The price was around $45,903 per coin, while rivals Ethereum and Dogecoin were trading around $3,344 (+3.69%) and 23.7 cents (+1.45%) per coin, respectively, according to Coindesk.

It was just one week ago, Bitcoin was trading above $52,000 per coin.

BITCOIN IN EL SALVADOR SPARKS CRYPTO CURRENCY DEBATE

In other cryptocurrency news, approximately $2.6 billion worth of digital assets could be wiped out when South Koreas deadline for crypto exchange registration arrives on Sept. 24, theFinancial Timesreported Sunday.

Bitcoin was trading 3.33% higher on Tuesday morning nearing $46,000 per coin. (iStock)

South KoreasFinancial Transaction Reports Actis requiring all crypto exchanges to register with the Financial Services Commission (FSC) by the end of the month. To comply with the countrys anti-money laundering and know-your-customer procedures, crypto exchanges need to register with local banks and set up real-name accounts for their customers.

Also in the news, Walmart and crypto investors were hit with fake news on Monday.

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A press release, distributed by GlobeNewswire, touted the retail giant's alleged new payment option with Litecoin that turned out to be fake, according to Walmart.

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Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin all higher Tuesday in early trading - Fox Business

Over the past year, interest in cryptocurrency has become much more mainstream, with the price of bitcoin, the largest by market value, surging to a record high in April.

With all of the hype, you might be wondering if it's possible and worthwhile to invest in cryptocurrency for retirement, specifically in your individual retirement account, or IRA.

It is possible through a self-directed IRA, which can be used to hold alternative investments normally not permitted in a traditional IRA, such as real estate or commodities. However, experts generally warn against it.

Here's why you should probably avoid investing in cryptocurrency for retirement.

One reason experts warn against investing in cryptocurrency through a self-directed IRA is because they're not widely available and don't make sense for most investors. Generally, they can be both risky and expensive to maintain, even without cryptocurrency holdings.

There are also strict rules in place from the Internal Revenue Service regarding which investments are prohibited in IRAs. With a self-directed IRA, you manage all the investments yourself, so you're personally on the hook if any rules are broken.

"Self-directed IRAs usually require a specialized firm or custodian and the costs can be sizable due to the additional compliance and IRA requirements," Anjali Jariwala, certified financial planner, certified public accountant and founder ofFit Advisors,tellsCNBC Make It."[I]f you fail to abide by all of the rules, then your account may lose its tax-deferred status."

There's also the potential for fraud, as the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has previously warned. "While a broader set of investment options may have appeal, investors should be mindful that investments in self-directed IRAs raise risks, including fraudulent schemes, high fees and volatile performance," the SEC wrote in 2018.

"I would be really concerned with someone's decision to proceed," Jariwala says.

In addition to the risks of a self-directed IRA, Jariwala warns against investing retirement money in cryptocurrency specifically, due to its volatile and speculative nature.

Cryptocurrency investors generally need to be comfortable with extreme price swings and potentially losing their entire investment. For that reason, crypto may not be the best option in a retirement portfolio. It may make more sense as a relatively small portion of your overall portfolio since it can dramatically increase your portfolio's risk profile and potential drawdowns.

"I believe in diversification and prefer IRA-type accounts to be invested in the markets," Jariwala says. "If [an investor has] extra money that is in cash or sitting in a brokerage account, that may be used toward more speculative investments like bitcoin, but I wouldn't try to find a way to invest retirement money."

It's also important to consider the possibility for additional cryptocurrency regulation before adding it to your self-directed IRA.

"Currently, crypto is viewed as property, but if the IRS changes the asset type, it may become one that cannot be held in a self-directed IRA," Jariwala says. If that happens, "you might be stuck and forced to liquidateat an unfavorable time or face severe tax issues."

If, despite the risks, you still want to invest in cryptocurrency, try starting with an amount you can afford to lose outside of your retirement savings. Allocating a smaller portion of your overall portfolio can assist in hedging risk, while also giving you exposure to cryptocurrency assets.

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Don't miss: These 14- and 9-year-old siblings earn over $30,000 a month mining cryptocurrency

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It's possible to invest in cryptocurrency in an IRA, but experts warn against it - CNBC

On Sept. 7, in a historic first, the small Central American nation of El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender.

The true significance of this day for how people all around the world exchange value and what meaning they ascribe to the concept of money will take some time to reify and be fully understood. Yet, what is already clear is that September 2021 will be up there next to January 2009 in the history books of the digitization of finance.

Surrounded by controversy, protests, bumpy infrastructure rollout how else? but also the joy and optimism of millions globally who look at this great experiment with hope, the Bitcoin Day marked the first instance of a sovereign state making a decentralized digital asset its national currency. Was it a success, after all?

A nation of under 7 million, El Salvador has long waived its claim for monetary sovereignty. In 2001, it ditched the coln, its national currency in use for more than a century, in favor of the United States dollar. The move made a lot of practical sense since the share of remittances a good chunk of them coming from U.S.-based Salvadorans in the countrys gross domestic product exceeded 16% at peak points.

At that time, the move by then-president Francisco Flores Prez sparked protests and was condemned by detractors who claimed it was undemocratic and allegedly benefitted the bankers and the rich.

Two decades later, President Nayib Bukele a forty-year-old who rose to power at the helm of a party called New Ideas added another chapter to El Salvadors monetary saga this time, supplementing a foreign currency circulating in the country with one unhemmed by borders.

Much like 20 years ago, there has been backlash concerning the Bitcoin Law. However, the same pollsthat show a lack of support for Bitcoin (BTC) as a new means of payment suggest that a large share of Salvadorans have a limited understanding of what it is and how it will affect their lives.

Furthermore, in many cases, resentment toward Bitcoin can be linked to resentment toward Bukele, who, despite robust approval ratings, remains a divisive figure whose alleged autocratic tendencies concern some international observers.

In sum, there are good reasons to believe that there is no powerful ideological opposition to the concept of decentralized finance in El Salvador, and whatever pushback currently exists will likely dissipate further down the adoption curve if implementation proves to be an ultimate success.

Meanwhile, the somewhat rushed launch of the payments infrastructure was, expectedly, far from seamless. The government-run Chivo wallet went down for several hours, and some retail workers reportedly didnt know how to process BTC payments. Soon after the launch, the president himself took on the role of customer support,tweeting updates on the state of the wallet service.

Yet overall, according to the accounts of those who were there to witness El Salvador making its first steps as a Bitcoin nation, things started to smoothen soon after a choppy start. Bart Mol, founder and host of the Satoshi Radio podcast,tweeted along his journey from Chivo ATMs that didnt work to successfully performing Lightning transactions to pay for pizza and coffee at separate retail locations.

The overall feeling, Mol concluded, was that of witnessing history.

Institutions of the global financial system seem less excited. The International Monetary Fund has been passive-aggressive about El Salvadors Bitcoin Law since it passed early this summer. Perhaps, if this experiment yields favorable results, the IMF and other global financial bodies will come around?

Some legal professionals are skeptical about this prospect. During a Discord ask me anything (AMA) session withCointelegraph Markets Pro subscribers last week, Cointelegraph general counsel Zachary Kelman opined that global financial institutions are unlikely to ever get on board with Bitcoin as national currency:

Other nation-states, however, are watching closely. Granted, El Salvadors position as the regions remittances leader, combined with its earlier experience in outsourcing the national money function to a foreign currency, makes for a rare combination. Most other nations have higher bars to clear even if they could muster political momentum for making a decentralized money legal tender.

Still, the potential favorable effects of El Salvadors move could nudge other countries to consider Bitcoin as a payment infrastructure more seriously. Amanda Wick, chief of legal affairs at blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, told Cointelegraph that cryptocurrency is an ideal technology for remittances, and it is thus well-positioned to serve remittance-heavy economies:

The reported acceleration of other countries central bank digital currency research programs, the push to define cryptos legal status in Ukraine, and discussions to make cryptocurrency a legal alternative payment method in Panama can all be seen as carry-over effects of El Salvadors bold initiative.

Related:Slow to start: Crypto regulators lagging behind blockchain industry

Evidently, not every nation-state is in a position to embrace Bitcoin as the national currency. But on Sept. 7, virtually everyone was prompted to reassess where they stand on the digital money map of the world.

Regardless of the outcome of the El Salvador experiment, the pioneering example of the Central American nation has already pushed cryptocurrency deeper into the mainstream political agenda than it could ever get without recognition by a sovereign state.

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El Salvadors Bitcoin day: The first of many or a one-off? - Cointelegraph

September 14, 2021 / 07:51 AM IST

Cryptocurrency prices continue to be in the red on September 14. The global cryptocurrency market cap is $2.06 trillion, a 0.85 percent decrease over the last day, while the total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $139.62 billion, which makes a 28.7 percent increase.

The volume of all stable coins is now $109.44 billion 78.39 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin's price is currently $45,160.42 and its dominance is currently 41.28 percent, an increase of 0.32 percent over the day.

Walmart Inc said on Monday it was looking into how a fake press statement announcing a partnership with litecoin, which briefly led to near 30% gains in the cryptocurrency, was issued by news release distributor GlobeNewswire.

The fake press release touting the acceptance of litecoin as online payment by the world's largest retailer led to a sudden spike in its prices, but the gains faded quickly after Walmart issued a statement saying the press release was fraudulent.

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Cryptocurrency Prices Today on September 14: Bitcoin, Ether, Cardano plunges over 14% in one week - Moneycontrol.com

Today marks the official release of Bitcoin Core 22.0, the 22nd major release of Bitcoins original software client launched by Satoshi Nakamoto almost 13 years ago.

Overseen by Bitcoin Core lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan, this latest major release was developed by well over a hundred contributors in a span of about eight months. The result of roughly 800 pull requests, Bitcoin Core 22.0 is the first major Bitcoin Core release to support the upcoming Taproot protocol upgrade, while also offering several other improvements over previous Bitcoin Core versions.

As an aside, this is also the first Bitcoin Core release to drop the leading 0 from its version number: its Bitcoin Core 22.0 not Bitcoin Core 0.22.0.

Below are some of the more notable changes.

Hardware wallets are special purpose devices designed to keep private keys secure, that can sign transactions without the private keys ever leaving the device. Still, in order to transact, hardware wallets generally do need to be used in combination with a software wallet. A number of software wallets have the required compatibility to do this, but the Bitcoin Core wallet was for some time not one of them.

This started to change a few years ago: Bitcoin Core has been compatible with hardware wallets since version 0.18.0. However, users had to initially use the command-line interface (CLI) to use this feature. Since Bitcoin Core 0.20.0, users could partially use the graphical user interface (GUI) as well, but this still required some manual copy-pasting to sign transactions.

Bitcoin Core 22.0 is the first Bitcoin Core release to offer full GUI support for hardware wallets. By using the Hardware Wallet Interface (HWI) software as a sort of add-on, Bitcoin Core users will be able to smoothly use the Bitcoin Core wallet in combination with devices from Ledger, Trezor, BitBox, KeepKey, and Coldcard.

One way to de-anonymize Bitcoin users is to analyze the Bitcoin network and track from which nodes specific transactions originate. The IP-addresses associated with these nodes can then be tied to real-world identities.

To protect their privacy, Bitcoin Core users could already connect to the Bitcoin network through the anonymizing Tor network. But Tor is not the only anonymizing network.

The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is another decentralized, peer-to-peer, anonymous communication network layered on top of the regular internet. Like Tor, it lets users communicate by routing messages across a network, using different layers of encryption for each step in the transmission chain to mask both the message itself, as well as the senders and the receivers IP-addresses.

(The difference between Tor and I2P is subtle, and beyond the scope of this article. But in short, I2P is said to have a more distributed solution for mapping the network, which is needed for message routing. It would also be better geared towards supporting hidden services, like websites that are only available on the I2P network itself. Tor, in contrast, is said to have better support for exit nodes, which allow users to communicate with the regular internet.)

Bitcoin Core 22.0 now supports connecting to the Bitcoin network through I2P as well. After Tor, this makes I2P the second anonymity network that Bitcoin Core users can utilize to shield their IP address from peers on the Bitcoin network, allowing them to better protect their privacy.

Bitcoin Core 0.21.1 was the first Bitcoin Core release to include activation logic for the upcoming Taproot protocol upgrade, which will activate this November. Now, Bitcoin Core 22.0 is the first major release to support the upgrade.

Most obviously, this means that Bitcoin Core 22.0 will fully validate the new Taproot rules. From the moment that the upgrade activates this November, all Taproot transactions will be checked for validity according to the new protocol rules.

Additionally, the Bitcoin Core wallet will support the creation of basic Taproot outputs (addresses). Bitcoin Core users will be able to accept payments to Taproot outputs that can be spent with a single private key, but that is protected using the Taproot logic.

Of course, this doesnt actually offer many benefits (if any) compared to what was already possible with the Bitcoin Core wallet software before; the more complex types of smart contracts that Taproot supports will presumably be supported in future Bitcoin Core releases.

Under the hood, Bitcoin Core will also support the creation of Taproot-specific descriptors, which identify Taproot outputs as such. This categorization could benefit applications that rely on the Bitcoin Core software, like (external) wallets.

Package relay is an ongoing project to upgrade how transactions are transmitted over the Bitcoin network. Right now, transactions are only relayed if they include a high enough fee to be included in the memory pool (mempool) of Bitcoin nodes. If a transaction doesnt include a high enough fee, it is not accepted by a node, and not forwarded to other nodes on the Bitcoin network.

This logic differs a little bit from how transactions are selected for inclusion in a new Bitcoin block, however. To determine whether a transaction is included in a block, a transaction's fee isnt just considered on its own, but it is also taken into account whether that transaction would help to get other transactions confirmed. If so, the combination of transaction fees is considered.

This allows users to get a transaction with a low fee that is waiting in the mempool unstuck, by re-spending the coins in a new transaction with a high fee to compensate. To get the second (higher) fee, miners will want to accept both transactions at the same time. This trick is called Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) and can be particularly useful in the context of some Layer Two protocols like the Lightning Network.

The difference in policy between mempool inclusion and block inclusion can in some cases thwart the CPFP solution. If the first transaction doesnt include a high enough fee to be accepted in mempools in the first place, a new transaction to re-spend the coins with a higher fee will not be accepted in a block, because it needs the first transaction to also confirm before it is considered valid.

To solve this, package relay would enable that transactions are transmitted over the Bitcoin network in packages. Instead of considering transactions and their fees individually, combinations of transactions would be considered for mempool inclusion, just like it happens for block inclusion.

Bitcoin Core 22.0 includes a step towards realizing package relay: applications connected to Bitcoin Core can test if transactions would be included in their own mempools, by submitting several transactions as a single package. Transmitting or accepting such packages over the peer-to-peer network is not yet supported in this release, however.

Multi-signature (multisig) outputs are coins that require signatures from multiple private keys in order to be spent. This can for example be two signatures from two different private keys, or three signatures from a set of five private keys, or even seven signatures from a set of eight private keys, and so on.

Multisig can be used for several purposes. One example is to secure funds using several devices so that even if one device is compromised or lost, the coins are still safe and accessible. Similarly, multisig can be used to share control over funds between several people, requiring cooperation between them to spend the coins. In addition, multisig is used in some Layer Two solutions.

The Bitcoin Core software until now supported the creation of multisig outputs for up to 16 keys in Segregated Witness (Segwit) outputs, even though the Bitcoin protocol has no such limit. Bitcoin Core 22.0 now expands Segwit multisig capability to 20 keys.

For more details and other changes, see the Bitcoin Core 0.22 release notes. You can download Bitcoin Core 22.0 here.

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Bitcoin Core 22.0 Released: Whats New - Bitcoin Magazine

Today, the Human Rights Foundation announced its most recent round of Bitcoin Development Fund grants, per a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine. The money is being gifted to 10 developers who will work on improving privacy tools, strengthening developer education in emerging markets, making bitcoin onboarding a better experience for new users, and continued Bitcoin Core development.

This round of developer funds totals 3.75 BTC (375 million sats) which at the time of writing is worth $167,540.62. The funds will be distributed to the recipients with half of them receiving 0.25 BTC (25 million sats) and the other half getting 0.50 BTC (50 million sats) each. Below are the talented developers who will be receiving the funds, with some backstory on each of them.

Starting off the 0.25 BTC recipients is Lili and Richard Myers, who will initiate an open-source research project focusing on bitcoin in low-bandwidth environments. The research report the couple will be creating will be centered around technologies that facilitate the use of bitcoin in hostile environments. The aim of this project is to identify any pain points and improve user experience for individuals in developing countries and emerging markets. Krakens Dan Held was instrumental in making this grant happen.

The second round of 0.25 BTC is being gifted to Chaincase, a mobile and open-source iOS bitcoin wallet that allows users to use features such as CoinJoin, coin control, and Tor. The money received will be spent on supporting the addition of PayJoin, which is a peer-to-peer (P2P) CoinJoin transaction that helps restrain Bitcoin surveillance even for users who do not use PayJoin.

The third round of 0.25 BTC is awarded to SeedSigner who will use the money to upgrade their user interface, as well as add support for other languages and add new user optimizations. SeedSigner was gifted this grant for their great work taking advantage of Raspberry Pi Zeroes to create inexpensive open-source hardware wallets.

The fourth round of 0.25 BTC is given to LNBits for their user-friendly, lightweight, open-source Lightning wallet. LNBits currently supports LND, c-lightning, OpenNode, lntxbot, LNPay, and itself, LNBits. The HRF has stated that they will support the integration of LNURL.

The fifth and final recipient of the 0.25 BTC grant will go towards a bounty for developers to add a JoinMarket app to the Umbrel full-node platform. The reasoning for this will be to increase the privacy and fungibility of their bitcoin transactions for Umbrel users. This is estimated to increase JoinMarket usage which will result in bitcoin privacy being much more accessible.

BTCPaycontributor Patricia is receiving 0.50 BTC to work on the merchant section of theBitcoin Design Guide,which is a resource for designing new bitcoin products that will improve the bitcoin onboarding experience, targeting new companies, foundations, and donation-receiving organizations.

The second recipient of 0.50 BTC is Fod Diop who will be creating a bitcoin programming course, Bitcoin Developers Academy, which aims to allow just about anyone around the world to learn how to program Bitcoin. The initial target will be individuals in West Africa and countries like Senegal who still use the CFA franc. A special shoutout and thanks to Manuel Stotz for making this happen.

The third recipient of 0.50 BTC is Bitcoin Core developer Vasil Dimov, who is known for implementing Tor v3, BIP155, and I2P support in Bitcoin Core. The money will be used on implementing CJDNS support, which will improve privacy and the security of the network against partitioning attacks. In addition to this Dimov will work on code review which will improve the testability of the networking code.

The fourth 0.50 BTC recipient is being awarded to another Bitcoin Core developer, Fanquake (Michael Ford). Fanquake has been contributing to Bitcoin Core since 2012 and has since then become a Bitcoin Core maintainer in 2019. The funds will be used to help him continue his work and make sure everything runs smoothly.

The fifth and final recipient of 0.50 BTC is a group of Bitcoiners organizing a program called Qala fellowship to find and grow local Nigerian talent, starting with developers to build careers in Bitcoin. The developers establishing this program are Bernard Parah, Carla Kirk-Cohen, Tim Akinbo, and Abubakar Nur Khalil. The program will consist of a six-month-long bootcamp on how to build on top of Bitcoin. Shout out to Bitcoin exchange Paxful for making this happen.

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)3 organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Since June 2020 the HRF has allocated more than $900,000 to more than 25 developers and educators across the world. The HRF continues to raise support for the Bitcoin Development Fund, with the next round of gifts to be announced in Q4 of 2021.

They have previously given grants to top Bitcoin developers such as Gloria Zhao for Package Memepool Accept, Chris Belcher for Coinswap, Abubakar Nur Khalil for Nigerian Bitcoin user experience improvements, Muun Wallet for their mobile Lightning wallet, Sphinx for their Lightning-powered decentralized social media work, Janine for her Bitcoin privacy newsletter, Blockchain Commons for their Bitcoin internship program, and Arabic Hodl for his work translating important Bitcoin texts into Arabic.

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Human Rights Foundation To Gift 3.75 Bitcoin In Latest Round Of Developer Grants - Bitcoin Magazine

What is game theory? Simply put, if you are playing any game of strategy, like chess, any move you make in the game will have to be countered by your opponent. The strategic decisions that you and your opponent make will ultimately determine who wins and who loses the game.

So how does this relate to Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the greatest invention since the Gutenberg press. The Gutenberg press affected the game theory of how the Church and State worked and how information was shared with the world. When Johannes Gutenberg invented his press, he was essentially moving his chess piece to checkmate the Church. For the most part, up until the invention of the Gutenberg press, the Church and people in positions of power or education could read, write and spread whatever information they wanted. Before the printing press, there were limited copies of important writings such as the Bible. Any knowledge about the world mostly came from whatever your local town had available for a literate figurehead to read in church or school. Most people were not able to read or write, so they had to depend on others to gain their knowledge of the world. People were told what to learn, believe and how to live their lives by the Church. As long as the State and the Church controlled what the people were taught they could control the people's ideologies.

Bitcoin has the same game theoretics as the Gutenberg press, but it is working toward separating the State from Money. Now lets envision a chessboard where the "worlds most powerful players" (WMPPs) that is, banks, governments, special interest groups are playing on one side of the chess board and Bitcoin is on the other side. This chess game between Bitcoin and the WMPPs has been the longest chess game to have ever been played because it has been going on for 12 years. In the game of chess, there are two possible outcomes, stalemate or checkmate. There is no chance that Bitcoin will face a stalemate in its game against the WMPPs, because a stalemate means that neither player wins or loses. A stalemate results when neither player can make a move that would result in the game progressing any further.

Alternatively, when Bitcoin checkmates the WMPPs king and wins the game of chess, Bitcoin will have become a store of value and medium of exchange for the whole world. The WMPPs cannot checkmate Bitcoin because, at most, if it were possible for the entire world to ban Bitcoin, as far-fetched as that sounds, Bitcoin would just go underground and be used like the Tor network, aka dark web.

This year, the WMPPs have made the following chess moves against Bitcoin along with "Bitcoins game theoretic countermoves" (BGTC):

WMPPs Move #1: China banned all bitcoin miners from their country. China represented approximately 65% of the computing power that runs the Bitcoin network.

BGTC: Bitcoin miners moved to the U.S. and other bitcoin miner-friendly countries. The resilience of the Bitcoin network was greatly tested by this huge move by the second most powerful country in the world. The Honey Badger does not care about China or any other powerful countrys decision about it. Bitcoin has the mindset of the little engine that could and will soon become a steamroller that all countries will have to get out of the way of or get steamrolled" by.

WMPPs Move #2: The United States snuck in a cryptocurrency provision within its Infrastructure bill so as to get $28 billion worth of taxes to fund the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The cryptocurrency provision was horribly worded by people in D.C. that did not have any clue as to what bitcoin or cryptocurrencies were.

BGTC: Bitcoiners called all their senators and fought for the cryptocurrency provision to be reworded and less harsh on the Bitcoin industry. This Bitcoin movement sent shockwaves among the halls of Congress and even though the "provision" did not change in favor of cryptocurrencies, the shockwaves that were caused by Bitcoiners will forever be felt. Bitcoin, the protocol, did not care about the bill nor the opinions of man and kept running to the tune tick tock next block.

WMPPs Move #3: The Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement puppeteered Elon Musk to come to the "realization" of Bitcoins immense amount of energy usage and the need to make Bitcoin greener.

BGTC: The Bitcoin Mining Council was created by Michael Saylor and after compiling an immense amount of energy usage data from 23 miners (62% of the mining industry) that freely joined the council, it was found that Bitcoin currently generates more than 50% of its usage from renewable energy. Bitcoin crashed to $29,000 after the Musk and China FUD in a span of a few months. Bitcoins price is now close to $50,000. The Honey Badger doesn't care about Musk or the ESG, but the Bitcoin Mining Council is serving as a great way to educate the masses about Bitcoin's energy usage.

WMPPs Move #4: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) tried to strong-arm El Salvador into not passing a law that would allow bitcoin to become legal tender in the country, by threatening that they would not support El Salvador.

BGTC: The President of El Salvador took things into his own hands and did what he thought was best for his people in passing a bill over a span of one day to allow bitcoin to become legal tender in El Salvador. El Salvador started using bitcoin as legal tender on September 7, 2021, which is like Bitcoin moving its pawn to the end of the chessboard and all avid chess players know what happens to a pawn when it reaches the end of a chess board. Pawns become queens, and the queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess. This game theoretic move by Bitcoin will start a chain reaction among other countries to adopt bitcoin, help bank the unbanked, and protect the purchasing power of those who adopt it from the rampant printing of fiat by all Nation States.

In conclusion, the Bitcoin network will continue to operate no matter what the WMPPs say, do or think. Some of the greatest, most powerful entities like the IMF, China, United States and ESG movement have tried to attack Bitcoin, but it will continue to move its chess pieces on the world's chessboard to counter every move because it is a beautifully engineered protocol. You might even argue that Bitcoin is artificial intelligence considering how it has countered the WMPPs every move for 12 years but that will be for a different article.

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

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A Look At The Game Theory Of Bitcoin - Bitcoin Magazine